In relation to matters like 9/11, plenty of writing on this year's September 11th speak to issues of note in regard to our beliefs about andremembrance of things past. Very few of them, however, at least here at home, have anything to say about what took place twenty-eight years prior to 2001 on that day, thousands of miles to the South in Chile.

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Here is an idea that I've expressed on wood, which my wife and I transform into art. "That yesterday affects today is no more in doubt than is the fact that the mother's experience of gestation influences the birth and future development of her child: truly the past authors the present in similar fashion as the rains of Spring induce the growth of Summer and Autumn's bounty, or lack thereof."

Time's touch often enough caresses one's memory, as one might experience on birthdays or other repositories of fond recollection; at other junctures, however, the temporal interface has more in common with a jab in the gut or an ax in the face. Most people in North America would likely see September eleventh as such a problematic point in time for purposes of recalling the past.

Especially when pain or plaintive loss characterizes the way we remember a particular yesterday, we owe ourselves--unless our hope is to maximize the generation of more such memories--a stalwart attempt to understand how what was painful and harmful came to pass. Such thinking would, as just noted, probably apply to most Americans' feelings about what happened in New York City fourteen years ago. Thus, we ought to inquire why and how jets flew into skyscrapers, and we should willingly dig deeply in seeking answers.

Especially in the United States, however, such sifting of days gone by for insight to the present pass presents a nearly intractable problem. Media repeatedly obfuscate and falsify, or at leasttrivialize, what happened. Standard-issue or other 'accepted' history books provide assessments that are partial or plain wrong. Discourse and debate about how 'bad things happen to good people' is, charitably, sadly inadequate.

Were the results of these patterns merely a lack of closure and a missing out on understanding, these eventualities would be bad enough. When such archetypes of prejudice and ignorance make probable, or even certain, upcoming new disasters that stem from inadequate capacity to contextualize the roots of events, the cost is incalculable, possibly including the destruction of human life on our planet.

In relation to matters like 9/11, plenty of writing on this year's September 11th speak to issues of note in regard to our beliefs about andremembrance of things past. Very few of them, however, at least here at home, have anything to say about what took place twenty-eight years prior to 2001 on that day, thousands of miles to the South in Chile.

The events there--involving premeditated murder of at least ten thousand people--resulted from explicit planning-assistance and other resources that the United States made available to the assassins and butchers who ran Chile on behalf of demonstrably imperial and illegal interests for fifteen years after the terrible occasion of 9/11/1973. If citizens here do not understand these things, then the next 'terrorist' attack on North American soil will be much worse.

Therefore, on this day, the Spindoctor is posting a thorough--which means lengthy--investigation and analysis of what transpired in Chile forty-two years ago, reportage that has had a life online already but which is worth proffering again for people again to have the chance to read. At least, it is worthy of further reflection if we hope to avoid upcoming catastrophes markedly more dire than anything that's take place plus far.

In our regular aggregation of Daily Links, a Thought of the Day appears. Here's one from this week that may be apt. "What the futuremight deliver is often enough much more in keeping with one's hopes and needs than the seemingly arcane intricacies and paradoxes of the tumultuous present, all of which of course comes to us from a past that appears inscrutable enough to forestall our investigating it carefully, a truly unfortunate error, since the only way that tomorrow's light will be likely to shine sweetly in our favor is if we comprehend yesterday well enough both to see the current moment clearly and accurately, and then to set a course for an evolution of today's reality that this awareness designates as at least plausible, as well as necessary for the fruition of our goals and objectives."

Again, here is the link to "'United in Blood' Against Empire--Jara, Neruda, & Chilean Culture's Social Solidarity Impact"

Authors Bio:
The original 'odd bird,' my stint as head of High School ROTC included my wearing MFS's black armband just before I turned down an appointment to West Point to go to Harvard. There, majoring in bridge, backgammon, and poker for my middle years as an undergrad, I managed to get a degree in History-and-Philosophy that led me to believe that writing was my calling.

Years and years in the South since then have sent me down all sorts of strange byways of political, environmental, and civil rights activism, during all three decades of which I've squeaked by fiscally doing all sorts of odd jobs, including slinging texts at all sorts of buyers when the market permitted.

Today, I teach--primarily Koreans--about the intricacies of reading and writing English, often as a second language, and imagine a future in which my fiction, commentary, journalism, and criticism finds an audience. Graduate school may beckon in my sixth decade above ground, who knows?

I'm game for collaboration, correspondence, and constructive feedback. "I'm drawn to those who seek the truth, and I flee from those who have found it." Or, as Octavio Paz noted, "He sang, singing not to remember his true life of lies, but to recall his lying life of truth."