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November 20, 2001
Moving Toward a Police State or Have We Arrived?
By: Michael Ratner
Secret Military Tribunals, Mass Arrests and Disappearances, Wiretapping & Torture
I live a few blocks from the World Trade Center. In New York, we are still mourning the loss of so many after the attacks on our city. We want to arrest and punish the terrorists, eliminate the terrorist network and prevent future attacks. But the government's declared war on terrorism, and many of the anti-terrorism measures, include a curtailment of freedom and constitutional rights that have many of us very worried. Full Article
US planned War In Afghanistan Long Before September 11
By Patrick Martin
Insider accounts published in the British, French and Indian media have revealed that US officials threatened war against Afghanistan during the summer of 2001. These reports include the prediction, made in July, that "if the military action went ahead, it would take place before the snows started falling in Afghanistan, by the middle of October at the latest." The Bush administration began its bombing strikes on the hapless, poverty-stricken country October 7, and ground attacks by US Special Forces began October 19. Full Article
Anthrax carefully dispersed
By: Davy De Verteuil
Here is where the anthrax scare headed, I told you so, the world is dealing with a cold calculating machinery that have sown the seeds of it's own destruction.
Now you see the reasons for the carefully dispersed anthrax the and in some cases baby powder throughout the US and a few token states that manufactures the Administration case for initiating war on the peace.
Did anyone ask if the US (elite) administration is capable of killing his or her own to achieve it's own ends, well there goes the evidence. Full Article
Lifting the veil does not liberate women
By: Mary Dejevsky
'It ill behoves Western women to denounce the veil as a symbol of oppression alone'
It was a consummate logistical operation of the sort that showed the "special relationship" at the very top of its game. As the First Lads of the US and Britain plotted how to finish off the Taliban without handing a free pass to the Northern Alliance, the First Lasses were deployed in a pincer movement of their own.
From Washington at the weekend, we had Mrs Laura Bush – becoming, so the White House boasted, the "first First Lady to deliver an entire presidential radio address" – denouncing the "severe repression and brutality against women in Afghanistan". Full Article
Don't take liberties Mr Blunkett
Guardian UK
In 1971, the goventment introduced internment without trial in Northern Ireland. Doubters were reassured that intelligence sources could identify those involved in planning terrorism and that their removal from the scene would bring peace to the province. Thirty years later, it is abundantly clear that the experiment was an almost complete failure. Not only did it fail to curb terrorism, it fomented massive resentment.
So much for learning from history. Last week, Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed that he proposes to reintroduce internment without trial. His new powers will mean that people can be locked up on suspicion. They will have a right of appeal, but they will have no right to see the evidence against them if it is 'sensitive'. Both they and their chosen lawyers can be excluded from any part of an appeal hearing.
Sadly, the recent history of British and US security services - not least in failing to predict the events of 11 September, or even to recruit staff from ethnic or religious groups who might have been able to do so - gives no confidence whatsoever that such prescriptions will be made accurately. And as events in Afghanistan unfold this weekend, it becomes clear that there is now little justification to claim the 'public emergency' required so that Britain can opt out of the European Convention on Human Rights in order to allow internment to take place. Full Article
U.S.-Backed Rebels Accused of Wholesale Slaughter
By James Ridgeway
Welcomed here as a heroic, victorious force just yesterday, the Northern Alliance today is being painted as a gang of murderers on the loose. The Pakistani press today reports two alliance massacres of Taliban soldiers.
One involved the wholesale slaughter of 1,700 troops, many of them students from Pakistan who'd joined the Taliban army south of Kabul. The Northern Alliance forces were under the command of Afghanistan's Burhanuddin Rabbani, whom the alliance reportedly named president of the country yesterday. They were also advised by British and American military units inside Kabul. Full Article
