Bush overplays the terror card
It's 'unpatriotic' to say that corrupt business is ruining our economy
Robert Scheer, Los Angeles Times, June 30, 2002
Has the war on terrorism become the modern equivalent of the Roman Circus, drawing the people's attention away from the failures of those who rule them? Corporate America is a shambles because deregulation, the mantra of our president and his party, has proved to be a license to steal. Yet to question our leaders' stewardship of the economy has been made to seem unpatriotic.
Although combating terrorism is of compelling importance--and should have been before Sept. 11--one is likely to be branded a nut for daring to suggest that the administration might be using current security threats as a smoke screen to obscure our floundering economy.
Yet, after the miserable performance of the stock market these past five weeks, the forced resignations and indictments of corporate titans (not to mention the conviction of a top accounting firm), the humbling of the dollar and a rise in the trade gap, isn't it time to ask whether the war on terrorism isn't being milked as a convenient distraction? The question seems particularly relevant when our man in the White House has had close personal and financial ties to the company--Enron--whose demise is the most glaring symbol of the broad moral disarray of the nation's corporate culture.
World Con
Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, June 30, 2002
The scandals [World Com, Enron, Xerox, etc] have rocked Washington and redefined the political agenda. For the first time since 11 September, there is a bitter, domestic issue to the fore. The administration of President George Bush has been rocked back on its heels - joining the chorus of condemnation, with a major speech on corporate reforms planned for next week. Mindful of the fact that nearly half of all voters are shareholders, Bush has so far reacted in language that echoes Teddy Roosevelt's famous lines about the 'malefactors of great wealth'. But most analysts see in his reaction a case of the jitters. Bush has extremely close ties to those malefactors - no administration has been so closely associated with, and beholden to, corporate America.
Young icons of death who warn the world of the rise of Hamas
Peter Beaumont, The Observer, June 30, 2002
The rise in popularity of Hamas has also been noted with worry by European diplomats who fear that far from uprooting terrorism, and the scourge of the suicide bomber, Israel and the United States' joint policy of isolating Arafat and dismantling his institutions is making the suicide bombers stronger.
Pledging allegiance to fundamentalism
David Corn, AlterNet, June 28, 2002
A Christian socialist who turned his back on religion. That's the guy whose handiwork politicians of both parties and religious right leaders rushed to defend this past week. Francis Bellamy, a Baptist minister in upstate New York who sermonized against the materialism of the Gilded Age and who resigned from his church after businessmen cut off funding because of his socialist activities and lectures, wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892. Now his words, composed for a magazine-sponsored school program celebrating the quadricentennial of Columbus Day, are treated as a sacred writ. Holy irony!
A flock of chickenhawks
Randolph T. Holhut, The American Reporter, June 2, 2002
Why does it always seem like the distinguished folks who scream the loudest for the use of military force are the ones who never spent a day in uniform? The super-patriots who wormed their way out of military service when it was their time to fight have richly earned the title of "chickenhawks." Daniel Fowle, editor and publisher of The New Hampshire Gazette, has made it easy to keep track of the men who, in his words, "share a number of qualities: a tendency to favor American military action, past, present and future; allegiance to the Republican Party, and a paradoxical lack of military service despite there having been a war on in their youth."
Blair's aides denounce US 'blundering' in Afghan war
Christina Lamb, The Telegraph, June 30, 2002
Senior officials in the [British] Prime Minister's office have launched an astonishing attack on America's handling of the hunt for Osama bin Laden and al-Qa'eda fugitives. They have told The Telegraph that troops carrying out house-to-house searches in the remote tribal areas of Pakistan along the Afghanistan border were "blundering" with a "march-in-shooting" approach. The US action was "backfiring", increasing support for terrorism and making it harder for bin Laden and his henchmen to be caught. "The Americans think they and the Pakistanis can just march in shooting", said an official closely involved in the direction of the war. "They don't understand the sensitivities. We have years of experience in the tribal areas and we know using force will just backfire and increase sympathy for al-Qa'eda."
LEADING BY EXAMPLE
COMMENT -- If America is leading the world by example, God bless America and God help the world. First comes the hubris, then the humiliation, but can the superpower now swallow its pride and show some humility? Probably not.
The price of American leadership is on the slide
Anatole Kaletsky, The Times, June 28, 2002
America has spent most of the past decade lecturing the rest of the world on how to run its affairs: telling the Arabs to replace their leaders, the Japanese to restructure their industries and the Europeans to reorganise their societies and ways of life. Now this hubris is making way for nemesis.
For most people around the world, the most important event in America this week was President Bush’s speech on the Middle East. There was a chillingly Orwellian quality to his proposal that Palestinians should vote for leaders approved in advance by Israel and Washington. For Mr Bush, however, this week’s Middle East challenges paled into insignificance beside the challenges from Wall Street. To judge from his brief appearance on TV from the G8 summit in Canada, the accounting scandal at WorldCom aroused much deeper emotions in Mr Bush than any event in the Middle East — and, in a way, this order of priorities was understandable.
The adage that “the business of America is business” has never been truer than it is today. Washington is run by an Administration that looks, behaves and thinks exactly like the board of a Fortune 500 company.
Can Israel be Jewish and democratic?
Lily Galili, Ha'aretz, June 28, 2002
The new interest in demography touches the core of the state's being - its definition as a Jewish state. For the first time in the history of public discourse here, even the most devout leftists are being required to confront their inner truth. It is no longer possible to seek refuge in banal statements like "there is no contradiction between a Jewish and a democratic state," or hollow slogans about coexistence. Anyone who clings to the concept of a Jewish state cannot ignore the demographic figures laid out in black and white in dozens of publications on the subject. The character of the state, its identity card, now depends on the definitions derived from these figures. The fact that the vast majority of Jewish citizens cling to the definition of Israel as a "Jewish state" leaves no way out.
Bush's plan is simply unrealistic
Gareth Evans and Robert Malley, International Herald Tribune, June 28, 2002
A call for regime change, but with no serious carrots to accompany the sticks, won't provide the Palestinians with any genuine incentive to implement the necessary security steps or structural reforms. And it will undermine, rather than strengthen, growing voices within Palestinian society itself that are calling for domestic changes and an end to terrorist attacks against Israeli civilians.
European Union peace move amid fears of West Bank breakdown
Ian Black and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, June 29, 2002
The EU is to launch a Middle East peace initiative next week amid fears that George Bush's policy switch has left a dangerous vacuum in the region.
The first fireball
The US nuclear attack on Hiroshima paved the way for September 11 and its aftermath
John Berger, The Guardian, June 29, 2002
Concerning President Bush's riposte to September 11 - his so-called war against terrorism, which was first baptised Infinite Justice, and then renamed Enduring Freedom - the most trenchant and anguished comments and analyses I have come across, during the last six months, have been made and written by US citizens. The accusation of "anti-Americanism" against those of us who adamantly oppose the present decision-makers in Washington is as short-sighted as the policies in question. There are countless "anti-American" US citizens, with whom we are in solidarity.
Afghanistan: American troops rounded up men and munitions in the middle of the night, reminding some of Soviet occupiers
Alissa J. Rubin, Los Angeles Times, June 28, 2002
An American military raid last weekend on this village near the eastern town of Gardez has left area residents shaken, confused and, above all, angry. For locals, the incident seems reminiscent of the tactics used by the Russian troops who occupied Afghanistan in the 1980s: forced entrance into homes, detentions and the seizure of property. Their assessment explains some of the difficulties that the United States faces in its military mission in Afghanistan. "It is harmful to the Americans when they do these things. People will begin to hate them the way they hated other governments that tried to dominate them," said Abdullah Mujahed, the commander responsible for security for Gardez.
Perpetual war poses a risk to U.S. power
Daniel Warner, International Herald Tribune, June 28, 2002
The United States is at war. This has been repeated by President George W. Bush and members of his administration on several occasions. What has not been made clear is the nature of the war. There has been no formal declaration that clearly sets out goals and objectives. Why is this so worrying? In 1987, the Yale University historian Paul Kennedy described the rise and fall of empires. He analyzed how all imperial powers arrived at a point of overreach that eventually destroyed the empire. Too much concern for security and disproportionate spending on defense were endemic to the fall of all previous empires he studied. The United States appears at this time to be marching into a situation that fits Kennedy's description of imperial decline.
"NO SEPARATION BETWEEN GOD AND STATE"
COMMENT -- Until 1954 no one in America was obliged to utter the words "one nation under God." Apparently it took Americans 178 years to figure out how to articulate the spirit of the nation. Now, according to the Senate chaplain, this isn't just one nation under God, but there is "no separation between God and state." This trumps having God on your side. America and God are One!
Justice Dept. seeks pledge hearing
Christopher Newton, Associated Press, June 27, 2002
"We acknowledge the separation of sectarianism and state, but affirm the belief that there is no separation between God and state," Senate Chaplain Lloyd Ogilvie said in Thursday's morning prayer.
NATIONAL REVIEW OFFERS A TONIC FOR THE AMERICAN SPIRIT:
ANOTHER KILLING SPREE
COMMENT -- Sensing that the confidence of the nation is at a new low, National Review columnist, Larry Kudlow, suggests that war against Iraq would "revive the American spirit." It's the usual psychology: if you feel weak, act tough. Or to be more precise, if you feel weak, talk tough and try and fool the real tough guys (in the military services) into risking their lives so you can feel strong.
Taking back the market — by force
Larry Kudlow, National Review, June 26, 2002
Decisive shock therapy to revive the American spirit would surely come with a U.S. invasion of Iraq. Why not begin with a large-scale special-forces commando raid on the Iraqi oil fields? This will send a shot across Saddam's bow; an electrifying signal to all terrorist nations. The message will be that the game is up. Surrender now or you will be crushed in a short while.
Arabs under autocratic rule question Bush speech
Calls for democracy seen as selective
Howard Schneider, Washington Post, June 28, 2002
Listening to President Bush demand democratic elections and transparent government for the Palestinians, Egyptian engineer Mady Abu Elela said, he wondered where those all-American values were two years ago when he tried to form a new political party here. His idea, for an Islamic-based party with a moderate approach, was quickly discarded by the government of President Hosni Mubarak. But as far as Elela can remember, neither the United States nor any other Western nation challenged the fairness of a system in which those who hold power dictate who can compete against them.
President Bush may have discovered a need to upset the ruling order in the Palestinian Authority in hopes of quelling what he views as terrorism, Elela noted. But American leaders have been much more hesitant to apply the same standards in such allied countries as Egypt, where U.S. interests have been protected by a former air force officer, and Saudi Arabia, whose monarchs rule beyond the reach of any electorate. "The democratic situation in most of our area is not right," Elela said. "We need reform in most of the countries of the Arab world. So why the Palestinians only? This is not for reform. This is to pressure the Palestinians for Israel."
Jerusalem under attack
Neve Gordon, Counterpunch, June 27, 2002
While the media spends much time covering the attacks in West Jerusalem, most commentators have often blurred the difference between the personal and national dimension of the threat. The very real personal threat every Israeli feels when he or she enters a mall, takes a bus, or walks into a crowded pub, should not be mistaken for a national threat. The random killings of civilians in no way jeopardize Israel's existence.
Moreover, the media has consistently failed to expose what is happening on the city's occupied east side, where Palestinians live. Like West Jerusalem, the East is also under attack. Not by suicide bombers, of course, but rather by Israeli authorities.
The Jerusalem municipality -- headed by Likud mayor Ehud Olmert -- together with the military and police have been exploiting the ongoing conflict in order to accelerate Israel's geographic and demographic conquest of East Jerusalem. The strategy is clear -- to strangle and intimidate the Palestinian population.
European Union gives more aid to Arafat in defiance of Bush
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, June 28, 2002
A threat by President George Bush to topple Yasser Arafat by starving the Palestinian Authority of cash made little immediate headway yesterday when the European Union released new funds to repair the damage caused by Israel's military invasions. Speaking from the G8 summit in Calgary late on Wednesday, Mr Bush said: "We won't be putting money into a society which is not transparent and [is] corrupt, and I suspect other countries won't either." The EU, which together with the Arab League has been keeping Mr Arafat's government afloat, will continue to provide €10m (£6.5m) a month to his administration, a spokesman for the external affairs commissioner, Chris Patten, said. The Arab League provides some $55m (£36m) a month.
Marooned on his fantasy island, Bush stands firm
Martin Woollacott, The Guardian, June 28, 2002
Anybody who has done some foreign reporting knows that the views of correspondents on the nature of the crisis or war which has brought them to a particular place tend to be similar. Day-to-day experience, constant discussion, and the weight of numbers produce a consensus which only a few resist. Thus most of the correspondents who covered Vietnam felt that the war was in some way wrong, a feeling reflected in their stories, and thus today most of the correspondents who cover the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians would agree that Sharon is more of an obstacle to peace than Arafat. The point here is that the consensus is multinational and, especially, that there is not that much divergence between Americans and non-Americans.
Black hole in Brooklyn
A prison where detainees disappear
Chisun Lee, Village Voice, June 26, 2002
Baloch spent 23 and a half hours a day alone in his cell under bright lights that were always on, without television or, often, even reading material. He was shackled hand and foot when outside. He had only hints that dozens of others—perhaps 50 or more, according to lawyers—were similarly confined. "Through the small window, I saw the guards taking others," he said. And he heard rumors that other detainees were attempting suicide.
His wife eventually tracked him down, and Baloch got a lawyer who, outraged at the imprisonment without cause, filed a habeas corpus petition. As previously reported by the Voice, Baloch was charged promptly thereafter with illegally crossing the U.S.-Canada border—before September 11, a rarely prosecuted offense. He ultimately pled guilty to that and using a fake social security card and was sentenced to time served.
He was deported in April without his identification documents or belongings. In Canada, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and severe depression. Not long ago considered too dangerous to mingle with other inmates, Baloch was approved by a doctor to collect public assistance. He said he had been told to take it easy and not seek work for six months.
Worse than the confinement itself was the injustice of it, said Baloch. The day he was arrested, he said, "They told me, 'You will be going to Canada tomorrow. You have your flight at six o'clock in the morning.' " So he thought nothing of signing a piece of paper waiving his right to seek the Canadian consulate's help.
"I didn't know they were going to keep me for seven months," he said.
The sons and daughters of liberty
Nat Hentoff, Village Voice, June 21, 2002
In the spirit of the Sons of Liberty, on February 4 of this year, some 300 citizens of Northampton, Massachusetts, held a town meeting to organize ways to—as they put it—protect the residents of the town from the Bush-Ashcroft USA Patriot Act. On that night, the Northampton Bill of Rights Defense Committee began a new American Revolution. Similar committees are organizing around the country.
Principle gives way to prerogative
Editorial, The War in Context, June 27, 2002
As the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11th, some observers drew comfort from the thought that what had also been destroyed was any rational argument for the United States to continue spending billions of dollars on the development of national missile defense.
Euphemisms for Israeli settlements confuse coverage
FAIR, June 26, 2002
The Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz reported last month (5/31/02) that at the behest of a Likud party minister, the Israel Broadcasting Authority has banned its editorial departments from using the terms "settlers" or "settlements" on radio and TV. According to Ha'aretz, "it is not clear if the editors will obey the order," which was seen as an attempt by the new IBA director to curry favor with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. What does seem clear is that settlements-- housing built on land illegally seized by Israel after the 1967 war-- are such a contentious issue within Israel that the Israeli government would like to stop reporters from even saying the word.
Nonetheless, the opinion pages of an Israeli paper like Ha'aretz often show a franker debate over Israel's aggressive settlement policy than one can generally find in mainstream U.S. media. Direct government interference doesn't seem to have been necessary to convince some major U.S. news outlets to avoid honest investigation of settlements, and sometimes even to avoid the word itself.
Red, white and ever more blue
As icon after icon falls, America's psyche slips into a deepening funk
Mark Leibovich, Washington Post, June 27, 2002
These are rough times for American icons. Every day brings a fresh shame, pick your category: corporate icons (Arthur Andersen, Merrill Lynch), cultural icons (Martha Stewart), spiritual icons (the Catholic Church), altruistic icons (the Red Cross). This week's revelations that WorldCom, the nation's second-largest long-distance carrier, had overstated its cash flow by $3.8 billion was yet another body blow to our national faith in capitalism triumphant. All of which follows too closely on the destruction of the World Trade Center, the icon of capitalist architecture, and the attendant fear that has settled over Full Alert Nation since Sept. 11.
The time of the terrorist
Patrick Buchanan, WorldNetDaily, June 24, 2002
Whenever Palestinians or Israelis seem to be moving toward the peace table, Hamas snaps that red cape of bloody terror in the face of Ariel Sharon, and Sharon dutifully imitates the raging bull. "We will never negotiate with terrorists and never reward terror," Israelis respond to the latest atrocities. Understandably so. But what Israelis fail to understand is that they are rewarding terror every time they respond in the way Hamas intends them to.
Bush speech seen spurring Mid-East radicals
Alistair Lyon, Reuters, June 26, 2002
If President Bush had aimed to crank the motor of Islamic militancy, his Middle East policy speech was just the job, analysts said. "This is God's gift to Osama bin Laden," said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arab newspaper al-Quds, who has interviewed the Saudi-born militant in the past. "Bush pleased two people -- the ultra-rightwing Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon and the ultra-rightwing fundamentalist bin Laden. He confirmed bin Laden's argument that America is Israel and Israel is America," Atwan said.
Martina Navratilova: U.S. can be as oppressive as a communist state
Kate Connolly, The Guardian, June 27, 2002
The tennis legend Martina Navratilova has hit out at her adoptive homeland, the United States, saying that in some ways it is as manipulative and oppressive as the Czechoslovak communist regime from which she fled 27 years ago.
U.S. CONTINUES CAMPAIGN AGAINST INTERNATIONAL LAW
US threat to Balkans peace force
Ewen MacAskill and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, June 27, 2002
The US is threatening to scupper a Nato-led peacekeeping force in Bosnia from next Monday, as part of its campaign against the International Criminal Court (ICC).
Dynasties
Kevin Phillips, The Nation, July 8, 2002
Politically, we already have a dynasty at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue: the first son ever to take the presidency just eight years after it was held by his father, with the same party label. This dynasticism also has its economic side: both Bushes, père et fils, having been closely involved with the rise of Enron, another first for a presidential family, more on which shortly.
If we lack an official House of Lords, there are Bushes, Tafts, Simons, Rockefellers, Gores, Kennedys and Bayhs out to create a kindred phenomenon. Laura Bush is the only wife of a 1996 or 2000 major-party presidential nominee who has not yet entertained seeking a US Senate seat in her own right. The duchesses of Clinton, Dole and Gore have already considered (or acted).
Bush's faux peace plan for the Middle East
David Corn, The Nation, June 25, 2002
Here's a question for George W. Bush. Do you believe your June 24 speech on the Middle East crisis would give a Palestinian living in a refugee camp--perhaps in a town where Israeli forces shelled a market, killing women and children, and destroyed parts of a hospital--any solace, any hope?
You are sitting on the key
Hanoch Marmari, Ha'aretz, June 26, 2002
Dear Settlers of Judea and Samaria,
The time has come for us to turn to you with a most painful request: to give up the dream you have cultivated for years and come home. Come home of your own free will, not because you are forced to. Come home, recognizing and accepting that this is what must be done. You will be welcomed with open arms.
In the 35 years since the occupation of the territories, you have known times of hope and prosperity, and times of trouble and affliction, but you have always set yourselves apart from the rest of the community. The act of settlement has been the source of bitter controversy since the day you pitched your first tent. You have never enjoyed the blessing of the general public. Convinced of your righteousness, you chose to shut your ears to any rumblings of discontent.
Bush is irrelevant and must go
Ira Chernus, Common Dreams, June 26, 2002
In a major policy shift, I have decided that George W. Bush is irrelevant and must be replaced as leader of the United States. Every week, an American somewhere murders, rapes, or brutalizes a foreigner. I hold the president personally responsible for every such attack.
I wonder why Bush doesn't let Sharon run his press office
Robert Fisk, The Independent, June 26, 2002
Put your flak jackets on, President George Bush has spoken. He wants a regime change in Palestine, just as he wants a regime change in Iraq. He reads the Israeli government press handouts and accurately quotes them to his American people.
News outlets pressed on bias in Mideast coverage
Mark Jurkowitz, Boston Globe, June 26, 2002
From CNN to National Public Radio, from The Washington Post to the Minneapolis Star Tribune, news organizations are coming under intense pressure, primarily from pro-Israeli advocates who are issuing press releases, withholding advertising, and organizing reader boycotts.
Pakistan's president could confront axis of extremists
Tyler Marshall, Los Angeles Times, June 25, 2002
President Pervez Musharraf faces an ominous new challenge to his rule from three Islamic militant groupings that now stand against him, each clearly capable of using violence to bring him down, diplomats and others following developments in Pakistan believe. The presence of an undetermined number of fighters from Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terrorist network who fled to Pakistan last winter after the Taliban regime's collapse in neighboring Afghanistan merely adds to the volatile brew.
Our girl was killed by a suicide bomber.. but it is the terror of Israel's occupation that 's to blame for her death
Alexandra Williams, The Mirror, June 25, 2002
A big red "Free Palestine" sticker has a prominent place on the Elhanan family's front door. But this is not a Palestinian house in the occupied territories. Remarkably, this home is in an affluent Jewish area in Jerusalem and belongs to a couple whose daughter Smadar, 14, was killed by a Palestinian suicide bomber.
Bush strategy aimed at bringing Palestine into house of compliant Arab states
David Hirst, The Guardian, June 26, 2002
To whatever camp they belong - be they "moderates" or "radicals", as the US classifies them - the whole Arab world cannot but regard Bush's policy pronouncement as perhaps the most dramatic display so far of his administration's incorrigible partisanship. "Blind support for Israel", trumpeted one Beirut newspaper; "Sharonian in letter and spirit," said another, "amounting to a US green light for Israel to upgrade its aggression against the Palestinians to include Lebanon and Syria too."
DEMOCRACY FOR PALESTINIANS - FLORIDA-STYLE
COMMENT -- European leaders are dismayed that President Bush claims the right to tell the Palestinian people who they can or cannot have as their leader, but as we all know, the ballot box only has a minor role in George Bush's vision of democracy.
UK rift with Bush over Middle East
Patrick Wintour, Ian Black and Ewen MacAskill, The Guardian, June 26, 2002
Britain, in a rare breach with Washington, aligned itself yesterday with the rest of Europe in expressing dismay over George Bush's Middle East peace plan. It is the first serious rift on foreign policy between Tony Blair and Mr Bush since the Palestinian uprising began 21 months ago. Ahead of a difficult meeting with Mr Bush today at the G8 in Canada, Mr Blair and the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, openly rejected US demands that the Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, stand down. Mr Blair insisted: "It is up to the Palestinians to choose their own leaders."
Another step toward nowhere
Gideon Samet, Ha'aretz, June 26, 2002
There are worthy political plans that are difficult to implement, like the Oslo agreements and the Clinton plan. Then there is the Bush speech, which is talk without suggesting what to do with it. It was an unimplementable menu, full of hopeless conditions, posed not to solve a difficulty but to circumvent it.
Both sides are wrong
Amira Hass, Ha'aretz, June 26, 2002
Today, reports on "Palestinian suffering" are perceived as national treason. Israelis conclude that the suicide attacks are the result of a murderous tendency inherent to the Palestinians, their religion, their mentality. In other words, people turn to bio-religious explanations, not social or historical ones. This is a grave mistake. If one wants to put an end to the terror attacks in general, and to the suicide attacks in particular, one must ask why the majority of the Palestinian population supports them.
George W's bloody folly
Jonathan Freedland, The Guardian, June 26, 2002
That was a fantastic speech. Quite literally, fantastic. George Bush's address on the Middle East, delivered outside the White House on Monday evening, consisted, from beginning to end, of fantasy. It bore so little relation to reality that diplomats around the world spent yesterday shaking their heads in disbelief, before sinking into gloom and despair. Our own Foreign Office tried gamely to spot the odd nugget of sense in the Bush text - but, they admitted, it was an uphill struggle. Israelis committed to a political resolution of the conflict were heartbroken. Even Shimon Peres, foreign minister in Ariel Sharon's coalition, reportedly called the speech "a fatal mistake", warning: "A bloodbath can be expected."
FBI checks out library records of terrorist suspects
Associated Press, USA Today, June 25, 2002
Across the nation, FBI investigators are visiting libraries and checking the reading records of people they suspect of being in league with terrorists, library officials say.
When is a state not a state? When it's Palestinian
William Saletan, Slate, June 24, 2002
The White House keeps asserting that all parties in the conflict support Bush's "vision" of a Palestinian state. It's just that they don't quite agree on how to get there. To maintain this veneer of agreement, the administration avoids specificity. When will the "provisional" state give way to a permanent one? "At some point in the future," says Powell. Who will decide at what point Palestinian reforms are sufficient to merit statehood? "The President will wait … to see if the Palestinian institutions are going to form in a way that gives faith to the President and to the neighborhood that a viable government can be formed," says Fleischer. What is the U.S. agenda for upcoming talks with the parties? "We have remained committed to the concept of moving forward with the concept," says Powell. What immediate results does the United States expect? "The short-term goal is to figure out the way to get to the long-term goal," says Fleischer.
[The complete article]
The reality thing
Paul Krigman, New York Times, June 25, 2002
President George H. W. Bush once confessed that he was somewhat lacking in the "vision thing." His son's advisers don't have that problem: they have a powerful vision for America's future. In that future, we have recently learned, the occupant of the White House will have the right to imprison indefinitely anyone he chooses, including U.S. citizens, without any judicial process or review. But they are rather less interested in the reality thing.
[The complete article - registration required]
US hawks deliver victory to Sharon in battle over Arafat
Phil Reeves, The Independent, June 25, 2002
George Bush finally gave his long-awaited speech on the Israel-Palestinian conflict last night. The document had created acrimonious divisions between the administration's hawks and the State Department. The hawks won.
[The complete article]
Will the war on terrorism follow the path of the Cold War?
Jo Freeman, Counterpunch, June 24, 2002
Since September 11 our government has mobilized for another undeclared war of uncertain duration against an unseen enemy -- this time on terrorism. Like its predecessor, the War on Terrorism aims at a powerful and pernicious enemy who could wreak enormous havoc at any minute. Like the Cold War, the War on Terrorism is being used to justify a variety of security measures which can potentially cause more harm to Americans than anything the enemy can do.
[The complete article]
Sharon, the failed kingmaker
Charles Glass, The Guardian, June 25, 2002
Voices in Israel, including within Ariel Sharon's cabinet, are calling on their prime minister to crown his reconquista of the West Bank by naming a new Palestinian leader. If he does so, it will be his second exercise in Arab kingmaking. The first was 20 years ago in Lebanon. Eighteen years and thousands of dead later, Israelis were as happy to leave as the Lebanese were to see them go.
[The complete article]
One-sided offer that will change nothing
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, June 25, 2002
Hours before President Bush delivered his vision for Middle East peace yesterday, Israeli tanks roared up to the headquarters of Yasser Arafat and a sixth Palestinian town fell under Israeli military occupation. Mr Bush made no mention of either fact. Instead, his promise of a Palestinian state was contingent on a call to Palestinians to overthrow their elected leader, Yasser Arafat, and to create a western-style democracy that exists nowhere else in the Arab world.
[The complete article]
Getting others involved
Mohamed Sid-Ahmed, Al-Ahram, June 20, 2002
The term "provisional state" turns the very notion of statehood on its head. The word state, with all its rich meanings and connotations, is deprived of all content when linked with the word provisional. Moreover, this bizarre appellation indefinitely postpones any content. It refuses the Palestinian Authority's request that a timeline be specified for an end to the occupation and, therefore, for the intermediary stage, and has replaced a fixed timetable for concluding a final status agreement by a performance benchmark system. Though Bush insisted that the Americans rather than the Israelis will determine whether the benchmarks have been met, given Bush's reluctance to inconvenience Sharon in any manner the interim stage could stretch on indefinitely.
[The complete article]
America keeps doing Israel's bidding
Salim Hoss, International Herald Tribune, June 21, 2002
Arabs are dismayed by the fact that American positions concerning the Middle East have in effect been subordinated to Israel's will. The injunction comes from Ariel Sharon, prime minister of Israel, and the accommodation from the American president, George W. Bush. Sharon who suggested a conference on the Middle East. Now this has become an American proposition. It was Sharon who declared that an overhaul of the Palestinian Authority should precede any attempt at resuming peace talks between the Palestinians and Israel. Now this has become an American demand.
[The complete article]
Critics say Bush doctrine might provoke 1st strike
Storer H. Rowley, Chicago Tribune, June 24, 2002
President Bush's emerging doctrine advocating pre-emptive military strikes against America's adversaries or terrorists possessing weapons of mass destruction could lead to unintended, and in some cases disastrous, consequences, defense analysts warn.
[The complete article - registration required]
CONSPIRACY THEORY?
The white van
Were Israelis detained on Sept. 11 spies?
20/20, ABC News, June 21, 2002
Millions saw the horrific images of the World Trade Center attacks, and those who saw them won't forget them. But a New Jersey homemaker saw something that morning that prompted an investigation into five young Israelis and their possible connection to Israeli intelligence.
[The complete article]
Israeli spies cheer as WTC burns – not that there's anything wrong with that, says Barbara Walters
Justin Raimondo, Anti-War.com, June 24, 2002
The stories the American media hopes you forget
WhatReallyHappened.com
Build moral pressure to end the occupation
Desmond Tutu, International Herald Tribune, June 14, 2002
The end of apartheid stands as one of the crowning accomplishments of the last century, but we would not have succeeded without the help of international pressure. There is no greater testament to the basic dignity of ordinary people everywhere than the divestment movement of the 1980s.
A similar movement has taken shape recently, this time aiming at an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. We should hope that average citizens again rise to the occasion, since the obstacles to a renewed movement are surpassed only by its moral urgency.
[The complete article]
Al-Qaeda regroups in Pakistan's no-man's land
Jack Kelley, USA Today, June 24, 2002
Ghulam Khan, Pakistan — For $100, the two barbers in this border village will trim a traveler's hair, shave his beard, give him a set of clothes and help him slip pass checkpoints manned by Pakistani police. Since March, all of their customers — an average of 14 a week —have been al-Qaeda fighters, they say. Despite U.S.-led raids to capture them, up to 1,000 al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters have crossed from Afghanistan into Pakistan's tribal areas since the Taliban regime was ousted in November. Here, in a mountainous no-man's land where Pakistan wields little authority, al-Qaeda fighters have reassembled and are planning new attacks against the West, U.S. officials say.
[The complete article]
Senator Feinstein demands answers from FBI
Report on University of California activities generates 'deep concern'
Seth Rosenfeld, San Francisco Chronicle, June 23, 2002
Documents, obtained during the course of three lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act, show that [in the 1950's and '60's] the FBI campaigned to fire UC President Clark Kerr, conspired with the head of the CIA to pressure the Board of Regents to "eliminate" liberal professors, mounted a covert operation to manipulate public opinion about campus events and to embarrass university officials, and secretly gave Gov. Ronald Reagan's administration intelligence reports it could use against groups engaged in dissent.
[The complete article]
Welcome to the world
Gary Kamiya, Salon, June 22, 2002
One of these days, we're going to win the World Cup. When that day arrives, the rest of the world will no doubt be outraged. Too bad. We will have paid our dues. We will have earned the right to hold that trophy aloft and exult like everyone else. And as our athletes hold that trophy up, if we have learned anything from the World Cup we will celebrate not our God-given superiority as Americans who have now extended our sports hegemony into the last enemy redoubt, but something very different: our ordinariness. We will celebrate the way the sport cut us down to size. We will celebrate the way it took away our advantages -- our money, our facilities, our college gladiator-training factories -- leaving us face to face with our competitors. We will celebrate the sheer dazzling equality of this sport, and our membership in the community of nations, and our humanity.
[The complete article]
War on Iraq is wrong
Editorial, The Nation, July 8, 2002
If the Bush Administration has its way, Iraq will be the first test of its new doctrine of pre-emption, which calls for early unilateral action against enemies suspected of posing a threat to America. For the United States, the world's military and economic superpower, to abandon a defensive, international-law stance and adopt such a destabilizing strategy is profoundly contrary to our interests and endangers our security. What was once the frothing of right-wing ideologues is now on the verge of becoming national policy. Yet we hear no opposition from leading Democrats either regarding the new doctrine--which will alienate allies and makes us even more hated around the world, and will be used by other nations as a pretext for settling their own scores--or regarding its specific application in Iraq. Instead, the Administration gained several influential supporters for an Iraqi regime change, including House minority leader Richard Gephardt and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle.
[The complete article]
The West is walking away from Afghanistan - again
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, June 24, 2002
When it came to sharing jobs in President Hamid Karzai's new government a balance was struck between the country's main ethnic groups, the Tajiks and the Pashtun. But on the major issue of whether Afghanistan will be run by educated people with a vision of democratic development, the loya jirga was a disaster. The struggle between the modernisers and the old mojahedin leaders was won decisively by the latter. Men responsible for the mayhem of the early 1990s hogged the microphones to boast of their role in resisting Soviet occupation but ignored the more recent destruction they caused and the fact that ordinary Afghans despise them as reactionary warlords. They forced their fundamentalist views of Islam on to the assembly, demanding - and getting from Karzai - the right to call the government "Islamic". A chief justice was appointed who believes in a strict interpretation of sharia law. The minister for women's affairs was denounced as "Afghanistan's Salman Rushdie"
[The complete article]
VENGEANCE
COMMENT -- When George Bush launched his war on terrorism, he made it clear that this war would have a scope of his choosing when he included the clause, "...and those who harbor them." This would be a war not just against terrorists but also those who share their company. Bush's supporters described this as simply a pragmatic, practical approach to dealing with terrorism. What they refused to acknowledge was that they were implicitly sanctioning vengeance. The Israeli government is now attempting to institute a policy of expelling the families of terrorists. (It has had a long-standing practice of bulldozing their homes.) Who can argue that wittingly or not, these families have harbored terrorists and that Israel is yet again putting into practice the Bush Doctrine. But if this really is a doctrine, why should its province be exclusive to terrorism? Why should the spouse of a murderer not also face trial?
It's called "guilt by association" and it's a cornerstone of the Bush Doctrine. If it is morally and legally indefensible, isn't it time that it be treated as such?
IDF set to expel bombers' families
Aluf Benn, Amos Harel and Gideon Alon, Ha'aretz, June 23, 2002
The cabinet decided in principle in favor both of the expulsion of families of suicide strikers from the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, and of the expulsion of terror operatives from the territories. The implementation of this expulsion policy depends upon the outcome of a legal review.
[The complete article]
Israel to deport the families of suicide bombers
Peter Beaumont, The Guardian, June 24, 2002
US cartoonists under pressure to follow the patriotic line
Andrew Buncombe, The Independent, June 23, 2002
Nine months after the attacks of 11 September, leading American political cartoonists say they are under intense pressure to conform to a patriotic stereotype and not criticise the actions of Mr Bush and his "war on terror". Those who refuse to bend to such pressure face having their work rejected, being fired or even publicly humiliated by the President's press secretary. Last month the veteran TV anchor Dan Rather sparked controversy when he said the patriotism engulfing the country had stopped the media asking difficult questions of America's leaders, and admitted he personally was guilty of such self-censorship. Now cartoonists, often the most biting political commentators of all, say they are feeling the same pressures. Excessive patriotic zeal exerted by editors and publishers means that many "progressive" cartoonists are having their work dropped. Some, especially those who work for smaller newspapers or who are freelance, are engaging in self-censorship to ensure their work gets used.
[The complete article]
ISRAELI ARMY ON THE RAMPAGE
In Jenin, hospital officials recount a costly operation
John Ward Anderson and Molly Moore, Washington Post, June 21, 2002
Hospital workers said the Israeli troops threw a grenade into the building's foyer and sprayed it with automatic-rifle fire, blew up the safe and the door to the electrical wiring closet in the basement, and demolished the laundry room with heavy machine-gun fire that ripped through the wall from a tank outside. The rounds destroyed a $13,600 washer, dryer and iron from Denmark that were so new they were still in their shipping containers.
"A soldier pounded the [laundry] machine and said, 'This is not more important than 20 persons killed in Jerusalem,' " referring to a suicide bus attack Tuesday, according to Ali Jabarin, vice chairman of the hospital.
"He was a terrorist, but you are not a terrorist," Jabarin said he replied, pleading with troops not to damage the building and its contents. "You are a soldier . . . and this is a hospital."
[The complete article]
Head of Sept. 11 probe allegedly obstructed Danforth's Waco inquiry
Richard Leiby and Dana Priest, Washington Post, June 22, 2002
The official in charge of ferreting out information about the FBI for a joint congressional intelligence panel allegedly obstructed a Justice Department probe of the bureau two years ago. As the FBI's deputy general counsel, Thomas A. Kelley was the bureau's point of contact for special counsel John C. Danforth's inquiry into the 1993 Waco debacle in which 75 Branch Davidians died in a fire after a 51-day standoff. Kelley, who has since retired from the FBI, heads the intelligence panel's probe of the bureau's role in tracking terrorists before the Sept. 11 attacks. According to a December 2000 internal FBI memo, Kelley "continued to thwart and obstruct" the Waco investigation to the point that Danforth was forced to send a team to search FBI headquarters for documents Kelley refused to turn over. "This non-cooperative spirit was at the specific direction of [deputy general counsel] Kelley," the memo states. The memo, written by an agent in the bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility, is cited in a letter sent to the intelligence committee leadership by Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa). The letter was obtained yesterday by The Washington Post. "I am concerned that Mr. Kelley is part of this review," Grassley wrote.
[The complete article]
Fatal vision: how Bush has given up on peace
Robert Fisk, The Independent, June 23, 2002
Just a week ago, as we all know, Mr Bush had another of his famous "visions". They started in the autumn of last year when he had a vision of a Palestinian state living side by side with Israel. This particular vision coincided quite by chance, of course, with his efforts to keep the Arab states quiescent while America bombed the poorest and most ruined Muslim country in the world. Then this dream was forgotten for a few months until, earlier this year, Vice President Dick Cheney toured the Middle East to drum up Arab support for another war on Iraq. The Arabs tried to tell Cheney that there was already a rather dramatic little war going on in the region. And what happened? George Bush suddenly had his vision thing again.
Now, however, after six visits to the United States by Ariel Sharon – and after Bush was totally ignored by the Israelis when he demanded an immediate end to the West Bank invasion and an end to the siege of Palestinian towns – the President has had yet another vision, a rather scaled-down version of the earlier one. Now he dreams of an interim Palestinian state. It is a sign of how obedient American journalists have become that not one US newspaper has seen this for the preposterous notion it really is. The great American newspapers – I'm talking about their physical bulk not their contents – tiresomely pontificate on the divisions within the American administration on the Middle East. Or they ask whether there's a Middle East policy at all: there is not, of course. But the ideas of this US administration, however vacuous or simply laughable, continue to be treated with an almost sacred quality in the American press and on television.
[The complete article]
They come here to live... and, if God wills it, to die
Peter Beaumont, The Observer, June 23, 2002
Jewish settlers have borne the brunt of recent terror attacks. Yet still they cling on to occupied Palestinian land, blocking moves towards peace. Peter Beaumont finds out why they are so determined to stay.
[The complete article]
Bush at bay
Ed Vulliamy, The Observer, June 23, 2002
The invitation arrived at the White House a few days before last week's historic World Cup victory by the United States over Mexico. It was from the Mexican President Vincente Fox, suggesting that President George Bush and he watch the game together, as a gesture of friendship between neighbouring nations. The reply came, from a member of Bush's staff: the President would be asleep at that hour of the night. It mattered little, since most of his nation was likewise in slumber - but the rebuff spoke volumes to columnists and Washington DC observers about the clueless, crassly selfish quality of a President and a presidency which are suddenly lurching, rather than governing, at the apex of American power.
[The complete article]
Listening to Ted Turner
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, June 23, 2002
Deep in our hearts we are perhaps beginning to understand that we, too, have a part in the deterioration that has brought us and the Palestinians to our present state, which is more fraught with despair than anything in the past, and to which our only response is to attack.
[The complete article]
Send more teaspoons
Doron Rosenblum, Ha'aretz, June 23, 2002
With what surprising indifference we received the chilling conclusion of the FBI and CIA - published in The New York Times - that America's war against Qaida in Afghanistan has actually failed. Not only did the indiscriminate revenge and carpet bombings not eliminate terror, but in fact they may have doubled the threat. The terror organizations have apparently branched out and turned into a global jihad movement, with 10 times more motivation to seek vengeance and wreak destruction.
Since we worked so hard to draw a parallel between our war against terrorism and America's war in Afghanistan, this conclusion should be all the more disturbing to us. In our equation, we were America and the Palestinian Authority was Qaida. But when the Pentagon admits defeat, what are little we (and the mighty Uzi Landau) to do? Apply more force? Drop more bombs?
[The complete article]
U.S. signal is turning green as Sharon weighs a blow against Syria
Geoffrey Aronson, Los Angeles Times, June 21, 2002
While public attention in the United States and elsewhere is riveted to the latest maneuvers in the stalemated Israeli-Palestinian conflict, something far more significant may be brewing on Israel's northern frontier. For the first time since then-Defense Minister Ariel Sharon, under a benevolent American eye, led Israel's star-crossed invasion of Lebanon in 1982, there are growing indications that a U.S. president has given Israel a green light to attack targets on Syrian soil if the on-again-off-again battle between Israel and Hezbollah intensifies.
[The complete article - registration required]
Of lies and oil
David Martin, Counterpunch, June 21, 2002
After years of working to end the sanctions against Iraq, Rahul Mahajan has emerged as a leading voice of dissent in these conformist times. He has critiqued the mainstream media's coverage of the so-called "war on terrorism" in an article for the media watch group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and even more extensively in his new book. With the recent barrage of news stories about what happened before 9-11 and the new warnings of future attacks, the Current interviewed Mahajan to see if he could clarify some of the realities behind the mainstream media myths.
[The complete article]
Shoppers killed as Israeli tank opens fire in market
Phil Reeves, The Independent, June 22, 2002
At least three Palestinians – including two children – were killed yesterday when an Israeli tank fired shells into a West Bank market place in what army officials said was an attempt to disperse a crowd of people breaking the curfew. The killings in Jenin came after Israeli troops invaded the town in response to a surge of Palestinian attacks in which 33 Israelis, mainly civilians, have been killed in three days. Atrocities and despair have engulfed the region anew, overshadowing the latest frail American initiative even before President George Bush has unveiled it to the outside world. The bloodshed in Jenin came less than a day after a Palestinian from the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades militia infiltrated a Jewish settlement near Nablus, broke into a house and shot dead five people, including a mother and three of her children inside their home.
[The complete article]
Civil wrongs
Maya Jaggi, The Guardian, June 22, 2002
Since September 11, President Bush's war on terror has highlighted issues of immigration, nationality, race and culture, and widened the divide between 'insiders' and 'outsiders'. And what that means, according to law professor and author Patricia Williams, is that a great many Americans have more to fear than ever.
[The complete article]
U.S. increasing its military dominance, reports show
Jim Lobe, OneWorld, June 21, 2002
Led by sharp increases in the United States defense budget, particularly since last September 11, the world appears to be on a course toward growing militarization, according to recent reports on global military trends.
[The complete article]
The Bush doctrine
Richard Wolffe, Financial Times, June 20, 2002
In burying the cold war doctrines, Mr Bush and his national security team are running head first into the clearest foreign policy principles of the Reagan administration. As the Reagan cabinet pursued containment and deterrence against the Soviet Union, it definitively rejected pre-emption.
When the last pre-emptive military strike was launched to destroy Iraq's nuclear ambitions, the US had no hesitation in condemning the Israelis for bombing the Osirak reactor in 1981. Jeane Kirkpatrick, then US representative to the United Nations, said: "I don't think anybody in the whole cabinet believed in the use of pre-emptive force and that is why we condemned Israel."
[The complete article]
Israeli settlers rampage after blood-soaked week
Phil Reeves, The Independent, June 22, 2002
Armed Israeli settlers appeared to have taken the law into their own hands yesterday by raiding a West Bank town as divisions emerged within the Israeli government over how to respond to the latest wave of Palestinian attacks.
[The complete article]
They hate women, don't they?
Arzu Merali, The Guardian, June 21, 2002
Muslim women have become an absolute symbol of oppression, and distorted images of them permeate news coverage. While Daisy Cutters began to thunder down on Afghans last year, journalists from across the political spectrum - from Boris Johnson in the Telegraph to Polly Toynbee on these pages - maintained that it was Islam that oppressed Afghan women. Beware Muslims, they screamed in their unlikely unanimity. They hate women, don't they? [...]
While the gap between Muslims and the west is widening the most striking feature of each other's critiques of their treatment of women is the lack of dissimilarity. Violence, workplace discrimination, educational opportunity and a desire for basic respect from men are universal issues.
[The complete article]
Martyrdom missions: To what end?
A growing debate in Palestinian society
Muntaser Hamdan, Jerusalem Times, June 13, 2002
While Israel continues to escalate military preparedness to thwart possible martyrdom missions in Israeli cities, a heated debate is brewing among the Palestinians as to the usefulness, timing and location of such missions and also the fact that the missions target Israeli civilians.
[The complete article]
The new suicide bombers
James Bennet, New York Times, June 21, 2002
The range of recruits to suicide missions continues to broaden in often bewildering ways. This week, Israel's forces arrested a 12-year-old Palestinian boy its intelligence had identified as planning an attack. Dr. Iyad Sarraj, a Palestinian psychiatrist in Gaza City, has watched the trend toward suicide bombing with growing alarm. He said that having grown up with the idea of suicide attacks, Palestinian children were equating death with power. "They are creating a new kind of culture," he said, arguing that they were in part compensating for the powerlessness of their parents in the face of the restrictions and frequent humiliations of Israeli occupation.
[The complete article - registration required]
WAR!
WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
When William Bennett, James Woolsey, Frank Gaffney and their buddies founded Americans for Victory Over Terrorism, they promised to "take to task those who blame America first and who do not understand -- or who are unwilling to defend -- our fundamental principles." Early indications are that they haven't been winning the battle on America's college campuses. Only a paltry 5% of students surveyed strongly agree that "the values of the U.S. are superior to those of other nations." 57% believe the policies of the United States are "at least somewhat responsible" for the September 11th terrorist attacks.
The results of the AVOT survey.
Among the many noteworthy findings of the survey is that there is a direct correlation between church attendance and the willingness to die for America - one more reason for the neocons to keep chipping away at that pesky old wrinkle in the Constitution that stipulates a separation between Church and State. More discussion on the survey's findings is provided at Christian Science Monitor.
The warlords win in Kabul
Omar Zakhilwal and Adeen Niazi, New York Times, June 21, 2002
On the final night of the loya jirga, more than 1,500 delegates gathered for the unveiling of the new cabinet. Our hearts sank when we heard President Hamid Karzai pronounce one name after another. A woman activist turned to us in disbelief: "This is worse than our worst expectations. The warlords have been promoted and the professionals kicked out. Who calls this democracy?"
[The complete article - registration required]
Cheney's silence says plenty
Juan Andrade, Chicago Sun-Times, June 14, 2002
When Cheney suddenly popped up, I couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. It didn't take more than a few minutes of watching Cheney that I knew Bush and his bush-league intelligence team had screwed up. Cheney is Bush's pit bull. When Cheney senses danger, he puts on his fighting face, characterized by his snarling monotone manner of speaking, barely opening his mouth and using only one side to deliver his bite.
[The complete article]
U.S. aid to Israel subsidizes a potent weapons exporter
Jim Krane (AP), Boston Globe, June 19, 2002
In France, Turkey, The Netherlands and Finland, Israeli companies have edged such U.S. firms as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman and General Atomics out of arms deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars in recent years. The irony, experts say, is that tens of billions of U.S. tax dollars and transfers of American military technology helped create and nurture Israel's industry, in effect subsidizing a foreign competitor. No other country receives as much U.S. aid or freedom to plow it into its own export industries as Israel, say experts in academia, industry and the U.S. government.
[The complete article]
Peace through 'de-occupation'
Michael Tarazi, Washington Post, June 19, 2002
After 35 years of Israeli occupation, most Palestinians roll their eyes at the mention of the phrase "interim agreement" -- and with good reason. Interim agreements are Israel's way of tossing the Palestinians a few bones, such as the right to design postage stamps or issue license plates -- while Israel continues to confiscate Palestinian land and build more illegal Israeli colonies. In other words, interim agreements are Israel's way of prolonging its occupation of Palestinian territory, not ending it. This is why Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon keeps talking of a "long-term" interim agreement -- and why Palestinians will have none of it.
[The complete article]
Hamas history tied to Israel
Richard Sale, UPI, June 18, 2002
Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.
[The complete article]
The art of war
J. Hoberman, Village Voice, June 19, 2002
Not since the flurry of Vietnam movies in the late 1980s has the combat film been so viable or so visible. And not since the gung ho Reagan-era warnography of Rambo and Top Gun has the brass been as pleased. Vice President Dick Cheney took a breather from his undisclosed location to join Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld at the gala Washington premiere of Black Hawk Down, the first movie for which (thanks to Rumsfeld's personal intervention) U.S. troops were dispatched to a foreign country to aid in its production.
[The complete article]
Christian Science Monitor report published August 14, 2001
A suicide bomber's world
Cameron W. Barr
The Monitor has interviewed Palestinian militants involved in suicide bombings, a young man who has considered carrying out such an operation, the father of a deceased bomber, and some Israelis who were affected by one attack. The following accounts offer a closer look at this form of violence - the motivations of its perpetrators and the experiences of its victims.
[The complete article]
Isn't democracy worth it?
Bob Herbert, New York Times, June 17, 2002
Mr. Padilla, an American citizen, has been sucked into a procedural black hole in which he no longer has any legal rights. This is a new and dangerous region that is outside the public's view and, for the time being at least, beyond the reach of the Constitution. If left unchecked, this contempt for the law and due process could pose more of a threat to our way of life than Al Qaeda.
[The complete article - registration required]
Palestinian intellectuals call for end to suicide attacks
Reuters, Ha'aretz, June 20, 2002
A group of Palestinian intellectuals urged Palestinian militants Wednesday to halt attacks on civilians inside Israel, saying they hindered Palestinian aspirations for independence. "We urge those behind military attacks against civilians inside Israel to reconsider their positions and to stop pushing our youth to carry out these attacks, which only result in deepening hatred between the two peoples," said the 55-member group in a full-page advertisement in the al-Quds Arabic daily.
[The complete article]
Rebuilding Afghanistan: Promises, promises, promises
Stephanie Salter, San Francisco Chronicle, June 19, 2002
Over the past two decades, as their wild and once-beautiful country has been wrecked by a revolving cast of super-powers, religious fanatics and thugs, the people of Afghanistan have been promised much. Almost nothing has been delivered, a reality that hovered like the proverbial dark cloud over the lofty speeches and ambitious plans of the recent loya jirga. This time, thanks to eight months of hunting Osama bin Laden with jets and bombs, the promise-makers are we. But, as Abdul Azimi, a law professor, told the Los Angeles Times last week:
"A lot of Afghan people are still not sure if the United States is sincere this time or will disappear after a year or two when the first part of its goals are achieved."
[The complete article]
U.S. RESERVES ITS RIGHT TO ENGAGE IN WAR CRIMES
US demands immunity for its peacekeepers
Oliver Burkeman, The Guardian, June 20, 2002
America has infuriated its allies at the United Nations by threatening to keep US troops out of peacekeeping forces unless they are granted a blanket immunity from prosecution by the International Criminal Court, which comes into being next month.
[The complete article]
The curse of the infidel
Karen Armstrong, The Guardian, June 20, 2002
On July 15 1099, the crusaders from western Europe conquered Jerusalem, falling upon its Jewish and Muslim inhabitants like the avenging angels from the Apocalypse. In a massacre that makes September 11 look puny in comparison, some 40,000 people were slaughtered in two days. A thriving, populous city had been transformed into a stinking charnel house. Yet in Europe scholar monks hailed this crime against humanity as the greatest event in world history since the crucifixion of Christ.
[The complete article]
Is America the New Roman Empire?
Michael Lind, The Globalist, June 19, 2002
In the past, parallels between Imperial Rome and Imperial America were primarily drawn by leftists or right-wing isolationists. They thought that U.S. power politics corrupted the world, the American republic — or both. What is new since the terrorist attacks of 9/11 is the embrace of U.S. imperialism by many mainstream voices as something desirable and defensible.
[The complete article]
Occupation without end
Bradley Burston, Ha'aretz, June 19, 2002
Throwing down the gauntlet of conquering Palestinian Authority lands again in response to suicide bombings, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has sparked charges that his proposal means no less than a return to permanent occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
In a dramatic, dead-of-night announcement following one of the bloodiest suicide bus attacks on record, the heads of the parties that make up Sharon's ruling coalition declared early Wednesday that Israel would henceforth reply to every Palestinian terror attack by seizing PA territory, "which will be held for as long as the terror continues." Additional terrorist attacks, the statement warned, "will bring about the capture of additional territories."
For the past 18 months, Israel has consistently maintained that it had "no interest in remaining in Area A" - the regions specified by past peace accords as under formal PA rule - and that its troops would withdraw from these areas as soon as their specific, limited missions there had been completed.
Sources said right-wing cabinet ministers - many of whom still nurse hopes of a return to the concept of Greater Israel, Israeli dominion over all of the West Bank and Gaza Strip - left the meeting with little-disguised satisfaction.
[The complete article]
Islam has a progressive tradition too
Hamza Yusuf, The Guardian, June 19, 2002
When a Welsh resistance leader was captured and brought before the emperor in Rome, he said: "Because you desire to conquer the world, it does not necessarily follow that the world desires to be conquered by you." Today one could offer an echo of this sentiment to western liberals: "Because you wish your values to prevail throughout the world, it does not always follow that the world wishes to adopt them." The imperial voice is based on ignorance of the rich traditions of other civilisations, and on an undue optimism about what the west is doing to the world politically, economically and environmentally.
[The complete article]
Behind 'plot' on Hussein, a secret agenda
Scott Ritter, Los Angeles Times, June 19, 2002
President Bush has reportedly authorized the CIA to use all of the means at its disposal--including U.S. military special operations forces and CIA paramilitary teams--to eliminate Iraq's Saddam Hussein. According to reports, the CIA is to view any such plan as "preparatory" for a larger military strike. Congressional leaders from both parties have greeted these reports with enthusiasm. In their rush to be seen as embracing the president's hard-line stance on Iraq, however, almost no one in Congress has questioned why a supposedly covert operation would be made public, thus undermining the very mission it was intended to accomplish.
[The complete article - registration required]
A legal tool emerges in terror war
Warren Richey, Christian Science Monitor, June 19, 2002
Since the terror attacks on Sept. 11, the so-called material-witness statute has emerged as a key – and highly controversial – weapon in the legal arsenal being used to wage the Bush administration's war against terrorism in America's homeland.
[The complete article]
Court jousters
A small cartel of conservative lawyers rewrites the American rule
James Ridgeway, Village Voice, June 19, 2002
Behind the Bush Administration's attack on civil rights in the name of war lurks the network of attorneys crafting laws for a new America. Their hodgepodge of rules and statutes either now or soon will remake the nation, providing local police with sweeping federal authority, pushing the military and CIA directly into everyday domestic politics, and sanctioning indefinite detention without a charge or even a court hearing. Immigration policy already has disintegrated into the random search and arrest of anyone with dark skin. College students are to be singled out on the basis of ethnic background and required to carry special identity papers. In the rather near future, all citizens will be registered in a national database that includes criminal records, welfare payments, delinquent loans, credit card debt, and so on. Committees of local vigilantes are on the way to being sanctioned as legitimate militias assigned to root out terrorists, just as the Ku Klux Klan was after the Civil War. These are not distant ideas out of George Orwell, but real laws and practices about to be put in place.
[The complete article]
Code of quiet
The secret war on whistle-blowers
Geoffrey Gray, Village Voice, June 19, 2002
"The FBI never fires whistle-blowers, directly," says psychiatric social worker Don Soeken. In the late '70s, Soeken worked for the U.S. Public Health Service, and his job was to perform "fitness for duty" examinations for federal employees whose supervisors thought they were mentally unstable. But Soeken noticed something curious about his clientele. All his patients seemed to be whistle-blowers, Soeken says, and he was asked to label the muckrakers mentally unfit, giving the government the green light to dismiss them. Soeken refused. He then became a whistle-blower himself, reporting the shameful practice to Congress, and now helps whistle-blowers recover on a farm in West Virginia. He calls it the Whistlestop. "There's only one commandment in the FBI," says one of his patients, Fred Whitehurst. "Thou shall not say anything bad about the FBI."
[The complete article]
Tension down, danger high
Sadanand Dhume and Joanna Slater, Far Eastern Economic Review, June 20, 2002
[The Indian soldier] doesn't see anybody, but the stillness of the scorching afternoon is deceptive. At any minute, either side can let loose a barrage of artillery or heavy machine-gun fire. The soldier smiles wryly when a visitor asks him whether the situation has calmed down after a flurry of Western diplomatic visits to New Delhi and Islamabad. "Maybe in Delhi," he says. "Not here."
[The complete article]
Palestinians offer peace proposal with concessions
Karen DeYoung, Washington Post, June 18, 2002
The Palestinian Authority has presented the Bush administration with the written outline of a peace proposal with concessions over two of the most contentious Arab-Israeli issues, the status of Jerusalem and refugees, while insisting that Israel retreat to its pre-1967 borders for the formation of a Palestinian state.
[The complete article]
A changed president -- or a new repression?
FAIR, June 17, 2002
FAIR reports on the protests against Bush at Ohio State University that the Washington Post failed to report.
[The complete article]
The "Turn Your Back on Bush" campaign is presented here.
'We were better off under the Russians'
Michael Ware, Time, June 17, 2002
The Allies are still on the hunt in Afghanistan—and the locals aren't happy.
[The complete article]
Before Baghdad burns
Laura Miller, Salon, June 18, 2002
The author of a new book on Iraq cautions that a U.S. invasion to get rid of Saddam Hussein could be even more dangerous than his weapons of mass destruction.
[The complete article]
Gunning for Saddam - but is the CIA capable of riggering his demise?
David Usborne, The Independent, June 18, 2002
So dismal was the image of the CIA when it turned 50 in 1997 that voices were raised in Washington including those of two former directors that it be dismantled and a new intelligence body be built from scratch. That didn't happen. It is ironic that since 11 September, when its worst failure of all protecting America from foreign terror was exposed, the agency has been given new and multiplied burdens, notably hunting al-Qa'ida and now toppling President Saddam.
[The complete article]
Iraq and ruin
Toppling Saddam Hussein still tops George Bush's 'to do' list - how to achieve it is another matter
Brian Whitaker, The Guardian, June 17, 2002
Since the early days of the Bush administration, its policy on Iraq has been absolutely clear: Saddam must be removed, by force if necessary. What is less clear is the rationale for the use of force to do so. The usual justifications, cited by both Democrat and Republican members of Congress, are Iraq's alleged pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and violations of United Nations resolutions and international law. But the trouble with this is that the same arguments can be applied to Israel, though there are no US plans to bomb Tel Aviv or depose Ariel Sharon. Israel actually has nuclear weapons, whereas Iraq - so far as anyone knows - is still trying to acquire them. In terms of flouting UN resolutions and international law, many would argue that Israel's behaviour is a more serious threat to international stability, at the present time, than that of Iraq.
[The complete article]
For '60s activists, fear of old abuses in new FBI powers
Wayne Washington, Boston Globe, June 17, 2002
The FBI's counterintelligence programs on civil rights advocates, black radicals, and pacifists - code-named Cointelpro - generated a backlash after they came to light in the early 1970s. That backlash led to restrictions on how agents could conduct surveillance, how long they could conduct it, and who could be the subject of such surveillance. Sept. 11, however, has provided federal officials with the motivation for a return to domestic surveillance.
[The complete article]
Restoring the imperial presidency
Bruce Shapiro, Salon, June 17, 2002
With the political aftershocks of Sept. 11 only now beginning to be felt in Washington, it's especially important to recall the real lessons of Watergate. Thirty years on, it is easy to forget that "Watergate" was really misleading shorthand: It was shorthand not only for the 1972 break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters and Nixon's subsequent coverup of campaign shenanigans, but also for a vast array of domestic spying and other executive-branch abuses, which the Nixon crew perfected but did not invent. It is fashionable now to blame Watergate on Nixon's paranoia and rogue personality. But the crimes of Watergate grew directly from the kind of unchecked presidential powers now sought by the Bush administration both at home and abroad.
[The complete article]
Why a first strike will surely backfire
William A. Galston, Washington Post, June 16, 2002
As the White House moves closer to a brand-new security doctrine that supports preemptive attacks against hostile states or terrorists that have chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, Iraq would be first on its list of targets. [...] [H]ardly anyone in either party [Democrat or Republican] is debating the long-term diplomatic consequences of a move against Iraq that is opposed by many of our staunchest friends. Fewer still have raised the most fundamental point: A global strategy based on the new Bush doctrine means the end of the system of international institutions, laws and norms that the United States has worked for more than half a century to build.
What is at stake is nothing less than a fundamental shift in America's place in the world. Rather than continuing to serve as first among equals in the postwar international system, the United States would act as a law unto itself, creating new rules of international engagement without agreement by other nations.
[The complete article]
Citizens, combatants and the constitution
Laurence H. Tribe, New York Times, June 16, 2002
The case of Mr. Padilla, who is a suspect in a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in the United States, rightly concerns many civil libertarians. All citizens have the right to know the reasons they are being held, and if no adequate reasons are forthcoming, to be promptly released. If they are charged with a crime, they have the constitutional right to a speedy trial. But demanding a trial in these circumstances, where someone like Mr. Padilla would almost surely be found guilty, carries a high cost for civil liberties: it would stretch the meaning of already elastic concepts like criminal conspiracy to the point of creating what would amount to thought crimes.
[The complete article - registration required]
ExxonMobil-sponsored terrorism?
David Corn, The Nation, June 14, 2002
The lawsuit against Exxon Mobil [facing charges made by villagers in the Aceh province of Indonesia] had been moving along slowly (as is normal) in a Washington federal court but took a turn that could threaten its continuation. At a hearing in April, federal district judge Louis Oberdorfer asked the oil company's attorneys whether the State Department had expressed an interest in the matter. Martin Weinstein, an Exxon Mobil lawyer, said that "this is a very difficult time in Indonesian-American relations" because al Qaeda fighters are residing in that large Muslim nation. He argued that if the judge allowed the lawsuit to proceed, Oberdorfer "would be forced to judge the conduct of the Indonesian government, an ally with whom America's relationship has never been more important, in order to determine whether the allegations in this complaint are those of murder or legitimate warfare against fundamentalist insurgents trying to break a country apart by bombings and other terrorist activities." That is, Exxon Mobil was saying the judge might end up interfering with the war on terrorism. Weinstein suggested Oberdorfer contact the State Department and ask for its advice on how to handle the case.
[The complete article]
Burning the Oslo candle at both ends
Gideon Levy, Ha'aretz, June 16, 2002
In Operation Defensive Shield, Israel not only destroyed the security services of the Palestinian Authority, but also a large part of its civilian infrastructure. As a result, the population is now facing a situation it has never experienced before: There is no governing body that deals with daily affairs. The civil administration of old is gone, and the Palestinian Authority has basically been destroyed. Who is in charge of sanitation? Who supplies water? Who runs the schools and the welfare system? Israel says it's the PA's responsibility, but in practice, it does not allow the Authority to do its work.
[The complete article]
A dirty bomb from Pakistan? Or a dirty trick from Washington?
Rupert Cornwall, The Independent, June 16, 2002
It sure sent a jolt through the United States. Yet last week's much ballyhooed arrest of the "dirty bomb" suspect Jose Padilla now seems, like other developments in the "war against terror", to have been a political device of the Bush administration – designed to distract attention from US intelligence failures and solidify support behind President Bush.
[The complete article]
Palestinian elections now
Edward Said, Al-Ahram, June 13, 2002
The major interests in Palestinian society, those that have kept life going, from the trade unions, to health workers, teachers, farmers, lawyers, doctors, in addition to all the many NGOs must now become the basis on which Palestinian reform -- despite Israel's incursions and the occupation -- is to be constructed. It seems to me useless to wait for Arafat, or Europe, or the US, or the Arabs to do this: it must absolutely be done by Palestinians themselves by way of a Constituent Assembly that contains in it all the major elements of Palestinian society. Only such a group, constructed by the people themselves and not by the remnants of the Oslo dispensation, certainly not by the shabby fragments of Arafat's discredited Authority, can hope to succeed in re- organising society from the ruinous, indeed catastrophically incoherent condition in which it is to be found.
[The complete article]
Not In Our Name
A Statement of Conscience
Let it not be said that people in the United States did nothing when their government declared a war without limit and instituted stark new measures of repression.
The signers of this statement call on the people of the U.S. to resist the policies and overall political direction that have emerged since September 11, 2001, and which pose grave dangers to the people of the world.
We believe that peoples and nations have the right to determine their own destiny, free from military coercion by great powers. We believe that all persons detained or prosecuted by the United States government should have the same rights of due process. We believe that questioning, criticism, and dissent must be valued and protected. We understand that such rights and values are always contested and must be fought for.
We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do -- we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our own name. Thus we call on all Americans to RESIST the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral, and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world.
We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11, 2001. We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the terrible scenes of carnage -- even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City, and, a generation ago, Vietnam. We too joined the anguished questioning of millions of Americans who asked why such a thing could happen.
But the mourning had barely begun, when the highest leaders of the land unleashed a spirit of revenge. They put out a simplistic script of "good vs. evil" that was taken up by a pliant and intimidated media. They told us that asking why these terrible events had happened verged on treason. There was to be no debate. There were by definition no valid political or moral questions. The only possible answer was to be war abroad and repression at home.
In our name, the Bush administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere and anytime. The brutal repercussions have been felt from the Philippines to Palestine, where Israeli tanks and bulldozers have left a terrible trail of death and destruction. The government now openly prepares to wage all-out war on Iraq -- a country which has no connection to the horror of September 11. What kind of world will this become if the U.S. government has a blank check to drop commandos, assassins, and bombs wherever it wants?
In our name, within the U.S., the government has created two classes of people: those to whom the basic rights of the U.S. legal system are at least promised, and those who now seem to have no rights at all. The government rounded up over 1,000 immigrants and detained them in secret and indefinitely. Hundreds have been deported and hundreds of others still languish today in prison. This smacks of the infamous concentration camps for Japanese-Americans in World War 2. For the first time in decades, immigration procedures single out certain nationalities for unequal treatment.
In our name, the government has brought down a pall of repression over society. The President's spokesperson warns people to "watch what they say." Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked, and suppressed. The so-called Patriot Act -- along with a host of similar measures on the state level -- gives police sweeping new powers of search and seizure, supervised if at all by secret proceedings before secret courts.
In our name, the executive has steadily usurped the roles and functions of the other branches of government. Military tribunals with lax rules of evidence and no right to appeal to the regular courts are put in place by executive order. Groups are declared "terrorist" at the stroke of a presidential pen.
We must take the highest officers of the land seriously when they talk of a war that will last a generation and when they speak of a new domestic order. We are confronting a new openly imperial policy towards the world and a domestic policy that manufactures and manipulates fear to curtail rights.
There is a deadly trajectory to the events of the past months that must be seen for what it is and resisted. Too many times in history people have waited until it was too late to resist.
President Bush has declared: "you're either with us or against us." Here is our answer: We refuse to allow you to speak for all the American people. We will not give up our right to question. We will not hand over our consciences in return for a hollow promise of safety. We say NOT IN OUR NAME. We refuse to be party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies; we will show our solidarity in word and deed.
We who sign this statement call on all Americans to join together to rise to this challenge. We applaud and support the questioning and protest now going on, even as we recognize the need for much, much more to actually stop this juggernaut. We draw inspiration from the Israeli reservists who, at great personal risk, declare "there IS a limit" and refuse to serve in the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.
We also draw on the many examples of resistance and conscience from the past of the United States: from those who fought slavery with rebellions and the underground railroad, to those who defied the Vietnam war by refusing orders, resisting the draft, and standing in solidarity with resisters.
Let us not allow the watching world today to despair of our silence and our failure to act. Instead, let the world hear our pledge: we will resist the machinery of war and repression and rally others to do everything possible to stop it.
Michael Albert
Laurie Anderson
Edward Asner, actor
Rosalyn Baxandall, historian
Russell Banks, writer
Jessica Blank, actor/playwright
Medea Benjamin, Global Exchange
William Blum, author
Theresa Bonpane, executive director, Office of the Americas
Blase Bonpane, director, Office of the Americas
Fr. Bob Bossie, SCJ
Leslie Cagan
Henry Chalfant, author/filmmaker
Bell Chevigny, writer
Paul Chevigny, professor of law, NYU
Noam Chomsky
Robbie Conal, visual artist
Stephanie Coontz, historian, Evergreen State College
Kimberly Crenshaw, Professor of Law, Columbia, UCLA
Kia Corthron, playwright
Kevin Danaher, Global Exchange
Ossie Davis
Mos Def
Carol Downer, board of directors, Chico (CA) Feminist Women's Health Center
Eve Ensler
Leo Estrada, UCLA professor, Urban Planning
John Gillis, writer, professor of history, Rutgers
Jeremy Matthew Glick, editor of Another World Is Possible
Suheir Hammad, writer
Rakaa Iriscience, hip hop artist
David Harvey, distinguished professor of anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Erik Jensen, actor/playwright
Casey Kasem
Robin D.G. Kelly
Martin Luther King III, president, Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Barbara Kingsolver
C. Clark Kissinger, Refuse & Resist!
Jodie Kliman, psychologist
Yuri Kochiyama, activist
Annisette & Thomas Koppel, singers/composers. Savage Rose
Dave Korten, author
Tony Kushner
James Lafferty, executive director, National Lawyers Guild/L.A.
Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor, TIKKUN Magazine
Barbara Lubin, Middle East Childrens Alliance
Staughton Lynd
Anuradha Mittal, co-director, Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First
Malaquias Montoya, visual artist
Robert Nichols, writer
Rev. E. Randall Osburn, exec. v.p., Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Grace Paley
Jeremy Pikser, screenwriter
Juan Gomez Quinones, historian, UCLA
Michael Ratner, president, Center for Constitutional Rights
Adrienne Rich, poet
Boots Riley, hip hop artist, The Coup
David Riker, filmmaker
Edward Said
Starhawk
Michael Steven Smith, National Lawyers Guild
Bob Stein, publisher
Gloria Steinem
Alice Walker
Naomi Wallace, playwright
Rev. George Webber, president emeritus, NY Theological Seminary
Leonard Weinglass, attorney
John Edgar Wideman
Saul Williams, spoken word artist
Howard Zinn, historian
Organizations for identification only (signers as of 6/1/02)
Contact the Not In Our Name statement at: nionstatement@hotmail.com
John Ashcroft: Minister of Fear
Dick Meyer, CBS, June 12, 2002
Who needs terrorists when we have John Ashcroft to scare us out of our pants? The way the attorney general detonated the “dirty bomber” case this week completes his metamorphosis from a common press hog to a genuine fear monger.
[The complete article]
THE LOGIC OF THE WAR ON TERRORISM
COMMENT -- When President Bush announced to the world that the United States would not discriminate between terrorists and those who harbor them, he may not have considered every logical extension of this policy. Washington attorney, Nathan Lewin, uses Bush's logic to advocate a barbaric form of retribution against the families of suicide bombers. Support for Lewin's views may be muted, but anyone who supports the Bush doctrine might find it difficult to explain why they do not also support the Lewin version.
Top lawyer urges death for families of bombers
Ami Eden, Forward, June 7, 2002
A prominent Washington attorney and Jewish communal leader is calling for the execution of family members of suicide bombers.
Nathan Lewin, an oft-mentioned candidate for a federal judgeship and legal advisor to several Orthodox organizations, told the Forward that such a policy would provide a much-needed deterrent against suicide attacks. Under the proposal, which Lewin unveiled in the current issue of the opinion journal Sh'ma, family members would be spared if they immediately condemned the bombing and refused financial compensation for the loss of their relative.
[The complete article]
U.S. INTELLIGENCE AT WORK
Now showing on satellite TV: secret American spy photos
Duncan Campbell, The Guardian, June 13, 2002
European satellite TV viewers can watch live broadcasts of peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations being conducted by US spyplanes over the Balkans. Normally secret video links from the American spies-in-the-sky have a serious security problem - a problem that make it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of US intelligence activity than to get Disney cartoons or new-release movies.
[The complete article]
AN AMERICAN JEWISH ACTIVIST BEARS WITNESS TO THE BRUTALITY OF THE ISRAELI OCCUPATION
The boy who kissed the soldier: Balata Camp
Starhawk, Palestine, June 1, 2002
"What source can you believe in order to create peace there?" a friend writes when I come back from Palestine. I have no answer, only this story:
June 1, 2002: I am in Balata refugee camp in occupied Palestine, where the Israeli Defense Forces have rounded up four thousand men, leaving the camp to women and children. The men have offered no resistance, no battle. The camp is deathly quiet. All the shops are shuttered, all the windows closed. Women, children and a few old men hide in their homes.
The quiet is shattered by sporadic bursts of gunfire, bangs and explosions. All day we have been encountering soldiers who all look like my brother or cousins or the sons I never had, so young they are barely more than boys armed with big guns. We've been standing with the terrified inhabitants as the soldiers search their houses, walking
patients who are afraid to be alone on the streets to the U.N. Clinic. Earlier in the evening, eight of our friends were arrested, and we know that we could be caught at any moment.
It is nearly dark, and Jessica and Melissa and I are looking for a place to spend the night. Jessica, with her pale, narrow face, dark eyes and curly hair, could be my sister or my daughter. Melissa is a bit more punk, androgynous in her dyed-blond ducktail.
We are hurrying through the streets, worried. We need to be indoors before true dark, and curfew. "Go into any house," we've been told. "Anyone will be glad to take you in." But we feel a bit shy.
From a narrow, metal staircase, Samar, a young woman with a wide, beautiful smile beckons us up.
"Welcome, welcome!" We are given refuge in the three small rooms that house her family: her mother, big bodied and sad, her small nieces and nephews, her brother's wife Hanin, round-faced and pale and six months pregnant.
We sit down on big, overstuffed couches. The women serve us tea I look around at the pine wood paneling that adds soft curves and warmth to the concrete, at the porcelain birds and artificial flowers that decorate a ledge. The ceilings are carefully painted in simple geometric designs.
They have poured love and care into their home, and it feels like a sanctuary.
Outside we can hear sporadic shooting, the deep 'boom' of houses being blown up by the soldiers. But here in these rooms, we are safe, in the tentative sense that word can be used in this place. "Inshallah", "God willing", follows every statement of good here or every commitment to a plan.
"Yahoud!" the women say when we hear explosions. It is the Arabic word for Jew, the word used for the soldiers of the invading army. It is a word of warning and alarm: don't go down that alley, out into that street.
"Yahoud!"
But no one invades our refuge this night. We talk and laugh with the women.
I have a pocket-sized packet of Tarot cards, and we read for what the next day will bring. Samar wants a reading, and then Hanin. I don't much like what I see in their cards: death, betrayal, sleepless nights of sorrow and regret. But I can't explain that in Arabic anyway, so I focus on what I see that is good.
"Baby?" Hanin asks.
"Babies, yes,"
"Boy? Son?"
The card of the Sun comes up, with a small boy-child riding on a white house. "Yes, I think it is a boy," I say.
She shows me the picture of her first baby, who died at a year and a half. Around us young men are prowling with guns, houses are exploding, lives are being shattered. And we are in an intimate world of women. Hanin brushes my hair, ties it back in a band to control its wildness. We try to talk about our lives. We can write down our ages on paper. I am fifty, Hanin is twenty-three. Jessica and Melissa are twenty-two: all of them older than most of the soldiers. Samar is seventeen, the children are eight and ten and the baby is four. I show them pictures of my family, my garden, my step-grandaughter. I think they understand that my husband has four daughters but I have none of my own, and that I am his third wife. I'm not sure they understand that those wives are sequential, not concurrent - but maybe they do. The women of this camp are educated, sophisticated - many we have met throughout the day are professionals, teachers, nurses, students when the Occupation allows them to go to school.
"Are you Christian?" Hanin finally asks us at the end of the night.
Melissa, Jessica and I look at each other. All of us are Jewish, and we're not sure what the reaction will be if we admit it. Jessica speaks for us.
"Jewish," she says. The women don't understand the word. We try several variations, but finally are forced to the blunt and dreaded "Yahoud." "Yahoud!" Hanin says. She gives a little surprised laugh, looks at the other women. "Beautiful!"
And that is all. Her welcome to us is undiminished. She shows me the shower, dresses me in her own flowered nightgown and robe, and puts me to bed in the empty side of the double bed she shares with her husband, who has been arrested by the Yahoud. Mats are brought out for the others. Two of the children sleep with us. Ahmed, the little four year old boy, snuggles next to me. He sleeps fiercely, kicking and thrashing in his dreams, and each time an explosion comes, hurls himself into my arms.
I can't sleep at all. How have I come here, at an age when I should be home making plum jam and doll clothes for grandchildren, to be cradling a little Palestinian boy whose sleep is already shattered by gunshots and shells?
I am thinking about the summer I spent in Israel when I was fifteen, learning Hebrew, working on a kibbutz, touring every memorial to the Holocaust and every site of a battle in what we called the War of Independence. I am thinking of one day when we were brought to the Israel/Lebanon border.
The Israeli side was green, the other side barren and brown. "You see what we have made of this land," we were told. "And that - that's what they've done in two thousand years. Nothing."
I am old enough now to question the world of assumptions behind that statement, to recognize one of the prime justifications the colonizers have always used against the colonized. "They weren't doing anything with the land: they weren't using it." They are not, somehow, as deserving as we are, as fully human. They are animals, they hate us.
All of that is shattered by the sound of by Hanin's laugh, called into question by a small boy squirming and twisting in his sleep. I lie there in awe at the trust that has been given me, one of the people of the enemy, put to bed to sleep with the children. It seems to me, at that moment, that there are indeed powers greater than the guns I can hear all around me: the power of Hanin's trust, the power that creates sanctuary, the great surging compassionate power that overcomes prejudice and hate.
One night later, we again go back to our family just as dark is falling, together with Linda and Neta, two other volunteers. We have narrowly escaped a party of soldiers, but no sooner do we arrive than a troop comes to the door. At least they have come to the door: we are grateful for that for all day they have been breaking through people's walls, knocking out the concrete with sledgehammers, bursting through into rooms of terrified people to search, or worse, use the house as a thoroughfare, a safe route that allows them to move through the camp without venturing into the streets.
We have been in houses turned into surreal passageways, with directions spray painted on their walls, where there is no sanctuary because all night long soldiers are passing back and forth. We come forward to meet these soldiers, to talk with them and witness what they will do. One of the men, with owlish glasses, knows Jessica and
Melissa: they have had a long conversation with him standing beside his tank. He is uncomfortable with his role.
Ahmed, the little boy, is terrified of the soldiers. He cries and screams and points at them, and we try to comfort him, to carry him away into another room. But he won't go. He is terrified, but he can't bear to be out of their sight. He runs toward them crying.
"Take off your helmet," Jessica tells the soldiers. "Shake hands with him, show him you're a human being. Help him to be not so afraid." The owlish soldier takes off his helmet, holds out his hand. Ahmed's sobs subside. The soldiers file out to search the upstairs. Samar and Ahmed follow them. Samar holds the little boy up to the owlish soldier's face, tells him to give the soldier a kiss. She doesn't want Ahmed to be afraid, to hate. The little boy kisses the soldier, and the soldier kisses him back, and hands him a small Palestinian flag.
This is the moment to end this story, on a high note of hope, to let it be a story of how simple human warmth, a child's kiss, can for a moment overcome oppression and hate. But it is a characteristic of the relentless quality of this occupation that the story doesn't end here. The soldiers order us all into one room. They close the door, and begin to search the house. We can hear banging and crashing and loud thuds against the walls. I am trying to think of something to sing, to do to distract us, to keep the spirits of the children up. I cannot think of anything that makes sense. My voice won't work. But Neta teaches us a silly children's song in Arabic. To me, it sounds like:
"Babouli raizh, raizh, babouli jai, Babouli ham melo sucar o shai," "The train comes, the train goes, the train is full of sugar and tea."
The children are delighted, and begin to sing. Hanin and I drum on the tables. The soldiers are throwing things around in the other room and the children are singing and Ahmed begins to dance. We put him up on the table and he smiles and swings his hips and makes us all laugh.
When the soldiers finally leave, we emerge to examine the damage. Every single object has been pulled off the walls, out of the closets, thrown in huge piles on the floor. The couches have been overturned and their bottoms ripped off. The wood paneling is full of holes knocked into every curve and corner. Bags of grain have been emptied into the sink. Broken glass and china covers the floor.
We begin to clean up. Melissa sweeps: Jessica tries to corral the barefoot children until we can get the glass off the floor. I help Hanin clear a path in the bedroom, folding the clothes of her absent husband, hanging up her own things, finding the secret sexy underwear the soldiers have obviously examined. By the time it is done, I know every intimate object of her life.
We are a houseful of women: we know how to clean and restore order. When the house is back together, Hanin and Samar and the sister cook. The grandmother is having a high blood pressure attack: we lay her down on the couch, I bring her a pillow. She rests. I sit down, utterly exhausted, as Hanin and the women serve us up a meal. A few china birds are back on the ledge. The artificial flowers have reappeared. Some of the loose boards of the paneling have been pushed back. Somehow once again the house feels like a sanctuary.
"You are amazing," I tell Hanin. "I am completely exhausted: you're six months pregnant, it's your house that has just been trashed, and you're able to stand there cooking for all of us." Hanin shrugs. "For us, this is normal," she says. And this is where I would like to end this story, celebrating the resilience of these women, full of faith in their power to renew their lives again and again.
But the story doesn't end here.
The third night. Melissa and Jessica go back to stay with our family. I am staying with another family who has asked for support. The soldiers have searched their house three times, and have promised that they will continue to come back every night. We are sleeping in our clothes, boots ready.
We get a call.
The soldiers have come back to Hanin's house. Again, they lock everyone in one room. Again, they search. This time, the soldier who kissed the baby is not with them. They have some secret intelligence report that tells them there is something to find, although they have not found it. They rip the paneling off the walls. They knock holes in the tiles and the concrete beneath. They smash and destroy, and when they are done, they piss on the mess they have left.
Nothing has been found, but something is lost. The sanctuary is destroyed, the house turned into a wrecking yard. No one kisses these soldiers: no one sings.
When Hanin emerges and sees what they have done, she goes into shock. She is resilient and strong, but this assault has gone beyond 'normal', and she breaks. She is hyperventilating, her pulse is racing and thready. She could lose the baby, or even die.
Jessica, who is trained as a Street Medic for actions, informs the soldiers that Hanin needs immediate medical care. The soldiers are reluctant, "We'll be done soon," they say. But one is a paramedic, and Melissa and Jessica are able to make him see the seriousness of the situation. They allow the two of them to violate curfew, to run through the dark streets to the clinic, come back with two nurses who somehow get Hanin and the family into an ambulance and taken to the hospital.
This story could be worse. Because Jessica and Melissa were there, Hanin and the baby survive. That is, after all, why we've come: to make things not quite as bad as they would be otherwise.
But there is no happy ending to this story, no cheerful resolution. When the soldiers pull out, I go back to say goodbye to Hanin, who has come back from the hospital. She is looking dull, depressed: something is broken.
I don't know if it can be repaired, if she will ever be the same. Her resilience is gone; her eyes have lost their light. She writes her name and phone number for me, writes "Hnin love you." I don't know how the story will ultimately end for her. I still see in the cards destruction, sleepless nights of anguish, death.
This is not a story of some grand atrocity. It is a story about 'normal', about what it's like to under an everyday, relentless assault on any sense of safety or sanctuary.
"What was that song about the train?" I ask Neta after the soldiers are gone.
"Didn't you hear?" she asks me. "The soldiers came and got the old woman, at one o'clock in the morning, and made her sing the song. I don't think I'll ever be able to sing it again."
"What source can you believe in order to create peace there?" a friend writes. I have no answer. Every song is tainted; every story goes on too long and turns nasty. A boy whose baby dreams are disturbed by gunfire kisses a soldier. A soldier kisses a boy, and then destroys his home.
Or maybe he simply stands by as others do the destruction, in silence, that same silence too many of us have kept for too long. And if there are forces that can nurture peace they must first create an uproar, a vast breaking of silence, a refusal to stand by as the boot stomps down.
www.starhawk.org copyright © Starhawk 2002
This story carries the author's copyright to protect her rights to future publication. Permission is given to email it, post it on the Internet, reprint it in relevant newsletters, etc.
About the author: Starhawk is a veteran of progressive movements and deeply committed to bringing the techniques and creative power of spirituality to political activism. A collection of her recent political writings, with new commentary, is forthcoming in September, 2002, from New Society Publishers: Webs of Power: Notes from the Global Uprising.
New film accuses US of war crimes
Kate Connolly and Rory McCarthy, The Guardian, June 13, 2002
The filmmakers claim that thousands of Afghans, Pakistanis, Uzbeks, Chechens and Tajiks may now be buried at the mass grave. UN and human rights officials have found the grave but have not estimated the number it contains.
[The complete article]
GOVERNMENT HYSTERIA IS INFECTIOUS
Airline passenger's rash sets off a smallpox scare
Henry K. Lee, San Francisco Chronicle, June 12, 2002
Health authorities converged on a Northwest Airlines flight from San Francisco to Memphis after a passenger remarked that a rash on his neck might be a result of smallpox, officials said today. The 40-year-old man Memphis man, whose name was not released, was checked by paramedics, who determined that he did not have smallpox, a deadly, contagious virus that causes a high fever and a rash that scars its survivors. It was simply a case of the hives, and maybe some sunburn, authorities concluded. Nevertheless, the incident made for a good in-flight scare amid the backdrop of recent "air rage" and anthrax cases.
[The complete article]
Mr Bush's titanic war on terror will eventually sink beneath the waves
Robert Fisk, The Independent, June 12, 2002
First it was to be a crusade. Then it became the "War for Civilisation". Then the "War without End". Then the "War against Terror". And now - believe it or not - President Bush is promising us a "Titanic War on Terror". This gets weirder and weirder. What can come next? Given the latest Bush projections last week - "we know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us" - he must surely have an even more gargantuan cliche up his sleeve.
[The complete article]
Disillusioned delegates walk out of loya jirga
Staff and agencies, The Guardian, June 12, 2002
The loya jirga's politics have left some delegates disillusioned and angry that foreigners and special interests have seemingly usurped their right to plot the nation's future.
[The complete article]
Hello? Is anybody getting this down?
Geov Parrish, WorkingForChange, June 11, 2002
U.S. General John Ashcroft announced in Moscow Monday that the Bush Administration can now hold U.S. citizens in prison indefinitely, without charges, access to defense lawyers, or trial. I am not making this up.
And you'd think it would be a screaming headline.
Instead, this little nugget is being buried as, oh, I don't know - one sentence in the sixth paragraph of Tuesday morning's Associated Press story in one of my local papers. The headline, of course, and each of the other 27 paragraphs, dealt with the accusations against Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen and Chicago resident who is said by our government to have been assisting al-Qaeda in its efforts to detonate a "dirty" nuclear bomb in the United States.
The AP story genuinely devoted more lines to Padilla's traffic violations in the '90s than to John Ashcroft's assaults on 213 years of American jurisprudence.
[The complete article]
At checkpoint in Gaza, travelers wait and wait
Tim Golden, New York Times, June 12, 2002
In the West Bank, some Palestinian cities and towns have become isolated enclaves, surrounded by troops and tanks. But the restrictions are nowhere felt more sharply than by the 1.3 million people of the Gaza Strip, which has been effectively cut in half and sometimes into thirds by checkpoints set up in large part to safeguard the travel of Gaza's 7,100 Jewish settlers.
[The complete article - registration required]
The best of enemies?
Thomas L Friedman, New York Times, June 12, 2002
Quick quiz: Which Muslim Middle East country held spontaneous candlelight vigils in sympathy with Americans after Sept. 11? Kuwait? No. Saudi Arabia? No. Iran? Yes. You got it!
[The complete article - registration required]
Plots, plans and panics
The US lacks a serious anti-terror strategy
Lead Editorial, The Guardian, June 12, 2002
By their words and actions, George Bush and senior US administration officials may be doing more to terrify American citizens than the al-Qaida terrorists they have vowed to destroy. In particular, John Ashcroft's assertions about the alleged "dirty bomber", Abdullah al-Muhajir, require close scrutiny. The attorney-general claims a "plot" to attack the US with a radioactive weapon was foiled by Mr Al-Muhajir's arrest. But deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz is more circumspect. "It was not an actual plan," he says. FBI director Robert Mueller is vaguer still. "It had not got, as far as we know, much past the discussion stage, but there was substantial discussion." Is Mr Al-Muhajir to be charged therefore with the hitherto unfamiliar offence of talking? Or is there more substantial evidence to suggest prospective wrongdoing? Unfortunately Mr Ashcroft and his colleagues, by denying Mr al-Muhajir legal counsel and a public hearing and by locking him up indefinitely, have ensured that such questions cannot be answered. This they do in the name of national security. Yet by this and similar actions they undermine their cause, boost al-Qaida's credibility, scandalise the US constitution, and intensify the anxiety all Americans share about possible repeat attacks. Perhaps another terrible outrage really was forestalled. But the point is, how is the public to know?
The Bush administration's feckless attitude to civil liberties and the law, symbolised by its Guantanamo Bay prison camp, is far from being the only frightening aspect of current policy. Mr Bush's West Point speech on June 1 made clear that this administration now feels itself justified in threatening, and attacking without warning, states and individuals anywhere, any time if, in its unaccountable, secretly-sourced wisdom, it judges them to constitute a potential security risk. Mr Bush's aggressive rhetoric about the "evil axis", "unbalanced dictators", "mad tyrants", and unidentified foes seeking the "catastrophic power to strike at great nations" stokes rather than reduces fear. By threatening pre-emptive strikes, even to the irresponsible extent of using tactical nuclear weapons, Mr Bush foments international instability, encourages copycat behaviour by vassal governments, and invites pre-emptive pre-emption by hidden enemies. Thus is international law, like US domestic law, subverted, no doubt to the terrorists' silent delight. This is not leadership. It is scare tactics borne, perhaps, of an unpleasant mix of political calculation and something approaching private panic.
What is needed now is backbone - a little less of febrility in Washington, a little more of fortitude and calm resolve. Nobody doubts the reality of the terrorist menace; the potential horror of weapons of mass destruction in the wrong hands is plain to all. But curbing proliferation means, for example, fully funding the Nunn-Lugar programme for weapons disposal (which Mr Bush initially opposed) and extending it beyond the old Soviet sphere. Beating terrorism requires painstaking collective diplomacy and intelligence-gathering, not go-it-alone militarism. Sound leadership means respecting and building on America's democratic strengths, not emphasising America's vulnerability to justify the undercutting of its traditions. Too much of what Mr Bush and his officials say, including the al-Muhajir case, looks politically-driven, partly by a belatedly rising tide of domestic criticism, partly by a rightwing agenda. Too much of what they do lacks perspective. When fear usurps reason and becomes the ruling principle of governance, terrorism wins.
[The complete article]
On dance, identity and war
Omar Barghouti, Counterpunch, June 11, 2002
Is reconstruction only applicable to devastated buildings, roads, water pipes and electricity poles? How about shattered dreams and shaken identities, don't they need reconstruction as well? I could not but recall John Stuart Mill's definition of humans as "unique," "self-creating," and "creative individuals" who are "culture-bearing."
[The complete article]
Sharon rewrites the peace script
Henry Siegman, International Herald Tribune, June 12, 2002
Sharon's interest in the Palestinian Authority is not its democratic character but its effectiveness in eliminating terrorists and terrorism against Israel. The less transparent such efforts, the more effective they are likely to be. For this purpose a Genghis Khan is a far better president of the Palestinian Authority than a Thomas Jefferson. Yet Sharon had no difficulty getting U.S. and international support for his idea. There is every reason to believe that he will be equally adept at getting Washington to buy into his formulation of Resolution 242, a formulation that, for all practical purposes, erases Palestinian rights to the West Bank and Gaza.
[The complete article]
Ashcroft hypes a dirty bomber
Big, bad John
James Rdigeway, Village Voice, June 12, 2002
In announcing this week the arrest of a Chicago-area man for allegedly plotting to set off a radiological bomb, Attorney General John Ashcroft at last did what civil rights activists and lawyers have been demanding for months—he stood up and named someone caught in his post-9-11 dragnet.
[The complete article]
Fear itself is the main threat of a dirty bomb, experts say
Matthew L. Wald, New York Times, June 11, 2002
A dirty bomb would be simple — an Oklahoma City truck bomb laced with a few pounds of something radioactive — but the death and destruction would be from the bomb part, not the dirty part, experts say.
[The complete article - registration required]
A U.S. war against Iraq must be prevented now
Jan Oberg and Christian Harleman, Transnational Foundation, June 7, 2002
The problem with the West and its media, including The Wall Street Journal, is that the only Iraqi mentioned among 25 million is President Saddam Husayn. The only approach they have to one of the world's oldest and most sophisticated cultures is devastating sanctions and military enforcement. The only perspective they have is their own and it seems to be beyond dispute that they have a moral right to bomb societies and oust leaders they just do not like. How the Iraqis think and feel after the wars with Iran, with Kuwait, with each other, with the West and after 12 years of utterly inhuman sanctions is of no concern.
[The complete article]
A mission to murder: inside the minds of the suicide bombers
Suzanne Goldenberg, The Guardian, June 11, 2002
In an investigation into this critical phenomenon, the Guardian interviewed the friends and families of 21 of the suicide bombers, searching for the motivations for those who did the bombing, and the cold calculations of those who sent them. Why have so many Palestinians - women and middle-aged men as well as a majority of young men - lined up to turn themselves into human bombs? And what do their handlers hope to achieve by aiming their violent ends at Israeli civilians?
[The complete article]
The axis of contradictions
Editorial, The War in Context, June 10, 2002
Alliances depend on the perception of mutual interest, on give and take, and on the willingness to compromise. To ally is to share power and by so doing, acquire power. For Americans convinced of this nation's unassailable global authority, does not the notion of sharing power suddenly look instead like giving power away? From this perspective, power shared is power lost.
[The complete article]
White House warmonger
Chris Matthews, San Francisco Chronicle, June 10, 2002
President Bush wants to change the Department of Defense back into a War Department. No longer are the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines to defend America and American vital interests. In his speech at West Point last weekend, the president showcased a war agenda that included fighting for 'human liberty' against "terrorists and tyrants" and for "free and open societies on every continent." Who is this guy, Napoleon?
[The complete article]
Justice detained
Editorial, New York Times, June 10, 2002
he Bush administration's post-Sept. 11 assault on civil liberties reached a new low recently when the Justice Department argued in court that an American-born detainee, who may be a United States citizen, should not be allowed to talk to a lawyer. This is the same Justice Department that has refused to release the names and locations of the estimated 1,200 people detained after Sept. 11, and that has insisted on conducting detainees' legal hearings in secret. These policies are blatantly unconstitutional, and in recent rulings, courts have begun saying just that.
[The complete article - registration required]
Gangsters, murderers and stooges used to endorse Bush's vision of 'democracy'
Robert Fisk, The Independent, June 10, 2002
Washington wants the loya jirga to succeed. True, far too many of its pliant warlords – the Pashtun and Tajik gangsters whom the Americans paid in thousands of dollars for their sometimes loyal alliance against Osama bin Laden – have been trying to bribe and bamboozle their own candidates into power once they realised that the "grand assembly" of Afghans would actually be held today. And true, there has been intimidation and delegates murdered.
But a successful interim government – whatever its chances of producing fair parliamentary elections – is vital for the United States. Firstly, it will allow President Bush, despite his failure to capture either Mr bin Laden or the Pimpernel-like Mullah Omar, to claim that America has fulfilled its promise to bring "democracy" to Afghanistan. Secondly – and more importantly – because it is America's ticket out of the country. As an article in the Wall Street Journal, the President's best friend in his "war on terror", put it last week, nation-building "certainly beats keeping crack [sic] US troops on the Afghan-Pakistan border for the next 10 to 15 years".
[The complete article]
'New' FBI, same old problems
Doug Ireland, In These Times, June 7, 2002
What do you do with a federal agency of notorious incompetence that is also famous for regularly trampling on the Constitution? If you’re George W. Bush, you give it more money and power. That’s exactly what happened when the “reorganization” of the FBI was announced on May 29 by Attorney General John Ashcroft. By giving the FBI carte blanche to spy on speech and ideas—from libraries to the Internet, from religious groups to political meetings—and by opening its files and agents to unprecedented levels of cooperation with the CIA (heretofore prohibited from domestic spying), the Bush administration has taken another giant step toward turning this nation into a garrison state.
[The complete article]
FBI - PAST AND PRESENT
COMMENT -- Will an FBI serving the Department of Homeland Security operate differently from the FBI of the '60's?
Secret FBI files reveal covert activities at University of California
Bureau's campus operations involved Reagan, CIA
Seth Rosenfeld, San Francisco Chronicle, June 9, 2002
Under the guise of protecting national security, the FBI conducted wide-ranging and unlawful intelligence operations concerning the University of California that at different points involved the head of the CIA and then-Gov. Ronald Reagan, The Chronicle has learned. According to thousands of pages of FBI records obtained by The Chronicle after a 17-year legal fight, the FBI unlawfully schemed with the head of the CIA to harass students, faculty and members of the Board of Regents, and mounted a concerted campaign to destroy the career of UC President Clark Kerr, which included sending the White House derogatory allegations about him that the bureau knew were false.
[The complete article]
The warlords are plotting a comeback
Sam Zia-Zarifi, International Herald Tribune, June 10, 2002
Hundreds of delegates from across Afghanistan have arrived in Kabul to take part in the loya jirga, or grand national assembly, that meets from this Monday until next Sunday to select the next government. Contrary to the rules, many of these delegates have been handpicked by warlords determined to defend regional fiefdoms. The fate of the process, and the country, hinges on whether warlord representatives will outweigh delegates who seek a stable civilian government. An institution that promised the start of a democratic future could instead legitimize a return to the abusive past.
[The complete article]
The holy name of liberty
Arundhati Roy, New Statesman, June 10, 2002
With each battle cry against Pakistan, India inflicts a wound on herself. As nationalism becomes synonymous with anti-Muslim prejudice, the subcontinent risks repeating the horrors of the Nazi regime.
[The complete article]
"Send in The Weekly Standard"
The Screaming Pundits Assault Corps
"George Sutherland", Counterpunch, June 8, 2002
On the model of the intellectuals who created the international brigades to fight in the Spanish Civil War, our 200 most illustrious war pundits should be formed into a special assault company to take on the tasks the U.S. military is too chicken to perform. Is there a Navy P-3 sitting shanghaied on Hainan Island? The 1st Pundit Assault Company (Special Operations Capable) should be parachuted into the island to blow it up and raise general mayhem among the perfidious Red hordes. Has the CIA overcome its incompetence and located Saddam Hussein in one of his numerous palaces? Send in the 1st Pundit Assault Company to storm the palace, overcome the Republican Guard, and slay the beast in his lair. Since Saddam is the leitmotiv and obsession of the pundits' writings, since he no doubt appears wraith-like in their troubled dreams, we can be sure the pundits would jump at the chance to kill him, even if the cost were their own certain death!
[The complete article]
'Betrayal' of confused jihadis
Pakistan's shadowy spy agency, the ISI, has run thousands of militants into Kashmir and is now responsible for reining them in
Jason Burke, The Observer, June 9, 2002
Musharraf and his advisers clearly felt that with their new international credibility, gained by joining the 'war on terror', the world would be more sympathetic to their Kashmir policy. They were wrong. 'We knew we would get dumped eventually,' one senior Pakistani official said. 'We didn't think it would be so soon.'
Abdul Sattar, Pakistan's Foreign Minister, resigned on Friday for health reasons. Now the focus is shifting to Pakistan's internal affairs where there is growing anger at what many see as Musharraf's 'surrender' to the West.
[The complete article]
Police to spy on all emails
Fury over Europe's secret plan to access computer and phone data
Kamal Ahmed, The Observer, June 9, 2002
Millions of personal emails, other internet information and telephone records are to be made accessible to the police and intelligence services in a move that has been denounced by critics as one of the most wide-ranging extensions of state power over private information. Plans being drawn up by Europol, the police and intelligence arm of the European Union, propose that telephone and internet firms retain millions of pieces of data - including details of visits to internet chat rooms, and of calls made on mobile phones and text messages.
[The complete article]
Bush intelligence plan meant to blunt tough questions
James Ridgeway, Village Voice, June 7, 2002
President Bush's proposal for a new homeland security department amounts to dropping a fragmentation bomb on Congress to bust up growing demands for an inquiry into who knew what when about 9-11.
[The complete article]
End the nuclear danger: An urgent call
Jonathan Schell, Randall Caroline Forsberg, David Cortright, The Nation
A decade after the end of the cold war, the peril of nuclear destruction is mounting. The great powers have refused to give up nuclear arms, other countries are producing them and terrorist groups are trying to acquire them
[The complete article]
Rumsfeld: NATO can't wait for proof to fight terror
Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters, June 6, 2002
"The only way to defend against individuals or groups or organizations or countries that have weapons of mass destruction and are bent on using them against you...is to take the effort to find those global networks and to deal with them as the United States did in Afghanistan," he said. "Now is that defensive or is it offensive? I personally think of it as defensive."
[The complete article]
Spying and lying: The FBI's dirty secrets
Mark Weisbrot, AlterNet, June 6, 2002
It seems that the FBI is likely to be rewarded for the missed warnings, fumbled intelligence, and bureaucratic foul-ups that preceded Sept. 11. Attorney General John Ashcroft has announced that the FBI is changing its rules so that it can spy on domestic organizations, even where there is no evidence of specific criminal activity.
[The complete article]
Why small scale war may quickly go nuclear
Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian, June 7, 2002
A war over Kashmir is most likely to start with limited Indian strikes against Islamist militant bases in Pakistani-controlled territory, military analysts and intelligence sources said yesterday. But these could quickly escalate into a wider military conflict, even leading to Pakistan using nuclear weapons, they warn.
[The complete article]
No war has been declared. But in the border villages it has already begun
Luke Harding, The Guardian, June 7, 2002
For the Indian villagers of Garkwal, it is not a question of when war will break out. It already has. The moment came just over three weeks ago when Jagther Singh was dozing in the courtyard of his bungalow.
[The complete article]
The Bush doctrine makes nonsense of the UN charter
Jonathan Steele, The Guardian, June 7, 2002
[At West Point last week,] President Bush launched his new concept of pre-emption. His speech can claim to be the most chilling statement of his presidency so far. In effect, he retroactively approved the Israeli strike on Osirak and said the US has the right to strike, pre-emptively, at any nation which it decides is developing weapons of mass destruction or supporting terrorism. It is carte blanche for a war on the world.
[The complete article]
Mideast pattern, now in Kashmir
Peter Grier, Christian Science Monitor, June 6, 2002
Bitter disputes over territory. Suicide bombings. Threats of retaliation. International attempts to calm roiled passions. The Middle East? Yes – and South Asia. Although there are important differences between the Israeli–Palestinian struggle and the standoff between India and Pakistan over Kashmir, the similarities between the situations are striking. And perhaps the most important similarity is this: In both cases, the stronger party has had some success in defining its aim as the defeat of terrorists.
[The complete article]
Militant's claim that Arafat can't end attacks
Tim Golden, New York Times, June 6, 2002
If there is one thing that the Palestinian militant group Islamic Jihad does not fear, one of its leaders said today, it is the repressive force of Yasir Arafat and his Palestinian Authority. "The Palestinian Authority is broken; its institutions are destroyed," the leader, Sheik Abdallah al-Shami, said calmly as he sat in the living room of his home here. "How can the Palestinian Authority assure the security of the Israelis when it cannot even protect its own people?"
[The complete article -registration required]
Surviving a bombing, day by day
How an Israeli mother altered her life after an attack
Cameron W. Barr, Christian Science Monitor, June 6, 2002
She once felt she could see an answer to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: A Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, a shared Jerusalem, intertwined economies. Now she feels that she and many of her fellow Israelis had deluded themselves about the true nature of the other side.
[The complete article]
A-bomb survivors fear new Hiroshima
Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, June 6, 2002
Survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs expressed a growing sense of foreboding yesterday about the increasing tension between the nuclear-armed India and Pakistan.
[The complete article]
FOREIGNERS
I was once an immigrant
Luciana Bohne, Democratic Underground, June 5, 2002
I am one of those people whom President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft have warned Americans to be on the alert about, to report on--to put on notice, in other words. I am different, possibly un-American.
[The complete article]
Rights groups condemn visa plan
Ashcroft says crackdown is essential for U.S. security
Carolyn Lochhead, San Francisco Chronicle, June 6, 2002
The Justice Department's new plan to fingerprint and periodically register an estimated 100,000 visa holders mainly from the Middle East is but the beginning of a major tightening of immigration rules spawned by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
[The complete article]
How can Israel find security?
Martin Asser, BBC News, June 6, 2002
Clearly, Israel's massive Operation Defensive Shield in April to "root out the terrorist infrastructure" in the West Bank has failed to prevent determined suicide bombers hitting their targets. In fact the ever-harsher military operations in the Palestinian-ruled territories has had the effect of provoking ever-more-frequent and ferocious Palestinian attacks to terrorise the Israeli public.
[The complete article]
India plans war within two weeks
Rahul Bedi, The Telegraph, June 6, 2002
Most senior Indian officers expect that the conflict would last about a week before pressure from America and other powers forced a ceasefire. One officer said he believed there was only the "slimmest chance" of nuclear weapons being used. "We will call Pakistan's nuclear bluff," he said. It [the nuclear factor] cannot deter us any more."
[The complete article -registration required]
A conservative takes on Ashcroft
John Nichols, The Nation, June 4, 2002
There are those who wrongly believe that the debate over civil liberties in this country breaks along ideological grounds. It's an easy mistake to make: Especially when Attorney General John Ashcroft, a certified -- and, arguably, certifiable -- conservative is treating the Constitution like it was a threat to America.
[The complete article]
Gephardt endorses ousting Hussein
Ronald Brownstein, Los Angeles Times, June 5, 2002
Gephardt explicitly endorsed the use of military force to remove Hussein, as the administration has been considering. "We should use diplomatic tools where we can, but military means when we must to eliminate the threat he poses to the region and our own security," Gephardt said. Gephardt's comments could help Bush build congressional support for an attack on Iraq if the president chooses that option.
[The complete article - registration required]
The trial of John Ashcroft
A year of right-wing ideology and rollbacks on civil liberties
People for the American Way Foundation, TomPaine.com, June 4, 2002
The September 11 terrorist attacks were a watershed for the nation in many ways, and for John Ashcroft as well. Ashcroft's response to those attacks has been marked by a troubling willingness to amend our laws and Constitution by executive fiat and by a consistent disrespect for the role of the Congress and the courts in reviewing executive branch actions. He proposed legislation to grant extraordinary new powers to federal agencies and attempted to stifle congressional consideration of its impact. He then initiated or supported executive branch orders, without consulting Congress, that expanded executive branch powers even beyond those granted in the sweeping anti-terrorism legislation.
[The complete article]
Kashmir, terrorism, and hypocrisy
Peter Beinart, New Republic, June 3, 2002
Conservatives had better hope The Wall Street Journal and National Review aren't read closely in New Delhi. Because if they are, some angry Indian nationalist is going to point out the glaring contradiction between the American right's line on the crisis between India and Pakistan and its line on the crisis between Israel and the Palestinians.
[The complete article]
East Jerusalem exiles
Kareem Fahim, Village Voice, June 5, 2002
"The Israeli plan is, first, to have Jewish territorial continuity stretching from the university to what we call Highway 1, over there," he says, gesturing west. "They don't want Hebrew University to be an isolated enclave."
"Secondly," he says, "they want to destroy the Clinton plan, which says the solution in Jerusalem should be that wherever there are Palestinians, it will be Palestinian land and sovereignty, and wherever there are Jews, it's Israeli land and sovereignty. So the settlers are trying to penetrate houses, to establish 'facts on the ground.' When the Clinton plan is reviewed later, they will say, we can't really divide this land anywhere, because even in Palestinian neighborhoods you have Jewish settlers. The point is endless fragmentation of the land."
[The complete article]
Intelligence test
Michael Crowley, New Republic, June 3, 2002
With Democrats pressing their case (albeit more subtly than at first) for tough investigations of the Bush administration's pre-9/11 failures, the White House is determined to depict the criticism as cheap election-year partisanship. Which is why the most irritating figure to the Bushies right now is not Dick Gephardt, Hillary Clinton, or Tom Daschle--it's Richard Shelby.
[The complete article]
We've had enough witch hunts
Robert Sheer, Los Angeles Times, June 4, 2002
Nothing succeeds like failure. Suddenly, everyone wants to grant the FBI and other intelligence agencies even more power despite the fact that they failed so spectacularly to utilize the expansive powers they had to head off terrorism before Sept. 11. In a sign of mass impotent rage, liberal columnists and politicians are joining right-wing talk show blatherers in insisting the FBI not be "hamstrung" by the restraints of civil liberty. First to go? Freedom from discrimination based on ethnicity, race or nationality. Racial profiling, popular since the Dark Ages, is again in vogue.
[The complete article - registration required]
Wage peace, not war
George Monbiot, The Guardian, June 4, 2002
There is something dreamlike about our contemplation of the drift to war in Kashmir. While India and Pakistan move their missiles into position, in Britain our concerns are focused on the evacuation of our own citizens, the destination of the likely refugees, and the possibility that the Indian cricket team might be prevented from visiting England at the end of this month. That 12 million people could be vaporised if the war begins in earnest is viewed as regrettable, but nothing to do with us.
[The complete article]
A fight to feed hungry Afghanistan
Philip Smucker, Christian Science Monitor, June 3, 2002
Afghan administrators – from doctors to warlords – here in the country's drought belt, agree on one thing: The country's unchecked poverty is feeding the angry tirades of Islamic fundamentalists who charge that the West does not really care about the Afghan people. A new report commissioned by the US Agency for International Development and based on interviews with 1,100 households across Afghanistan has found that the level of "diet security," a measurement of vulnerability to famine, has plummeted from nearly 60 percent in 2000 to just 9 percent now.
[The complete article]
J. Edgar Mueller
William Safire, New York Times, June 3, 2002
To fabricate an alibi for his nonfeasance, and to cover up his department's embarrassing cut of the counterterrorism budget last year, Attorney General John Ashcroft — working with his hand-picked aide, F.B.I. Director "J. Edgar" Mueller III — has gutted guidelines put in place a generation ago to prevent the abuse of police power by the federal government.
They have done this deed by executive fiat: no public discussion, no Congressional action, no judicial guidance. If we had only had these new powers last year, goes their posterior-covering pretense, we could have stopped terrorism cold.
Not so. They had the power to collect the intelligence, but lacked the intellect to analyze the data the agencies collected. The F.B.I.'s failure to absorb the Phoenix and Minneapolis memos was compounded by the C.I.A.'s failure to share information it had about two of the Arab terrorists in the U.S. who would become hijackers (as revealed by Newsweek today).
Thus we see the seizure of new powers of surveillance is a smokescreen to hide failure to use the old power.
[The complete article - registration required]
Indians scorn worry and love the bomb
Catherine Philp, The Times, June 3, 2002
Scientists have predicted that a nuclear exchange would kill 12 million people, half of them in India, but all over the country people are baying for war, nonetheless. About 82 per cent believe that Pakistan would use nuclear weapons in the event of a conflict, but 74 per cent believe that India should attack.
[The complete article]
Nuclear neighbours teeter on brink of Armageddon
Jason Burke and Peter Beaumont, The Observer, June 2, 2002
One man with a Kalashnikov and some dynamite could set off a blast that will make the entire world tremble.
[The complete article]
Too much, not enough - the failings of the National Security Agency
James Bamford, Washington Post, June 2, 2002
Amid all the questions about possible intelligence failures at the CIA and FBI related to Sept. 11, one spy group -- the National Security Agency (NSA) -- has largely escaped the public spotlight. But a congressional joint intelligence committee, which will examine those questions in closed hearings beginning Tuesday, will give particular attention to missed opportunities at the secretive NSA -- the largest of all such agencies and the one specifically created to warn America of surprise attack at home.
In one of the greatest ironies of Sept. 11, the NSA, which intercepts massive amounts of signals intelligence from all over the world, did not know that some of the terrorists had set up shop literally under its nose. It is now clear that NSA officials passed within feet of the terrorists who were on their way to blow up the Pentagon. An al Qaeda cell had improbably chosen to live in Laurel, the Maryland bedroom community just outside the NSA's gates, while they planned their attack.
For months, theterrorists and the NSA employees exercised in some of the same local health clubs and shopped in the same grocery stores. Finally, as the terrorists pulled out of the Valencia Motel on Route 1 on their way to Dulles Airport and American Flight 77, they crossed paths with many of the electronic spies who were turning into Fort Meade, home of the NSA, to begin another day hunting for terrorists.
[The complete article]
THE FBI WAS LAST WEEK'S FALL GUY - THIS WEEK THE CIA NEEDS TO COME CLEAN
The hijackers we let escape
Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman, Newsweek, June 10, 2002
The CIA tracked two suspected terrorists to a Qaeda summit in Malaysia in January 2000, then looked on as they re-entered America and began preparations for September 11.
[The complete article]
Time to clean up the battlefield of a dirty war
Jonathan Cook, The Guardian, June 3, 2002
After the week-long frenzy of concern in mid-April, the current silence of the international community is truly scandalous. One cannot but suspect that the world has chosen to forget Jenin. Two related factors contributed to this rapid loss of interest. The first occurred with the west's supine acceptance of Israel's decision to block a UN fact-finding mission. There is little doubt that the UN lost its nerve to push for an inquiry. The fierce criticism UNWRA now faces in the US has increased its reluctance to publicise the camp's plight. The second factor was the hasty claims - made by Palestinian and Israeli spokesmen in the absence of concrete facts - that hundreds of Jenin's inhabitants had been killed. Given the world's inflated expectations, the talk of a massacre seemed grossly disproportionate once the camp was opened to scrutiny. The casualties sustained by the Israeli army, including 23 soldiers killed, only fed the view that Jenin was a messy but essentially fair fight.
[The complete article]
Under the nuclear shadow
Arundhati Roy, The Observer, June 2, 2002
This week as diplomats' families and tourists quickly disappeared, journalists from Europe and America arrived in droves. Most of them stay at the Imperial Hotel in Delhi. Many of them call me. Why are you still here, they ask, why haven't you left the city? Isn't nuclear war a real possibility? It is, but where shall I go? If I go away and everything and every one, every friend, every tree, every home, every dog, squirrel and bird that I have known and loved is incinerated, how shall I live on? Who shall I love, and who will love me back? Which society will welcome me and allow me to be the hooligan I am, here, at home?
We've decided we're all staying. We've huddled together, we realise how much we love each other and we think what a shame it would be to die now. Life's normal, only because the macabre has become normal. While we wait for rain, for football, for justice, on TV the old generals and the eager boy anchors talk of first strike and second strike capability, as though they're discussing a family board game. My friends and I discuss Prophecy, the film of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the dead bodies choking the river, the living stripped of their skin and hair, we remember especially the man who just melted into the steps of the building and we imagine ourselves like that, as stains on staircases.
[The complete article]
MOUTHPIECE OF THE PRESIDENT
The peculiar duplicity of Ari Fleischer
Jonathan Chait, New Republic, May 30, 2002
What Fleischer does, for the most part, is not really spin. It's a system of disinformation--blunter, more aggressive, and, in its own way, more impressive than spin. Much of the time Fleischer does not engage with the logic of a question at all. He simply denies its premises--or refuses to answer it on the grounds that it conflicts with a Byzantine set of rules governing what questions he deems appropriate. Fleischer has broken new ground in the dark art of flackdom: Rather than respond tendentiously to questions, he negates them altogether.
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ALL IN THE COURSE OF DUTY
COMMENT -- An elderly tribal leader dies as his skull is smashed with a rifle butt and a fleeing child dies as she falls into a well. Is this what Donald Rumsfeld would describe as a "mopping up operation"?
U.S. troops release 50 men from Afghan village raid
Carlotta Gall, New York Times, May 31, 2002
"They interrogated me once. I said I was a farmer, working the land, and that there was not enough water because of the drought," said one of the released men, Abdullah, who has a white beard and gave his age as "80 or 90." He was arrested in the nighttime raid and taken, bound and hooded, in a helicopter to the air base in Kandahar, he said. "I am angry because I am not a criminal," he said. After six days of being kept in a big cage with a canvas roof, he said, the prisoners were spoken to through an interpreter by an American officer, who told them they would be released. "They apologized and said, `We are sorry to have disturbed you,' " he said.
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India alert as nuclear war looms
Luke Harding and Richard Norton-Taylor, The Guardian,June 1, 2002
"The situation is extraordinarily serious. It could very rapidly lead to nuclear war," a well-placed source said last night."This is a credible scenario, millions of people would be killed and untold damage be done to the infrastructure." Diplomatic sources insisted that such a doomsday scenario was "very real". Neither the Indian nor Pakistani government had grasped the seriousness of the situation and the leaders of both countries would find it very difficult for domestic political reasons to back down, the sources said.
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