The Other 9-11: Part II

In an earlier post titled "The Other 9-11: Part I," I observed that the 1973 coup in Chile that deposed Allende also happened on 9-11.

I quoted some writers on the left who made an analogy between "Chile's 9-11" and "America's 9-11." The message of these writers was that our 9-11 was some kind of "payback" for America's alleged participation in the Chilean coup.

Ward Churchill made a similar analogy even before 9-11 about the death-squads in Chile after the coup and alleged FBI-sponsored death-squads operating in America.

Ward Churchill's 1990 book The Cointelpro Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against Dissent in the United States [by Ward Churchill & Jim Vander Wall South End Press ISBN 0-89608-359-4 Chapter 7], makes an analogy between the supposed FBI-backed "murders" at Pine Ridge and the deaths after the coup in Chile. The beginning of Chapter 7 says:

"During the 36 months roughly beginning with the end of Wounded Knee and continuing through the first of May 1976, more than sixty AIM members and supporters died violently on or in locations immediately adjacent to the Pine Ridge Reservation. A minimum of 342 others suffered violent physical assaults. 78 As Roberto Maestas and Bruce Johansen have observed:

Using only these documented political deaths, the yearly murder rate on Pine Ridge Reservation between March 1, 1973, and Mardi 1, 1976, [note the lapsed English] was 170 per 100,000. By comparison, Detroit, the reputed "murder capital of the United States," had a rate of 20.2 in 1974. The U.S. average was 9.7 per 100,000, with the range for large cities as follows: Detroit, 20.2; Chicago, 15.9; New York City, 163; Washington, D.C, 13.4; Los Angeles, 12.9; Seattle, 5.6; and Boston, 5.6. An estimated 20,000 persons were murdered in the United States in 1974. In a nation of 200 million persons, a murder rate comparable to that of Pine Ridge between 1973 and 1976 would have left 340,000 persons dead for political reasons in one year; 1.32 million in three. A similar rate for a city of 500,000 would have produced 850 political murders in a year, 2,550 in three. For a metropolis of 5 million the figures would have been 8,500 in one year and 25,500 in three ... The political murder rate at Pine Ridge between March 1, 1973, and March 1, 1976, was almost equivalent to that in Chile during the three years after the military coup supported by the United States deposed and killed President Salvador Allende ... Based on Chiles population of 10 million, the estimated fifty thousand persons killed in three years of political repression in Chile at the same time (1973/1976) roughly paralleled the murder rate at Pine Ridge. 79"

Churchill's allegation that the FBI backed the killers of 60 Indians was disputed by the FBI.

In fact, in 1985, Churchill had claimed that FBI-backed death squads murdered 342 Indians. As early as 1985 Churchill [not his later 1990 sources Roberto Maestas and Bruce Johansen--see above] had claimed:

"The statistics [death rate on Pine Ridge] are entirely comparable to what happened in Chile in the immediate aftermath of Pinochet's coup."

Odd that Churchill didn't use his own 1985 citation in his 1990 book, Cointelpro, instead of relying on other scholars' comparisons about Chile and Pine Ridge!

In his 1990 book, Cointelpro, Churchill claimed that the FBI-backed killers assaulted 342 Indians and murdered about 60.
I wrote about Churchill's morphing allegations about FBI complicity in the "deaths" or "assaults" 342 Indians here.

I wonder if the selection of the date 9-11 may have been an Al Qaeda nod to anti-American radicals in this country like Ward Churchill who have invented American atrocities and spread poisonous lies about the FBI and CIA to the whole world.

Perhaps it was the blowback of these anti-American "scholars'" lies that caused the terrorists to select the date 9-11.