10/20/01
11:20:36 AM
We Will Not Be Silenced
MPs must be free to speak out against this absurd and potentially disastrous war
by George Galloway Saturday October 20, 2001 The Guardian
In exile in Switzerland, shortly before the Russian revolution, Lenin opined that "there are decades when nothing happens; and there are weeks when decades happen". We are, it seems, living through such weeks. It is hard to remember a time when political instability, civil strife and the roar of bombs and missiles have so scarred the international landscape. Governments like Norway's fall, others like Australia's cut and run for a khaki election. General Musharraf, Pakistan's self-appointed military strongman, admits he's forcing through a policy rejected by 83% of his compatriots. General Sharon's Israeli government, riven between hawks and superhawks, now appears to have embarked on a doomsday option, possibly including the assassination of Arafat, following the slaying of the world's least attractive "tourism" minister.
The "soft centered" European governments are beginning to squirm and the Labour benches in the British parliament are turning queasy at the slaughter of the world's poorest by the world's richest. Coalition comrades, India and Pakistan, are shelling each other across the line of control in Kashmir. Aid agencies are in "emotional" revolt and, like Mary Robinson, are having to be ordered back into their box by Clare Short. Muslim streets are burning from Gaza to Jakarta. In the House of Commons, former defence ministers, Labour rightwingers like Gwyneth Dunwoody and MPs with large Muslim electorates have swollen the ranks of the usual suspects - those like me, who have opposed all the wars of the new imperialism.
Internationally, the coalition is shakier still. The Arab League, echoing Nato leaders, has declared that any attack on an Arab country will be regarded as an attack against all of them. The Saudis, having denied the US use of their bases and declined a visit by Tony Blair, are now questioning the basis of the whole campaign - even openly doubting the involvement of Bin Laden in the crimes of September 11.
Meanwhile, the phone-in lines to Arab television stations are jammed with opponents of the war and blood-chilling threats of mayhem in revenge. Bush and Blair may not be "at war with Islam", but "Islam" is now at war with them and we will be lucky if that is not soon visible on the streets of northern English cities.
Nowhere is that more evident than in the reaction to the "Middle East fit for heroes" the Anglo-Americans are promising. The Arabs simply don't believe it. Perfidious Albion, after all, has a track record. The Palestinian tragedy was authored here in the building in which I write. During the Great War, while Lawrence of Arabia rallied the tribal hordes to support our jihad on the Turks - with the promise of Arab independence - over in Downing Street Mr Sykes and Monsieur Picot were carving up the area into British and French colonies. And in 1991, Britain and America offered the Arabs a new deal, with Israel forced to implement international legality, if they backed the fight against Iraq. Promises made and broken with a handshake.
Seldom can a western war drum have sounded more hollow. Seldom can the prattle of ministers - Labour ministers, many of whom I can still see sporting their CND badges as they shuttled around looking for safe seats in the 70s and 80s - about command and control centres, air defences and radar capabilities have seemed so obscenely stupid. The Afghans have none. The airport at Kabul is no more than a collection of shacks, whose telephones couldn't even make outgoing calls. And the statement, delivered by our defence secretary with all the gravitas of Captain Mainwaring, that we had achieved "air-superiority" over Afghanistan - over a Flintstones-style air force which couldn't even leave the ground - will live forever as one of those stories you really couldn't make up.
So what are the "allies" bombing? The four UN mine-clearing staff, the shepherds and their families in the village of Khorum, the Red Cross compound in Kabul, the residents of Kandahar, the trucks full of terrified refugees. More of these human and public relations disasters will conspire to "bury" the government's message. An already restless audience here, never mind among the 1.3bn Muslims nursing their wrath, will not sit through this unequal fight with equanimity. And without a change of policy, the winter snows will soon begin to tilt this disaster into an international catastrophe.
Well, what should we do, ask the remaining subalterns of the war party's thin red line. As the Irishman famously replied: "If I wanted to get to Cork, I wouldn't have started from here." The government was repeatedly warned of the grisly consequences of its tango with Islamic fundamentalism in Afghanistan. I accused it on the eve of the fall of Kabul of having opened the gates to the barbarians and of the long dark night which would follow. Many of us have since described the rising tide of radical Islam, buoyed by our double standards towards Palestine and Iraq, and our buttressing of stooge kings, generals and 99%-of-the-vote presidents of the Muslim world - now laughably lined up behind "operation enduring freedom".
But even for those who have brought us to this terrifying cusp in world events, there were alternatives. The squeeze could have been kept up on the Taliban - three weeks is not a long time to secure extradition on a capital offence, especially without providing evidence to the country concerned. The judicious waving of carrots to tribal chiefs could well have achieved the betrayal of Bin Laden. And if military action was seen as unavoidable, the target should have been the Arab legions in the mountains, not the poor ragged Afghans they've colonised, who never invited them in - we did - and have no way of making them leave. This and a Lockerbie-type trial, in a neutral country and including Muslim jurists, would have been one way to show how "civilised" we were. Instead we've answered savagery with savagery.
On the home front, there are disturbing signs of the Downing Street general staff losing their nerve. Careless talk circulates about members of parliament being carpeted, media appearances vetted, ultimatums issued. This would be the ultimate surrender to democracy's enemies. Throughout the second world war, Aneurin Bevan subjected the line of the Churchill coalition government to excoriating criticism and withering examination - as Churchill himself had done with Chamberlain. Both would have scorned the idea of their actions being licensed by whips, as if we were circus dogs whose duty was to perform tricks for the ringmaster. I too have now been summoned to see the chief whip. Next week, over tea and biscuits at 11 Downing Street, I will have to courteously explain to my old friend Hilary Armstrong that I, for one, will not be gagged. This bombing has to stop - and the war is too important to be left to ministers and generals in conclave.
· George Galloway is Labour MP for Glasgow Kelvin and a columnist for the Scottish Mail on Sunday. He will be online on guardian.co.uk/politics on Monday at 1 pm.
George Galloway MailTo:gallowayg@parliament.uk
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,577516,00.html
10/20/01
11:11:41 AM
Claims That China Paid Bin Laden To See Cruise Missiles
by John Hooper in Milan Saturday October 20, 2001 The Guardian
China paid Osama bin Laden several million dollars for access to unexploded American cruise missiles left over from the US attack on his bases three years ago, a senior alleged al-Qaida agent in Europe has claimed.
The alleged agent's account is contained in the transcript of a secretly taped conversation between supporters of Osama bin Laden obtained by the Guardian. His revelation emerged as President Bush yesterday announced that he had won Beijing's support for the war on terrorism. After his first face-to-face meeting with China's President Jiang Zemin in Shanghai, Mr Bush said: "President Jiang and the government stand side by side with the American people as we fight this evil force".
The Chinese government has denied it obtained US missiles after the 1998 raid, which was carried out in reprisal for the bombings of the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Beijing is said to have made a deal with al-Qaida to acquire the missiles despite the fact that it was facing a growing threat from Muslim separatists in the Xinjiang region. In 1999, China accused Bin Laden's organisation of training members of the independence movement in guerrilla warfare.
The US fired 75 missiles into Afghanistan during the attack on Bin Laden's camps on August 20, 1998. A report four months later in the Pakistani newspaper Ausaf, cited Taliban sources as saying that 40 were found unexploded.
The story of what happened next was taken up by Lased Ben Heni in a conversation with associates this year. Ben Heni, a 32-year-old Libyan arrested in Munich last week, is accused by Italian prosecutors of being the liaison officer between two terrorist cells owing allegiance to al-Qaida in Frankfurt and Milan.
On March 9, in a rundown flat in the Milan suburb of Gallarate, he met the leader of the Italian cell, Sami Ben Khemais Essid (alias "Saber") and told him of his experiences in Afghanistan visiting Osama bin Laden's camps. Unknown to the two men, the flat had been bugged by officers of the Italian anti-terrorist police.
"Perhaps the Americans are convinced by the bombardment of the sheikh's [Bin Laden's] training centres," Ben Heni is quoted as saying. "For them, it was a victory. But, in fact, it was a defeat because the majority of the missiles didn't even explode."
After a digression, the transcript continues: "With these weapons, he [Bin Laden] has boosted his financial resources. From every part of the world businessmen who hate Americans have come to study American missile strategy.
"In particular, businessmen have come from China. He works a great deal with China. He's got good relations with them.
"You see them and you ask 'But what are they doing here?' In the end, you understand that they work for the sheikh and that they came to study these missiles.
"Thanks to the money that comes from these studies from outside, he created the army of mohajedin headed by Omar Zayan (or Zaghan) in Chechnya".
Later, in a passage the meaning of which is not entirely clear, Ben Heni is heard to say: "When [Bin Laden] saw that the Afghan people, who were dying of hunger, passed missiles to sheikh Messaoud, he bargained with the Chinese and sold them to them for an enormous sum - I think $10m dollars - but only after the sheikh had studied them".
The transcript is the first supporting evidence from inside al-Qaida of sporadic reports in the months following the 1998 attack that China had acquired two unexploded Tomahawk missiles. In March 1999, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman described the reports as "groundless".
President Jiang told a joint press conference after his meeting with Mr Bush yesterday that they had reached a "consensus" on terrorism, although he urged that the anti-terrorist action should "hit accurately and also avoid innocent casualties".
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,577542,00.html
10/20/01
11:01:33 AM
New Brothers In Arms - And Cash And Intelligence
How the US and Britain reward countries offering support in war against Taliban
Jamie Wilson, Suzanne Goldenberg, Ewen MacAskill and Jonathan Steele
Saturday October 20, 2001 The Guardian
The US is expected to release shipments of advanced rocket artillery to Egypt and supply helicopter gunship spares to China - where both President George Bush and secretary of state Colin Powell are currently in negotiations - in the latest of a long list of arms, intelligence and cash deals struck to obtain the support of surrounding countries for its war against terrorism and the Taliban.
Britain's contribution is expected to include the granting of Russian demands that a hard line be taken against Chechen exiles in London, and the offer to Malaysia of sophisticated intelligence surveillance kit to use against internal dissent.
The feudal sultanate of Oman is being promised more than $1bn worth of US arms. The nuclear-armed Pakistan military regime is expecting not only large sums of cash and removal of sanctions, but also American diplomatic support over its long-running feud with India over Kashmir.
Turkey is hoping to get a big increase in loans to escape its economic crisis. And Iran, the former "terrorist state" has seen the US government this week move to block an unwelcome lawsuit against them.
James Lindsay, a former director of global issues on the US national security council under President Clinton, says the acquisition by the US of intelligence material from neighbouring states is important, alongside overflying rights and military facilities. "Intelligence sharing is going on. The US wants to get intelligence from these governments, but the way it is trading intelligence is unknown."
We list below some of the deals struck in the last month, often to regimes whose democratic and human rights records had made them virtual international pariahs before September 11.
Iran
Initially condemned the bombing of Afghanistan: but its agreement to rescue American personnel in distress in its territory suggests relations might not be too frosty. Iran is also believed to be providing the US with intelligence and has expelled Imad Mughniyeh, a Lebanese on the FBI's "most wanted" list.
The return? Tehran's views on the shape of a future Afghanistan are being given greater weight by the US. There is already a channel open for quasi-military western co-operation: Iran receives night vision goggles and four-wheel drive vehicles from Britain "to fight the drugs trade". The EU council of foreign ministers pledged consultations with a view to negotiating a trade agreement. On the same day that it was revealed that Iran agreed to help downed pilots, the US administration asked a federal judge to throw out a $10bn lawsuit brought against Iran by Americans taken hostage in 1979.
Palestinians
Yasser Arafat has backed Mr Bush. Now he hears the US president speak positively about the possibility of a Palestinian state. A proposal by a US senator, Diane Feinstein, to ban funding to the Palestinian Authority because of the suicide bombings in Israel was withdrawn after a request from Colin Powell.
Syria
Last week this former "terrorist state" was made a non-permanent member of the UN security council. This elevation passed without America using its veto.
Egypt
Israeli intelligence sources say that Tel Aviv is particularly worried about the likely sale of 26 rocket artillery systems to Egypt. Israeli lobbyists previously managed to block the sale in the US Congress before September 11.
Oman
Thousands of western troops are deployed there. On the day the defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld arrived for talks, the US announced the sale of 12 late-model F-16C fighters; plus night-attack navigation and laser-bomb targeting devices; advanced air-to-air missiles; kits to make laser-guided weapons out of bombs; Harpoon anti-ship missiles and radar equipment.
Pakistan
US sources see four elements to the deal with Pakistan: complete lifting of sanctions; increased aid and restructuring of its loans; a promise that Pakistan will have a say in the future shape of the next Afghan government and, finally, Kashmir. The Pakistani leader, General Pervez Musharraf, is understood to have demanded formal recognition of the existing Kashmir boundary with India.
The US Senate foreign relations committee approved a bill enabling Pakistan to receive emergency military assistance to combat terrorism - a useful tool should Gen Musharraf find himself facing a pro-Taliban insurgency.
The international development secretary Clare Short offered another £15m in British aid and spoke of cancelling interest payments. The EU council of foreign ministers is to boost aid. The European commission has rushed through trade concessions worth about $1.35bn.
Russia
Chechnya has been a constant source of awkward questions from foreign governments. The west now accepts that Russia is confronting "terrorism" with regard to bombings in Moscow. President Vladimir Putin has already won a change of wording from the White House, which referred the participation of al-Qaida terrorists in Chechnya.
Russia will also be expecting a clampdown on the alleged flow of young UK Muslims to fight in Chechnya. It also received a promise that the west will soften its attitude over Russia's behaviour towards unstable Muslim countries on its southern flank: where there is fighting, especially over water rights.
China
US government sources say the Bush administration wants to promote exchanges of anti-terrorist intelligence.
Sanctions bar the sale of military-related equipment to Chinese security forces: they were imposed after the 1989 crackdown on Tiananmen Square demonstrators. But Mr Bush is reported to be considering clearing the way for the sale of spare parts for Black Hawk helicopter gunships the US sold to China during the 1980s.
Uzbekistan
US forces are being given the use of bases in the former Soviet republic. When Mr Rumsfeld visited there he carried a letter from Mr Bush underscoring Washington's interests in a new relationship.
The authoritarian president, Islam Karimov, is known to be keen to run an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to a port in Pakistan. With a friendly US-controlled government in Kabul the pipeline could finally become a reality. US oil companies would no doubt be willing to get involved.
EU foreign ministers have also agreed to boost cooperation with Uzbekistan.
Turkey
Nato's sole Muslim member and a key US ally - airbases in Turkey have been a key staging post for the attacks on Afghanistan - has been offered IMF and World Bank loans totalling $1.7bn and is seeking a further $9bn to help shore up its crumbling export and tourism industries in the wake of the attacks.
Malaysia
The US has been seeking assistance to provide intelligence and arrest Bin Laden terrorist suspects from lists provided by the FBI.
British intelligence sources say interception and surveillance equipment to enable regimes to spy on their own people is being offered as a sweetener to states such as Malaysia offering information about Bin Laden and al-Qaida.
Saudi Arabia
Saudi Arabia is under fierce criticism in Washington for its refusal to allow the unrestricted use of US airbases there and apparent refusal to share intelligence and act against al-Qaida supporters.
Members of the US intelligence community have been briefing journalists including the New Yorker magazine about the contents of some of their unsavoury national security agency phone taps involving members of the Saudi royal family and prostitutes. The threat to the Saudi elite is clear: help us or else.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/waronterror/story/0,1361,577569,00.html
10/19/01
10:36:10 PM
Don't Use The Sept. 11 Tragedy To Loot Social Security
by Alan Benjamin
A story that is buried in the financial pages should have every working family up in arms. The Bush administration, with the willing collaboration of leading figures in the Democratic Party, is using the tragedy of Sept. 11 to try to rob working people of trillions of dollars in Social Security.
The Wall Street Journal, in an editorial dated Sept. 19, was among the first to call on Bush to hurry up and take advantage of the "unique political climate" created by the Sept. 11 events to "assert his leadership not just on security and foreign policy but across the board."
Specifically, the Wall Street Journal summoned the president to move ahead on faster tax-rate cuts, expanded oil drilling in Alaska, fast-track authority for trade negotiations -- and, yes, dipping into the Social Security surplus to fund some of his new military expenditures.
A few weeks later, a leading figure in the Clinton administration joined the chorus. In an op-ed article published in the Oct. 8 New York Times, Laura Tyson -- former chief economic adviser to Bill Clinton and current dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley --argues that the only way the United States can fund its protracted, multifaceted war on terrorism is to use "funds pledged to Medicare and Social Security." She calls this a "temporary raid on the Medicare and Social Security surpluses."
But just how temporary? "The costs of the war are likely to last for years," Tyson continues, "and they will be high." In a word, this "justifiable" raid could go on for many years.
All will not be rosy, Tyson acknowledges, as the government may not have the money down the road to pay recipients the Social Security checks they are entitled to. "Slicing into the Medicare and Social Security surpluses now will only make the day of reckoning, when the baby boomers begin to retire, more painful, Tyson states. "The government will then be forced to choose between higher payroll taxes, reduced retirement benefits and escalating budget deficits."
The meaning is clear: That portion of every working person's paycheck that was deducted month after month to help pay for retirement may not be there after all when the time to retire comes. The "day of reckoning" may be painful -- meaning that retirement benefits may be reduced, or the retirement age may be increased (another form of theft), or the funds simply may have disappeared into all sorts of speculative ventures. Whatever the form, it's highway robbery, pure and simple.
Aren't these funds off limits?
Many working people have a hard time believing that the government has the right to tamper with funds set aside explicitly to pay retirees their Social Security benefits. How did this come to pass?
It didn't all begin with Sept. 11. A number of laws passed since the early 1980s have paved the way.
First came a law that took Social Security funds, which had been held separate from general revenues in their own trust account, and folded them into the government's accounting system. This gave the government direct access to these funds.
Then came a law demanding a balanced budget, forcing the government to cut spending if tax revenues drop. This was followed by the huge tax cut for the rich, sugar-coated with insignificant tax rebate checks for the nation's working families. All this created what the government calls a "cash flow squeeze" and set the stage for doing something a majority in Congress vowed not to do before Sept. 11 -- and that is, dip into the Social Security surplus to pay for tax cuts or government spending.
A perfect pretext
The call from corporate America to "overhaul" Social Security did not originate with the Sept. 11 tragedy. In fact, during his first months in office, Bush handpicked a group of businessmen to propose the revamping of the entire Social Security system. This included plans to dip into the Social Security surplus while also raising the retirement age and reducing both the retirement benefit and cost-of-living adjustments.
But how to carry out this looting of the Social Security fund in the face of major opposition in the Congress? The Sept. 11 events have provided Bush and his corporate buddies with the perfect pretext. Democrats --all-too-eager to jump on the bandwagon of "national unity to fight terrorism" -- have dropped their oppositionist stance, embracing this corporate raid of workers' hard-earned money.
Admittedly, the Social Security checks paid out every month to retirees are limited. But for many older people, they are the difference between eating and starving, between having a roof over one's head and living on the street. With the stocks-based retirement plans rapidly losing value, moreover, it is evident that no 401(K) plan and no investment scheme can take the place of a government-guaranteed retirement fund.
More than ever it is necessary to demand: Bush and the Congress, Hands Off Social Security!
This article originally appeared in the September-October 2001 issue of The Organizer newspaper.
10/19/01
10:29:07 PM
Flagging Interest
by Bob Woodiwiss, Cincinnati CityBeat
Dear Neighbor,
The fact that you, along with everyone else on the street, are flying the American flag has not escaped my attention. I suspect that my failure to do the same might also have attracted yours. Please allow me to explain why my display of patriotism is so lacking:
1. I burned all my flags protesting something. Or things, I should say, though I don't remember what exactly. Probably I flambeed a few over nuclear proliferation; I was big on that for a while and I could really get into a froth on the subject. And I torched plenty of them at free speech demonstrations; those rallies always got my flag-burning juices flowing. NAFTA and the WTO claimed a few, too. Honestly, though, a lot my flags got ashed for less than noble reasons. I mean, burning them kind of became my "thing," my "signature." I lit 'em at my nephew's Little League games, at my high school reunion, even one time at the grand opening of a Super Cuts. Whatever, that big box of American flags I had in my basement is empty now.
2. I don't really need a flag in my yard since I recently stuck a teeny-tiny "window cling" decal of an American flag in the middle of my left contact lens. That way, I see a vague, translucent image of the Stars and Stripes out in front of me all day long. Also, if I poke myself hard in the eye with my finger, the red and blue and purple spots I see look like fireworks going off behind Old Glory on the 4th of July.
3. I'm trying to impress an Afghan woman who works in my office and who I'm thinking about asking on a date. Her name's Shelly and she's a second generation American and everything, and from what I've overheard her say to other people in the break room she deplores terrorism and supports this country's fight against it, but, geez, she's really, really cute and I don't want to do anything that could even remotely hurt my chances with her if I ever get the nerve to actually go out with her and, you know, bring her back to my place for coffee or a drink.
4. Stripes make my house look fat. I keep hoping the government will come out with a flag in a solid, muted earth tone or, if they absolutely have to have a print, a subtle houndstooth, you know, something that'll look good on your average Midwestern house, not just on some skinny, New York brownstones.
5. My flagpole, made of black walnut, manufactured in the 1920s and rated for 48 stars, is currently in the shop being restored, updated and modified to accommodate the modern American 50-star standard.
6. It's been almost three years since you all started calling me "the lazy ass who won't paint his house" and I'm sick and tired of it. May I suggest you now switch to "the son of a bitch without the flag?"
7. As someone of Swiss descent, I find myself confronting this time of great crisis with nothing more than a swelling sense of neutrality.
8. You always expect me to play along with your little yard themes and schemes, but you never go along with mine. Like, remember a few years ago? Somebody got a cement goose and dressed it up in different outfits and before you know it everybody's got a goose with outfits. It was practically mandatory. Then came the silhouettes. Of the dog barking up the tree, of the man leaning against the tree, etc., etc. And before this whole Old Glory kick, every house around here was all caught up in hanging holiday flags and special occasion flags and seasonal flags. But how about when I replaced my garage door with strings of glass beads? Or when I turned the front yard into a prairie dog village? Or the condom machine next to the mail box? Where were you trend sheep for those ideas? Nowhere. Well, I'm telling you, you provincial bastards, until somebody gets behind one of my ideas, screw you.
9. There are strict rules governing the hows and whens and wheres of displaying the United States flag, and if I were any good whatsoever at following strict rules, I wouldn't have a pair of cuticle scissors and three bottle caps lodged in my large intestine.
10. My habitual abuse of peyote renders me incapable of undertaking any job which would require my attention for any time period longer than 10 angstroms in the cruel helix of wolf geography. Repiffens?
Yours sinceremoniously,
Bob
Bob Woodiwiss writes humor and satire columns for the Cincinnati Citybeat.
10/19/01
10:12:36 PM
Operation Enduring Protest
by Liza Featherstone
On Saturday, October 13, a cry to stop the bombing in Afghanistan was heard all over the world. More than 20,000 demonstrators in London, 15,000 in Berlin, 10,000 in San Francisco and thousands more in Sweden, Nepal, South Korea, Nigeria and elsewhere called for peace. A rally in New York City's Washington Square was comparatively small, attracting some 700 people.
That rally, organized by War Is Not the Answer, one of several emerging New York City peace coalitions, attracted New Yorkers of varying races and nationalities, but the 1960s generation was heavily represented. Protester Curtis Mack of Crown Heights avoided the draft during the Vietnam War, even though his seven brothers fought. He said, "We need a peaceful solution to this mess. Why can't we all just get along?" Smiling sheepishly at his reference to Rodney King's famously naïve plea, he explained, "I don't have all the answers, but this is what I feel in my heart."
Still, performers and speakers were hardly limited to the usual left suspects. The Rev. Al Sharpton eloquently drove home the point that war is "not patriotism," a refrain now echoed by peace activists nationwide. Punk-rock icon Patti Smith--who cut a sexy, stringy-haired spectacle, wearing a blue wool cap, a white T-shirt and non-ironic crucifix--gruffly urged the assembled to "wrestle the world from fools!" Smith saved the gathering from turning into a 1960s flashback (other performers had perpetrated folk songs, including the dead-tired "I Ain't Gonna Study War No More").
Speakers were just as passionate as Curtis Mack, but unfortunately, equally short on answers. All did their best to avoid the thorny question of how to fight terrorism without bombs. Physicist Michio Kaku gave a witty speech about the ineffectuality and wastefulness of Star Wars; he said little about Afghanistan. Others engaged in more elaborate avoidance strategies, evoking well-worn left paradigms that seemed at best peripheral, if not completely irrelevant. Some talked about corporations that would profit from war, attempting to conjure the Gulf War with the slogan "No War for Oil"-which has been making a comeback nationwide. Though oil is crucial to the US relationship to the Middle East, and military contractors do benefit from war, it strains credibility to suggest that the Bush Administration's assault on the Taliban, a response to a brutal massacre on US soil, is driven by corporate greed. Many speakers blamed the ideologically biased media for public support of the war; rally emcee and Democracy Now! radio host Amy Goodman repeatedly invoked the concept of "manufactured consent." (Apropos of that, she ended the rally with an appeal to support her crusade against Pacifica, while some of her acolytes handed out fliers referring to the "Pacifica Board Hijackers.") Of course much of the mainstream media coverage amounts to a twenty-four-hour war infomercial. But when people are afraid of terrorist attacks, consent to an aggressive solution hardly needs to be "manufactured."
Some of Washington Square's assembled seemed frustrated with the event's muddled message. "It's so irresponsible," a woman sighed in exasperation as Al Sharpton concluded his rousing antiwar polemic. "He doesn't say what we should do." The left is accustomed to refusal. But there may be aspects of Bush's "war on terrorism" that peace activists should support, if they are to persuasively oppose its murderous violence. The current bombing campaign is killing innocent people, creating a relief crisis in a destitute country and further destabilizing an already-perilous region. It is dangerously limitless in its scope and military insiders are expressing serious concerns about whether it will even accomplish its goals. Yet given that terrorism is an immediate and continuing threat, protesters must be able to discuss alternative approaches to national security. "We'd like to see a united international effort to bring [the terrorists] to justice," rally organizer Reecha Upadhyay said, admitting that the movement was finding it difficult to figure out how this would work. "We know what we shouldn't do."
But there's no reason to give up on the possibility of informed, credible resistance to the bombing of innocents. Another international wave of demonstrations is planned for November 11, including one in Washington Square Park that's likely to be much bigger than last Saturday's. On US campuses, from CUNY's Hunter College to Kansas State, antiwar protests, fasts and walkouts occur daily. Nearly as important are activists' attempts to develop reasonable analyses of the situation; many groups are focusing heavily on teach-ins and internal discussion. Says Upadhyay, whose coalition held a free-form public debate in Union Square after Saturday's rally, "Coming together and talking about it is a first step."
Source: http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=featherstone20011018
10/19/01
10:03:23 PM
AlterNet Headlines
10 REASONS TO STOP BOMBING AFGHANISTAN
Don Hazen, AlterNet
From killing civilians to creating future "blowback," our bombing campaign against Afghanistan increasingly looks like a bad idea. Here's why.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11764
HIGH ANTHRAX DRUG PRICES BRING PATENT ISSUE HOME
Liz Highleyman, AlterNet
Is the U.S. government willing to put American lives at risk to protect pharmaceutical company profits?
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11760
OPERATION ENDURING PROTEST
Liza Featherstone, The Nation
Demonstrators gathered at points across the globe to protest the bombing of Afghanistan. 20,000 in London, 15,000 in Berlin, 10,000 in San Francisco...
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11759
HEARTS AND MINDS: AVOIDING A NEW COLD WAR
Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen, AlterNet
The single most common question antiwar activists are confronted with is, "What's your solution?" Here are some very practical, very attainable ones.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11755
FLAGGING INTEREST
Bob Woodiwiss, CityBeat (Cincinnati)
Why do I not raise the flag? 1. Stripes make my house look fat; 2. My flagpole is only rated for 48 stars; 3. I burned my flag protesting something ... I forget what.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11756
DON'T USE THE SEPT. 11 TRAGEDY TO LOOT SOCIAL SECURITY
Alan Benjamin, AlterNet
A story that is buried in the financial pages should have every working family up in arms.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11750
NOBEL LAUREATE ENCOURAGES GLOBAL JUSTICE MOVEMENT
Tim Shorrock, Inter Press Service
Joseph Stiglitz, whose critiques of free market fundamentalism cost him a senior job at the World Bank, has succinct advice for the global justice movement: Keep it up.
*In Globalization: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=21
BUSH SHOULD RETHINK WALTERS
Earl Ofari Hutchinson, AlterNet
For the first time in nearly three decades, the number of people imprisoned has slowed down due to a gradual shift in drug policy. But one man could slam shut that window of policy enlightenment.
*In DrugReporter: http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=17
THE ECONOMIC STIMULUS PACKAGE: A GUIDE TO WHAT SPECIAL INTERESTS WANT AND MAY GET
Center for Responsive Politics
Washington's special interest lobbyists view the stimulus plan as an irresistible way to finally get some tax breaks and handouts.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11763
REICH: SACRIFICE OR SPEND?
Robert B. Reich, AlterNet
Despite being asked in the name of patriotism to spend, consumers are holding back. Perhaps Americans are realizing the economy exists to support us and the standard of living we choose, not the other way around.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11758
SOLOMON: THE TELEVISED GREATNESS OF GEORGE W. BUSH
Norman Solomon, AlterNet
Today's television environment is, more than ever, warmly hospitable to simple -- and simplistic -- declarative statements. That's good news for President Bush.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11752
HUFFINGTON: THE UNBEARABLE LUDICROUSNESS OF POLLING
Arianna Huffington, AlterNet
As polls are proving to be less reliable, our political leaders' continued reliance on them as their primary means of making policy decisions seems more and more ludicrous.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=11753
10/19/01
9:47:26 PM
WorldWatch Paper 158
HUMAN ACTIONS WORSEN NATURAL DISASTERS
More people worldwide are now displaced by natural disasters than by conflict. In the 1990s, natural catastrophes like hurricanes, floods, and fires affected more than two billion people and caused in excess of $608 billion in economic losses worldwide-a loss greater than during the previous four decades combined. But more and more of the devastation wrought by such natural disasters is "unnatural" in origin, caused by ecologically destructive practices and an increasing number of people living in harm's way, finds a new study by the Worldwatch Institute, a Washington D.C.-based environmental research organization.
"By degrading forests, engineering rivers, filling in wetlands, and destabilizing the climate, we are unraveling the strands of a complex ecological safety net," said Senior Researcher and author of Unnatural Disasters Janet Abramovitz. "We have altered so many natural systems so dramatically, their ability to protect us from disturbances is greatly diminished."
Also contributing to the rising toll of disasters is the enormous expansion of the human population and the built environment, which put more people and more economic activities in harm's way. One in three people-some 2 billion-now live within 100 kilometers of a coastline. Thirteen of the world's 19 megacities (with over 10 million inhabitants) are in coastal zones. The projected effects of global warming, such as more extreme weather events and sea level rise, will only magnify potential losses.
Although "unnatural disasters" occur everywhere, their impact falls disproportionately on poor people as they are more likely to be living in vulnerable areas and they have fewer resources to prepare for or recover from disasters. Between 1985 and 1999, 96 percent of recorded disaster fatalities were in developing countries.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) estimates that future impacts of climate extremes will affect the poor disproportionately. Viet Nam and Bangladesh, for example, are projected to lose more than 70,000 square kilometers of land, affecting some 32 million people. Rich countries will not be spared either. The entire Mediterranean coast is especially vulnerable to sea level rise, as are the U.S.'s Atlantic and Gulf coasts.
Economic losses from "unnatural disasters" are greater in the developed world-the earthquake that rocked Kobe, Japan in 1995, for example, cost more than $100 billion, making it the most expensive natural disaster in history. Smaller losses often hit poor countries harder, where they represent a larger share of the national economy. The damage from 1998's Hurricane Mitch in Central America was $8.5 billion-higher than the combined gross domestic product of Honduras and Nicaragua, the two nations hardest hit.
Few of the losses in poor countries are insured. In the period 1985-99, the vast majority of insured losses-some 92 percent-were in industrial nations.
"Expanding the financial safety net for poor countries is essential," said Abramovitz. "So too is maintaining and restoring nature's ecological safety net in all countries. Dunes, barrier islands, mangrove forests and coastal wetlands are natural 'shock absorbers' that protect against coastal storms. Forests, floodplains, and wetlands, are 'sponges' that absorb floodwaters. Nature provides these services for free, and we should take advantage of them rather than undermining them."
For example, China now recognizes that forests are ten times more valuable for flood control and water supply than they are for timber, and has halted logging in the Yangtze River watershed. The loss of 85 percent of the forests in the upper Yangtze River worsened the 1998 flood that affected 223 million people. Viet Nam has restored 2,000 hectares of mangroves in a successful effort to provide a buffer from coastal storms as well as much-needed jobs in fisheries. The U.S. could prevent a repeat of the devastating 1993 Mississippi flood by restoring just half of the wetlands lost in the upper Mississippi Basin-a move that would affect no more than three percent of surrounding agricultural, forest, and urban land.
To date, much of the response to disasters has focused on improving weather predictions before the events and providing humanitarian relief afterwards-both of which have saved countless lives. "Yet, too often long-term mitigation efforts are overlooked by the public and politicians alike," says Abramovitz. "Money invested in disaster mitigation yields several fold returns in recovery cost savings. Considering the social and ecological losses that are also prevented, it's clear that mitigation is a great investment."
Unnatural Disasters also suggests several other specific mitigative measures: Community-based disaster preparedness is essential in preventing and responding to the full array of disasters that societies now face. Rather than subsidizing environmentally unsound settlement and development practices, governments need to direct new construction and settlement out of harm's way. Infrastructure in vulnerable locations can be built or reinforced to withstand hazards. Debt relief for developing nations can free up resources for desperately needed disaster prevention efforts. Better hazard mapping can further improve early warning and disaster preparedness schemes, keeping human and economic losses as low as possible.
Source: http://www.WorldWatch.org
10/19/01
9:37:11 PM
Letter From Ground Zero
by Jonathan Schell
Seven Million At Risk
he horrors that have been sprung upon the world since September 11 have come with a rapidity that threatens to overwhelm the capacity of the imagination to respond, not to speak of the capacity of governments to frame policies that make sense.
No sooner had the Trade Center fallen and the Pentagon been attacked than the United States was declaring war; no sooner had the United States declared war than it was at war; no sooner was the United States at war than someone was attacking the United States with "weapons-grade" anthrax. The fifth week of the crisis has proceeded likewise. No sooner was anthrax arriving in mailboxes around the nation than still another horror--one that may yet prove the greatest of the entire story--was upon us: the prospect that millions of Afghans could starve to death this winter. On October 12 Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and now the United Nations commissioner for human rights, sounded a sharp, clear warning. She called for a halt to the bombing of Afghanistan in order to permit humanitarian aid--above all, food--to be sent into Afghanistan before the winter snows cut off access to the population. "It is a very, very urgent situation," she noted. "It is very hard to get convoys of food in when there is a military campaign.... You have millions of people, they say up to 7 million, at risk." And she asked, "Are we going to preside over deaths from starvation of hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of people this winter because we did not use the window of opportunity?" Her words, though widely quoted around the world, went almost entirely unreported in the United States. The next day, among the thirty or so newspapers that the Lexis/Nexis database of newspapers calls major, only one--the San Francisco Chronicle--saw fit to mention it, and none of the major television networks did. (The day after that, Steven Erlanger briefly mentioned her comments in the New York Times in a story about eroding support in Germany for the bombing.) Not until four days later, when an American bomb destroyed a Red Cross warehouse in Kabul and humanitarian groups joined Robinson's call for a bombing halt, did the appeal begin to get attention in this country.
That a catastrophe was developing was not news--or should not have been. The combination of a decade of war by Afghan fighters against the Soviet Union, the civil war that followed the Soviet defeat, the extreme misrule of the victors in that war, the Taliban, and four years of drought have destroyed Afghanistan's ability to feed and care for itself. Humanitarian groups whose aid was already keeping substantial numbers of people alive have been warning of the gathering disaster as it has unfolded. After September 11, foreign aid personnel, advised by the Taliban that it could no longer assure their safety, withdrew from the country. Soon, the nations surrounding Afghanistan closed their borders to refugees. On September 19, Dominic Nutt, the emergency officer for the relief group Christian Aid, told the Guardian, "It's as if a mass grave has been dug behind millions of people. We can drag them back from it or push them in." On September 24, two weeks before the military campaign began, the UN warned in a report that "a humanitarian crisis of stunning proportions is unfolding in Afghanistan," and Secretary General Kofi Annan appealed for assistance to head off "the world's worst humanitarian disaster." On October 5 twenty relief organizations again reminded the world that Afghanistan was on the "brink of disaster." "It must be remembered," the statement said, "that these potential refugees are currently trapped inside a closed country." Two days later, the bombing began, and the vast internal migration from the cities to inaccessible rural parts of Afghanistan began. The new element introduced by Robinson's appeal was her delineation of the terrible significance of the bombing campaign in view of the deadline for assistance imposed by approaching winter.
The principal reason for saving the lives of the Afghans must, of course, be those lives themselves. Avenging thousands of innocents in America cannot take precedence over saving millions of innocents in Afghanistan. To say this is to make a moral point, but it is also more than a moral point. The humanitarian crisis of course arrives in the middle of a global military crisis and a political crisis. These last two--and the relationship between them--have dominated public attention and policy in the United States. (I have to admit that this has also been true of this weekly "Letter from Ground Zero.") What, we have been asking, is the outlook for military success in the "war on terrorism"? Will overthrowing the Taliban reduce or increase the terrorist threat? If they are overthrown, who will follow them? Will military success in Afghanistan spell political defeat in Pakistan and/or Saudi Arabia, where brittle, repressive regimes face strong opposition from Muslim extremists? These questions, echoing issues that arose in the Vietnam War, are important, but the answers to every one of them, we can now suddenly see, will depend on whether mass starvation can be headed off in Afghanistan. The spectacle of US special forces roving through a land of the dead and the dying in search of Osama bin Laden is as absurd a prescription for policy as it is offensive to decency.
A reversal of American policy is necessary. At present, political goals have been treated as a footnote to military goals (George W. Bush did not drop his opposition to nation-building in Afghanistan until a week after he ordered the bombing campaign), and humanitarian goals have been treated as a footnote to political goals. (The piteously inadequate food drops from US planes is the embodiment of this footnote.) This policy must be stood precisely on its head. Whatever the operational details, the humanitarian crisis must dominate. The bombing should stop, and a new policy--perhaps one of armed humanitarian intervention on the ground--should be adopted. Such a policy would replace the current iron fist in a humanitarian velvet glove with a helping human hand in a glove of chain mail. Not nation-building but nation-saving--the physical salvation of Afghan lives--must be the controlling consideration. Only if this humanitarian effort is successful can a political policy succeed--whether in Afghanistan itself, in Islamic opinion or in world opinion. And only if these humanitarian and political goals are accomplished will the war on terrorism--whose importance, in our anthrax-menaced world, has become greater than ever--have any chance of going well.
Source: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=schell
10/19/01
9:28:54 PM
The Nation
Christopher Hitchens's October 8 Nation magazine column on the roots of September 11 provoked a spate of mail, both pro and con, which led to Hitchens's elaboration for the Nation website, in which he took many progressives to task, including Noam Chomsky, for being soft on what he calls "Islamic Fascism." Chomsky then replied, and a further exchange ensued. You can find all of this currently at:
http://www.thenation.com/special/20010911debate.mhtml
The torrent of reader mail we've received on this debate is virtually split down the middle on whose comments--Chomsky's or Hitchens's--are more relevant and resonant. There's also a dissenting minority clamoring for the combatants to stop their "ridiculous verbal duel" and, in the words of another writer, "start training their sights on the real enemies," and "stop bickering over points of emphasis."
Read a sampling of these letters, from Edward S. Herman and Michael Kazin, among many others, now at:
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=special&s=webletters20011017
We've also created a special page on The Nation website where we're collecting all of our September 11 material.
Updated regularly, this page highlights information, articles and resources on the September 11 attacks, the unfolding U.S. response and the continued threat of terrorism.
New features include articles by Dilip Hiro (on Uzbekistan and the U.S.) and Liza Featherstone (on antiwar protests); information and links to RAWA - the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan; an online map of the Muslim world; a 1998 Nation interview with Osama bin Laden conducted by Robert Fisk; a set of links to antiwar/peace groups; a frequently updated collection of media resources; a link to the South Asian Journalist's Association's Bias Report documenting the harassment of Arab-Americans since September 11; a 1996 essay by Fred Halliday examining the Taliban shortly after it took power; a 1978 mediation by Aryeh Neier on terrorism and justice; Nation web articles by Naomi Klein, Joel Rogers, Tariq Ali and David Corn and a review of an-at-that time new book on Afghanistan published in the October 11, 1906 issue of The Nation.
All this and more at:
http://www.thenation.com/special/wtc/index.mhtml
And don't miss these new articles, editorials, columns and comments from the November 5, 2001 issue of The Nation:
BRUCE SHAPIRO: Anthrax Anxiety
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=shapiro
KATHA POLLITT: War and Peace
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=pollitt
MARC SIEGAL: Profits of Fear
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=siegel
VICTOR NAVASKY: Profiles in Cowardice
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=navasky
JONATHAN SCHELL: Seven Million at Risk
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=schell
MARY KALDOR: Wanted: Global Politics
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=kaldor
MICHAEL MASSING: Press Watch
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20011105&s=massing
You can also read John Nichols's account of the bitter debate that divided one of the most liberal cities in the United States, when members of the Berkeley City Council voted on Tuesday night to urge a quick halt to the U.S. bombing of Afghanistan. Available at:
http://www.thenation.com/thebeat
10/19/01
9:02:43 PM
The Russian Connection
by Christopher Ruddy
Unsettling was the report this week that Mikhail Gorbachev had canceled plans to travel to the United States.
I noted that he passed on a long-standing engagement to speak at a charity dinner in Palm Beach, among several other appearances.
No doubt such an event was long in planning. Couples had to cough up $5,000 to hear the former U.S.S.R president speak.
Arm-twisting to get Gorbachev to change his mind didn't work, I hear.
His office claims he was accepting President Putin's advice to him and other Russian officials: Under no circumstances travel to the U.S. over the next weeks, especially for an extended stay!
Putin's advisory has not gotten much publicity, so I'll discount any thinking that this is just Russian propaganda.
One wonders, then, what threat might exist that would cause someone like Gorbachev, who planned to travel to various U.S. cities, to suddenly cancel his plans.
Gorbachev must have taken the advice very seriously. After all, he has compared himself on many occasions to Jesus Christ. Such a divine figure wouldn't be given to many fears.
We can't exclude the possibility that the Russians know something -- or may be behind the "something" that will affect us.
It never ceases to amaze me how the media censor certain topics from discussion. It has been taboo, for instance, to talk about how the Clinton administration led us to the point of Sept. 11.
Equally, it has been radioactive to discuss the links between Russia and almost every nation that supports terrorism and terrorist networks such as al-Qaeda.
Russia is the main backer of nearly every terrorist-sponsoring regime identified by the U.S. State Department, regimes such as Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya, North Korea and Cuba.
Almost all of these countries spent the '90s engaging in significant military buildups, with special emphasis on building strategic weapons: nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. In almost every case, Russia has been a helping hand to these efforts.
Such stories rarely, if ever, make it to the pages of the New York Times, or on CNN. Why?
Today, America is facing the serious threat of biological weapons.
Russia has a significant link here again.
This week I spoke with Dr. Sanford Kuvin, an American expert on infection diseases who founded and chairs the Center for Infection Diseases and Tropical Science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Kuvin has little doubt that Russia, primarily through its unemployed scientists, shared the smallpox virus with rogue states.
Kuvin says the highly contagious smallpox could be devastating to us, far more than an anthrax attack.
He believes such countries as Iraq, Iran, Syria and North Korea have the smallpox virus, one they can easily incubate and turn into a biological weapon.
More Russian connections. After Sept. 11, there have been several press reports that Osama bin Laden was trying to acquire Russian nuclear suitcase bombs from Russian "mafia" sources.
But in 1998, the Times of London reported bin Laden had successfully acquired such weapons.
If he did, I agree with Col. Stanislav Lunev, a former Russian GRU officer, who claims such a transfer could only be done with the blessing of the Russian government and its intelligence agencies.
The old communist guard, whose members control almost every top position in Russia, including the presidency, have little love for America. They are envious and still despise us.
Almost overnight, Russia faded as a superpower. Perhaps Russia's leadership would like to see the same thing happen to the U.S.
In the light of Sept. 11, and the events yet to unfold, we need to continue asking:
Who is really backing these terrorists and who are the nations that harbor them?
Cui Bono (who benefits) from these attacks?
Who benefits from these transparent financial attacks, which are clearly intended to undermine our economy?
Who crafted the intricate terrorist plan against America -- one so sophisticated no terrorist group has ever employed it against a country before?
Who helped to provide the biological, chemical and nuclear weapons that these terrorists have or may get?
We must accept the fact that there is indeed a significant effort by one of more foreign powers to undermine America's financial standing in the world.
I believe we can, for the moment, rule out Chinese complicity. China is fast developing as a superpower itself, thanks to American capital. Why should it stop that process?
No doubt, China's rise is unsettling to Russia. In a few years, Russia will be left in the dustbin of history -- unless it puts the breaks on America and China's economic juggernaut.
Perhaps that is another good reason the trigger was pulled on Sept. 11.
Source: http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/10/18/235410.shtml
10/19/01
8:43:51 PM
The Last Moments Of Flight 11
BBC
Ms Sweeney's plane was the first to be crashed A flight attendant's desperate telephone call has provided new details of the last moments of Flight 11 before it hit the World Trade Center.
According to the FBI transcript, part of which was published in the Los Angeles Times, Madeline Amy Sweeney described how hijackers stabbed passengers and then diverted the plane.
A US official praised Ms Sweeney's ability to keep calm and describe the crisis as it unfolded but the mother-of-two's words ended in horror and disbelief.
When Ms Sweeney came on the phone to ground staff in Boston it was to report that a hijack was in progress.
Four attackers had cut the throat of a passenger in business class and stabbed two others, she said.
Three of the hijackers had been sitting in business class themselves and one spoke very good English.
Composure
As Ms Sweeney was giving their seat numbers, they reached the cockpit and it was then, as the plane suddenly changed course, that she spoke her last reported words:
"I see water and buildings. Oh my God! Oh my God!"
Officials at American Airlines have been asked not to discuss the telephone call with the press, but one unnamed member of staff praised the dead flight attendant.
"She was very, very composed, very detailed," he said.
"It was impressive that she could do that."
Ms Sweeney's account of the hijacking provides unique evidence of what took place but it also appears to conflict with previous information.
The FBI has named five hijackers on board Flight 11, whereas Ms Sweeney spotted only four.
Also, the seat numbers she gave were different from those registered in the hijackers' names.
10/19/01
1:42:30 PM
70,000 GRADUATES OF BIN LADEN UNIVERSITY
Gary North's REALITY CHECK
On October 11, Winston Churchill spoke to the National Press Club in Washington. Shirley MacLaine served as his channel.
Actually, it was Winston Churchill, the grandson, son of Randolph Churchill and Pamela Beryl Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman. His mother was the lady who, in 1992, introduced Washington Democrats socially to W. J. Clinton of Arkansas. She held one of her famous Party parties for him. For this, late in her maritally astounding career, Clinton appointed her the U.S. Ambassador to France.
Churchill gave a rousing speech on the war against terrorism. Midway in the speech, he got to the topic at hand: funding. I find it ominous.
It is impossible to guess how long it will take to apprehend bin Laden and his henchmen and to bring them to justice. That it will be done in time, I have no doubt. Meanwhile, the overthrow of the cruel, barbaric Taliban regime which harbors him is clearly the top priority. This is an alien regime, established only in the past five years with funding and arms from the Arab countries, by way of Pakistan, which acted as godfather to the creation of the Taliban. Their rule has been so brutal and so disastrous that an estimated one in four Afghans have fled as refugees to Iran or Pakistan, creating a massive humanitarian crisis in the region.
Once the Taliban have been overthrown, a high priority must be to cut off the funding --not only for the terrorists, but also for the fundamentalist madrassas, the theological schools established in numerous countries around the world where the gospel of Islamic purity and anti-Western hatred is preached. Unbelievable though it may seem, no country has been more responsible for this than Saudi Arabia, the West's principal ally in the Middle East. In order to appease and deflect criticism of their pro-Western leanings and opulent lifestyle, the Saudi ruling family, in an act of consummate folly, has poured vast resources into the establishment of these schools and religious universities in their own countries and overseas. They now find that they are riding a tiger of extreme fundamentalism, entirely of their own creation, which threatens the very foundations of their hold on power. As a result, today almost half the young Saudi males coming onto the jobs market have only religious qualifications, making them not only unemployed, but effectively unemployable. In consequence, barely one in four is able to find a job. The rest make a fertile field of disaffection, from which bin Laden is able to recruit new generations of suicide bombers, hijackers and terrorists. And it is no coincidence that many of last month's hijackers were Saudi citizens.
More horrifying yet, if that were possible, if estimates attributed to the CIA are to be believed, in recent years some 70,000 militants have passed through bin Laden's terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, and are currently dispersed across no fewer than 55 countries around the world, including our own. New attacks are inevitable, and some undoubtedly will succeeded before this hydra-headed monster of international terrorism is destroyed.
While it will be difficult for the Saudi government to bring its extremist theological schools under control and integrate them as they must within the state education system, if it fails to do so it is inevitable that the Saudi ruling family will sooner or later -- and probably sooner than later -- forfeit its hold on power and be drowned in a tidal wave of fundamentalism.
What is the likelihood that the Saudis will shut down these schools? Not high, surely. The Saudis are already distancing themselves from the United States. This article appeared the day after we began bombing Kabul.
RIYADH: The US ally Saudi Arabia said on Monday that it was unhappy about the bombing of Afghanistan, sending the clearest signal yet that its relations with Washington are being tested by the war on terrorism.
Interior Minister Prince Naif broke Saudi silence on the bombing late on Sunday, telling reporters that the kingdom opposed terrorism but did not approve of the US response. "We wish the United States had been able to flush out the terrorists in Afghanistan without resorting to the current action ... because this is killing innocent people," he said. . . .
"It's unbelievable the way the feeling here has changed from sympathy to anger in such a short time," a Western analyst based in Riyadh said. "More sensitive and astute decision-making on both sides is required to handle a relationship which has become extremely difficult to manage. Every aspect of it is under pressure." . . .
http://www.jang.com.pk/thenews/oct2001-daily/16-10-2001/main/main14.htm
Churchill argued that money to the Taliban has come from Arab states through Pakistan. I don't know about the Arab states, although I suspect that this is the case. With respect to Pakistan, it's becoming ever clearer: big money came from our new-found ally.
From day one, Pakistan has backed the Taliban. The American press will not touch this story. Now this aspect of the war is getting juicy.
The head of Pakistan's version of the CIA, called the ISI, recently retired. It is pretty clear that he was quietly forced out because of pressure from the United States. Here's why it had to be so quiet. The following information comes from the INDIA TIMES, which, regarding Pakistan, is not what I would call an unbiased source. But the American press will not follow this lead. It's a "not worth pursuing" story.
[Note: the TIMES does not publish dates on its news reports. This is a very peculiar policy.]
While the Pakistani Inter Services Public Relations claimed that former ISI director-general Lt-Gen Mahmud Ahmad sought retirement after being superseded on Monday, the truth is more shocking.
Top sources confirmed here on Tuesday, that the general lost his job because of the "evidence" India produced to show his links to one of the suicide bombers that wrecked the World Trade Centre. The US authorities sought his removal after confirming the fact that $100,000 were wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan by Ahmad Umar Sheikh at the instance of Gen Mahumd.
Senior government sources have confirmed that India contributed significantly to establishing the link between the money transfer and the role played by the dismissed ISI chief. While they did not provide details, they said that Indian inputs, including Sheikh's mobile phone number, helped the FBI in tracing and establishing the link.
http://www.timesofindia.com/articleshow.asp?art_id=1454238160
Can this story be true? Is there evidence? Not as much as there was two weeks ago. According to INDIAREACTS,
. . . we reported in our Intelligence section on Saturday (Intelligence, "Pak GHQ fire could be sabotage," 13 October 2001) that the five-hour fire that raged through a section of the Pakistan army headquarters in Rawalpindi on 10 October could have been staged. The fire entirely destroyed cell 320 containing files of Afghan operations and dossiers on the Taliban leadership since 1995.
General Musharraf had created a new Afghan division after he took over. But all files on the Taliban prior to that were lost in the cell 320 fire. Firemen were prevented from dousing it from the inside and ordered to see that it did not spread to other parts of the building. . . .
But how is it that the fire raged for five hours despite the presence of modern fire-fighting equipment from Belgium that was ordered not to be used? Who ordered that? Why? . . .
Again, this is an Indian publication. But the following information is bothersome.
Second, we are now told that Musharraf had stalled a US-Pakistani army plan to grab Osama Bin Laden in October 1999. The plan approved by deposed Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharief and former US president Bill Clinton entailed training Pakistani commandos to make the grab. The commandos were trained but Musharraf deposed Sharief in a coup and cancelled the plan.
http://www.indiareacts.com/home.asp
What we have today is an anti-Taliban alliance that is not what I would call rock-solid.
10/19/01
1:35:21 PM
UTNE WEB WATCH
The Best of the Alternative Web
SHOPPING WITH YOUR VALUES
by Cliff Feigenbaum, Green Money Journal
-- Green Money Journal offers strategies to reduce your environmental impact and be a socially responsible consumer.
TOY STORY
by Sean Daly, Washington City Paper
-- "One robot is intended to help disabled children. The other is designed to fight a war. Guess which one gets more funding."
THE GREAT LITERARY LOTTERY
by James Campbell, The Guardian
-- A look at the life of Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prizes and inventor of dynamite, reveals a man discontented with himself and with life.
Links to the above articles: http://www.utne.com/webwatch
10/19/01
1:33:47 PM
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE
ANTHRAX ANXIETY AT TOP UN ENVIRONMENTAL AGENCY
NAIROBI, Kenya, October 18, 2001 (ENS) - A letter suspected of anthrax contamination was received at the Headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the agency has confirmed. The letter came to the UNEP headquarters in Gigiri, a Nairobi neighborhood.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-18-02.html
PESTICIDES SENT AS AID TO NEPAL NOW TOXIC WASTE
KATHMANDU, Nepal, October 18, 2001 (ENS) - Greenpeace efforts to contain a stockpile of obsolete pesticides on the outskirts of Kathmandu, have been successful and are nearing completion, the environmental organization said Wednesday.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-18-03.html
SMALL GRANTS AIM TO SOLVE GLOBAL SIZED PROBLEMS
By Diane Jukofsky
SAN JOSE, Costa Rica, October 18, 2001 (ENS) - Alarmed by growing contamination of their rivers and streams, residents of Hojancha, Costa Rica, got together a few years ago to see how they might make their village more ecologically sound. They formed the Monte Alto Foundation and with a $20,000 grant from Costa Rica's Small Grants Program of the Global Environmental Facility (SGP-GEF), established an environmental education center and an inn for ecotourists.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-18-01.html
MEXICAN MAIZE CONTAMINATED WITH ENGINEERED GENES
WASHINGTON, DC, October 18, 2001 (ENS) - Testing of maize varieties from 22 communities in the Oaxaca, Mexico areas have revealed genetic contamination in 15 of them. The findings raise questions about the potential for genetic pollution in a region considered the world's best repository of maize genetic diversity, and about American policies of exporting engineered crops.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-18-06.html
U.S. EPA RENEWS APPROVAL FOR Bt CORN
WASHINGTON, DC, October 18, 2001 (ENS) - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has extended approval for genetically modified Bt corn for an additional seven years, the agency said Tuesday. The decision was applauded by the biotechnology industry, but roundly criticized by environmental and consumer groups.
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-18-07.html
ENVIRONMENT NEWS SERVICE AMERISCAN: OCTOBER 18, 2001
Terrorist Threat Raises Fears at Three Mile Island
Nation's Water Called Unlikely Terrorist Target
White House Backs Environmentally Friendlier Farm Bill
Groups Visit Las Vegas to Protest Nuclear Dump
Greens Criticize Fast Track Legislation
$55 Million Supports Study of Biocomplexity
Clean Coal Research Gets $110 Million Boost
Manatee Supporters Challenge Delisting Petition
New Database Promotes Earth Science Studies
For full text and graphics visit:
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-18-09.html
10/19/01
1:25:16 PM
U.S. Government Knowledge and Complicity
From: David Feustel <dfeustel@mindspring.com>
Chicago Attorney David Schippers, head of the Clinton impeachment, asserted yesterday on the Alex Jones show that the Justice department had detailed information on 911 weeks before the attack was carried out.
Schippers says that he personally sent information about the impending 911 attack to AG Ashcroft asking for an investigation, but Ashcroft refused to do that.
Schippers got his information from FBI agents who had collected information about the impending attack and all the terrorists subsequently involved.
The FBI agents sent the information to Schippers after they were explicitly ordered to drop their investigation of signs of the impending attack.
Given the Government's extremely well documented prior knowledge of and complicity in the first WTC bombing and the OKC bombing, I find this report credible.
Only the government is benefiting from the fallout of 911 as a result of its assumption of drastically increased powers to 'fight terrorism'.
http://arc2.m2ktalk.com/alexam/101001.ram
10/19/01
1:17:12 PM
Say What You Want, But This War Is Illegal
by Michael Mandel
Professor of law at Osgoode Hall Law School, Toronto
Globe and Mail, Tuesday, October 9, 2001
A well-kept secret about the U.S.-U.K. attack on Afghanistan is that it is clearly illegal. It violates international law and the express words of the United Nations Charter.
Despite repeated reference to the right of self-defence under Article 51, the Charter simply does not apply here. Article 51 gives a state the right to repel an attack that is ongoing or imminent as a temporary measure until the UN Security Council can take steps necessary for international peace and security.
The Security Council has already passed two resolutions condemning the Sept. 11 attacks and announcing a host of measures aimed at combating terrorism. These include measures for the legal suppression of terrorism and its financing, and for co-operation between states in security, intelligence, criminal investigations and proceedings relating to terrorism. The Security Council has set up a committee to monitor progress on the measures in the resolution and has given all states 90 days to report back to it.
Neither resolution can remotely be said to authorize the use of military force. True, both, in their preambles, abstractly "affirm" the inherent right of self-defence, but they do so "in accordance with the Charter." They do not say military action against Afghanistan would be within the right of self-defence. Nor could they. That's because the right of unilateral self-defence does not include the right to retaliate once an attack has stopped.
The right of self-defence in international law is like the right of self-defence in our own law: It allows you to defend yourself when the law is not around, but it does not allow you to take the law into your own hands.
Since the United States and Britain have undertaken this attack without the explicit authorization of the Security Council, those who die from it will be victims of a crime against humanity, just like the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Even the Security Council is only permitted to authorize the use of force where "necessary to maintain and restore international peace and security." Now it must be clear to everyone that the military attack on Afghanistan has nothing to do with preventing terrorism. This attack will be far more likely to provoke terrorism. Even the Bush administration concedes that the real war against terrorism is long term, a combination of improved security, intelligence and a rethinking of U.S. foreign alliances.
But, you might ask, does legality matter in a case like this? You bet it does. Without the law, there is no limit to international violence but the power, ruthlessness and cunning of the perpetrators. Without the international legality of the UN system, the people of the world are sidelined in matters of our most vital interests.
We are all at risk from what happens next. We must insist that Washington make the case for the necessity, rationality and proportionality of this attack in the light of day before the real international community.
The bombing of Afghanistan is the legal and moral equivalent of what was done to the Americans on Sept. 11. We may come to remember that day, not for its human tragedy, but for the beginning of a headlong plunge into a violent, lawless world.
10/19/01
1:04:36 PM
Taliban - Confidential
By Gordon Thomas
China has provided the Taliban with state-of-the-art electronic defence equipment. It was developed by military contractors in Britain, the United States and Germany and stolen by Chinas Secret Intelligence Service (CSIS).
The deal was cemented in Kabul on the day the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were hit.
In return for beefing-up Afghanistans defences, the Taliban have agreed to close Afghan-based camps used to train Muslim Fundamentalists currently terrorising Chinas northern provinces. Details of the deal leaked out of Beijing last week to the Sunday Express from anti-Taliban forces in Afghanistan. It was confirmed by Washington where the State Department was highly disturbed by the news the U.S. Embssy in Beijing had sent about the deal.
Secretary of State Colin Powell was told the deal involved two major Chinese companies, Huswei Technologies and ZTE. Both are major suppliers to Chinas Peoples Liberation Army. Chinas Ministry of State Security supplied missile-tracking equipment and a range of electronic counter-measures to the Taliban.
The equipment had been developed in Britain. Since last Sunday Chinese air force transporters have been flying into Kabuls airport with the equipment. It was immediately distributed to areas from where the Taliban fear a U.S. attack would come. And for the first time we can reveal the close contacts between CSIS and Osama bin-Laden. It has emerged that in the past year he has made several visits to Beijing, usually accompanied by Chinas ambassador to Pakistan who is Beijings most senior diplomat in the region. A high-ranking Chinese defector to America, with full access to the CSIS, has revealed the most comprehensive-ever details of Chinas spying operations against key economic and industrial targets in Britain.
State-of-the-art research and technology worth an estimated 14 billion has been stolen in the past three years since CSIS intensified its operations in Britain. The defector, Colonel Xu Junping, was Director of Strategy in Chinas Defence Ministry. For the past five years he oversaw all secret operations by CSIS against the West. Xu has told his CIA debriefers how:
CSIS has established bases in Londons Soho (Chinatown) and other cities. Some are above restaurants or in brothels. CSIS pays for Chinese students to have further education in Britain. Many attend university post-graduate courses at our leading universities including Oxford and Cambridge.
After qualifying usually in computer or science-related subjects those students are taught how to apply for jobs with British firms some of whom have sensitive defence contracts. Xu has provided a list of target firms. Most are in the high-tech industry.
CSIS trains those graduates to steal trade secrets from their employers and bring them to safe houses. Xu has provided a list of the houses in London, Glasgow and Manchester.
CSIS has twenty full-time agents working in Britain. Only two of them have diplomatic status. The others are attached to Chinese business organisation to provide them with cover for their secret activities. The number of CSIS agents is larger than any other foreign intelligence service operating in Britain. In the five months that Xu has been kept under wraps in a safe house deep in the countryside outside Washington its perimeter guarded by crack-shot agents the slim, good-looking 44-year old defector has also provided valuable insights about how much China knows.
Of MI6 operations in the Far East. How China secretly contravened sanctions against Saddam to re-arm Iraq with nuclear weapons. Iraq now has a capability to produce long-range nuclear missiles. How China secretly helped Slobodan Milosevic during the Balkans War and how a CSIS team flew to Belgrade, ready to whisk Milosevic to sanctuary in China - shortly before he was arrested and sent to The Hague War Crimes Tribunal. Even more alarming was Xus revelation that Osama bin-Laden to the U.S. the grandmaster of terrorism has close contacts with CSIS.
Our intelligence service operates on the principle that your enemies are our potential allies, Xu told his debriefers. So important were some of Xus revelations that U.S. National Security Adviser, Condolezza Rice, sat in on debriefings. She heard:
Xu confirm CSIS plans to stage an escalating series of crises to help China become the new Superpower of the new Millenium. How CSIS is working hard to exploit Europes growing problem with asylum seekers. Xus predictions have now been included into a CIA report entitled Global Trends Up To 2015. The report contains these chilling claims:
CSIS will provide biochemical and small nuclear devices to terrorist groups to attack the United States and Britain. CSIS will increasingly support rogue states like Iraq and Iran. On present calculations, with the help of China, both countries will have gone nuclear by the year 2005, says the report. The report is a grim precursor to the present economic slowdown.
CSIS will exploit the present economic stagnation that will reach its peak in the year 2015. All the indications are there could be a major war by then. The main protagonists will be China and America. But Britain and NATO will inevitably be drawn in. White House sources say a copy of the report is permanently on President Bushs desk in the Oval Office.
Xu, who speaks fluent English, was one of Chinas new breed of high fliers, a brilliant strategist according to one CIA source. He defected with nothing but the clothes he wore and a small overnight case. With his diplomatic passport he had no problem catching a China Air flight to Bangkok earlier this year. From there he flew to Washington. There he called a number a CIA agent had given him in Beijing.
An hour later he was installed in the CIA safe house. Last week his five months of intensive debriefing was over. During that time Xu was given the courtesies of a top-level defector. He had his own chef to cook his favourite Chinese meals. Videos of Manchester United, his favourite team, were obtained from Britain for him to watch. Then it was back to work..talking for hours into a microphone.
This coming week Xu enters Americas Witness Protection Programme. He will have plastic surgery to change his appearance. A language teacher will coach him in the latest buzz words. He will get used to his new name. A job will be found for him and he will receive a secret pension for life.
But he will have no physical protection against the ever present threat that a CSIS team will assassinate him. To give him a bodyguard would be to draw attention to him, said an FBI source. His best protection will be his ability to melt into his chosen background.
Chinese Spies
China now has the worlds largest intelligence-gathering apparatus. As well as CSIS (approx 4,000 staff), a third based overseas, the others are:
STD. Headquartered in the monolithic Ministry of Defence building in Beijing, the Science and Technology Department (4,000 members) has two prime functions. Collating all signals traffic from the Chinese Navy, overseas embassies and satellites. Targeting all foreign firms at the cutting edge of military and civilian technology.
MID. Reports to the Politburo and Army General Staff. Brief includes updating all foreign military capabilities. Members attached to every Chinese embassy and consulate. Number of staff estimated as 1,500. ILD. Small specialist unit (300 members). Conducts high-tech intelligence-gathering.
MSS. (3,500 staff). Equivalent to MI5 but three times larger. Targets all foreigners in China and spies on its own citizens. CLIP
Gordon Thomas
10/19/01
1:00:11 PM
Media Spin Revolves Around The Word "Terrorist"
by Norman Solomon
During the first two days of this month, CNN's website displayed an odd little announcement. "There have been false reports that CNN has not used the word 'terrorist' to refer to those who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon," the notice said. "In fact, CNN has consistently and repeatedly referred to the attackers and hijackers as terrorists, and it will continue to do so."
The CNN disclaimer was accurate -- and, by conventional media standards, reassuring. But it bypassed a basic question that festers beneath America's overwhelming media coverage of recent weeks: Exactly what qualifies as "terrorism"?
For this country's mainstream journalists, that's a non-question about a no-brainer. More than ever, the proper function of the "terrorist" label seems obvious. "A group of people commandeered airliners and used them as guided missiles against thousands of people," says NBC News executive Bill Wheatley. "If that doesn't fit the definition of terrorism, what does?"
True enough. At the same time, it's notable that American news outlets routinely define terrorism the same way that U.S. government officials do. Usually, editors assume that reporters don't need any formal directive because the appropriate usage is simply understood.
The Wall Street Journal does provide some guidelines, telling its staff that the word terrorist "should be used carefully, and specifically, to describe those people and nongovernmental organizations that plan and execute acts of violence against civilian or noncombatant targets." In newsrooms across the United States, media professionals would agree.
But -- in sharp contrast -- Reuters has stuck to a distinctive approach for decades. "As part of a policy to avoid the use of emotive words," the global news service says, "we do not use terms like 'terrorist' and 'freedom fighter' unless they are in a direct quote or are otherwise attributable to a third party. We do not characterize the subjects of news stories but instead report their actions, identity and background so that readers can make their own decisions based on the facts."
Since mid-September, the Reuters management has taken a lot of heat for maintaining this policy -- and for reiterating it in an internal memo, which included the observation that "one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." In a clarifying statement, released on Oct. 2, the top execs at Reuters explained:
"Our policy is to avoid the use of emotional terms and not make value judgments concerning the facts we attempt to report accurately and fairly."
Reuters reports from 160 countries, and the "terrorist" label is highly contentious in quite a few of them. Behind the scenes, many governments have pressured Reuters to flatly describe their enemies as terrorists in news dispatches.
>From the vantage point of government leaders in Ankara or Jerusalem or Moscow, for example, journalists shouldn't hesitate to describe their violent foes as terrorists. But why should reporters oblige by pinning that tag on Kurdish combatants in Turkey, or Palestinian militants in occupied territories, or rebels in Chechnya?
Unless we buy into the absurd pretense that governments don't engage in "terrorism," the circumscribed use of the term by U.S. media makes no sense. Turkish military forces have certainly terrorized and killed many civilians; the same is true of Israeli forces and Russian troops. As a result, plenty of Kurds, Palestinians and Chechens are grieving.
American reporters could plausibly expand their working definition of terrorism to include all organized acts of terror and murder committed against civilians. But such consistency would meet with fierce opposition in high Washington places.
During the 1980s, with a non-evasive standard for terrorism, news accounts would have routinely referred to the Nicaraguan contra guerrillas -- in addition to the Salvadoran and Guatemalan governments -- as U.S.- backed "terrorists." Today, for instance, such a standard would require news coverage of terrorism in the Middle East to include the Israeli assaults with bullets and missiles that take the lives of Palestinian children and other civilians.
Evenhanded use of the "terrorist" label would mean sometimes affixing it directly on the U.S. government. During the past decade, from Iraq to Sudan to Yugoslavia, the Pentagon's missiles have destroyed the lives of civilians just as innocent as those who perished on Sept. 11. If journalists dare not call that "terrorism," then perhaps the word should be retired from the media lexicon.
It's entirely appropriate for news outlets to describe the Sept. 11 hijackers as "terrorists" -- if those outlets are willing to use the "terrorist" label with integrity across the board. But as long as news organizations are not willing to do so, the Reuters policy is the only principled journalistic alternative.
There is no credible reason to believe that mainstream U.S. media will jump off Uncle Sam's propaganda merry-go-round about "terrorism." And the problem goes far beyond the deeply hypocritical routine of condemning some murderously explosive actions against civilians while applauding or even implementing others.
More than five years have passed since Madeleine Albright, then secretary of state, appeared on the CBS program "60 Minutes" and explained her lack of concern about the deaths resulting from U.S.-led sanctions against Iraq. In a broadcast that aired on May 12, 1996, the CBS correspondent Lesley Stahl asked Albright: "We have heard that a half a million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died when -- in -- in Hiroshima. And -- and, you know, is the price worth it?"
"I think this is a very hard choice," Albright replied, "but the price- we think the price is worth it."
Since then, by continuing to impose sanctions on Iraq, the U.S. government has killed hundreds of thousands more children. Of course such present-day policies did not stop Albright's successor from immediately claiming the high moral ground on Sept. 11. Responding to the tragic events that day, Colin Powell denounced "people who feel that with the destruction of buildings, with the murder of people, they can somehow achieve a political purpose."
Obviously, top U.S. officials still believe that they can "somehow achieve a political purpose" with sanctions that are killing several thousand Iraqi children every month. While standing on that policy platform, the officials fervently deplore terrorism.
10/19/01
12:56:37 PM
HERE ARE SOME OF THE INTERESTING STORIES YOU WILL FIND AT
Two years of groundbreaking coverage on the Vietnamization of Colombia
Three years of reporting on the channeling of drug profits through Wall Street
The first news entity to publish the entire deposition of Adm. Thomas Moorer admitting sarin gas use in SE Asia
Exclusive coverage on the contents of a CIA IG report (10/98) admitting direct CIA involvement in the drug trade
Expanded coverage of the CIA illegally transferring military aircraft to private companies that were later used to smuggle cocaine in the 1990s
The connection between the crack cocaine epidemic and massive foreclosures of HUD financed homes in South Central Los Angeles. (Ethnic Cleansing)
The first US news entity to report in detail on connections between the KLA and the heroin trade
An exclusive two-part series connecting Dominican drug lords to money laundering through the Democratic Party
The first US news agency to fully explore the massive looting of Russia through the Bank of New York and link it to the drug trade
Gov George Bush flying in a Texas state airplane once owned by Barry Seal (picked up by the AP)
Perjury committed by Deputy Attorneys General in the conviction of Edwin Wilson
The Democratic Party's Presidential Drug Money Pipeline
The 9th Circuit Court Affirming Contra Leaders Claims of CIA Sanction for Drug Trafficking
Promis Software (2000)
The Bush-Cheney Drug Empire
European Economic Conference on US Economy
Massive Holes in the U.S. Position on the Shootdown of Missionaries in Peru
10/19/01
12:54:20 PM
Bill Blum on the Hypocrisy Crusade
Keep Those Envelopes Coming!
The man illegally occupying the White House made the following announcement a few days ago:
"We are asking every child in America to earn or give a dollar that will be used to provide food and medical help for the children of Afghanistan. You can send your dollar in an envelope marked 'America's Fund for Afghan Children' right here to the White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C."
I suggest that we send the envelopes, but not with any money; instead with a note saying something like "You could help the children of Afghanistan a great deal more if you'd stop bombing their country, killing them and their parents, and making it impossible for real charitable organizations to bring food, medical, and other aid into the country."
It would be better if you signed your name and address, but you must realize in the expanded police state that is now looming, this could likely get you put on a list, if not worse.
Bill Blum is the author of "Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II" and "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower"
Portions of the books can be read at:
http://members.aol.com/superogue/homepage.htm
10/19/01
12:50:26 PM
The longer this war continues, the more difficult it will become
Independent
This, we were told, was a different kind of war. But as the air strikes against Afghanistan settle into their second week, America's war on terrorism looks all too familiar, virtually indistinguishable from the Gulf War and Kosovo before it. Missiles and high-altitude bombers rain destruction on such worthwhile military targets as exist in that benighted land, an unspecified number of innocent civilians die in "collateral damage" – but with no convincing evidence that the will of the Taliban has been broken, or that the US is much closer to "taking out" its chief foes, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar.
And as the military campaign stagnates, the diplomatic landscape darkens.
All along, President Bush has assured that America's quarrel is not with the Afghan people and still less with Islam, but with the terrorists who organised the attacks of 11 September and those who shelter them. For the Muslim world, however, each new civilian casualty within Afghanistan gives the lie to that assertion – and makes more plausible the accusation that the US is fighting a "coward's war", killing innocents on the ground from the safety of the skies.
And each new casualty renders more precarious the position of President Pervez Musharraf, Washington's most pivotal but most uncomfortable ally in the region. Consider a poll released as Colin Powell, the Secretary of State, arrived in Pakistan yesterday: no less than four-fifths of President Musharraf's countrymen sympathise with the Taliban. Every sweetener that General Powell can offer – US support, financial aid and international acceptance – will count for nothing if these feelings boil over on the streets.
The Bush administration knows all the above full well. But it faces two dilemmas; one military and one political. Even before the bombing began, it was assumed that the war would quickly move to a second phase, whose focus was on operations on the ground inside Afghanistan, aimed directly at Mr bin Laden. Alas, every account suggests that the CIA has so far failed to deliver the essential precondition: intelligence data pinpointing the whereabouts of the leader of al-Qa'ida. Failing that, the choice is, to bomb or not to bomb, in the full knowledge that the latter would be hailed as victory by the Taliban.
So, in all likelihood, more bombing it will be. The political dilemma rides in tandem with the military dilemma. Like it or not, the US is now committed to "nation building" in Afghanistan. But just suppose the Taliban regime does disintegrate tomorrow. Washington's political campaign to construct an acceptable and stable successor is running far behind its military offensive .
So what next? The US is indeed fighting a different kind of war, the kind of war, alas, for which it is least equipped. In this war, hi-tech wizardry counts for less than down-and-dirty gathering of human intelligence. Victory is unlikely to be secured, blood-free, from the air. Almost certainly it will require risking American lives on the ground.
No less important, the home front must hold as well. Thus far American public opinion has been overwhelmingly behind the war, and vaunted "splits" within the administration have been conspicuous by their absence. But suppose there was another terrorist attack inside the US. Almost certainly, the public clamour to lash out indiscriminately in revenge would become irresistible. On every front – military, political, diplomatic and at home – America must display patience and unwavering commitment. President Bush, it must be acknowledged, has demanded such qualities from the first. But modern America is a country addicted to the quick fix, and one which is easily bored. The longer this war continues, the more difficult it will become.
http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=99640
10/19/01
12:47:09 PM
Government Had Prior Knowledge - Key Points
The FBI knows another terrorist attack is being planned now in Oklahoma City - attack site unknown. The FBI has and is prohibiting their agents or local police from taking known terrorists into custody. An Iraqi terrorist cell is involved and was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Ashcroft and members of Congress aren't listening. CLIP
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3bc4dfde166e.htm
The longer this war continues, the more difficult it will become
http://argument.independent.co.uk/leading_articles/story.jsp?story=99640
Anti-Terrorism Questions for Bush - and more articles
10/19/01
12:30:48 PM
Henry Kissinger in an address to the Bilderberg Organization meeting at Evian, France, May 21, 1992 said the following as transcribed from a tape recording made by one of the Swiss delegates:
"Today American's would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order; tomorrow they will be grateful. This is especially true if they were told there was an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead with world leaders to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well being granted to them by their world government."
"...the US (and particularly the Pentagon) has hitherto opposed the creation of any international criminal tribunal which could conceivably indict an American citizen." (Geoffrey Robertson). In fact there is a wide international support for, and ratification of, the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
Details at: http://www.un.org/law/icc/index.html
10/19/01
12:25:29 PM
Planet Ark World Environment News
Serbian drug plants say waste may delay investment - YUGOSLAVIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12884/story.htm
US pipelines, nuclear plants, dams seen vulnerable - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12885/story.htm
US energy dept gives $51 mln for clean coal technology - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12880/story.htm
WRAPUP - Anthrax hits third US network, spreads to Kenya - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12892/story.htm
EPA says US air quality better, but smog still a problem - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12891/story.htm
UPDATE - Security alert dropped at Three Mile Island nuke - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12883/story.htm
EPA says anthrax risk to water systems small - USA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12894/story.htm
INTERVIEW - North Korea still stalls UN nuclear inspections - UNITED NATIONS
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12890/story.htm
Nickel cast superalloy demand seen to rise sharply - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12886/story.htm
European MTBE prices slump, following gasoline - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12899/story.htm
UPDATE - Britain says tests for BSE in sheep flawed - UK http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12898/story.htm
Global GM crop area growing amid health debate - PHILIPPINES http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12900/story.htm
UPDATE - El Paso, Iberdrola in Arctic gas deal - NORWAY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12895/story.htm
INTERVIEW - Greens issue confidence warning to NZ govt on GMOs - NEW ZEALAND
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12897/story.htm
India frees two Russians arrested for catching bugs - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12879/story.htm
INTERVIEW - Binani's lead plant to start in 2003 - INDIA http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12881/story.htm
German government demands Biblis nuclear report - GERMANY http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12888/story.htm
Wartsila buys Finnish biomass power plant firm - FINLAND http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12889/story.htm
Austria threatens Czech EU talks over Temelin - CZECH REPUBLIC http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12887/story.htm
Damaged Petrobras' ship leaks naphtha in Brazil - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12893/story.htm
Huge Amazon areas lost each year but forest stands - BRAZIL http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12882/story.htm
10/19/01
11:49:58 AM
Blairism Won't Win Us The War, Tony
Charlotte Raven, The Guardian
Of all the things Tony Blair dislikes about the dirty business he is now engaged in, the one that upsets him most is the fact that a war cannot be fought by people who agree with each other. The sine qua non of military conflict - a divergence of opinion so great that no common ground can be found - is inimical to the Blairite view of an argument as a breakdown of communication. In Blair's mind an enemy is a friend who hasn't read the relevant paragraph of the piece he wrote explaining why their views are wrongheaded. He doesn't accept the existence of real detractors. However firmly rooted their opinions might appear, the Arabs burning effigies of him are only behaving so strangely because they don't have access to the allied message. By this logic, the allies' most pressing job, apart from bombing shepherds and farm hands, must be the business of winning Arab hearts and minds to the cause of "enduring freedom".
At least Blair is now on familiar ground. Every detail of the strategy he is pursuing in the so-called propaganda war has been tried and tested on the domestic front. Dealing with Osama bin Laden as they would an errant leftwinger trying to get selected for a safe-as-houses northern seat, Blair and Campbell have set about trying to limit his access to the media. We don't yet know the result of Campbell's attempts to persuade broadcasters not to screen the al-Qaida videos, but there is no doubt how silly it looks. The suggestion that some of the statements might contain coded messages to terrorists in other countries has fallen as flat as the idea that repeated exposure to the terrorists' war cries is somehow bad for "public morale".
Everyone seems fairly clear that Campbell is only bothered about al-Qaida because they sound much saner than he thought they would. Disappointing as it must have been for the forces of truth and justice to be confronted with people speaking coherent sentences, there's no excuse for trying to censor their output. To do so is to misunderstand the reasons why their message has the resonance it does. The Arab world's disgust at the bombings is not in any way attributable to the effectiveness of the al-Qaida broadcasts or the grossly overstated efforts of the Taliban "lie machine". To date, all this has amounted to is a couple of hillside rants and the possible - but by no means certain - exaggeration of civilian casualties. Compared with the US's dumbass refusal to own up to any missed targets, it is pretty small beer. Yet Campbell and Blair are entranced by the possibility that this drip, drip of anti-US invective is stealing hearts that might otherwise have beaten to the allies' drum.
For them, Muslim fanaticism is the product of a PR triumph on the part of the forces of darkness