[Peace-discuss] News notes, 11/4

[C. G. Estabrook]

NOTES ON THE WEEK'S NEWS, FOR AWARE MEETING 11/4

[N.B.--this fragmentary list is organized a bit differently from last
week's -- more topically than chronologically.]

Notes On The Week's News, For AWARE Meeting. 11/4

	[AFP] = Agence France-Presse
	[ALL] = major papers
	[AP] = Associated Press
	[BBC] = British Broadcasting Corporation
	[CNN] = Cable News Network
	[CP] = CounterPunch
	[FR] = French papers
	[FR2] = France 2 (TV)
	[FT] = Financial Times (London)
	[GL] = Guardian (London)
	[GM] = Globe and Mail (Toronto)
	[GR] = German papers
	[HI] = Hindu (India)
	[IHT] = International Herald Tribune
	[IL] = The Independent (London)
	[IPS] = Inter Press Service
	[LAT] = Los Angeles Times
	[LM] = Le Monde
	[MI] = Mirror (UK)
	[NA] = Nation
	[NBC] = NBC Evening News
	[NJ] = National Journal
	[NST] = New Scientist
	[NWK] = Newsweek
	[NY] = New Yorker
	[NYT] = New York Times
	[OL] = Observer (London)
	[OS] = Orlando Sentinel
	[PR] = Progressive Review
	[PV] = Pravda
	[RT] = Reuters
	[SC] = The Scotsman
	[SJM] = San Jose Mercury News
	[TI] = Times of India
	[TEL] = Telegraph (London)
	[TL] = Times (London)
	[UK] = British papers
	[UPI] = United Press International
	[UST] = USA Today
	[WP] = Washington Post
	[WSJ] = Wall Street Journal
	[WT] = Washington Times

COVERAGE OF THE WAR

[WP 10/31W] The chairman of CNN has ordered his staff to balance images of
civilian devastation in Afghan cities with reminders that the Taliban
harbors murderous terrorists, saying 'seems perverse to focus too much on
the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan ... We must talk about how the
Taliban are using civilian shields and how the Taliban have harbored the
terrorists responsible for killing close to 5,000 innocent people."  The
memo went on to admonish reporters covering civilian deaths not to "forget
it is that country's leaders who are responsible for the situation
Afghanistan is now in."  A follow-up memo from Rick Davis, CNN's head of
standards and practices, suggested sample language for news anchors: " 'We
must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this from Taliban-controlled
areas, that these U.S. military actions are in response to a terrorist
attack that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the U.S.' or, 'We
must keep in mind, after seeing reports like this, that the Taliban regime
in Afghanistan continues to harbor terrorists who have praised the
September 11 attacks that killed close to 5,000 innocent people in the
U.S.,' or 'The Pentagon has repeatedly stressed that it is trying to
minimize civilian casualties in Afghanistan, even as the Taliban regime
continues to harbor terrorists who are connected to the September 11
attacks that claimed thousands of innocent lives in the U.S.' " "In the
United States," the NYT noted, "television images of Afghan bombing
victims are fleeting, cushioned between anchors or American officials
explaining that such sights are only one side of the story." In other
countries, however, "images of wounded Afghan children curled in hospital
beds or women rocking in despair over a baby's corpse" are "more frequent
and lingering."  When CNN correspondent Nic Robertson reported from the
site of a bombed medical facility in Kandahar, the Times reported, U.S.
anchors "added disclaimers aimed at reassuring American viewers that the
network was not siding with the enemy."  During its US broadcasts, CNN
"quickly switched to the rubble of the World Trade Center" after showing
images of the damage in Kandahar, and the anchor "reminded viewers of the
deaths of as many as 5,000 people whose 'biggest crime was going to work
and getting there on time.'"  Thus, one of the world's most powerful news
outlets has instructed its journalists not to report Afghan civilian
casualties without attempting to justify those deaths.

[OL 11/4S] Nick Cohen: "If bin Laden died tomorrow, he could console
himself with the happy parting thought that the deaths of civilians and
the coming Afghan famine have ensured a posthumous victory."

[FT 11/1TH] USG "cannot understand how a nation that invented public
relations and dominates the world media can get caught by a group that
communicates only via melodramatic statements dispatched from a country
that bans television ... the informed consensus appears to be that this
war is being lost.  The spectacle of the strongest nation in the world
beating up one of the most wretched is uncomfortable, as is the continuing
association with Israeli policies.  If Muslims in London are sceptical,
what must they think in Quetta, Gaza and Jakarta? In the noisy streets
that now constitute the Islamic front line, America and Britain are hated
more than ever."

[UK 10/29M] The tide of international media opinion is dramatically
turning against the US-led War on Terrorism if Monday headlines in London
prove any indication: "THIS WAR IS A FRAUD" splashes the MIRROR
[circulation 2,149,422] in large font on p. 1 and then says, "The war
against terrorism is a fraud. After three weeks' bombing, not a single
terrorist implicated in the attacks on America has been caught or killed
in Afghanistan." "CRITICS OF WAR TACTICS TURN UP THE HEAT ON US" leads the
FINANCIAL TIMES.  "BLOODY SUNDAY PROVES A TEST FOR U.S. RESOLVE" headlines
the INDEPENDENT. "The US government insisted yesterday that its Afghan
campaign was going according to plan, despite repeated bombing errors
including the killing of seven children as they ate breakfast at home in
Kabul."  "BOMBING MAY STOP FOR RAMADAN AS SUPPORT FOR WAR FALTERS" fronts
the DAILY TELEGRAPH.

[MI 11/1TH] "Confusion, dithering, talk of full-scale invasion and now the
B52s move in. 50 days on from Sept 11, are we heading for another
Vietnam?"

[GL 10/30T] In Britain, poll shows support for war cooling.  Majority want
bombing pause: 54% say halt attacks and allow aid convoys into
Afghanistan.

[FR 10/31W] Osama bin Laden underwent treatment in July at the American
Hospital in Dubai where he met a US CIA official, French daily Le Figaro
and Radio France International reported.

US PROPAGANDA

[10/30T] Hysterical speech by US lapdog UK PM Tony Blair: ""It is
important we never forget why we are doing it [i.e., the war]. Important
we never forget how we felt watching the planes fly into the twin towers.
Never forget those answering machine messages. Never forget how we felt
imagining how mothers told children they were about to die ... If we do
not act against Al Qaida and the Taliban, Al Qaida will have perpetrated
this atrocity, the Taliban will have sheltered them, and we will have done
nothing. We will have done nothing despite the fact, also inescapable,
that they intend to commit more atrocities unless we yield to their
demands which include the eradication of Israel, the killing of all Jews
and the setting up of fundamentalist states in all parts of the Arab and
Moslem world."

[UST 10/29M] "Bush has told advisers that he believes confronting this
enemy is a chance for him and his fellow baby boomers to refocus their
lives and prove they have the same kind of valor and commitment their
fathers showed in World War II."

[PR 11/2F] A WEST VIRGINIA JUDGE has upheld the three day suspension of a
15-year-old high school student for wearing T-shirts with messages such
as: "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly
recovered sense of national security. God Bless America." She had also
attempted to form an anarchy club. Circuit judge James Stucky said that
free speech rights are "sacred" but are "tempered by the limitations that
they ... not disrupt the educational process." James Withrow, lawyer for
the Kanawha County Board of Education, argued that an anarchy club was
inappropriate because students "do not feel that their school is a safe
place anymore. Anarchy is the antithesis of what we believe should be in
schools."

ECONOMY

[AP 11/2F] US unemployment rate soared to 5.4 percent in October, [up
0.5%] the biggest one-month jump in more than 21 years. The Labor
Department reported Friday the highest unemployment rate the country has
seen since December 1996, and the biggest cut in payrolls since May 1980.
The rate rose a full point, to 9.7 percent, for blacks, compared to only
half a point for whites, to 4.8 percent. The rate for Hispanics rose .8,
to 7.2 percent.  AP spins it as "the most dramatic evidence yet that
economic fallout from the terror attacks probably pushed the country into
recession."  Nine hundred thousand jobs have been lost since March, but
almost half of those (415,000) disappeared just last month

BOMB STORIES

[WP 11/1TH] The food shortage in Afghanistan has grown much worse. "We've
reached 2 million people in the last month, but that's no great shakes
when we need to get up to 6 million," said a UN spokeswoman.

[NBC 10/29M] "As for that Red Cross food warehouse in Kabul bombed twice
last Friday, a senior US military official now says it was bombed on
purpose because the food was being stolen by Taliban troops."  The Red
Cross says that's not true,

[CP 10/29M] A US bomb hit the United Nations mine dog centre in Kabul,
killing two highly trained dogs and damaging two vehicles, the UN said on
Saturday. The apparently stray bomb crashed into the centre on Thursday
evening.]

[RT 10/29M] US radio broadcasts into Afghanistan now include a safety
warning: airdropped food parcels are square, unexploded cluster bombs are
can-shaped, and both are yellow ... Rep, Cynthia McKinney points this out
in a Congressional hearing as is reviled as an associate of terrorists by
Steve Emerson of the NY Post.

[IPS 10/30T] Human Rights Watch (HRW) reported on Friday that at least 23
civilians, most of them young children, were killed when US bombs hit the
village of Thori ... Amnesty International called on Washington to stop
using cluster bombs.

MILITARY OPERATIONS

[NY 11/2F] The real story of the US Special Forces raid on October 20
slowly emerges, against the administration's attempt to whitewash it.  It
was nearly a disaster, says Seymour Hersh in the November 12, 2001 issue
of the NEW YORKER, on sale Monday. Delta Force, which prides itself on
stealth, was counterattacked by the Taliban, and 12 Delta members were
wounded, three of them seriously.  The intensity and ferocity of the
Taliban response "scared the crap out of everyone," a senior military
officer tells Hersh.  The Delta team stormed Mullah Omar's complex, but
found little of value, Hersh reports, and then, "as they came out of the
house," one senior officer says. "It was like an ambush. The Taliban were
fighting with light arms and either [rocket-propelled grenades] or
mortars." Hersh continues, "The Delta team was forced to abandon one of
its objectives: the insertion of an undercover team into the area and the
stay-behind soldiers fled to a previously determined rendezvous point,
using a contingency plan known as an E. & E., for escape and evasion." One
Delta Force soldier told a colleague. "Next time, we're going to lose a
company." The Pentagon could not give details of what really happened near
Kandahar "because it doesn't want to appear that it doesn't know what it's
doing." Another senior officer says, "I don't know where the adult
supervision for these operations is. Franks -- the general in charge of
the U.S. Central Command -- is clueless."

[NBC 11/4S] On MEET THE PRESS, CJCS Gen. Myers, said that he hadn't read
the article, but that it wasn't true:  "From my view, it went flawlessly,"
he said.

[GM 11/3SA] The Taliban says between 90 and 100 civilians, almost the
entire population of the village of Chowkar-Karez, were killed in an
attack by US warplanes on Oct. 22.  The Pentagon says the community was
supporting terrorists from the al-Qaeda network and deserved its fate.
Human Rights Watch concluded that at least 25, and possibly as many as 35
people died in the nighttime raid.  Western journalists were taken to the
village, and the bombing of Chowkar-Karez, a farming village about 60
kilometres north of the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar, has become the
best documented bombing of the war.  "It begins to make you question not
only the credibility of the information that's coming back to us as
members of the public but also the kind of information and intelligence
that's going into the selection of targets," said Sidney Jones, the
director of the Asian division of Human Rights Watch.  Witnesses talked to
by the Western reporters claimed there were no Taliban troops in the
village and that US planes opened fire on people as they attempted to flee
the bombs.  The Pentagon has confirmed that Chowkar-Karez was attacked by
AC-130 Spectre gunships.  SOD Rumsfeld -- asked again this week about the
incident after the journalists visited the site -- professed ignorance. "I
cannot deal with that particular village," he replied.  Later,
unidentified Pentagon officials told CNN that Chowkar-Karez was "a fully
legitimate target" because it was a nest of Taliban and al-Qaeda
sympathizers. "The people there are dead because we wanted them dead."

[TEL 10/29M] AN elite American military unit is preparing for possible
incursion into Pakistan in order to steal its nuclear weapons arsenal, it
is reported today by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker.  The special forces
unit is training with Israel's most trusted anti-terrorist unit, and would
be called into action in the event that Gen. Pervaiz Musharraf lost power
in Pakistan -- "exfiltration."

CIVIL LIBERTIES

[RT 10/29M] A group of 21 civil liberties, human rights and electronic
privacy organizations filed a request under the US FOIA seeking
information about ... nearly 1,000 people detained since the attacks on
the US; rights groups say they have had trouble getting information on
those held.  HRW, Amnesty International USA, the American Friends Service
Committee, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center asked the US DOJ
to release the names of all those arrested and any charges filed against
them. It also seeks the names of their lawyers and the identities of any
courts that have been asked to seal any proceedings in connection with
those held. A 55-year-old Pakistani man who had been arrested in
connection with the Sept. 11 attacks died in custody in a New Jersey
county jail last Tuesday. Local officials attributed his death to a heart
condition. The new law will, among other things, allow the attorney
general to hold foreigners considered suspected terrorists for up to seven
days before charging them with a crime or beginning deportation
proceedings.

[NA 11/12] "Of the 150 who remain detained, only four presumed Al Qaeda
suspects have been publicly named. FBI agents frustrated at the lack of
progress in their interrogations of those four now mutter in the WP about
using sodium pentothal, or turning the suspects over to a country where
beatings or other torture is used. The government's stranglehold on
information about other arrests makes it impossible to know just how far
agents have already gone down that road....."

[WP 11/3SA] Signed by a top international terrorism official at FBI
headquarters in Washington, a seven-page document, which has not been
previously disclosed, is being used repeatedly by prosecutors in detention
hearings across the country.  The document's language offers the clearest
window so far into a campaign of detentions on a scale not seen since
World War II.  The government has adopted a deliberate strategy of
disruption -- locking up large numbers of Middle Eastern men, using
whatever legal tools they can.  The operation is being conducted under
great secrecy, with defense attorneys at times forbidden to remove
documents from court and a federal gag order preventing officials from
discussing the detainees. Law enforcement officials have refused to
identify lawyers representing people who have been detained or to describe
the most basic features of the operation.

[NJ 10/30T] "The anti-terrorism package enacted in the wake of the Sept.
11 attacks contains a provision expanding the authority of federal law
enforcement officers to conduct covert searches [= black-bag jobs] Unlike
other provisions broadening law enforcement power, this one does not have
a 'sunset' or time limit ... And like many other provisions, [it] is not
restricted to terrorism investigations ... The Justice Department ...
relied on a 1990 decision by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In US
v. Villegas, the court upheld a covert search where no physical evidence
was seized in a drug investigation.

W.O.T. ELSEWHERE

The War on Terrorism ramifies (like the War on Drugs). The Nicaraguan
daily La Prensa on Monday, October 29th carried a full-page paid ad for
Liberal Party presidential candidate Enrique Bolaños signed by Florida
Governor Jeb Bush.  Of the Sandinista candidate, Bush wrote, "Daniel
Ortega is an enemy of everything the United States represents. Further, he
is a friend of our enemies. Ortega has a relationship of more than 30
years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international
terrorism."  {Soft-on-terrorism replaces soft-on-communism.]

[OL 11/4S] "Amid the worst violence between Israelis and Palestinians for
a decade, Israeli tanks are reoccupying West Bank cities ... Both the US
and Britain must now demand that Israel abides by UN resolutions requiring
a retreat to its 1967 borders, including the withdrawal from East
Jerusalem and the Old City and the evacuation of settlements on
Palestinian land ... Mr. Blair must tell Ariel Sharon what it took it
successive British governments 30 years to learn in Northern Ireland - you
cannot defeat the bombers in your midst only with armies and
assassination. You have to use justice and negotiation, too."

[TEL 11/2F] Pakistan's military dictator, Gen. Musharraf, Thursday ordered
the arrest of the head of Pakistan's leading political party, the Muslim
League, after it backed protests against his pro-US policies. Mukhdoom
Javed Hashmi, president of the moderate league, was arrested after a
police raid on his Islamabad home. The league is still officially headed
by the former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, ousted by the general and now
exiled to Saudi Arabia.

ANTHRAX

[NS 10/29M] "...evidence is emerging that [the spreading anthrax] is an
American product. Not only are the bacteria genetically close to the
strain the US used in its own anthrax weapons in the 1960s, but ... the
spores also seem to have been prepared according to the secret US
"weaponisation" recipe ... While the terrorists behind the anthrax-laced
mail might have got hold of the strain of anthrax in several laboratories
around the world, the method the US developed for turning a wet bacterial
culture into a dangerous, dry powder is a closely-guarded secret.  Its
apparent use in the current spate of attacks could mean the secret is out.
An alternative is that someone is using anthrax produced by the old US
biological weapons programme that ended in 1969..."

PROGNOSIS

[AP 11/3SA] The leader of Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia agreed to
extradite Osama bin Laden to Saudi Arabia in 1998 but reneged following
U.S. strikes on Afghanistan, a former head of Saudi intelligence said
Saturday

[WT 10/31W] A Taliban military commander said in a published interview
that China is secretly assisting the ruling militia in Afghanistan. Maulvi
Jalaluddin Haqqani told an Urdu-language newspaper in Pakistan that the
ruling militia's strategy is to conduct a long war aimed at entrapping
U.S. forces on the ground. "China is a good country [he said].  Taliban
are in contact with it even now.  China is also extending support and
cooperation to the Taliban government, but the shape of this cooperation
cannot be disclosed," Mr. Haqqani said in the interview published Oct. 22
in the newspaper Islamabad Pakistan.  The United States has set up a
military base in Uzbekistan, a move that undermined China's goal of
organizing several Central Asian nations under the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization.  A representative of the Northern Alliance Afghan opposition
said China has been supplying weapons to the Taliban for several years,
primarily small arms.  Publicly, China's government has not opposed U.S.
military action in Afghanistan but has said strikes should be limited to
avoid civilian casualties; two Chinese companies have been building a
telephone switching network in Kabul for the past 21/2 years.  The Taliban
also helped Chinese government agents recover pieces of U.S. cruise
missiles fired during the 1998 U.S. raids on terrorist training camps in
Afghanistan.  Mr. Haqqani said the Taliban is braced for a long war
against the United States and has a "sufficient stock" of arms left behind
by the Soviet Union and from the United States. "We have shifted all these
weapons from our garrisons to the mountains," he said. "Let the Americans
drop their commandos and you would see how many casualties they suffer."  
Asked about widespread international support for the United States' war
against terrorism, Mr. Haqqani said it was "due to the coercion and
terrorism of the United States."  However, he said some nations such as
Russia, Japan, Iran, China and Libya want to see the United States stuck
in a long conflict in Afghanistan. "These countries want Afghanistan to
become the graveyard for the American soldiers," he said.

[NYT 11/4S] Britain's defense minister, Geoff Hoon, recently warned that
public opinion in Britain, America's most loyal ally, is turning against
the war because of the bombing campaign. This will only worsen in the
coming winter as refugees die from cold and starvation and the American
air war is blamed. Nor is the Northern Alliance likely to deliver victory.
It is despised by many Afghans (and Pakistan), and the Taliban outnumber
it by about three to one. Alliance soldiers are poorly led, trained, and
equipped. Indeed, the Alliance may be losing ground to the Taliban, even
with American air support. The bleak prospects have led some to call for
deploying large contingents of American ground forces. Senator John McCain
has advocated this strongly. For starters, it is not clear how the United
States would get a large army into land-locked Afghanistan any time soon.
Some light infantry troops could be flown into Uzbekistan or makeshift
airfields in Afghanistan. But mechanized forces, which are essential for
gaining military superiority, would have to be moved across either
Pakistan or Russia and Uzbekistan to reach Afghanistan. It seems unlikely
that any of these states will agree to such an arrangement, which would be
a logistical nightmare in any case. The United States would also run the
risk that China and Iran, both of which are suspicious of Washington's
motives and share borders with Afghanistan, would try to undermine the war
effort out of fear that a victory might mean a permanent American military
presence on their borders. If history is any guide, most Afghans would
oppose an American invasion and fight the foreign occupiers, probably with
substantial help from "freedom fighters" from around the Arab and Islamic
world. Finally, to stand any chance of winning the guerrilla war the
United States would have to employ brutal tactics, further alienating
support within and outside the Muslim world just when we would most need
it to destroy the far-flung Al Qaeda. Afghanistan is four times the size
of South Vietnam, 60 times the size of Kosovo. Victory in Afghanistan
would probably require at least 500,000 troops, because the United States
would have to control most of the countryside as well as the major towns
and cities. Otherwise the Taliban and Al Qaeda would be free to operate in
those areas outside American control. [John J. Mearsheimer]

[AND FINALLY, in regard to those CNN memos, George Orwell, author of the
distressingly relevant novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, observed, "Circus dogs
jump when the trainer cracks his whip, but the really well-trained dog is
the one that turns his somersault when there is no whip" -- rather like
the rest of the media.]

Regards, Carl
	==============================================================
	C. G. Estabrook
	Visiting Professor of Sociology
	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [MC-190]
	109 Observatory, 901 South Mathews Avenue, Urbana IL 61801 USA
	office 217.244.4105 / mobile 217.369.5471 / home 217.359.9466