"We must conclude that a change is imminent and ineluctable in the co-opted cast who manage the domination and, notably, those who direct the protection of that domination. In such an affair, the novelty of course will never be displayed on the stage of the spectacle. It will only appear like lightning, which we know only when it strikes. This change, which will decisively complete the work of these spectacular times, will occur discreetly and, although it concerns those already installed in the sphere of power, conspiratorially. It will select those who will take part part in it on this central requirement: that they clearly know what obstacles they have overcome, and of what they are capable."-Guy Debord

The editors over at NOT BORED (a pro-situ 'zine) added this footnote:
*"Because of Debord's use of a series of predictions to conclude his Comments, one feels comfortable in mentioning that, just four years after his book was published and in the aftermath of the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, some of the people who would later go on to form the "Project for a New American Century" were trying to convince then-President George H. Bush that the time was right for the USA to take over the world. Though these people (Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and Donald Rumsfeld, among them) failed to convince him, they eventually succeded with his son, George W. Bush, who was the self-avowed President of the country on 11 September 2001. Ever since then -- with and through America's military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq and Haiti -- the efforts to create a New American Empire have been going full-steam."

Back in 2004 the folks at notbored.org wrote a response to the leftist group RETORT. Here's an excerpt from that:

"RETORT never thinks about what preceded the attacks (the creation, training and arming of Al Qaeda by the CIA; the surprising strength and vehemence that the "anti-globalization" movement showed in Seattle and Genoa; and the theft of the 2000 US Presidential election), never tries to get inside the heads of those who are in charge of NATO, the Pentagon or the CIA [11], never asks the classic question, "Who benefited?" Instead, RETORT occupies itself with the "singularity" of "the present madness," [12], as if what happened at the Reichstag, or at the Bologna train station, could never happen here. But it can; indeed, it already has."
http://www.notbored.org/retort.html

Debord and the situationist critique of industrial society are both well worth keeping in mind as we consider 911 and the deepening catastrophe.

One thing is for certain, we need to get a hold of history, start shaping it, and fast.