[Peace-discuss] News notes 11/25

[C. G. Estabrook]

NOTES ON THE WEEK'S NEWS, FOR AWARE MEETING, 11/25

[NB: This week's notes are, by request, organized chronologically, day by
day.  Each note is followed by an indication of source.  At the end of the
notes are two longer analyses.]

KEY TO SOURCES: [AFP] Agence France-Presse; [ALL] major papers; [AP]
Associated Press; [AW] Antiwar.com; [BBC] British Broadcasting
Corporation; [BG] Boston Globe; [BH] Boston Herald; [CD] Commondreams.org;
[CHE] Chronicle of Higher Education; [CMW] CBS Market Watch; [CNN] Cable
News Network; [CP] CounterPunch; [DPA] Deutsche Presse-Agentur; [EC] The
Economist; [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); [HRZ] Ha'aretz (Israel); [HT] Hindustan
Times (India); [IHT] International Herald Tribune; [IL] The Independent
(London); [IPA] Institute for Public Accuracy; [IPS] Inter Press Service;
[LAT] Los Angeles Times; [LM] Le Monde; [MI] Mirror (UK); [MSN] MSNBC.com;
[NA] Nation; [NBC] NBC Network News; [NI] News International (Pakistan);
[NJ] National Journal; [NR] New Republic; [NST] New Scientist; [NWK]
Newsweek; [NY] New Yorker; [NYP] New York Post; [NYT] New York Times; [OL]
Observer (London); [OS] Orlando Sentinel; [PG] The Progressive; [PR]
Progressive Review; [PV] Pravda; [RT] Reuters; [SC] The Scotsman; [SJM]
San Jose Mercury News; [SMH] Sydney Morning Herald; [TEL] Telegraph
(London); [TI] Times of India; [TL] Times (London); [TM] Time Magazine;
[UK] British papers; [UPI] United Press International; [UST] USA Today;
[WP] Washington Post; [WSJ] Wall Street Journal; [WT] Washington Times

* SUNDAY 18 NOVEMBER

(1) Burhanuddin Rabbani, the Afghan president ousted by the Taliban in
1996, returns to Kabul. His 1992-96 regime was marred [sic] by violent
power struggles that killed around 30,000 people and destroyed large parts
of the capital. [WP] Rabbani's government still controls the Afghan seat
at the UN. [LAT]

(2) Thousands of protesters marched across London on Sunday calling for an
end to the war. Demonstrators of different ages, religions and backgrounds
chanted "Bush, Blair, CIA, how many kids have you killed today?" and waved
placards urging "Stop the War" and "Not In My Name".  The Stop the War
Coalition estimated that 100,000 people attended the march, which they
said was the biggest of its kind since the Vietnam War three decades ago,
But police said there were 15,000 people at the march, which snaked
through London from Hyde Park to Trafalgar Square, where anti-war
campaigners such as Bianca Jagger and former Labour politician Tony Benn
spoke to a cheering, whistling crowd. [RT]

(3) Marches have taken place in Glasgow, Australia, western European
capitals and even the US since the Allies' bombing campaign began . . .
Veteran Labor MP Tony Benn told the rally he hoped Sunday marked the start
of a movement for world peace. He said parliament was "passive" and Tony
Blair's cabinet was "cringing" in its failure to question the UK's role in
the bombing campaign. ... Fellow Labor MP Paul Marsden accused Tony Blair
of being "drunk with power" in his handling of the war on terrorism. [BBC]

(4) GEORGE MONBIOT: But the size of the demonstration was not its only
unexpected feature. It soon became obvious that the crowd was thinking
about more than just Afghanistan. To thunderous cheers, speaker after
speaker linked the war to the other means by which the rich world
persuades the poor world to do as it bids: namely its power over bodies
such as the World Trade Organization. It is not only the peace movement
which hasn't gone away, it seems, but also the anti-corporate movement,
whose death has been so widely proclaimed since September 11. Just as the
peace campaigners have drawn strength from the internationalists, the
internationalists are building on the peace campaign. The battle against
corporate power has resumed. [GL]

(5) Jingoistic, sugar-coated, superficial - those are just some of the
criticisms leveled at US television networks' coverage of the conflict in
Afghanistan in recent days - and not just by the foreign competition.
Columnists for ... the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have
deplored what they describe as the networks' shallow and soft-focus
reporting. The Journal's Tunku Varadarajan has attacked the superficial
analysis offered by CNN's "parachute" journalists, while the Times' Caryn
James lamented US television's knee-jerk pandering to the public mood.
Weighing into the US cable stations and networks for their "myopic view",
James criticized editors for caving into patriotism "rather than informing
viewers of the complex, sometimes harsh realities they need to know." At a
media industry conference this week in Barcelona, Spain, the Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation's (CBC's) news chief said he was startled by the
contrast between US and European small-screen coverage of the 40-day-old
war. "It's like watching two different wars ... The BBC (British
Broadcasting Corporation) has focused very much on the humanitarian issues
in the region ... ", while NBC, ABC and CBS had anchored their reports
"almost exclusively" around Pentagon briefings, he explained.  "There
seems to be a real reluctance on the part of the US television media to
dwell on the human impact"; he also noted that the "uncritical,
hyper-patriotic" reporting differed remarkably little between the three
national networks, who he felt were all toeing the administration line.
"They're in lockstep with the administration ... and there's no
distinction between the networks, which is unusual in a competitive
environment." [SMH]

(6) Yahoo! has adopted an aggressive policy against anti-U.S. language in
relation to the conflict on its message boards. The policy ranges from
deleting insultingly worded posts to deleting sometimes rationally worded
opposing points-of-view. One Muslim U.S. student, Usman Sheikh, claims to
have repeatedly tried to post messages foregrounding civilian casualties
in the U.S.-led war only to see them deleted, while anti-Arab and
anti-Muslim posts have remained up despite complaints by himself and
others.  In the past, "we would err on the side of 'If it's distasteful,
let it stay,' " said Stephen Killeen, president of Terra Lycos U.S. "Now,
we err on the side of 'If you want to post this kind of information, you
don't have to do it here.' " "The sentiment in the United States changed
on September 11 about what's acceptable and what's not in terms of what
you can say," Killeen explained. [WP]

*MONDAY 19 NOVEMBER

(7) The International Monetary Fund and World Bank wrapped up a weekend
meeting today with fresh calls for increasing aid to developing countries,
but resistance to the idea by the United States raised doubts about how
much new assistance would be forthcoming.  A "substantial increase" in
current levels of official development assistance would be required in
coming years, the World Bank's policy-setting development committee said
in a statement. The bank's president, James Wolfensohn, said ... at a
press conference after the meeting of the panel, which represents the
World Bank's 183 member countries, said there has been a "growing
realization" since Sept. 11 that aid "is not just charity; it's self
interest" for donor nations.  Wolfensohn acknowledged, however, that the
most powerful member of the committee, U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H.
O'Neill, was by far the least enthusiastic about that proposition.
Exhortations by Wolfensohn and others underscored the view among aid
advocates that the chance and the need for mobilizing more assistance for
poor countries was greater than ever since Sept. 11. That is because the
slowing global economy has hit developing countries particularly hard,
which has raised concern about a worsening of conditions that foster
anti-Western sentiment. ... At a press conference, O'Neill agreed that
rich nations "need to pay attention and try to do something" about the
millions living in poverty, but he gave the idea of more aid a cold
reception. "Over the last 50 years the world has spent an awful large
amount of money in the name of development without a great degree of
success," he said.  Rich countries need to concentrate on "producing
results" in poor countries, O'Neill said. "It's time for us to become
determined and purposeful about making a difference in living conditions
[of the poor] by creasing real economic development and not just more
giving," he added.  The disparities over aid between the United States and
its allies is a longstanding source of tension. U.S. aid contributions
total about 0.1 percent of the nation's gross domestic product, the lowest
among the Group of Seven major industrial countries. That amount compares
with an average 0.22 percent of GDP for all rich nations, with several
European nations contribution about 1 percent of their GDP. In remarks
today to the development committee, O'Neill urged his colleagues to rally
behind a U.S. proposal, first advanced last summer, that the Bush
administration has cited as evidence of the "compassionate conservatism"
behind its aid philosophy. Under the proposal, up to half the World Bank's
aid to the poorest nations would be converted from loans to grants.  The
administration, however, has proposed no additional contributions to the
World Bank to pay for the plan, which has raised European suspicion that
it was intended to starve the bank of funding. [WP]

(8) The American air force is again bombing targets around the town of
Gardez, about two hours' drive southeast of the Afghan capital, Kabul. The
area fell to anti-Taleban tribal forces last week, soon after the Taleban
withdrew from Kabul.  Even so, US airplanes kept up the bombing of targets
to the east of the town, killing seven people and injuring three others.  
The victims were a family of refugees sheltering near buildings belonging
to a United Nations mine clearance agency which were destroyed overnight.
It was the second bombing in 24 hours. [BBC]

(9) A catastrophic error [sic] by carpet-bombing US Air Force warplanes
was blamed yesterday for the deaths of about 150 unarmed Afghan civilians
in a densely populated frontline town ... Terrified refugees fleeing the
town of Khanabad yesterday told The Independent that American planes had
bombed the area a few miles from Kunduz daily since Thursday, seemingly
oblivious to the fact that the buildings they were bombing were civilian
homes ... "I saw 20 dead children on the streets," said Zumeray, one of
the refugees. "Forty people were killed yesterday alone. I saw it with my
own eyes. Some of them were burned by the bombs, others were crushed by
the walls and roofs of their houses when they collapsed from the blast."
Khanabad lies 10 miles from Kunduz, one of only two major population
centres in Afghanistan still under Taliban control. The refugees said they
had endured three days of bombing before the Taliban ordered them out of
their homes and told them they were free to cross the front line. [This
may bring deaths from US bombing to around 1,000, not counting starved
refugees.] [IL]

(10) Defense Department strategists are building a case for a massive
bombing of Iraq as a new phase of President Bush's war against terrorism,
congressional and Pentagon sources say. Proponents of attacking Iraq,
spearheaded by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, are now arguing
privately that still-elusive evidence linking Iraqi leader Saddam
Hussein's regime to the terrorist attacks Sept. 11 is not necessary to
trigger a military strike." [UST]

*TUESDAY 20 NOVEMBER

(11) American forces attacking Taleban fighters in Afghanistan are under
orders to take no prisoners, the US Defense Secretary said last night.
Donald Rumsfeld also ruled out suggestions that thousands of al-Qaeda
mercenaries trapped in the northern city of Konduz might be allowed to
negotiate safe passage to a third country ... 'The United States is not
inclined to negotiate surrenders, nor are we in a position, with
relatively small numbers of forces on the ground, to accept prisoners,' he
said ... General Mohammad Dawood Khan, commanding the Northern Alliance
forces that face the Taleban on three sides of the city, told The Times:
"If a country accepted them as refugees, we would have no problem, they
can go free. We have been in contact with the UN over this" ... "The idea
of their getting out of the country and going off to make their mischief
somewhere else is not a happy prospect. So my hope is that they will
either be killed or taken prisoner (by the Northern Alliance)." [TL]

(12) US B-52 bombers today attacked Taliban positions around Kunduz, the
regime's last stronghold in northern Afghanistan ... an estimated 3,000
foreign fighters, including a significant contingent of the Egyptian
terrorist group, al-Gamaa al-Islamiya, bitterly oppose surrender, fearing
that the Northern Alliance will kill them, according to recent Taliban
defectors. [GL]

(13) In a flurry of newspaper articles and television appearances,
prominent hawks such as former Defense Department official Richard N.
Perle and columnist William Safire are pressing the administration to make
Phase 2 of the war against terror a full-fledged effort to topple Hussein.
'As the campaign in Afghanistan has progressed, a consensus has emerged
that it is high time to remove Saddam Hussein from power,' wrote Thomas
Donnelly, deputy executive director of the Project for the New American
Century, a conservative think tank.  National Security Advisor Condoleezza
Rice sent the hawks' pulses racing Sunday with tough talk against Hussein
on NBC's 'Meet the Press' ... Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (D-Conn.), Al
Gore's running mate in 2000, is urging the administration to commit itself
to removing Hussein from power. [LAT]

(14) ONE REASON BUSH IS GETTING AWAY WITH IT: Because the Democrats have
people like Joseph Biden who recently said of John Negroponte, Bush aide
and Iran-Contra gang member, "I love the guy . . . All the accusations
were wrong." [PR]

(15) In contrast, Robert Levy of the right/libertarian Cato Institute
attacks Bush's military courts as being clearly unconstitutional. [WSJ]

(16) Israel demolished Palestinian houses in Gaza and said it would build
new homes for Jewish settlers in the West Bank city of Hebron, a day after
the United States announced a new Middle East peace drive . . . Israel
also said it would replace mobile homes in the Jewish settlement in
divided Hebron with concrete houses, despite Secretary of State Colin
Powell's call to halt settlement construction amid nearly 14 months of
violence . . . In Geneva, Amnesty International accused Israel of
increasingly using torture in interrogating Palestinians. Israel said the
practice was banned and any complaints investigated. [RT]

(17) As this Ramadan begins, the Palestinians are in the worst situation
they have been in since the Israeli occupation befell them. Their lack of
freedom has reached a level they have never known before. Only a few
peoples in the world still live under such dire conditions of occupation,
and none of them have been subjected to occupation for such a lengthy
period. The very limited freedom that the Palestinians enjoyed until this
past year has disappeared as though it never was; now, it seems to be a
beacon of liberty in the light of their present conditions. Does anyone
still remember that once the Palestinians could travel anywhere they
wanted? During this Ramadan, Palestinian families will not be able to
gather for the festive evening meal that ends the daily fast. Family
members living in a different city or village, however close by, will not
be able to visit relatives to partake of the meal with them in the
traditional manner. The Israeli occupation, which intrudes on every sphere
of life, has this year reached their holiday tables and will decide for
them who is going to eat with whom. On top of that, Israel is also
deciding what will be served in the meals: With such a cruel, tight
closure, which has created a 40 percent unemployment rate, according to
Israeli data, poverty has turned into hunger. Many Palestinian families
will not be serving the traditional meat dishes this year during Ramadan.
The presents for the children will be more modest, if they are given at
all. [HRZ]

(18) School officials are being asked to justify a recent speech given by
peace activist Howard Zinn at Newton North High School in which he equated
the U.S. military strikes in Afghanistan with the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks.  The controversial historian and former Boston University
professor stressed that the U.S. bombing raids aimed at toppling the
Taliban and hunting down fugitive terror boss Osama bin Laden were killing
children and innocent civilians.  ``The terrorists of Sept. 11 did a
horrible thing to us, so we do terrible things to the people of
Afghanistan. That is immoral and puts us on the same level as a
terrorist,'' Zinn was quoted as saying in a report in the school
newspaper.  Parents questioned exposing young teens to Zinn's opinions.
``It's unbelievable what this guy did,'' said Tom Mountain, a parent of
three Newton students who are not yet in high school.  "It's horrifying.
He told these things to an entire school audience of kids 13 to 17 who
don't know any better.'' Mountain said he has disagreed with Zinn for more
than 20 years, dating back to the 1980s when Mountain was a student at
Brandeis University rallying in support of Israel

(19) JOHN QUIGLEY, Professor of international law at Ohio State
University: "We don't seem to be doing anything to keep the Northern
Alliance within the bounds of international conventions regarding warfare
and the treatment of POWs. Since we are helping them achieve their goals,
we are ultimately responsible for their conduct. Given the past record of
human rights abuses and atrocities by the Northern Alliance, our vigilance
on this issue is of utmost importance." MARJORIE COHN, associate professor
at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego: "The bombing of
Afghanistan is not legitimate self-defense under the UN Charter, since the
Sept. 11 attacks were criminal attacks, not armed attacks by another
nation. Moreover, taking control of Afghanistan provides the U.S.
government with the opportunity to set up a permanent military presence
there ... in order to increase U.S. access to attractive routes for
transporting Caspian Sea oil."  DAVID GIBBS, associate professor of
political science at the University of Arizona: "The military intervention
in Afghanistan must be judged according to whether or not it makes us
safer from terrorism in the long run. Even if bin Laden were captured, it
would be relatively easy to reconstruct the terrorist organization; the
events of the last few months have demonstrated that the main requirement
is people willing to die for the cause. The bombing of Afghanistan may
well serve as a recruiting poster for the next generation of terrorists
and make us less safe in the long run." [IPA]

*WEDNESDAY 21 NOVEMBER

(20) Iraq said it would consider accepting monitoring of its weapons
program if trade sanctions imposed by the United Nations were lifted,
Iraq's Foreign Minister Naji Sabri said in an interview with the
London-based Arabic-language Alhayat newspaper published on Wednesday.  
UN weapons inspectors have been barred from Iraq since December 1998.  
The last team left shortly before the United States and British launched a
bombing campaign after the weapons inspectors said Baghdad was obstructing
their work. Sabri said the UN Security Council should first lift sanctions
and rid the Middle East region of weapons of mass destruction before Iraq
would consider allowing any new monitoring. Baghdad has rejected a UN
resolution adopted in December 1999 which calls for the suspension of
sanctions if it allows weapons inspectors to return.  Sabri also said he
expected a normal rollover of the UN-administered oil-for-food deal when
it comes to an end in November 30.  The Security Council must approve a
resolution either to extend the current program or revamp it.  The program
allows Baghdad to sell oil to buy food and medicine. The oil revenues are
controlled by the United Nations, which pays suppliers of goods to Iraq.
[RT]

(21) The world has plunged into recession for the first time in two
decades [according to] the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development; it said its 30-nation zone would contract "slightly" in the
second half of this year and was forecast to stay weak into 2002. [IL]

(22) Recent Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz, along with well-known
economist Paul Krugman, have of late made a flurry of public statements
critical of the policies and processes of the World Trade Organization
(WTO), the World Bank / IMF, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the
Americas (FTAA) -- while leaving plenty of harsh words for the blatantly
pro-corporate actions of the Bush Administration. Both economists point to
the disruptive and distorting influence of large corporate entities
through their dominance over both domestic and international institutions.
Stiglitz and Krugman have begun to voice their indignation more frequently
in the press, raising many of the same concerns that social justice and
environmental advocates have long made about the disproportionate
influence of big business and the hypocrisy of "free market" dogma. [NYT]

(23) The Blair government in Britain, normally Washington's lapdog, is
acting strangely.  "Clare Short ... the International Development
Secretary, claimed the US military was hampering aid effort in
[Afghanistan] and rebuked the US government for its parsimonious
contribution to the alleviation of global poverty."  The rift seems to
arise because "London is keen to see a large-scale international
peacekeeping force established in Afghanistan, Washington is apprehensive
about the consequences of committing troops for the drawn-out process of
'nation building' ... [Ms. Short] said it was a 'paradox' that a country
which prided itself on its generosity and was made up of people from all
parts of the world gave only 0.1 per cent of its GDP in international aid
- compared to Britain's 0.3 per cent and the United Nations' target of 0.7
per cent. She added: 'The suicide bombers of 11 September appeared not to
come from poor countries, they came from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab
Emirates, but the conditions which bred their bitterness and hatred are
linked to poverty and injustice, there is no doubt.  It is not something
that excuses 11 September, but it is part of the breeding ground for 11
September.' Ms Short later widened her criticism of the White House saying
that the US military's inefficiencies were hindering aid agencies working
on the ground." [SC]

(24) Eight to nine million people face starvation in impoverished and
drought-stricken Afghanistan, [according to] the newly reinstated governor
of Herat, Ismail Khan, who returned to power after the Taliban's ouster
from the western province. [AFP]

(25) JIM JENNINGS, President of Conscience International, a humanitarian
aid organization, said today: "The humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan is
far from over -- millions still face starvation and disease. The sudden
expansion of Northern Alliance territories, although opening the
possibility of deliveries from the north, actually stopped the food
convoys from Pakistan and Iran for several days because truck drivers are
reluctant to travel into a militarily volatile situation.... Meanwhile,
the humanitarian effort is losing precious days, a critical factor because
of the onset of winter. For every day lost now, some people will die down
the line."  SARAH ZAIDI, research director of the Center for Economic and
Social Rights. said today: "The biggest obstacle to the relief effort is
now posed by U.S. partners. Northern Alliance warlords have sabotaged
supply routes inside Afghanistan, while Pakistan and other neighboring
countries continue to seal their borders and prevent desperate people from
reaching food and safety. Rather than seeking to score PR points, the U.S.
military should pressure its allies to allow free movement to Afghans and
to UN and private relief agencies. Ensuring that thousands of Afghans do
not starve to death this winter is both a moral imperative and a human
rights obligation for all parties who have contributed to the crisis --
including the United States." CESR's executive director Roger Normand said
today: "The Geneva Conventions and Red Cross regulations mandate that
relief aid be neutral, impartial and motivated solely by humanitarian
concerns. But so far the U.S. military has viewed the food crisis in
Afghanistan -- which our bombing helped create -- as a domestic PR
opportunity. Independent relief agencies have condemned our military
policy of dropping food into heavily-mined areas as not only ineffective
and dangerous, but also a distraction from the unglamorous but crucial
work of distributing the huge amounts of staple goods necessary to feed
millions of hungry people." JOHN DAVISON, Spokesperson for Christian Aid,
said today: "The main routes we had managed to establish were coming in
through Pakistan and lately virtually nothing is getting in -- I believe
only a single convoy got in yesterday.... Soon it will get to the point
that the trucks won't go out at all because of fears of getting stuck in
the snow.... Everyone is glad that the Taliban have mostly lost power but
the recent developments have demonstrated the lifesaving importance of the
pause in the bombing that we and six other major international aid
agencies had called for -- our call went unheeded and now we face this
crisis. In the Western and Central Highlands where we carry out most of
our work, about 80 percent of the population is very vulnerable.... Food
is very short and people are trying desperately to get out and they have
no means of transportation. That's hundreds of thousands of people facing
starvation." [IPA]

(26) Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) said at a Nov. 19 meeting with local
Georgia officials that to combat terrorism a Georgia sheriff could be
turned loose to "arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line."
Believe it or not, this man is chairman of the House Subcommittee on
Terrorism and Homeland Security.  He claims that this remark was a "joke,"
and that "if anybody's offended by it, I feel very apologetic toward them"
[sic]. [CP] So he's not only a bigot, he's an idiot.  The WP reports that
"Chambliss, according to sources in Valdosta, personally sought to
persuade the reporter, Bill Roberts, to kill the story using his remarks,
and asked the local sheriff to help block publication."

*THURSDAY 22 NOVEMBER

(27) The answer to the riddle of why Al Gore joined an obscure California
fund is that Wall Street wouldn't hire him. The man who would be president
had sought in earnest all year to land a top spot with one of the major
city firms because he wanted to be in the Big Apple, sources said. But
none of Gore's prospective employers, including big buyout firms and major
investment banks, would take him on, according to sources close to several
of the firms. Instead, Gore has signed on with the Los Angeles-based
financial services firm Metropolitan West Financial as a vice-chairman.
His pay and perks weren't disclosed, but sources on Wall Street said Gore
came knocking at numerous firms here, asking for a base salary of between
$2 million and $3 million. One executive here said Gore was very frank
about his job goals: Gore wanted to amass enough money quickly on Wall
Street deals so that he could re-launch his political career at the
mid-term elections in 2002 [NYP]

(28) In Britain, senior police officers back "radical reform" of the drugs
laws, in particular the downgrading of ecstasy to a class B drug and a
proposal for "shooting galleries" where addicts could legally inject
heroin. But comments by Commander Brian Paddick, in charge of the Lambeth
cannabis experiment, attract the lion's share of attention. He told the
Commons home affairs select committee that the recreational use of
ecstasy, cocaine or cannabis at the weekend bought with money people had
earned legitimately had no "adverse effect" on themselves or people around
them. He told the committee: "They go back to work on Monday morning and
are unaffected for the rest of the week. In terms of my priorities as an
operational police officer they are low down." [GL]

(29) The Portland, Oregon, police will not cooperate with the Federal
Bureau of Investigation in its efforts to interview 5,000 young Middle
Eastern men nationwide because such questioning violates state law, the
department's acting police chief, Andrew Kirkland, said. The decision is
the first known case of a city's refusing to go along with the
antiterrorism effort, which was announced by Attorney General John
Ashcroft. But top police officials in several other cities have also said
that Mr. Ashcroft's plan raises troubling questions about racial profiling
- an issue that has brought endless grief to police departments nationwide
- and may violate local and state laws about issues like intelligence
gathering for political purposes [NYT]

(30) Spain cannot extradite suspected Islamic extremists to the United
States while the death penalty is in force there, judicial sources said on
Thursday. Eight suspected members of a radical Spanish Islamic group were
detained in Spain last week, accused of involvement in the September 11
attacks ... the men [are] mostly Spanish citizens of Arab origin ... The
death penalty was abolished in Spain with the introduction of the
constitution in 1978 three years after the death of dictator General
Francisco Franco.  A total of 85 people were executed in the U.S. last
year and more than 60 have been executed so far this year. [RT]

*FRIDAY 23 NOVEMBER

(31) US commandos inside Afghanistan have been given historic autonomy to
plan and execute attacks when needed, resulting in "hundreds" of deaths of
enemy soldiers, military officials say. One official described the
special-operations forces' (SOF) rules of engagement as an "unrestricted
hunting license" for Taliban militia and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
terrorist army now in disarray. Special-operations troops the past two
weeks have conducted their first sustained ground combat in Afghanistan.
Sources say small teams of Delta Force soldiers, and other commando units,
have ambushed the enemy and killed them in small batches. "From the
reports I've seen, they have killed in the hundreds," a senior
administration official said. "There have been no deaths on our side."
This official, and others, said in interviews they credit the success to a
premium placed on special-operations training the past 20 years. They also
praise the freedom granted the units by Gen. Tommy Franks.  Gen. Franks,
who as head of U.S. Central Command is directing the war in Afghanistan,
is part of the "conventional" Army, and thus suspect in the eyes of
hardened covert warriors. But some in the community are applauding the
general's willingness to give SOF their loosest rein since the Vietnam
War. Then, Army Green Berets infiltrated enemy territory and attacked at
will. Commandos are working in small teams at night in southern
Afghanistan, attacking Taliban and al Qaeda soldiers around their
stronghold of Kandahar. U.S. commandos can conduct reconnaissance,
identify the enemy and plan missions to attack without getting approval
from Central Command, officials said. "You've got to give these guys
freedom to plan direct action because the intelligence is so fragile," an
administration official said. "In conventional warfare, you can rely on
older intelligence of enemy positions because the enemy is not as mobile.
In direct action, they're going after people. They have to do their own
intelligence and act on it right away. You have to give these guys some
slack." In some cases, soldiers have used sniper fire, taking advantage of
stealth and superior night-sight equipment. In other encounters, soldiers
used Barret 50-caliber weapons, a heavy sniper rifle that can take out an
armored vehicle, or a person, at 1,500 yards. The administration official
said now that hundreds of SOF soldiers are behind enemy lines they must
act quickly or lose their prey. "It's only when you operate in country
that information becomes minutes old," the official said. Personnel in the
special-operations community say Afghanistan has provided a playing field
for SOF specialists to ply two classic trades at once: unconventional
warfare and direct action. In unconventional warfare, Army Special Forces,
or Green Berets, have worked with the Northern Alliance and other
opposition groups. The U.S. soldiers, trained in indigenous customs and
language, give tactical advice, supply arms and bond with commanders who
will one day run the country. In "direct action" carried out by Delta
Force and other SOF units, commandos find targets for fighter jets to
strike, blow up some targets themselves and conduct hit-and-run raids.
"They're not leaving a footprint," said the administration official. "When
these guys do sleep, they sleep on the ground. They don't have a fixed
base camp." Delta Force is under the control of U.S. Joint Special
Operations Command (JSOC), located at Pope Air Force Base, which borders
Fort Bragg, N.C., home to Army Special Operations Command. JSOC not only
oversees the super-secret Delta anti-terrorism unit, but also the Navy's
Seal Team Six. "There are elements of JSOC we don't talk about," an Army
officer said. Under the command of Army Maj. Gen. Del Dailey, JSOC units
train in total secrecy. Few outside the units know who they are or what
they do. Gen. Dailey, an ex-member of the 800-strong Delta unit,
personally briefed President Bush on their missions in Afghanistan before
the war began. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld visited Pope and Fort
Bragg this week to fire up troops on whose shoulders much of the war's
fate now rests. Backed by air power, they must not only kill terrorists,
but also help catch, or kill, the two primary al Qaeda leaders: bin Laden
and his top aide Ayman al Zawahiri. While at Fort Bragg, Mr. Rumsfeld
credited SOF with turning the war in Afghanistan in the United States'
favor. In the first weeks after the air campaign began Oct. 7, opposition
forces made little headway. But once U.S. warriors entered the country in
significant numbers and began finding crucial command and troop targets,
the Taliban began its retreat. "The air war enabled the ground war to
succeed," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And it turned when we had Special Forces
down there to help with the targeting. And God bless them for doing it."
[WT]

(32) Most children in Afghanistan, lacking toys, play with what they find.
In this tiny, dusty village, they have been finding pieces of a cluster
bomb. Three children were injured this week, and one teenager was killed,
when they picked up undetonated remnants of a bomb dropped by American
planes about a month ago. The bomb's initial impact killed 12 people, most
from the same extended family. The village mourned, thinking it had seen
the worst. But workers from the Organization for Mine and Afghan
Rehabilitation knew better. They are reluctant veterans of detonating
unexploded ordinance - thanks to the millions of land mines in this
country - and each morning they find and detonate a bomb's pieces. An
explosion sounds every few minutes, the signal that one more threat has
been neutralized. But the detonators are finding themselves in a race
against children's curiosity - and their hunger. The pieces of the bomb
are yellow, the same color as the packages of food rations dropped by
American planes this week. And while the Pentagon has said it plans to
change the color of the food packets from yellow to blue to avoid
confusion, it has not yet done so. So it was that 10-year-old Mohebolah
Seraj went out to collect wood for his family, and thought he had happened
upon a food packet. He picked it up and lost three fingers in an
explosion. Doctors say he will probably lose his whole hand. "It wouldn't
matter if my daughter lost a hand," his mother, Sardar Seraj, said,
weeping. "But my son was supposed to help support us." She said that she
cried and told the doctors not to cut off her son's whole hand. "But the
doctors say it's impossible not to." Mr. Seraj and her eight children are
refugees from the drought- stricken Ghor Province. Now they live in one
room in this village. Mrs. Seraj said she was so poor that she could not
even afford a taxi to the hospital in Herat, so she walked the two or
three miles. The hospital where her son is being cared for is a grim
place, lacking power and basic sanitation. In one room lay Muhammad Ayoub,
a 20- year-old who was in the house when the cluster bomb initially
landed. He lost a leg and his eyesight, and his face was severely
disfigured. He moaned in agony. Down the hall, sharing a room with several
adults, lay two cousins, one 9, one 7, who were injured on Tuesday when
they picked up an unexploded bomb while playing. Their grandmother
nervously watched over them, but said she thought that they would be fine.
Hospital officials said that a 16- year-old had been decapitated on
Wednesday after he picked up a piece of the bomb. Back in the village, the
family members who survived the bomb's initial explosion crowded in one
room, refugees just feet from their own homes. One house was destroyed
when the bomb fell; other homes that were damaged were deemed unsafe to
return to until the mine experts finish their work. Bashahmad Ahmadi, 25,
who was at home when the bomb hit, saw three people die. "Suddenly I felt
very hot, then I didn't feel anything." He has had surgery on his foot,
but still walks with a crutch. His father, a teacher, was killed by the
bomb, as were the husbands of three of his mothers' sisters. His mother
has 10 children and 5 grandchildren. Crutch or not, he must now find a way
to support them all. [NYT]

(33) Calls rose for a probe into the deaths of five Palestinian children
in an explosion in the Gaza Strip after reports that they were killed by a
booby-trap laid by the Israeli army.  The daily Maariv said Friday,
quoting military sources, that the bomb was placed a week ago by special
forces seeking to kill Palestinian militants who were firing mortar bombs
from the area at Israeli targets. [AFP]

(34) Somalia's only internet company and a key telecoms business have been
forced to close because the United States suspects them of terrorist
links.  The two firms, Somalia Internet Company and al-Barakaat, both
appear on a US list of organisations accused of funneling money to the
al-Qaeda network.  Both companies have stated they are not linked to
terrorists.  Along with denying all internet access to Somalis, the
closures have severely restricted international telephone lines and shut
down vitally needed money transfer facilities.  Correspondents say the
closure of the companies will have a devastating effect on the country,
which desperately needs the services they provide.  Desperation Hassan
Barise in Mogadishu told the BBC's Network Africa programme the said more
than 80% of Somalis depend on money they receive from relatives outside
the country He said all internet cafes have now shut down and
international phone lines run by two other companies are failing to cope
with the extra pressure of calls.  He also pointed out that the United
Nations, local and international aid agencies, as well as the government
itself all relied heavily on internet access, now denied.  "I would say it
is very depressing and if I could find any stronger word than that I would
say it," he said.  He added the impact would be felt even more strongly
because the cuts have come during the holy month of Ramadan.  Shutdown On
7 November, the Bush administration released the list of 62 organisations
and individuals accused of financial links with Osama Bin Laden.  Reports
say the Somali Internet Company was forced to close when it realised that
its international gateway had been cut off.  Al-Barakaat, Somalia's
largest company with interests in telecommunications, banking and postal
services, closed its financial businesses after its assets were frozen.
Its international telephone service was then shut down when its
international gateway - run jointly by AT&T and British Telecom - was also
cut off.  The company, which has 600 shareholders, is the largest employer
in Somalia.  Hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Somalis depend on
it to transfer money throughout the world.  Somalis living abroad use it
to send money to their relatives back home as there are no other banking
systems in Somalia since the downfall of the Siad Barre regime in 1991.
Somalia's prime minister has issued a decree appointing a special
committee to investigate al-Barakaat, as well as all other remittance
companies. [BBC]

*SATURDAY 24 NOVEMBER

(35) American Delta Force troops have killed hundreds of Taleban and
al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan, according to US military officials.
Under their rules of engagement, the special forces troops, whose
existence is never officially acknowledged by the Pentagon, have been
given an "unrestricted hunting licence".  So far, Delta Force has had a
good war. Having lost some of its highly trained members in Somalia in
1993 during a disastrous peacekeeping operation, when 18 American
soldiers, a mix of Rangers and Delta Force, died in an ambush, the
800-strong unit has been in need of battle glory.  Afghanistan has
provided the right environment, especially because they can operate
covertly and without the prying eyes of television cameras. US military
officials told The Washington Times that small teams of Delta Force
soldiers and other units had been ambushing Taleban and al-Qaeda troops
and killing them in batches. [TL]

(36) Israeli helicopter gunships on Friday killed a senior commander of
the radical Islamic group Hamas who had topped Israel's lists of
most-wanted terror suspects. The assassination inflamed Palestinian
passions just as peace envoys sent by the Bush administration were about
to arrive in the region. Mahmoud Abu Hanoud had survived so many attempts
on his life that some Palestinians called him "the unkillable man." But as
he traveled in a car near the West Bank city of Nablus with two other men,
Israeli helicopters opened fire on the vehicle with antitank missiles,
obliterating it. What was left of his body was so fragmentary that it took
more than five hours to verify his death. In the past 14 months of Middle
East violence, Israel has tracked and killed more than 50 Palestinians
under its policy of assassinating people it considers terrorists. None
proved so elusive as Abu Hanoud, 34, whom the Israelis had been seeking
since at least 1995, saying he engineered repeated attacks on Israelis.
His killing follows the deaths Thursday of five Palestinian schoolboys in
the Gaza Strip, apparently victims of a booby-trap bomb planted by Israeli
troops in a residential area occasionally used by Palestinian gunmen.
Israeli politicians said today they favored an investigation of the
explosion, which security officials were privately calling a tragic
mistake. Two senior U.S. diplomats, Assistant Secretary of State William
Burns and retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony Zinni, a special envoy, are
scheduled to arrive in Israel Sunday to push hard for a cease-fire. Their
visit is part of the first major U.S. peace effort in five months. Even
before the last few days' events, analysts here say, their task was
formidable. Since Sept. 11, Israel has killed more than 160 Palestinians,
and Palestinians have killed nearly 20 Israelis. "After this, I'd guess
the Americans are wasting their time," said a Western diplomat in
Jerusalem. Mahmoud al-Aloul, the Palestinian governor of Nablus, said the
missile strike was a "new crime" by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
"It is clear that Sharon insists on the continuation of his aggression and
. . . in aborting all the attempts to cool down the conflict," he told the
Reuters news agency. A Hamas official vowed revenge. [WP]

*SUNDAY 25 NOVEMBER

(37) THE war on terrorism is to be extended to three new countries as soon
as the campaign in Afghanistan is over.  Targets linked to Osama Bin Laden
in Somalia, Sudan and Yemen will be at the top of the hit list, according
to senior sources in London and Washington.  "We have the wind at our
backs and we don't want to lose it," said a senior Washington source.
Preparations are under way in all three countries. Military preparations
have also begun, though plans to strike specific targets have not yet been
finalised.  The first targets, according to British sources, could be hit
as early as late January if the war in Afghanistan is nearing its final
stages by then.  Yemen, where 17 American sailors died in a suicide bomb
attack on the USS Cole at Aden last year, is considered the country most
likely to feel Washington's wrath. Al-Qaeda supporters, including many
Afghan veterans, have established bases in the northern mountains, where
they run training camps. [TL]

(38) A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and
Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a
leading journal.  Academics who have already received copies of Human
Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them
away. The journal's editor, Nicole Sucio-Foca, of Columbia University, New
York, claims the article provoked such a welter of complaints over its
extreme political writing that she was forced to repudiate it. The article
has been removed from Human Immunology's website, while letters have been
written to libraries and universities throughout the world asking them to
ignore or 'preferably to physically remove the relevant pages'.  [The lead
author, Spanish geneticist Professor Antonio Arnaiz-Villena, of
Complutense University in Madrid] has been sacked from the journal's
editorial board.  Dolly Tyan, president of the American Society of
Histocompatibility and Immunogenetics, which runs the journal, told
subscribers that the society is 'offended and embarrassed'.  The paper,
'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other
Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune
system genes among people in the Middle East. In common with earlier
studies, the team found no data to support the idea that Jewish people
were genetically distinct from other people in the region. [OL]

(39) Hundreds of Osama bin Laden's foreign legion were killed after
staging an uprising with smuggled arms in a northern alliance prison
Sunday, officials said. U.S. airstrikes helped quash the daylong
insurrection.  The fighters, about 300 Chechens, Pakistanis and Arabs who
surrendered Saturday from the besieged city of Kunduz, had smuggled
weapons under their tunics into the Qalai Janghi fortress and tried to
fight their way out, the Pentagon said. [AP]

(40) TIME magazine correspondent Alex Perry filed an eyewitness report
late Sunday of 800 Taliban prisoners in armed rebellion at a Northern
Alliance fort near Mazar- I-Sharif. Perry saw 12 Americans and British
soldiers fighting with the Northern Alliance against the rebelling
prisoners who were grabbing weapons from an armory. The Americans were
wearing Air Force uniforms. One of two Americans trapped inside the fort,
according to Perry, is dead. "The mission by the Americans and Northern
Alliance was to kill every single one of them now."  On Saturday, 800
Taliban soldiers surrendered to the forces of Gen. Rashid Dostum, a
leading commander of the Northern Alliance. But on Sunday, the prisoners
decided to rebel, grabbing weapons from an armory at the local fort and
attacking the Northern Alliance. At least two American soldiers were
trapped in the fort when it happened and at least one is dead. [TM]

(41) Police [in Britain] are to set up a secret database of children as
young as three who they fear might grow up to become criminals. Youngsters
who behave badly or commit trivial misdemeanours will be put on the
confidential register so that they can be monitored and supervised
throughout childhood.  The controversial initiative is to be pioneered in
11 London boroughs from March and then expanded nationally. Any child who
is thought to be at risk of committing a crime by the police, schools or
social services, will be put on the database.  Children involved in
cheekiness, minor vandalism and causing nuisances, will be targeted under
the scheme.  Their progress will then be monitored at school and on the
streets by special squads of police officers and social workers, even
though the children have not committed a crime and will not have been
warned that they are being watched. [TEL]

	* * *

DENNIS HANS: On the morning of November 10, President George W. Bush
addressed the UN General Assembly and spoke words that warmed the hearts
of human rights activists the world over: "For every regime that sponsors
terror, there is a price to be paid and it will be paid.... [Nations that
support terror] are equally guilty of murder and equally accountable to
justice... We must unite in opposing all terrorists, not just some of
them. No national aspiration, no remembered wrong can ever justify the
deliberate murder of the innocent. Any government that rejects this
principle, trying to pick and choose its terrorist friends, will know the
consequences.... The Afghan people do not deserve their present rulers....
I make this promise to all the victims of that regime: The Taliban's days
of harboring terrorists, and dealing in heroin, and brutalizing women are
drawing to a close."  That evening, during a joint press conference with
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Bush described the Northern Alliance
as "our friends." Moments later, Musharraf branded Bush's "friends"
terrorists: "Why I have been recommending that Kabul should not be
occupied by the Northern Alliance basically is because of the past
experience that we've had when the various ethnic groups were ahold of
Kabul after the Soviets left. There was total atrocities, killings and
mayhem within the city. And I think if the Northern Alliance enters
Afghanistan -- enters Kabul -- we'll see the same kind of atrocities being
perpetuated against the people there...."  A reporter followed up by
asking Bush if he agreed with Musharraf's assessment of the Alliance. Bush
replied, "Only, only, I said one question. Now you're going with three."
No other reporter put the question to Bush.  Now that is a disciplined
press corps... For a sampling of Northern Alliance atrocities, see the
October 2001 "Background" report from Human Rights Watch. Since 1992, the
various Alliance factions have killed tens of thousands of civilians every
bit as innocent as America's 9-11 victims; their rap sheets includes rape,
torture, summary executions and "disappearances." "To date," states HRW,
"not a single Afghan commander has been held accountable for violations of
international humanitarian law"... On ABC, Slammin' Sam Donaldson did
indeed hold National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice's feet to the fire
on state sponsorship of terrorism. Outflanking the Bush administration on
the right, Donaldson put on the screen the State Department's list of
states that sponsor terror and asked why we aren't taking it to the
governments of Lebanon and Syria like we're taking it to the Taliban.  
Note that Donaldson, in theory, represents ABC's "liberal" wing. For two
decades he's been cast as a counterweight to George Will, the staunch
conservative of "This Week." Donaldson could have asked why Cuba was on
the terror-sponsor list. He could have asked why Colombia was not, given
that its army collaborates with and protects a right-wing death-squad
federation on the State Department's list of Foreign Terrorist
Organizations. ... To ask any of those questions, Donaldson wouldn't
necessarily have to be a liberal. He could just as well be a moderate or
conservative, many of whom disapprove of selective morality and alliances
with cutthroats. But he would have to be informed. Like most everyone else
posing questions on Sunday morning, Donaldson is bright, articulate and
ignorant. All are prerequisites: Smarts and a way with words lend an air
of credibility; ignorance ensures the avoidance of embarrassing questions
about "principles" that seem to be honored more often in the breach.  To
gain a coveted seat as a network foreign-policy interviewer, you must be
incapable of thinking outside the parameters of bogus State Department
lists. Your knowledge must be sufficiently superficial that you cannot
recognize an evasive answer or demolish a dishonest one. Mix in an abiding
faith in the fundamental decency of U.S. foreign policy and you could be
the next Russert, Donaldson or Jim Lehrer. [CD]

JOHN PILGER: The truths they never tell us. Behind the jargon about failed
states and humanitarian interventions lie thousands of dead.
	Polite society's bombers may not have to wait long for round two.
The US vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned last week that America could
take action against '40 to 50 countries'. Somalia, allegedly a 'haven' for
al-Qaeda, joins Iraq at the top of a list of potential targets. Cheered by
having replaced Afghanistan's bad terrorists with America's good
terrorists, the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, has asked the
Pentagon to 'think the unthinkable', having rejected its 'post-Afghanistan
options' as 'not radical enough'.
	An American attack on Somalia, wrote the Guardian's man at the
Foreign Office, 'would offer an opportunity to settle an old score: 18 US
soldiers were brutally killed there in 1993 . . .' He neglected to mention
that the US Marines left between 7,000 and 10,000 Somali dead, according
to the CIA. Eighteen American lives are worthy of score-settling;
thousands of Somali lives are not.
	Somalia will provide an ideal practice run for the final
destruction of Iraq. However, as the Wall Street Journal reports, Iraq
presents a 'dilemma', because 'few targets remain'. 'We're down to the
last outhouse,' said a US official, referring to the almost daily bombing
of Iraq that is not news. Having survived the 1991 Gulf war, Saddam
Hussein's grip on Iraq has since been reinforced by one of the most
ruthless blockades in modern times, policed by his former amours and arms
suppliers in Washington and London. Safe in his British-built bunkers,
Saddam will survive a renewed blitz - unlike the Iraqi people, held
hostage to the compliance of their dictator to America's ever-shifting
demands.
	In this country [UK], veiled propaganda will play its usual
leading role. As so much of the Anglo-American media is in the hands of
various guardians of approved truths, the fate of both the Iraqi and
Somali peoples will be reported and debated on the strict premise that the
US and British governments are against terrorism. Like the attack on
Afghanistan, the issue will be how 'we' can best deal with the problem of
'uncivilised' societies.
	The most salient truth will remain taboo. This is that the
longevity of America as both a terrorist state and a haven for terrorists
surpasses all. That the US is the only state on record to have been
condemned by the World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a
UN Security Council resolution calling on governments to observe
international law is unmentionable. Recently, Denis Halliday, the former
assistant secretary general of the UN who resigned rather than administer
what he described as a 'genocidal sanctions policy' on Iraq, incurred the
indignation of the BBC's Michael Buerk. 'You can't possibly draw a moral
equivalence between Saddam Hussein and George Bush Senior , can you?' said
Buerk. Halliday was taking part in one of the moral choice programmes that
Buerk comperes, and had referred to the needless slaughter of tens of
thousands of Iraqis, mostly civilians, by the Americans during the Gulf
war. He pointed out that many were buried alive, and that depleted uranium
was used widely, almost certainly the cause of an epidemic of cancer in
southern Iraq.
	That the recent history of the west's true crimes makes Saddam
Hussein 'an amateur', as Halliday put it, is the unmentionable; and
because there is no rational rebuttal of such a truth, those who mention
it are abused as 'anti-American'. Richard Falk, professor of international
politics at Princeton, has explained this. Western foreign policy, he
says, is propagated in the media 'through a self-righteous, one-way
moral/legal screen with positive images of western values and innocence
portrayed as threatened, validating a campaign of unrestricted political
violence'.
	The ascendancy of Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and
associates Richard Perle and Elliot Abrams means that much of the world is
now threatened openly by a geopolitical fascism, which has been developing
since 1945 and has accelerated since 11 September.
	The present Washington gang are authentic American
fundamentalists. They are the heirs of John Foster Dulles and Alan Dulles,
the Baptist fanatics who, in the 1950s, ran the State Department and the
CIA respectively, smashing reforming governments in country after country
-- Iran, Iraq, Guatemala -- tearing up international agreements, such as
the 1954 Geneva accords on Indochina, whose sabotage by John Foster Dulles
led directly to the Vietnam war and five million dead. Declassified files
now tell us the United States twice came within an ace of using nuclear
weapons.
	The parallels are there in Cheney's threat to '40 to 50'
countries, and of war 'that may not end in our lifetimes'. The vocabulary
of justification for this militarism has long been provided on both sides
of the Atlantic by those factory 'scholars' who have taken the humanity
out of the study of nations and congealed it with a jargon that serves the
dominant power. Poor countries are 'failed states'; those that oppose
America are 'rogue states'; an attack by the west is a 'humanitarian
intervention'. (One of the most enthusiastic bombers, Michael Ignatieff,
is now 'professor of human rights' at Harvard). And as in Dulles's time,
the United Nations is reduced to a role of clearing up the debris of
bombing and providing colonial 'protectorates'.
	The twin towers attacks provided Bush's Washington with both a
trigger and a remarkable coincidence. Pakistan's former foreign minister
Niaz Naik has revealed that he was told by senior American officials in
mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the
middle of October. The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, was then
travelling in central Asia, already gathering support for an
anti-Afghanistan war 'coalition'. For Washington, the real problem with
the Taliban was not human rights; these were irrelevant.
	The Taliban regime simply did not have total control of
Afghanistan: a fact that deterred investors from financing oil and gas
pipelines from the Caspian Sea, whose strategic position in relation to
Russia and China and whose largely untapped fossil fuels are of crucial
interest to the Americans. In 1998, Dick Cheney told oil industry
executives: 'I cannot think of a time when we have had a region emerge as
suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian.'
	Indeed, when the Taliban came to power in 1996, not only were they
welcomed by Washington, their leaders were flown to Texas, then governed
by George W Bush, and entertained by executives of the Unocal oil company.
They were offered a cut of the profits from the pipelines; 15 per cent was
mentioned. A US official observed that, with the Caspian's oil and gas
flowing, Afghanistan would become 'like Saudi Arabia', an oil colony with
no democracy and the legal persecution of women. 'We can live with that,'
he said. The deal fell through when two American embassies in east Africa
were bombed and al-Qaeda was blamed. The Taliban duly moved to the top of
the media's league table of demons, where the normal exemptions apply. For
example, Vladimir Putin's regime in Moscow, the killers of at least 20,000
people in Chechnya, is exempt. Last week, Putin was entertained by his new
'close friend', George W Bush, at Bush's Texas ranch.
	Bush and Blair are permanently exempt -- even though more Iraqi
children die every month, mostly as a result of the Anglo-American
embargo, than the total number of dead in the twin towers, a truth that is
not allowed to enter public consciousness. The killing of Iraqi infants,
like the killing of Chechens, like the killing of Afghan civilians, is
rated less morally abhorrent than the killing of Americans.
	As one who has seen a great deal of bombing, I have been struck by
the capacity of those calling themselves 'liberals' and 'progressives'
wilfully to tolerate the suffering of innocents in Afghanistan. What do
these self-regarding commentators, who witness virtually nothing of the
struggles of the outside world, have to say to the families of refugees
bombed to death in the dusty town of Gardez the other day, long after it
fell to anti-Taliban forces? What do they say to the parents of dead
children whose bodies lay in the streets of Kunduz last Sunday? 'Forty
people were killed,' said Zumeray, a refugee. 'Some of them were burned by
the bombs, others were crushed by the walls and roofs of their houses when
they collapsed from the blast.' What does the Guardian's Polly Toynbee say
to him: 'Can't you see that bombing works?' Will she call him
anti-American? What do 'humanitarian interventionists' say to people who
will die or be maimed by the 70,000 American cluster bomblets left
unexploded?
	For several weeks, the Observer, a liberal newspaper, has
published unsubstantiated reports that have sought to link Iraq with 11
September and the anthrax scare. 'Whitehall sources' and 'intelligence
sources' are the main tellers of this story. 'The evidence is mounting
...' said one of the pieces. The sum of the 'evidence' is zero, merely
grist for the likes of Wolfowitz and Perle and probably Blair, who can be
expected to go along with the attack. In his essay 'The Banality of Evil',
the great American dissident Edward Herman described the division of
labour among those who design and produce weapons like cluster bombs and
daisy cutters and those who take the political decisions to use them and
those who create the illusions that justify their use. 'It is the function
of the experts, and the mainstream media,' he wrote, 'to normalise the
unthinkable for the general public.' It is time journalists reflected upon
this, and took the risk of telling the truth about an unconscionable
threat to much of humanity that comes not from faraway places, but close
to home. <www.johnpilger. com> [NS]

	* * *

The Onion reports:  In a strongly worded ultimatum Tuesday, President Bush
warned the Arab world to "stop hating the United States or suffer the
consequences." "You have exactly 10 days to put aside your deep-rooted
resentment and rage toward America and learn to like us," said Bush in a
message broadcast live to 17 Arab nations via Al Jazeera. "If you fail to
comply, prepare to have the full might of the U.S. military brought down
upon you." Bush also threatened to carpet-bomb any Arab region whose
populace continues to be angry about America's longtime bombing campaign
against Iraq and the decade-long U.S. sanctions that have led to the
malnutrition deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi children.

AND FINALLY it is reported that in negotiations between the US and the
Taliban last summer -- well before 9/11 -- the US representatives told the
Taliban, "Either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you
under a carpet of bombs."  DC DAVE writes, "I wonder if we learned this
negotiation/intimidation technique from the Medellin Cartel. They call it
'plata o plomo,' silver or lead."

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
        <galliher at alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>