Eventually, almost certainly, a distinguished bipartisan commission will be convened to examine the conditions that led to the catastrophe of Sept. 11.
The Bush administration doesn't want this. And Republicans in Congress are fighting to prevent it. But it will happen.
The American public remains largely in the dark about the terrorist threat that is still out there, and the nation's preparedness to deal with it. The periodic terror-related announcements by top Bush administration officials often seem calculated not to educate or to illuminate, but rather to frighten the public and intimidate the political opposition.
That is not acceptable in a free society. Despite the preferences of the administration, which likes to operate behind closed doors with the windows shut and the shades drawn, the public has a right to more information, not less. A thoroughly independent, non-Congressional inquiry is essential.
And that sentiment was poignantly expressed this week by a group of women whose husbands were lost in the World Trade Center attack. They traveled to Washington for a round of meetings and demonstrations in an effort to build support for an independent investigation. "It's not about politics," said one of the women, Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J. "It's about doing the right thing. It's about the safety of the nation."
Friday, June 14, 2002
Nine months into a global anti-terror campaign, we find it distressing that the White House seems to place a higher priority on protecting the president's poll numbers than in rooting out endemic weaknesses in our intelligence gathering capabilities. If we don't find out what went wrong and it happens again -- who does Karl and Co. think we're going to blame then? If Bush wants to keep his job, he should realize -- and realize fairly quickly -- that protecting his ass isn't nearly as important as protecting the rest of ours.
By
Kevin Phillips's new book, "Wealth and Democracy," is a 422-page doorstopper, but much of the book's message is contained in one stunning table. That table, in the middle of a chapter titled "Millennial Plutographics," reports the compensation of America's 10 most highly paid C.E.O.'s in 1981, 1988 and 2000.
In 1981 those captains of industry were paid an average of $3.5 million, which seemed like a lot at the time. By 1988 the average had soared to $19.3 million, which seemed outrageous. But by 2000 the average annual pay of the top 10 was $154 million. It's true that wages of ordinary workers roughly doubled over the same period, though the bulk of that gain was eaten up by inflation. But earnings of top executives rose 4,300 percent.
What are we to make of this astonishing development? Stealing (and modifying) a line from Slate's Mickey Kaus, I'd say that an influential body of opinion has reacted to global warming and the emergence of an American plutocracy the same way: "It's not true, it's not true, it's not true, nothing can be done about it."
For many years there was a concerted effort by think tanks, politicians and intellectuals to deny that inequality was increasing in this country. Glenn Hubbard, now chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, is a highly competent economist; but he demonstrated his fealty during the first Bush administration with a ludicrously rigged study purporting to show that income distribution doesn't matter because there is huge "income mobility" — that is, that this decade's poor are likely to be next decade's rich and vice versa.
Senior British officials responsible for countering al-Qaida terrorism are becoming increasingly concerned about the Bush administration's handling of the problem.
They say that imprecise or exaggerated warnings of attacks merely serve to encourage panic, and give gratuitous propaganda victories to the terrorists.
One official described a blanket warning by Dick Cheney, the American vice-president, last month about possible attacks on apartment blocks in the US as being so vague as to be meaningless. Another British official put it down to "back-covering".
There is also deep concern about the rhetoric employed by senior members of the Bush administration, including Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, and John Ashcroft, the attorney general - and even Mr Bush himself. Some suspects have been described as serious terrorists despite a lack of evidence against them, with remarks which would be prejudicial to a fair trial.
Mr Rumsfeld's description of prisoners at the US camp at Guantanamo Bay as some of the worst al-Qaida terrorists, and pictures of the inmates given out by the Pentagon, were described by Whitehall officials as "scandalous".
One official said: "American politicians are only concerned with American audiences." Another described the rhetoric, and the US refusal to acknowledge the Geneva convention, as "not benchmarks of a civilised society".
US SOLDIERS took part in the torture of Taleban prisoners and may have had a role in the "disappearance" of around 3,000 men in Mazar-i-Sharif in north-west Afghanistan, according to a new documentary.
Massacre at Mazar, by Scots film producer Jamie Doran, was shown on Wednesday in the Reichstag, the German parliament building in Berlin and the European parliament in Strasbourg.
Much of Mr Doran’s footage in the 20-minute preview of a future full-length documentary film was taken secretly.
In one sequence, a witness claims he saw a US soldier break an Afghan prisoner’s neck and pour acid on others.
"The Americans did whatever they wanted. We had no power to stop them." Some prisoners were beaten up, taken outside only to "disappear", the witness said.
Two other witnesses claim they were forced to drive into the desert with hundreds of Taleban prisoners who were in containers. The orders came from the local US commander, they alleged. Prisoners who had not suffocated to death were then shot dead while 30 to 40 US soldiers stood by watching.
In another sequence, a witness admits to having executed prisoners, while another Afghan, said to have been a senior officer under the Northern Alliance’s General Rashid Dostum, was said to have gone into hiding following threats to his life.
The screening of the film at the European Parliament in prompted calls for an international commission to investigate the charges.
Thursday, June 13, 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.
That Ashcroft insisted that he had to scoop all the other terror warriors (Mssrs. Mueller, Wolfowitz and Thompson) and make the announcement about Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir, in a panicky performance from Moscow shows what a camera-moth Ashcroft is.
That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot and of “dirty bombs” as weapons of mass destruction, shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good.
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 Рbelieve it or not РPresident 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 Р"we know that thousands of trained killers are plotting to attack us" Рhe must surely have an even more gargantuan clich̩ up his sleeve.
Well, he must have known about the would-be Chicago "dirty" bomber – another little secret he didn't tell the American people about for a month. Until, of course, it served a purpose. We shall hear more about this strange episode – and I'll hazard a guess the story will change in the next few days and weeks. But what could be more titanic than the new and ominously named "Department for Homeland Security", with its 170,000 future employees and its $37.5bn (£26.6bn) budget? It will not, mark you, incorporate the rival CIA and FBI – already at each other's throats over the failure to prevent the crimes against humanity of 11 September – and will thus ensure that the intelligence battle will be triangular: between the CIA, the FBI and the boys from "Homeland Security". This, I suspect, will be the real titanic war.
AL-MUGHRAQA, Gaza Strip, June 12 (Reuters) - Hussein al-Matwi's short, hard life in a Gaza Strip tent village ended as he went out to get a rare treat: sweets.
Israeli gunfire from a nearby Jewish settlement killed the eight-year-old boy on Tuesday evening, Palestinian security sources said, and wounded another young resident of al-Mughraqa, a mostly bedouin Palestinian village.
The Israeli army said troops at Netzarim settlement were returning fire after being shot at. Hours later, troops killed four Palestinian gunmen closing in to attack Netzarim, just south of Gaza City.
Whether the gunmen hailed from Mughraqa or just came by way of it, villagers on Wednesday felt more vulnerable than ever.
Matwi's mother, Selmia, described the boy dying as he went out on the most mundane of children's missions.
"He was crying and he wanted to buy some sweets, but soon he was about to step outside the tent, bullets sprayed the whole area," Selmia told Reuters.
"'Get down, kids,' I shouted. Hussein came in, putting his hand on his chest, which was bleeding."
At least 1,394 Palestinians and 509 Israelis have been killed since the Palestinians rose up against Israeli occupation in September 2000 after peace talks stalled. Hundreds of children are among the dead.
Institute says weakness invites 'anxious' U.S. to violate our border in event of a crisis
Canada's military has withered so thoroughly the country is practically defenceless, according to a study released yesterday by the C.D. Howe Institute.
"Whether Canadians realize it or not, Canada is now all but undefended at a time of danger," Dr. Jack Granatstein writes for the institute.
Dr. Granatstein is a noted York University historian and chairman of the Council for Canadian Security in the 21st Century, a non-partisan group based in Calgary that advocates a greater government emphasis on defence.
However, Dr. Granatstein argues that the real threat posed by the deterioration of Canada's army, navy and air force is not from foreign invaders or terrorists, but from the United States.
He said Canada's military impotence threatens Canadian sovereignty because it invites the U.S. to take steps to defend itself against terrorist attacks, even to the point of sending troops onto Canadian soil.
"Although terrorism poses a real threat, it is not the most serious crisis," he wrote. "The danger lies in wearing blinkers about the United States at a time it is in a vengeful, anxious mood."
WASHINGTON, June 11 — The widows marched through the halls of Congress today, brandishing photos of their dead and a potent brew of patriotism, grief and indignation. The four women, New Jersey homemakers whose husbands vanished in the rubble of the World Trade Center, head a group demanding an independent inquiry into the events surrounding Sept. 11.
"It's not about politics," said one of the women, Kristen Breitweiser, 31, of Middletown, as she sat in the office of Representative Tim Roemer, an Indiana Democrat who is a member of the House Intelligence Committee. "It's about doing the right thing. It's about the safety of the nation."
Until now, it has been a largely Democratic chorus calling for the establishment of a blue-ribbon panel, much like the commissions that dissected the attack on Pearl Harbor, the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the explosion of TWA Flight 800. President Bush has resisted the creation of an outside body, saying Congress can handle the job and suggesting that an additional investigation might interfere with national security.
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.
For more than six months live pictures from manned spy aircraft and drones have been broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. The satellite, Telstar 11, is a commercial TV relay. The US spyplane broadcasts are not encrypted, meaning that anyone in the region with a normal satellite TV receiver can watch surveillance operations as they happen.
The satellite feeds have also been connected to the internet, potentially allowing the missions to be watched from around the globe.
Viewers who tuned in to the unintended attraction on Tuesday could watch a sudden security alert around the US army's Kosovan headquarters, Camp Bondsteel in Urosevac. The camp was visited last summer by President Bush and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.
BEIRUT: US President George W. Bush favours the creation of a "temporary state" for the Palestinians ahead of a full-fledged state, US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in an interview published on Wednesday.
"The president did not give up his objective but he knows that to reach his goal a temporary Palestinian state as an interim phase and maybe other measures would be necessary," Powell told the Arabic-language Saudi daily Al-Hayat.
Such a formula, according to Powell, would "allow the Palestinians to achieve their hopes and dreams, and secure the confidence of the international community".
But Powell cautioned that a temporary state needed to rely on "a democratic power, transparency without corruption and effective security agencies".
"This will help to develop the necessary confidence between the two parties (Palestinians and Israel) in order to push forward," Powell told Al-Hayat, which is published in Beirut and other Arab capitals.
The differences between President George W Bush's pro-Israel Middle East policy and the approach favoured by Colin Powell, his secretary of state, were laid bare yesterday.
In an interview with Al Hayat, a London-based Arabic newspaper, Gen Powell said: "It's up to the Palestinian people to determine who their leader is, to determine who should head their government. And, at the moment, Yasser Arafat is the leader of the Palestinian people." Mr Arafat had to be negotiated with and "the president understands that".
Gen Powell also appeared to back Arab calls for "the end of the occupation" of the West Bank and Gaza by Israel so that "the creation of a state called Palestine" could take place there.
The Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, has warned President George Bush that if Washington tries to impose a peace deal he will call early elections, thereby freezing the peace process.
The threat emerged as Mr Bush and officials were poised to consider a strategy for the Middle East, including the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Mr Sharon told Mr Bush at the White House this week that if countries tried to impose such a state he would call elections, which would paralyse diplomatic activity for months.
Mr Sharon said he envisioned a Palestinian state only after a long negotiating process and an end to all attacks against Israelis.
THE White House has slapped down the US justice chief in a gathering row over the suspect in the "dirty bomb" case.
Two days after the sensational exposure of a plot to unleash a radiation bomb on a US city, questions about the case threatened a backlash against Washington’s "war on terror."
White House officials have objected bitterly to ominous warnings from John Ashcroft, the attorney general, that suspect Jose Padilla was poised to inflict "mass death and injury", it was reported yesterday.
The row came as President George Bush launched a push for his new multi-billion Department of Homeland Security - and against renewed warnings of al-Qaeda-inspired terror from Germany to Gibraltar.
The UK announced its own plans yesterday for a rapid reaction force to confront any terror attack, a 6,000-strong "home guard" drawn from the Territorial Army.
US officials suggested al-Qaeda might stir war in Kashmir. German security agents suggested the terror organisation could use bomb-laden model aeroplanes to down passenger aircraft.
It followed an alleged threat of suicide attacks on British warships by three Saudi Arabian men arrested in Morocco.
The announcement Monday that U.S. officials had nabbed an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist who had planned to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in the USA meshed neatly with President Bush ( news - web sites)'s agenda.
It came four days after Bush proposed a homeland security department in his Cabinet and 10 days after he began describing a doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes against countries that threaten the United States. It seemed to add impetus to his argument that Saddam Hussein ( news - web sites) must be ousted before Iraq sells weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
But some people, especially some Democrats, wondered Tuesday whether the arrest announcement dovetailed a little too tidily with Bush's agenda.
Those questions were fueled by the fact that the announcement came a month after Abdullah Al Muhajir's arrest May 8 and by reports Tuesday that he had no radioactive material, no concrete plan and no target.
''It would just be interesting to know why any particular day is chosen more than a month after the fact to make an announcement, especially an announcement of this magnitude,'' says Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. Other Democrats in Washington said the same thing privately.
THERE are at least three troubling points about the sudden appearance of the “dirty bomber”, the latest “villain” on a stage rather short of prime suspects.
Yes, most obviously, the timing is politically inspired, beyond dispute. The Bush Administration announced on Monday that authorities had arrested Abdullah al-Mujahir, that he was a terrorist threat and that he had been planning to build a “dirty” bomb to spread radioactive contamination. Then it emerged that he had, in fact, been in custody since May 8.
Could the timing be related to the White House’s nervous bid to drum up support for its messy and controversial new Department of Homeland Security? Tom Daschle, leader of the Democratic majority in the Senate, revealed why he will never have the drama of delivery to make a plausible presidential candidate, offering only that “I have questions about why it was announced (on Monday), but I am certainly confident that the Administration would not politicise this issue”.
In an earlier column, I theorized that when the hijackers rammed those planes into the World Trade Center, they must've torn a hole in the space-time continuum, opening the door to another dimension – the Bizarro World – an alternate universe where everything is grotesquely inverted. But now it seems that the Great Inversion may have occurred far earlier, well before the hijackers succeeded in their hellish plot. The news that Mohamed Atta and friends paid a visit to the Department of Agriculture in order to apply for a government loan – after all, terrorism on the scale he imagined didn't come cheap – goes waaaay beyond bizarre, all the way to phantasmagoric. How else can we describe Johnelle Bryant's story of her close encounter with Atta, in which the terrorist mastermind walked in demanding a $650,000 government loan to fulfill his "immigrant's dream" and start a crop-dusting business?
"He wanted to finance a twin-engine six-passenger aircraft … and remove the seats. He said he was an engineer, and he wanted to build a chemical tank that would fit inside the aircraft and take up every available square inch of the aircraft except for where the pilot would be sitting."
Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Meeting Saturday with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, President Bush said that while the United States had no timetable for a Middle East peace conference, discussions on setting a date should get "started quickly." Said the president, all sides need to "seize the moment."
Meeting Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Mr. Bush said "conditions aren't even there yet" for setting up a conference. He did not contradict Mr. Sharon's statement that "we don't see a partner" in Yasser Arafat. Yet Mr. Bush insisted that "Mr. Arafat is not the issue."
If the president's comments seem confusing, it is because the timetable that seems most important to the Bush administration and Congress is the November mid-term elections. With the House and Senate up for grabs, every voting bloc matters even more than usual. So the president puts off any meeting at which he might have to make demands of Israel, and lawmakers pass bipartisan resolutions in support of Israel that are designed as campaign commercials for Jewish voters. In the meantime, another suicide bomber attacked Tuesday inside Israel, fortunately killing only himself, and the Israeli army raided two towns and kept up the siege of Mr. Arafat's compound in Ramallah.
CERNOBBIO, Italy -- Kristol's War, as it will henceforth be called, was declared after dinner here at the splendid Villa D'Este hotel on Lake Como. He announced a vast U.S. foreign policy agenda, beginning with a war against Iraq and ending with replacing the monarchy in Saudi Arabia. His audience of mostly Europeans at first gasped and then reacted with irritation. "Very provocative," many of them commented -- a polite way of saying that he, and by extension the Bush administration, was totally mad.
A federal judge has slapped down yet another Bush administration attempt to assert broad, unchecked powers of secrecy.
At issue is a manuscript by Danny Stillman, a retired top official at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. The proposed book is not about his 28 years at Los Alamos but about his trips to China in a private capacity to visit a nuclear lab and test site. The book is tentatively titled "Inside China's Nuclear Weapons Program."
Like other employees in sensitive posts, Stillman had agreed to submit any manuscripts to review by government security specialists.
Disputes about what can and cannot be published are resolved by negotiation or, in an impasse, by the writer going to court to force the government to justify its censorship.
What's at issue here is not what Stillman wrote, but his right to go to court. The Bush administration insists he has none. Astonishingly, the administration insists that the federal courts have no standing to review its decisions about classifying information. And if those decisions violate someone's constitutional rights, that's just too bad.
The Bush administration is no friend of open government, but, even so, this sweeping assertion is, as U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan said, "stunning." He ruled — and hurray for him — that, "This court will not allow the government to cloak its violations of plaintiff's First Amendment rights in a blanket of national security."
WASHINGTON -- With the prospect of a somber Father's Day ahead, widows, children and relatives of victims who died Sept. 11 rallied yesterday on Capitol Hill to demand an independent investigation into whether the government could have prevented the terrorist attacks.
"My 3-year-old daughter's most enduring memory of her father will be placing flowers on his empty grave," said Kristen Breitweiser of Middletown, N.J., whose husband, Ronald, worked on the 94th floor of the World Trade Center Tower 2. "We need an investigation so that not one more child has to grow up knowing that their mother's or father's death could have -- and should have -- been prevented."
It was a mix of grief and anger shared by many of the more than 200 who attended the midday rally. Many wore photos of their relatives who died and carried signs urging Congress not to forget their personal stories of pain.
They were joined by a largely Democratic contingent of lawmakers who claimed that they want to make sure future attacks are averted, not conduct a witch-hunt.
"The government of the United States, in ways we don't still fully understand, let our people down. The institutions of our government, for reasons we don't yet grasp, appear to have failed," Sen. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., told the crowd. "The American people need to know why, not only for the sake of justice or for their own peace of mind, but because the truth is the only way of assuring that it never happens again."
Henry Kissinger may face extradition proceedings in connection with the role of the United States in the 1973 military coup in Chile.
The former US secretary of state is wanted for questioning as a witness in the investigation into the events surrounding the overthrow of the socialist president, Salvador Allende, by General Augusto Pinochet.
It focuses on CIA involvement in the coup, whether US officials passed lists of leftwing Americans in Chile to the military and whether the US embassy failed to assist Americans deemed sympathetic to the deposed government.
Chile's Judge Juan Guzman is so frustrated by the lack of cooperation by Mr Kissinger that he is now considering an extradition request to force him to come to Chile and testify in connection with the death of the American film-maker and journalist Charles Horman, who was killed by the military days after the coup.
Horman's story was told in the 1982 Costa-Gavras film, Missing, starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek.
Judge Guzman is investigating whether US officials passed the names of suspected leftwing Americans to Chilean military authorities. Declassified documents have now revealed that such a list existed. Sergio Corvalan, a Chilean lawyer, said that he could not divulge the "dozens" of names on the list.
The announcement Monday that U.S. officials had nabbed an alleged al-Qaeda terrorist who had planned to explode a radioactive ''dirty bomb'' in the USA meshed neatly with President Bush's agenda.
It came four days after Bush proposed a homeland security department in his Cabinet and 10 days after he began describing a doctrine of pre-emptive military strikes against countries that threaten the United States. It seemed to add impetus to his argument that Saddam Hussein must be ousted before Iraq sells weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.
But some people, especially some Democrats, wondered Tuesday whether the arrest announcement dovetailed a little too tidily with Bush's agenda.
Those questions were fueled by the fact that the announcement came a month after Abdullah Al Muhajir's arrest May 8 and by reports Tuesday that he had no radioactive material, no concrete plan and no target.
''It would just be interesting to know why any particular day is chosen more than a month after the fact to make an announcement, especially an announcement of this magnitude,'' says Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster. Other Democrats in Washington said the same thing privately.
Bush's stage-managing of public pronouncements to serve his goals is a technique every president has used. Trying to dominate news coverage to remind voters that he and fellow Republicans are leading the war on terror is a perquisite of the presidency.
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.
That Ashcroft insisted that he had to scoop all the other terror warriors (Mssrs. Mueller, Wolfowitz and Thompson) and make the announcement about Jose Padilla, a.k.a. Abdullah Al Muhajir, in a panicky performance from Moscow shows what a camera-moth Ashcroft is.
That Ashcroft overstated the threat of the Padilla Plot and of “dirty bombs” as weapons of mass destruction, shows with egregious clarity how willing Ashcroft is to use scare-tactics to grab headlines, control the news agenda and make himself look good.
In his Monday statement, Ashcroft said, “In apprehending Al Muhajir as he sought entry into the United States, we have disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive ‘dirty bomb.’”
By Monday night, my colleague Jim Stewart, was reporting that FBI sources were “backing off” Ashcroft’s assertion that there was a specific, developed, real plan to use a “dirty bomb” in the U.S.
By Tuesday morning, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, the Administration’s hardest hard-liner, was telling CBS News that, “ I don’t think there was actually a plot beyond some fairly loose talk and [Al Muhajir’s] coming in here obviously to plan further deeds.”
By Wednesday morning, White House sources were telling USA Today that Ashcroft had been chastised for overplaying the Padilla Plot.
From: "Mario Profaca"
Subject: FW: LAW: Israeli forces invade Ramallah, obstruct medical treatment
From: "Lawsociety"
Israeli forces invade Ramallah, obstruct medical treatment
10 June 2002
This morning at 2.30 am Israeli forces invaded Ramallah and El-Bireh from
different directions. A total of one hundred military vehicles, including
tanks, armored personnel carriers, and military jeeps, backed by two
Apache attack helicopters, firing heavy machine gunfire, occupied the
entire area and raided the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority for
the second time in five days. During the invasion the helicopters shelled
Um as-Sharayet neighborhood and 'Amari refugee camp. At 3.00 am Israeli
forces occupied the entire area of Ramallah and El-Bireh. During the raid
Israeli forces wounded a number of Palestinians and killed 26 years old
Yasser Sawalha, who was a member of the Palestinian security forces.
Israeli forces surrounded Ramallah Hospital, the Sheikh Zeid Hospital,
and the headquarters of the Palestinian Red Crescent Society and
prevented ambulances from gaining access to the wounded. According to Dr.
Wa'el Qadaan only two ambulances are operating, which happened to be
outside the surrounded area.
Israeli forces occupied the building of the Palestinian Agricultural
Relief Committees (PARC) which hosts several press agencies, such as
Reuters, al-Watan TV, ABC News, Link, and Abu Dhabi TV and evacuated the
journalists. The building is one of the largest buildings in Ramallah and
strategically overlooks 'Amari refugee camp.
During the previous Israeli invasion of Ramallah on March 29, which
lasted more than a month, Israeli forces also surrounded the same
hospitals and occupied the building of the Palestinian Agricultural
Relief Committees.
Six staff members of the Palestinian Agricultural Relief Committee are
currently held hostage in the yard of the building. Also, Palestinian
journalist Ali al-Jayousi is also held by Israeli forces. Israeli forces
imposed a curfew on a number of neighborhoods, including Um as-Sharayet
and 'Amari refugee camp and arrested a number of residents. Last night
Israeli forces also raided Tulkarem, Qalqiliya and several areas in
Hebron.
LAW has repeatedly condemned Israel's obstruction of attempts by medical
personnel and others to aid the injured. Pursuant to Article 16 of the
Fourth Geneva Convention, the Israeli military has an obligation to
accord to the wounded and sick 'particular protection and respect.'
Violations of these well-established norms of international humanitarian
law have occurred on a significant scale in the Occupied Territories.
Violations of the right of medical personnel and health facilities to be
free from attack, commonly known as the right of medical neutrality, have
been pervasis during the course of the past twenty months. Medical
personnel 'of all categories' must be allowed to carry on their on their
duties and should be 'respected and protected' at all times.
Violations of the medical human rights by the Israeli military in the
Occupied Palestinian Territories are international offenses for which the
international community has legal standing to intervene. Such action is
required to protect the fundamental rights of the wounded civilians and
medical personnel in the Occupied Palestinian Territories.
LAW, therefore, urgently calls on the international community to take
effective measures in order to protect the rights and lives of
Palestinians in the Occupied Palestinian Territories and specifically to
immediately send an independent, effective protection force to the area.
LAW calls on the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva Convention
to comply with their obligations to ensure respect for the Convention, by
taking urgent action to prosecute Israel's grave breaches of the Fourth
Geneva Convention (war crimes).
LAW also calls upon the European Union, a vital trading partner for
Israel, to suspend its Association Agreement with Israel and renew its
arms embargo against Israel as a means to pressure Israel into compliance
with basic norms of human rights and international humanitarian law.
_____________________________
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicated to preserving
human rights through legal advocacy. LAW is affiliate to the
International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), the International Federation
for Human Rights (FIDH), and the World Organisation Organisation Against
Torture (OMCT).
LAW - The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the
Environment, PO Box 20873, Jerusalem, tel. +972-2-5833530, fax. +972-2-
5833317, email: law@lawsociety.org, web: www.lawsociety.org
British and European security officials are highly sceptical of American claims that the alleged "dirty bomb" plotter, Abdullah al-Muhajir, was preparing to unleash a radioactive attack.
British sources point out that despite extensive inquiries, no evidence has been produced to show that he had access to the radioactive material needed to build the bomb, or indeed that he had even worked out a time or place to launch the attack.
The most that could be said about Mr Muhajir, a former member of a Chicago street gang now allegedly working for al-Qa'ida, is that he had the "intention" of launching such an attack, security sources said.
President Bush announced yesterday that a "full-scale manhunt" was under way across the United States for accomplices of Mr Muhajir. "We will run down every lead, every hint. We're in for a long struggle in this war on terror. And there are people that still want to harm America."
MOSCOW - Russia's Foreign Ministry expressed "surprise" Tuesday over a U.S. accusation that Russia was continuing to provide Iran and other states of concern with technology that could be used to develop and deliver weapons of mass destruction.
U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said Monday that Russia "over the years has pursued policies that have led, and continue to lead in our judgment, to the proliferation" of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons. The U.S.-Russian relationship will depend on whether Moscow stopped the proliferation, he said.
In spite of the two countries' increasingly close ties, symbolized by the nuclear arms reduction agreement and declaration of partnership signed last month by Russian President Vladimir Putin ( news - web sites) and U.S. President George Bush, the U.S. government has harshly criticized Russia for allegedly advancing other countries' efforts to develop nuclear weapons.
The warlords of Afghanistan rallied behind their interim leader, Hamid Karzai, yesterday in a display of unity that came after America engineered a climbdown by the country's former king.
Many tribal delegates attending the grand council, or loya jirga, called to pick the members of the new administration, expressed concern at the "outside influence" overshadowing the event. All were aware the American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, had been the first to announce the former king would stay out of government, after intense backroom politicking delayed the assembly opening by 24 hours. The king's decision means Mr Karzai has no serious challenger as president.
"This is not a democracy," Sima Samar, the women's affairs minister, said yesterday. "This is a rubber stamp. Everything has already been decided by the powerful ones."
KABUL, Afghanistan (Reuters) - Afghanistan ( news - web sites)'s interim leader, Hamid Karzai, made a mistake in claiming the presidency after the opening session of the Loya Jirga tribal assembly, a spokesman said Tuesday.
"The situation was confusing for us," Karzai spokesman Yousuf Nooristani told Reuters. "Karzai thought the audience applause meant they were voting for him. Later he found out it was a mistake."
Former king Mohammad Zahir Shah announced at the opening of the Loya Jirga, a traditional Afghan debating chamber that goes back centuries, that he did not want to restore the monarchy and that he was putting his support behind Karzai.
Asked by Reuters what he thought about the former king's support, Karzai said: "It is finished. The assembly has voted for me."
Nooristani said voting would start Wednesday. "There's a strong possibility that Karzai will win."
Going by the signals emanating from Almaty and Singapore, and from Washington, New Delhi and Islamabad, the level of official rhetoric of India-Pakistan hostility has come down by a few decibels during the past week. This must be heartily welcomed. But the lowering of the pitch of hostility is not consistent and pervasive, nor yet reflected on the ground. The military mobilisation at the border remains as frightful as ever – with more than a million soldiers eyeball-to-eyeball, and on high alert. Not only is this the greatest military mobilisation anywhere since World War II. It has an extraordinarily scary and unique nuclear dimension too.
Compounding this grim reality are shrill calls to discard all diplomatic options in favour of "decisive battles" to settle India-Pakistan disputes "once and for all." These calls emanate from official sources (e.g. Ministers Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Uma Bharati and I.D. Swamy), political leaders (e.g. Jana Krishnamurthy and Giriraj Kishore), and Right-wing commentators known more for obsessive militarism than for wisdom. As if this weren't bad enough, there is generalised smugness about the danger of a nuclear catastrophe, whose very possibility is being denied.
Hopefully, if present trends continue, some of the war hysteria will get diffused as the realisation sinks in of how seriously alarmed is the rest of the world about a possible nuclear outbreak in South Asia. The news of thousands of foreign nationals leaving, tourist and hotel bookings being cancelled, business contracts being put on hold, and the economy being badly hit will have an impact, favouring a cooling of India-Pakistan tensions. As will the visits of Messrs Rumsfeld and Armitage.
The American citizen accused of plotting a "dirty" bomb attack in the United States has challenged the legality of his detention.
There aren't any formal charges and... the defence community is outraged
Defence lawyer Donna Newman
The arrest of Abdullah al-Muhajir on 8 May at Chicago's O'Hare international airport was announced by the US Government on Monday.
Representing Mr al-Muhajir, defence lawyer Donna Newman has filed a petition questioning the legal basis for classifying her client as an enemy combatant - a term which allows for his indefinite detention without trial.
"He is being detained without time limit, or the right to counsel. There aren't any formal charges and that is why the defence community is outraged," she said.
NEW DELHI -- Unlike their Western counterparts, India's antinuclear activists are a lonely bunch.
But talk of a potential nuclear conflict between India and Pakistan has suddenly raised their profile with a recent cover story in the country's leading news magazine, India Today, showing people fleeing a giant mushroom cloud and a headline, "What If?"
Still, India's antinuclear movement says there is huge ignorance about the devastating consequences of a nuclear war in a country where hundreds of millions of people have to devote their energy to eking out a subsistence living.
"People in India are preoccupied with everyday problems and don't know what nuclear weapons are - they don't even know the fact that even a 'limited' nuclear war can kill millions," said Achin Vanaik, an executive member of the Coalition for Nuclear Peace and Disarmament.
In India, antinuclear activists are often accused of being unpatriotic because the country's membership in the nuclear club is seen by many as affirmation of its big power status, Vanaik said in an interview.
The antinuclear coalition, which bands together doctors, scientists, academics, social activists and writers, and runs on a shoestring out of members' homes, was founded two years after India held nuclear tests in 1998.
JERUSALEM -- The U.N. ambulance had just dropped off a patient in critical condition at a West Bank hospital and was headed back to a nearby refugee camp when it came under fire. One bullet narrowly missed the oxygen tank. A second came within inches of a nurse's head. A third entered the back of 43-year-old assistant Kamal Hamdan, piercing his aorta and killing him almost immediately.
"It was clearly gunfire from an Israeli position," Richard Cook, director of operations for the U.N. Relief Works Agency in the West Bank, said of the March 7 incident. "We had our flag lit with a floodlight; it was marked with a red cross and the U.N. emblem; we'd made several runs that day; and they knew we were in the area."
Arrests, deportations, visa and travel restrictions, checkpoint harassment, threats, injuries and deaths are among the impediments that humanitarian groups say they're facing at the hands of Israeli immigration and military authorities as they struggle to deliver food, medicine and humanitarian assistance to hundreds of thousands of Palestinians living in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. "We in no way condone what is done from the other side with the suicide bombers and understand the Israeli need for security," Cook said. "If there's some sort of problem, show us the proof. But stop targeting our ambulances and stop killing our staff."
RAMALLAH, West Bank - Israeli Army Col. Ilan Paz stood in front of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's battered compound yesterday and casually chatted with soldiers training their assault rifles on what was once a proud symbol of Palestinian self-rule.
Arafat was holed up with his aides on the second floor of one of the few buildings still standing, just 100 yards away, but from the outside it appeared that the sprawling city-block-size complex was deserted. Not a person could be seen; not a single shot was fired by Arafat's elite presidential guard.
Instead of meeting with his newly restructured Cabinet, Arafat was under military siege once again. The Israeli army was surrounding his compound for the second time in five days and the third time since March.
"We don't want to be here at all," said Paz, a 42-year-old career military man, standing amid the bulldozed ruins of the compound's perimeter wall. "I would prefer to be on the outside. Unfortunately, that is not the situation we have right now."
Jews will be a minority in the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea by 2020, the chairman of the National Security Council, Major General Uzi Dayan told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee on Monday.
Dayan said that if current demographic trends did not change, this area, in 2020, would have 15 million inhabitants, out of which Jews would constitute 45 percent and Arabs 55 percent. Currently, the ratio is reversed: There are some 5 million Jews and 4 million Arabs in the region.
Dayan said these demographic trends required Israel to make immediate strategic decisions as did the worldwide proliferation of nuclear weapons.
"In the coming years, we are liable to find ourselves with 20 to 25 countries that possess nuclear weapons," he said, adding that these might include radical states such as Syria, Libya, Iran and Iraq. All of these states were actively trying to acquire weapons of mass destruction, primarily in the area of ground-to-ground missiles, he noted.
The British Broadcasting Corp. is reporting that most of the Brits in the private sector in India and Pakistan are staying put, despite official warnings that they should leave.
The people on the ground don't think there will be a nuclear war, and I vote with them, despite the nervous Nellies in the government and the media.
The reason is that both sides, I'm sure, realize using nuclear weapons puts the cost of war so high that not even so-called victory would be worth it. It's the paradox of nuclear weapons. Without nuclear weapons, I think the United States and the Soviet Union would have gone to war in the 1950s. Instead, both sides showed admirable restraint.
And so, too, will Pakistan and India show restraint. That doesn't mean their troops might not come to blows along the Line of Control that separates the Pakistan-controlled areas from the Indian-controlled areas.
New York, NY – June 11, 2002 – Yesterday’s announcement by Attorney General John Ashcroft that authorities had a Brooklyn-born Latino man in custody for involvement in an alleged Al Qaeda plot to explode a radiological bomb in Washington, DC underscored once again the continuing vulnerability of the United States to a wide variety of possible terrorist attacks.
"If the evidence against the suspect proves to be accurate, the Bush administration deserves credit for heading off this plan in its early stages," said William D. Hartung, a Senior Fellow at the New York-based World Policy Institute.
"But this case also highlights the Bush administration’s dirty little secret. They still don’t have their priorities straight when it comes to taking measures to thwart the most damaging -- or the most likely – kinds of potential terror attacks on U.S. soil."
There is general agreement among experts that the most damaging effects of a so-called 'dirty bomb' – a conventional explosive set up to disperse radioactive materials in a populated area – would be psychological and economic. Loss of life would be minimal compared to the use of a nuclear weapon, which could kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people in a highly populated urban area. The threat of a radiological weapon still needs to be taken seriously, however, since a crude device would be far easier to construct and transport than a nuclear weapon, and the fear and chaos that the use of one or more of these devices would cause could strike a devastating blow to the morale of the public, as well as to the economies of the targeted areas.
The Pentagon has made a decision that threatens to keep the American public and Congress in the dark about how things are going with the Bush administration's high-priority missile defense program.
As revealed in Defense Daily, a defense trade publication, the Pentagon's Missile Defense Agency has decided to classify as "secret" details of targets and countermeasures to be used in all future flight intercept tests of the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system. Beginning with the next test, now scheduled for late July, the policy will be to withhold specifics about the targets or decoys used.
On its face, this new classification policy seems reasonable. If the Pentagon reveals which kinds of targets it can hit and which it misses, an enemy will have an advantage. Similarly, if the Pentagon reveals which decoys and countermeasures work against this system, an enemy can employ only the most effective decoys.
WASHINGTON, D.C., JUNE 7—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.
Put forward in a national address Thursday night, Bush's idea for a centralized anti-terror agency will cause members of the Capitol Hill intelligence committees, who already are bickering among themselves over what their inquiry is about, to get consumed with covering their asses and maintaining control over the spy corps they now supervise. The Senate Judiciary Committee, the one congressional committee somewhat likely to take a serious look at the management of the FBI, will now be taken up with parceling out sections of the Justice Department, such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service, and other agencies with judicial functions.
Most importantly, it puts Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle's call for an independent investigatory commission on the sidelines. As his party's leader on the Hill, Daschle must now concentrate on Democratic responses to the Bush plan, along with managing turf battles. And he will have to rejigger his own underground campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. His main competitor, Senator Joe Lieberman, is already taking credit for the new homeland department, since he proposed the same thing before the president took over the notion.
The vaunted reorganization of the FBI is actually, in dangerous essence, a return to J. Edgar Hoover's COINTELPRO counterintelligence operation from 1956 to 1971. Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller are again unleashing the FBI to infiltrate, monitor and target lawful organizations and their members, or visitors — with no current or planned evidence of illegal activity.
COINTELPRO was closed down because of unbridled FBI abuses of the First and Fourth amendments, along with other parts of the Constitution. "The American people need to be reassured that never again will an agency of the government be permitted to conduct a secret war against those citizens it considered threats," pledged then-Sen. Frank Church of Idaho — chairman of the Senate Select Committee to investigate the FBI's violations of fundamental American liberties — in 1975.
Because of the abuses of COINTELPRO, guidelines were set — which have now been dismissed by the attorney general — requiring that FBI agents could not investigate gatherings in church or other meetings without some evidence that someone there may have done, or planned to do, something illegal.
Tuesday, June 11, 2002
The most significant test of any system is how it handles unanticipated situations. A well-designed and implemented system is one which can continue to operate correctly (i.e. one which continues to embody its design principles and function according to its specifications) in a situation which was not considered in its creation. A system which does not must be considered flawed, either in design or implementation.
While those of here who are scientists and engineers use this principle of evaluation daily in our work, it's likely that few of us (and probably even fewer in the general population) have applied this principle to the State(s) in which we live. Since the United States, in its current form, is over two hundred years old (and one of its designers, Thomas Jefferson himself, advocated such a review every twenty years), a public review of how well it has proceeded is long overdue.
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A well-formed project will have three things, not because they are necessary for its success, but because they are necessary for deciding whether it has succeeded. These are: 1) a statement of goals, 2) a specification and 3) the implementation. Without these, it is impossible to look at a finished system and reasonably decide to what degree it is (or is not) what was intended and to what degree it actually performs the functions it's intended to perform.
The United States is a rarity among States, in that it possesses all three of these things:
1) statement of goals: The Declaration of Independence and The Federalist Papers
2) design specification: The Constitution
3) implementation: the State as it exists
(Most modern States possess a written Constitution, though as I understand it the United Kingdom does not, and obviously all States, in that they exist, possess an implementation. Few, however, have a written statement of the founders intentions; the United States, the Soviet Union and Maoist China are quite a rare collection in that respect.)
Since the U.S. has all three attributes, it is possible to evaluate it as we would any other project. This involves answering three questions;
1) How closely does the specification follow the stated goals?
2) How well does the implementation follow the specification?
3) How accurately does the implementation embody the stated design goals?
Britain's foreign intelligence service MI6 warned the United States about terrorist plans to use civilian planes in "unconventional ways" two years before the September 11 strikes, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
In 1999, MI6 handed a secret report to liason staff at the US embassy in London after the intelligence service learned of such plans by followers of prime terror suspect Osama bin Laden, The Sunday Times said.
The information did not specify targets and would not necessarily have enabled US agencies to prevent the September 11 plane attacks on New York and Washington, the paper quoted intelligence sources as saying.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have been sharply criticised for intelligence failures ahead of September 11, when hijacked planes were steered into the World Trade Center and Pentagon with the loss of some 3,000 lives.
The chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said yesterday that the September 11 "hijackers could have been stopped" had U.S. officials acted on intelligence information available before the terrorist attacks.
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, Vermont Democrat, in an interview that aired yesterday on CNN, called September 11 the "worst example of what happens when information is not shared and is not acted upon."
"There was plenty of information available before September 11. I think historians are going to find, tragically, that, had it been acted upon, the hijackers could have been stopped," Mr. Leahy said on CNN's "Novak, Hunt & Shields."
The Democratic chairman, whose committee is holding public hearings examining the failure of top FBI officials to take seriously leads given to them by field agents about the possibility of hijackings and planes being flown into the World Trade Center, joins at least two others on the Judiciary panel who have said they believe the September 11 attacks could have been prevented, given the clues that were available.
(CBS) The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee said Sunday "significant numbers of people" from inside the government were coming forward with new information on U.S. intelligence failures related to the Sept. 11 attacks on America.
Sen. Bob Graham, a Florida Democrat, said some of those offering information to the joint investigation of the Senate and House intelligence committees were emboldened by the recent disclosures of FBI whistle-blower Coleen Rowley. He also said it was becoming clear "there are some people who deserve to get sanctions as a result of what they were doing before Sept. 11."
"We are already getting significant numbers of people coming to us, either in person or with materials that hadn't previously been known," Graham told CBS' "Face the Nation" program. "I think the testimony of Ms. Rowley has given encouragement to folks" inside the federal bureaucracy.
Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, said such failures extended beyond the FBI and CIA to the super-secret National Security Agency and elsewhere.
Shelby also said the sweeping plan for a new Department of Homeland Security proposed last week by President
Bush did not effectively address the failures of intelligence-gathering uncovered so far.
In a stinging letter to FBI Director Robert Mueller, Rowley questioned his handling of information and accused FBI headquarters of hampering field agents from fully investigating Zacarias Moussaoui, the man officials now believe intended to become the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 attacks.
June 4, 2002—Don't know about you, but all this who-knew-what-when pre-9/11 stuff is mighty confusing. So once again, I head to that all-purpose reference series for some comprehensible answers.
Q. I've heard all these reports about the government knowing weeks and months in advance of 9/11 that airliners were going to be hijacked and flown into buildings, and yet the Bush administration apparently did nothing and denied they did anything wrong. They claimed the fault lay in the intelligence agencies "not connecting the dots," or that it was the "FBI culture" that failed. Can you explain?
A. Most of the "it's-the-fault-of-the-system" spin is designed to deflect attention from the real situation. Bush and his spokesmen may well be correct in saying they had no idea as to the specifics—they may not have known the exact details of the attacks—but it is more and more apparent that they knew a great deal more than they're letting on, including the possible targets.
Q. You're not just going leave that hanging out there, are you? Just bash Bush with no evidence to back it up?
A. There's no need to bash anybody. There is more than enough documentation to establish that the Bush administration was fully aware that a major attack was coming from Al-Qaeda, by air, aimed at symbolic structures on the U.S. mainland, and that among mentioned targets were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, the White House, the Congress, Statue of Liberty. (According to Richard Clarke, the White House's National Coordinator for Anti-Terrorism, the intelligence community was convinced 10 weeks before 9/11 that an Al-Qaeda attack on U.S. soil was imminent.)
Q. If they knew in advance that the, or at least an, attack was coming, why did the Bush administration do nothing to prepare the country in advance: get photos of suspected terrorists out to airlines, have fighter jets put on emergency-standby status or even in the air as deterrents, get word out to the border police to stop these "watch-list" terrorists, put surface-to-air missiles around the White House and Pentagon, etc.?
A. The explanation preferred by the government is to admit, eight months late, to absolute and horrendous incompetence, up and down the line (although Bush&Co., surprise!, prefer to focus the blame lower down, letting the FBI be the fall guy). But let's try an alternate explanation. Think about it for a moment. If their key goal was to mobilize the country behind the Bush administration, get their political/business agenda through, have a reason to move unilaterally around the globe, and defang the Democrats and other critics at home—what better way to do all that than to have Bush be the take-charge leader after a diabolic "sneak attack"?
June 10, 2002—If you think the war in Afghanistan has anything to do with 'terrorism" you had better be able to explain the following "strange coincidences."
The Russians got into their Vietnam (Afghanistan) right after we got out of ours. Isn't that strange?
We supported Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban for years, and viewed them as freedom fighters against the Russians. Isn't that strange?
As late as 1998 the US was paying the salary of every single Taliban official in Afghanistan. Isn't that strange?
There is more oil and gas in the Caspian Sea area than in Saudi Arabia, but you need a pipeline through Afghanistan to get the oil out. Isn't that strange?
Unocal, a giant American oil conglomerate, wanted to build a 1,040-mile long pipeline from the Caspian Sea through Afghanistan to the Arabian Sea. Isn't that strange?
Unocal spent $10-$15 million on geological surveys for pipeline construction, and very nicely courted the Taliban in for their support in allowing the construction to begin. Isn't that strange?
All the leading Taliban officials were in Texas negotiating with Unocal in 1998. Isn't that strange?
June 10, 2002—The outrage is out there. It is silent and intimidated by the expert manipulations of the Bushista and media spin machines. Nevertheless, among those outraged at the Bush regime are a significant group of individuals, and when they gain their spine and sense of solidarity, and furthermore, when they find their voice–watch out!
Though the press and their surrealistic "approval rating" polls would have us believe otherwise, the dissenting liberals and the progressives have an impressive array of allies, both actual and potential.
To begin, as we all know but too easily forget, Bush lost the popular vote, after which he won the only vote allowed to count: five to four in the Supreme Court.
Which leads directly to the first class of the outraged: the lawyers and legal scholars.
Three days after the Supreme Court gave the Presidency to George Bush, 306 law professors published a letter stating in part that "by taking power from the voters, the Supreme Court has tarnished its own legitimacy. As teachers whose lives have been dedicated to the rule of law, we protest." Numerous practicing lawyers, most notably Vincent Bugliosi, have voiced their agreement. A year and a half later, they have not forgotten this assault on the rule of law. The outrage remains. Rest assured that it is being widely expressed in law schools throughout the land.
Similarly, in February, 2001, 409 historians signed the following statement:
For two hundred and thirteen years, against formidable obstacles, democracy in American has expanded. We opened up the right to vote, securing the popular election of US senators and presidential electors, securing voting rights for the poor, women, and blacks. Now, in an act no less reprehensible than the partisan resolution of the election of 1876, a narrow majority of the Supreme Court has pulled the nation backward. . . . We are outraged and saddened at this wound inflicted upon American democracy. We call upon our fellow citizens, Republicans, Democrats and independents, to join us in dedicating ourselves to reform the electoral system so that the democratic will of the people is never again violated in an American election.
What can be done?
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpation's, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security . . ." US Declaration of Independence—1776
A "dirty bomb" is not to be confused with a nuclear explosion, but experts say such a device could release relatively small amounts of radiation over several city blocks and have its most devastating effect in the panic it probably would create.
For that reason, it has been called an ideal terrorist weapon.
A dirty bomb also is relatively easy to fashion. It can use a conventional explosive to disperse radioactive material.
Last month, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission disclosed that it receives an average of 300 reports a year of small amounts of radioactive materials missing from construction sites, hospitals and other users of these radioisotopes.
NRC officials said they have no evidence of anyone collecting this material to have enough for a dirty bomb. But critics say no one is sure of that.
The NRC has acknowledged that even a small amount of radioactive material, if properly milled into fine particles and dispersed by a conventional explosive, could spread radioactive particles over an area of several blocks.
After escaping serious damage in the early stages of the high-tech wreck, venture capitalists suffered even deeper financial wounds than stock market investors last year, according to industry figures released Monday.
Venture capital funds plunged by an average of 27.8 percent in 2001, a gruesome about-face from the prior year when the average fund gained 28.6 percent, according to statistics complied by Thomson Financial/Venture Economics for the National Venture Capital Association, an industry trade group.
It marked the industry's first calendar-year loss since the trade group began tracking fund returns in 1980. Before 2001, venture capitalists' worst single-year performance came in 1984 when the average fund inched up by 1.3 percent.
The venture capital community's setback was even more severe than the Nasdaq composite index, the most popular benchmark for measuring the performance of publicly held tech stocks. The Nasdaq index fell by 21 percent during 2001, coming off a 39 percent loss in 2000.
Israel yesterday began erecting a security fence around parts of the West Bank, just hours after United States President George Bush expressed strong support for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Construction work was under way on the outskirts of the Palestinian-ruled town of Jenin, the scene of fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian gunmen earlier this year.
The move comes amid continuing violence yesterday during which at least three Israelis were wounded by an explosion outside the Jewish settlement of Kiryat Arba, near the divided city of Hebron, in the West Bank.
A municipal official said it appeared a bus had driven over a roadside bomb outside the town.
The construction of the fence, aimed at preventing Palestinians from crossing into Israel to launch attacks, indicates that both sides have lost hope in resolving their conflict in the near future through negotiations.
Attorney General Elyakim Rubinstein warned Tuesday that the new International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague which begins work in July, may indict Israelis moving into settlements in the West Bank and Gaza Strip for war crimes.
Justice Ministry officials said Tuesday that a special team has been established to prepare for the new court, headed by the deputy state prosecutor Rachel Sukar, which includes Foreign Ministry and Military Court officials.
Rubinstein, speaking at a Knesset Constitution, Law and Justice Committee meeting on the authorities of the international court regarding Israelis, said that the tribunal may also discuss the indictments of IDF soldiers and officers over their involvement during Operation Defensive Shield in Jenin and other Palestinian-controlled areas.
"We believe in the purity of arms of IDF troops," Rubinstein said. He added that soldiers have been indicted by Israel in extreme cases: since the outbreak of the Al Aqsa Intifada, 140 soldiers have been accused of looting and some of them have been indicted.
MADISON, Wis. (Reuters) - Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (news - web sites) on Saturday criticized President Bush (news - web sites) for refusing to accept a federal agency report that blames humans for global warming (news - web sites).
The recently released Environmental Protection Agency (news - web sites) (EPA) report appeared to back the view of many scientists who believe global warming is caused mainly by emissions from automobiles, power plants, and oil refineries.
Bush appeared to dismiss the report, calling it a product of bureaucracy, and said he would continue to press for voluntary efforts and financial incentives for U.S. companies to reduce emissions.
Gore, the 2000 Democratic presidential nominee and a champion of environmental protection as vice president, said the president had succumbed to powerful interests that run the Republican Party and rejected the report rather than accept it and do something about global warming.
"That's not a moral choice," Gore said. "I don't want to hear from this bunch: 'We didn't know'."
WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration will now keep secret key information on its missile defense program, a blow to opponents who have relied on such data to challenge the technology as error-prone and not ready for deployment.
Administration officials said they will withhold the data, which concerns flight tests of the program's most advanced long-range system, to prevent U.S. adversaries from gaining secrets about hardware intended to shield the nation from nuclear attack. Critics of the program, including some influential lawmakers, say the move is an attempt to stifle criticism and allow the administration to control the debate on the system's future.
"They're attempting to avoid the usual oversight by Congress, the media ... and the larger scientific community," said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services subcommittee that oversees the project. "There's an attitude of 'we know best, don't bother us.'"
Who is the most powerful woman in America? It's a toss-up between Condoleezza Rice and Lynne V Cheney. One (the national security adviser) works behind the scenes. The other (Mrs Vice-President) is the administration's junkyard bitch. Immediately after the September outrage, Cheney went into attack mode. Bush and his advisers have taken to heart the lesson of the Vietnam defeat: if you make war overseas, neutralise the campus enemy at home first.
When, with Clinton's victory, she was ousted from her position as tyrannical chair of the National Endowment of the Humanities, Cheney founded the American Council of Trustees and Academics. Acta exists to deplore, oppose and undermine the incorrigibly liberal tendency of American higher education. Two months after 9/11 her council issued a rabid tract: "Defending Civilisation: How our Universities are Failing America and What Can Be Done About It". What could be done was to name names: 40 professors - including the president of Wellesley College - were anathematised.
Do Your Job
In the aftermath of September 11, Dan Rather publicly shed patriotic tears on David Letterman’s show, demonstrating that he was in as much pain as any American and as loyal to the national cause. At the same time, TV news programs across the country were wrapping themselves in stars-and-stripes graphics as news outlets of all kinds rushed to associate themselves, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, with the nation’s surge of patriotic emotion.
Flag-waving is not surprising in the aftermath of a full-scale attack on American civilians. As individuals, we are all part of a severely traumatized body politic. But it is precisely during the most trying periods that journalists must distance themselves from their emotions if they are to do their best work. And it is also imperative to distinguish between patriotism, love of one’s country, and nationalism — the exalting of one’s nation and its culture and interests above all others. If patriotism is a kind of affection, nationalism is its dark side. Nationalistic pressure also makes it hard for journalists to do their job. Even today, eight months after the events, many journalists are troubled by a sense that we have failed an important test, that we have allowed certain kinds of honest reporting to be portrayed as somehow disloyal.
Breaking bread with a room full of Post reporters and editors probably doesn't rank very high on FBI Director Robert Mueller's list of 100 most desirable things to do while in Washington. But there he was in our dining room on Wednesday, gamely fending off questions about FBI failures and having his say about tracking terrorists and reorganizing his beleaguered agency.
In response to one questioner's concerns, Mueller offered reassurances that on his watch, FBI agents will remain firmly within the constitutional scheme, even as they use their new investigative powers to keep the homeland safe.
At the time, it all sounded pretty good to me.
But then I went back to my desk and read the fact sheet on the attorney general's newly issued guidelines for detecting and preventing terrorist attacks.
Now, despite promises in the Ashcroft guidelines to preserve constitutional and statutory limits, I find myself longing to once more hear the director's comforting words about the bureau's steadfast devotion to the restraints of the Bill of Rights.
Sorry to be such a worrywart, but there's a whiff of something in the guidelines that brings back the odor of another time in America.
The new guidelines direct the FBI to "detect and neutralize" suspected terrorists before they can commit a crime. At first reading, it sounds great. But the language also calls to mind an era when the FBI, in the name of protecting the nation, also set out to "expose, disrupt, and otherwise neutralize" activities of domestic groups whose conduct was nowhere near the stage of prosecutable acts. It was called COINTELPRO. And the Constitution took a beating.
Bureau's campus operations involved Reagan, CIA
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 FBI, in contrast, developed a "close and cordial" relationship with Reagan, who made campus unrest a major issue and vowed to fire Kerr during his 1966 gubernatorial campaign.
And after he was elected, the FBI failed to report that Reagan falsely stated on a federal security clearance form that he never had been a member of any group officially deemed subversive, an omission that could have been prosecuted as a felony.
There may come a time to boot Robert Mueller III as F.B.I. director, if Congressional and other investigations eventually prove that his removal is warranted. For now, he is in the difficult position of both defending and reforming an agency left in exceptionally poor condition by Louis Freeh, the former director whose amazing immunity from public criticism soon seems likely to end. Although the current director is responsible for the bureaucratic butt-covering since last September’s disaster, he doesn’t deserve blame for the interagency bungling that occurred before his watch began.
Yet in Washington’s ritualistic bloodletting style, Mr. Mueller is plainly being set up for sacrifice. The Wall Street Journal editorial page calls upon him to resign; right-wing pundit Robert Novak reports that "he is becoming a candidate for the first head to roll." This is premature and patently unfair—and ill-advised at a time when national law enforcement is already in turmoil.
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court agreed Monday to referee a congressional boundary dispute from Mississippi, a victory for Democrats who are contesting a plan that helps Republicans.
The case will be the first reviewed by the court over boundaries drawn using 2000 census data. Plans by many other states are also being contested.
The court did not intervene in time to affect this year's election, however. Primaries were held last week in districts favorable to Republicans approved by a federal panel earlier this year.
Mississippi is losing one of its five congressional seats because of sluggish population growth in the 1990s, and incumbents Chip Pickering and Ronnie Shows are competing for one seat.
Hello,
Was reading through Fox News website (gotta keep track of what they're up to) and went through a poll they had posted as of 6-6. Mostly the usual spin, Bush is God, etc. (gag) and then I came upon the following qustion:
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Residents of the United States must pass a test to obtain a driver's license before being allowed to drive a motor vehicle. Do you think residents should also be required to pass a test before being allowed to:
23. Buy a gun? Yes 77% No 18 NS 5
24. Become a parent? Yes 37% No 54 NS 9
25. Register to vote? Yes 47% No 48 NS 5 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, the first thing that jumped out at me was that we, the people, were now being referred to as "residents," not citizens. There was no mention of aliens, legal or otherwise, or foreign visitors, but "residents," which could only mean you and I. (Perhaps we must prove our citizenship before the regime before we are recognized?)
Then question 25. Should "residents" be required to pass a "test" before being allowed to vote?
What!???!!!
Pass a test before we are "allowed" to vote???!!!
"ALLOWED"???!!!
To VOTE???!!!
MANILA - There appears to be a dispute over the United States' role in the botched rescue operation of hostages, with Manila insisting that the US had prior knowledge.
However, Washington has maintained that it first learned of the operation after it was informed of the death of an American missionary.
Philippines Defence Secretary Angelo Reyes said that US forces helped plan the operation in the southern Philippines that ended in the death of the missionary and a Filipina captive.
Contradicting the Pentagon's version of Friday's bloody rescue attempt, Mr Reyes said the Americans 'participated in the planning and the execution in terms of advice and intelligence reports, and in the training of our soldiers' who carried out the mission.
Washington -- 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?
Some months ago an academic colleague — a man with strong Democratic connections — urged me to write a couple of columns praising the Bush administration. "What should I praise?" I asked.
There was a long pause — funny, isn't it, how "balance" becomes a goal in itself? — but eventually he came up with something: "How about its commitment to free trade?"
Ahem. In fact, George W. Bush has turned out to be quite protectionist. The steel tariff and the farm bill attracted the most attention, but they are part of a broader picture that includes the punitive (and almost completely unjustified) tariff on Canadian softwood lumber and the revocation of Caribbean trade privileges. When it comes to free trade, the Bush administration is all for it — unless there is some political cost, however small, to honoring its alleged principles.
Which brings me to the story that has Washington's political groupies twittering: that Esquire article in which the White House chief of staff, Andy Card, frets that with the moderating influence of Karen Hughes gone, the hard-liner Karl Rove will run the show. If the past 18 months have been what policy looks like with Mr. Rove only partly in control, one shudders to think what comes next.
For the most distinctive feature of Mr. Rove's modus operandi is not his conservatism; it's his view that the administration should do whatever gives it a political advantage. This includes, of course, exploiting the war on terrorism — something Mr. Rove has actually boasted about. But it also includes coddling special interests.
Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge said Thursday he would advise President Bush to veto any legislation creating a congressionally authorized Office of Homeland Security if Congress approves a bill this year.
"I'd probably recommend he veto it," Ridge told a National Journal Group editorial board meeting. In the past, Ridge has asked Congress to hold off on the legislation.
Today's comments were the first time Ridge has said he would recommend a presidential veto. Ridge said presidents should be "entitled to a few advisers" who owe their loyalty solely to the president.
"I believe that the president and future presidents always would be well served having an adviser coordinating the actions among [the] multiple agencies" charged with protecting homeland security. "I don't think you get that if you are accountable to Congress," Ridge said.
While the Homeland Security director should be "accountable" to the president, he or she should be "accessible" to Congress, he said. Ridge said he has visited Capitol Hill 50 times since Sept. 11 to brief legislators on the Bush administration's efforts to head off future terrorist attacks.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Leading lawmakers on intelligence issues said Sunday that President Bush ( news - web sites)'s proposed domestic security agency does not address flaws in the FBI ( news - web sites) and CIA ( news - web sites) and is just the start of the changes needed in response to Sept. 11-related failures.
"If the administration takes the stonewall position that every word in their plan is biblical and if you change it you're unpatriotic, I think that will be a very serious error," said Sen. Bob Graham ( news, bio, voting record), D-Fla., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Sen. Richard Shelby ( news, bio, voting record), the committee's top Republican, said Congress must review carefully what Bush's plan does and does not do. For example, he said, it fails to address problems with the FBI and CIA that Congress' intelligence committees are reviewing.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Despite the continuing shuttle diplomacy that aims to defuse tensions between India and Pakistan, it's not difficult to imagine how war on the Indian subcontinent would begin--and, more frightening, how it would end.
India might launch punitive airstrikes and commando raids on the camps of Kashmiri and Pakistani militants based in Azad, or Pakistani Kashmir. Pakistan, in turn, could retaliate, hitting army bases in Indian Kashmir. After weeks of fighting, with neither side able to claim an advantage in the mountainous terrain despite raids and counter-raids across the disputed Line of Control, one side might attempt to break the logjam by crossing the international border and invading the other. Or India's navy might blockade Pakistan's only artery to the outside world, the port of Karachi.
You’d think there’d be high-fives in FBI field offices across the country. When Attorney General John Ashcroft and FBI Director Robert Mueller granted broad new powers to federal agents pursuing terrorists, the White House and many members of Congress praised the move as an important advance in the fight against Osama bin Laden. Gumshoes can now trail suspicious people in public places and monitor them on Web sites and public databases, even if there’s no evidence that they’ve committed a crime.
INDIA extended a tentative hand of goodwill to Pakistan yesterday when it lifted restrictions banning Pakistani aircraft from its airspace.
Delhi’s Foreign Ministry said that the move, the most significant sign that tensions are easing between the two countries, was being taken in response to a measured drop in the number of Pakistani militants crossing into Indian-administered Kashmir and it hinted at further concessions if the trend continues.
“We are engaged in a very detailed assessment of the situation on the ground. We have decided that there has been some improvement,” Nirupama Rao, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, said. “We’ve decided to make this announcement in reaction to that. There has been some fall in infiltration, but the trend is not generally established yet.”