Osama won.

"...our economy, symbolised by the world trade center"

That remark brought to mind the identity of the owners of the WTC and the way that they obtained the land on which it was built. Perhaps one day the Sept. 11 attacks will be regarded by a majority as those attacks should be regarded: As an attack upon a form of communism.

The airport, airline, and aircraft industries, too, are rotten and were rotten at the time of attack. Let's see now:

(1) Airports: Communistically built, owned, and operated.
(2) Airlines: Subsidized indirectly through the airports.
(3) Commercial Jet Aircraft: Subsidized by the government through militarism. The research and development needed to design large aircraft and jet engines has always been subsidized by military spending. Other overhead expenses such as construction plants were paid wholly or in part by military spending at the beginning of the jet age, and since that time the basic arrangement has remained in place. Some of the benefits of this subsidization are enjoyed by the airlines, too.

And what about the Pentagon? How does that palace of imperial aggression not count as proof of communism and government monopoly in defense services? Since it and its activities are subsidized by extorted wealth, it stands to reason that Americans are getting far more defense service than would be provided in the case of laissez faire. Still worse, the military power is employed for aggression, too, and resistance to the aggression is deemed criminal. The outlandish amount of spending is therefore mostly wasteful and tends to divert an enourmous amount of capital from savings and investment that would have been possible in the absence of the militarism.

I don't know if OBL understood how the American economy works. If he did, then he deserves a little respect for helping to carry out the attacks in the manner that he did. After all, main street was not attacked, at least not until the taxgatherers, all of them Americans, showed up to compel main streeters to pay for the response by the military and domestic police forces. If only the IRS, too, had been attacked on Sept. 11, events might have played out a little bit better during the past nine and 2/3 years. The fact that the IRS was not attacked leads me to suspect that OBL was much less interested in fighting evil than he was in helping Muslims to posture as victims.

Still, it remains true that communism was attacked on Sept. 11, and this fact should be repeated ad nauseum until the conservatives yield to the truth and correct their bad behavior in support of communism.