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2002/09/20
No comment. Click on the picture for further information! Next week slaskrad will not be updated, due to the editor's "holiday". 2002/09/18
Robert Harris; We don't win wars when we fire the first shot, The Mirror 18.09.2002
Tony Blair addressed the Trades Union Congress on the day before September 11. George Bush spoke at the United Nations on the day afterwards. Both speeches were explicit appeals for action against Saddam Hussein. Both started with references to the terrorist atrocities of last year. With the wounds of last autumn freshly reopened in our minds, we were, like Winston Smith, invited to indulge in an officially sponsored hate. But a careful study of the words of both leaders suggests that, despite all the efforts of Western intelligence - and Western journalism - there is still no direct evidence linking Iraq to the horrors of September 11. The best President Bush could come up with was two scraps - first, that Baghdad had defended the al-Qaeda attack (although so did several Guardian columnists without, as far as one knows, courting an American invasion of their Farringdon Road HQ) and, secondly, that "al-Qaeda terrorists escaped from Afghanistan and are known to be in Iraq". This glosses over the fact that the vast majority escaped to Pakistan, apparently with the connivance of some elements of the Pakistani military, and are still there. Mr Bush and Mr Blair are obviously determined to shake us out of our peace-loving complacency.
AlterNet's collection of articles regarding the rush to war on Iraq:
War on Iraq, AlterNet 2002 This page offers our readers the best analysis, activism resources, and timely information they need to resist this precipitous rush to war. The rightwing hawks within the Bush administration continue to press for an attack on Iraq, even as prominent members of their own party call for greater debate and restraint. A significant percent of Americans and all our allies agree -- a unilateral strike against Baghdad is both unwarranted and potentially disastrous. But if the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney get their way, we will be exactly where we started a year ago -- attacking another nation under the aegis of the global war on terror. 2002/09/17
Bush planned Iraq 'regime change' before becoming President, Sunday Herald 15.09.2002
A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure 'regime change' even before he took power in January 2001. The plan shows Bush's cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: 'The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.' And here's the so-called secret report, from the Project for the New American Century (PNAC); Rebuilding America's Defenses - Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century, PNAC September 2000.
America plan PR blitz on Saddam, Times Online 17.09.2002
The White House is aware that it lacks substantial new intelligence on Saddam’s nuclear programme or evidence directly linking Baghdad to the September 11 attacks. But it will build on the contents of President’s Bush’s speech made to the UN General Assembly last week, in which he listed Saddam’s violations of UN resolutions. The campaign, which will initially receive over $200 million (£130 million), will be overseen by the Office of Global Communications, whose existence will not be formally announced until next month. 2002/09/13
 No war with Iraq - Since the second world war the United States Government has bombed 21 countries, New Internationalist, Autumn 2002
We are told there is no option but to wage war on Iraq. But the options are clear. We bomb innocent people and hope that this will result in a change of leader. Or we allow UN weapons inspectors to do their job, we work for a change in regime rather than leader, we allow medicines and food into Iraq and we avoid a humanitarian disaster. There is no legal justification for any invasion or associated bombing of Iraq. There is no hard evidence that Iraq possesses any weapons of mass destruction and there is no substantiated connection between the Government of Iraq, September 11th, and the al Qaeda network. Iraq's neighbours; the ones most at risk from Iraq's weapons, are against this war, as are top military professionals in Britain and the US, many international organizations and countries around the world, and a great majority of people in the US.
2002/09/12
 Voting problems in Florida again. Is this the Bush brothers' Banana Republic? Story found at The Rittenhouse Review weblog. Mixed bag greets voters at polls in Broward County, Sun Sentinel 10.09.2002 While some voting places did not open on time because of equipment problems, no equipment or voting rolls at all, or not enough workers to staff the polls, others opened on time and and ran all day like the well-oiled machines that elections officials had hoped for. But the confusion, problems and shortages at some sites in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade and several other counties forced Gov. Jeb Bush to extend poll hours two hours longer statewide later in the day. Polls in South Florida will now be open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. on Tuesday. “It’s a fiasco,” said polling deputy Marian Hynes at Precinct 22x. “We didn’t have the equipment to open up. She (pointing to an assistant clerk)called the office (of the supervisor of elections). They put her on hold. They had her on hold so long they wore out the batteries of her cell phone.” Continued: Two days later, still no clear winner in gubernatorial primary, Sun Sentinel 11.09.2002 But by late in the day the campaign had hired a Tallahassee attorney and staffers were beginning to gather affidavits from voters who were unable to cast a ballot on Tuesday because the polls were late in opening or closed early despite Gov. Jeb Bush’s order they remain open late. Jones said he also received complaints from a handful of voters who said their party registration had been changed — from Democrat to Republican — without their knowledge and they were unable to vote in the primary. “There’s no question that hundreds and probably thousands of people were turned away that we know of,” said Joe Geller, the head of Miami-Dade’s Democratic Party and a key Reno supporter. 2002/09/11
Robert Fisk; One year on: A view from the Middle East, The Independent 11.09.2002
September 11 did not change the world. Indeed, for months afterwards, no one was allowed even to question the motives of the mass murderers. To point out that they were all Arabs and Muslims was fair enough. But any attempt to connect these facts to the region they came from – the Middle East – was treated as a form of subversion; because, of course, to look too closely at the Middle East would raise disturbing questions about the region, about our Western policies in those tragic lands, and about America's relationship with Israel. Yet now, at last, President Bush's increasingly manic administration has spotted the connection – and is drawing all the wrong conclusions.
John Pilger; Remembering 9/11, ZNet daily commentaries 06.09.2002
Remembering 11 September merely as gruesome spectacle is an insult to the victims of that epic crime. However, remembering is important in order to make sense of it, and especially of what happened next. Making sense of 11 September is urgent. Another crime is imminent. In 1998, the Pentagon warned Bill Clinton that the "collateral damage" of an all-out invasion of Iraq could be as high as 10,000 civilians. How often, routinely, does humanity have to suffer this? That is the question many now ask. When the correspondent of the Washington Post, a famous liberal news-paper, can say on the BBC that the British are speaking out against the war party because they are jealous of America having "the sun around which the rest of the world revolves" (words to that effect) then you appreciate how the elite of great power thinks. The Romans and the imperial British would have thought like this. But the 21st century has arrived and the respectability that Nazism finally stripped from imperialism ought not to be allowed to return.  History of the Chilean Military Coup of September 11 1973, CNN.com
Find documents and analyses of the military overthrow of the Allende regime led by Augusto Pinochet. Testimony: Detainee remembers Chile 1973, BBC News 23.10.1998 I lived in a small flat in Eyzaguirre Street, very close to the centre of the city. Trapped at work by the military curfew on the day of the coup, I was rescued by the cleaners who hid me in their home in a nearby shanty town while troops fired machine-guns at random from helicopters hovering overhead.  Flashback: Caravan of Death, BBC News 25.07.2000
For a few days in October 1973, a self-styled military "delegation" toured provincial cities in northern and southern Chile, killing dozens of political opponents of General Augusto Pinochet's September coup. Many of the victims of what became known as the "Caravan of Death" had voluntarily turned themselves into the military authorities. Prisoners were taken from their cells and summarily executed, often without the knowledge or consent of the local military authorities. Tito Tricot; Remembering September 11 1973, The Guardian 16.09.2002 Were the lives of those killed at the World Trade Centre more valuable than the innocents murdered in Chile's US-backed coup? [..] The truth is that no US president ever shed a tear for our dead; no US politician ever sent a flower to our widows. The US government and media use different standards to measure suffering. It is precisely this hypocrisy and these double standards that make us sick, especially when on such a symbolic day for Chileans, the president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, attended a memorial service at the United States embassy where the ambassador, William Brownfield, stated that "people who hate the United States must be controlled, arrested or eliminated". 2002/09/10
Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes, The Guardian 09.09.2002
September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That's all to the good. The president is not the first to ask: "Why do they hate us?" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people". His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is "opposing political or economic progress" because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region.
Drain the swamp and there will be no more mosquitoes, The Guardian 09.09.2002
September 11 shocked many Americans into an awareness that they had better pay much closer attention to what the US government does in the world and how it is perceived. Many issues have been opened for discussion that were not on the agenda before. That's all to the good. The president is not the first to ask: "Why do they hate us?" In a staff discussion 44 years ago, President Eisenhower described "the campaign of hatred against us [in the Arab world], not by the governments but by the people". His National Security Council outlined the basic reasons: the US supports corrupt and oppressive governments and is "opposing political or economic progress" because of its interest in controlling the oil resources of the region. 2002/09/06
Jonathan Marcus; Analysis: Air attack on Iraq, BBC News 06.09.2002
The latest attack by US and British warplanes against a command and control centre in southern Iraq has inevitably raised speculation that it may be a preliminary to a much broader air campaign. Allied aircraft attack Iraqi air base, CNN 06.09.2002 Coalition aircraft attacked targets on an Iraqi air base Thursday southwest of Baghdad, the U.S. Central Command said. The coalition response came after Iraqi forces fired anti-aircraft artillery at coalition jets patrolling the southern no-fly zone of that country, a Pentagon official said. 2002/09/05
Medea Benjamin; The anniversary of 9/11, Sand in the Wheels (n°143), ATTAC Weekly newsletter - Wednesday 04/09/02
The first anniversary of 9/11 is a critical time for people around the country to reflect on the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the Bush administration's response, and ask ourselves if the Bush strategy of fighting violence with violence has made us any safer. I would say no, that the world is even more dangerous today than it was one year ago. With the US government anxious to launch an invasion of Iraq that could lead to the death of tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians and unleash a new wave of anti-American sentiment in the Arab world, this is no time to be complacent. It's a urgent time to dedicate ourselves to building a strong peace movement here in the United States that can move us towards a world free of violence and war. Let's take a look at the past year.
Chris Kutalik; September 11: One Year Later, Sand in the Wheels (n°143), ATTAC Weekly newsletter - Wednesday 04/09/02
By September 12, 2001, commentators were already telling Americans that "nothing will ever be the same again." In the year since then, workers have found that some things have changed a lot, and others not at all-but that they now have a new rationale, the war on terrorism. Increasingly, national security is invoked to cover the anti-labor agenda of the Bush Administration and the employers.
Marcela Sanchez; Mixed Message on Human Rights, Again, The Washington Post/ Special to washingtonpost.com 30.08.2002
The Bush administration has been crisscrossing the globe asking countries to sign bilateral agreements that would exempt U.S. citizens from prosecution for human rights abuses by the new International Criminal Court. At the same time, it continues to proclaim, as the United States has for a quarter-century, that human rights is a pillar of U.S. foreign policy, and that full respect for human rights is a precondition for its military aid. The problem with this message is obvious: It's mixed. Once again. 2002/09/04
 On a Balkan War's Last Day, Trouble From the Sky, The New York Times 02.09.2002
In the early morning hours, the scientists come to work on a small tongue of land with one of the loveliest views along the Mediterranean. Behind them is the stunning bay of Kotor and its crown of steep mountains, ahead is the shimmer of the open sea, a few hours' sail from Italy. The scientists from Montenegro are searching for war debris, specifically bullets coated with slightly radioactive depleted uranium. American warplanes fired some 480 rounds at the cape on the final day of NATO's 1999 air campaign against Yugoslavia, according to NATO records. 
Serbia was hit by some 3,500 rounds of depleted uranium and its cleanup has only just begun. But Montenegrins feel wronged, Ms. Misurovitc explained, because they made it clear they were neutral in the war. She has tried to enlist the help of the United Nations and other international bodies with the uranium. Her message for NATO: "Come and take back your radioactive waste and pay for decontamination."
Bruce Schneier; "Body of Secrets" by James Bamford, Salon April 25, 2001
"Body of Secrets" is one fascinating book. It's a secret history of U.S. foreign policy from the perspective of signals intelligence, beginning with the Cold War and continuing through the year 2000. And it's chock-full of juicy stuff: secret Cold War missions over the Soviet Union, government coverups of military debacles, eavesdropping on our friends and enemies. Stuff you have trouble imagining a civilian being able to research and publish. Bamford has two weapons: the tenacity needed to exploit the Freedom of Information Act and the patience to wade through mounds of public papers in archives around the country. They have both served him well. Among the more shocking things Bamford learned is that in 1962, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved something called Operation Northwoods. Fortunately never implemented, it involved committing random acts of terror on Americans in the United States and then blaming them on Cuba. Most of the documents detailing this Bamford found in the National Archives, among the thousands of papers the Joint Chiefs of Staff released about the Cuban missile crisis. In 1967, the Israeli military attacked and destroyed the USS Liberty, a spy ship that had eavesdropped on an Israeli massacre of surrendered Egyptian soldiers in the Sinai. The ship's intercepts were destroyed, but the NSA also had spy planes eavesdropping. The details, including President Johnson's coverup to save the Jewish vote in the next election, were in a box in the back of the NSA Museum. They were in a public place, but no one had bothered to look at them before.
Don Hazen; Seizing The Populist Moment, AlterNet 03.09.2002
The big chance to organize for change has arrived. Large numbers of Americans are being screwed by deregulation, corporate corruption and political bribery. As the economy has tanked workers are burdened with increasing unemployment (at 6 percent, the highest in six years) stagnant wages and skyrocketing health care costs. This is not a union battle, or a worker vs. management struggle. This is a struggle to create a society that values fairness and justice, that protects its people and preserves a healthy environment with clean air and water. AlterNet intends to provide you with ongoing coverage and opportunities to participate in making change during this important time. We hope you will unite with us in this endeavor. 2002/09/03
Gilbert Achcar; The Clash of Barbarisms, Monthly Review, Volume 54, Number 4, September 2002
Every attempt to explain the descent into terrorism that culminated in the suicide attacks of September 11, 2001, as a consequence of the deplorable state of the world we live in has run up against a barrage of vicious polemical artillery. In a climate of intellectual intimidation bearing a certain resemblance to the dark hours of the Cold War, the intimidation relied on two deliberate amalgams. The prevalent code of ethics is more flexible than ever since Western warmongers began to lay claim to “humanitarian” concerns. According to this twisted morality it is thus highly immoral to try to put the crime of September 11 in proportion by referring to the long list of crimes committed by the U.S. government and cited in part by those who planned the attacks. Yet by contrast it is supposed to be a moral imperative, according to the same code of ethics, to put the criminal bombing of Afghanistan in proportion by incessantly referring to the crime that it is supposedly a response to. A double standard is at work here. This is the never-ending iniquity of every form of egocentrism, whether ethnic or social.
An article describing the norwegian oil policy untill now, these days state controlled companies are partly privatized and the EU will control more of the norwegian oil and gas resources...
Oiling the desire for identity, Sunday Herald 01.09.2002 In contrast with the UK's 'hands-off' policy, Norway had always been clear that its seabed resources were the property of its citizens . Norway's parliament, the Storting, ruled that the state takes 50% participation in all production licences given to oil firms. By the 1980s the benefits of this approach were obvious. While the Thatcher government took a hacksaw to Scottish industry and the welfare state, Norway ploughed its oil revenue into native industries and a vast public welfare system. In two decades, Norway -- like Scotland, a numerically small north-European periphery -- seemed to be transformed from a pauper among nations to one of the most prosperous societies in the world. Despite international integration loosening public controls over industries and welfare, the Nordic states ensure income distribution remains markedly even. In the UK, which historically has valued entre preneurial self-help and assistance only to those deemed in dire need, the gap between rich and poor is dramatically wider. Scotland's reluctance for a radical fiscal overhaul, which would bring us in line with Scandinavia, illustrates the extent to which we remain wedded to a traditional British aversion to footing the bill for those who just need to 'pull themselves together'. Thanks to Alister and his weblog perspective for this article. |
