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alternative perspectives on the "war on terrorism"
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Has the US lost its way?
Paul Kennedy, The Observer, March 3, 2002
'By what right,' an angry environmentalist demanded at a recent
conference I attended, 'do Americans place such a heavy footprint upon
God's Earth?' Ouch. That was a tough one because, alas, it's largely
true. We comprise slightly less than 5 per cent of the world's
population; but we imbibe 27 per cent of the world's annual oil
production, create and consume nearly 30 per cent of its Gross World
Product and - get this - spend a full 40 per cent of all the world's
defence expenditures.
[The complete article]
Bush view of secrecy is stirring frustration: disclosure battle unites conservatives and liberals
Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, March 3, 2002
"The cumulative message from the White House and from Ashcroft is:
Stall. Don't release," said Tom Blanton, executive director of the
National Security Archive, an access advocacy group that collects and
publishes declassified documents. "They believe that the trend for 30
years has been to make the White House too open."
[The complete article]
"I can tell them that this will be worse than Vietnam"
Rebels keep eye out for U.S. as Colombian conflict flares
Karl Penhaul, San Francisco Chronicle, March 2, 2002
After three years of relative calm in the southern corner of this
conflict- torn nation, guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of
Colombia, or FARC, are back on a combat footing -- and they say they are
ready to take on the United States as well as the Colombian government.
[The complete article]
Let us not talk falsely now
Ron Jacobs, Colombia Report, February 25, 2002
The suspension of peace talks by the Colombian government has the
potential to involve U.S. forces directly in a conflict that can only
truly be resolved when the rich no longer rob the poor. This recent turn
of events seems closely linked not only to a renewed confidence in the
ranks of the Colombian military, thanks to the funding provided it by
Plan Colombia, but also to increased warmongering in Washington. For
years, the Colombian military, its paramilitary allies and certain
sectors of the U.S. national security apparatus have wanted to destroy
Colombia's revolutionary groups. They now believe their time has come.
[The complete article]
Ecuadorian farmers fight DynCorp's chemwar on the Amazon
Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch, February 27, 2002
The International Labor Rights Fund has filed suit in U.S. federal
court on behalf of 10,000 Ecuadorian peasant farmers and Amazonian
Indians charging DynCorp, the U.S. defense contractor, with torture,
infanticide and wrongful death for its role in the aerial spraying of
highly toxic pesticides in the Amazonian jungle, along the border of
Ecuador and Colombia.
[The complete article]
Why terrorism is unbeatable
John Gray, New Statesman, February 25, 2002
Revolutionary nihilism of the kind embodied by al-Qaeda is not a
throwback to the past but part of what it means to be modern. John Gray,
professor of European thought at the London School of Economics,
reviews the reaction to September 11 and argues that Americans, like the
rest of us, must learn to live with such shocks.
[The complete article]
Congress not advised of shadow government
Amy Goldstein and Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post, March 2, 2002
Key congressional leaders said yesterday the White House did not
tell them that President Bush has moved a cadre of senior civilian
managers to secret underground sites outside Washington to ensure that
the federal government could survive a devastating terrorist attack on
the nation's capital.
[The complete article]
Thoughts about America
Edward Said, Al-Ahram Weekly, February 28, 2002
I don't know a single Arab or Muslim American who does not now feel
that he or she belongs to the enemy camp, and that being in the United
States at this moment provides us with an especially unpleasant
experience of alienation and widespread, quite specifically targeted
hostility.
[The complete article]
Shadow government is at work in secret
Barton Gellman and Susan Schmidt, Washington Post, March 1, 2002
President Bush has dispatched a shadow government of about 100
senior civilian managers to live and work secretly outside Washington,
activating for the first time long-standing plans to ensure survival of
federal rule after catastrophic attack on the nation's capital.
[The complete article]
Pentagon's silver lining may be bigger than cloud
Norman Solomon, Media Beat, February 28, 2002
The Office of Strategic Influence went from obscurity to infamy to
oblivion during a spin cycle that lasted just seven days in late
February. Coming to terms with a week of negative coverage after news
broke that the Pentagon office might purposely deceive foreign media, a
somber defense secretary announced: "It is being closed down." But for
Donald Rumsfeld and his colleagues along the Potomac, the inky cloud of
bad publicity has a big silver lining.
[The complete article]
A cloak of righteousness - The White House's most defining feature
John Rieger, TomPaine.com, February 26, 2002
Was there ever an American presidency better prepared to wage a war
of Good Against Evil? With a born-again president and a seasoned team of
political infighters, the Bush administration has donned its soaring
poll numbers like a cloak of righteousness that miraculously conceals
even the most sordid motivations and questionable policy choices.
[The complete article]
U.S. reliance on Iraqi oil grows despite "evil" tag
Bernie Woodall, Reuters, February 27, 2002
As U.S. President George W. Bush singles out Iraq as the keystone of
a global "axis of evil," the U.S. oil industry last year deepened its
dependence on Baghdad's supplies, U.S. Energy Department figures show.
[The complete article]
Washington broods over X-Ray prognosis
Matthew Engel, The Guardian, February 28, 2002
As the prisoners while away the weeks in their flyblown cages at
Camp X-Ray, Washington's government lawyers are in a state of confusion
and embarrassment, having so far failed to come up with a coherent plan
for the captives' future.
[The complete article]
OK, George, make with the friendly bombs
Terry Jones, The Observer, February 17, 2002
To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious
idea that I can't think why no one has thought of it before. It's so
simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland,
we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.
[The complete article]
Pentagon outlines plans to take war on terror to Georgia
Julian Borger, The Guardian, February 28, 2002
The Pentagon yesterday revealed details of plans to expand the war
on terrorism to Georgia, including the proposed deployment of up to 200
military advisers to help combat suspected terrorists hiding with
Chechen guerrillas in the Pankisi Gorge region.
[The complete article]
Big John wants your reading list. Has the Attorney General been reading Franz Kafka?
Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, February 22, 2002
During the congressional debate on John Ashcroft's USA Patriot Act,
an American Civil Liberties Union fact sheet on the bill's assaults on
the Bill of Rights revealed that Section 215 of the act "would grant FBI
agents across the country breathtaking authority to obtain an order
from the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court . . .
requiring any person or business to produce any books, records,
documents, or items."
[The complete article]
Interrogation at the US border
John Clarke, Counterpunch, February 25, 2002
As soon as my ID was run through the computer, there was a marked
change in the situation. An officer asked me more questions about my
intentions in the US, what anti-globalization protests I had attended
and whether I opposed the 'ideology of the United States'.
[The complete article]
The future of war and peace
Eric Hobsbawm, Counterpunch, February 27, 2002
The 20th century was the most murderous in recorded history. The
total number of deaths caused by or associated with its wars has been
estimated at 187m, the equivalent of more than 10% of the world's
population in 1913. Taken as having begun in 1914, it was a century of
almost unbroken war, with few and brief periods without organised armed
conflict somewhere. It was dominated by world wars: that is to say, by
wars between territorial states or alliances of states.
[The complete article]
Muslims at odds with the US, survey shows
Miranda Green, Financial Times, February 26, 2002
Muslims feel sympathy for the US after the terrorist attacks of
September 11 but feel even more strongly that the West's military action
in Afghanistan was wrong, according to a Gallup poll of the Islamic
world published on Tuesday.
[The complete article]
Resisting Bush's war
Rep. Dennis Kucinich, AlterNet, February 25, 2002
The following is a speech that Dennis Kucinich, U.S. Congressman
from Cleveland, Ohio, gave this past weekend at the University of
Southern California. Rep. Kucinich is the leader of the Progressive
Caucus and a longtime defender of free speech, civil liberties and
international peace. This speech makes him the first member of the
United States Congress to openly repudiate President Bush's war
rationale.
[The complete article]
A new war is brewing in Afghanistan
Luke Harding, The Guardian, February 27, 2002
Two weeks ago Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, accused
three members of his own government of murdering aviation minister,
Abdul Rahman when he was besieged by angry pilgrims whose plane to Mecca
had failed to turn up. What, then, does this tale of post-Taliban
assassination mean for Afghanistan? The answer is depressing: that
Afghanistan is now in real danger of sliding back into civil war.
[The complete article]
How American Dream faded in downtown Mogadishu
Janine di Giovanni, The Times (via Common Dreams), February 26, 2002
It was the stuff American dreams are made on. A few weeks ago,
Yussuf Hussein, a Somali who came to the United States in his teens, was
living in Boston with his wife and two children, earning $70,000
(£43,000) working for a computer software company. Now, he and more than
30 other American-Somali men are holed up in a squalid hotel costing $2
per night in downtown south Mogadishu, without either money or
passport, determined to return home.
[The complete article]
The disappeared
Andrew Gumbel, The Independent, February 26, 2002
Since 11 September last year, up to 2,000 people in the United
States have been detained without trial, or charge, or even legal
rights. The fate of most is unknown. Andrew Gumbel investigates a
scandal that shames the land of the free.
[The complete article]
For Algerian writer, the lonely side of fame
Alan Riding, The New York Times (via IHT), February 26, 2002
"The war is lost if the West plays the game of the fundamentalists,
which is violence, because you cannot frighten someone who accepts death
with devotion."
[The complete article]
Brothers in Islam, but not in politics
Celia W. Dugger, The New York Times (via IHT), February 26, 2002
The orthodox Islamic school of thought that came to find its most
virulent expression in the Taliban originated in this placid north
Indian town, where Hindus and Muslims peaceably coexist to the eternal
rhythms of sowing and harvesting.
[The complete article]
Patriotic dissent
Jordan Moss, The Nation, February 24, 2002
It just got a little harder to ignore the dissenters in America's
War on Terrorism. Family members of victims, about seventeen so far,
have joined under the banner "Sept. 11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows"
to encourage discussion of alternatives to war and to bring aid to
families affected by the US bombing campaign in Afghanistan.
[The complete article]
Ashcroft's and other US officials' religious remarks raise fears of intolerance
Naftali Bendavid, Chicago Tribune, February 24, 2002
Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft sounded like the preacher's son he is
during an impassioned speech Tuesday to a group of religious
broadcasters, quoting the Book of Isaiah, invoking the serpent in the
Garden of Eden and declaring unequivocally that God is on America's side
in the war on terrorism.
[The complete article]
Outspoken rabbi feels the heat - Jewish backlash over stance on Palestinians
Chip Johnson, San Francisco Chronicle, February 25, 2002
For more than 30 years, Berkeley Rabbi Michael Lerner has been a
thorn in the side of conservative Jews, but the backlash has never been
so furious. Whether he is calling for the immediate withdrawal of
Israeli settlers and soldiers from the West Bank and Gaza Strip or
promoting his own humanitarian- based political formulas, some hard-line
Jews describe him as one of the most self-loathing Jews on the planet.
Now, his critics have launched a campaign to kill off Tikkun, the
magazine Lerner co-founded 15 years ago as an organ for liberal
intellectuals, Jewish and otherwise. Lerner calls Tikkun the nation's
only multi-issue Jewish magazine.
[The complete article]
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HOME
September 11 and the declaration of a "war on terrorism," has
forced Americans to look at the World in a new light. No one can afford
any longer to define the limits of their concerns by refusing to look
beyond this nation's borders. If the freedom that every American
cherishes, is not to become a freedom bound within a fortress, then
every American will need to understand and respect the needs and
concerns of the rest of the World. To this end, The War in Context
invites anyone with interest and an open mind to listen to the critical
discourse in which the policies and actions of the Bush administration
are now being questioned. This debate, which is engaging inquiring minds
inside and outside America, will hopefully inform the development of a
sustainable new world order - a world order in which America is as much
shaped by the World as is the World shaped by America.
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