[Peace-discuss] News notes, 1/13/02 (Part 1 of 2)

[C. G. Estabrook]

NOTES ON THE WEEK'S NEWS, FOR AWARE MEETING, 1/13/02 (Part 1 of 2)

[These notes are even hastier than usual, but in view of tonight's
conspiratorial discussion, I've added a comment from the excellent site
<www.counterpunch.org>.  Regards, CGE]

SUNDAY JANUARY 6, 2002

Congress has provided more than $60 billion since September [equal to the
proposed cost of the ABM system] to combat terrorism at home and abroad
and to rebuild from the attacks on New York and Washington. That's roughly
five times what the nation spent to fight terrorism in the previous year
... When he sends Congress his $2 trillion budget for fiscal 2003 next
month, President Bush is expected to propose billions more for the
military's $345 billion wartime budget for the rest of this year, plus a
hefty increase for next year for government-wide anti-terrorism efforts.
Fiscal 2003 begins Oct. 1 ... Though but a sliver of the federal budget,
$60 billion exceeds the 2000 revenues of all but the dozen largest U.S.
corporations. [AP]

Is a drunk, rowdy passenger on an airplane a terrorist? Is a man who
pushes a judge? They are according to annual reports from the Department
of Justice. An investigation by the Miami Herald found that the department
routinely overstates the number of terrorist arrests and convictions it
makes every year. It does so, apparently, to cook the numbers for
Congress, as a way to justify its annual $22-billion budget of which
counterterrorism is a part. In the department's most recent annual report,
released in May, the department claims there were 236 terrorism
convictions in the fiscal year ending September 2000. But when pressed to
provide specifics, the department refused to release information backing
up that number or disclosing the details of those convictions. In its
investigation, Herald reporters reviewed dozens of so-called terrorism
cases over a five-year period, examining files obtained through the
Freedom of Information Act. The reporters found that numerous convictions
labeled as terrorism were just ordinary crimes, having nothing to do with
a politically motivated agenda. For example, the department listed as a
case of domestic terrorism, the conviction of a man from Arizona who got
drunk while returning from Shanghai. He had continually demanded liquor
and manhandled a flight attendant. The judge in the case called it a case
of a man "being an annoyance beyond belief," but not terrorism. According
to the department, terrorism was also involved in the case of an
Ecuadorian man who tried smuggling 12 guns from Miami to his home country
for the purpose of reselling them. And the conviction of seven Chinese
sailors was counted as terrorism after they commandeered a boat in order
to sail it into U.S. territorial waters to ask for political asylum.
Disturbingly, the federal prosecutor office in San Francisco was the
office that listed the most cases of domestic terrorism over the past
three years. For much of that time, Robert Mueller, now director of the
FBI, was at its helm. [ST PETERSBURG TIMES editorial 020102]

Last summer, in a fit of legislative frenzy fueled by law enforcement and
the mass media, Illinois lawmakers passed and Republican Gov. George Ryan
signed a law stiffening penalties for even small-time distribution of
MDMA, or ecstasy, and other club drugs That law went into effect on
January 1, making Illinois' ecstasy law one of the harshest in the nation.
Under the new Illinois law, sale of as few as 15 ecstasy tablets will be
treated as a Class X felony, like heroin or cocaine sales, punishable by
up to 30 years in prison, with a mandatory minimum six-year sentence.
Under the old law, persons possessing up to 900 Ecstasy tablets were
eligible for probation. The new law also contains provisions allowing
authorities to charge ecstasy dealers with "drug-induced homicide" if
someone dies after ingesting the drug. Under the old law, dealers had to
have sold about 200 tablets in order to be charged with murder in the
event of a customer death. Law enforcement and political figures in
Illinois took a handful of rare but highly-publicized club drug-related
deaths in the Chicago area in the last two years and created a faux public
health and law enforcement crisis that spurred the legislation ... The
Illinois Department of Public Health's Center for Health Statistics could
not come up with any hard numbers, nor could the governor's office, nor
could the Dept. of Public Safety ... In a recent series on club drug and
heroin use in the Chicago suburbs, the suburban newspaper the Daily Record
identified a grand total of one ecstasy death and four deaths from PMA
overdoses. 

MONDAY JANUARY 7, 2002

ZINNI LEAVES MIDEAST ON UPBEAT NOTE AS ISRAEL ACCUSES ARAFAT [sic -- AFP
headline]

The White House has said that U.S. President George W. Bush meant no
disrespect to the Pakistani people by referring to them as "Pakis" ...
Bush used the term in remarks to reporters on Monday when discussing the
possibility of nuclear rivals India and Pakistan going to war. "I don't
believe the situation is defused yet, but I do believe there is a way to
do so, and we are working hard to convince both the Indians and the Pakis
there's a way to deal with their problems without going to war," Bush
said. Most Americans are unaware of the sensitivity of the term. In
Britain, however, it is considered an ethnic slur toward Pakistanis who
emigrated there in large numbers in the 1960s and '70s. [REUTERS]

The attack on Qalaye Niazi was as sudden and devastating as the Pentagon
intended. American special forces on the ground confirmed the target and
three bombers, a B-52 and two B-1Bs, did the rest, zapping Taliban and
al-Qaida leaders in their sleep as well as an ammunition dump. The war on
terrorism came no cleaner and Commander Matthew Klee, a spokesman at the
US central command in Tampa, Florida, had reassuring news: "Follow-on
reporting indicates that there was no collateral damage." Some of the
things his follow-on reporters missed: bloodied children's shoes and
skirts, bloodied school books, the scalp of a woman with braided grey
hair, butter toffees in red wrappers, wedding decorations. The charred
meat sticking to rubble in black lumps could have been Osama bin Laden's
henchmen but survivors said it was the remains of farmers, their wives and
children, and wedding guests. They said more than 100 civilians died at
this village in eastern Afghanistan. Survivors lacked the bewilderment
common to those who have been bombed, because they had an explanation: a
tribal rival had manipulated the Americans into attacking Qalaye Niazi to
further his political ambitions in Paktia province. The Pentagon said it
had indications that senior Taliban and al-Qaida officials were at the
site and that two surface-to-air missiles were fired at the aircraft
during the December 29 raid. The bombs set off secondary explosions
consistent with stockpiled ammunition. The Pentagon has produced no
evidence that missiles were fired at the planes but there was a stockpile.