[Nettime-bold] September 11...(7)

[radtimes <resist@best.com>]

"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one 
surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on 
some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more 
intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, 
therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, 
and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others. The 
inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course..." -- Emma 
Goldman

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[multiple items]
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The Price of Empire

http://www.antiwar.com/bock/b091201.html

September 12, 2001
by Alan Bock

One can understand the shock, the horror, the unbelief as the war most
Americans didn't know was going on or didn't choose to acknowledge came home
in such a brutal, deadly fashion in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon.  This
was obviously a coordinated attack, carried out with skill and stealth.  Its
success reflects a failure of Intelligence and intelligence on a massive
scale.

In short, the United States, as a government and to some extent as a
society, seems to have no idea how it is perceived in much of the world and
no effective defense against the most dangerous threats to the continuing
functioning of our society.  It is hardly unique in history for officials to
spend their time and spin their wheels preparing for the last war, or
operating on assumptions that haven't been valid for decades.  The attacks
in Washington and New York � and possibly attacks planned elsewhere that
either failed or were thwarted � demonstrate that official intelligence in
this country is sadly ineffective.

WAITING FOR REAL INFORMATION

The media have been full of speculation about which groups, organizations or
states might have been involved in these terrorist acts.  I talked with
Geoffrey Kemp, Middle East expert at the Nixon International Center in
Washington and hardly a dove.  Knowing a good deal more than most people
about the people, players and organizations in the Middle East, he simply
refused to speculate.  He believes it could take several days for the first
intelligence breaks that could be viewed as reliable to come through.

While the operation was clearly well-coordinated, highly professional, and
had to have at least some kind of cooperation from what Mr.  Kemp referred
to as foreign "entities," it is simply impossible to be sure at this point
who carried out these terrorist attacks.  A talk-show host in New Orleans
with whom I spoke, Ed Butler, suggested that Colombian narco-traffickers
might have been behind them, and they just might have the resources and the
capability.

It is difficult to wait for reliable information, especially insofar as you
understand that it might never become available.  But to respond without
reliable information � to target, just to take a recent example, an aspirin
factory rather than a real terrorist headquarters � would be worse than
ineffective.  It would increase resentment.

ASKING OTHER QUESTIONS

Given that we don't yet know and might never know exactly who perpetrated
these terrorist acts, it might be appropriate � even though it might be
early in the game for most Americans to be ready to consider them � to ask
questions about our own policies and posture in the world.

I talked with Chalmers Johnson, political scientist, authority on Japan and
author of Blowback: The Costs of American Empire, published last year by
Henry Holt.  He was saddened but not surprised by the attacks.  His book had
come close to predicting roughly similar attacks on American soil as
resentment, hatred and hopelessness become more commonplace around the world
that the United States tries rather desultorily to run.

Certain pertinent questions have been studiously ignored in most of the
media and in most of the centers of policy-making and analysis, says
Chalmers Johnson.  Why was the United States a target?  Why was the World
Trade Center the target?  Was it a symbol of capitalism or a symbol of
American hegemony?  What have we done � or what has the government done in
our names � to create such intense and organized hostility?

"We have 65 major U.S.  military installations in other peoples' countries
right now," Johnson told me, and not everybody in those countries is happy
about those bases' presence.  Although plenty of people have speculated, for
example, that Osama bin Laden, a Saudi national who is supposedly estranged
from the Saudi government, has been behind numerous terrorist acts and
masterminds a worldwide terrorist network, nobody has suggested that the
United States withdraw its troops or bases from Saudi Arabia.  If we were
simply considering possible alternatives without preconceptions, that would
certainly be at least on the table as an option.

FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE

The remarkable success of the terrorist assault � the ability to get
hijackers through airport security and onto four or five different
airplanes, to hijack all these airplanes simultaneously, to have people
available who could not only fly an airplane reasonably competently but were
willing to undertake a suicide mission � suggests a catastrophic failure of
intelligence.  But it is not just a failure of information-gathering but a
failure of imagination and understanding of how the world is, rather than
how it was.

Chalmers Johnson maintains that US defense and intelligence services have
seemed incapable of imagining the world as it really is for at least a
decade, maybe longer.  He thinks that the Cold War actually ended, in terms
of the Soviets posing a genuine threat, before the Soviet Union
deteriorated.  Even if that's arguable, however, the world changed
profoundly in 1989 and our defense and intelligence agencies, whether
through bureaucratic inertia or the comfort of old preconceptions or a
number of other reasons, still don't understand � and haven't even tried
very hard to understand � the new shape of the world.

Thus we are almost completely unprepared for the dispersed, decentralized
kind of terrorist threat that was proven, yesterday, to be capable of
creating incredible destruction.

BLOWBACK

Even more important, however, is a failure to understand just how deeply
hated the United States is in many parts of the world � and hated by people
ready and able to take desperate and ruthless actions.  It's not just that
most CIA analysts have never even been to the countries they are supposed to
be analyzing, nor that they often don't speak the language.  It is that we
are careless and arrogant in our ignorance, that we exercise our hegemony
without much forethought, analysis or intelligence.

"Blowback" is a CIA term referring to an operation that comes back to bite
you, often in unpredictable and certainly unintended way.  The terrorist
operations against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon can be seen as
blowback, the unintended consequences of American hegemony, the costs that
have finally begun to be paid by Americans, on American soil, for our
leaders' casual and often thoughtless form of empire-building and
maintenance.

RESPONDING FOOLISHLY

The temptation US leaders will struggle with in the next day or so is to
respond intelligently and in a measured fashion rather than blindly and
disproportionately.  It is almost certain, for example, that airport
security will be significantly tighter, that access to government buildings
and major office building will be more difficult.  Some of these measures
may be required but some may be overdone.

Plenty of people have compared this attack to Pearl Harbor , and in terms of
casualties and the surprise element the comparison may be apt.  Chalmers
Johnson reminded me, however, that one of the responses to Pearl Harbor was
what he called a "racial pogrom" against Japanese-Americans, almost all of
whom had nothing to do with the attack and had no sympathy for their former
country.  (It is a point of pride to me that the Orange County Register was
one of the few newspapers to oppose the internment of Japanese-Americans in
1943 and 1943 rather than years later.)

It also can be said that Pearl Harbor (and other affiliated activities) led
to the formation of the intelligence services that became the CIA.  Perhaps
the World Trade Center assault, which exposed the ineffectiveness of the CIA
as it is presently constituted, will lead to a deconstruction of the CIA and
the building of a better information capability from the ground up.  I don't
think that's likely, but I do think it would be desirable.

WHEN HOPE DIES

Chalmers Johnson points out one more phenomenon that makes such attacks,
especially suicide attacks, feasible.

What we have seen � perhaps most notably in the Middle East but elsewhere as
well � is a loss of hope among wide swaths of people.  It is not too
difficult to understand that a lot of Palestinians have lost hope that
anything positive is likely to happen in their lifetimes.  It is also
becoming more the case that Israelis are losing hope also.

When people have no hope or see no possibility of a decent life for
themselves and their children, then war and even suicide become less
unthinkable, less unlikely.  Insofar as increasing numbers of people have
lost hope for the future, perhaps we will see more people willing to engage
in what most of see as incredibly desperate acts of violence and terrorism.

I hope Chalmers Johnson is wrong about that one.  But there is little
question now that the United States has begun to pay the price in bloodshed
at home for the arrogance and breastbeating of our almost breathtakingly
ignorant foreign policy leaders.  One may hate those consequences, but until
we begin to recognize that retaliation against innocents is among the
consequences of our foreign policy, we will make little progress either in
understanding September 11 or avoiding more attacks in the future.

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Why Did It Happen?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/moody/moody26.html

September 13, 2001
by Rob Moody robmoody2@worldnet.att.net

Crisis is the rallying cry of a tyrant.  ~ James Madison

As I followed the coverage of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon on Tuesday, a number of thoughts occurred to me.  I have seen very
little, if any, coverage of these items by the mainstream media:

The intelligence failure by the federal government was total and complete.
The primary raison d'etre given for the State is that it protects us from
those who would do us harm.  But in this case, it couldn't even protect the
headquarters of its own protection agency.

The security failure by the government was total and complete.  The
government operates and provides security for virtually every major airport
in America.  How could four airplanes be hijacked in one morning?  How much
time, money and energy does the government spend searching passengers and
luggage for drugs, cash and other harmless contraband when it should be
looking for guns and knives?

President Bush said the federal government would find the perpetrators and
punish them (the focus is always on retribution instead of trying to
understand why it happened in the first place).  But it seems that many, if
not most, of those people are now dead.  Bush said that freedom had been
attacked and that freedom would be defended.  I cringed when I heard those
words, because they sounded like Newspeak.  No, it was hegemony that was
attacked, and freedom will be sacrificed to defend hegemony.

Hawks such as Senators John McCain and Chuck Hagel have already started
beating the war drum, calling the attacks "an act of war" and "a second
Pearl Harbor." Of course they're an act of war; our government has been at
war with other countries and peoples since the beginning of the 20th
century.  Only after a battle takes place on American soil do we realize
this.  "Hey, tonight's baseball game has been canceled.  What's going on?"
Of course, politicians love war since it always results in the expansion of
state power.  As Randolph Bourne said, "War is the health of the State."

I'm sure the neocon warmongers at National Review and The Weekly Standard
are berserk with rage right now, and will call on Bush to nuke some Third
World country, lest America be "humiliated" again like it was with China.
Meanwhile, the unindicted war criminals Henry Kissinger, Sandy Berger and
Richard Holbrooke called on the U.S.  to "respond" by committing the same
crimes they have committed.

September 11 was a black day for Liberty.  I am extremely concerned that
politicians will use these attacks as Hitler used the Reichstag fire to
suspend civil liberties and consolidate his power.  I can only imagine what
kind of legislation New York's senators � who happen to be two of the most
tyrannical members of Congress (if Hillary were President, she would have
already suspended the Constitution and imposed martial law) � will propose
"to prevent something like this from happening again." As Claire Wolfe wrote
on Tuesday, "They--Rudman, Hart, Gingrich, FEMA, the military, and all the
creepy corporations who sell them their spy cameras, their bio-war supplies,
their retina scanners, their metal detectors, and the other gear of the
crushing Big Brother state--have been waiting for something like this to
happen." Whatever Schumer & Co.  propose � war, more police power,
censorship of the Internet, gun registration � Congress will approve it so
they can be seen as "doing something," and the American sheeple will gladly
surrender what few rights they have left in return for their newfound
"security."

Doesn't this make the idea of spending $100 billion or more on a missile
defense shield seem awfully foolish?  It seems that individuals armed with
knives and box cutters pose a more immediate threat.  But the politicians
will point to these attacks as proof that we need a missile defense shield
more than ever.

What surprised me the most about the attacks was not that they were carried
out, but that they were conventional in nature.  For the last several years,
I have been expecting a nuclear, biological or chemical attack on a large
American city.  If you thought there was panic on Tuesday (911 operators
were flooded with calls, there was fear of a bank run, the price of gas shot
up to $5 a gallon in some places, etc.), wait until they attack a city with
Sarin or anthrax.

It seems to me that the vast majority of Americans reflexively want to
"respond," presumably militarily, instead of trying to understand why this
happened in the first place.  As long as they can strike back with a few
hundred cruise missiles, they're not really interested in why they were
attacked.

I was disturbed by the almost mindless jingoism I heard on Tuesday, which I
last saw after the Gulf War.  One veteran said this made him want to "re-up"
(re-enlist in the military).  Why?  So he could be sent overseas by
politicians to kill people he didn't know, and perpetuate the cycle of
violence?  It is one thing to love your country.  It is quite another to
want to kill people who have never done you any harm.  I now see how FDR
could manipulate a populace that was much less educated and informed into
wanting to go to war.  One caller to a radio show described how a woman was
standing on the side of the road, waving an American flag (Why?), and
reiterated that this was "one country, indivisible." The talk show host
responded by saying that everyone should fly an American flag every day
anyway, and implied that a lack of patriotism contributed to the attacks.  I
submit that the truth is just the opposite.  It is our unthinking,
unquestioning patriotism that causes us to mindlessly support the
politicians every time they want to bomb another country.  The more
patriotic we are, the more the politicians bomb, and the more the rest of
the world despises us.

I have heard virtually no discussion about the motive of the attackers.  It
seems to me that it would be the key to understanding why this happened and
preventing something like this from happening again.  I don't know which
group is responsible, but given the way Palestinians were celebrating in the
streets, I would not be surprised if it was a Middle Eastern group that was
violently opposed to the state of Israel.  Assuming that's the case, why did
they come halfway around the world to attack America?  They attacked America
because America has been attacking them on almost a weekly basis since at
least the 1970s.  From Libya to Afghanistan, we have bombed, shelled,
invaded, occupied, sanctioned, embargoed, spied on, inspected and otherwise
meddled in the affairs of virtually every country in the Middle East.  The
U.S.  government has two basic policies for countries in the Middle East:
either it's giving them billions of dollars in aid each year or it's bombing
them; there is no in-between, no neutrality.  They also attacked America
because the U.S.  government has been giving billions of dollars of economic
and military aid to the Israeli government, which has used that aid to
repress and kill Palestinians.  When will we learn to have, as Jefferson
said, "Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling
alliances with none"?  You reap what you sow, and on September 11, America
finally reaped its bitter harvest.
---------------
Rob Moody is a financial planner in Atlanta and lives in Kennesaw, where
every household is required to own a gun.  He also edits Strike The Root.

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Future Hope column, September 13, 2001

A New World

By Ted Glick

We all need to face up to it. Whatever our main area of political work,
whatever our culture or nationality, wherever we live, whatever our age,
the world has shifted because of what happened on September 11th, and
our lives are going to have to shift too.

George Bush is clear on this shift, and he's very open about it. Today,
the 13th, he talked about how these terrible attacks are an "opportunity
to do generations a favor by coming together and whipping terrorism."
Not just the group, whatever it may be, responsible for this recent
crime, but "terrorism."

As if the U.S. government has the moral authority to decide what
constitutes "terrorism," the same government which has militarily
intervened or supported repressive governments and movements all over
the world for decades.

It is essential, imperative, that we speak up wherever we are and
however we can in opposition to the intended, opportunistic use of this
terrible tragedy for political, economic and military gain in the world.
It is one thing to go after the group found to be responsible for the
September 11th attacks. It is another thing entirely to see this as just
the beginning of a generalized, anti-"terrorist" campaign, as Bush
administration leaders are now saying.

In the short term, it is going to be tough going for us to speak out in
this way. We shouldn't underestimate the legitimacy and depth of
peoples' feelings about these attacks. These feelings, in combination
with continuing racism and ignorance of realities on the ground in the
Middle East and elsewhere, will make it an uphill, difficult political
battle for some time to come. It is realistic to expect attacks on our
civil rights that will make it even harder.

Longer-term, there are reasons to believe we can have an impact.

One reason is, quite frankly, because it is a Bush presidency and not a
Clinton presidency. The Bush/Cheney administration's unilateral actions
since taking office--withdrawing from Kyoto, pushing "National Missile
Defense," the low-level delegation sent to and the early withdrawal from
the World Conference on Racism, other examples-while temporarily
forgotten in the immediate crisis atmosphere, continue to be issues
other countries care passionately about. There was already widespread
concern about the "cowboy" nature of this new regime before September
11th. If, or as, the U.S. government escalates its "war against
terrorism," going beyond efforts to neutralize whatever group is
responsible, they are likely to face mounting international resistance.

The other reason has to do with the nature of our overall progressive
movement today, and the political impact we have had and are having.

 >From my vantage point within the movement, I see many positive
developments taking place. It is certainly uneven; we by no means have
gotten it all together, but there is much to be hopeful about. When I
look at what is happening on college campuses, when I see the staying
power and relative unity of the global justice movement, when I hear
about the many positive developments at the World Conference Against
Racism, when I observe, connect with and participate in Green Party and
other third party organizing activity all over the country, when I see
the mix of constituencies, races and ages at the near 1,000
person-strong national Jobs with Justice conference just last
weekend--all of these and other examples paint a picture of a
progressive movement that is moving forward. We are moving forward
because our organizing work in all the many different arenas of struggle
is striking a positive chord among the different cultures and peoples
who make up this country.

This movement has the potential, over a relatively short period of time
(as in months) to, yes, take advantage of this terrible crisis we are
all suffering through and turn it into a national educational campaign
on the roots of terrorism. Why would people take such desperate actions?
What are the realities of life in the Middle East, in the countries of
the Global South, which propel such a wide variety of forms of
resistance, some we stand in solidarity with, others we abhor? What is
the way, beyond this immediate crisis, that we can really "break the
back of terrorism," not through military action but through action to
create a truly just and healthy world?

Perhaps the projected Global Justice Week of Action in Washington, D.C.
September 25-October 1, or at least the September 28-30 weekend portion
of it, could become such a teach-in. Perhaps it could be a place where
those from around the country also learn the skills involved with
organizing such events and decide upon a national week when we would
make them happen in a coordinated way all over the country.

The U.S. government and military are moving fast to turn this tragedy to
their advantage. We can't sit back and let them do so, unchallenged. On
an individual level, first, we need to be there with our families, our
friends, our neighbors, our co-workers, speaking up to point out the
folly and danger of what they intend. And we need to take on new
responsibilities to organize a 21st century peace and justice movement
that will combine the best of past peace movements with the new strength
and insights we have been gaining over this most recent period of time.
The urgency is clear, and we must answer the call.
-----------------
Ted Glick is National Coordinator of the Independent Progressive
Politics Network (www.ippn.org) and author of Future Hope: A Winning
Strategy for a Just Society. He can be reached at futurehopeTG@aol.com
or P.O. Box 1132, Bloomfield, N.J.  07003.

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September 14, 2001

Some Call for Lifting of Assassination Ban

<http://latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-091401assassin.story>

Policy: The issue of government-sponsored killings remains a sensitive one, 
even in the wake of the most
deadly attack on America.

By DAVID G. SAVAGE and HENRY WEINSTEIN, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON -- For the last 25 years, the United States has officially 
forbidden the carrying out of assassinations abroad, a policy that may not 
survive this week's terrorist attacks in New York and Washington.
The policy, first adopted by President Ford in 1976, followed revelations 
that the CIA had tried and failed to kill Cuban leader Fidel Castro. There 
also were fears the botched assassinations might have led to the slaying of 
President Kennedy.
Though controversial, the assassination ban has lasted through five 
administrations and a succession of military operations. The U.S. has 
dropped bombs on Libya and Iraq and fired cruise missiles at Afghanistan 
and Sudan, all with the hope that certain tyrants or terrorists would 
perish in the destruction.
But officials have stopped short of using killing squads, or hiring them, 
to assassinate those who are behind terrorist plots.
This week, some lawmakers have been calling for the repeal of the 
assassination ban as outdated in a world of international terrorism.
"This is a different type of war," said Sen. Richard C. Shelby of Alabama, 
the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.  "They are 
going to assassinate our people and blow up our buildings unless we 
eradicate them first."
Rep. Bob Barr (R-Ga.) had urged President Clinton to repeal the ban after 
the 1998 attacks on the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Saudi exile Osama bin Laden was believed to be behind those attacks, and he 
survived the retaliatory cruise missile strikes ordered by Clinton.
Barr said U.S. policy should not "tie the hands" of the CIA by forbidding 
targeted assassinations. Rather, the authority to carry out such killings 
means the masterminds "can be eliminated in cases where it is simply 
impossible to capture them by ordinary means."
Because the assassination ban is an executive order, not a law, it can be 
repealed by the president. Clinton refused, however, choosing to maintain 
the more nuanced U.S. policy on terrorism. It allows the use of military 
force against recognized threats, including terrorists. And whenever 
possible, the U.S. policy seeks to "bring terrorists to justice for their 
crimes," rather than kill them on the spot.
Before Tuesday's attacks, the Bush administration had placed more 
hard-liners in key posts in the Defense Department. And after the deadly 
assaults on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, they are talking about 
an entirely new approach to combating terrorism.
"It's a different ballgame now," Deputy Defense Secretary Paul 
D.  Wolfowitz said Thursday. From the start, President Bush also spoke of 
"hunting down" those who are behind the terror campaign.
On Thursday, Barr called for the House and Senate to declare war on 
terrorists. If adopted, the resolution would give the president full 
authority to attack and even occupy countries that sponsored terrorism.
Barr also sent the president a letter urging him to repeal the ban on 
targeted assassinations.
Terrorists must be fought by "all means necessary," Barr said.
Not surprisingly, administration officials have not said just what they 
might do to retaliate against this week's terrorism. And the issue of 
government-sponsored assassinations remains a sensitive one, even in the 
wake of the most deadly attack on America.
Just a few weeks ago, State Department officials were critical of Israeli 
efforts to assassinate Palestinian officials who were suspected of 
perpetrating car bombings.
Experts in international law were divided on whether the U.S. should 
undertake an effort to kill Bin Laden. Some said such a move would be 
justified as retaliation for an act of war. Others said it would violate 
the principles of international law, and even the rules of war.
"The idea of targeting people for assassination is legally impermissible 
under international law," said M. Cherif Bassiouni, an international law 
expert at DePaul University in Chicago and the former chairman of the 
United Nations commission that investigated the war crimes in Yugoslavia.
"I think it is a wise policy to not have the intelligence agencies be 
judge, jury and executioner all wrapped into one. The potential for abuse 
is too big and the symbolism is too harmful," Bassiouni said.
Former Rep. Lee Hamilton (D-Ind.), who chaired the House Foreign Affairs 
Committee, said there have been periodic moves to repeal the assassination 
ban, but cooler heads have prevailed.
"After all, assassinations are antithetical to our values. We pride 
ourselves on being a nation of the rule of law." And as a practical matter, 
"we've never been good at assassinations," Hamilton added.
Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh said Bush's team can use force against 
the terrorists without lifting the assassination ban.
"What the Bush administration would argue is this situation is closer to 
the use of force against Iraq in 1991 than the assassination scenarios that 
triggered the Ford executive order," said Koh, who served in the Clinton 
administration. "An act of terrorism is an offense against the law of 
nations," he said, and would justify the use of force in retaliation.

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Terrorists are made, not born

<http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2001/09/12/blowback/index.html>

Indiscriminate bombing? Dirty tricks? They're part of the problem, not the 
solution.

By Bruce Shapiro

Sept. 12, 2001 | "How much anger can prompt a group of people to do this?" 
asked my friend David Handschuh, a New York Daily News photographer, after 
firefighters pulled him, legs shattered, from the rubble at the World Trade 
Center.
With President Bush talking of war and "a monumental struggle between good 
and evil," motivation may seem beside the point. But David's anguished 
query is the right one, and one we ignore at our peril: What do we make of 
a rage so deep that it could prompt a few individuals to convert 
box-cutters, pilots' licenses and airline schedules into weapons of mass 
destruction?
For now, with the attackers still officially unidentified, the only thing 
that can be responsibly said is that terrorist killers are made, not born. 
Call it blowback, call it payback, but whichever part of the world these 
sadistic attacks emanated from, it is someplace where people have long 
acquaintance with body counts and death raining down from the sky.
Handschuch's question is even more relevant because, as the bodies and 
survivors are finally recovered, the mute bewilderment and confusion will 
turn into anger of our own. That is natural. But what contours will that 
rage take as it emerges in Washington and around the country?

President Bush read the words "a quiet, unyielding anger" from his 
teleprompter Tuesday night. But hours earlier, even as Air Force One 
scrambled the unseen president's entourage from airbase to airbase to 
bunker, something different was already evident.
Already, certain Washington hands and select media mouthpieces were playing 
an alarming blame game, seeking to channel public anger into their 
long-favored favored projects.  On ABC, former Secretary of State James 
Baker blamed the whole thing on the Church Committee, he U.S. Senate 
inquiry that 20 years ago exposed the long history of CIA manipulation of 
foreign governments and subsidizing of torture.  "In terms of intelligence, 
we unilaterally disarmed," Baker insisted, declaring it time return for a 
return to the days of unaccountable "dirty business."
He seems to have forgotten just how deeply American embroilment in dirty 
business, coups, assassinations, military regimes, contributed to hatred of 
the U.S. (Today's CIA, let it be noted, profoundly objects to this yearning 
by nostalgic old Cold War hands: Earlier this year I attended a conference 
on terrorism at which Bill Harlow, the CIA's director of public affairs, 
bluntly said that the intelligence community manages to recruit any sources 
it desires under current rules.) A few hours later, former Secretary of 
State Lawrence Eagleburger called on the U.S. to flatten Kabul: "We've got 
to be somewhat irrational in our response. Blow their capital from under 
them."
Just how effective would the Baker-Eagleburger strike-hard policy be in 
quelling the terrorist threat? Look at the West Bank, where the cycle of 
vengeance and victimization gets further cemented into the foundation of 
daily life with each new home demolition and cafe bombing.
This is no time for lectures; in these first hours and days all of us are 
thinking about the
people who escaped, or who didn't. But with the clamor for aggressive and 
massive military
action already beginning, it's essential to point out just how many of the 
world's more baleful
terrorists and mass murderers were born precisely from the kind of 
operations now advocated by the bomb-and-assassinate crowd.
Pol Pot? Rode to power after formerly neutral and stable Cambodia was 
flattened by American bombs. The Taliban? Detritus of the anti-Soviet 
Afghan guerrilla movement financed and trained by the U.S. Chechnya 
guerrillas? Russia's own private blowback.
None of this diminishes the responsibility of the perpetrators of this 
week's attack, or diminishes the need to bring the full force of domestic 
and international law to bear. But it should serve as a warning to our 
leaders that assuaging the public's grief with B-52 strikes will reap its 
own unforeseeable whirlwind. "Blow Kabul from under them?" You might as 
well hand out box-cutters and directions to Kennedy Airport to every kid in 
Afghanistan unto the third generation.
And on the domestic front, while comparisons to Pearl Harbor are 
inevitable, the comments of some politicians Tuesday were a chilly reminder 
of the worst panic-driven excess of the Second World War: the internment of 
Japanese-Americans in prison camps. No one was going quite that far. But 
Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., called for closing the nation's borders.  Sen. 
John Edwards, D-N.C., and Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., propose greatly 
expanding the FBI's surveillance powers, powers that already are the 
broadest in American history.  Not that there is a shred of evidence that 
the cold, disciplined commandos who so carefully perpetrated these ghastly 
attacks chatted about their plans over cellphones, or that dozens of 
terrorist teams are creeping in from Vancouver.
What is striking, in fact, is the raging irrelevance of the extreme 
measures both military and legal authorities proposed in the last 24 hours. 
"The responses for which support is being mobilized are not going to 
address the true character of this challenge," says professor Richard Falk 
of Princeton, a foreign policy scholar who has thought long and hard about 
the reconfigured world order. "This is the first war for which there is no 
military solution. And without a military solution our leaders lack the 
imagination to understand what is happening and what to do."
One former high-ranking federal emergency official and terrorism response 
expert described to me a recent simulated terrorism exercise that featured 
role-playing by such Washington luminaries as Sam Nunn and David Gergen. 
The participants were given an imaginary scenario involving the deliberate 
release of smallpox. This observer was struck how in the "outbreak's" early 
phases, when small measures could have made the simulated events more 
manageable, the players could not settle on a course of action. Later, when 
in a real epidemic it would have been far too late, they resorted to 
draconian measures. In the all-too-real scenario now playing out in 
Washington, draconian measures, political, legal and military, seem to have 
similar appeal.
The war has indeed come home. But I don't mean the war on terrorism, a 
phrase repeated endlessly and meaninglessly on television Tuesday night. 
Nor do I mean, in any narrow sense, the fanatic war of whoever it was who 
attacked lower Manhattan. What has come home, on an unimaginable scale and 
with inconceivable speed, is a vicious cycle of victimhood and revenge, a 
bitter, confusing jumble of shock, grief, fear.
"How much anger can prompt a group of people to do this?" That is the 
question to ask of ourselves as well as of our attackers.
-------------
About the writer
Bruce Shapiro is national correspondent for Salon News.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feds enlist ISPs in terrorist probe

September 13, 2001
By Richard Stenger

(CNN) -- Major Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United States said
Thursday they are cooperating with federal authorities in the investigation
of the terrorist attack on New York and Washington.
The FBI served EarthLink with a search warrant to gather electronic
information relating to national security, said Dan Greenfield, spokesperson
for the Atlanta, Georgia-based ISP.
"We received on Tuesday an FISA order," said Greenfield, referring to the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which provides guidelines for certain
kinds of secret investigations of the FBI, CIA, the National Security Agency
and a handful of other federal organizations.
"You cannot necessarily make the assumption that it was around events on
Tuesday," Greenfield added. "We are cooperating with the FBI and other
officials on any assistance they need," he said, declining to elaborate.
Representatives of many top ISPs said that their companies had been working
with U.S. authorities in the wake of the hijackings and air assault Tuesday.
But none gave any specifics.

"We have been approached by investigators. We did cooperate and provided
information that was requested," said Nicholas Graham, a spokesperson for
America Online, based in Dulles, Virginia.
"We routinely cooperate with authorities, from the local to the state to the
national level. This investigation is no different," he said.
Alison Bowan of Excite@Home said that the Redwood City, California-based ISP
was been in contact with federal law enforcement agents.
"I can't elaborate on which branch. We are cooperating fully based on the law
on our policies," she said.

Use of 'Carnivore?

Greenfield said EarthLink did not install any so-called "Carnivore" boxes on
its servers, which the FBI uses to monitor electronic correspondences of
suspected criminals.
Likewise, other ISPs said that they did not use the Carnivore system.
Greenfield and other ISP reps hastened to add that their companies were
adhering to internal guidelines that protect the privacy of their
subscribers.
The FBI, as is its custom, declined to confirm or comment on the
investigation. But one U.S. government official said that they "were not
ruling out any legal investigative techniques right now."
Early Tuesday, hijackers took control of four commercial airliners. Within
the span of an hour, two crashed into the World Trade Center twin towers, one
slammed into the headquarters of the U.S. military, and another went down in
rural Pennsylvania. Some believe that the last aircraft had an intended
target in Washington, D.C.
Federal authorities said Thursday that they had identified at least 18 people
who took part in the hijackings, some from Arab nations in the Middle East.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Former president Bush urges fewer restrictions on US intelligence

Friday September 14, 2001

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/010913/1/1g5eo.html

BOSTON, Sept 13 (AFP) -
       Former president George Bush, reacting to the deadly terrorist
attacks in the United States, made a strong plea here Thursday for
removing constraints that hamper the ability of the US intelligence
community to penetrate terror groups.

       "The world we live in today is very different than what it was
when this week began, very different," the father of President George
W. Bush, told a business conference, referring to Tuesday's terrorist
attacks against the Pentagon and New York's World Trade Center feared
to have killed thousands.

       "We should make sure that these agencies responsible for
protecting American citizens against terror are not forced to fight
this critical battle with one armed tied behind them."

       The former president, who served as director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) from January 1971 to January 1977, noted
that the intelligence community had been criticized in the past for
maintaining links with "unsavory people."

       "People tried to make a lot out of the fact that at one point
the intelligence community dealt with (former Panamanian strongman)
Manuel Noriega," he said.

       "Well, they did; but it isn't a nice, clean business. And if
you're going to infiltrate some cell somewhere or a terrorist cell,
you have to deal with people that are willing to betray their
country, people that are willing to betray their friends, people that
want money or other things."

       In December 1989, the elder Bush ordered US forces to invade
Panama and Noriega was arrested and taken to Florida to stand trial.
The trial began in 1991, and Noriega's attorneys argued his wealth
largely came from the CIA, for which Noriega was an informant, and
not from illegal activities.

       Noriega however was convicted of drug trafficking and money
laundering, and remains in a Miami federal prison.

       "I think we're going to find that we have to do more in the way
of human intelligence and that means we're going to have to take a
broad look at exactly what constraints the intelligence community,
not just CIA, but the community itself, is operating under," the
former president said.

       "I think it's important to recognize that all this new Internet
technology that you guys know so much about has to be reviewed, in a
sense, to see whether we're constraining our intelligence communities
from getting after the culprits that may be American citizens. It's
not pleasant," he noted. "You have got to always respect the privacy
and right of an American citizen."

       The United States fields a total of 13 intelligence-gathering
organizations, including the CIA, the National Security Agency,
responsible for electronic eavesdropping around the world and the
Defense Intelligence Agency.

       US security experts have repeatedly complained that US
intelligence agencies rely too much on technical means of data
collection, such as spy satellites and electronic eavesdropping
devices, at the expense of human intelligence.

       Larry Johnson, a former deputy director of the State
Department's counter-terrorist office, said the CIA was having
trouble adapting to challenges of the post-Cold-War era, including
the new strength of extremist Islamic groups.

       "To penetrate these organizations, you don't have diplomatic
cocktail parties where we would traditionally recruit spies from
other countries," he told MSNBC.

       Johnson said US intelligence operatives should not hesitate to
get their hands dirty, if that is what it takes to put an end to
terrorism.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Peace Signs Amid Calls for War

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/20/nyregion/20PEAC.html?ex=1002036454&ei=1&en=9923a9c22c188b7d

September 20, 2001
By ANDREW JACOBS

The drumbeat for war, so loud in the rest of the country,
is barely audible on the streets of New York.

In Union Square Park, which has become an outdoor memorial
to loss and grief, peace signs, antiwar slogans and pleas
for nonviolence far outnumber demands for retribution. The
equestrian statue of George Washington charging into battle
has been transformed into a monument of antiwar sentiment,
and although there are a handful of wanted posters
featuring Osama bin Laden, there are far more that say,
"Mourn the Victims, Stand for Peace" or "An eye for an eye
creates blindness."

In interviews with two dozen New Yorkers, most people said
the desire for peace outweighed any impulse for vengeance,
even among those directly affected by the destruction of
the World Trade Center. Many said they were worried that
the rest of the country, encouraged by the White House and
the news media, was driving the nation toward a large-
scale conflict.

"I don't want to see more people go through pain and
suffering," said Shannon Carr, 34, who teaches at St.
Ann's, a private school in Brooklyn. Several children at
the school have parents still buried in the rubble of the
twin towers. "There has to be justice," Ms. Carr said, "but
I don't think war is the answer."

While much of the country clamors for martial retribution,
with polls showing nearly 90 percent supporting a military
response, many New Yorkers who were interviewed remain
ambivalent about President Bush's promised war against
terrorism. Many expressed fear that any strike would spark
another wave of mayhem in New York.

"It's easy to call for blood when you live in Des Moines,"
said Terrance Kincaid, 37, an insurance broker from Queens.
"We have seen the horrific consequences of aggression. For
the rest of the country, it's still just a bunch of
television images."

Other New Yorkers said they had no wish to inflict misery
on the civilians who would inevitably become victims of an
American military assault.

"A few days ago I was saying, `Bombs away,' but now that
I've calmed down, I don't want a war," said Jana Crawford,
29, a photo editor at Advertising Age magazine in
Manhattan. "I don't want a lot more people to die."

Some of those opposed to military action say their voices
are not being heard by Washington or the mainstream news
media.

"The White House is demanding blood and the television is
preparing us for war, but no one is considering
alternatives," said Carol Thompson, a political science
professor at Northern Arizona University, one of 530
academics who have signed a petition urging restraint. More
than 1,200 religious leaders have added their names to a
similar statement, as have a group of actors, authors and
other celebrities who plan to publish their "Justice Not
Vengeance" declaration in newspapers across the country.

This afternoon, a series of rallies on college campuses
around the nation will strike a similar theme, and on
Friday night, a peace vigil will wend its way from Union
Square to the armed forces recruiting station in Times
Square.

Of course, there are plenty of New Yorkers who believe that
only war will end terrorism, including many liberals who
have been surprised by their own emotions. "I've had blood
lust from the very beginning," said Jackie Bayks, 38, a
lawyer who has been unable to return to her apartment in
Battery Park City. "It's strange because I'm not a
patriotic person, but I've been feeling very patriotic this
week. I just can't help myself."

Karen Senecal, a minister at Judson Memorial Church in
Greenwich Village, said she had been trying to resist the
temptation to join in the culture of jingoism. "Part of me
realizes that violence brings more violence, but another
part of me wanted retaliation," she said. "Many people are
getting strength in that, and I felt I was missing
something."

Some say they are reluctant to buck the tidal wave of
patriotism by speaking about peace. "I feel like I can't
talk about nonviolence because I'm afraid it will be
perceived as disrespectful or un-American," said Madeleine
Bloustein, 40, a voice-over actress from Brooklyn.

But a large number of New Yorkers are not sure where they
stand. As shock gives way to anger, their thirst for
revenge is only growing stronger; others say the opposite
is true. But many, like Matthew Pack, a student at New York
University, have been whiplashed by their emotions. A
self-described pacifist who is "way to the left," Mr. Pack,
22, said he felt disgusted by his own vengeful fantasies.

"I'm not used to feeling this way," he said, "and every
time my head starts to cool off, I see one of those missing
person posters and all those emotions come back. The only
thing I can say at this point is that I'll never be the
same."

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

DOJ's Anti-Terrorism Law Would Dismantle Civil Liberties

Electronic Frontier Foundation Media Release
For Immediate Release: September 19, 2001

Contacts:
Shari Steele, EFF Executive Director, ssteele@eff.org,
    +1 415 436-9333 x103
Lee Tien, EFF Senior Staff Attorney, tien@eff.org,
    +1 415 436-9333 x102 (office),
    +1 510 290-7131 (cell)

DOJ's Anti-Terrorism Law Would Dismantle Civil Liberties

Legislate to Improve Security Not Eliminate Freedoms

San Francisco, California - The Electronic Frontier
Foundation (EFF) today criticized the "Mobilization Against
Terrorism Act" proposed by the US Department of Justice
because many provisions of the law would dramatically alter
the civil liberties landscape through unnecessarily broad
restrictions on free speech and privacy rights in the
United States and abroad.

EFF again urged Congress to act with deliberation in
approving only measures that are effective in preventing
terrorism while protecting the freedoms of Americans.

Attorney General John Ashcroft distributed the proposed
Mobilization Against Terrorism Act to members of
Congress after Monday's press conference at which he
indicated that, among other measures, he would ask
Congress to expand the ability of law enforcement officers
to perform wiretaps in response to the terrorist attacks
on the United States on September 11, 2001. Ashcroft
asked Congress to pass anti-terrorism legislation
including "expanded electronic surveillance" by the end of
this week.

EFF believes this broad legislation would radically tip the
United States system of checks and balances, giving the
government unprecedented authority to surveil American
citizens with little judicial or other oversight.

One particularly egregious section of the DOJ's analysis of
its proposed legislation says that "United States
prosecutors may use against American citizens information
collected by a foreign government even if the collection
would have violated the Fourth Amendment."

"Operating from abroad, foreign governments will do the
dirty work of spying on the communications of Americans
worldwide. US protections against unreasonable search and
seizure won't matter," commented EFF Senior Staff Attorney
Lee Tien.

Additional provisions of the proposed Mobilization Against
Terrorism Act include measures which:

* Make it possible to obtain e-mail message header
information and Internet user web browsing patterns without
a wiretap order

* Eviscerate controls on roving wiretaps

* Permit law enforcement to disclose information obtained
through wiretaps to any employee of the Executive branch

* Reduce restrictions on domestic investigations under the
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)

* Permit grand juries to provide information to the US
intelligence community

* Permit the President to designate any "foreign-directed
individual, group, or entity," including any United States
citizen or organization, as a target for FISA
surveillance

* Prevent people from even talking about terrorist acts

* Establish a DNA database for every person convicted of
any felony or certain sex offenses, almost all of which
are entirely unrelated to terrorism

EFF Executive Director Shari Steele emphasized, "While it
is obviously of vital national importance to respond
effectively to terrorism, this bill recalls the McCarthy
era in the power it would give the government to
scrutinize the private lives of American citizens."

Ashcroft's proposed legislation comes in the wake of the
Senate's hasty passage of the "Combating Terrorism Act"
on the evening of September 13 with less than 30 minutes
of consideration on the Senate floor.

About EFF:

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is the leading civil
liberties organization working to protect rights in the
digital world. Founded in 1990, EFF actively encourages and
challenges industry and government to support free
expression, privacy, and openness in the information
society. EFF is a member-supported organization and
maintains one of the most linked-to websites in the world:
http://www.eff.org/

The proposed Mobilization Against Terrorism Act:
http://www.eff.org/sc/ashcroft_proposal.html

EFF analysis of the Mobilization Against Terrorism Act
[coming soon]:
http://www.eff.org/sc/eff_ashcroft.html

Attorney General John Ashcroft remarks on response to
terrorism from FBI headquarters on September 17, 2001:
http://www.eff.org/sc/ashcroft_statement.html

The Combating Terrorism Act (S1562) passed by the Senate:
http://www.eff.org/sc/wiretap_bill.html

Senator Leahy's testimony on the Combating Terrorism Act:
http://www.fas.org/sgp/congress/2001/s091301.html

EFF analysis of the Combating Terrorism Act:
http://www.eff.org/sc/eff_wiretap_bill_analysis.html

Why "backdoor" encryption requirements reduce security:
http://www.crypto.com/papers/escrowrisks98.pdf

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Broad Coalition Forms to Defend Rights, Liberties in Wake of Attacks

   http://www.drcnet.org/wol/203.html#indefenseoffreedom

A broad coalition of public policy organizations, law professors,
technology professionals and common citizens kicked off a
campaign to ensure that the "war against terrorism" does not
become a war on hard-won American rights and liberties with a
press conference at the National Press Club in downtown
Washington Thursday.

"Americans should think carefully and clearly about the balance
between national security and individual freedom, and we must
acknowledge the fact that some will seek to restrict freedom for
ideological and other reasons that have little to do with
security," warned Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the
American Civil Liberties Union.

The ACLU and an impressive list of more than 150 organizations of
the left, right, and center -- from Amnesty International to the
American Conservative Union, from the Baptist Joint Committee on
Public Affairs to the Unitarian Universalist Association of
Congregations, from the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation to Gun
Owners of America, from the Free Congress Foundation to People
for the American Way -- as well as more than 300 law professors
and 40 computer scientists -- have come together around ten basic
points in an effort to fend off post-attack security measure that
threaten fundamental civil liberties.

The "In Defense of Freedom" declaration reads as follows:

1.  On September 11, 2001 thousands of people lost their lives in
a brutal assault on the American people and the American form of
government.  We mourn the loss of these innocent lives and insist
that those who perpetrated these acts be held accountable.

2.  This tragedy requires all Americans to examine carefully the
steps our country may now take to reduce the risk of future
terrorist attacks.

3.  We need to consider proposals calmly and deliberately with a
determination not to erode the liberties and freedoms that are at
the core of the American way of life.

4.  We need to ensure that actions by our government uphold the
principles of a democratic society, accountable government and
international law, and that all decisions are taken in a manner
consistent with the Constitution.

5.  We can, as we have in the past, in times of war and of peace,
reconcile the requirements of security with the demands of
liberty.

6.  We should resist the temptation to enact proposals in the
mistaken belief that anything that may be called anti-terrorist
will necessarily provide greater security.

7.  We should resist efforts to target people because of their
race, religion, ethnic background or appearance, including
immigrants in general, Arab Americans and Muslims.

8.  We affirm the right of peaceful dissent, protected by the
First Amendment, now, when it is most at risk.

9.  We should applaud our political leaders in the days ahead who
have the courage to say that our freedoms should not be limited.

10.  We must have faith in our democratic system and our
Constitution, and in our ability to protect at the same time both
the freedom and the security of all Americans.

(The statement, along with a list of endorsers is available at
http://www.indefenseofreedom.org online.)

Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference
on Civil Rights, told the press conference that history shows
that civil rights and civil liberties fall before the imperatives
of national security.  "This coalition has been formed with the
hope that the aftermath of last week's tragedy will be the
exception," he said.  "We must resist rash action conceived in
the heat of national crisis.  We must not compound this tragedy
by infringing on the rights of Americans or persons guaranteed
protections under the Constitution."

The coalition is particularly concerned with provisions of the
hastily-drafted Anti-Terrorism Act of 2001 (available online at
http://www.epic.org/privacy/terrorism/ata2001_text.pdf), which is
being rapidly rushed through the Congress.  Its wiretapping
proposals, for example, seek to remove judges from the minimal
oversight role they currently have.  By calling for "nationwide"
pen registers, which record phone numbers called, and trap and
trace surveillance, the Justice Department is asking Congress to
approve what the ACLU calls the equivalent of "a blank warrant in
the physical world."  Under this provision, a judge would issue
the warrant and law enforcement would fill in the places to be
searched.  "This is not consistent with the Fourth Amendment
privacy protection of requiring that warrants specify the place
to be searched," the ACLU noted.

Saying that law enforcement already possesses broad authority for
wiretaps and has a history of abusing that authority, the ACLU
warned lawmakers to "be extra careful not to upset the careful
balance between law enforcement and civil liberties.  These
amendments were adopted with little debate in the middle of the
night."

One of the participants in the coalition, the conservative Free
Congress Foundation, had earlier organized a letter (on September
10), under the umbrella of the "Coalition for Constitutional
Liberties" asking the Senate Judiciary Committee to consider
certain issues in its deliberations over the nomination of John
Walters as drug czar.  Saying the coalition was 'concerned that
the war on drugs has degraded our privacy and civil liberties,"
the letter asked the committee to consider raising the following
privacy and civil liberties issues in connection with the Walters
nomination: the use of new surveillance and investigative
technologies, including the Carnivore/DCS1000 and Echelon
systems, the "Know Your Customer" proposal of the Financial
Action Task Force, asset forfeiture abuses, racial profiling,
wiretaps and the drug war's sometimes corrupting influence on law
enforcement itself."

By the next day, the whole issue was subsumed within the broader
concerns now abroad in the land as Congress works feverishly on
proposals with unproven utility for improving security but strong
risk of eroding civil liberties that have already been deeply
undermined.

Free Congress has launched a companion web site --
http://www.defendyourfreedom.org -- which allows visitors to
endorse the "In Defense of Freedom" declaration and send it to
Congress.  A statement by the foundation in releasing it called
the impulse to pit civil liberties against security a "false
choice."  The statement cited evidence that no criminal
investigations have ever been thwarted by the use of encryption
technology, and that a reliance on wiretapping and surveillance
had come at the expense of the "human intelligence" that could
infiltrate terrorist networks and the governments supporting
them.

Two articles by Declan McCullagh in Wired News yesterday provide
further information on the proposals currently in Congress and
the civil liberties coalition:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46953,00.html
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,46959,00.html

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Palestinian People's Party, Thu, 13 Sep 2001

http://www.palpeople.org , mailto:shaab@palpeople.org

Press Release over acts of bombing in the US
September 12, 2001

The Palestinian People's Party warns of the scheme of Sharon's government
which is trying to exploit the bombing operations with planes that targeted
the World Trade Center in New York and the US Defense Department in order to
settle accounts with the Palestinian leadership and people through forming
the so-called "international front to fight terrorism" that offers a cover
up for more acts of aggression against the Palestinian people and against
the other peoples of the world who are struggling to reinforce their
independence and right in self determination.

We join our voice to the voices of all Palestinian, Arab, and international
forces in condemning the suicide operations in the US.And we affirm that the
attempt to picture the Palestinian people as supporters of such acts is
nothing but an Israeli attempt to justify the policy of tightening the
aggression and siege.

We understand the call to form the so-called "international front against
terrorism" which was advocated first by Israel as an attempt aiming to
exploit the aftermath and international reactions resulting from the bombing
operations that condemn the killing of innocent civilians. This Israeli call
aims to break the international isolation resulting from the policy of
colonialism and racial discrimination and the establishment of a new
alliance that can save it from its isolation and can allow it to resume its
aggressions against the Palestinian people.

We stress that the current phase requires urgent efforts to form "an
international front against colonialism and racial discrimination" and work
on implementing the decisions of Durban Conference, mainly the formation of
an international movement against Israeli racial discrimination against the
Palestinian people.

The Palestinian People's Party

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 20, 2001

Bush creates homeland defense agency

<http://www.govexec.com/dailyfed/0901/092001ts1.htm>

By Tom Shoop tshoop@govexec.com

In an address to Congress and the nation Thursday night, President Bush 
announced the creation of a new Cabinet-level Office of Homeland Security.
The new office, Bush said, will "lead, oversee and coordinate a national 
strategy to safeguard our country against terrorism and respond to any 
attacks that come."
The new office will be headed by Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge.
Bush noted that currently, several different federal agencies have 
responsibility for aspects of homeland defense, and said Ridge would work 
to manage their efforts.
Some members of Congress have pushed for the creation of a single agency to 
be responsible for homeland defense. Such an agency would embrace some 
combination of the Border Patrol, the Immigration and Naturalization 
Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the Customs Service, the Coast Guard, 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and possibly others.  Rep. Mac 
Thornberry, R-Texas, introduced legislation to create such an agency 
earlier this year.
In his speech, Bush said the United States is "a country awakened to danger 
and called to defend freedom." He pledged to launch an all-out assault on 
terrorists and the nations who harbor them. "We will direct every resource 
at our command," Bush said.
The effort, the President said, would not be like the ground war against 
Iraq or the recent air war over Kosovo, but would be "a lengthy campaign 
unlike any we have ever seen."
In remarks directed to military service members, Bush said, "the hour is 
coming when America will act, and you will make us proud."
The White House also announced Thursday that Bush would nominate R. David 
Paulison to be Administrator of the United States Fire Administration at 
the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Paulison has been Fire Chief of 
Miami-Dade County since 1992, after 21 years of service with the Miami-Dade 
County Fire Department. He also directs the Miami-Dade County Office of 
Emergency Management.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fighting a 'dirty war'

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1555000/1555760.stm

Bush may have to widen his powers to fight the war

By BBC world affairs correspondent William Horsley
Friday, 21 September, 2001

In times of crisis, American leaders look to the Central Intelligence Agency
to do their dirty work.

President George W Bush characterises his "war on terrorism" as a battle to
maintain freedom.

But he may be about to award himself special powers to order the deaths of
his enemies abroad.

The CIA would again be called on to do the dirty work.

Meanwhile, the US Congress looks like baulking at proposals to enact radical
changes to the law, to allow a clamp down on potential terrorists by giving
government agencies sweeping extra powers.

'Dangerous business'

Following the devastating attacks on New York and Washington, US leaders
fear that more terrorists are in hiding in the country, waiting perhaps to
unleash even more terrible destruction using germ warfare or chemical
weapons.

President Bush has declared Osama Bin Laden the prime suspect for last
week's outrages, and declared him "wanted: dead or alive".

He also said he would make "no distinction" between those who carried out
the deadly attacks and governments which support or harbour terrorists.

Last Sunday US Vice-President Dick Cheney announced the determination of the
US to strike back at terrorists who threaten America, using their own
methods.

He said the US had no choice. It must launch into "the mean, nasty, dirty,
dangerous business" of infiltrating terrorist networks, to try to eliminate
them.

But what about the law? In 1976 President Gerald Ford signed an executive
order prohibiting US leaders from ordering the assassination of foreign
leaders.

But President George W Bush could rescind that order by himself any time he
chooses.

Would that be politically astute? Probably not, say many policy experts in
Washington.

Failed plots

The assassination ban was imposed in response to a series of Congressional
inquiries which unearthed evidence of several CIA plots to kill foreign
leaders, including the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

CIA agents tried to assassinate Fidel Castro several times

The CIA was also accused by its critics of backing the military coup which
resulted in the death in 1973 of the elected left-wing leader of Chile,
Salvador Allende.

The extent of the CIA's involvement remains a matter of debate.

At about the same time, the CIA was active in many states in Africa and
Latin America, working to undermine left-wing regimes hostile to the US.

Their efforts often resulted in right-wing juntas coming to power which then
suppressed civil rights and were responsible for widespread abuses of human
rights.

In Vietnam and across Indochina at that time, working mostly in secret, the
CIA played a key part in trying to counter the rising communist insurgency
and to sustain in power leaders who would be pliable and friendly towards
the US.

Their efforts failed, as Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia fell like "dominoes" to
the victorious communist armies.

Watergate

To many anti-war and civil rights leaders in the US, the final straw came
with the Watergate scandal in the early 1970s.

America suffered a new trauma when it emerged that President Richard Nixon
had ordered agents to break in to the Watergate Hotel in Washington, the
election campaign headquarters of his Democratic rival.

Then the president abused the powers of the CIA and the FBI as he sought to
cover up his involvement.

Opinion in the US is divided on the question: should the president have the
right, in extreme cases, to order the death of an enemy abroad?

Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat, seemed in no doubt when he told the Senate
that every means must be used to eliminate the ability of America's enemies
to attack.

"If that means we have to have the authority to assassinate people before
they can assassinate us, yes, we should free that stricture", he said.

Others suggest the letter of the law is irrelevant.

A former top CIA lawyer, Jeffrey Smith, told the BBC: "If the president so
directed, the US could attack Osama Bin Laden and his headquarters, not to
kill him but to use force. And if in the course of that he were to be
killed, no-one would shed many tears."

Recruiting criminals

The question is also being asked: should the CIA be freed from existing
restraints on employing unsavoury or even criminal individuals, in order to
wage the "war against terrorism"?

(The CIA) never turned down a field request to recruit an asset in a
terrorist organisation

Bill Harlow, CIA spokesman
Individuals with extraordinary skills and backgrounds are needed, to
infiltrate terrorist cells or guerrilla movements.

Again, experts suggest that the secret services are not really constrained
by present rules, which simply oblige them to record the known facts
whenever they recruit someone with a dubious past.

The CIA's spokesman, Bill Harlow, said the CIA has "never turned down a
field request to recruit an asset in a terrorist organisation".

And Jeffrey Smith, the former CIA lawyer who is a member of the prestigious
US Council on Foreign Relations says: "The CIA and the FBI have used
scoundrels and crooks for years."

What's more, says Mr Smith, by using these methods the US has successfully
penetrated or exposed several terrorist networks and foiled a number of
potentially deadly attacks on US cities in recent years.

The "dirty and dangerous" war is not new. But since the loss of more than
6,000 lives in the attacks on the US last week, it has grown more deadly.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 20, 2001

Panic and Indignity: The Currency of Revenge

<http://www.antiwar.com/cockburn/c092001.html>

by Alexander Cockburn

"We should melt the sand," snarled one four-star Air Force general to a 
friend of mine three days after the September 11 attacks.  His fury is 
echoed hourly on TV and radio. The predictable eye-for-an-eye frenzy has 
built up its usual lethal head of steam with predictable rapidity. The 
outstanding question is: how many eyes for an eye. Count 5,000 dead in the 
Trade Towers, the four hijacked planes and the Pentagon. How many dead does 
this require in Kabul, or Baghdad or elsewhere in the hinterlands of 
terrorist Islam?

The traditional valuation of one white American to members of the brown 
races usually runs at about 500 to one, and the western press is mostly 
incapable of rating Indians or Chinese in units of under 5,000. Such 
equations would require a minimum revenge killing of 500,000, a pretty tall 
order, given that the "revenge window" (meaning the period in which public 
opinion is sufficiently fomented to exclude all moral qualms about mass 
murder of innocents) is not permanently ajar.
The only quick way to achieve killing on this scale would be with a 
substantial nuclear device on a city.  Given this requirement, we may 
applaud the restraint of Thomas Woodrow in the Washington Times on 
September 14, though his moderation is salted with the pusillanimous phrase 
"at a bare minimum." Woodrow recommends that "at a bare minimum, tactical 
nuclear capabilities should be used against the bin Laden camps in the 
desert of Afghanistan. To do less would be rightly seen by the poisoned 
minds that orchestrated these attacks as cowardice on the part of the 
United States and the current administration."
Though there are certainly some hotheads among the President's counselors 
eager to endorse such a tactic, the balance of opinion would doubtless 
argue against this course at the present time, on the grounds that it might 
excite criticism abroad and further perturb the chances for any long-term 
global coalition (the world's White Citizens Council) against terrorism by 
the brown races.
Absent dropping a Big One, how can the necessary revenge be exacted? Cruise 
missiles, used by Bill Clinton as a way of expressing his displeasure at 
Sudan, may be useful for destroying pharmaceutical factories, hospitals, 
even defense ministries, but the body counts are not robust. Certainly not 
brawny enough to satisfy a man like retired Army Colonel James McDonough, 
who told the Washington Post last weekend that "The near term will help 
unleash the terrible anger and outrage Americans unilaterally feel. It will 
be swift, total, bloody, and compelling." Given such requirements, a 
symbolic revenge sortie like the Doolittle bombardment of Tokyo after Pearl 
Harbor won't be enough.
So how about large-scale bombing? Here again, experience tells us that 
protracted bombing is required, and though the death count on the ground 
can be most satisfactory, the risks to the aviators can also become 
substantial. The bombing of German cities by the Allies in World War Two 
did yield a total of 250,000 civilian deaths. Less well known is the fact 
that for every two German deaths thus achieved by bombs, there was one dead 
or captured Allied airman: 125,000 in all.
The first sortie in any bombing campaign may yield satisfactory results in 
terms of civilian deaths, but the target populations soon learn to go to 
ground in shelters, or evacuate to the countryside. As an infant, the 
present writer spent the first portion of the Luftwaffe's blitz of London 
on the platform of St. John's Wood subway station (one of the deepest in 
London) and the latter in Northumberland, during which time the Cockburn 
home at number 5, Acacia Road, northwest London, was leveled by one of 
Werner von Braun's rockets, with no loss of life, though a severe shock for 
the cat. Casualty rates from NATO bombs in Yugoslavia were not very high, 
and neither were those immediately consequent upon the bombardments of Iraq 
in 1991.
But who or what is is there to bomb in Afghanistan?  The Russians have 
already done their best. A pathetically poor country in the first place, 
Afghanistan is only marginally ahead of Mali, in terms of available 
infrastructure to destroy, with far more challenging terrain.
A land invasion in force, a blitzkrieg sparing nothing and no one? 
Afghanistan is famously the graveyard of punitive missions embarked upon by 
the Great Powers, as the British discovered in the nineteenth century and 
the Soviets in the 1980s. The mere mounting an expeditionary force would 
take would be a difficult, possibly protracted business, landing the United 
States in a prodigious number of diplomatic difficulties, given the mutual 
antagonisms and stresses of adjacent or nearby states such as Pakistan, 
India, Russia's dependency Tajikistan, and China.
One familiar way extricating oneself from confrontation an unsuitable foe 
is to substitute a more satisfactory one. Though it is highly likely that 
Iran was the sponsor of the downing of Panam Flight 103, in revenge for the 
downing of the Iranian Airbus by the US carrier Vincennes (whose crew was 
subsequently decorated for its conduct in shooting down a planeload of 
civilians) the US preferred to identify Qaddafi's Libya as the culprit, as 
a more easily negotiable target for revenge.  Already there's a lobby, the 
most conspicuous of whom is former CIA chief James Woolsey, pressing Iraq's 
case as possible sponsor or cosponsor of the World Trade Center attacks. So 
sanctions against Iraq could be strengthened, its cities bombed and perhaps 
even another invasion attempted.
Obviously aware of the difficulties surrounding speedy, adequately bloody, 
retribution, Bush's entourage have been talking in Mao-like terms about 
"protracted war," or a "war in the shadows," with the inference that 
America's revenge will be exacted for years to come in the back alleys of 
the world, cold steel between the ribs of each Muslim terrorist on a 
moonless night. The purely nominal ban against US Government-sponsored 
assassination (there have been numerous CIA-backed against Castro since the 
mid-1970s ban, if you believe the Cubans) will be lifted, as will the 
supposed inhibition against the CIA hiring unsavory characters, meaning 
drug smugglers, many of them also trained in the flying schools of southern 
Florida.
The war in the shadows will be definition be shadowy (hence poor provender 
for the appetite for revenge), at least until some CIA-backed revenge 
bombing surfaces into public view like the attempted bombing of Sheik 
Fadlallah outside a Beirut mosque, sponsored by CIA chief William Casey, 
which missed the Sheik but which killed over a hundred bystanders, 
including many children.
The war in the shadows will naturally provoke counterattacks from groups 
intent on discomfiting America. This is recognized, rather comfortably so, 
by America's military men, quoted in the Washington Post: "Every war has 
two sides, and the U.S. public needs to expect reprisals, warned James 
Bodner, a former Pentagon official. "Future attacks against us will be 
planned, and some may occur," Bodner said.
As in no other American conflict, civilians are on the front line. That's 
especially worrisome because the public infrastructure of the United 
States  especially its airports and border controls  wasn't designed with a 
long military campaign in mind. "The safest place to be in this kind of 
warfare may be in uniform," noted retired Army Col. Johnny Brooks.
A moment's reflection instructs us that none of this is likely to yield the 
results sought in the short term (revenge) or in the long-term (victory 
over terrorism). America's official reaction magnified an already dreadful 
disaster and further exhilarated the foe.
On this point, be instructed by a fine, but sadly rare example. On the 
morning of September 11 Judge Henry Wood was trying, of all things, an 
American airline crash damage case in Federal District court in Little 
Rock, Arkansas. In the wake of the attacks there were orders to close the 
courthouse. All obeyed, except Judge Wood, aged 83, who insisted that jury 
and lawyers and attendants remain in place.  Turning down a plea for 
mistrial by the defendant, Wood said, "This looks like an intelligent jury 
to me and I didn't want the judicial system interrupted by a terrorist act, 
no matter how horrible."
Wood's was the proper reaction. Why on Earth close the Minnesota state 
legislature? If Gov. Jesse Ventura was truly an independent spirit he would 
have insisted it remain open. America could do with more of what used to be 
called the Roman virtues.  Why shut the schools, and then proclaim 
counseling sessions, presumably, to instruct children that the world can be 
a bad place. And what is all this foolish talk about "vulnerability," "a 
change in the way Americans feel"? A monstrous thing happened in New York, 
but should this be a cause for a change in national consciousness? Is 
America so frail?  People talk of the trauma of another Pearl Harbor, but 
the truth is, the trauma in the aftermath of the day of infamy in 1941 was 
far in excess of what the circumstances warranted, and assiduously fanned 
by the government for reasons of state. Ask the Japanese Americans who were 
interned.
Why, for that matter, ground all air traffic and semi-paralyse the economy 
for four days, with further interminable and useless inconveniences 
promised travelers in the months and possibly years to come? Could any 
terrorist have hoped not only to bring down the Trade Center towers but 
also destroy the airline industry? It would have been far better to ask 
passengers to form popular defense committees on every plane, bring their 
own food and drink, keep alert for trouble, and look after themselves. A 
properly vigilant democracy of the air. Remember, even if there were no 
x-ray machines, no searches, no passenger checks, it would still be far 
more dangerous to drive to the airport than to get on a plane.
Martyrdom is hard to beat. In the first few centuries after Christ, the 
Romans tried it against the Christians, whose martyrdom was almost entirely 
sacrificial of themselves, not of others. The lust for heaven of a Muslim 
intent on suicidal martyrdom was surely never so eloquent as that of St. 
Ignatius in the second century who, under sentence of death, doomed to the 
Roman amphitheater and a hungry lion, wrote in his Epistle to the Romans:
"I bid all men know that of my own free will I die for God, unless ye 
should hinder me. . . Let me be given to the wild beasts, for through them 
I can attain unto God. I am God's wheat, and I am ground by the wild beasts 
that I may be found the pure bread of Christ. Entice the wild beasts that 
they may become my sepulcher. . . Come fire and cross and grapplings with 
wild beasts, wrenching of bones, hacking of limbs, crushings of my whole 
body; only be it mine to attain unto Jesus Christ."
Eventually, haughty imperial Rome made its accommodation with Christians, 
just as Christians amid the furies and martyrdom and proscriptions of the 
Reformation, made accommodations with each other. What sort of 
accommodation should America make right now? How about one with the history 
of the past hundred years, in an effort to improve the moral world climate 
of the next hundred years? I use the word accommodation in the sense of an 
effort to get to grips with history, as inflicted by the powerful upon the 
weak. We have been miserably failed by our national media here, as Jude 
Wanniski, political economist and agitator of conventional thinking, 
remarked in the course of a well-merited attack on "bipartisanship," which 
almost always means obdurate determination to pursue a course of collective 
folly without debate: "It is because of this bipartisanship that our press 
corps has become blind to the evil acts we commit as a nation."
A great nation does not respond to a single hour of terrible mayhem in two 
cities by hog-tying itself with new repressive laws and abuses of 
constitutional freedoms, like Gulliver doing the work of the Lilliputians 
and lashing himself to the ground with a thousand cords. Nor does it demean 
itself with mad talk of firing off tactical nuclear weapons at puny foes 
like bin Laden, himself assisted onto the stage of history by the Central 
Intelligence Agency.  America has great enemies circling the camp fires and 
threatening the public good. They were rampant the day before the September 
11 attacks, with the prospect of deflation, sated world markets, idled 
capacity, shrinking social services. Is ranting about Kabul and throwing 
money at the Pentagon going to solve those true national emergencies?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

September 21, 2001
CYBER LAW JOURNAL

Concern Over Proposed Changes in Internet Surveillance

<http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/21/technology/21CYBERLAW.html>

By CARL S. KAPLAN

Significant and perhaps worrisome changes in the government's Internet 
surveillance authority have been proposed by legislators in the wake of the 
attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Indeed, so much is happening so quickly it's hard to keep track of the 
legislative process, let alone follow the ongoing debate between 
fast-moving law enforcement experts and more cautious civil libertarians.
To illuminate the huge changes afoot, it might be useful to spotlight one 
little corner of some proposed legislation. After all, as lawyers love to 
say, the devil is in the details.
The proposed law that is furthest along in the pipeline is the Combating 
Terrorism Act of 2001, an amendment to an appropriations bill that was 
passed by the Senate on September 13th without hearings and with
little floor debate. That legislation, which may ultimately become part of 
an integrated package of laws put forward this week by the Attorney 
General, has several provisions. Perhaps the most controversial is
section 832, which seeks to enhance the government's ability to capture 
information related to a suspect's activities in cyberspace.
Some background information is in order.
With telephone conversations, a law enforcement official can tap a 
suspect's conversations only if there is probable cause to believe the 
suspect is doing something illegal and if a magistrate agrees to issue an 
order. The Fourth Amendment's ban on unreasonable searches have heightened 
the legal requirements needed for a government wiretap.
But suppose an F.B.I. agent doesn't want to listen to the content of a 
telephone conversation. Suppose she just wants to get a list of the 
telephone numbers that a suspect dials, and the telephone numbers of people 
that call the suspect? This information, the Supreme Court has held, is not 
that private. Under federal law, all the government has to do in order to 
plant gizmos that record a suspect's outgoing and incoming telephone 
numbers so called pen registers and trap and trace devices, is to tell a 
magistrate that the information is relevant to an ongoing criminal 
investigation. There is no probable cause requirement and no hearing. The 
pen/trap and trace information is extremely easy to get.
For the past few years, the government has interpreted the existing pen 
register and trap and trace laws, which were designed with telephones in 
mind, to allow them to swiftly garner certain information from ISP's about 
a suspect's e-mails, for example, the to/from header information.
In one sense, section 832 of the Senate amendment codifies the government's 
pro-law enforcement interpretation. Among other things, the amendment 
explicitly expands the pen/trap and trace law to include Internet 
communications. Specifically, the proposed law allows the government, under 
the low-standard pen/trap and trace authority, to record not just telephone 
numbers dialed but "routing, addressing, or signalling information" .
According to experts on both sides of the legislative debate, the exact 
meaning of routing, addressing and signalling data is ambiguous. But 
chances are it includes not just to/from e-mail header information but a 
record of the URLs, Web site addresses, that a person visits.
The legislation's language is "not very narrow," said Stewart Baker, head 
of the technology practice at Steptoe & Johnson, a Washington, D.C. law 
firm, and former general counsel of the National Security Agency. 
Conceivably, he said, federal agents under the proposed law could very 
easily, and without making a showing of probable cause, get a list of 
"everyone you send e-mail to, when you sent it, who replied to you, how 
long the messages were, whether they had attachments, as well as where you 
went online."
"That's quite a bit of information," added Baker, who this week 
participated in a written dialog on national security in wartime on the 
online magazine Slate. Moreover, it's more information-rich material than a 
log of telephone numbers. "I think if you asked anyone on the street: 
'Which would you rather reveal, the telephone numbers you dialed or a list 
of all the people you sent e-mail to and the Web sites you visited?' I 
think they'd say, "Go with the phone numbers,'" he said.
Under the proposed amendment, the government's authority to easily monitor 
a person's clickstream is particularly troublesome and an unwarranted 
enlargement of pen/trap and trace law, say some critics. After all, they 
point out, on the Internet the boundary between a mere address and the 
content of a communication is fuzzy. For example, by examining a URL, an 
agent may gain knowledge of a book that a person sought to purchase on 
Amazon.com, or perhaps learn about a person's query on a search engine.
Indeed, a URL for a target's use of Google may reveal travel plans:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Do+You+Know+the+Way+to+San+Jose&btnG=Google+Searchr
"When you look at URLs, you're getting a map of how someone surfs the Net," 
said Daniel Solove, a law professor at Seton Hall University and an expert 
on privacy. "That's much more telling about an individual" than a list of 
telephone numbers, he said. He said that he wished Congress would take its 
time and examine any new Internet surveillance legislation with great care.
That view is echoed by Eugene Volokh, a law professor at UCLA and the other 
half of the ongoing national security dialog on Slate. "Keep in mind that 
these laws are things we will live with for a long time," he said in an 
interview.  "These laws can be used by the government in other sorts of 
investigations" besides terrorism, he added.
For his part, Baker of Steptoe & Johnson is willing to stomach section 832, 
should it become law. "Obviously, we're in a crisis," he said.
Marc Zwillinger, a former Internet crime prosecutor for the Department of 
Justice who is currently a partner at the Washington, D.C. office of 
Kirkland & Ellis, a large law firm, goes a bit further. He said that 
bringing the pen/trap and trace law into the Internet Age is not that big a 
deal.
"Knowing that you visited a Web site at a certain time, how is that 
different from knowing that you dialed a certain telephone number at a 
particular time of the day?" he asked. It's the same thing, he asserted. 
The only difference is that because people use the Web more than 
telephones, authorities can learn more. "I'm not troubled by it," he said.
Zwillinger noted that when he worked for the government, he obtained 
pen/trap and trace information about suspects' Internet use "hundreds of 
times." He said that under the Justice Department's interpretation of the 
current federal law, as well as under the proposed law, the government can 
lawfully record, for example, which computer terminals downloaded a 
particular file from a server; which computers logged into a Hotmail 
account to retrieve mail; which URLs a computer user visited. Often, an ISP 
can capture this information, he said, or the F.B.I. can deploy 
over-the-counter software tools or use sniffer programs such as Carnivore 
to obtain needed results.
But Volokh cautioned against the argument that because law enforcement has 
been doing something all along without explicit authority, Congress should 
pass a bill quickly recognizing the status quo. "Originally, the government 
had the right to record phone numbers" without a showing of probable cause, 
he said. "Then they looked at e-mail headers. Now they're looking at URLs. 
Each step is small. But put a lot of little steps together and you get a 
big bit."


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