The Spirit of the Internet Weekly

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[Note: The following news and opinions primarily came from email sent by our friends. Thank you Sirius and all the others who have forwarded these messages to us. Due to the large volume of email we are receiving, we can only post a sampling here, but we thank everyone for sending stories like this. We read them all and post what we can as time permits.]

Endless War (Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive, October 12, 2001)
“Bush wants ‘to rid the world of terror,’ but his war will create more terrorists. The use of overwhelming force by the most powerful nation in the world against one of the most backward will only fuel the terroristic passions of those who view the United States as a global bully. . . . But this has not given Bush pause. Instead, he is promising more war against additional enemies, ‘a war against those governments that support or shelter’ terrorists. . . . Bush has no constitutional or Congressional mandate, and no justification under international law, to wage this limitless war. . . . But terrorism is not something that can be solved militarily. . . . Part of the solution must be political: It must address some of the legitimate grievances that contribute to the conditions that give rise to terrorism. . . . One of those grievances is U.S. support for Israel's thirty-four-year occupation of Palestinian territory. . . . ‘If you harbor a terrorist, there will be a price to pay,’ Bush said. . . . And over the years, it is the United States that has harbored or trained many terrorists: contras in Nicaragua, death squad officers in El Salvador, goon squads in Haiti, brutalizers in Indonesia and East Timor, anti-Castro terrorists in Miami, mujahedeen in Afghanistan. As Eduardo Galeano points out, Bush's father called the Afghan guerrillas ‘freedom fighters,’ and ‘now they are evil incarnate, a mere thirteen years later.’ ”

In a Time of Terror, Protest Is Patriotism (Jim Hightower, Hightower Lowdown, November 14, 2001)
“As with so many others, I'm flying our flag out of an assertive, perhaps defiant pride -- for I am proud, damned proud, to be an American citizen, and, in this time of true woe and deep national trauma, I'll be damned to hell before I meekly sit by and allow this symbol of our nation's founding ideals -- ‘liberty and justice for all’ -- to be captured and defiled by reactionary autocrats, theocrats, xenophobic haters, warmongers, America-firsters, corporatists, militarists, fearmongers, political weasels, and other rank opportunists. . . . Nor is our flag some bloody rag to be waved by politicians hoping to whip us into such a lust for vengeance that they can turn our people's republic into a garrisoned state, armed to the teeth and mired in a quasi-religious war that George W. defines as ‘this crusade’ to ‘rid the world of the evildoers.’ We Americans are not that blind. . . . Americans desperately need to talk -- about what our society is, where we're headed, what kind of future we're creating for the next generation. . . . Terrorists have no ability to destroy our democracy -- but we do, simply by surrendering it, by keeping our mouths shut while it is dismantled by the authorities. . . . The better part of patriotism is for us to raise hard questions, put out inconvenient information, assert our values, and appeal to what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’ ”

Warning: Media Management Now In Effect (Danny Schechter, ZNET)
“The White House seems to have taken three steps. . . . First, keep critics off the air. (And not just videos of bin Laden or Al-Jazeera, which ‘coincidentally’ had its Kabul office bombed). It soon became clear that the media were allocating little space for domestic critics, much less harder-line opponents, of the policy. While administration officials condemned the ideological fundamentalism of the Taliban, a certain ideological intolerance began to be practiced in the homeland media. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), noted on November 2 that 44 columns in the Washington Post and New York Times stressed a military response, with only two that suggested diplomatic and international law approaches. . . . Second, bring the press on board. The American media empires soon seemed to be marching in lockstep with the government. . . . Third, get the West Coast studios to jump in. . . . While movieland is key because of its global reach, the cooperation of the TV networks is vital for the engineering of consent on the domestic front. The networks have their own reasons to cooperate. . . . Growing skepticism in influential media outlets overseas is worrying to policy-makers here. On November 11, the front page of The New York Times carried a long piece on ‘the battle to shape opinion,’ reporting on the Bush administration's new strategies. The article acknowledges that the administration has enforced ‘policies ensuring that journalists have little or no access to independent information about military strategies, successes and failures.’ . . . In fact, a growing number of Americans are looking for news and information elsewhere, from the very sources that alarm Bush media strategists. NPR reports that American are flocking to foreign web sites while England's BBC and Canada's CBC report a big spike in viewing by Americans.”

Fear and Numbing in the TV Zone (Norman Solomon, MediaMonitors.net)
“Overall, the media disconnect is pretty extreme: Journalists and a range of commentators have told us that our world changed profoundly and irreversibly on Sept. 11. Yet the vast majority of what's on television is in the same old groove. . . . President Bush has stressed that Americans shouldn't fail to shop, as if pulling out credit cards is a defiant blow against ‘the evildoers.’ Thousands of TV commercials go on their merry way, oblivious to dire circumstances outside the calculus of huckstering. . . . To credulously watch TV is to submit to a numbing process. What television offers today, perhaps more than ever, is anesthesia in the face of apprehension. As a stunned spectator, the body politic is incessantly coached as to the implicit limits of sensitivity -- the innocent lives at home are clearly precious, the innocent lives in Afghanistan nearly worthless. With impressive high-tech visuals, the TV set offers us expansive zones of unreality, swaddled in the comforts of commerce, hermetic entertainment and propaganda. If we must watch, it's essential that we recognize what we're seeing.”

Osama's Nuclear Plans Half-Baked (Farhad Manjoo, Wired.com, November 20, 2001)
“British reporters searching through an abandoned ‘al-Qaida safe house’ in Kabul, Afghanistan, last week apparently found the document, and reported that they'd stumbled upon the terrorists' nuclear intentions. . . . The similarity of the two passages was first caught by the weird news site The Daily Rotten, which featured image captures of the document taken from a TV report filed by BBC correspondent John Simpson. . . . That the Taliban, al-Qaida or the enterprising Brit reporters could have mistaken this Internet antic for a true nuke recipe surprised Marc Abrahams, a former editor of the now-defunct Journal, who edits a successor publication called The Annals of Improbable Research (sponsor of the Ig Nobel awards). . . . ‘Pretty much every line of it is a joke,’ Abrahams said. ‘Either there's one guy in the Taliban who had a sense of humor, or everyone was downloading everything on the Net that had the word 'thermonuclear' in it.’ ”

The Holy Alliance (Uri Avnery)
“At the reception desk of the War-Against-Terror Coalition, there lies an application form for new partners. After stating his name, country and function (king / president / emir / dictator / tyrant), the applicant is invited to answer the question: ‘Do you have local opponents that you wish to have branded as terrorists and dealt with accordingly?’ . . . Nearly all the applicants so far have answered this question with great enthusiasm. Vladimir Putin designated the Chechnyian rebels, Spain mentioned the Basque ETA, Turkey the Kurds, India the Kashmiris, just to mention a few of a long list. In short, every potentate, big and small, pointed a finger at the people he oppresses, hoping that the United States will help him get rid of their war of liberation. ‘Send in the big bombers,’ they beg, ‘and blow these miserable terrorist bandits sky-high!’ . . . Wherever an oppressed people dared to raise its head in rebellion, all the rulers of Europe would band together, one for all and all for one, to help their threatened colleague. The Russians, for example, sent troops to squash the Hungarian and Italian rebellions against Austria; the secret services of all cooperated against the socialists and anarchists. . . . Under the umbrella of the War Against Terror, a new Holy Alliance is in the making. George W. Bush is now the supreme judge who decides who is a terrorist and who is not, as once a mayor of Vienna decided who is a Jew. . . . The national interests of the United States clearly point to the recognition of Palestine as a corner-stone of peace and stability in the Middle East. Domestic politics points in the opposite direction.”

A War in the Planning for Four Years (Michael Ruppert, From The Wilderness Publications, November 2001)
“The current Central Asian war is not a response to terrorism, nor is it a reaction to Islamic fundamentalism. It is in fact, in the words of one of the most powerful men on the planet, the beginning of a final conflict before total world domination by the United States leads to the dissolution of all national governments. This, says Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) member and former Carter National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, will lead to nation states being incorporated into a new world order, controlled solely by economic interests as dictated by banks, corporations and ruling elites concerned with the maintenance (by manipulation and war) of their power. . . . ‘They are not fighting against terrorists. They are fighting against citizens.’ . . . In a lesser context he describes the Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Iran and Kazakhstan as essential “lesser” nations that must be managed by the U.S. as buffers or counterweights to Russian and Chinese moves to control the oil, gas and minerals of the Central Asian Republics (Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan). . . . ‘About 75 per cent of the world’s people live in Eurasia, and most of the world’s physical wealth is there as well, both in its enterprises and underneath its soil. Eurasia accounts for 60 per cent of the world’s GNP and about three-fourths of the world’s known energy resources. . . . His [Dr. Johannes Koeppl] fall from grace was rapid after he realized that Brzezinski was part of a group intending to impose a world dictatorship. “In 1983/4 I warned of a take-over of world governments being orchestrated by these people. There was an obvious plan to subvert true democracies and selected leaders were not being chosen based upon character but upon their loyalty to an economic system run by the elites and dedicated to preserving their power. . . . ‘All we have now are pseudo-democracies.’ . . . As to the present conflict Koeppl expressed the gravest concerns, “This is more than a war against terrorism. This is a war against the citizens of all countries. The current elites are creating so much fear that people don’t know how to respond. But they must remember. This is a move to implement a world dictatorship within the next five years. There may not be another chance.”

Who was responsible? (Opinion by Richard K. Moore)
“After reading scores of e-mails about 9.11 in the last few weeks, it seems clear that the Al-Q'uaeda network was infiltrated and allowed to plot an extreme action against the U.S. by an enemy ‘inside the gates’ that then took over the action at the last minute.”

Military Favors a Homeland Command: Forces May Shift To Patrolling U.S. (Bradley Graham, Washington Post, November 21, 2001)
“The nation's top military authorities favor appointing a four-star commander to coordinate federal troops used in homeland defense, part of a broad reorganization that Pentagon officials say could change some forces' primary mission from waging war overseas to patrolling at home. . . . Rather than set up an entirely new command, with all the fresh bureaucracy and expense that would entail, officials have focused on which of several commands already headquartered in the United States could be rejiggered to take on the homeland defense mission. Their deliberations appear to have narrowed into a competition between two candidates, the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) in Colorado and the Joint Forces Command in Virginia. . . . Critics expressed alarm at the prospect of military forces encroaching on areas traditionally considered the responsibility of civilian emergency response, law enforcement and health agencies. . . . The bar to military involvement was lowered further in 1986, when President Ronald Reagan directed the Pentagon to assist in the war on drugs. . . . The move to establish a homeland CINC, officials said, is likely to be followed by geographical and other adjustments in some of the combatant commands under what the Pentagon calls the Unified Command Plan.”

Journal axes gene research on Jews and Palestinians (Robin McKie, The Guardian, November 25, 2001)
“A keynote research paper showing that Middle Eastern Jews and Palestinians are genetically almost identical has been pulled from a leading journal. . . . Academics who have already received copies of Human Immunology have been urged to rip out the offending pages and throw them away. . . . Such a drastic act of self-censorship is unprecedented in research publishing and has created widespread disquiet, generating fears that it may involve the suppression of scientific work that questions Biblical dogma. . . . The paper, 'The Origin of Palestinians and their Genetic Relatedness with other Mediterranean Populations', involved studying genetic variations in immune system genes among people in the Middle East. . . . Jews and Palestinians in the Middle East share a very similar gene pool and must be considered closely related and not genetically separate, the authors state. Rivalry between the two races is therefore based 'in cultural and religious, but not in genetic differences', they conclude.”

Terrorism Works (Noam Chomsky, Al-Ahram Weekly and Media Monitors Network)
“By far the most important question that we must ask ourselves after 11 September is what is happening right now? Implicit in this question is the question of what we can do about it. . . . It looks like what is happening is some sort of silent genocide. It also gives a good deal of insight into the elite culture, the culture that we are part of. It indicates that whatever will happen, we do not know, but plans are being made and programmes implemented on the assumption that they may lead to the death of several million people in the next couple of weeks. Very casually, with no comment, no particular thought about it. That is just kind of normal, here and in a good part of Europe. Not in the rest of the world, though. In fact, not even in much of Europe. . . . What is the ‘war against terrorism’? The war against terrorism has been described in high places as a struggle against a plague, a cancer which is spread by barbarians, by ‘depraved opponents of civilisation itself.’ . . . I am quoting President Reagan and his secretary of state. . . . The Reagan administration responded to this ‘plague spread by depraved opponents of civilisation itself’ by creating an extraordinary international terrorist network, totally unprecedented in scale, which carried out massive atrocities all over the world. . . . It [the U.S.] now stands as the only state on record which has been condemned both by the World Court for international terrorism and has vetoed a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law. . . . The following year Nicaragua took its case again to the General Assembly. This time the US could only rally Israel to the cause, so two votes opposed observing international law. At that point, Nicaragua had exhausted all available legal measures, concluding that they do not work in a world that is ruled by force. . . . Terrorism, on the other hand does work, and is the weapon of the strong. It is a very serious analytic error to say, as is commonly done, that terrorism is the weapon of the weak. Like other means of violence, it is primarily a weapon of the strong -- overwhelmingly, in fact. It is held to be a weapon of the weak because the strong also control the doctrinal systems and their terror does not count as terror.”

Why Isn’t America Against All Terrorist Groups? (Fatima Hamilton, Media Monitors Network)
“America keeps changing its mind. It has since the beginning. First, they only wanted Osama bin Laden. Then they wanted him and his Al-Qaeda group. Then they wanted to punish Taliban. Now, they want to topple Taliban, which is an internal problem and none of their business. Are they supposed to be in the business of going around the world and toppling all governments they don’t like? . . . Of course it is a war against Islam! They fear Muslims building a strong country that may not obey American will. They want to keep the Third World at bay while keeping themselves the only strong power around the world. If this is not true, then why are they going after only Arab and Muslim terrorist groups? Why are they hitting civilians in Afghanistan? . . . The question is, where are the other terrorist groups throughout the world? Why isn’t America going after other terrorist groups or seizing their assets? Why not go after groups like the Real IRA in North Ireland, ETA (the Basque Separatist Group in Spain who are famous for setting off bombs), FARC and other government opposition groups in Columbia, and others throughout the world. They could even campaign against terrorist groups in their midst like white militant groups in America. . . . America is clear in its prejudice and in its goal. They say one thing to cover themselves with Muslims in America (as well as justifying war with other Americans) while acting in clear ways to show us they really want to make another “Crusade”. They say, “Either you are with us or against us.” Why can’t one be neutral? They’re lining up not only those against terrorism but those against Muslims and Islam. They are pressuring the Muslim governments to join them and giving them “carrots” like Pakistan’s debt relief and lifting of sanctions. Yet, the people tell us the true message. In these regions, either the governments are pressured by America and fear for their people or they are pro-Western puppets. The people have different opinions than their respective governments. . . . People must learn to listen very closely to the words spoken by all government officials and even the media. It’s like a puzzle. I hope we can solve it before it is too late and we all end up destroyed.”

Washington Cannibals: Next Stop, Baghdad (Mohamed Khodr, Media Monitors Network)
“No other nation except Israel and no other ethnic group in America except Jewish Americans have a revolving door of leadership between Jewish American lobbies and the highest positions in our government, especially in positions in the State Department, National Security Council (during Clinton's term: 7 of 11 members were Jewish), and Pentagon. . . . First, let's look at the commonality of membership in two Pro-Israeli institutions, the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, as well as Syndicated Pro-Israel Columnists (exception: Pat Buchanan and Robert Novak) who contribute to the Jewish World Review and Townhall.com (part of the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC). America needs to know these organizations and recognize the Pro-Israel bias that many of the nationally known columnists and TV ‘experts’ and understand that their agenda is ISRAEL FIRST and not America's interest. Only by Recognizing this overlapping membership, the preponderance of Jewish Americans and Conservative Columnists, both Republicans and Democrats, and former Government officials who are desperate for America to fight Israel's Arab enemies, can we prevent the death of our youth and reclaim our government, Congress, and our foreign policy. . . . Writing in The Weekly Standard (owned by Rupert Murdoch, owner of News Corporation and FOX Network, a very strident supporter of Israel), William Kristol and Robert Kagan, both Jewish, wrote: This war ‘is not going to stop in Afghanistan...it is going to spread and engulf a number of countries. ... It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid ... it is possible that the demise of some 'moderate' Arab regimes may be just round the corner.’ . . . What has become of our nation when a small powerful minority can push our military to carpet bomb and murder thousands of innocent civilians on the flimsiest of evidence. How tragic that ‘American Voices’ other than the powerful few don't have access to our government or media, yet murder will be committed in our name. In the land of the free many Americans are reduced to writing to the choir on internet sites and not in the mainstream media. Without our voices raised we shall spend the holidays celebrating peace while our military is ordered to kill in the name of the few. God help us and forgive us our silence.”

Blood, tears, terror and tragedy behind the lines (Robert Fisk, The Independent, 26 November 2001)
“But then a refugee with a cracked face and white hair matting the brow below his brown turban he looked 70 but said he was only 36 stumbled up to us. ‘The Americans just destroyed our homes,’ he cried. ‘I saw my house disappear. It was a big plane that spat smoke and soaked the ground with fire.’ . . . For a man who couldn't read and had never left Kandahar province in all his life, it was a chilling enough description of the Spectre, the American ‘bumble bee'' aircraft that picks off militiamen and civilians with equal ferocity. And down the tree-lined road came hundreds more refugees old women with dark faces and babies carried in the arms of young women in burqas and boys with tears on their faces all telling the same stories. . . . An American F-18 soared above us as a middle-aged man approached me with angry eyes. ‘This is what you wanted, isn't it?’ he screamed. ‘Sheikh Osama is an excuse to do this to the Islamic people.’ . . . Out of a dust-storm came a woman in a grey shawl. ‘I lost my daughter two days ago,’ she wailed. ‘The Americans bombed our home in Kandahar and the roof fell on her.’ Amid the chaos and shouting, I did what reporters do. Out came my notebook and pen. Name? ‘Muzlifa.’ Age? ‘She was two.’ I turn away. ‘Then there was my other daughter.’ She nods when I ask if this girl died too. ‘At the same moment. Her name was Farigha. She was three.’ I turn away. ‘There wasn't much left of my son.’ Notebook out for the third time. ‘When the roof hit him, he was turned to meat and all I could see were bones. His name was Sherif. He was a year and a half old.’ . . . It was an eerie phenomenon. Taliban men rifles over their shoulders stared into the sun, up high into the burning light through which four white columns of smoke burnt from jet engines across the sky. I stood behind them and wondered at the battle I had watched for 20 years: a swaying host of eighth-century black turbans and, just behind them, the contrails of a B-52 heading in from Diego Garcia. God against technology.”

Suicidal ignorance (Edward Said, Al-Ahram Weekly Online, 15 - 21 November 2001)
“I would go so far as saying that today almost the least likely argument to be listened to in the United States in the public domain is one that suggests that there are historical reasons why America, as a major world actor, has drawn such animosity to itself by virtue of what it has done . . . The assumption seems to be that American virtue or honour in some profoundly inviolate way has been wounded by an absolutely evil terrorism, and that any minimising or explanation of that is an intolerable idea even to contemplate, much less to investigate rationally. That such a state of affairs is exactly what the pathologically crazed world-vision of Bin Laden himself seems to have desired all along -- a division of the universe into his forces and those of the Christians and Jews -- seems not to matter. . . . There really is a feeling being manufactured by the media and the government that a collective ‘we’ exists and that ‘we’ all act and feel together . . . There is plenty of unrecorded or unregistered scepticism, even outspoken dissent, but it seems hidden by overt patriotism. So, American unity is being projected with such force as to allow very little questioning of US policy, . . . Our only hope as a people is for Palestinians to show the world that we have our principles, we occupy the moral high ground, and we must continue an intelligent and well-organised resistance to a criminal Israeli occupation, which no one seems to mention any more. . . . Israel has been destroying the Palestinian infrastructure, destroying towns and schools, killing innocents, invading at will, without Arafat paying enough serious attention. He must lead the non-violent protest marches on a daily, if not hourly basis, and not let a group of foreign volunteers do our work for us. . . . It is not acceptable to sit in Beirut or Cairo meeting halls and denounce American imperialism (or Zionist colonialism for that matter) without a whit of understanding that these are complex societies not always truly represented by their governments' stupid or cruel policies. We have never addressed the currents in Israel and America which it is possible, and indeed vital, for us to address, and in the end to come to an agreement with. In this respect, we need to make our resistance respected and understood, not hated and feared as it is now by virtue of suicidal ignorance and indiscriminate belligerence.”

Legacy of civilian casualties in ruins of shattered town (Justin Huggler, The Independent, 27 November 2001)
“The Americans killed more than 100 unarmed civilians in Khanabad in the last two weeks, relentlessly bombing heavily populated residential areas in the town, one of the last under Taliban control. The Independent first reported allegations of civilian deaths made by fleeing refugees a week ago. Yesterday, after the Taliban left, those claims were confirmed. . . . Whole suburbs – such as Charikari, where we were –had been destroyed, with giant holes and rubble where houses had stood. We found a man, Juma Khan, digging with a shovel in a crater where 15 members of his family had died. His wife and six of his children, his brother and all of his brother's children were killed when a bomb hit their house at 8am. “I was just sitting there. The next thing I knew, people were digging me out of the rubble,” Mr Khan said. . . . There was no clue as to why the Americans decided to bomb residential areas of Khanabad. Some refugees said that foreign Taliban fighters had been hiding inside the houses – but the people we met said that was not true. There was a Taliban barracks nearby, but it appeared to be unharmed.”

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