As of 3:55 p.m. EST September 12, 2001, MIM found the following statements by other organizations on the Internet. Our comments are in brackets:
"For immediate public release:
This is a major event and very serious situation. We don't know who was behind it. But it is certain that it will be used by the powers-that-be to implement repressive measures against political opposition and broad sections of the populace who had nothing at all to do with this.
Revolutionary Communist Party
September 11, 2001"
[International Minister comments for MIM: MIM agrees with this completely. We think the RCP-USA should consider itself obligated to say more, more quickly.]
"Fight to Smash Capitalism: Source of All Terrors to the Working Class
CHALLENGE-DESAFIO and Progressive Labor Party have always condemned terrorism. Terrorism by nationalists and fundamentalists just copy the terrorism of the big bosses.
The bloodbath caused by the blowing up buildings with hijacked planes full of passengers is a despicable anti-working class act copying what the U.S./NATO did during the 1999 air war against the former Yugoslavia or during the 1991 Oil War against Iraq (bombing which still goes on by U.S. and British planes).
Now the U.S. bosses will use the blowing up of the Twins Towers and part of the Pentagon as an excuse to prepare for war and impose police state measures against all workers. Workers and youth should not fall for this.
We must not fall for the anti-Arab racism that might soon follow. Bin Laden, who some are blaming for this terrorism, was, after all, trained by the Central Intelligence Agency to wage a "holy war" against the Soviet army in Afghanistan.
Islamic fundamentalism was built by the U.S. bosses and their allies in oil-rich Saudi Arabia to wage an anti-Soviet crusade in the 1980s and to protect the oil profits of Exxon-Mobil and their billionaire Saudi royal family friends. . Now "the chickens are coming home to roost."
Workers and youth face in the U.S. and worldwide mass job cuts as the bosses try to make us pay for their economic slowdown. A pro-war hysteria will only make us support the same bosses who are eliminating our jobs.
We in PLP fights for the unity of all workers and youth to organize a movement that will fight for a society without warmakers, without oil profiteers, a society where workers produce for their needs: communism. Join us!"
[International Minister comments for MIM: We have to agree that since the PLP opposes war, that this is a progressive stance. It should not be called Marxist, because the PLP here and elsewhere opposes all armed struggle in the world as it actually exists.]
[As of September 12th at 3:55 p.m., www.workers.org had no statement on events of September 11th. The website is the website of the Workers World Party.]
Contact MIM by writing mim3@mim.org