------- Index of Articles

NUCLEAR
UK Approves MOX Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing Plant
Fury over Sellafield plutonium decision
Britain approves start of BNFL MOX nuclear plant
Pakistan presents a nuclear dilemma
House panel OKs bill on security for nuclear plants, waste
SENSITIVE INFORMATION REMOVED FROM FEDERAL WEBSITES

MILITARY
The disinformation campaign
Plan spares civilian structures
Taliban Fortifies Capital For War Trenches Are Dug, Men Conscripted
Sentiment Is Rising in Japan for a More Muscular Military
Taliban reaps drug profits
'Super' Heroin Was Planned by bin Laden, Reports Say
NATO backs U.S. aid request
Report Finds Substantial Lapses in Security

ENERGY AND OTHER
Energy Independence Now! We Need A New Energy Revolution
EPA, OSHA POST WORLD TRADE CENTER MONITORING DATA
Ebola-style killer virus sweeps Afghan border

POLICE / PRISONERS
Lantana man hospitalized with anthrax
Coalition fears abuse of anti-terrorist tools
Attacks Probed in Closed Courts
House committee passes counterterrorism measures
The disinformation campaign

ACTIVISTS
Leftist media urge restraint
No criticism in land of the free
Speak No Evil
Dissenting voices
Nothing anti-American about opposing the drive to war



-------- NUCLEAR

-------- britain

UK Approves MOX Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing Plant

October 4, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-04-02.html

LONDON, United Kingdom, The UK government today approved operation of the controversial mixed oxide (MOX) nuclear fuel manufacturing plant at Sellafield, drawing immediate threats of legal action by environmental groups.

Designed to turn uranium and plutonium from spent fuel into new reactor rods, the MOX plant was completed in 1996 but never started. Operator British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. has been fighting an increasingly bitter battle to win operating approval since its commercial reputation was savaged in 1999 by a data falsification scandal.

The government announced that the manufacture of mixed oxide (MOX) fuel is justified under European Community law. The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, Margaret Beckett, and the Secretary of State for Health, Alan Milburn, made this decision after considering all the relevant information, including the comments received in response to the five public consultations which have been carried out since 1997.

Britain's environment and health ministries today concluded that operating the plant would produce a net financial benefit, as required under a 1996 Euratom directive. Over the plant's lifetime, they said, the "net present value" of this benefit would be over UK£150 million (US$221.6 million).

The environment ministry added that "wider risks and benefits" had also been taken into account in reaching the decision. Regarding environmental impacts, radiation doses to the most exposed members of the public are put at 0.002 microsieverts per year for discharges to air and 0.00003 microsieverts per year for liquid discharges, or "around one-millionth of the dose from natural background radiation."

Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth both threatened legal action against the government today, calling the decision "dangerously irresponsible" and "outrageous."

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace in the UK said, "Expanding the global trade in plutonium is dangerously irresponsible, especially at a time of huge global insecurity. The Prime Minister recently acknowledged that terrorists might obtain and use nuclear weapons, which makes his move today to launch an export business in bomb-making materials both inconsistent and downright stupid."

The approval of a new plutonium fuel facility at the Sellafield nuclear complex "will increase the risk of terrorists seizing weapons usable material," Greenpeace warns.

Both groups also claim that the government had ignored hidden costs and commercial uncertainties in deciding that operating the MOX plant would bring a net financial benefit.

Of the 9,000 or so responses received in total to the five consultations which have been carried out since 1997, around 7,000 were in favor of the MOX plant approval and around 2,000 were against the proposals from British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. (BNFL), government officials said.

BNFL's Chief Executive Norman Askew said, "I'm highly delighted with today's decision by the Government. I am especially grateful to all those dedicated people within BNFL who have worked for so long for this outcome. Our customers have been extremely patient with us and we can now get on with the business of manufacturing fuel for them and to repay the commitment that they have shown us."

{Published in cooperation with ENDS Environment Daily, Europe's choice for environmental news. Environmental Data Services Ltd, London. Email: envdaily@ends.co.uk}

----

Fury over Sellafield plutonium decision

Paul Brown, environment correspondent
Thursday October 4, 2001
The Guardian
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/worldlatest

After four years of dithering, the government gave the go-ahead to the £472m plutonium fuel plant at Sellafield, Cumbria, yesterday, a decision immediately condemned by environmental groups but welcomed by the owner, British Nuclear Fuels.

The decision safeguards 1,600 jobs at Sellafield and begins a worldwide trade in the plutonium based fuel MOX.

Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace were both consulting lawyers last night and are expected to take on the government in the high court to get the decision overturned on the grounds that the plant can never be economically viable - which it must be under European law to justify the radioactive discharges from the plant.

But the strongest condemnation of the decision came from people who fear that the worldwide trade in plutonium which will get under way when the plant is operational represents an unacceptable terrorist threat.

The MOX plant, as it is known, takes plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel and mixes it into pellets to make new fuel for reactors. It is built on the end of the troubled £1.6bn Thorp reprocessing plant at Sellafield, which dissolves used fuel from British, Japanese, German and Swiss reactors and is itself running behind schedule.

British Energy has refused to use MOX because it is too expensive, but the Germans and Swiss have placed orders. The Japanese are key to the financial success of the plant but have placed no orders following a row with BNFL two years ago when specifications for early versions of the fuel were found to falsified. It was this argument about the financial viability of the plant that caused the government to have no fewer than five consultations over licensing in five years.

BNFL was accused of "voodoo economics" because it wrote off the multimillion pound construction cost of the plant and claimed that it would make a profit as a result.

Margaret Beckett, the environment secretary, said that with the capital cost written off, the plant would make £150m profit.

But since the attack on New York, ministers have been constantly reminded of the potential dangers of the plutonium trade posed by MOX. The government decided not to take these representations into consideration when making the decision, even though the need to have an armed escort for each shipment could dramatically increase costs.

Dan Plesch, senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, said: "In the present international situation this is a reckless decision - it beggars belief. It hardly fits into Mr Blair's vision of taking new opportunities to build a new world."

BNFL is confident that it can overcome both the economic and security difficulties.

Norman Askew, BNFL chief executive, said: "I am delighted with the decision. Our customers have been extremely patient with us and we can now get on with the business of manufacturing fuel."

He said the plant needed contracts or reserved business for only 40% of plant capacity to break even.

Martin Forwood, of Cumbrians Opposed to Nuclear Environment, said: "This is a crazy decision economically. They just do not have the orders to justify it. The Japanese said again this week they are not talking to BNFL and have no plans to buy MOX. Even with the terrorist threat it is a disgraceful decision based on voodoo economics."

Charles Secrett, of Friends of the Earth, said: "It is outrageous that the government thinks it can get away with using Alice in Wonderland economics to justify giving this MOX plant the go-ahead. This is a political decision which doesn't make economic or environmental sense."

Stephen Tindale, executive director of Greenpeace in the UK, said: "Expanding the global trade in plutonium is dangerously irresponsible, especially at a time of huge global insecurity. Some may think this is the end of the MOX controversy. In reality, it is just the beginning."

--------

Britain approves start of BNFL MOX nuclear plant

Planet Ark
October 4, 2001
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
http://www.planetark.org/dailynewsstory.cfm/newsid/12640/newsDate/4-Oct-2001/story.htm

LONDON - Britain gave the go ahead yesterday for the start-up of a controversial nuclear fuel manufacturing plant in Sellafield, north eastern England which has lain idle since its completion five years ago.

The government said it had decided to allow state-owned British Nuclear Fuels (BNFL) to begin operations at the 472 million pound mixed oxide (MOX) plant provided the company received consent from the Health and Safety Executive.

"In addition to evaluating the economic case for MOX fuel and the operation of the (plant), we have also considered the wider risks and benefits involved," Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in a statement.

Beckett said the plant met European Union laws which say the government must be able to show the economic benefits of the project outweigh the health and environment detriments.

The plant takes plutonium from BNFL's neighbouring THORP reprocessing plant to make MOX fuel for nuclear power stations.

Concerns over the MOX project and BNFL's recent poor financial performance have forced the government to postpone plans to float 49 percent of BNFL.

The MOX plant has been the subject of five consultations since 1997 and its future was thrown into doubt in 1999 after the discovery of falsified data for an experimental batch of MOX fuel delivered to Japan caused an outcry in Japan and Germany, countries which were targeted to be the main customers.

After the data scandal, BNFL submitted a revised economic case for the plant and in July a report from consultants Arthur D. Little said it could be justified as it would deliver net benefits of over 200 million pounds if allowed to open.

Environmental groups Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Greenpeace said they were seeking urgent legal advice about the government's decision.

"This is a political decision which doesn't make economic or environmental sense," said FOE director Charles Secrett.

"We believe it is also unlawful. The government may be forced to defend its actions in court."

The environment groups argue analysis of the economic benefits of the plant do not take into account the 472 million pounds spent on construction.

They also say there is insufficient evidence that customers, like the Japanese, will materialise.

-------- india / pakistan

Pakistan presents a nuclear dilemma
U.S. officials wonder what, if anything, to do to protect the arms amid the threat of instability.

Thursday, October 4, 2001
By Warren P. Strobel
Philadelphia Inquirer
http://inq.philly.com/content/inquirer/2001/10/04/national/PAKISTAN04.htm

WASHINGTON - With political instability threatening Pakistan, the United States has begun debating how to help the country secure its nuclear weapons stockpile and nuclear-related facilities.

Driving the preparations is the frightening prospect, however remote, that Islamic militants angered by a U.S. military assault on neighboring Afghanistan could seize power in Pakistan or gain control of some of its nuclear weapons.

But while the threat is clear, the solution is not, according to current and former U.S. government officials who have dealt with Pakistan's nuclear program.

The problem, they say, is that international treaties and U.S. laws designed to control the spread of nuclear weapons severely limit how much aid the United States can give to Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, even with the best of intentions.

The Bush administration, contrary to some reports, has not yet held any detailed discussions with Pakistan on the issue, said a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

And it was not until this week that top government experts began discussing how to assist Pakistan in light of the restrictions, the senior official said.

Proposals vary widely for helping Pakistan ensure its nuclear weapons do not fall into the wrong hands. They range from sending in U.S. troops to guard nuclear facilities - which Pakistan has not asked for and almost certainly would not accept - to technical assistance in transporting nuclear materials and guarding against their unauthorized use.

Any one of those would involve overturning long-standing U.S. policy, which has been to oppose nuclear programs, such as Pakistan's, that are outside international controls.

The dilemma is similar to the one over whether to give drug addicts clean needles to stem the spread of disease, said Lee Feinstein, who as a State Department official in the Clinton administration helped formulate the U.S. response to India and Pakistan's May 1998 tit-for-tat nuclear tests.

While nonproliferation is still important, "we have treaty obligations that didn't exactly foresee the circumstances we're in now," said Feinstein, now at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a Washington research firm.

Those obligations include the 1968 Nonproliferation Treaty, which bars encouragement and assistance to any country except the original five declared nuclear powers: the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

Pakistan, where a vocal minority supports Islamic radicals, has between 23 and 29 nuclear weapons, according to the Washington-based Center for Defense Information, a research outfit led by retired military personnel. It has a plant to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons at Kahuta, outside Islamabad, and a newer facility for producing plutonium at Chasma, southwest of the capital.

U.S. officials are concerned enough about political instability in Pakistan that they are trying to minimize the U.S. military's use of the country for expected strikes on Afghanistan in retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"Pakistan is a fragile political society, and we don't want to burden Pakistan with more than we absolutely need," Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said yesterday on ABC News' Good Morning America.

U.S. experts inside and outside government say that Pakistan's nuclear weapons, controlled by the army, appear to be under secure control for now.

"I'm not in a position to say there's not a real source of concern, because we've seen the unthinkable," said George Perkovich, author of India's Nuclear Bomb, referring to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

But, he said, images of "a bunch of guys with long beards running through a fence somewhere" in Pakistan and taking over a nuclear weapons complex are unrealistic.

Warren P. Strobel's e-mail address is wstrobel@krwashington.com.

-------- u.s. nuc facilities

-------- nevada

House panel OKs bill on security for nuclear plants, waste
Measure calls for armed escorts to guard shipments of spent fuel

Thursday, October 04, 2001
Las Vegas Review-Journal
By STEVE TETREAULT DONREY WASHINGTON BUREAU
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2001/Oct-04-Thu-2001/news/17144902.html

WASHINGTON -- A House committee Wednesday approved a bill that directs the government to pull its security blanket tighter over commercial nuclear plants and spent-fuel storage, including a proposed repository at Yucca Mountain.

The legislation urges the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to devise new rules requiring armed escorts for all spent-fuel shipments and requiring inspections that would take place at a repository and other facilities at least once every two years.

Also, the measure would expand the law on sabotage involving nuclear materials to cover acts committed at a spent-fuel repository, nuclear waste treatment plants and fuel enrichment facilities.

The penalty for conviction of nuclear sabotage would be increased to $1 million or life in prison without parole.

A committee spokesman said the bill would cover acts committed during the transportation of nuclear waste.

The actions by the House Energy and Commerce Committee came as panels on Capitol Hill are developing anti-terrorist legislation that will be incorporated into a single bill and brought before Congress.

The NRC had requested legislation giving nuclear plants more authority to arm guards and control weapons brought onto the premises, but committee member Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., offered what he said were more substantial safeguards.

One amendment would direct the NRC to upgrade its sabotage scenario, which licensees are required to defend against.

Markey said current rules envision small groups of attackers who would not be willing to kill themselves in the course of committing sabotage, characteristics that run counter to what was demonstrated in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York City and Washington.

"More realistic rules should be in the books," Markey said.

Under his amendment, nuclear plants would be required to have protections against at least 20 intruders wielding explosive devices and not afraid to die using them.

For nuclear waste shipments, "regulations shall require armed escorts, capable of repelling attacks by a large number of attackers working as several coordinated teams and using sophisticated techniques and equipment," according to the amendment.

Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas, objected to requiring armed escorts for nuclear waste. He said it would be packed in canisters strong enough "to withstand a locomotive crash or sustained fire."

"You're going to have to have an armed battalion with every spent fuel shipment that goes anywhere in this country," he said. "Do we really want to do that? I don't think so."

Energy Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., argued against the Markey amendment and said it was premature because the NRC was conducting its own threat study.

When it appeared that committee members were about to approve the legislation over his objections, an angry Tauzin said he would rewrite the bill before it reached the House floor to ensure it would not hamper the NRC's efforts.

Another Markey amendment, requiring federal background checks of anyone seeking a driver's license to transport nuclear waste, was set aside to be redrafted.

Markey withdrew another amendment that would have allowed the president to declare "no fly zones" over nuclear plants and to station National Guard troops at utilities in emergencies.

Barton argued the president already has that authority and it may complicate state emergency planning.

Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., said Congress should take a broader look at nuclear power security.

It may turn out, he said, that the government may need to take over some management of nuclear power and the nation's electricity grid in the same way it is moving to assert more control over airport security.

-------- us nuc politics

SENSITIVE INFORMATION REMOVED FROM FEDERAL WEBSITES

October 4, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-04-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, Many federal agencies have now removed from their websites sensitive information that could be used by terrorists to target additional attacks on the U.S.

Responding to concerns that information about hazardous chemicals, nuclear shipments, oil and natural gas pipelines and other prime targets could be used by terrorists, agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Transportation (DOT) and the Centers for Disease Control and Protection (CDC) have taken some public information off the Web.

Since 1999, the EPA has required facilities that store or use dangerous chemicals to report on the worst case scenarios for chemical accidents or deliberate chemical releases at their sites. That information was to be posted on the web under public right to know laws.

But after some groups and members of Congress raised concerns that these scenarios could be used to plan terrorist or criminal attacks, the EPA agreed to restrict access to worst case scenarios to limited access reading rooms at EPA sites across the country.

Since September 11, the EPA has been reviewing its policy on who can access such information. The agency has also removed most information about chemicals and emergency plans from its risk management program website.

The "Washington Post" reports that the DOT has removed oil and gas pipeline maps and information on the risks of certain chemicals. The CDC has deleted a "Report on Chemical Terrorism," which described industry weaknesses in contingency plans for terrorist attacks, the "Washington Post" said.


-------- MILITARY

The disinformation campaign

by Phillip Knightley
author of The First Casualty, a history of war reporting
The Guardian
Thursday October 4, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4270014,00.html

Western media follow a depressingly familiar formula when it comes to the preparation of a nation for conflict.

The way wars are reported in the western media follows a depressingly predictable pattern: stage one, the crisis; stage two, the demonisation of the enemy's leader; stage three, the demonisation of the enemy as individuals; and stage four, atrocities. At the moment we are at stages two and three: efforts to show that not only Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are fanatical and cruel but that most Afghans - even many Muslims - are as well.

We are already through stage one, the reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as "We're on the brink of war", or "War is inevitable".

News coverage concentrates on the build up of military force, and prominent columnists and newspaper editorials urge war. But there are usually sizable minorities of citizens concerned that all avenues for peace have not been fully explored and although the mainstream media ignores or plays down their protests, these have to be dampened down unless they gain strength.

We now enter stage two of the pattern - the demonisation of the enemy's leader. Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler's name provokes. So when George Bush Sr likened Iraq's takeover of Kuwait with the Nazi blitzkrieg in Europe in the 1930s, the media quickly took up the theme. Saddam Hussein was painted as a second Hitler, hated by his own people and despised in the Arab world. Equally, in the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs were portrayed as Nazi thugs intent on genocide and words like "Auschwitz-style furnaces" and "Holocaust" were used.

The crudest approach is to suggest that the leader is insane. Saddam Hussein was "a deranged psychopath", Milosevic was mad, and the Spectator recently headlined an article on Osama bin Laden: "Inside the mind of the maniac".

Those who publicly question any of this can expect an even stronger burst of abuse. In the Gulf war they were labelled "friends of terrorists, ranters, nutty, hypocrites, animals, barbarians, mad, traitors, unhinged, appeasers and apologists". The Mirror called peace demonstrators "misguided, twisted individuals always eager to comfort and support any country but their own.

They are a danger to all us - the enemy within." Columnist Christopher Hitchens, in last week's Spectator article, Damn the doves, says that intellectuals who seek to understand the new enemy are no friends of peace, democracy or human life.

The third stage in the pattern is the demonisation not only of the leader but of his people. The simplest way of doing this is the atrocity story. The problem is that although many atrocity stories are true - after all, war itself is an atrocity - many are not.

Take the Kuwaiti babies story. Its origins go back to the first world war when British propaganda accused the Germans of tossing Belgian babies into the air and catching them on their bayonets. Dusted off and updated for the Gulf war, this version had Iraqi soldiers bursting into a modern Kuwaiti hospital, finding the premature babies ward and then tossing the babies out of incubators so that the incubators could be sent back to Iraq.

The story, improbable from the start, was first reported by the Daily Telegraph in London on September 5 1990. But the story lacked the human element; it was an unverified report, there were no pictures for television and no interviews with mothers grieving over dead babies.

That was soon rectified. An organisation calling itself Citizens for a Free Kuwait (financed by the Kuwaiti government in exile) had signed a $10m contract with the giant American public relations company, Hill & Knowlton, to campaign for American military intervention to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

The Human Rights Caucus of the US Congress was meeting in October and Hill & Knowlton arranged for a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl to tell the babies' story before the congressmen. She did it brilliantly, choking with tears at the right moment, her voice breaking as she struggled to continue. The congressional committee knew her only as "Nayirah" and the television segment of her testimony showed anger and resolution on the faces of the congressmen listening to her. President Bush referred to the story six times in the next five weeks as an example of the evil of Saddam's regime.

In the Senate debate whether to approve military action to force Saddam out of Kuwait, seven senators specifically mentioned the incubator babies atrocity and the final margin in favour of war was just five votes. John R Macarthur's study of propaganda in the war says that the babies atrocity was a definitive moment in the campaign to prepare the American public for the need to go to war.

It was not until nearly two years later that the truth emerged. The story was a fabrication and a myth, and Nayirah, the teenage Kuwaiti girl, coached and rehearsed by Hill & Knowlton for her appearance before the Congressional Committee, was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. By the time Macarthur revealed this, the war was won and over and it did not matter any more.

So what should we make of the stories in the British press this week about torture in Afghanistan? A defector from the Taliban's secret police told a reporter in Quetta, Pakistan, that he was commanded to "find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten crows from their nests". The defector then listed a series of chilling forms of torture that he said he and his fellow officers developed. "Nowhere else in the world has such barbarity and cruelty as Afghanistan."

The story rings false and defectors of all kinds are well-known for telling interviewers what they think they want to hear. On the other hand, it might be true. The trouble is, how can we tell? The media demands that we trust it but too often that trust has been betrayed.


-------- afghanistan

Plan spares civilian structures

October 4, 2001
By Rowan Scarborough
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011004-31834294.htm

The Bush administration is putting final touches on a bombing plan against Afghanistan's Taliban militia that will spare civilian infrastructure such as electrical grids, bridges and water supplies, U.S. officials say.

"The 'center of gravity' is not bridges. It's the Taliban," said one administration official, using the military's term for an enemy target.

In previous U.S.-led bombing campaigns, such as those against Iraq and Serbia, the Pentagon worked off a broad, or strategic, target list. Targets included bridges, roads, electrical generators and, in some cases, central water supplies.

Officials say the impending campaign, relying on a growing arsenal of "smart" munitions, will attempt to surgically separate the ruling Taliban militia from Afghan society. Targets include the military that supports the terrorists, along with Taliban headquarters, meeting places and known hide-outs.

President Bush has stopped short of saying his war on terrorism has a goal of removing the Taliban, but officials have indicated that one objective of air strikes will be to destroy the Taliban's command and control capabilities. The destruction would make the regime vulnerable to an uprising from various anti-Taliban factions, most notably the Northern Alliance.

Sparing civilian infrastructure also will allow the Bush administration to show that the strikes are not part of a war against the Afghan people, but rather against the radical Taliban government.

The Taliban admits to harboring Osama bin Laden, who the United States says orchestrated the Sept. 11 hijacked airliner attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Mr. Bush has announced U.S. policy to treat regimes that harbor terrorists the same as the perpetrators themselves.

Another bombing objective is to spur bin Laden, and top members of his al Qaeda terror network, to run. A moving target, officials say, is easier to locate and kill or capture.

"Take away his protectors, the Taliban, and he must run," said one official.

Another administration source said, "Make it so he can't spend the same night in the same place twice."

War strategists have anticipated that bin Laden may be located hiding in a cave. A quick air strike, an official said, could turn the tunnel into bin Laden's permanent tomb.

Taking down the Taliban, an official said, "will send a message to any other government in the world that is even remotely thinking about hosting terrorists on their soil."

The United States has aimed an array of intelligence assets on Afghanistan to create a bombing target list and to locate bin Laden.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said yesterday the United States has some indication of bin Laden's whereabouts, but not his "coordinates." Planners would need the coordinates to order an air strike at bin Laden.

In addition to striking Taliban's infrastructure, U.S. and British warplanes would hit military assets such as air defense networks, MiG fighters and tanks.

Also on the list is al Qaeda's large network of terrorist training camps, complete with bunkers and connecting tunnels.

The U.S. military has augmented its arsenal of precision-guided munitions since the 1991 Gulf war. Besides laser-guided weapons and cruise missiles, Air Force bombers carry the Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAMs).

The 1,000- and 2,000-pound bombs are guided by satellite coordinates, and thus are not subject to poor weather conditions that can misdirect the laser beams.

Pentagon officials say the air war is being planned through a classic chain of command.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees military operations in the Persian Gulf and Central Asia, has been drawing up the master target list.

The targets have been submitted to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose Joint Staff, and the military services, have submitted ideas. The list has been briefed several times to Mr. Rumsfeld and the White House.

Mr. Rumsfeld has sent conflicting signals on an air campaign. At one point, he publicly doubted there was much of value to bomb in Afghanistan, an arid, impoverished country locked in destructive civil wars for decades.

Asked on Sept. 18 how he planned to strike Afghanistan, the defense secretary answered, "I think that one has to find ways to alter behavior. And as I've indicated, that runs across the spectrum. You're quite right; Afghanistan is a very poor country. It is a country that has had - several countries have exhausted themselves pounding that country and fighting. So it is - there are not great things of value that are easy to deal with."

But that same week, he signed deployment orders sending about 150 Air Force planes to the region, including heavy B-52 and B-1B bombers.

A week later, he described the war on terrorism this way: "It is by its very nature something that cannot be dealt with by some sort of a massive attack or invasion. It is a much more subtle, nuanced, difficult, shadowy set of problems."

In addition to the Air Force aircraft, two Navy carriers are in the area, with two more en route, meaning a potential naval air force of nearly 300 planes.

--------

Taliban Fortifies Capital For War Trenches Are Dug, Men Conscripted

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, October 4, 2001; Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A2416-2001Oct3.html

GOLBAHAR, Afghanistan, Oct. 3 -- The ruling Taliban militia has begun fortifying its lines around Kabul in preparation for a military attack, recovering from an early period of disarray, according to defectors emerging from the embattled capital city and opposition spies.

Taliban troops in recent days have built two lines of defense north of Kabul, digging trenches and bomb shelters while replenishing their forces by apprehending young men and sending them to front lines north of the capital. Some recruits who refused to join up were shot, a defector reported, and the Taliban has begun rotating troops to and from the front every three or four days to guard against desertions.

"They said they'll fight to defend Kabul," Khan Jan, who defected from the Taliban army, said in an interview today in rebel-held territory north of Kabul. The Taliban leaders have decided that "if America attacks us, it's our duty to defend our homeland, it's our duty to wage jihad," he said.

"At first the Taliban were in a panic, but now they've gotten themselves better organized in their defenses," said Mirabdulwahid, the chief intelligence officer for the 516th Regiment of the anti-Taliban rebel forces known as the Northern Alliance. Like many Afghans, he uses only one name. "But the [Taliban] military is still quite disorganized, not as organized as before, and they're collecting people by force."

The reconnaissance from Kabul suggests that during the nearly three weeks since the United States announced it would take military action if the Taliban did not surrender Osama bin Laden, the Afghan rulers have collected themselves and put their forces in better order. The days following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States brought a chaotic response in Kabul, as senior officials and other residents fled rather than face what they expected to be a swift U.S. airstrike.

"In the first days, the commanders ran away and there was nobody to give orders," said one rebel, 20, who added that he was undercover in Kabul for three months.

Since then, some order has been restored. While ordinary residents are still leaving the city, some government ministers have returned and some stores have reopened, according to rebel spies. The Taliban evidently has decided to make a concerted effort to prevent Northern Alliance rebels from overrunning the capital as part of a U.S. assault.

"When the Americans said they would attack but didn't attack at once, the situation normalized," said Abdul Rahim, commander of another front-line rebel post who has agents crossing back and forth from Taliban territory. "Their leaders said, 'Go back to Kabul and prepare to defend it and prepare your troops.' "

While the Taliban is based mainly in the southern city of Kandahar, Kabul remains the capital and a key political and military center. The Taliban's capture of Kabul in September 1996 cemented its hold on power in Afghanistan on the way to setting up a state governed by an ultra-strict interpretation of Islamic law.

The Northern Alliance, formed from the remnants of the government ousted by the Taliban, has been battling with the Taliban ever since but has been stalled in positions north of Kabul for two years. Rebel leaders now hope the U.S. military will enable them to make a decisive breakthrough.

Abdullah, foreign minister for the Northern Alliance government-in-exile, told reporters in Jabal Saraj today that in recent days he had his first face-to-face meeting with a U.S. official to discuss cooperation. He would not identify the official or the setting other than to say it was not in Afghanistan. Abdullah has been meeting with envoys from other countries lately in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the most accessible foreign capital for the Afghan rebels, who can reach it from here by helicopter.

Abdullah also confirmed for the first time that the rebels have been receiving support from Russia and Iran in their fight against the Taliban, although such aid has been widely known through other sources for years. The Iranian government, led by Shiite Muslims, opposes the Taliban, which is Sunni Muslim and has persecuted Afghanistan's Shiite minority. Russia fears the spread of Islamic radicalism in the former Soviet states of Central Asia.

Although the Northern Alliance controls just 5 to 10 percent of Afghanistan, its leaders are banking on a popular uprising to help overthrow the Taliban after U.S. bombs start to fall. At his news conference today, Abdullah expressed confidence that Taliban troops would defect and citizens would take up arms on the Alliance's behalf and predicted the combination would mean a gain of 10,000 fighters for the rebels.

Such forecasts are impossible to verify. Several rebel commanders here in the Panjshir Valley said they have been in contact recently with their counterparts on the Taliban side to talk about deserting after the U.S. operation begins.

"This is the end for them," Mohammad Ashraf, a deputy rebel commander at a post outside Jabal Saraj, said of the Taliban. "There's no way they can advance. Some of their commanders are already talking with us. They're waiting for [the beginning of] airstrikes to come over to our side." The only reason they are not coming now, he said, is fear of Taliban reprisals.

One Taliban soldier who has already come over is Khan Jan, who crossed lines last week. A young man with a wispy beard who described himself as 23 or 24, Jan was a shopkeeper in the northern city of Kunduz until the Taliban police rounded up him and 50 others about three months ago and flew them to Kabul. He was forced to serve in the reserves until a few weeks ago, when he said he was sent to the front.

Although he said he saw several other "recruits" shot for refusing to fight, he decided to flee, and slipped away one day at 4 a.m. He met up with a rebel officer who brought him here.

Jan said the Taliban has had several defections but retains considerable force. He said "they're certainly very well equipped" with new guns and new tanks provided by foreign supporters. "The majority of their armored personnel carriers are new."

Various rebel commanders estimated the Taliban force defending Kabul at between 4,000 and 5,000, many of them Pakistanis and Arabs allied with the Afghan government. The main bases for their troops inside the city are the military university, the barracks of the old national guard and the Hotel Intercontinental, according to rebel agents. The Taliban forces are equipped with Chinese and Russian antiaircraft batteries as well as U.S.-made Stinger shoulder-fired missiles. Ashraf said an informer recently saw seven 100mm cannons in action at an antiaircraft drill.

Another agent, who spent more than 10 days in Kabul scouting Taliban positions before returning this week, said there were 300 to 400 Pakistanis in the northwest part of the city, where the old 8th Division was headquartered, while hundreds of Arab soldiers were based in the former 10th Division headquarters elsewhere in the city. Another 300 Arabs were at a checkpoint near Bagram north of the city at the front lines, he said.

The agent said anti-American demonstrations were being held in Kabul every day, and the religious police were detaining more young men every night and holding them in a prison that was reopened in recent months.

The agent said Kabul's population would support an assault on the Taliban. "We have lots of mujaheddin in the Taliban ranks," he said, using the term for holy warriors. "As soon as people find out that our forces are approaching the city, the people will immediately rise up."

-------- asia

IN JAPAN
Sentiment Is Rising in Japan for a More Muscular Military

New York Times
October 4, 2001
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/international/asia/04JAPA.html

TOKYO, Oct. 3 - In Japan, the American declaration of war on international terrorism has already had one dramatic, if largely unintended, effect: pushing this country's debate over the role of its armed forces further in the last three weeks than in the previous three decades.

Until last month's terrorist attack on the United States, proposals to allow Japan's Self Defense Force to behave like most military forces - fighting to promote national interests and working closely with allies during crises - had been perennially stalled.

Two powerful obstacles, the constitutional restraints on the use of military force and strong popular support for the country's official pacifism, have always combined to keep things that way.

But since the country's political leaders were powerfully nudged two weeks ago by a comment from Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, to "show the flag" alongside the United States, politicians here have been virtually outdoing one another in urging new roles for the Self Defense Force.

In this process, Japan appears to be following Germany, its ally during World War II and another country whose armed forces were placed on a tight leash after the horror of Hitler's war. Over the past decade, these constraints have been loosened in Germany as the army has taken on missions in the Balkans that were previously unthinkable.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took the lead in this debate, amid fevered discussion here of the need to avoid the embarrassments suffered during the 1991 Persian Gulf war, when Japan declined to join the fight against Iraq. On Sept. 19, the prime minister announced a seven- point plan to dispatch Japanese warships to provide rear-area support for the United States Navy.

But instead of drawing the condemnation expected from many quarters, this first overseas deployment of Japanese armed forces since World War II - aside from peacekeeping missions - quickly drew a statement of support from the country's leading opposition formation, the Democratic Party.

Mr. Koizumi might have expected strong resistance from within his ruling coalition as well, especially since one of its members, the powerful Buddhist-affiliated New Komeito Party, is strongly identified with pacifism. But in recent days, as the Parliament has debated legislation to enable the naval deployment, senior Komeito members have signaled their willingness to allow broad leeway for the use of weapons by Japanese forces.

Japanese public opinion remains deeply divided over the dispatch of warships, recent polls indicate, although support rises to roughly 70 percent when people are specifically asked if Japan should provide rear- area support only. Although their comments have been muted so far, Japan's neighbors, in particular China and the two Koreas, have consistently opposed anything that appears to strengthen this country's military.

"We have been paying attention to responses from China and South Korea and have explained in an appropriate manner," Mr. Koizumi told legislators today.

The new legislation, which will be introduced on Friday, would expand the circumstances under which Self Defense Force troops may use weapons to include protecting people like refugees and disabled soldiers under the care of Self Defense Force personnel. There has also been talk of authorizing search-and-rescue operations to support American forces. Current rules permit Japanese troops to use weapons only in self- defense.

Japanese political analysts say that what appears to be happening is that the country's leading parties are competing to demonstrate support for an already popular leader, Mr. Koizumi, whose strength has only grown during the crisis.

For the time being, the most notable objections to Mr. Koizumi's offer to support the United States have come from elders within his own party, who appear to be angered over not having been consulted.

"I want a Japan that can't be drawn into a broader war," said Hiromu Nonaka, a former Liberal Democratic Party secretary general who lost much of his clout when Mr. Koizumi won office in April. "Right now we don't have a mechanism to put on the brakes."

There is a historical shift here.. The old-line power brokers of Mr. Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party had traditionally been the most ardent advocates of revising Japan's so-called peace constitution.

Akihiko Tanaka, a professor of international politics at Tokyo University, said: "What has happened, obviously, is that now we have a prime minister who is immensely popular, and though he may not be a great expert in security matters, he has a good feel for situations like these. He had promised that he would bring about a radical change in thinking, without depending on lots of party gurus, and that is just what he did."

-------- drug war

Taliban reaps drug profits

October 4, 2001
By Jerry Seper
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011004-28328120.htm

The ruling Taliban regime in Afghanistan is collecting millions of dollars a year in profits from illicit drug sales with some of the cash going to the terrorists who hide and train in that country, the head of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said yesterday.

DEA Administrator Asa Hutchinson told a House subcommittee that while there is little direct evidence to link the drug profits directly to Osama bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 attacks on America, there is no question the Taliban controls drug trafficking in that country and is closely aligned with bin Laden and his terrorist network, known as al Qaeda.

"The relationship between the Taliban and bin Laden is believed to have flourished in large part due to the Taliban's substantial reliance on the opium trade as a source of organizational revenue," Mr. Hutchinson told the House Government Reform subcommittee on criminal justice, drug policy and human resources.

"The very sanctuary enjoyed by bin Laden is based on the existence of the Taliban's support for the drug trade," he said.

"This connection defines the deadly, symbiotic relationship between the illicit drug trade and international terrorism."

Since the Taliban took control in 1996, Afghanistan has accounted for more than 70 percent of the global supply of opium, the source crop for heroin.

Between 80 percent and 90 percent of the heroin sold in Europe is processed from opium produced and now being stockpiled in Afghanistan.

Mr. Hutchinson said opium sales by the Taliban generate as much as $40 million annually, with some estimates ranging far higher. He said that as the de facto government of Afghanistan, the Taliban taxes all aspects of the opium trade, including cultivation, processing and transportation.

The current tax rate for cultivation, he said, is 10 percent, while the "sporadic" tax on those who process and transport the drug varies, but ranges as high as 20 percent.

Last year, the Taliban ordered a ban on the cultivation of opium, saying it was "un-Islamic." The ban, according to a State Department advisory released last week, reduced that country's opium production by 95 percent, accounting for a global supply decline of nearly two-thirds.

Law enforcement authorities, however, called the ban a "public relations ploy" that let the drug traffickers stockpile supplies of opium and boost its price.

During the ban, the price of opium rose from $44 to $429 per kilogram, Mr. Hutchinson said, adding that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Taliban has been unloading its warehouses of opium at prices ranging from $95 to $746 a kilo.

William Bach, a State Department counternarcotics official, told the subcommittee in yesterday's hearing that there was "ample evidence" that the Taliban has condoned and profited from the drug trade.

He said the Taliban regime also had "provided sanctuary to and received military assistance from terrorist groups in Afghanistan."

"Taliban taxes on opium harvests, heroin production and drug shipments have helped finance its military operations against rival factions," he said, adding that while there is no clear evidence directly linking drug traffickers and terrorists, the Taliban's "responsibility is obvious, particularly given its de facto control over 90 percent of the country."

Mr. Bach noted that an April report by the United Nations accused the Taliban of selling opium and heroin to finance its war against northern rebels and to train terrorists.

He said the report found that funds raised from the production and trade of opium and heroin were being used directly to "buy arms and war materials and to finance the training of terrorists and support the operation of extremists in neighboring countries and beyond."

The subcommittee's chairman, Rep. Mark Souder, Indiana Republican, said the United States needs to expand its focus on drug traffickers to include those in Afghanistan.

"We must now confront the new reality that the Afghan drug trade, largely without crossing our borders, has harmed our country as much as the drugs from half a world away," he said.

--------

DRUGS
'Super' Heroin Was Planned by bin Laden, Reports Say

New York Times
October 4, 2001
By BARRY MEIER
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/international/04DRUG.html

The terror network headed by Osama bin Laden has tried to develop a high-strength form of heroin that it planned to export to the United States and Western Europe, according to intelligence reports received by United States officials.

An informer and a foreign law enforcement agency alerted American officials about two years ago that the network was seeking to recruit chemists to work on the effort, a federal official said.

The official said the goal of the project, which apparently did not succeed, was to create a high-potency heroin that would produce greater addiction and havoc than drugs available in Western cities.

The plan was supposedly developed in retaliation for the United States missile attack in August 1998 against terrorist training camps in Afghanistan, the official said.

In an telephone interview yesterday, Drug Enforcement Administrator Asa Hutchinson confirmed that the D.E.A. had received "limited information" about the reported heroin effort.

The announcements were made as United States officials, gearing up for possible military action in Afghanistan, are seeking to portray the governing Taliban officials and Mr. bin Laden as critical cogs in the world drug trade.

Although there is little dispute that the Taliban derived millions of dollars from opium production, the intelligence reports, if accurate, would provide a rare link between Mr. bin Laden's organization and drugs.

American officials have been hard pressed to make that connection.

At a hearing yesterday in Washington by the House Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy and Human Resources, Mr. Hutchinson and William Bach, a narcotics expert in the State Department, testified that narcotics provided important revenue for the Taliban.

But they said in their statements that federal officials did not have direct evidence of Mr. bin Laden's involvement.

Asked why he did not release the intelligence reports on Mr. bin Laden at the hearing, Mr. Hutchinson said that was because the information was classified and could not be released at a public hearing.

"It would be available to the committee if they request it," he said.

At the hearing, Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Bach said it was their belief that the close ties between the Taliban and Mr. bin Laden's network made some interaction on illegal drugs inevitable.

That view is also backed by a United Nations panel that found that the Taliban used money derived from opium and heroin production to finance, among other activities, "the training of terrorists and support the operation of extremists in neighboring countries and beyond."

Faced with international pressure, the Taliban announced last year that it was banning the production of opium poppies. But most drug experts say they believe that large supplies of raw opium or heroin are stockpiled around Afghanistan and that some of those supplies are slipping across the porous borders as war appears more and more imminent.

Others in the region, including the opposition Northern Alliance, also control opium-growing regions.

One federal official likened Mr. bin Laden's role in the Afghan heroin trade to that of a facilitator rather than a direct participant.

The official said Mr. bin Laden's network appeared to provided protection for processing plants that convert opium into heroin, as well as for smugglers who carry drugs into neighboring countries. Those drugs mostly make their way to Europe, with 10 percent of the heroin derived from Afghan production reaching the United States.

Mr. bin Laden's role, however, may have shifted dramatically for a time after the American missile attack in 1998 on training camps that his forces used.

The United States launched that strike in retaliation for the bombings of two American Embassies in East Africa.

It was at that point that American officials received information from the informer and the foreign law enforcement agency that Mr. bin Laden or his network were preparing to become directly involved in the heroin trade by developing a superpotent form of the heroin.

One Federal official said Washington had not able to confirm the reports independently, but added that the foreign law enforcement agency that had provided the information had proved reliable in the past.

-------- nato

NATO backs U.S. aid request

Washington Times
October 4, 2001
http://www.washtimes.com/national/default-2001104123746.htm

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) - NATO approved the United States' request for specific military contributions in the campaign against terrorism today, the alliance's secretary-general said.

The decision backs up earlier promises with military hardware and intelligence, after Washington's 18 NATO allies said they were convinced by U.S. evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

``Today's decision clearly demonstrates the allies' resolve to combat terrorism,'' Secretary-General Lord Robertson said. He added the commitments were ``clearly not time-limited.''

Mr. Robertson said the decision means the allies will enhance intelligence cooperation relating to terrorist threats, allow for blanket overflights during the campaign, provide access to airfields and deploy standing naval forces and AWACS early-warning radar aircraft.

He said the requests were made ``in a broad sense because the United States has not decided how it will respond.''

Diplomatic sources at alliance headquarters have said the aid requested was essentially a compilation of the kinds of support the United States already has obtained from member states on a bilateral basis.

France, for example, has agreed to American requests to open its airspace and has offered naval and logistics support in the Indian Ocean.

Germany said the U.S. request included cooperation on intelligence, protection of U.S. installations in NATO countries, unlimited overflight rights and air space surveillance. The chancellor said he told the German representative to NATO to cooperate in helping the United States with its needs.

On Tuesday, the allies formally invoked NATO's Article 5, which says an attack against one member is an attack against all.

The decision on the request for assistance from the United States was taken by the so-called silent procedure, by which the member states agree if they do not raise objections by a certain deadline.

-------- u.s.

PROTECTING WEAPONS
Report Finds Substantial Lapses in Security for Shipments of Missiles Within the U.S.

New York Times
October 4, 2001
By KURT EICHENWALD
http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/04/national/04BOMB.html

Security for domestic shipments of surface-to-air missiles, cruise missiles and other explosives has been so poor that terrorists could easily obtain them for use in an attack in this country, according to a classified government report and other confidential records.

The classified report by the General Accounting Office found that the lapses in the system for shipping military explosives around the United States by truck were so serious that they posed "substantial national security or public safety risks."

The report, which was issued in July, has gained increased significance as a result of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Since then, government investigators have been fearful that terrorists might be trying to obtain licenses to drive trucks loaded with hazardous materials, which could be used as a weapon. But as the report and related confidential records make clear, terrorists could obtain weapons of the American military that are moved and temporarily stored on private trucks with little difficulty.

Some of the unsecured weapons, including hand-held rockets, were ready to fire, according to the report. Others could create "explosions that could cost lives and destroy residences and businesses," it says.

The classified report was also obtained by ABC News and is scheduled to be the subject of a broadcast tonight on the program "PrimeTime Thursday."

In a separate study, the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, also found that the military did not know at times the location of weapons and explosives that were being shipped.

For example, the investigators found that a shipment of 192 Stinger missiles was left temporarily in a civilian storage area without the knowledge of either the military or the contractor who shipped the weapons.

Maj. James Hutton, a spokesman for the United States Transportation Command, which coordinates air, land and sea shipping for the military, said that the military could not comment on the reports because they are classified.

The Defense Department makes some 40,000 shipments of explosives each year, with about 20 percent of those including extremely dangerous items like cruise missiles and handheld rockets. Such shipments are not always handled by the military itself; instead, the Defense Department hires private trucking companies to move the weapons.

But the security in the trucking system is woefully inadequate, the Congressional report said. Under the military contract, trucking companies are allowed to leave trucks loaded with weapons in commercial carrier terminals, which the accounting office found have few safeguards to keep deadly weapons away from intruders and are often near residential areas.

At one terminal, a security guard "was watching television in the main part of the building, away from the office where keys to the gates were hanging on the wall," the report says. "At the time of our visit, the terminal had a shipment of Hawk missiles sitting in the yard in temporary storage."

There are 31 such carrier terminals in 17 states, the report says. The terminals are used when a shipment is moved from a short-haul truck to a long-haul truck, or when a military munitions depot refuses to accept delivery of the explosives because it is a weekend or holiday.

In examining the security of those terminals, the Congressional investigators found that they had been allowed full access to missiles and rockets by doing little more than flashing bogus credentials that appeared to be from the Defense Department.

At times, the investigators tried to raise suspicions, but were still not challenged. In one instance, the investigators signed in at the carrier terminal using names that were different from the ones on their bogus credentials; no one noticed.

Almost every level of security was inadequate, the report concluded. Gates protecting dangerous material were kept unlocked, it said, and none had alarms to detect intrusion.

In one instance, investigators found that officials at a site that stored Hawk surface-to-air missiles routinely left open a garage door.

At some sites, the investigators were allowed access to the bills of lading for each trailer, giving them information about which trucks contained explosive and dangerous cargo.

At the five sites where the accounting office personnel gained access, a full military arsenal was accessible. According to the report, investigators found one long-range cruise missile, 11 surface-to-air missiles, 5 anti- tank rockets, 72 bombs, 14,000 rounds for canons and howitzers, and other ammunition and explosives.

There are few Defense Department guidelines for the operation of carrier terminals, the report says, and the ones that do exist are often ignored. For example, the investigators found that the terminals holding missiles and other explosives were located within 2,000 feet of homes and businesses, a violation of safety guidelines that are supposed to be followed by trucking companies that contract with the Defense Department.

Another regulation requires that such dangerous shipments should not be stored at terminals for more than 100 hours, or a little more than four days. Again, the investigators found, that rule is routinely ignored.

For April through June of last year, the report says, 43 percent of the explosives shipped by the Defense Department were stored in terminals for at least a week. And one- quarter of shipments held for that time were military equipment that created the highest public risk for a mass explosion, the report found.

The accounting office concludes, however, that even if all of the applicable regulations had been followed, security risks would still exist because the department's "regulations, policies and procedures are fundamentally flawed."


-------- OTHER

-------- alternative energy

"Energy Independence Now! We Need A New Energy Revolution"

Hal Plotkin,
Special to SF Gate
Thursday, October 4, 2001
http://www.sfgate.com/technology/beat

Amid this week's latest batch of unbearably sad stories about the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, one of the most important stories is the one we haven't read.

It's the story about how, after the last major crisis in the Middle East 25 years ago, America embarked on a crash program to develop new solar, wind, geothermal and fuel-cell technologies to successfully become energy independent.

You didn't read it, because it didn't happen.

The news we're reading this week might look very different if we had followed that course, which was recommended at the time by scores of environmentalists, ranging from author/activist Barry Commoner to our then-governor, Jerry Brown.

Had we listened to them, the US government might not have earned our well-deserved reputation as a hypocrite nation that prizes oil above everything else, including the very values we purport to uphold.

Of even more immediate concern, our continuing dependence on foreign oil leaves the American economy dangerously vulnerable, particularly if the already unstable situation in the Middle East continues to deteriorate.

That's why a campaign for energy independence remains one of our best weapons against terrorism. In the long run, one of the most effective steps we can take to preserve freedom here at home and to extend its benefits to others around the world is to loosen oil's slimy grip on our domestic and foreign policies.

There is an undeniable relationship between America's alliances with oppressive Middle East regimes and the organized, religiously fueled terror campaign that seeks to punish the US for being the chief enabler of those dictatorships. Put simply, we rely on oil-rich despots at our own peril.

President Bush has been very busy, no doubt.

But more than three weeks after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, we are yet to hear a single word from the president about the importance of new energy technologies. Nor has he told us what he plans to do to wean the US away from the imported sources of fuel that force us into unwise alliances with dictatorships such as Saudi Arabia, where many of the Taliban-protected terrorists and their leaders originated, and where they first learned to hate America.

We should not drop the energy-independence ball again. That doesn't mean plundering the Alaskan wilderness for a short-term supply of oil. Instead, the federal government should act on promises made recently by Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham, who last week pledged to increase federal efforts to develop nontraditional supplies of energy.

The president could, for example, issue an emergency declaration that allows investors and entrepreneurs to mine existing patents for potentially useful energy-related technologies that have been buried or not fully exploited by their owners.

In 1979, the Federal Trade Commission, under President Carter, sought to stop Exxon Corporation from taking over the Reliance Electric Motor Company. The company had developed an "alternating-current synthesis" technology that, at the time, was thought to be a major breakthrough. The hope was that the technology could be used to reduce our dependence on oil by making cars and factories more energy efficient.

President Carter's FTC thought it unwise to allow the Reliance technology to fall into the hands of a company whose primary goal was to sell more oil. After President Reagan was elected, however, his appointees quickly reversed the previous FTC order. Shortly thereafter, Exxon abandoned any plans to commercialize the technology.

There's no telling how many such underutilized energy patents may exist. I'm no conspiracy theorist, mind you, but it's just common sense that at least some forces within an industry as powerful and wealthy as the global oil business would have worked over the years to retard the development of technologies that promised to threaten their revenue streams.

We should make it much easier for firms to develop new energy technologies even if that means some existing patent rights must be relaxed. Companies should be permitted -- invited, even -- to violate energy-technology patents free of charge if those technologies are not fully exploited by the holders of those patents.

Fortunately (and somewhat remarkably), the top 65 US venture-capital firms raised nearly $10 billion in new investments over the last three months, according to the National Venture Capital Association. There are, however, precious few good places to invest that cash right now. Nobody really needs another dot-com or computer-services firm at the moment.

What we do need, though, is for the venture-capital community to back firms that are working to change what happens on the other side of the electrical outlet. Opening up neglected energy patents for exploitation by tech firms is just one way we can give the new energy economy a much-needed shot in the arm.

The president should also get tough with California, which is the largest market for energy in the country.

What happens in our state helps determine what's possible across the country and around the world. If California fails to lead, or falls behind, the nation's quest for energy independence will be greatly diminished.

Sadly, our state officials are not rising to meet this challenge. Instead, they've proven themselves entirely inept when it comes to formulating intelligent and workable energy policies that would serve not only California's but also our nation's interests.

Take, for example, the current multibillion-dollar bond measure California state officials are planning to float to pay for the overpriced electricity recently purchased by state agencies on behalf of California's consumers and businesses.

Although the Public Utilities Commission rejected the deal this week, based on its costs, Gov. Davis and state Treasurer Phil Angelides are already trying to revive it.

What most people don't know yet, though, is that the Wall Street bankers selected without full public hearings by our state officials to handle the transaction -- if and when it finally is approved -- are demanding that California consumers be prevented from purchasing electricity from sources other than the local monopoly for however many years it will take to pay off the bonds. If that happens, it will mean we've been put though this whole energy-deregulation mess for nothing.

It also means Californians will be forced to buy energy from existing suppliers regardless of whatever new technologies might emerge. At a time when we need to use the power of California's enormous market to encourage new tech-driven approaches, nothing could be more backward.

State officials hide behind promises that California will set goals to increase the use of renewable-energy technologies by 10 percent or more over the next few years. But those promises are just as empty as the unmet pledge of future 10 percent energy-price reductions that accompanied the disastrous and misnamed 1996 energy-deregulation bill.

President Bush's more savvy political advisers might be wise enough to see the opportunity created by California's continued bungling of its energy policies.

The president could even assume the unlikely role of hero by sticking to his professed free-market position and using the powers of his administration to forbid state officials, including our governor and the state PUC, from preventing free competition in California's end- user electricity market. That doesn't mean abandoning federal price caps on electricity supplies, but it does mean making certain all firms and technologies can compete fairly with one another in the country's biggest market, with no group of suppliers getting a government guarantee of a locked-in customer base.

The truth is, California has many options that would allow it to float revenue bonds that don't involve preventing consumers from having a free choice about where they want to buy their electricity. The state already has the ability, for example, to build new, more efficient power plants, including renewable-energy-based plants, and to grant a percentage of the revenue generated from those plants to any would-be bondholders. That approach has the benefit of increasing the supply of energy while giving the bondholders title to tangible assets in return for their investments.

There are surely other possibilities in a state as large as California. The overall goal, though, should be to do what should have been done decades ago, which is to more effectively support the development of technologies that can help the US become energy independent.

Given the attitudes of Gov. Davis and the state legislature, few of these ideas appear likely to get a fair hearing. That is, unless federal government authorities step in and let our state officials know they cannot prevent competition in California's energy markets, no matter how much money they might need for their reelection campaigns.

President Bush is casting the current crisis in simplistic terms, as "a battle between good and evil." His stated goal is nothing less than the elimination of global terrorism.

As laudable as that sounds, eliminating all terrorism is sure to remain an unobtainable goal in a world where America's need for oil overwhelms our concerns for human rights.

Our enemies have dealt us a grievous blow. But what troubles me even more are the evils we keep doing to ourselves.

Hal Plotkin is a veteran Silicon Valley writer and broadcaster. hplotkin@sfgate.com

-------- environment

EPA, OSHA POST WORLD TRADE CENTER MONITORING DATA

October 4, 2001
ENS
http://ens-news.com/ens/oct2001/2001L-10-04-09.html

WASHINGTON, DC, The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) are both providing environmental monitoring data from the World Trade Center site and nearby areas in Manhattan, Brooklyn and New Jersey on their websites.

Both agencies have taken hundreds of samples to monitor environmental conditions since the terrorist attacks on September 11, and have found no evidence of any significant public health hazard to residents, visitors or workers beyond the immediate World Trade Center area.

In response to public requests for more detailed information, EPA and OSHA are making the results of environmental and occupational sampling available on their sites on the World Wide Web (http://www.epa.gov and http://www.osha.gov), and will post additional data as it becomes available.

The EPA and OSHA, working closely with other federal, state, and local agencies, have been sampling the air, dust, water, river sediments and drinking water and analyzing them for the presence of pollutants such as asbestos, radiation, mercury and other metals, pesticides, PCBs, or bacteria that might create health hazards. They have found no evidence of any significant public health hazard to residents or visitors to the New York metropolitan area.

"EPA's web site now has more detailed information on environmental monitoring information in New York City that should be very reassuring to residents, tourists and workers, and we will continue to update that site with information as it becomes available," said EPA Administrator Christie Whitman. "Our data show that contaminant levels are low or non-existent, and are generally confined to the Trade Center site. There is no need for concern among the general public, but residents and business owners should follow recommended procedures for cleaning up homes and businesses if dust has entered."

OSHA Administrator John Henshaw confirmed that workers on the site should take appropriate steps to protect themselves, but said there is no threat to public health.

"We have more than 200 staffers involved in a round the clock effort, continually monitoring conditions to ensure the safety and health of workers," Henshaw said. "It is important for workers involved in the recovery and cleanup to wear protective equipment as potential hazards and conditions are constantly changing at the site; however, our samples indicate there is no evidence of significant levels of airborne asbestos or other contaminants beyond the disaster site itself."

-------- health

Ebola-style killer virus sweeps Afghan border

Telegraph (UK)
By Tim Butcher in Quetta
04/10/2001
http://www.portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2001/10/04/wref04.xml&sSheet=/news/2001/10/04/ixhome.html

THE largest outbreak in history of a highly contagious disease that causes patients to bleed to death from every orifice was confirmed yesterday on Pakistan's frontier with Afghanistan.

At least 75 people have caught the disease so far and eight have died. An isolation ward screened off by barbed wire has been set up in the Pakistani city of Quetta, and an international appeal has been launched for help.

Evidence suggests the outbreak of Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever emanates from within Afghanistan, raising fears of an epidemic if millions of refugees flee across the frontier into Pakistan.

CCHF has similar effects to the ebola virus. Both viruses damage arteries, veins and other blood vessels and lead to the eventual collapse of major organs.

As one doctor put it, a patient suffering from haemorrhagic fever "literally melts in front of your eyes".

At the Fatima Jinnah Chest and General Hospital in Quetta, capital of the Pakistani province of Baluchistan, an isolation ward with eight treatment beds and two observation bays has been set up.

Nine-year-old Ismail Sadiq lay on one of the beds yesterday, his body wracked with fever and a wad of cotton wool stuffed into each nostril to stem the bleeding.

Outside members of his family sat anxiously in the shade of a tree. An elderly gentleman worked a string of worry beads through his fingers, but doctors had forbidden all visits.

The only people Ismail now sees are doctors and nurses wearing the complete "barrier nursing" outfit of sterilised hairnet, mask, gloves, gown and overshoes.

Another patient, a 65-year-old man, lay inert on his bed, with streams of dried blood on his chin, nose and tongue. His shirt was also stained heavily with blood.

Dr Akhlaq Hussain, the hospital's medical superintendent, said: "The first cases came in June. There were a number of deaths, but at first we did not know what was the cause."

A number of blood samples were sent to Pakistan's national virology testing centre in Islamabad. They were then sent to South Africa's National Institute of Virology in Johannesburg for confirmation.

Dr Hussain said: "When the results came back we knew we were dealing with Crimean-Congo Haemorrhagic Fever." He has compiled a list of all 75 cases, which involved refugees recently arrived from Afghanistan or people living close to the border.

The first known case of the disease was among Russian soldiers serving in the Crimea in 1944 and then among villagers living near the Congolese city of Kisangani in 1956. Not until 1969 were scientists able to isolate the single virus common to both.

Although there have been a number of cases since, the outbreaks have never been as large as the current one.

The doctor said: "We had our first case in Pakistan in the 1970s. It would seem there is a reservoir of the virus in Afghanistan and we are now worried about the possible effects of an influx of many new refugees.

"The virus is carried by domestic animals, and if they come in large numbers with large numbers of animals we can expect many more cases."

The authorities in Pakistan have appealed to the World Health Organisation for additional supplies to help deal with the outbreak, including storage facilities for clean blood plasma and white blood cells which can be used to replace those lost by patients.

The virus is widely distributed in the blood of sheep, cattle and other mammals across eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. It can be passed to man by a species of tick, Hyalomma marginatum, common in the same areas.

If caught in time, CCHF can be treated by replacing enough of the lost body fluids to allow the patient's own immune system to take over and kill the virus.

The facilities at Fatima Jinnah are basic, but the staff are dedicated and brave, treating patients even though there is a high risk of infection from spittle or blood.

----

Lantana man hospitalized with anthrax

Oct. 4, 2001
Associated Press
http://www.floridatoday.com/news/local/stories/2001/oct/loc100401anthrax.htm

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. -- A 63-year-old man has been hospitalized with pulmonary anthrax, Florida Lt. Gov. Frank Brogan said Thursday.

Anthrax has been developed by some countries as a possible biological weapon, but Brogan said there was no indication the illness was related to bioterrorism.

The Lantana, Fla. man, whose name was not released, checked into a hospital on Tuesday and it was initially believed he had meningitis, Brogan said. But testing and X-rays showed that it was pulmonary anthrax, an extremely lethal disease. It is treated with antibiotics.

Florida Secretary of Health John Agwunobi said the disease is not contagious and there is no indication that anyone else has it. The disease, while rare, can be caught naturally.

Brogan said the man had recently traveled to North Carolina and became ill shortly after he returned. The incubation period for the disease can be 60 days.

Tim O'Connor, spokesman for the Palm Beach health department, said officials believe the case is isolated and it is "very likely" to be fatal.

Palm Beach County health officials have scheduled a news conference Thursday afternoon to discuss the case.

Anthrax is a spore-forming bacterium often carried by livestock that is especially virulent if inhaled. The disease causes pneumonia and the spores germinate and spread through the lungs, releasing toxin.

There is a vaccine to prevent the disease.

Anthrax can be caught by handling infected animals, eating contaminated meat or breathing in anthrax spores. All forms are rare, but the most recent cases -- including ones in Texas and North Dakota -- have been so-called cutaneous cases resulting from handling animals.

During the 20th century, only 18 cases of inhaled anthrax have been reported in the United States, the most recent in 1976.

-------- human rights

Coalition fears abuse of anti-terrorist tools

October 4, 2001
By Audrey Hudson
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011004-536599.htm

An unusual mix of conservatives and liberals yesterday cautioned a Senate panel against trampling civil liberties in its pursuit of new law-enforcement tools to capture terrorists.

"While we may differ on many issues, we are all Americans," said Grover G. Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

"We unite in defense of the Constitution and ordered liberty," said Mr. Norquist, who spoke on behalf of a new organization of liberal and conservative groups called In Defense of Liberty. The coalition also includes the American Civil Liberties Union, American Conservative Union, Eagle Forum and the Free Congress Foundation.

Senate Judiciary subcommittee Chairman Russell D. Feingold, Wisconsin Democrat, said that in light of the Sept. 11 tragedy, the most important duty of Congress is to protect civil liberties.

"We can and will give the FBI new and better tools, but we must also make sure that the new tools don't become instruments of abuse," Mr. Feingold said.

"Preserving our freedom is the reason we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without a shot being fired if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people in the belief that by doing so we will stop the terrorists," Mr. Feingold added.

The House and Senate are considering separate anti-terrorist bills proposed by the Bush administration.

The House Judiciary Committee yesterday passed a scaled-back bipartisan package titled The Patriot Act. It allows detention of non-U.S. citizens for up to seven days and authorizes roving wiretaps for a two-year period.

Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, the leading House conservative opposed to the package, signed off yesterday on the compromise but said airport safety and intelligence gathering still need to be assessed.

Mr. Barr said he will "work hard in the days ahead to ensure these issues, which are not addressed in this legislation, receive the attention they deserve."

The Senate last night continued to negotiate what its package will contain, and committee passage could come as early as today. Majority Leader Tom Daschle said he hoped to bring the bill to the Senate floor next week but is under pressure from "5,000 different directions."

However, the South Dakota Democrat added, "there are so many points of pressure they all counterbalance, so I'm in a pressureless job right now."

Mr. Norquist called the Bush administration's request a "wish list of powers."

He told the Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee on the Constitution, federalism, and property rights, that he wrote every member of Congress, urging them to read the legislation before voting for it. Bill reading and analysis is normally left to staff members.

"I did receive one fax from the Hill asking if I was kidding. I was not," Mr. Norquist said.

Historically, Congress has passed law-enforcement statutes with the understanding that it would only pertain to certain crimes. For instance, the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) statutes were to be used against mobsters only. However, in later years, they were used against pro-life organizations, Mr. Norquist said.

When Congress gave the government power to seize private property from drug peddlers, the seizures became so sweeping the legislation had to be rewritten.

"Now we are told the government just wants to fight against terrorists. OK then, put limits in the use of these powers to terrorist cases and terrorist cases alone," Mr. Norquist said.

The most egregious provision is the language allowing indefinite detention, which the House changed to seven days, and the wiretapping, for which the House created a sunset provision.

Mr. Norquist said his group would support the sunset language. "A bad law that lasts two years is less damaging than a bad law that lasts forever," he said.

--------

Attacks Probed in Closed Courts

October 4, 2001
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Attacks-Secret-Courts.html

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The U.S. terror investigation that has hauled in hundreds of Middle Easterners is being conducted with closed court hearings and sealed documents on a scale legal experts say may be unprecedented.

As part of what Attorney General John Ashcroft has called the biggest criminal investigation in U.S. history, federal authorities have detained more than 300 people without releasing the paperwork that usually accompanies nearly any type of court proceeding.

A combination of federal laws and legal precedent allows authorities to detain witnesses, seal search warrants and close hearings on national security grounds or to protect grand jury investigations -- the two primary reasons cited for the judicial secrecy since the Sept. 11 attacks.

``It's not new,'' said Charles LaBella, a former federal prosecutor in San Diego and New York. ``But on this scale, it's unprecedented.''

While little is known about the secret proceedings, some have dealt with immigration issues, and others have been hearings to determine if some people can be detained as material witnesses to ensure they give testimony to a New York grand jury investigating the attacks. LaBella said evidence hearings related to the attacks may also have been kept secret.

Among the proceedings that have been closed to the public was a hearing last week in San Diego to determine whether three college students could be held as material witnesses in the terror case. The judge cited national security, but sealed even his order justifying the secrecy.

The secrecy has raised civil liberties concerns in some quarters.

``One of the things that this secrecy deprives you of knowing is just how far and energetically the government is biting into constitutionally protected activity,'' said Terry Francke, executive director of the California First Amendment Coalition.

A lawyer for the three men held in San Diego likened their detention to the sweeps for communists and sympathizers during the Red Scare of the 1920s. He complained that he was not even told where his clients were being held and was not permitted to contact them.

``I'm not even allowed to say whether they were in court,'' said lawyer Randall Hamud.

But experts said the government so far remains on firm legal ground.

The legal underpinning for much of the secrecy is the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978, which allows the government to permanently seal warrants for national security reasons with a judge's consent, said Laurie Levenson, a former federal prosecutor and legal scholar at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles.

Some defense attorneys who normally would be quick to criticize the government have been cautious.

``I think we should have a healthy concern about what's going on, but it should be tempered by the fact that we still don't know the facts about the events of Sept. 11,'' said Mario Conte, executive director of Federal Defenders, which represents poor defendants in San Diego.

Investigators may also be using secrecy to trace e-mail via a host of Internet service providers. In Silicon Valley, home to many Internet companies, the government has filed about three dozen sealed legal filings since Sept. 11.

In the past few years, various aspects were kept secret in the case of Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing trial and the spy investigations of Aldrich Ames, George Trofimoff and Robert Hanssen.

But Erwin Chemerinsky, a professor at the University of Southern California who specializes in constitutional law, could think of no other time in American history when the government had used so much judicial secrecy in a criminal investigation.

``What's different here, so far as we can know, is the scale of the operation, the number of people involved,'' he said.

Jonathan Lurie, a professor of history and law at Rutgers University in New Jersey, agreed, but added: ``This is a unique moment in our history and to expect that the old standards of due process are going to apply is naive.''

-------- police / prisoners

House committee passes counterterrorism measures

October 4, 2001
By Dave Boyer
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011004-682256.htm

The House Judiciary Committee last night passed a package of counterterrorism measures to aid the Justice Department's manhunt, despite lawmakers' concerns about giving federal agents more power.

"The left is not completely happy with the bill, neither is the right, and it certainly doesn't represent the Justice Department's wish list," said Chairman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., Wisconsin Republican. "I think this means we've got it just about right."

The measure, which passed on a 36-0 vote, includes greater authority for the FBI to conduct wiretaps and secret searches of property, as well as allowing authorities to detain aliens who are suspected terrorists for up to seven days without filing charges.

But it stopped short of Attorney General John Ashcroft's request in several respects, including his proposal to indefinitely detain illegal immigrants suspected of links to terrorist groups.

The Senate, meanwhile, reached agreement with the administration on a similar bill, with indications that work could be completed today. Since the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 that killed nearly 6,000 people, Mr. Ashcroft has been lobbying Congress aggressively to give him more effective tools to hunt down terrorists and prevent more attacks.

And Secretary of Health and Human Services Tommy G. Thompson yesterday outlined steps the government is taking to strengthen defenses against bioterrorism, including development of a new smallpox vaccine that should be ready by next year.

The concerns of some House lawmakers about eroding civil liberties in the anti-terrorism measure were eased by a provision requiring the new law to expire in only two years. They said they were mindful of examples of past government transgressions, such as the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

"My friends in law enforcement tell me that they can be trusted not to abuse the sweeping new powers they have requested," said Rep. John Conyers Jr., Michigan Democrat. "I wish that were true, but history has proven otherwise, regardless of the political party in charge."

The bill would modernize wiretap laws written in the age of rotary telephones, making it easier for authorities to monitor a suspect using disposable cellular phones.

It also would allow investigators with search warrants to obtain e-mail messages from Internet providers. And the measure would extend the statute of limitations for crimes of terror and increase the penalties for such offenses.

Changes made to the bill over the last two weeks persuaded even conservative Rep. Bob Barr, Georgia Republican, who had voiced strong objections, to support it yesterday.

Mr. Barr said he was encouraged by new provisions limiting the detention of aliens to seven days, curbing "roving" wiretaps and stopping the government from executing search warrants without giving notice.

"While I continue to disagree with the broad reach of many provisions in the legislation that go beyond addressing specific anti-terrorism needs, we were able to eliminate or severely limit the most egregious violations of Americans' civil liberties that were contained in the original proposal," Mr. Barr said.

Still, lawmakers clearly were leery of moving so swiftly with legislation that, they said, could result in federal agents eavesdropping on innocent people's phone conversations.

Rep. Barney Frank, Massachusetts Democrat, said if there is anyone who isn't worried about the government conducting surveillance on any part of his life, "you have my sympathies."

Rep. Robert C. Scott, Virginia Democrat, worried aloud that roving wiretaps would ensnare many people who are not the subjects of federal terrorism investigations.

"We want to make sure the target is the only one being listened to," Mr. Scott said.

Committee members approved an amendment by Mr. Conyers and Mr. Sensenbrenner that would prevent government prosecutors from "forum shopping" for friendly federal judges to approve search warrants.

They also struck down provisions that would have allowed using foreign wiretaps and allowed schools to turn over confidential student records to law enforcement.

"Is this a perfect bill?" Mr. Conyers asked. "Of course not. But it does represent a marked improvement over the administration's initial proposal."

The full House is expected to vote on the measure early next week. Senate leaders also hope to bring such a bill to the floor next week.

On the federal response to potential bioterrorism attacks such as smallpox or anthrax, Mr. Thompson testified that doctors and nurses need more training to recognize symptoms and protect themselves.

He said he also wants at least one "outbreak specialist" trained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in every state. Currently 13 states lack such a specialist.

Despite those shortcomings, Mr. Thompson said the public should not be scared into purchasing gas masks or hoarding food.

--------

The disinformation campaign

by Phillip Knightley author of The First Casualty, a history of war reporting
The Guardian
Thursday October 4, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4270014,00.html

Western media follow a depressingly familiar formula when it comes to the preparation of a nation for conflict

The way wars are reported in the western media follows a depressingly predictable pattern: stage one, the crisis; stage two, the demonisation of the enemy's leader; stage three, the demonisation of the enemy as individuals; and stage four, atrocities. At the moment we are at stages two and three: efforts to show that not only Osama bin Laden and the Taliban are fanatical and cruel but that most Afghans - even many Muslims - are as well.

We are already through stage one, the reporting of a crisis which negotiations appear unable to resolve. Politicians, while calling for diplomacy, warn of military retaliation. The media reports this as "We're on the brink of war", or "War is inevitable".

News coverage concentrates on the build up of military force, and prominent columnists and newspaper editorials urge war. But there are usually sizable minorities of citizens concerned that all avenues for peace have not been fully explored and although the mainstream media ignores or plays down their protests, these have to be dampened down unless they gain strength.

We now enter stage two of the pattern - the demonisation of the enemy's leader. Comparing the leader with Hitler is a good start because of the instant images that Hitler's name provokes. So when George Bush Sr likened Iraq's takeover of Kuwait with the Nazi blitzkrieg in Europe in the 1930s, the media quickly took up the theme. Saddam Hussein was painted as a second Hitler, hated by his own people and despised in the Arab world. Equally, in the Kosovo conflict, the Serbs were portrayed as Nazi thugs intent on genocide and words like "Auschwitz-style furnaces" and "Holocaust" were used.

The crudest approach is to suggest that the leader is insane. Saddam Hussein was "a deranged psychopath", Milosevic was mad, and the Spectator recently headlined an article on Osama bin Laden: "Inside the mind of the maniac".

Those who publicly question any of this can expect an even stronger burst of abuse. In the Gulf war they were labelled "friends of terrorists, ranters, nutty, hypocrites, animals, barbarians, mad, traitors, unhinged, appeasers and apologists". The Mirror called peace demonstrators "misguided, twisted individuals always eager to comfort and support any country but their own.

They are a danger to all us - the enemy within." Columnist Christopher Hitchens, in last week's Spectator article, Damn the doves, says that intellectuals who seek to understand the new enemy are no friends of peace, democracy or human life.

The third stage in the pattern is the demonisation not only of the leader but of his people. The simplest way of doing this is the atrocity story. The problem is that although many atrocity stories are true - after all, war itself is an atrocity - many are not.

Take the Kuwaiti babies story. Its origins go back to the first world war when British propaganda accused the Germans of tossing Belgian babies into the air and catching them on their bayonets. Dusted off and updated for the Gulf war, this version had Iraqi soldiers bursting into a modern Kuwaiti hospital, finding the premature babies ward and then tossing the babies out of incubators so that the incubators could be sent back to Iraq.

The story, improbable from the start, was first reported by the Daily Telegraph in London on September 5 1990. But the story lacked the human element; it was an unverified report, there were no pictures for television and no interviews with mothers grieving over dead babies.

That was soon rectified. An organisation calling itself Citizens for a Free Kuwait (financed by the Kuwaiti government in exile) had signed a $10m contract with the giant American public relations company, Hill & Knowlton, to campaign for American military intervention to oust Iraq from Kuwait.

The Human Rights Caucus of the US Congress was meeting in October and Hill & Knowlton arranged for a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl to tell the babies' story before the congressmen. She did it brilliantly, choking with tears at the right moment, her voice breaking as she struggled to continue. The congressional committee knew her only as "Nayirah" and the television segment of her testimony showed anger and resolution on the faces of the congressmen listening to her. President Bush referred to the story six times in the next five weeks as an example of the evil of Saddam's regime.

In the Senate debate whether to approve military action to force Saddam out of Kuwait, seven senators specifically mentioned the incubator babies atrocity and the final margin in favour of war was just five votes. John R Macarthur's study of propaganda in the war says that the babies atrocity was a definitive moment in the campaign to prepare the American public for the need to go to war.

It was not until nearly two years later that the truth emerged. The story was a fabrication and a myth, and Nayirah, the teenage Kuwaiti girl, coached and rehearsed by Hill & Knowlton for her appearance before the Congressional Committee, was in fact the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. By the time Macarthur revealed this, the war was won and over and it did not matter any more.

So what should we make of the stories in the British press this week about torture in Afghanistan? A defector from the Taliban's secret police told a reporter in Quetta, Pakistan, that he was commanded to "find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten crows from their nests". The defector then listed a series of chilling forms of torture that he said he and his fellow officers developed. "Nowhere else in the world has such barbarity and cruelty as Afghanistan."

The story rings false and defectors of all kinds are well-known for telling interviewers what they think they want to hear. On the other hand, it might be true. The trouble is, how can we tell? The media demands that we trust it but too often that trust has been betrayed.


-------- activists

Leftist media urge restraint

October 4, 2001
By Joyce Howard Price
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
http://www.washtimes.com/national/20011004-5365832.htm

"All signs point to war. But America needs to hold its fire," a prominent California student newspaper said in an editorial yesterday.

While President Bush threatens to wage war on countries that harbor terrorists, the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper at the University of California at Los Angeles, calls for diplomacy.

"We need to realize the inherent differences between countries who harbor terrorists and our own and cooperate with these countries," the newspaper said.

Tom Redmond, executive editor of alternative newspaper the San Francisco Bay Guardian, said his publication also opposes military retaliation for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon.

"We've said these horrible incidents should be treated as violations of international and criminal law, not as acts of war," he said yesterday in a telephone interview.

The United States, he said, should respond by "being in the forefront of an expansion of international law" and by "working with the United Nations and the World Court at The Hague" and supporting the "creation and funding of the U.N. Court of Criminal Justice."

"We should not be talking about military action," said Mr. Redmond. Richard E. Noyes, director of media analysis for the Media Research Center, said one has to turn to what he describes as "left-wing campus newspapers" and other representatives of the "far-left fringe media" to find opposition to Mr. Bush's war on terrorism.

"The mainstream media," Mr. Noyes said, "agree that terrorism needs to be stopped."

In contrast, he said, "The fringe media don't agree with the national goal" of halting terrorism and "are trying to blur things" by wrongly portraying support for the war against global terrorism as "being pro-Bush in a partisan way."

While the Media Research Center is usually monitoring television networks to find out how often they exclude conservative commentators or points of view, Mr. Noyes said he is currently "trying to keep an eye on" the college press and other left-wing media organizations to "see whether they start affecting the stream of thought" in the United States at large.

College campuses and their newspapers are "where a lot of bad ideas come from," he said.

A recent editorial in the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor opposed a military response to last month's deadly terrorist attacks, saying it would guarantee "that our search for justice will end in the slaughter of more innocent civilians."

That's also the outcome envisioned by leftist weekly news magazine the Nation. In a special report, free-lance contributor Joel Rogers argued, "Our own government, through much of the past 50 years, has been the world's leading 'rogue nation,'" responsible for innumerable "plainly illegal or unauthorized uses of force" that killed "thousands, if not millions, of innocents, most of them children."

"Simply doing more now of what we have done in the past cannot be thought a solution to our security problems, much less a guardian of our souls," Mr. Rogers wrote.

The Nation, which has 100,000 subscribers, has also written articles about what it calls a large and "growing" peace movement.

The Progressive, a monthly alternative news magazine with 30,000 subscribers, also opposes Mr. Bush's plan for war.

"We do not believe that killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people to avenge the deaths of thousands of innocent people makes sense on a moral scale," Editor Matthew Rothschild, said in a telephone interview yesterday.

----

No criticism in land of the free

By Toby Young,
Evening Standard UK,
October 3, 2001
From: "K. Neubeck" neubeck@neca.com

According to President Bush, the coming "war" is about one value above all others: freedom. "The advance of human freedom, the great achievement of our time and the great hope of every time, now depends on us," he said in his speech to both houses of Congress. It comes as a surprise, therefore, to discover that one of the most important freedoms of all - freedom of speech - isn't being prized very highly by Americans at the moment.

When Tom Gutting, a journalist on the Texas City Sun, wrote a column on 22 September criticising President Bush's handling of the current crisis, he was expecting to get some angry letters, possibly even an abusive phone call or two. But he wasn't prepared for the death threats.

"I was really astounded by the angry, emotional outrage," he says. "I've been writing controversial columns for some time now, but I've never had an experience like that. I just never expected people to say, 'How dare you disagree with the majority?' and 'How dare you disagree with the President?'" Four days later he was fired.

Tom Gutting isn't the only American journalist to be punished for expressing a dissenting point of view since the President declared that the nation was at war. Dan Guthrie, a columnist on the Daily Courier in Oregon, wrote a piece on 15 September in which he accused Bush of "hiding in a Nebraska hole" in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. He, too, was fired. And Susan Sontag, the celebrated intellectual, has been branded "unpatriotic" after daring to suggest that the events of 11 September were "a consequence of specific American alliances and actions".

The most notorious victim of this new mood of intolerance is Bill Maher, host of a late-night talk show on ABC. His mistake was to question whether it was accurate to describe the suicide hijackers as "cowards". "We have been the cowards lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away," he said. "That's cowardly."

That Maher's show is called Politically Incorrect did little to dampen the anger caused by his remarks. Since they were broadcast on 17 September, Sears, Roebuck and Co and FedEx Corp have pulled their advertising from the show and several ABC affiliates, including WJLA in Washington, have dropped it from their schedules. Politically Incorrect is now in danger of being cancelled by the Disney-owned network.

Even the White House has added its voice to the chorus of disapproval. "It's a terrible thing to say, and it's unfortunate," said Bush's press secretary last week, when asked about Maher's comments.

"There are reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do, and it's not a time for remarks like that; there never is."

On the face of it, the spectacle of a government spokesman telling the fourth estate that they need to "watch what they say" is something you'd expect to see in Afghanistan rather than the States. What is going on?

To those journalists who've spent any time in America, the hostility towards those who dare to question the President during this crisis comes as no surprise. When I worked as a freelance in New York from 1995 to 2000, I was continually struck by how deferential American journalists are compared with their British counterparts. They may claim to value freedom of speech, but they rarely exercise it, at least not when it involves the risk of public censure.

As de Tocqueville pointed out almost 170 years ago, democracy and liberty are often at loggerheads, and Americans value the former above the latter. Once the majority has expressed a view, few dare contradict it. Bush currently enjoys a 95 per cent approval rating, and to criticise him at the moment is tantamount to career suicide, as many journalists are discovering.

--------

Speak No Evil
The government can be expected to clam up in times of war -- but why are citizens muzzling themselves?

by Brooke Shelby Biggs
Oct. 4, 2001
Mother Jones News
http://www.motherjones.com/web_exclusives/commentary/opinion/self_censorship.html

Anyone who remembers the Gulf War won't be surprised to hear that as it undertakes the "war on terrorism," the US government plans to freeze out the press to an extent never before seen -- worse even than during Operation Desert Storm, when the media were bottle-fed news of smart bombs and surgical strikes that turned out to be less than accurate. Already, the State Department has "persuaded" the Voice of America to kill an interview with a prominent Taliban leader. And Pentagon officials have announced that they are prepared to lie to the press about developments in Operation Enduring Freedom.

We know to expect these kinds of efforts from a government at war. Even the White House's dressing down of a television personality shouldn't shock us -- anybody remember Murphy Brown and Dan Quayle?

Far more surprising than government attempts to stifle criticism is the seeming willingness of the media, politicians, and activist groups -- particularly those on the left -- to censor themselves. Some may be backing off to avoid the kind of public crucifixion endured by "Politically Incorrect"'s Bill Maher. Others, however, apparently truly believe that frank and vibrant public discourse is damaging to the country's moral fiber.

That was essentially the rationale behind the decision by a huge consortium of news organizations -- including the New York Times and the Washington Post -- to hold off on publishing the results of a recount of disputed votes in last year's presidential election. According to some of those familiar with the ballot project, one reason for the delay was the "queasy sense that now is not the right time to publish information that could well question the legitimacy of the nation's commander in chief."

But if ever there's a time to critically examine the legitimacy and ability of a leader, it's when he is leading the nation into an open-ended war and asking citizens to "make certain sacrifices," including some of our freedoms. Like a muscle, free speech has to be exercised, or it weakens.

Some instances of self-censorship are more egregious than others. Among the more trivial, but nonetheless disturbing cases was the decision by Bushorchimp.com to suspend its posting of images of the president side-by- side with pictures of various primates. The joke was broad, simple, and only moderately funny. Most importantly, it was harmless. The idea that the world's only superpower cannot afford a handful of citizens who derive joy from childishly comparing their leader to a monkey is not funny at all.

Perhaps Bushorchimp's disappearance was simply a case of a webmaster erring on the side of good taste (or failing to mention that the site had been kicked off its server for using too much bandwidth). And indications are that the nation's sense of humor may be recovering.

Still, it's hard not to wonder what was behind "Saturday Night Live"'s choice to eliminate any teasing of Bush in the show's Sept. 29 season opener: Did the show's producers fear the fate of "Politically Incorrect," which lost key sponsors in the wake of Maher's comments? That's what's known as a chilling effect.

Even more ominous than the silence of the satirists was the decision by both the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council to pull ad campaigns criticizing President George W. Bush's environmental policies. Bush's policies haven't changed -- and they still need some serious criticizing -- but both organizations said the atmosphere wasn't right to bring up such issues.

That would be understandable, if the reasoning were that America simply wasn't interested in thinking about anything other than the fresh tragedy. But an NRDC spokesman said the decision was made because "We want to show our support for the administration. This was a heinous act and it's unseemly for anyone to try to exploit this tragedy by pushing a pre-existing agenda." It's hard to understand how an ad campaign criticizing the president's stand on arsenic in drinking water could be seen as exploitation of the terrorist tragedy. The Sierra Club even went so far as to purge its Web site of comments critical of Bush made before Sept. 11.

Similarly, the Anti-Giuliani Message Board, dedicated to venting about the iron-handed leadership style of New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, was taken down just after the attacks, and replaced with a message offering the webmaster's "unqualified support" for the mayor. Even if most of us agree that Giuliani has done a remarkable job bringing his city together in the wake of the disaster, is it healthy to suspend examination of his record? Especially at a time when he is seeking an extension of his term?

Dissent, "a treasured American virtue" as one pompous anchorman aptly put it recently, is more than a privilege and a right; it's a responsibility. By abdicating our responsibility to voice opposition, we invite the erosion of the very value system we claim to be protecting. What do you think?

Brooke Shelby Biggs is a contributing editor of MotherJones.com

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Dissenting voices
Many Americans are having second thoughts about the war hysteria gripping the US, writes Jihan Alaily from Washington

4-10 October,2001
Al-Ahram Weekly

Americans are beginning to ponder the rationale behind fighting a war in which the outcome is not only uncertain, but guaranteed to see many innocent lives taken. Many did not find solace in US President George W Bush's statement to Congress in which he warned that "the course of this conflict is unknown, yet its outcome is certain."

On Saturday and Sunday thousands took to the streets in Washington DC in peace marches and rallies that brought together a mélange of ordinary Americans, political activists, students, local human rights organisations and anarchists. They were protesting the coming war and heightened anti-Arab and anti-Muslim sentiments in the wake of the 11 September attacks on New York and Washington.

Banners and signs read "Don't dishonor the dead by killing in their name" and "An eye for an eye makes the world blind". The demonstrations were the biggest so far of many protest gatherings across the country that have increasingly reflected a concern over the ethics and morality of the coming war. Some speakers and protesters at the rallies questioned not only Bush's management of the crisis but his legitimacy to govern.

"Both want war, both unelected" one poster read alongside pictures of Bush and Osama Bin Laden. As thousands marched toward Capital Hill on Saturday, many were chanting "No War in our name, Islam is not to blame". Many speakers denounced the racial profiling of Arabs, Muslims and Asians that gained added legitimacy after the 11 September attacks. One African American speaker noted how "There was no racial profiling of white guys with crew cuts after the Oklahoma City bombing," a reference to convicted bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Other speakers warned against the trampling over of the Bill of Rights and other civil liberties on the path to increased security. Policy analyst Phyllis Bennis explained increasing vocal outcry against the war as the result of the lack of any transition period between grief and war. "The people are beginning to resent not being given time to mourn," she said. "We were rushed through the mourning into a war build-up" she said.

Coverage of the weekend rallies and other anti-war gatherings, vigils and student activism on campuses across the country have largely been ignored by the drum-beating mainstream media, or buried in obscure places inside newspapers. The participation of anarchists who advocate the destruction of the capitalist system was highlighted in media coverage in an effort to drown the legitimate concerns of the many more ordinary Americans. Similarly, TV footage gave prominence to the marginal incidents of violence involving the anarchists at the rally on Saturday.

Public opinion polls indicating that 90 per cent of Americans surveyed support the coming war have been extensively quoted by media voices in newspapers and on TV. Mary Lou Greenburg, a self- declared communist and feminist who came from New York to attend the DC peace demonstrations, acknowledged that the findings represent some sentiments among the public, but cautioned against sweeping generalisations. "The message of those polls is generally to tell the people what they should be thinking."

Citing the writings of philosopher and linguist Noam Chomsky, Greenburg talked about the role of the corporate media in the US in "controlling the public mind" and mobilising community opinion in favour of vapid, empty concepts, like Americanism.

The national media watch group FAIR has criticised what it sees as the many media voices that have enlisted in the administration's push towards war. FAIR founder Jeff Cohen noted that CBS anchor Dan Rather seemed "more soldier than reporter" on a popular late-night talk show when he endorsed the war drive.

Appallingly little attention has been devoted in the mainstream media to obtaining justice through international law and UN sanctioned processes. Many experts of international law insist that the Bush administration has yet to present evidence to substantiate its claim that this is an act of war -- not a crime against humanity.

Francis Boyle, the renowned professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law, said: "Even if the Bush administration were to publicly provide clear and convincing evidence that Mr Bin Laden and his organisation were somehow behind the terrorist bombings in New York and Washington, the United States government would still have no valid justification or excuse for committing acts of war against Afghanistan. Both the United Nations Charter of 1945 and the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1928 absolutely require the United States to exhaust all means for the peaceful resolution of this dispute. So far the Bush administration has not even begun this legally mandated process."

Boyle, who helped resolve the dispute between the US, the UK and Libya over the handling of the Libyan suspects in the Lockerbie bombing case, believes that the 1971 Montreal Sabotage Convention, which was invoked in the Lockerbie crisis, is directly relevant in the current crisis. The same convention, he says, "provides a comprehensive framework for dealing with the current dispute between Afghanistan and the United States."

Clearly, Professor Boyle's views are not common. An appearance on the Fox News Channel with the right-wing pundit Bill O'Reilly on 13 September seems to have branded Boyle an undesirable guest. After the show, in which he argued for presentation of evidence, for authorisation from the Security Council and for adherence to the rule of law, Boyle has not been invited again to speak on any prime-time news programmes.

Pleas for nonviolence have largely been dismissed as pacifist claptrap. Among those cautioning against the war is the African American Reverend Graylan Hagler, pastor of the Plymouth congregation of the United Christ Church in DC. Reverend Hagler has led many pro- peace and interfaith meetings and has spoken out against what he calls "a US foreign policy organised around a need to dominate [rather] than to cooperate." The reverend believes that the message he is getting from his parishioners is one calling for tolerance and peace. "This is not reflected in the media," he says, adding, "The media has editorialised, ideologised and has conditioned the people into blind hysteria."

The voices of dissent are growing by the day. It is not clear, however, to what extent they can impact the course of the war as American aircraft carriers continue to arrive in the Persian Gulf. As the anticipated war fails to discriminate between the alleged terrorists and the innocent, it will be even harder for those Americans I saw at the anti-war rallies to make sense of what they inscribed earlier on their signs: "I would like to be able to love my country and justice at the same time."

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Nothing anti-American about opposing the drive to war

Mike Marqusee
The Guardian
Thursday October 4, 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/

Reading the fulminations against the alleged anti- Americanism of those opposed to the current drive to war, I feel I've come full circle. As an American teenager protesting against the butchery in Vietnam, I became accustomed to being attacked by some fellow citizens as anti-American. It always seemed frustratingly unfair. After all, we were Americans too, and so were the GIs we wanted to bring home, and wasn't being American all about the right to entertain diverse views on our government's policies?

Now, after 30 years abroad, I find myself in the dock once again for the thought-crime of "anti-Americanism". This time, the charge is levelled not by US citizens, but by British liberals, including adoptive Americans such as Chris Hitchens and Salman Rushdie. I wonder what they would have said to Mahatma Gandhi, who told the people of the United States that their country was governed "by a few capitalist owners" whose "holdings cannot be sustained except by violence, veiled if not open" and that therefore "your wars will never ensure safety for democracy". Or to Gandhi's American disciple, Martin Luther King, who described the US government as "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today".

The logic of the anti-American accusation remains as curious as ever. There is no rational basis for equating opposition to the demonstrably murderous policies pursued across the globe by the US government with hostility to the people of the United States. In my experience, the current anti-war protesters are motivated by a deep response to the suffering in New York and Washington. Surely it's the politicians and commercial interests exploiting that suffering to promote their own long-standing agendas whose respect for the dead ought to be questioned.

In some quarters, the purpose of the anti-American jibe is simply to cast aspersions on the motives of dissenters in order to evade their arguments. Elsewhere, the impulses are different. People from many lands have long engaged in a passionate romance with America. This society of extraordinary wealth and diversity, with its contradictions, beauties and savageries, exerts a powerful fascination. What disturbs me in recent effusions (including Tony Blair's invocation of the Statue of Liberty) is the glorification of the US as some kind of unique and sacrosanct human achievement, whose flaws are merely incidental, and of no relevance to our collective response to the September 11 atrocities.

This is an overseas variant of the aggressive boosterism that has for so long disfigured American political discourse and disarmed the American people in their own democratic arena. Too many British commentators seem intoxicated by America's affluence, and too few evince any real knowledge or concern about the conditions in which most Americans actually live. What Americans need now is a realistic understanding of their nation's place in the world, not the self-serving myths peddled by a corporate-sponsored political elite. Since September 11 I've been in constant communication with friends and family in New York and Washington and overwhelmingly they oppose their government's response to the terror attacks. They may be in a minority but they are as American as anyone else. I've also been in contact with friends in the peace movement across several continents.

What has struck me is that so many of these people have sought refreshment at the well-springs of American popular culture, from soul music to Star Trek, and found inspiration in American social movements, from civil rights to gay liberation. Like the baseball lovers in Cuba and Nicaragua, they have no trouble distinguishing between a people's culture and its government. They share an understanding that there is no monolithic America that one can reasonably be "pro" or "anti". They reject the dangerous assumption that there is a single essence that defines a particular society, nation or culture. That delusion is the common ground between Bush, Bin Laden and the knee-jerk commentators who have fallen back on the charge of anti-Americanism.

Recent events have sent me scuttling back to one of my boyhood heroes, the peculiarly American writer Henry David Thoreau. In 1845, in protest against the US's war with Mexico - a war of conquest driven by greed and jingoism - Thoreau refused to pay taxes and spent a night in jail. He explained his action in an essay entitled Civil Disobedience (it influenced both Gandhi and King). Thoreau urged America to "cherish its wise minority". And argued that when "a whole country is unjustly overrun and conquered by a foreign army, and subjected to military law, I think it is not too soon for honest men to rebel and revolutionise. What makes this duty the more urgent is the fact that the country so overrun is not our own, but ours is the invading army".

Mike Marqusee is author of Redemption Song: Muhammad Ali and the Spirit of the Sixties (Verso)


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