Together we humans remember our collective past. Now we are remembering 9/11, the attacks on the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and the aborted attack defeated by the heroic passengers on the flight that crashed in Shanksville, PA. Our collective memory is shaped by historical forces at the time, and then later. We do not remember “the winning of the West” or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki the way we did long ago. As our understanding of our world changes, the official memory of past events changes also. How are we now remembering 9/11, and is it the same as the way we understood the events 25 years ago?
This year’s memorials to the events of that day seem to remain focused on the tragedy of so many who died, and of the heroism of the “first responders” and those who brought down “the fourth plane” in Pennsylvania. The time-frame remains compressed. Our thinking about the time before 9/11 is focused on the intelligence failure – we were were not prepared for the attack. (See the 2001 article by Seymour Hersh linked below.) Our thinking about the period right after the attack now extends to the thousands of lives lost in the failure of esp. NYC authorities to act on the available evidence that the toxic residue of the attack was deadly dangerous – indeed, more people died from the toxic environment created by the attacks on the Twin Towers than were killed in the collapse of the Towers themselves. Beyond these limited time boundaries – before and after – our official memory of 9/11 has not enlarged much. How did our world change? And why did it change the way it did, instead of some other way? Some essays linked below address these questions.
It was in the chaotic days and weeks following 9/11 that people in the Rivertowns came together to talk, worry, and if they/we should do something, and what that might be. And so on this weekend Concerned Families of Westchester celebrates its 25th anniversary. It has taken on the burden of remembering and realizing what 9/11 really meant.
As someone in the late innings of his life, but also as the grandfather of a miraculous 4-year-old, I cannot “remember” 9/11 unambiguously. On some days I see it as the beginning of the end of our civilization, perhaps our species. On other days the grandfather kicks in, and a fighting spirit wants to protect a world that will nurture 4-year-olds. In the aftermath of 9/11, my friend Frances Anderson made a film called “Civilian Casualties.” It focuses on the work of September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows,” people who had lost loved one on 9/11 and who came to together to protest our nation turning to war in revenge – “Not in Our Name.” Some of the music for the film moved me deeply, especially that of the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt. His memorial composition for his friend, English composer Benjamin Britten, evokes endless falling (like the Towers), tragedy and despair, and ends in stillness – for Britten, for death; for us, the world made for us by 9/11 and what we make of it.
ESSAYS ILLUMINATING THIS WEEK
(Video) Noam Chomsky on the 9/11 Decade and the Assassination of Osama bin Laden: Was There an Alternative?
From Democracy Now! [September 11, 2011]
---- Ten years ago, at a time when lawmakers from both sides of the aisle joined together to authorize endless war, Noam Chomsky’s was the leading voice to call for the United States to \rethink its actions in the Middle East and across the globe. His 2001 book, simply titled “9-11,” became a surprise bestseller. The book collected a series of interviews Chomsky had given on the roots of the 9/11 attacks and his prescription for a just response. A decade later, Chomsky has just released an updated version titled “9-11: Was There an Alternative?” which refers to the U.S. assassination of Osama bin Laden and the continuity Chomsky sees between the Bush administration’s foreign policy and President Obama’s. “Right at this moment, Obama has succeeded in descending even below George W. Bush in approval in the Arab world,” says Noam Chomsky. “The policies change, but they’re hostile. We should understand where atrocities come from. They don’t come from nowhere. And if we’re serious, we should try to do something about what is the basis for them.” [See the Program]
Osama Bin Laden Won
By Nick Turse, The Intercept [September 11 2026]
---- Looking back, I’ve come to think of the acrid odor of the collapsed Twin Towers as more than a melange of burning paper, glass, concrete, and around 70 carcinogens. It was, instead, a harbinger of something even darker than the nearly 3,000 Americans who died on 9/11 — a long road of death and destruction stretching out into the future, beyond the vanishing point. … The vengeful war on the world that bin Laden managed to provoke has proved even more devastating than the effects of the toxic stew we inhaled near Ground Zero. An estimated 940,000 people were killed by direct post-9/11 war violence in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and elsewhere between 2001 and 2023, alone. Another 3.6 to 3.8 million people are estimated to have died indirectly in post-9/11 war zones, bringing the toll to at least 4.5 million dead and counting. This quarter century of carnage and all that it unleashed has left the U.S. hollowed out and rotting from within; a deterioration in every conceivable measure from economics to democratic ideals to the spiritual health of the nation. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - ‘‘Everything changed’: The human cost of 25 years of US wars,” by Hanna Duggal and Alia Chughtai, Aljazeera [September 11, 2026] [Link].
What Went Wrong. The C.I.A. and the failure of American intelligence.
By Seymour M. Hersh, The New Yorker [October 1, 2001]
---- After more than two weeks of around-the-clock investigation into the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the American intelligence community remains confused, divided, and unsure about how the terrorists operated, how many there were, and what they might do next. It was that lack of solid information, government officials told me, that was the key factor behind the Bush Administration’s decision last week not to issue a promised white paper listing the evidence linking Osama bin Laden’s organization to the attacks. There is consensus within the government on two issues: the terrorist attacks were brilliantly planned and executed, and the intelligence community was in no way prepared to stop them. The investigators are now split into at least two factions. One, centered in the F.B.I., believes that the terrorists may not have been “a cohesive group,” as one involved official put it, before they started training and working together on this operation…. Another view, centered in the Pentagon and the C.I.A., credits the hijackers with years of advance planning and practice, and a deliberate after-the-fact disinformation campaign. … Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists’ identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, “Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase.” [Read More]
CFOW NUTS & BOLTS
Please consider getting involved with Concerned Families of Westchester. Weather permitting we meet for a protest/rally each Saturday in Hastings, at 12 noon at the VFW Plaza (Warburton and Spring St.) The Northwest Yonkers Neighbors for Black Lives Matter holds a Monday afternoon vigil at 5:30 pm at the corner of Warburton Ave and Odell. The CFOW newsletter can be read on Substack, and is archived at https://cfow.blogspot.com; and news of interest and coming events is posted on our CFOW Facebook group. Another Facebook group focuses on the climate crisis. If you would like to join one of our Zoom meetings, each Tuesday and Thursday at noon, please send a return email for the link. If you would like to support our work by making a CONTRIBUTION, please make out your check to “Frank Brodhead,” write “CFOW” on the memo line, and send your check to CFOW, PO Box 364, Hastings-on-Hudson, NY 10706. Thanks.
Best wishes,
Frank Brodhead
For CFOW
FEATURED ESSAYS
FB – A new book by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor will be released this week. It is called End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World. In this 10-minute (dramatic) video, Klein and Taylor explain what they mean by “end times fascism” (Christian apocalypse, cyber-mogul fantasies, Trump’s MAGA base) to warn of the dangers of these people who think the “end of humanity” might be OK, even an improvement. See the video here. Klein and Taylor were interviewed for the New York Times Magazine. Lots of info and some pictures; the interviewer himself is a bit annoying. But you can read & watch it here.
This Is Really Bad – [Artificial Intelligence]
By Stephen Witt, New York Times [September 11, 2026]
---- The biggest vibe shift in artificial intelligence since the release of ChatGPT is currently underway. Researchers in Silicon Valley — and around the world — are beginning to recognize that A.I. may no longer be entirely within human control. Swarms of A.I.s are breaking out of their containers, colluding in secret, covering their tracks, cheating on tests and even mounting assaults on other computers. A.I. has gone rogue. I’ve spent the last month reporting on these incidents, and I am convinced that we need a global pause on A.I. research and development — now. I am not alone in this assessment. Many top researchers, including many researchers inside OpenAI and Anthropic, have called for a slowdown, which those in the industry call “pacing.” Theoretical concerns about runaway A.I. have circulated for decades, but recent events demonstrate that the threat is real. The vibe shift was brought on by what researchers are calling the “Hugging Face incident.” [Read More] - ALSO OF INTEREST – And for another side of the AI story, read some of the offerings in Dean Baker’s AI Bubble Monitor.
Where Hatred Lies – [“Antisemitism”]
By Omer Bartov, New York Review of Books [September 24, 2026 issue]
---- Over the course of the 1930s, as Mark Mazower writes in his incisive and timely study On Antisemitism, “the European continent was gradually dividing into two armed camps.” On one side were “the liberal victors” of World War I, who supported democracy, capitalism, and the new League of Nations. On the other was a group of revisionist states that sought to create a system of racist or ethnocentric dictatorships geared to address social inequality after the Great Depression, combat materialism, and, not least, ward off communism. Precisely because it remains “an ongoing problem,” Mazower writes, “anyone who takes antisemitism seriously” ought to be “dismayed by the confusion that exists around the term, not to mention the overuse that threatens to strip it of meaning.” How did it “come to seem unassailable common sense to a lot of people” today that a prejudice once central to the ideology of far-right anticommunism now resides primarily on the left? And if that common sense is wrongheaded, how might we better understand the workings of this all-too-present bigotry? [Read More]
ALSO OF INTEREST - “How drones reinvented the proxy war,” by Steven Feldstein, Bulletin in the Atomic Scientists [September 2, 2026] [Link]; and “What are the implications of AfD’s electoral rise for Germany and Europe?” from Aljazeera [September 7, 2026] [[Link].
REMEMBERING 9/11/2001 ON 9/11/2026
(Video) “Horror to Last a Lifetime”: Juan González on Covering 9/11 Attacks in NYC 25 Years Ago Today
From Democracy Now! [September 11, 2026]
---- Friday marks 25 years since the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and the crash of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Around 3,000 people were killed that day, and nearly 10,000 more have died in the years since from 9/11-related illnesses connected to the collapse of the twin towers. In 2001, Democracy Now! was a radio show broadcasting from the attic of Downtown Community Television in Chinatown, just blocks away from ground zero. We were the closest national broadcast to the World Trade Center site. We were on the air when the second plane hit the south tower. Today, we reair a clip of that broadcast and hear Democracy Now! co-host Juan González read the column he wrote for the New York Daily News in the hours after the attack, “A Horror to Last a Lifetime.” “A catastrophe like that changes people forever,” says González. [See the Program]
The Real 9/11: Citizens Succeeded, Institutions Failed
By Rebecca Solnit, Meditations in an Emergency [September 11, 2026]
---- For this twenty-fifth anniversary of that terrible day, let’s remember what actually happened: When the planes became missiles and the towers became torches and then shards and clouds of dust, many were afraid, but few if any panicked, other than the President who was far away from danger. The military failed to respond promptly, even though the Pentagon itself was attacked, and the only direct resistance that day came from inside Flight 93, which went down in a field in Pennsylvania on its way to Washington, thanks to the valiant and quickly improvised response of the passengers and crew to the hijackers. … It could all have been different. It’s too late now, but not too late, never too late, to change how we remember and commemorate this event and that other great landmark of the Bush era, Hurricane Katrina, and so prepare for disasters to come. New York has its pillars of light and readings of names for the anniversary of 9/11, but it seems to lack any invitation to the citizenry to feel its own power and prepare for the next calamity. For there will be next times for a great many cities and towns in this country and elsewhere. New Yorkers could gather in Union Square and elsewhere to remember what happened, really remember, remember that the heroes weren’t necessarily men, or in uniform, but were almost everyone everywhere that day. [Read More]
25 Years of War Was the Wrong Response to 9/11
By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, Code Pink [September 11, 2026]
---- The lesson of 9/11 should be that war is not the answer to any of the problems facing the United States. After inflicting violence and chaos on country after country for twenty-five years in a “global war on terror” that has evolved into a Zionist genocide and a revived Cold War against Russia and China, the widespread public opposition to Trump’s war on Iran suggests that most Americans have finally learned that lesson. Unfortunately, powerful sections of our corrupt business and political elites have not. Most Americans old enough to remember September 11, 2001, can still recall the horrifying images played endlessly on our TV screens as the scale of the mass murder became clear. But we also remember something else: the sinking feeling that the hopes and dreams of billions of people, in the US and around the world, would be pushed to the back-burner for the foreseeable future, as our leaders and corporate media all too predictably embraced a new agenda of revenge, fear-mongering, jingoism and military violence. We found out later that only hours after the attacks—less than six hours after the first plane struck the World Trade Center and barely five hours after the Pentagon was hit—the planning for America’s military response to the 9/11 massacre was already under way. [Read More]
THE US-ISRAEL WAR AGAINST IRAN
Selling the war: Purges, polygraphs and propaganda
From Aljazeera [“The Listening Post”] [September 12, 2026]
---- With the US midterm elections just weeks away, Donald Trump’s administration is trying to put a positive spin on a war with Iran that shows no sign of letting up. Climbing fuel and grocery prices, the president’s provocative social media posts and the Pentagon’s combative relationship with the media are making that story harder to sell. [Read More]
THE WAR ON PALESTINE
(Video) “NAZA” - Israeli documentary NAZA examines AI-driven warfare in Gaza
---- From TRT (Turkey) [September 12, 2026] This Israeli documentary NAZA received a 25-minute standing ovation at the Venice Film Festival for its examination of Israel’s use of AI and surveillance technology in Gaza. Featuring testimony from Israeli intelligence personnel, the film sheds light on how targets were selected and the impact on Palestinian civilians. [See the Program]. - ALSO OF INTEREST – At a 30-minute press conference in Venice following the screening of “NAZA,” the directors spoke about what they saw and how they constructed the film [Link].
Israel’s Dark Dream of Gaza without Gazans
By Binoy Kampmark, Informed Comment [September 7, 2026]
---- Let’s be done with the pretense of decency and soggy references to just resolution in the face of extreme circumstances. Be done with the hilarious stage acts of referring to legal doctrines that either do not exist or cannot exist in the bloodied context they are being forced to refer to. The State of Israel is intent, with every arm, administrative faculty and office bearer of consequence, to achieve ethnic effacing and utopic bliss with the removal of Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank, with the former going first. … It had been one of those moments of mental arrest, but Trump engendered a sharp frisson in the ranks of the Netanyahu government with his February 2025 proposal to relocate the residents of Gaza. Once done, developers and builders could come in and turn the strip into a tourist destination replete with the vulgar fripperies typical of such resorts. By October 2025, Trump’s peace plan envisaged something else; the relocation-development scheme seemed to have not so much stalled as died in its sleep, with the promise that the residents could stay and engage in the process of rebuilding the devastated territory. [Read More]
The U.K. Sanctions Are a Joke. Israel Is the Settlements, and the Settlements Are Israel
By Gideon Levy, Ha’aretz [Israel] [September 10, 2026]
---- The new British government says ethnic cleansing is occurring in the West Bank, making it the first Western country to say that. This is grounds for hope and a moral act. Hurray for Britain, no cynicism intended. But Britain chose only to punish the settlers, which sets a dangerous precedent. By doing so, it is saying that there is Israel and there are settlers. There is a country and there is an occupation, there are Israelis and there are settlers. … But settlements are not an independent political entity. When Europe imposed sanctions on the occupied Crimean Peninsula, it also imposed sanctions on the occupier, Russia. How can you only punish the settlers without imposing penalties against those who initiated the settlements, fund them and defend and support them, namely the government of Israel Therefore, Britain’s decision to impose sanctions on the settlers provides the international community with a way to evade its responsibility. The world, which often deludes itself into believing that the source of all evil is Benjamin Netanyahu, must also remember that Netanyahu did not found the settlement enterprise. The entire Zionist enterprise stands behind the settlements, and with it the Zionist establishment throughout the world. [Read More]
Revealed: Netanyahu Received an Explicit Warning Days Before Oct. 7. He Didn’t Brief Israel’s Security Chiefs
By Shlomi Eldar and Ruth Yuval, Ha’aretz [Israel] [September 8, 2026]
---- These were the final days of September 2023. Terrorist attacks inflamed the West Bank, masses of Gazans regularly protested at the border fence, and the country was reeling from internal conflict over the judicial coup laws. Anyone watching the events with clear eyes could sense that an escalation was lurking around every corner. UAE President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed – known as MBZ – was particularly concerned. “He spoke with me about this often in the months leading up to the war,” recounts President Isaac Herzog, who maintains friendly relations with bin Zayed. “He constantly conveyed messages that the situation needed to be defused. He even sent a special envoy to Israel who met with the prime minister. The emir seemed to sense that the area was on the verge of explosion.” Bin Zayed would also speak directly with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. These conversations followed a standard procedure: A representative from the Emirati embassy would come to the prime minister’s bureau, bringing a special phone device that ensured the confidentiality of the call. … Bin Zayed urged Netanyahu to take the situation seriously. To his surprise, however, the prime minister reacted with relative calm. Netanyahu said that, in his assessment, Hamas intended to operate in the West Bank area, and he reassured bin Zayed that Israel was prepared for any scenario. [Read More] – ALSO OF INTEREST - “Netanyahu Was Warned About October 7. Will Haaretz’s Exposé Change Anything?” by Linda Dayan, Ha’aretz [September 8, 2026]
[Link].
CIVIL LIBERTIES/”THE WAR ON TERROR”
(Video) Forever War: How 9/11 Unleashed U.S. Violence on Civilians Abroad & Attacks on Rights at Home
From Democracy Now! [September 11, 2026]
---- We look at how post-9/11 policies and the so-called war on terror reshaped the country and the world with two Columbia faculty members who convened a two-day symposium on “The Forever War and the First Amendment.” The symposium brought together journalists, scholars, lawyers and activists to explore the legacy of the “war on terror,” specifically focused on the impact on democratic rights, including the freedoms of speech and the press. First Amendment freedoms “were tested right away in the days and weeks after 9/11,” says Jameel Jaffer, legal expert and director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University. “All of the surveillance authorities that were put in place after 9/11,” says Jaffer, “their use was initially justified by reference to foreign threats. And now, increasingly, we’re seeing the Trump administration use these things to suppress domestic dissent.” [See the Program]
THE STATE OF THE UNION
The Shadowy Powers that Trump Could Use to End American Democracy
By Sasha Abramsky, The Nation [September 4, 2026]
---- The warnings in Medish and McCleary’s latest essay are stark. They center around the possibility that a cornered, wrathful Trump—enabled by supine leadership in the Justice Department, the Pentagon, and other key departments of government, as well as by GOP leadership in Congress—could declare a national emergency in the run-up to and aftermath of the midterm elections. Their fear is that, if he does so, he might then activate the highly secretive, Cold War era Presidential Emergency Action Documents (PEADs), authored to ensure continuity of the government following a nuclear attack, in an attempt to suspend the constitutional order. … PEADs exist outside of the regular legislative and legal framework of the country. Drafted by a series of White House lawyers from the Eisenhower presidency onward, they are, by definition, extra-constitutional. Congress isn’t looped in on their specifics; few attorneys within government, outside of a handful at the epicenter of White House power, are thought to have seen them; only a select few cabinet members, including the vice president, the defense secretary, the national security director, and the head of the CIA, are thought to have access to them; and those who do are forbidden to even acknowledge their existence. … Over the past several decades, according to those who have studied this shadowy world, the Department of Defense has spent billions of dollars out of secret, black-budget funds, building up an infrastructure to implement PEADs and other continuity-of-government measures should an emergency situation arise. … Today, under the National Security Presidential Memorandum-7 (NSPM-7) directive, the FBI and other agencies, in conjunction with Big Tech and other purveyors of surveillance infrastructure, are investigating large numbers of political dissidents and critics. [Read More]
Socialists Can Lead in the Fight Against AI Data Centers
By Liza Featherstone, Jacobin [September 9, 2026]
---- Seven in ten Americans oppose the construction of a large AI data center in their own community. In fact, there are few issues that unite Americans across the political spectrum like this one does. Even among Republicans, more say that new data center construction is bad than good. Yet most mainstream politicians, Democratic and Republican alike, are failing to meet the moment. That leaves socialists, who are unbeholden to large donors with vested interests in the AI boom, in a unique position. Democratic socialists are better positioned than either major party to stand up to oligarchy, a twenty-first-century American gangrene that every data center fight seems to reveal anew. … The reasons people hate data centers — and generative AI in its current, extractive, billionaire-piloted form— are deeply aligned with democratic socialists’ broader political agenda. Sarahana Shrestha, a democratic socialist assemblymember in New York’s Hudson Valley fighting for a state moratorium on new data centers, says that the data center fight is less about Terminator-style scenarios where AI turns against us and really about grounded, immediate issues like affordability and inequality. While rural New Yorkers are struggling with the rising costs of electricity and threats to the grid, data centers will drive up their energy costs. [Read More]
OUR HISTORY
The United States’ Major Wars and Direct Military Interventions Since 1945
By Eric Toussaint, Counterpunch [September 8, 2026]
---- Since its inception in the last quarter of the 18th century, the United States has, on numerous occasions, used its armed forces to expand its influence, territory, power and control over the natural resources of other nations. These interventions constitute the most visible form of the exercise of their global power. However, they represent only part of a much broader apparatus that also includes coups d’état, covert operations, military alliances, proxy wars and the global network of military bases. This section examines the main conflicts in which the US armed forces have been directly involved in combat operations since the end of the Second World War. The overall trend is marked by a profound shift: following the large-scale ground wars of the Cold War (Korea and Vietnam), Washington has gradually favoured interventions combining air superiority, precision technologies, special forces and cooperation with local allies. [Read More]
The Bund and the history of Jewish anti-Zionism.
By Bruce Robbins, The Nation [September 8, 2026]
[FB – This is a review of Here Where We Live Is Our Country: The Story of the Jewish Bund by Molly Crabapple.]
---- Born in the same year, 1897, Zionism and Bundism were bitter and intimate rivals from the beginning, struggling for the souls of poor Eastern European Jews. The Zionist program—to resolve the Jewish question once and for all by establishing a homeland in Palestine—is well-known, the Bund’s much less so. In Here Where We Live, Crabapple seeks to revive what she can of the Bund’s project. As her title reminds us, the Bund wanted to stay and fight—for Jewish and working-class emancipation through socialism—where its members lived. In the Bund’s eyes, the Zionists wanted exactly what the antisemites around them wanted: for the Jews to self-deport. Staunch opponents of self-deportation, the Bundists were well placed to predict, early and accurately, what the Zionist project of colonizing Palestine would mean for the Palestinians. Crabapple makes it a matter of pride that the Bund was so prescient. …The Bund’s spirit survives in the unprecedented proportion of Jews, especially young people, who have refused to allow antisemitism to be weaponized. It survives in the fact that a present-day Irving Howe, however surprised at a Yiddish accent, could no longer be shocked at hearing a Jewish denunciation of Israel. In the last 50 years, Howe’s outrage at Jewish critiques of Israel has become less intellectually respectable. The groundswell of praise that has greeted Crabapple’s book is a testament to its many virtues, but also to the change that has overtaken moral common sense, especially since Gaza. [Read More]
