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Back in the 1980s, before the Cold War gave way to the War on Terror, American money and supplies helped Osama Bin Laden create Al Qaeda and build it into one of the world’s most successful terrorist organizations. And without the close alliances between Al Qaeda and our “allies” Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the attack on the World Trade Towers could not have been carried out. What follows are the bare bones of what we know of this world as it existed in the days before September 11, 2001. (Some of the early material in this account first appeared in my book The Five Unanswered Questions About 9/11.)

In August 1998, shortly after the Al Qaeda bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa, Osama Bin Laden was interviewed by Agence France Press.  In grandiose but concise terms, he described his own rise to power in the early 1980s, during the years of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. “To counter these atheist Russians, the Saudis chose me as their representative in Afghanistan,” he said. “I settled in Pakistan in the Afghan border region. There I received volunteers who came from the Saudi kingdom and from all over the Arab and Muslim countries. I set up my first camp where these volunteers were trained by Pakistani and American officers. The weapons were supplied by the Americans, the money by the Saudis. I discovered that it was not enough to fight in Afghanistan, but that we had to fight on all fronts, communist or western oppression.”

In spite of its self-serving message and self-aggrandizing tone, the basic facts of Bin Laden’s account are not inaccurate. The terrorist organization that would one day launch the most devastating attacks ever to take place on American soil owes its existence, in large part, to U.S. covert operations and U.S. allies. At its inception, Al Qaeda was trained and supported by Pakistani agents, funded by Saudi sympathizers, and supplied by the CIA.

Later, when Bin Laden turned his sights on the United States, the CIA’s former friend in Afghanistan became its enemy. But the strategic and financial support provided by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia continued, right up to the moment of the 9/11 attacks. Without these two countries—and especially their powerful intelligence services—the attacks could not have taken place. Attacks of this magnitude required money, and they required a friendly regime in Afghanistan to provide a training base; these were supplied courtesy of our “allies” in the region. Their support for Al Qaeda continued over nearly two decades, with little intervention from the United States beforehand, and few consequences after the fact.
Osama bin Laden in happier days, when he was on the US CIA payroll

Lahore, Pakistan — I am incredulous!

I’ll say one thing: this US Special Forces operation deserves a standing ovation for immaculate execution. Except that some details do get confusing.  

Maybe I’m just slow, but truly, viewing the still pictures of the compound where Osama was shot to death that are being aired on local TV here, I am left spell-bound by many odd contradictions.

First, the wall that encircled the compound, which was blasted through to allow entry to the US attackers, showed a humble charpoy next to a water geyser and a few odd household items stacked right next to the opening. Not a hair out of place, so to speak. It was all a little too orderly for my lawyerly taste. Wouldn’t something have been damaged or knocked over at least?

Second, the room where the crucial “fire fight” took place causing deaths of Osama, his wife and some others (but no American), showed what were seemingly very humble lodgings. My own servant’s room is posh in comparison . There are no bullet holes, or marks of bullets ricocheting off the walls, and there’s no sign of damaged glass from the good-sized windows on one wall. The bed sheets on the two charpoys are so neat as to do a hotel maid proud. There’s just over 250 ml of blood on the floor between the two charpoys. It looks to me as though, rather than a fire fight, Osama & Co. were simply sitting ducks for a hunting party! Wait, that’s not all. The glass in the window is see-through. How odd! Anyone could have looked in and seen the world’s most wanted man once night fell, and remember, it’s an open area.

The downed helicopter, miraculously, disgorged its crew like magic. Presto! All unharmed by the crash! Yet oddly, the three neighbors of Osama who rushed to the scene to help, and who would have been witnesses to what actually happened, all have gone missing and never returned home.

And hey, where are the other dead bodies? There were some, no? And why the rush, rush, rush to dump Osama in the ocean? Why not share the evidence to put a stop of rumor mongers? At least show the corpus delicti to someone objective.
Osama's bedroom: no leaks in the waterbed after the shootout

THEY say he’s dead, that they killed him for justice yet they do not release photographs or any evidence of his death.



THEY say they buried him after Islam custom by dumping him in the open sea. But Islam says a body must be buried in the ground if the person did not die at sea.


THEY say a criminal suspect, even a terrorist, should be brought before a court.


THEY say, in Europe, they are against the death penalty.


THEY say he masterminded September 11.


THEY say he was terrorist number one.

(This article is Part II of journalist Ridenour’s political autobiography, Solidarity and Resistance: 50 Years With Che. Click here for Part I)
 

Wilfred Burchett was a key source of information for many of us who wanted to understand what the United States was doing against Southeast Asians. Burchett was an intrepid reporter for decades. He was the first correspondent to enter Hiroshima after the nuclear bombing and brought the world the military-censored news of its horrors.

Burchett’s journalist code influenced my journalism:

“It is not a bad thing to become a journalist because you have something to say and are burning to say it. There is no substitute for looking into things on the spot, especially if you are going to write on burning international issues of the day. Make every possible effort to get the facts across to at least some section of the public. Do not be tied to a news organization in which you would be required to write against your own conscience and knowledge.”

I later met Burchett. We spoke of doing some writing about Cuba but we never got around to it.

I had begun working as a reporter in 1967. The written word for me is a tool I wield for our liberation from exploitation and oppression. My first reporting was for the Communist Party’s California weekly, People’s World. My last articles for that publication were first-hand accounts from Prague just after the Soviet invasion. They were not published however–a decision taken by top party leaders over the editor’s objection–and I ceased writing for the People’s World.
Che was with me in more ways than I knew at the time. His image and revolutionary thoughts were often present at demonstrations in which I participated, especially anti-imperialist actions. But what I did not know, until I worked in Cuba in 1988, was that he had a flare for writing journalistically.

On June 14, 1988, Cuba’s Journalist Union published Che Periodista (Journalist Che) commemorating his 60th date of birth. It is a collection of chronicles, battle accounts, critiques of imperialism, ideological think pieces, and an homage to Camilo Cienfuegos, a close comrade killed in an airplane accident after the revolutionary victory.

Che’s reportage originally appeared in Verde Olivo (Olive Green), the Cuban revolutionary army magazine, written between October 1959 and April 1961. I found Che’s writings concise, freshly formulated in a crisp style.

After my Czechoslovakia report was ideologically censored by the Communist Party, I sought employment in the mass media, or mainstream media (MSM). My first job was as sports editor in central California at the Hanford Sentinel (1969-70). Not knowing anything about sports writing, I learned on the job. Then, I moved up to general reporting and features. I was soon fired, because I wrote about a taboo subject: racist covenants in housing.

The editor ran my piece, “Titles Include Race Restricting Provision,” on the front page, January 29, 1970. The lead read: “Said premises shall not be sold, conveyed, rented or leased to or occupied by any person not of the Caucasian race.” I had found this restriction on deeds at a real estate agency.
Ron Ridenour

   When it was  suggested the war in Iraq was about oil, Tony Blair,then the British prime minister, had this to say on February 6,2003

     “Let me just deal with the oil thing because… the oil conspiracy theory is honestly one of the most absurd when you analyse it. The fact is that, if the oil that Iraq has were our concern, I mean we could probably cut a deal with Saddam tomorrow in relation to the oil. It’s not the oil that is the issue, it is the weapons…”

  In fact, as I and numerous others, have reported on many occasions before, both during and after the war, oil was a principal if not the principal reason, for going to war. The reason for thinking this comes from any reading of oil history in the Middle East. The  modern industry began in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), which today probably boasts the largest reserves in the world. Current knowledge of oil and the war in large part comes from  the work of a  researcher in the UK named Greg Muttitt. Among other things, Muttitt has had close contacts with the Iraq oil workers union. Now Muttitt has written a book–released in Britain and India this week, called Fuel on the Fire-–that makes crystal clear  the role of big oil. His research had turned up hundreds of pages of heretofore secret documents and is further backed up by interviews with executives of the international oil companies.
Big Oil had plans for Iraq before the war even started

(This article is the first of seven pieces dedicated to the Cuban revolution and its defeat of the US imperialist invasion 50 years ago, April 17-19, 1961, and embraces my half-century struggle.)

 
I. Sharing Che’s Activism

Che’s penetrating eyes stare at me seriously as I write about him. It is strange that I have never written about him before, other than to quote him. Perhaps it is because Che has been too large a figure for me to tackle? I don’t know. This writing, though, is a commemoration of Che and of my 50 years in our common struggle.

Ernesto Guevara was my greatest personal inspiration and Cuba’s revolution was my greatest collective inspiration—along with the Vietnamese resistance fighters. Nicknamed Che, an Argentine expression, he lived and died as he preached. Che’s internationalist ideals, his consequent actions, his integrity and charm, have influenced my life all these decades.

What immediately attracted me was his forthright manner of speaking and writing, and his bravery and fairness in battle. Che’s dream was to liberate Latin America from the shackles of United States imperialism and its lackey national dictators and murderous straw men. This would be followed up by worldwide socialist revolution.

“I am Cuban and also Argentine…patriotic for Latin America…in the moment it might be necessary, I am disposed to offer my life for the liberation of whichever of the Latin American countries without asking anything of anyone.”

Those are his prophetic words printed on a calendar of photos, which I recently bought in the school room at La Higuera, Bolivia where he was murdered. The images of Che on my walls are important to me, as are some slogans, such as Fidel’s: “To be internationalist is to settle our own debt with humanity”—a moral displayed on Cuban billboards.

I began to share Che’s dream as my first life, that of a follower of the brutal and chauvinist American Dream, drew to a close. In my family, you were either an active American Dreamer, like my career militarist father, or a passive one like my grandmother, whose motto was: “Ignorance is Bliss”. I came to feel that these codes rejected other people. When I severed that knot, I entered a world of humanistic vision and struggle. I still see myself as a youth of the 60s, when many of us across the world fought the profiteering war-making empire-builders.
The author, Ron Ridenour

Bukowski loved the idea of poetry wars. Even at the lowest level of mimeo magazines, when he was co-editing Laugh Literary & Man the Humping Guns with Neeli Cherry, he jumped in guns blazing ready to take on the world. “Poetry,” he always said, “is a poor country without any boundaries. It’s open to all kinds of fools. All the poet has is his shitty little poem and his point of view. It’s like being on a bar stool, but with a piece of paper in your hand instead of a drink. You shout and scream and you hope someone will notice you.”

He thought poets were the spoiled children of literature: they had to do very little work to get published. They could write whatever they felt. Poetry was about feeling. It was not the complex work of a novelist or a journalist or a historian.

“Poets dazzle,” he said, “but often their best stuff is written in bitchy essays about what art is! When people call me a poet, it makes me want to vomit. I’m a writer!”

That was in 1976, when I was Arts editor of the L.A. Vanguard. I was doing a piece about Bukowski for the newspaper. Photographer Lory Robbin and I had showed up at Bukowski’s place on Carlton Way when he was first entertaining the woman who would later become Linda Bukowski. Lory got a great series of shots of the three of us drinking, while Bukowski was his usual outrageous self on tape.

The Vanguard had a policy about major pieces; they had to be approved by consensus among the editorial collective. When I handed in my piece on Bukowski, it was turned down by a three-to-two positive vote. Dorothy Thompson and Ron Ridenour turned it down because they viewed Bukowski as reactionary and anti-feminist.

I’d had this problem before. When we tried to send our male rock critic to a Holly Near concert, Near’s PR people threatened to withdraw their ad if we didn’t send a woman to review it. I sent Diana Saenz, who was a close friend, a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and secretary to Howard Jarvis of Proposition 13 fame. She wrote a great review, added a few lines of a song from an RCP group called Prairie Fire, and managed to piss off everyone but me, but it ran, because we had a paid advertisement. Diana was a delightfully talented poet, propagandist, and radical organizer and she could never be thought of as politically correct!

As editor, I’d had enough of the PC bullshit! “If not Charles Bukowski,” I asked, “who would you have in mind?”
Kenneth Rexroth

We are now on the brink of the mother of all meltdowns in more ways than one.

Last weekend, The Times quoted Alan Hansen, a nuclear engineer and executive vice president of Areva NC, a unit of Areva, a French group that supplied reactor fuel to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, who spoke before a private gathering at Stanford University. “Clearly,” he summarized, “we’re witnessing one of the greatest disasters in modern time.” What the on-going release of cancer-causing radioactive fragments means in terms of human health and the environment is only beginning to come to light.

It’s certainly not my expertise. What I do know is that, on top of the terrible calamities brought on by the tsunami and the scary portents of the radiation spewing into the air, the ocean, and into the ground surrounding Fukushima and beyond, we are facing an economic juggernaut that is likely to shatter the world’s fragile recovery. You don’t take out the world’s third biggest economy – until recently, the second — with no impact, despite the recent assurance by that reliable sage Timothy Geithner that the crisis in Japan would not hinder the U.S. recovery. (Meanwhile, Tim’s banking buddies are busy reviewing their clients’ exposure.)

Up until the last few days, media and stock market pundits continued to drool over the prospect of some $310 billion worth of new business anticipated to rebuild earthquake and tsunami-ravaged Japan. Newsweek featured an article by Bill Emmott, a former editor of The Economist, stating:

“Typically, if economic effects are measured simply by gross domestic product, natural disasters cause a short-term loss in output, thanks to the destruction of offices and factories and the disruption to transport links, but after just a few months they actually act like an economic stimulus package.”

Needless to say, these are far from typical times, and this is no typical disaster. Japan is suffering huge shortages as production capacity shrivels and logistical issues mount. The Financial Times reports that Japanese manufacturing activity plummeted to a two-year low in March, according to the Markit/JMMA purchasing managers’ index, which hit its worst low since its inception in 2001. Faced with the loss of a critical supply partner, many companies around the world are confronting an ominous reality.

Heading for a Global meltdown

 
The Statue of Liberty and Lower Manhattan

Isabel Wilkerson’s first book, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, couldn’t have come out at a better time for black New Orleanians, who as 2010 statistics confirmed, but our own hearts knew, lost more than a third of our community in the last decade. As we reassess what we had – good and bad – what we miss and what matters, we may find instruction and solace in this book about a previous era of departures, comparing its lessons to our Diaspora.

The Warmth of Other Suns is a beautiful book. It opens with a quote from author Richard Wright: “I was leaving the South to fling myself into the unknown…respond to the warmth of other suns and, perhaps, to bloom.”

The Warmth of Other Suns takes place from 1915-1970 and contains facts that New Orleanians may have forgotten or may not have experienced, as we were insulated, somewhat, in an urban setting. But Wilkerson points to Monroe, La., to explain why one type of migrant left, exemplified by Robert Foster. Coming from a family of educators, Foster wanted more than his small town offered – a segregated school system and a hospital which didn’t allow black doctors to operate, as well as a white establishment which had specific roles for blacks.

Foster leaves to become a surgeon, settling in Los Angles after a long, arduous journey, which Wilkerson describes perfectly: “Alone in the car, he had close to two thousand miles of curving road in front of him, father than farmworker emigrants leaving Guatemala for Texas.” The distance is also emotional as the book later shows. “He stayed awake at night weighing the options. All this education and no place to practice and live out his life as he imagined it to be.. a citizen of the United States like the passport said.”

Many of us may recall the trials of the South in the years of segregation and the frustrations experienced by professional people who could not work to their capability or get the same respect as whites in New Orleans. Segregation, its insults and its threats, affected everyone – men who were called boys on their jobs, and people who received less pay for the same work, for example. There were also the obvious stares, muttered curses and measured distances that characterized whites’ relations with us.
Author Isabel Wilkerson