The True Cost of 9/11
What is rarely talked about is the fact that close to a million innocent civilians, including women and children, the majority of whom are Muslims, lost their lives during the illegal wars that were immediately launched in Iraq and Afghanistan. And what's worse is that the counter is still ticking.
There seems to be no agreement on the exact number of civilian causalities in both of these countries. Some studies put the number as low as 100,000 deaths and others put it as high as 2 million. One particular poll that I found worth mentioning was conducted by the British firm Opinion Research Business. The poll, conducted in 2008, asked 1,720 Iraqi adults if they had lost family members by violence since 2003. Sixteen per cent had lost one, and 5 per cent has lost two. Using the 2005 census total of 4,050,597 households in Iraq, this suggests 1,220,580 deaths since the invasion. When the margin of error is taken into account, the study finds that a minimum of 733,158 to a maximum of 1,446,063 Iraqis have died as a result of the war.
This is a thread about 9/11 and its real "lessons," contra the imperialistic and jingoistic narratives of security and "terror." This thread is not for inside job theories or other conspiracy junkets. Leave them out of this thread.
Noam Chomsky's article
And here's a wonderful article about babble's role and history with 9/11, by Noreen, our newest satff member.
Tonya Surman, rabble's first and only business manager, and Judy Rebick, rabble's founder, both remember being in the middle of a rabble staff meeting when the attacks occurred. "At first we didn't realize how serious the attack was. Once we did, we saw that our babblers were following news all around the world," recalls Rebick.
That babble news thread was promoted to the lead item on rabble by Jude MacDonald, the editor at the time, and babblers were then asked to use separate threads for speculation and personal responses.
"We got a good idea of what social media could accomplish on that day because readers of rabble were getting the multiple perspectives of news from all over the world, including the Middle East," continued Rebick.
Other rabble staff members Michelle Langlois, a former babble moderator, and blogger Krystalline Kraus clearly recall the significance of rabble's 9/11 coverage. Kraus called it "the first awesome use of babble," and elaborated, saying "rabble help[ed] to facilitate Canadian coverage -- and later cover events itself -- during and after the 9/11 attacks, especially when mainstream media sites were crashing due to volume hits so people were turning to rabble for news."
Those babble threads are incredible. What an archive.
The hawks still maintain that torture was invaluable in rounding up "al-Qa'eda" suspects. But none of the miniscule few will be given a fair or impartial trial. It's all down to an American inquisition, and what they say goes. The torture is nothing new, although the lapdog news media have said that 9/11 is the reason for such extreme interrogations from 2001 forward. And that is a lie of Orwellian proportion.
American inquisitors tortured a confession from an "al-Qa'eda" suspect, and Colin Powell used that falsehood in front of the UN to connect Saddam Hussein with "al-Qa'eda". And not until after they bombed and invaded did the inquisitors ask their detainee why he lied under torture? Inquisitions and torture have everything to do with propping up authoritarian rule.
We know from Catholic and Spanish inquisitions of medieval times past that torture is never about discovering truth.