US Bankruptcy (October 8): In 1997, 82 public companies with total asset of $17.2bn filed for protection under Chapter 11 of the US bankruptcy code. According to New Generation Research Inc., companies with assets of $163bn filled for bankruptcy court protection through September. The figure may exceed $200bn by year end.

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US (October 9): In recent weeks, bond investors have had a lot to worry about. Corporate debt has not reached dangerous levels across every industry, but overall debt has risen substantially in the past five years. As a proportion of net worth, corporate bonds have already zoomed past the levels seen in the last recession in 1990. By August, default rates on high-yield bonds had reached 9.6%, above the 8.7% peak of 1990, according to Fitch Inc., a credit rating concern. Almost $56bn in debt was in default as August began, roughly double the amount in all of 2000.

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But the New York attack goes deeper in unseen connections. How could it have happened? After all, the pervasive Echelon surveillance apparatus and the most sophisticated intelligence machinery ever built is unlikely not to have eavesdropped on some of the very complicated organization and plans across states and boundaries for the multi-site hijacking of planes from major security structures across the US - especially since the suicide pilots were trained as pilots in the US, and the World Trade Centre had already been bombed in 1993 by Afghan ex-allies of the CIA. Since the prime suspect, Osama bin Laden, is himself an ex-CIA operative in Afghanistan, and his moves presumably under the intensest scrutiny for past successful terrorist attacks on two US embassies in 1998, one has to reflect on the connections.

One would be naive to think the Bush Jr. faction and its oil, military-industrial and Wall Street backers who had stolen an election with its man rated in office by the majority of Americans as poor on the economy (a Netscape poll taken off the screen when the planes hit the towers), and more deplored by the rest of the world as a deep danger to the global environment and the international rule of law, do not benefit astronomically from this mass-kill explosion. If there was a wish-list, it is all granted by this numbing turn of events. Americans are diverted from a free-falling economy to attack another foreign Satan, while the Bush regime�s popularity climbs. The military, the CIA and every satellite armed security apparatus have more money and power than ever, and become as dominant as they can over civilians in �the whole new era� now being declared by the White House. The anti-missile plan to rule the skies is now exonerated (if irrelevantly so), and Israel�s failure to withdraw from the West Bank is vindicated at the same time. Even the surgingly popular �anti world-trade� movement is now associated with foreign terrorists blowing up the World Trade Centre.

The more you review the connections and the sweeping lapse of security across so many co-ordinates, the more the lines of force point backwards.

Behind the terrible event on all sides, the deepest problem is not seen. The closed mind of life-disconnection is being locked in. Even now, even after suffering through the inside taste of bombed-city horror in the capital of the world�s number one aerial bombing nation, the leaders and their peoples across borders are now being drawn into preparing and calling for more. None but the silenced grasp the meaning that stands before them in the rubble, the death and the pain.

Bombing civilian population centres is evil�whether from outer-space as now researched by the Bush administration, or by kami-kasi hijackers dive-bombing into city skyscrapers more close-up. With rising talk about �the civilized world against the uncivilized world� and demands to do it again, the mind-lock has to be broken. It is not just that the evil of aerial bombing civilians exposes our own civilians to still more bloodshed and terror ahead, while military gangs and complexes grow richer and more in command. Bear in mind that over 90% of military-wrought deaths in the world have been unarmed people since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. At some point the pretense of �civilization� and �the free world� by our leaders has to move beyond ideological cant to be more than lawless mass murder in emperor�s clothes.

John McMurtry, Ph.D., F.R.S.C

John McMurtry, Ph.D., F.R.S.C., is a professor of philosophy at the University of Guelph. He is the author of Unequal Freedoms: The Global Market as an Ethical System and The Cancer Stage of Capitalism. His book, Value Wars, will be published by Pluto Press in early 2002.