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This week on CounterSpin: New Yorkers who were here 22 years ago remember the proliferation of signs and stickers reading “our grief is not a cry for war”—and then the way that voice was shouted over by corporate news media, calling for war crimes with US flags on their lapels. Hosting old general after old general, as peace and human rights activists and the overall public begged for an answer to violence that wasn’t just more violence, for a conversation that would allow us to see one another as human beings.
Pretend-neutral news media have done crucial work in selling Islamophobia, in weaponizing centuries of misinformation and demonization for wartime purposes, with the war being the undefined, unending “war on terror.” Media’s job has involved lying to us about many things—but, crucially, about what we believed, what we were capable of, and what we wanted to see as the way forward. Key to that campaign has been the idea that Muslims are the enemy—violent, dangerous, irrational—if not now, soon; if not your friend, his friend.
September 11, 2001, is the exemplar of a past that isn’t dead, or even past, and for no one more particularly than Muslims. We talk about that with Maha Hilal, author of the book Innocent Until Proven Muslim: Islamophobia, the War on Terror and the Muslim Experience Since 9/11.
Transcript: ‘There’s This Notion That the “War on Terror” Was Just Something That Happened Abroad’
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at recent press coverage of Ukraine, the UAW strike and Biden’s trip to Vietnam.
Featured Image: Texas Muslim Capitol Day, Austin, Texas, January 28, 2015 (Creative Commons photo: Manuel Garza)
September 11th was bad enough—–but then so was GW Bush and his early a.m. attack on Iraq so early in the morning. Revenge never solves anything. : (
Never Forget.. *More* Americans died in Bush’s (along with Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Powell, etc) wars of choice than on 9/11.
By a big factor..4x at the very least.
Meanwhile, well over a Million Iraqis died..perhaps up to 2 million.
Iraqis had zero to do with 9/11 while the Saudis appear to have been instrumental..and yet we never attacked Saudi Arabia. No, we attacked several other countries..most with very little if anything to do with 9/11.
Any serious accountability for all those deaths..Americans, Iraqis, etc??
For the $8+ Trillion blown?
Imagine all the phenomenal good that could have been done with all those $Trillions..?
Oh, sorry.. went off script!
Focus 100% on This: Russia BAD. China BAD. Iran BAD. N.Korea BAD!
‘Merica…GOOD!
It is comforting to know that ignorance, stupidity, brain-washing and arrogance are still alive and well in the good old U.S.A.