HEADLINES

3/5/10

ISLAMIC TERRORISM BEGINS AND ENDS IN BOSSIER PARISH, LOUSIANA. The sheriff of this northwest Louisiana parish organizes a bi-racial (5 blacks 195 whites) militia (which he says is not a militia) to prepare the parish for terrorist attacks, as rumor swirls of a "cell" of would-be Islamic terrorists in Bossier who are receiving training abroad with intentions of wreaking their evil acts on the parish. Homeland protection begins at home and the boys (including one woman) are ready with a 50 calibre machine gun mounted to their "war wagon."

Websites:

Anti-war.com:  http://antiwar.com/  

Information Clearing House: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

9/11 Research, well organized and searchable site: http://911research.wtc7.net/

Web resources on 9/11, a topical analysis: http://911research.wtc7.net/resources/web/index.html

Re-open 9/11.org (comprehensive site):  https://secure.reopen911.org/freedvd.php

180+  9/11 Smoking Guns, extended links to news about background to 9/11 and the event itself: http://geocities.com/killtown/

American Library Association, Alternative Resources on U.S.
"War Against Terrorism" (with many links: http://www.pitt.edu/~ttwiss/irtf/Alternative.html

Washington Post archive of articles on war on terrorism, updated through April, 2005: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/specials/attacked/

Center for Constitutional Rights: http://www.ccr-ny.org/v2/gac

911truthorg: http://www.911truth.org/

William Thomas  9-11 site with links: http://www.willthomas.net/911/index.htm  

University of Michigan Documents Center, America's War Against Terrorism (a comprehensive and searchable site featuring documentation): http://www.lib.umich.edu/govdocs/usterror.html#airlines

9/11 Research Library/Archive: http://911readingroom.org/bib/

Articles & views:

3/6/10

WHAT'S THAT "LOW GROWL OF A SMALL SURVEILLANCE PLANE CIRCLING IN THE NIGHT SKY OVERHEAD?" It's the sound of "surreptitious" effort of U.S., through drone aircraft, to support the Somali government's faltering effort against insurgents. In a New York Times article which might almost be a Pentagon press release, Jeffrey Gettleman describes the Somali conflict in terms that give full credit to the view that Somalia, as well as Yemen, are "failed" states harboring Islamist terrorists, while it perpetuates a "secret" apparently known everywhere but in Washington D.C. that U.S. as well as African Union military forces are helping to keep the cauldron burning for military conflict in the horn of Africa.

3/5/10

ISLAMIC TERRORISM BEGINS AND ENDS IN BOSSIER PARISH, LOUSIANA. The sheriff of this northwest Louisiana parish organizes a bi-racial (5 blacks 195 whites) militia (which he says is not a militia) to prepare the parish for terrorist attacks, as rumor swirls of a "cell" of would-be Islamic terrorists in Bossier who are receiving training abroad with intentions of wreaking their evil acts on the parish. Homeland protection begins at home and the boys (including one woman) are ready with a 50 calibre machine gun mounted to their "war wagon."

2/28/10

GITMO AFTERMATH: WHEN FORMER GUARD AND DETAINEES BECOME "FRIENDS" ON FACEBOOK. Guantanamo guard during the first two years of the detention center's operation refuses re-deployment on conscientious grounds and is finally discharged. Feeling ashamed of his role in torturing inmates, he seeks former detainees through Facebook and comes up with two British Muslims, imprisoned there for two and a half years and now returned to responsible employment in Britain. BBC records and In These Times reprints some of their attempts at conciliation in a face-to-face meeting that both the former guard and the former detainees describe as "weird."

2/26/10

DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY HAVING TROUBLE KEEPING ITS MIND ON ITS OWN BUSINESS. The DHS is now a "big boy" like the Department of Defense and, imitating the DOD, issues its first-ever Quadrennial Review. Charles Pena reviews it and finds it a "bureaucratic paperweight" which doesn't focus on its originating mandate to combat terrorism, but on matters that are only tangentially related to terrorism: illegal immigration, cross-national drug trafficking, concern about nations that don't observe international laws and a host of other world problems.

2/4/10

NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE DIRECTOR "RE-ASSURES" AMERICANS ABOUT INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ASSASSINATIONS OF OVERSEAS AMERICANS. Dennis Blair tells House Intelligence Committee that only under "defined policy and legal procedures" will these agencies assassinate an American citizen. He doesn't "define" what these policies would be, nor explain how it is ever "legal" to assassinate anyone without due process of law. What he seems to have in mind is the cooperation of U.S.intel in Yemeni government's plan to assassinate an al-Qaeda leader who is an American citizen, on the "legal" theory that a "terrorist" is not entitled to due process---a view many Americans would approve; at least until they themselves were accused by someone of being a terrorist.

2/3/10

9/11 AND THE CHRISTMAS UNDER-BOMBER: DID AL-QAEDA HAVE HELP? Justin Raimondo asks this question as urgently requiring investigation, without offering a definitive answer. A recent ABC News report had resurrected the idea of Kurt Haskell from Michigan that a "sharp dressed" man had assisted in getting the Christmas bomber past security checks at Schipol airport in Amsterdam. The spectre of "help" from some intelligence agency of some government needs to be exorcized in the interest of understanding what forces are driving the "war on terror."

1/30/10

U.S. nighttime raids and kidnappings in counter-terrorism operations are terrorizing people in Afghanistan.

1/18/10

U.S. PRESS SEEMS TO BE IGNORING ALLEGATIONS OF ISRAELI SECURITY FIRM INVOLVEMENT IN DETROIT AND OTHER TERRORIST ACTS AND PLOTS. So says Patrick Martin, noting that newspapers in Europe and even in Israel (Haaretz) are raising questions about the shadowy operations of Shin Bet-sponsored security agency that apparently cleared Umar Farouk Abdulmullab at Amsterdam airport and was on the scene of many terrorist acts since the agency was founded in 1982.

1/16/10

INTERNET USERS: READY FOR A LITTLE "COGNITIVE INFILTRATION?" It could be coming your way if Cass Sunstein has his way. A close associate of President Obama and fellow law school professor at University of Chicago is now the director of the government's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. Based on information developed by Raw Story, Sunstein and a co-author published a paper advocating the government's use of a kind of COINTELPRO for the internet, countering terrorism by placing agents on websites believed to be advocating anti-government conspiracies. The further development of the story by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, posted on Common Dreams, elicits a flood of negative commentary suggesting unflattering comparisons with the clandestine acts and plans of G.W. Bush, R. Nixon and yes, even A. Hitler.

COMMON DREAMS

1/12/10

PATRICK COCKBURN: ONLY FOOLS RUSH INTO YEMEN. GET READY, WHITE HOUSE AND DOWNING STREET. In a country with an average of three guns per person, the Yemeni government's impotent efforts to control insurgency in the area could not be successful without massive U.S. and U.K. invasion of the country, a "foolish" action that would provoke a violent level of local resistance.

1/11/10

GOVERNMENT OF YEMEN PREPARING TO PLAY THE "AL QAEDA CARD" IN GARNERING SUPPORT OF INTERNATIONAL ALLIES AGAINST AN INTERNAL REBELLION. This "card" of exaggerating a terrorist influence in the country has been played by many countries, especially in Africa where, for example, Libya in 2003 actually created its own "Al Qaeda" threat, the countering of which brought it a flow of U.S. assistance and where other "threats" throughout the continent set the stage for a U.S permanent military presence in AFRICOM. The U.S. geopolitical interest in shoring up its Saudi Arabia client state, maintaining its hegemony in the middle east and its control of a critical control point on the movement of oil from Asia to the West are the motives that will insure U.S. support, in the guise of the "war on terrorism" and precipitated by a Yemeni man's explosives in his underpants, of the Yemen government's battle against a Houthi insurrection.

1/10/10

HAS A JUDICIAL PHILOSOPHY OF MACHTPOLITIK MADE ITS WAY INTO THE U.S. JUDICIAL SYSTEM? Chris Floyd points, as an indication of this, to the statement of a federal appeals court judge in a decision to allow detention of enemy combatants without due process. She says that "War is a challenge to law, and the law must adjust." This is exactly the kind of legal "adjusting" that occurred between German courts and Hitler during World War II. This triumph of the "politics of brute force" contrasts sharply with a Supreme Court ruling in 1866 in which Justices, the majority of whom were appointed by President Abraham Lincoln, ruled that the law would not "adjust" to the illegalities of prisoner detention committed by Lincoln during the Civil War.

1/9/10

TAKING RESPONSIBILITY FOR TERRORIST PLOTS. President Obama performs the usual ritual of responsibility-taking (it happened on my watch) for an avoidable catastrophe in acknowledging "intelligence failures" that allowed the Christmas bomber caper at Detroit. Acting responsibly, he moves to address and redress those failures by demanding improvements in airport security practices. But, as Alexander Cockburn deconstructs this responsibility exercise, it is of a piece with historical instances of presidential responsibility-taking (like Reagan's doing this for the Iran-contra affair) which doesn't alter the situation because it doesn't address a President's responsibility in relation to the forces that created the catastrophe. Responsible action would be recognizing and removing the irritants to world Muslim militancy like U.S. support of Israel against Palestine. Responsible thinking would substitute a supposed "petrie dish" for generating militancy from marginalized Muslims in Britain to the enraging effects on Muslim populations which experience directly and vow jihad against the U.S. for the "collateral damage" of seeing their families blown to bits by "precision" al-Qaeda seeking drones.

1/9/10

Obama administration's attempt to combat terrorism in Yemen is hampered by lack of resources with stressed military and lack of expertise in the country or any good working relationship with government of the Yemen.

1/9/10

Video purportedly showing suicide bomber who killed 7 C.I.A. agents in Afghanistan shows him vowing revenge for Agency murder of a Taliban leader.

1/8/10

PRESS TV SCOOP: U.S. AND U.K. PLAN NEW COUNTER-TERRORIST INTERVENTION IN YEMEN. Information obtained from Prime Minister Gordon Brown's office indicates that the two heads of state will announce shortly the establishing of a joint "counter-terrorism police unit" to operate in Yemen, just as Yemeni PM is saying that U.S. troops are not wanted in Yemen.

1/6/10

TALIBAN COOK HELD AT GUANTANAMO SINCE 2002 SAYS HIS RIGHTS UNDER INTERNATIONAL LAW WERE VIOLATED BECAUSE HE NEVER ENGAGED IN ANY COMBAT AGAINST THE U.S. So sorry, says a U.S. federal appeals law, the President's "war powers" allow him to designate you as an "enemy combatant," not subject to the civil rights protection of U.S. laws. International laws? "Quaint!")

1/6/10

ON SCANS AND SCAMS: FULL BODY IMAGING FOR AIRPORT SCREENINGS. In the aftermath of the underwear bomber incident at Detroit, there is a groundswell of demand that the TSA have electronic scanning equipment available to screen all airline passengers (or at least "profiled" ones with Arab appearance or name or from one of the designated 14 "terrorist" danger nations). Does this technology work? According to James Ridgeway's survey, it does not work effectively, and would not even have detected the concealed material in the Detroit incident. Where it does "work" is in generating huge profits for yet another scam promoted by the TSA as expensive equipment of dubious utility. In this case, former Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff is associated with a group selling full body imagers, whose benefit Chertoff is busily touting, as is the current chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, Joe Lieberman.

1/4/10

HAVE U.S. PASSPORT AND WANT TO BOARD A PLANE WITH TERRORIST INTENTIONS? Not to worry, you won't be patted down or subjected to full body x-ray scanning or have TSA people go through every toothbrush in your luggage. New regulations at U.S. airports effectively "profile" people from 14 nations for such enhanced screening procedures and (surprise), 13 of those are predominantly Muslim countries, with Nigeria thrown in for "good measure."

1/3/10

INTERVENTION IN YEMEN: FIGHTING TERRIORISM OVER THERE SO WE DON'T HAVE TO FIGHT IT OVER HERE. THAT WORKED REALLY WELL IN AFGHANISTAN, DIDN'T IT? Ron Jacobs points to the "obvious" fact that 8 years of U.S. "counter-insurgency" operations in Afghanistan have only strengthened the power of Al Qaeda's violence there. He then proceeds to a little-known analysis of the Yemeni situation which emphasizes the rivalry of the government there with ethnic minorities and with neighboring Saudi Arabia, an insurgency that the government hopes to defeat by U.S. military support under the guise of fighting terrorism.

1/1/10

U.S. SAID TO BE CONSIDERING "RETALIATORY STRIKES" AGAINST TARGETS IN YEMEN ASSOCIATED WITH THE UNDERPANTS BOMBER. Sources say the Nobel peace prize winner in the White House is trying to decide when and where (not if) military strikes will take place. This determination will be guided by intelligence information on what people in what places in Yemen cooperated in getting the armed passenger aboard that flight.

12/31/09

WAS THE NIGERIAN UNDERPANTS BOMBER "JUST A PATSY?" Bruce Dixon resurrects these immortal words of Lee Harvey Oswald in examining the circumstances of the Nigerian man who allegedly planned to bring down a Northwest Airlines passenger plane at Detroit on Christmas day. Dixon finds striking similarities with such foiled "terrorist plots" such as those in Miami and New Jersey. ln support of this thesis, he links an interview after the incident with 9/11 skeptic Webster Tarpley by RT (Russia Today) television, as well as an extended early December radio interview of Tarpley which predicts similiar black operations in the pursuit of the "totalitarian liberalism" that he sees as a hallmark of the Obama administration.

12/31/09

NEW YORK CITY IN "HEIGHTENED SECURITY POSTURE" FOR NEW YEAR'S EVE DROPPING OF THE BALL AT TIMES SQUARE. Detroit bomb scare has city in a jittery state of fear of being the the next "terrorist target" as thousands of police are to be deployed on rooftop surveillance and in mingling with crowds to try to spot terrorist suspects. Mayor Bloomberg says the city will be "safe" and plans to go with his own family to the festivities

12/30/09

U.S. CRUISE MISSILES IN YEMEN: ME OH MY, WHERE SHOULD WE BOMB? Jason Ditz puts a jaundiced eye to the new "terrorism threat" posed by Yemen in aftermath of the Detroit "lap bomber's" alleged near-miss operation. The Yemini government, deeply embroiled in a civil war, hopes to use the "deep pockets" of massive military hardware to strike at targets that meet the government's own counter-insurgency needs.

12/28/09

DETAILS REMAIN SKETCHY ON CHRISTMAS DAY EFFORT OF UNDERPANTS BOMBER TO BLOW UP A PLANE LANDING IN DETROIT. With little information being released by authorities holding the bombing suspect, eyewitness accounts of some fellow passengers begin to fill in the picture. A Detroit talk radio show airs an interview of two such passengers, a Michigan couple returning from Uganda. Their account inserts a few figure in this picture, a "sharp-dressed" man who they say approached the departure gate for the flight at Amsterdam to urge the accompanying "bomber" be allowed on board the flight without a passport because he was a "Sudanese refugee."

12/27/09

"OFFICIALS POINT TO SUSPECT'S CLAIM OF QAEDA TIES IN YEMEN." This summarizes the news that the New York Times sees fit to print about the man arrested aboard a Nortwest Airlines plane on Christmas day after he allegedly tried to detonate explosive material sewn inside his underpants. These unnamed "officials" or "authorities" say they have not independently corroborated the man's supposed tale of getting his instructions and explosives from Yemeni terrorists, but one of these "officials" calls the supposed information "plausible." (It was take off your shoes at security after the shoe bomber, what will it be after this one?)

12/22/09

U.S. MILITARY'S TERRORIST-GENERATING MACHINE GRINDS ON IN YEMEN. Echoing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's 2003 warning that the invasion of Iraq would create "100 bin Ladens," Glenn Greenwald argues that recent "anti-terrorist" attacks in Yemen will only feed the anti-U.S. revulsion of people in the Muslim world. He cites very negative reactions to that attack in the world Muslim press in support of his argument.

12/19/09

YEMENI CRICKET! A LIE GROWS ON THE NOSE OF THE PINOCCHIO GOVERNMENT IN YEMEN. A day after a cruise missile attack that killed around 34 "militants," and the Yemini government claimed they were not ordered by the U.S. government, the truth comes out that Obama had ordered this and other strikes and had called the Yemeni President to "congratulate" him on the raids. The President's nose grows longer has he continues to deny U.S. instigation.

12/18/09

U.S. TO PAKISTAN AND YEMEN: LET'S HAVE YOU GUYS FIGHT THOSE TERRORISTS. Chairman of U.S. Joint Chief of Staff "insists" that Pakistan is about to launch a sweep against militants in North Waziristan, while Pak officials say that's news to them, as they are tied down in countering insurgency elsewhere in the country. The Yemeni governmnet, also under U.S. pressure, carries out a raid which it says killed 34 "militants" although here as in AfPak, observers say many of these were innocent civilians.

YEMEN

12/16/09

Obama's plan to relocate Guantanamo detainees to Thomson Illinois and to hold military tribunals there faces many roadblocks to the plan's implementation.

12/9/09

BIG BROTHER (HOMELAND SECURITY) WANTS TO STUDY YOUR BODILY FUNCTIONS AT AIRPORT SCREENING TO DETERMINE YOUR LEVEL OF "MAL-INTENT." As described by Lilian Segura, the "life" of HDS practice is imitating the "art" of a movie, Tom Cruise's Minority Report, in its focus on "pre-crime," detecting and hopefully thwarting planned crimes before they occur. Segura labels HDS as "half-baked" for this scheme, while civil libertarians object to the invasions of privacy. But so it goes in the unrelenting "war on terrorism."

11/24/09

UPCOMING SHOW TRIAL OF ALLEGED 9/11 CO-CONSPIRATORS: "FAILURE IS NOT AN OPTION." With public figures from the President and Attorney General to the editor of the National Journal making statements about the inevitability of convictions in these cases, Paul Craig Roberts says that the trials, indeed, will produce convictions: the convictions of "us all" of violating due process provisions of the U.S. constitution. Ironically, the show trials are designed to "show" the world just how fair and honorable is the U.S. system of justice, when a pre-determined outcome of a trial is the very antithesis of what system is supposed to be.

11/20/09

"SHOW TRIALS ARE AS AMERICAN AS APPLE PIE." Obama administration is about to serve up yet another slice of that pie: a trial with a pre-determined outcome undertaken to bolster a shaky political regime. The decision to try 9/11 suspects in a civilian court in NYC was exactly what AG Eric Holder said it was not: a political trial, undertaken to answer charges against the adminstration from two directions: from liberals who say military tribunals are violative of civil rights; and from conservatives accusing him of being "soft" on terrorism. In Alexander Cockburn's view, civil rights like the presumption of innocence will not prevail in the NYC court, and conservatives won't let up on its softness charges so long as there is even the possibility of an acquittal

11/19/09

DOES THE PRESUMPTION OF INNOCENCE IN A U.S. COURT APPLY TO THE TRIAL OF SUSPECTED TERRORISTS? Apparently not, judged by statements of the country's two chief law enforcement officials. Replying to Republican and other opposition to trial of 9/11 suspects in New York City, Attorney General Eric Holder says that failure (acquittal) is "not an option" for these trials. For his part, President Obama "predicts" a conviction, saying that those offended by his decision to try the alleged 9/11 "mastermind" in New York will not find it "offensive at all when he's convicted and when the death penalty is applied to him." (Perhaps remembering his constitutional law background, the President "quickly adds" that he won't be in that courtroom but the verdict and sentence will be the "job" of prosecutors and jurors, who hopefully will be a little more "judicial" than are the President and his AG).

11/18/09

WHEN RESISTANCE TO TERRORISM BECOMES DEFINED AS TERRORISM. In Denmark, resistance in any form to Nazi occupation was treated as "terrorism." In Denmark and around the world today, any opposition to anti-terrorism laws or support of national and democratic resistance movements elsewhere tends to get the same treatment. This issue comes to a head with current prosecution of Danish group called Rebellion, which has offered its support to resistance movements in such other areas as occupied Palestine and Colombia.

11/10/09

HELLUVA JOB, ROBIE MUELLER! The FBI and other U.S. "intelligence" agencies were long aware of the anti-American sympathies of the Major Nadil Malik Hasan, now accused in the murder of 13 persons at Ft. Hood, Texas. These agents last December intercepted communications with a "radical cleric" but deemed that these required no special treatment of the military assignments of the psychiatrist, since they constituted no direct "threat of violence."

11/1/09

A HALLOWEEN "MONSTER": THE SUICIDE BOMBER. Maryam Sakeenah, a Pakistani school teacher, reflects on her feelings about the spiral of violence in which Pakistanis have come to brutalize one another in the form of bombings in which many innocent people are killed. Sakeenah says that rather than simply condemning the "monster," we must dare to understand his or her behavior. A key to this understanding is noted in public reaction to a drone attack in Waziristan after the government and insurgents were in process of reaching an understanding with one another. Such actions lead Pakistanis to understand that the war is Somebody Else's war, not their own, and leads them to engage in acts whose victims are Pakistanis but whose real targets of aggression are that Somebody Else (NATO and the U.S.)

10/29/09

Alleged terrorist plots targetting newspapers in Denmark are "thwarted" by cooperation of FBI and Danish intelligence agents.

10/23/09

MEOW MIX CAT FOOD JINGLE ENLISTS IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM. This and many other instances of dissonant music have been, according to recent reports, used as they were played loudly at Guatanamo Bay camp in order to "break" detainees during interrogations. Pearl Jam and other purveyors of popular music are now joined in a coalition of musicians' groups demanding the immediate closing of the camp.

9/11/09

9-11-09; AND THE TRUTH OF 9/11/01 IS STILL NOT KNOWN. Justin Raimondo reprises the "story" of the airline hijacking attacks and finds it as incredible today as it appeared to be 8 years ago. He notes as well the substantial investigative reporting on behalf of Fox News by Carl Cameron immediately after the event of Israeli intelligence agents as prime suspects of complicity in the event---never mentioned in the "Truth Commission" and today resolutely ignored by Fox itself, as journalistic work like that of Cameron is consigned to history's dust-bin as the product of "conspiracy nuts."

9/6/09

CAN AMERICA BE SAVED FROM THE "DIVISIVE, INCENDIARY AND ULTIMATELY COUNTERPRODUCTIVE SENTIMENTS" OF VAN JONES? This is the characterization of Jones by Senator Kit Bond (R, Mo) as information comes out that Jones, a noted Bay Area activist appointed by President Obama as his "green economy adviser," signed a 2004 petition calling for investigation of Bush administration complacency and possible complicity in 9/11. As other Republicans call for his resignation, White House spokesman gives a tepid "he continues to work in this administration" response and Jones has recanted on support of the petition he signed. Common Dreams commenters suggest that Jones will shortly be "thrown under the bus" with numerous other persons who became inconvenient to Obama's purposes.

9/5/09

IS PREVENTIVE DETENTION COMING TO A PLACE NEAR YOU? This spectre is raised in a PBS NOW program which features interviews with two men who were apparently innocent of any "terrorist" acts but who who were detained without charges for long periods of time. In President Obama's struggle to find a formula to "close Guantanomo" without "endangering" the American people, consideration is being given to the indefinite detention of people who cannot be convicted in court but who are deemed too "dangerous" to be released. Lawyers and civil libertarians weigh in on both sides of this issue, the opponents saying indefinite detention could just as well be used against American as against "aliens."

9/2/09

British government is denying that release of convicted Lockerbie bomb was part of a "prisoner-for-oil" deal with Libya.

8/31/09

MY LAI AND LOCKERBIE: STUDIES IN HYPOCRISY IN THE WAR ON TERRORISM. Nick Nurse, with comments by Tom Engelhardt, notes the public outrage against the "compassionate" release after 8 years of prison of a dying man convicted in the Lockerbie Scotland plane bombing, a crime he denies having committed, and against the "hero's welcome" accorded him back in Libya. He contrasts this outrage with anything comparable for the My Lai terrorism which Lt. William Calley admitted having committed and for which served 3 years of house confinement and for he has apologized, being treated as something of a hero himself as he re-emerges into public consciousness.

8/25/09

TERRORIST SUSPECT INTERROGATION RENDITIONS WILL CONTINUE. Obama administration will continue this practice of the the Bush one, but with "better oversight." Human rights groups denounce the policy, saying that the proposed oversight would be based on ineffective "diplomatic assurances" that torture would not be used.

8/21/09

TOM RIDGE COMES CLEAN ABOUT THE POLITICAL MANIPULATION OF COLOR CODED TERRORISM ALERTS. In a new book the former Homeland Security Director admits that his agency changed colors for terrorism alerts in response to political pressures from the Bush administration, especially around the time of the 2004 election. As Glenn Greenwald notes, the journalistic establishment "played along" with Ridge's denials at the time that any such thing had happened and, as always, marginalized as "fringe leftist losers" (like Howard Dean) anyone who was making such allegations.

COMMENTS ON COMMON DREAMS POSTING:

8/20/09

THE U.S.A. AND A "DAMNED MURDER INC." Lyndon Johnson's famous utterance when he learned of C.I.A. operations which hired organized crime figures to assassinate Castro in the 1960s is echoed in Leon Panetta's recent discovery of CIA assassination plots, but this time involving paid assassins employed by the Blackwater "Security" Agency. Panetta as current C.I.A. head supposedly "closed down" such operations as LBJ supposedly did in 1963 but...

LBJ QUOTE

7/29/09

Impact of Sotomayor apppintment to Supreme Court may be felt very soon:. The "ultimate confrontation" between the Court and the presidency on the authority to decide on release or detention of terrorism suspects is likely to occur this fall when the case of Mohammed Jawad reaches the Court. Charges against Jawad were dropped after a federal judge found them without merit, but he continues to be held for possible future prosecution in the U.S. His lawyer's appeals are likely to be decided by the Court as it re-visits the 2008 decision that established habeas corpus rights of such prisoners. That was a 5-4 decision, one of the 5 being David Souter, whom Sotomayor would replace. Since Sotomayor was little questioned on this (or any other) major substantive issue, the impact of a re-constituted Court including herself is unknown.

2008 DECISION:

7/12/09

The U.S. is not responsible for any alleged atrocities committed by its allies in the "War on Terror.": This is the Pentagon's claim as it says that the U.S. has "no legal right" to investigate a 2001 in which U.S.-backed war lords in Afghanistan placed those captured as Taliban fighters in a closed container and allowed them to suffocate. Since it was "foreign" persons and not U.S. citizens who were involved, the U.S. claims to lack this "legal right." Physicians for Human Rights calls this claim "absurd."

7/10/09

AL QAEDA IN NORTH AFRICA: COUNTER-TERRORISM OFFICIALS ASSESS AN APPARENT RISE IN ITS OPERATIONS. There is general agreement that there has been a rise in terrorist attacks in countries like Algeria, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. There is less consensus on the meaning and significance of that fact. Some see it as a returning home of North African insurgents who have gone to Iraq in support of the insurgency there; others cite an extense rivalry between two factions of Al Qaeda in Africa as the cause.

7/8/09

British Security Service M15 is accused of "out-sourcing" the interrogation of terrorism suspects.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/conservative/5772749/David-Davis-MP-accuses-MI5-of-outsourcing-torture.html

6/11/09

A hospital chaplain, a Unitarian and Methodist minister, speaks bitterly of the results of a national survey which shows that more church-going than non-church-going Americans support torture of "suspected terrorists" under certain cirumstances.  The chaplain is incensed by the tendency of the media and U.S. political leaders to equate "terrorism" with any resistance to U.S. military violence, including those "crazed with grief" by the results of bombing of civilian populations.

http://www.counterpunch.org/alberts06102009.html

6/9/09

"Washington after Bush is now trapped in the painful politics of impunity."  Alfred McCoy, who literally "wrote the book" on psychological torture (CIA programs like Artichoke during the Cold War) reflects on the inability of the current Administration to break away from the "bi-partisan consensus" that condoned a type of "enhanced interrogation" technique that did little to gain intelligence information, but a great deal to enhance the psycho-sexual pathologies of the interrogators.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/06/08-5

6/3/09

A one-stop shop for kinformatio on U.S. nuclear programs.:."  A security expert's description of a document sent by President Obama to Congress and "accidentally" published on a secrecy news website, of the locations of nuclear facilities in the U.S.  The President explains his action as consistent with expectations of openness about its nuclear facilities that is being demanded of other countries such as Iran.  Some in the security community minimize the signficance of the incident while those like the above-quoted describe the release as furnishing a valuable tool for "thieves or terrorists." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/us/03nuke.html?_r=1&ref=global-home

5/28/09

Tinkering with an "enormous failure."  Barack Obama as presidential candidate so characterized the military commission tribunals of the Bush administration.  As President he re-institutes that system with some marginal improvements in defendant rights; and he also affirms the intention of maintaining indefinite detention of some terrorist suspects without trial of any kind.  These moves elicit the approval of Ari Fleischer, John McCain and the Wall Street Journal, who laud these moves as non-change that THEY can believe in.

http://www.counterpunch.org/mariner05272009.html

5/16/09

The beatings will continue until morale improves.  After President Obama "stopped" torture of terrorism detainees, a Spanish court finds that a "thug squad" still operates to provide "discipline" for recalcitrant inmates.  Formally known as the Immediate Response Force, this special unit administers extrajudicial punishments described in graphic detail by Jeremy Scahill.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/05/15-9

5/12/09

PAKISTANI SECURITY FORCES UNDERTAKE ASSAULT ON SWAT AND AL-QAEDA LICKS ITS CHOPS.  As Pakistan, under insistent U.S. pressure, invades its northwest territories that have been a "stronghold" of Taliban  control,  a half-million refugees flee the area, along with most of the Taliban.  Asia Times columnist Syed  Saleem Shahzad says that the Taliban will easily re-group elsewhere but that the population displacement in the area will produce heightened ethnic tensions in Swat and other areas to which the refugees flee, fulfilling the fondest al-Qaeda dreams of social unrest in Pakistan.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KE12Ak02.html

4/23/09

70 MILES FROM ISLAMABAD: THE GATHERING STORM OF TALIBAN INSURGENCY IN PAKISTAN.  Taliban, already in effective control of Swat Valley, seizes control of Buner district.  One law enforcement official says of this:  “They take over Buner, then they roll into Mardan and that’s the end of the game.” 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/23/world/asia/23buner.html?th&emc=th

4/20/09

Elephant in the room of America's "dark and painful chapter in our history."  The "debate" over Barack Obama's release of the "torture tapes," says Pierre Tristam, has largely ignored a correct definition of accountability for this "history."  While Obama's accompanying action of relieving past perpetrators of torture from  prosecution because they were "doing their duties" under "legal guidance" may or may not be justifiable, there is certainly no basis for excusing those who ordered the torture, and especially the "elephant" that the debate ignores, George W. Bush.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/19-4

4/11/09

The war on terror os over...replaced by "Overseas Contingency Operations.":."  Professor Ira Chernus welcomes that shift in foreign policy strategy as articulated by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  Some critics call this "Redefinition Accomplished" (a linguistic exit strategy for a "war" with no end); but Chernus takes this as a real change toward enabling the Obama administration to "re-focus" its attention on critical domestic reform needs in health, education and energy.  Note the string of mostly negative comments on Common Dreams re-post of the Tom Dispatch article.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/04/09-10

2/21/09

U.S. drone missile strikes in Pakistan get a new mission.  Recent attacks have shifted from al-Qaeda and Taliban forces believed to the threatening the U.S. mission in Afghanistan.  The recent targets have centered on the training camps of a militant leader who is seen as a threat to the Pakistini government, possibly an assassin of Benadir Bhutto.  These attacks may represent the Obama administration's commitment to Pakistan to help deal militarily with its domestic enemies while Pakistan cooperates with the U.S.-orchestrated "war on terror."

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/washington/21policy.html?th&emc=th

2/21/09

U.S. Justice Department rules that terrorism detainees at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan do not have the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7903005.stm

2/14/09

ACLU action turns up still more evidence of U.S. government approval of torture for terrorism detainees.:   Freedom of Action suits yield new unredacted documents that seem to prove that torture was used with official approval in Iraqi and Afghan prisons as well as in "ghost" detention centers maintained elsewhere by the CIA.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Unredacted_documents_reveal_prisoners_tortured_to_0212.html

2/14/09

With Guantanamo set to close, new critical attention being focussed on detention center at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0212/p01s01-usmi.html

2/12/09

BARACK OBAMA HAS ORDERED THE END OF MILITARY COMMISSIONS; LET BARACK OBAMA END THEM.  The legendary statement of President Andrew Jackson questioning whether Supreme Court justice John Marshall could enforce a Court decision is echoed in the situation today at Guantanamo, where  a holdover head of the Military Commissions from the Bush administration challenges the authority of Obama to stop them.  This, plus the chaotic condition in the prison with massive inmate hunger strikes and their forced-feeding by guards raises the question "who is in charge?" of the prison.

http://www.counterpunch.org/worthington02112009.html

2/12/09

Toronto mosque is offering a "de-tox" program for Muslim extremists, the first of its kind in Canada

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/canada/story.html?id=1275285

2/7/09

Obama "reframes" his policies on terrorism detainees in meeting with 9/11 families: The President speaks with a group which wants justice for the perpetrators of the crimes against their family members and has been critical of his decision to close Guantanamo and apparently to try some of the remaining detainees in U.S. criminal courts.  He wins applause and hugs from the audience in saying that he might indeed retain military commissions for the trials and a spokesman later says that his motive for closing Quantanamo was not because of the abuse of human rights therein, but in an effort to bring terrorists to "swifter" justice

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/251/story/61720.html

2/5/09

Those Pentagon claims that released terrorism detainees have "returned to the battlefield"?: Not true, says a Seton Hall University law professor who, along with his students, has studied 43 of the alleged 61 "known or suspected" returnees and found the allegation false in every case.  Many are based in spurious "returns" like being seen in a documentaries of films made before their arrests.  The professor, Mark Denbreaux, suggests that these fabrications are an effort to keep Obama from carrying through on closing Guantanamo, lest the closing result in further such "returns" if arrangements cannot be found to continue their detention.

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=14194

1/25/09

"RAISED VOICES, FOUL LANGUAGE AND DRUNKEN BEHAVIOR."  Such "behaviors" as a passenger on a U.S. airline can get you convicted of "terrorist" acts.  Under the revised Patriot Act, at least 200 passengers have been prosecuted for terrorism. They include the case of a mother whose children's quarrel caused her to spill a Bloody Mary on her lap, then she slapped the kids on the thigh, then cursed and threw the rest of her drink at a protesting flight attendant.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2009/01/25/bad_behavior_on_flights_prosecutable_under_patriot_act/

1/24/09

Obama does a Bill Clinton and "triangulates" on terrorism and torture:.  Although he signs Presidential directive to close Guantanamo and require strict adherence to Army Field Manual which forbids torture, he apparently gives a nod to war-on-terror hawks by leaving other detainee bases like Bagram in Afghanistan intact, and allowing for the possibility of "review" of the Manual toward enhanced interrogation technqieus under "exceptional" circumstances.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=11971

12/26/08

What's the future of Guantanamo detainees?  After a federal judge in October ruled that they must be brought to trial in U.S. courts, there was celebration among the 17 Chinese Muslim (Uighur) detainees that they were about to the be released to the U.S. mainland.  Instead, the U.S. government ruled that they must be kept in detention as a "population apart," meaning they were to receive such amenities as Pepsi, ping pong,  and plasma screen TV to watch World Cup soccer matches. What they are not getting is any indication of when they will be released; and it is suggested that prison improvement may provide a counter-model to the future of all detainees to Obama's promised closing of the facility

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/world/story/825965.html

12/24/08

Popular Christmas and New Year's parties in Indian state of Goa are cancelled over security concerns after attacks in Mumbai.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7793519.stm  

12/22/08

ACLU and other civil rights organizations issue an open letter to Obama calling on him to fulfill by a "date certain" his pledge to close the Guantanamo detention center and guarantee an "unqualified" transfer of detainees to the American justice system with prompt and fair trials without the indefinite detentions being practiced against "war on terror" detainees.

http://www.aclu.org/safefree/detention/38140prs20081218.html?s_src=RSS

12/19/08

Civil rights organizations in Australia working  to counter government's tendency to try to "balance" individual rights against the asserted need for "national security."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45155

12/4/08

India places airports in three cities on alert for threatened terrorist attacks

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7764142.stm  

12/4/08

If Mumbait was "India's 9/11," will India arn from U.S. mistakes in response to the atrocity?:?  Juan Cole hopes so, as he recalls how the U.S. demonized Muslims as a people and failed to recognize the "assymetical" character of modern terrorism with their foolishness about "state-sponsored" terrorism that led to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.  The rise of "communal violence" against Muslims and Indians and the persistent demands by India on the government of Pakistan to restrain such terrorists are not good indications that India is, in fact, learning from U.S. mistakes in dealing with terrorism.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21370.htm  

12/4/08

"THE VICTIMS OF MUMBAI WILL BE MOURNED BY AMERICANS, AS THEY SHOULD BE. THE VICTIMS OF UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT IN IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN ARE NOT.  Margaret Kimberley describes a weakness in American thinking about terrorism: our inability to recognize that such acts have their causes and that among those causes are the "grievances" of people who are the victims of warfare, the "ultimate act of terror."

http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=913&Itemid=1 

12/3/08

Did U.S. government give advance warning to Indian government of Mumbai terrorist attacks?: This is the allegation, based on unattributed source (senior Bush administration official), of an article in AntiWar.Com which raises the question why neither the Indian or U.S. government took action to stop the attacks. (Was Mumbai "India's 9/11" in more ways than one?)

http://news.antiwar.com/2008/12/02/advanced-us-warning-adds-fuel-to-post-mumbai-criticisms/

12/2/08

Indian government demands "decisive" action of Pakistan against terrorists who struck in Mumbai.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=1018813  

11/30/08

Lesson of Mumbai: If you're going to fight a "war on terrorism," you had better be prepared to fight micro-wars against small bands of terrorists:, As death toll in the attacks rises above 200, officials are piecing together a picture of the atrocity as the work of a group as small as 10 men, all but one of whom were killed in police efforts to free hostages. The one survivor says the group planned the operation as "India's 9/11."  London and Madrid have already had "9/11s" and no place in the world seems immune from such an operation.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/just-ten-trained-terrorists-caused-carnage-1041639.html

11/30/08

Because of its own recent attacks on alleged terrorist targets in Pakistan, U.S. may not be in favorable position to discourage India's reprisal attacks on Pakistan for alleged role in Mumbai bombing plot

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/world/asia/30diplo.html?th&emc=th

11/28/08

"Do not bring politics into this issue. We are facing a common enemy and we should join hands to defeat them.": Statement by Pakistani Foreign Minister in wake of terrorist assaults in Mumbai, India, as Indian PM makes "veiled accusation" that Pakistan government agencies may have been involved in the incident.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/29/world/asia/29mumbai.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&hp

11/28/08

Indian security forces now have a beseiged hotel in Mumbai, India "under control" after a terrorist assault.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7753892.stm

11/28/08

Vancouver officials expressing concern about possibility of "lone wolf" terrorist attack on 2010 Olympic Winter Games like the one which struck Atlanta in 1996.

http://www.nationalpost.com/most_popular/story.html?id=997993  

11/27/08

“There's absolutely nothing Al Qaeda-like about it.": Analyst at Rand Corporation notes that the "fingerprints" of an al-Qaeda operation are totally missing from yesterday's terrorist assaults on "foreigners" in Mumbai India: no suicide bombers for example.  The only group claiming "credit" for the operation are an unknown group calling themselves the Deccan Mujahedeen. (This situation gives force to Egyptian President Mubarak's warning in 2003 that the invasion of Iraq would produce "100 bin Ladens.")

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/28/world/asia/28group.html?hp

MUBARAK WARNING:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0331-01.htm  

11/27/08

Mumbai terrorists looked specifically for British and American tourists to capture as hostages.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/put-your-hands-up-if-you-are-british-gunmen-tell-terrified-travellers-1036875.html  

11/16/08

"Don't ask, don't tell may be operative policy on U.S. raids in Pakistan: .  Washington Post article says there is a "tacit agreement" between U.S. officials and the new PM of Pakistan, that the U.S. will be allowed to continue air attacks on Pakistani targets, attacks the U.S. will not publicly admit and which the Pakistani govermment can "noisily" protest, in deference to public opinion in that country. (A large grant to Pakistan from the International Monetary Fund may be the bait for the "agreement.")  The PM suggests that once Obama becomes President, his government can more overtly support these raids, because Pakistani opinion will become more "pro-American" once he assumes the presidency.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/15/AR2008111502656_pf.html

11/14/08

Will an Obama administration spell the end of torture as an instrument of intelligence gathering in the war on terrorism?:   Not likely, says Justin Raimondo of anti-war.com, in an article which draws freely on  an analysis in the Wall Street Journal of Obama's intelligence advisors in the presidential transition period.  A couple of them are notorious in producing the "flawed" intelligence that justified the Iraqi invasion and for views on interrogation torture that are similar to those of the Bush administration's authorization for torture in "certain case" and with "oversignt."   (Caveat: Raimondo's pieces morphs into a fund-raising appeal for antiwar.com, as he notes how the practice of the website in criticizing the President-elect has led to erosion of its support by "Obama fans.")

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13762  

11/12/08

U.S. said to be depending on Saudi Arabia to step into the "quagmire" of Pakistani reluctance to wage the "war on terror" to the liking of the U.S.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JK13Df02.html

11/9/08

Police in Indonesia on high alert for public protests after execution of 3 men convicted of 2002 Bali bombing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7718246.stm  

10/21/08

The DNA of terrorist failure: Al Qaeda in Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan: William Lind believes with other analysts that the religious fanatics in these movements are doomed to failure by their tendency to alienate "host" countries by their arrogant, un-guest like behaviors.  In contrast, more host-friendly organizations like Hezbollah and even the drug gangs in Latin America succeed by doing what al-Qaeda and the Taliban do not do: provide for a range of services to people which are neglected by inefficient and corrupt "host" governments.

http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=13619

10/11/08

Can Pashtun tribal elders control the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan?  A day after Pakistani government raid in Orakzai district of two Taleban hideouts, 2000 tribesmen assemble to discuss a Pashtun "force" to operate against the Taleban.  A suicide bomber attacks the assembly, killing 32. (This as U.S. officials are insisting that Pakistan must "do more" to fight the insurgency if it wants continued U.S. assistance.)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20081010/wl_afp/pakistanunrest

10/10/08

Constitutional crisis may ne looming over fate of 17 Chinese Uighur detainees:.  U.S. Justice Department files appeal to decision of a federal judge that the 17 Islamists were held at Guantanamo without legal warrant and must be brought to him in NYC by today to be released.  Justice doesn't challenge the right of the court to make this decision, following a Supreme Court decision 4 months ago, but says only the executive branch, not the executive, has the authority to determine who can come to the U.S.   Meantime, China offers to accept the detainees but Justice claims they would be subject to human rights violations, so they must be kept in Guantanamo where their rights are scrupulously observed (?).

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/1010/p02s01-usju.html

10/10/08

South Asia experts in U.S. Institute of Peace, with ties to both Obama and McCain, release report saying that Pakistan should be made to understand that continued U.S. support is contingent on better Pakistani effort in the "war on terror."

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JJ09Df04.html  

10/8/08

Federal judge orders freeing of 17 detainees at Guantanamo by the end of the week:.  The action comes in the case of Uighur Muslim detainees, men who were caught up in anti-insurgency sweeps in Afghanistan, even though their defense says they were merely refugees from anti-Muslim persecution in China.  As Justice Department asks for more delay in the 6-year-old case, the judge pronounces a version of "justice delayed is justice denied."

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/washington/08detain.html?th&emc=thhttp://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/08/washington/08detain.html?th&emc=th

10/3/08

New Pakistani government faces its first U.S. drone attack on a target within its borders:  The new PM says that attack, which killed six people, including an alleged Taliban leader, is a form of "terrorism" that reneges on U.S. promises to respect Pakistani sovereignty.  (If this issue was mentioned in last night's Vice-Presidential debate, the editor of SSA nodded off for a moment and didn't hear it.)

http://www.gulfnews.com/world/Pakistan/10249278.html

10/3/08

British officials say terrorism threat in UK is "approaching critical" as they fear militant retaliation for cross-border raids of Pakistan by U.S., with whom UK is closely allied.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/3124098/Terror-threat-in-UK-approaching-critical.html  

9/30/08

Militants infiltrating border between Pakistan and Afghanistan:.  In a new wrinkle on the flow of militancy between the two countries, Pakistani government officials say their lengthy military actions in Bajaur, Waziristan (in Pakistan) are being hampered by an infusion of militant forces across the border from Afghanistan.  A Pakistani official attributes this increase (and geographic spread) of Afghan militancy to Afghan reactions to American assaults on civilians in the two countries: while most civilians are not friendly to the Taliban, "if Americans continue their activities in the tribal areas, these people will become sympathizers of Taliban.” 

http://news.antiwar.com/2008/09/29/pakistan-complains-militants-infiltrating-bajaur-from-afghanistan/

9/28/08

Keeping the world "safe" from terrorism:.  U.S. military is said to be stepping up unauthorized anti-terrorist raids on Pakistani territory to (somehow) "thwart" an "October surprise" that may be planned by al-Qaeda which could entail an attack on a major world embassy.  Since the recent attack on the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad has been attributed to a motive of revenge for U.S. attacks on Pakistan, their "reasoning" on how border operations will deter such attacks is a little hard to follow.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/pakistan/3092548/US-steps-up-Pakistan-raids-to-thwart-al-Qaeda-October-surprise-plot.html

9/26/08

Have the first shots been fired in a war between the U.S. and Pakistan?  In a border incident the details of which have been contested by U.S. and Pakistani officials, an exchange of what are variously described as "gunfire" and as warning "flares" heats up the rhetoric in Pakistan's protests against alleged violations of its sovereignty in the U.S. prosecution of the "war on terrorism."

http://news.antiwar.com/2008/09/25/us-pakistani-troops-trade-fire-across-border/

9/24/08

The good war gone bad: The Marriot blast in Islamabad may be the "spill over" of Pashtun nationalism aroused by U.S. attacks on Pakistani civilians: Tariq Ali suggests this interpretation of the officially still-unexplained attack on a hotel with numerous foreigners among its guests.  He likens the Bush administration decision to expand the war to Pakistan to the Nixon/Kissinger decision in 1970 to expand the Viet Nam war to Cambodia, following the old "imperial motto" about failing militay enterprises, "When in doubt, escalate the war."

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20843.htm

9/24/08

Downed U.S. spy drone is found in Pakistan, in controversey over whether it crashed or was shot down. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7632957.stm  

9/22/08

Pakistani government gives clear but double-edged message to U.S. on terrorism fight within the country's borders:. Former National Security Adviser of Pakistani says that the government has given a clear message to the U.S. that it will not "tolerate" anti-terrorist raids that violate Pakistani sovereignty.  At the same time, the lack of effectiveness of the government's own campaign against terrorism is noted, and the U.S. is urged to assist Pakistan with weapons representing "enhanced capability" of pursuing that campaign.

http://dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2008\09\22\story_22-9-2008_pg7_6

9/22/08

Marriott Hotel in Islamabad, scene of terrorist attack, is a long-time target of local resentment against a "decadent" westernized Pakitani elite.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/21/pakistan.terrorism1 

9/21/08

Asif ali Zardari, welcome to the presidency of Pakistan: ,  Hours after his inaugural speech in which he promised to resist both internal extremists and those foreign governments that violate Pakistani sovereignty in pursuit of them, the new President's resolve is severely tested.  A truck loaded with explosives slams into and largely destroys Islamabad's luxury hotel, the Marriott, in which "foreigners" of various kinds are staying, including possibly some U.S. soldiers and C.I.A. agents. At least 51 people are killed in the attack, which has been called "Pakistan's 9/11." 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7627626.stm

9/21/08

Pakistan said to be trying to "ride a terrorr tiger" in its encouragment of Islamist militancy against India without being able to control the actions of that militancy.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI20Df02.html

9/19/08

U.S. AIR STRIKES IN PAKISTAN: DEFENSE SECRETARY ASSERTS A "RIGHT," CIA HEAD DESCRIBES THE RAIDS AS A "TICKLE." In BBC interview, Robert Gates asserts the right of the U.S. to engage in these raids when necessary to "protect American troops" in Afghanistan.  Michael Hayden says that the raids are useful as a "tickle" to test the responsive force of the militants.  Amidst these tickles and assertions of right, Pakistani civilians continue to be killed and the country's leaders and people are outraged at these assaults on their country's sovereignty.

http://news.antiwar.com/2008/09/18/gates-defends-right-of-us-military-launch-attacks-into-pakistan/

9/9/08

Casualty list of 9/11 continues to grow:.  The major "causalty" is the loss of civil liberties of Americans. A Palestinian writer living in Boulder Colorado cites as well "the incarceration of more than 5,000 residents of Arab descent on phony charges or on no charges at all."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/09/08-3

9/8/08

Smai al-Arian: Free at last, free at last (or is he?):.  He is released from detention after he was acquitted of "terrorism" in 2006 after being held for three years, but was still held as a witness in another terrorism trial.  His release was to "house arrest" under his daughter's custody, which a judge angrily ordered after a prosecutor raised the "racist" objection that, in Muslim "culture," a woman could not prevent a man from any course of action.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/09/sami-al-arians-long-delayed-freedom/

9/5/08

The "secret" U.S. plan to invade Pakistan appears to be no secret anymore:.  A counter-terrorist raid by U.S. forces stationed in Afghanistan to nearby Pakistan is not officially acknowledged, but the Pakistani government recognize this as a continued pattern and "summon" the U.S. ambassador to protest these violations of the country's sovereignty.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0904/p99s01-duts.html 

9/2/08

Can Muslim charities avoid persecution by U.S. enforcement agencies by cleaning up their act in terms of more stringent financial accountability?   Many of these agencies, in what is called a "last desperate step" to escape further government actions against them as suspects in the "war on terrorism," are entering into alliance with Better Business Bureau in an effort to make themselves less vulnerable to prosecution.  Critics doubt that this will deter a government intent on blaming them for perpetuating that "war" by providing "material support" to the "enemy."

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=43730

8/21/08

Saudi Arabia government engages in a program of cash payments and "re-education" to try to convert Islamic jihad militants.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0821/p01s01-wome.html

8/19/08

Questions the mainstream media never ask about the anthrax case:  With the suicide of the "lone mad scientist" now tagged as the sender of anthrax-laced letters to public officials in 2001, the media fails once again to ask some very pertinent questions about the implications of the episode for the "war on terrorism."  Tom Engelhardt takes on a number of these questions, focussed on the "double standard" of government's extreme response to 9/11 attacks and their reticence to pursue "terrorists" in their own ranks, supposedly scientists involved in the government's own bio-weapons development lab in Maryland.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174966/six_questions_about_the_anthrax_case  

8/16/08

'Fear itself.'  A Maine newspaper columnist describes the way in which neo-conservative political forces in the U.S., under the influence of Leo Strauss "philosophy," have manipulated public fear of terrorism and most recently have demonized Iranian PM Ahmadinejah in a Machiavellian effort to manipulate public fear in order to consolidate their political power.  Comments on the Common Dreams reprint of the column bring out the view  that fear-manipulation is a fully "bi-partisan" affair in the current presidential campaign.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/08/15/11017/  

8/15/08

Five years ago, Aafia Siddiqui "disappeared" and only surfaced last month when she was arrested last month by U.S. and Afghan police in the course of which she was shot in the stomach, and on her were allegedly found plans for various terrorist operations in New York.  As she appears in a Manhattan court, her family claims she was secretly arrested in 2003, tortured and then "re-arrested" with terrorist materials planted on her. The truth of her claims and those of the U.S. government is yet to be determined.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0814/p99s01-duts.html

8/9/08

For Salim Hamdan, it's not overtill it's over:.  Convicted by military tribunal at Guantanamo on terrorism charges, he gets a 5 1/2 year sentence, of which all but 5 months would be satisfied by "time served" awaiting trial.  But will he be released in 5 months?  Very doubtful, as Bush administration has promised to retain him as an "enemy combatant" until the end of the "war on terror," an effective life sentence were he even a baby-unborn as the GWOT is a "war" with no end in sight. Legal scholars criticize both the trial procedures and the "enemy combatant" detentions. (No word yet on whether McCain and/or Obama would continue the detention, but one can guess. wouldn't this be a great "debate" question?)

http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=13274

8/9/08

Pakistan accuses U.S. of playing a double game in the "war on terrorism."  Pakistani officials complain that the U.S. takes unlateral military action against suspected anti-Afghan terrorist targets in Pakistan but ignores information of Pakistani intelligence against anti-Pakistani terrorists in Kabul, Afghanistan that could lead to raids to eliminate that source of terrorism

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?sectionName=&id=95c61181-205b-4c33-8c29-01d3161e8786&  

8/8/08

Bin Laden driver at Quantanamo trial gets 5 1/2 year sentence.  With credit for 61 months in detention, he could be out in 5 months

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=707583

8/6/08

Guantanamo trials may turn out to be irrelevant to fate of detainees: As verdict nears in first detainee trial, that of bin Laden former driver Salim Hamdan, Pentagon press secretary admits that. even if they are acquitted, some detainees might remain indefinitely in custody as they will be "considered" too dangerous for release. (Just ask Sami Al-Arian).

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/Gitmo_detainees_subject_to_detentio_08052008.html

8/3/08

With suicide of the "suspect," is the case of the 2001 anthrax attack closed?  Not so, say associates of Bruce Ivins, fellow workers at the Ft. Detrick  anthrax lab from which the lethal material was supposedly sent out, as they say he lacked the "motive or means" to carry out the operation.  The impending closing of the case arouses an examination of the FBI's long-term involvement with Ft. Detrick personnel, who alternated between the roles of "consultants" and  "suspects" of the Bureau.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/08/02/AR2008080201632.html?wpisrc=newsletter

7/31/08

Tribal elders in Pakistan say they will resist any NATO-U.S. operations near the Afghan border: They say they will join Pakistani army in resisting efforts to interdict movement of people and weapons from Pakistan to Afghanistan.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9681

7/30/08

President Bush and president-in-waiting Obama take turns threatening and reassuring Pakistan about its contributionto the war on terrorism:   As Pakistani's Prime Minister Gilani visits Washington, Obama and Bush alternate between support for anti-terror "operations" in Pakistan that allegedly are U.S. sponsored, promises to pursue bin Laden from Afghanistan into Pakistan; and statements of support for the Pakistanis' own initiatives.  As for Gilani, he says "we'll take care of it ourselves."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/07/28/national/w133628D64.DTL

7/29/08

DHS declares a "POHA" for the months ahead.  Citing threats to attack the Olympics by a "Chinese Muslim group," the Department of Homeland Security warns that high profile public events, including the political conventions of the Democratic and Republican Parties, may attract terrorist attacks so the U.S. must enter a "Period of Heightened Alert."  (Any expectation of popular protest at the conventions may be doused by "security" precautions at the conventions that will remind us of the protests against NAFTA in Miami.) 

http://abcnews.go.com/TheLaw/story?id=5420514

7/27/08

Public forums being held at Guelph University in Canada on theory that NYC buildings were destroyed by "controlled demolitions" on 9/11/01

http://news.guelphmercury.com/News/article/359105

7/10/08

Bush gets a "long overdue" victory on surveillance legislation.  Senate approves, 69-28, a measure renewing the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which broadens the scope of warrantless wiretaps and provides legal immunity for telecommunications companies which engaged in such programs in the past.  19 Democrats join all voting Republicans in support of the act, which critics say is violative of the 4th amendment against "unreasonable searches and seizures."  Among recent presidential candidates, Senators Dodd, Clinton and Biden voted against the measure as did Dennis Kucinich in the House, Senator Obama voted for it although he had earlier promised to filibuster against its passage. (Senator McCain was campaigning and did not vote but had publicly endorsed the measure.)  On the cloture vote, 40 votes would have sustained the filibuster , the vote was 72-26 with Obama and 16 other Democrats voting to stop the filibuster. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/washington/10fisa.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

VOTE ON CLOTURE:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00167

VOTE ON PASSAGE

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00168:

HOUSE VOTE:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2008/roll437.xml  

CRITICAL REACTON:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/#postid-updateE6

7/4/08

Thousands of Obama supporters sign up on his campaign website to "pressure" him to oppose the bill in Congress granting civil immunity to telecommunications firms engaged in warrantless surveillance.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/03/10079/  

7/4/08

"Snoop-gate" widens as State Department audit shows that government workers' unauthorized examination of electronic passport records involves intrusion on records of many "celebrities" beyond those of presidential candidates.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070303799.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

7/3/08

Obama's position on elecommunications legal immunity for warrentless surveillance raises fire-storm of protest among his own followers:   Articles in New York Times and The Nation describe such protest on a website for his supporters, and the comments on the Common Dreams website, linked here, show a high level of angst among his supporters and of  "I told you so" declarations among his detractors. 

Times article:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/02/10035/ 

NATION ARTICLE:

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/07/02/10050/   

6/26/08

Is U.S. counter-terrorism aid to Pakistan "pouring money into a black hole"?:   This is Senator Tom Harkin's characterization of a report of the Government Accountability Office which details numerous projects which the U.S. has funded without their having been completed and in which fraud and corruption are suspected.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/24/AR2008062401255.html?wpisrc=newslette

6/26/08

Obama leads Democrats into taking a dive on FISA:.  Glenn Greenwald, a strong Obama supporter, decries an Obama flip-flop in which he gave his endorsement to the legislation passed in Congress approving warrantless electronic surveillance, which he had earlier opposed as violation of civil rights. Greenwald condemns as well the tendency of Obama supporters to play "follow the leader" and exempt him from criticism lest the criticism should compromise his chances to win the White House.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/21/obama/index.html

6/24/08

Terrorizing the electorate about terrorism:.  A top aide of GOP nominee-apparent John McCain tells Fortune Magazine that the McCain campaign would "benefit" by a new terrorist attack on the U.S., just as it had benefitted from last November's Pakistan assassination of Benazir Bhutto because such events highlight the importance of a President considered strong on "national security" issues. Barack Obama and John McCain himself denounce the comment of Charles Black and he apologizes for the remark, but asking the electorate to "ignore" it may be like asking a jury to ignore an inflammatory but inadmissable statement in a law court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062301979.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

6/22/08

"Worst of the worst" at Guantanamo; Meet Omar Khadr.  At age 14 the Canadian youth went to Afghanistan to fight with the Taleban against Soviet invasion; after 9/11 at age 15 he became a guerilla fighter against coalition forces, involved in a gun battle with U.S. soldiers who called in an air strike against a group of youthful fighters, killing most of them, but a wounded Khadr survived to throw a hand grenade among the soldiers who came in to "mop up" after the strike, killing one of them.  Against a number of laws of war against the detention of children, he was sent to Guantanamo as an "enemy combatant" where he remains today, at age 21. (The survivors of the killed U.S. soldier successfully sued Omar Khadr's father for "failure to control his son.")

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/21/9787/

6/19/08

UN nuclear watchdog group going into Syria to try to investigate allegations of covert nuclear development facilities remaining at site of an area bombed by Israel.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2008-06-19T090010Z_01_L17129416_RTRUKOC_0_US-NUCLEAR-SYRIA-IAEA.xml  

6/17/08

Is World War II-style internment of Nazis to be fate of Muslims in Britain?: Events are tending in that direction, as some UK officials hold up the internment of Germans as a useful precedent in how such a policy could protect the country from an "enemy within."  Now being debated in the country, as a form of "creeping internment," is a proposal to increase from 28 to 42 days the length of time that suspected terrorists may be detained without charges.  Opponents say that such policies in fact do not protect the British public but actually endanger it through its effects in "radicalizing" the Muslim population.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/06/42-days-creeping-internment-in-the-uk/  

6/15/08

Continuity of government orders issued on 9/11 may be key to understanding 9/11 as a "coup d'etat" : Peter Dale Scott, the erstwhile scholar of "deep politics" in the JFK assassination and the Viet Nam war, takes up a theme from "deep research" being found today only on the internet: the uncovering of indications that on the day of the terrorist attacks, the government secretly issued long-developed orders for "continuity" in the event of a terrorist attack that would effectively abrogate the civil rights of Americans.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9289

6/13/08

"The court's ruling makes clear the legal righrs given to Al Qaeda members today should exceed those provided to the Nazis during World War II":   Senator Lindsey Graham, author of the Military Commissions Act under which Guantanamo terrorism detainees are now being tried, so reacts to this week's Supreme Court decision granting access to U.S. civilian courts for these detainees.  He wants a constitutional amendment to overturn the decision by these "activist judges."

http://www.mcclatchydc.com/244/story/40899.html  

6/7/08

Racheal Ray, Dunkin' Donuts and Joe McCarthy reutnred, oh my!:  The food network's hostess wore a paisley scarf that some terrorism-frightened people thought resembled an Arab head-scarf and the doughnut maker responded by pulling its ad on the show.  For a Miami Herald columnist and some who comment on the Common Dreams reprint of his column, this episode recalls the panic about communism in the McCarthy era and one commenter laments the lack of an Edward R. Murrow in today's media to step forward and blow a whistle on terrorism-terror. http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/06/07/9486/  

5/28/08

“Safe, legal, ethical and effective, " is the American Psychological Association's justification for allowing psychologists to be involved in aggressive interrogations of terrorism detainees.  Stephen Soldz reviews independent reports of interrogation practices that assert that psychologists have generally failed to report or tried to stop unsafe, illegal, unethical and ineffective interrogation.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/05/american-psychological-association-supports-psychologist-engagement-in-bush-regime-interrogations/  

5/26/08

FEDERAL APPEALS JUDGE: "WHAT YOU ASSERT IS THE POWER OF THE MILITARY TO SEIZE A PERSON IN THE UNITED STATES, INCLUDING AN AMERICAN CITIZEN, ON SUSPICION OF BEING AN ENEMY COMBATANT?"  JUSTICE DEPARTMENT LAWYER: "YES YOUR HONOR."  These words were heard in a Virginia court during a detention hearing for the only "enemy combatant" held in a military prison on U.S. soil. The defendant is a citizen of  Qatari origin, arrested on such suspicion in 2002 and held without trial until now. The courts are still adjudicating that alleged U.S. military "power."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080524/ap_on_go_ot/enemy_combatant  

5/23/08

Justice department audit attempts to distance the Bureau's agents from the harsh interrogation techniques employed by U.S. military agencies.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0523/p03s01-usmi.html

5/15/08

Launched from a console in Nevada, U.S Predator drones deliver lethal strike at Pakistan/Afghanistan border:   The strike at a Pakistani village at which an al-Qaeda leader was believed to have lived a year ago, kills at least a dozen people, including some children.

http://wiredispatch.com/news/?id=169385

5/14/08

Is torture necessary to get vital intelligence information?  Contrary to this justification of "enhanced interrogation," the "20th hijacker," arrested at Orlando airport in 2001 before, allegedly, he could join the 19, has charges against him dropped at Guantanamo, apparently because success of prosecution was doubted because of evidence of his having been tortured to secure "information."

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/attytood/20th_hijacker_blows_up_torture_argument.html

4/29/08

British M 15 (Security Service) agents accused of having participated in interrogation of terrorism suspects after they had been tortured in Pakistan.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/29/humanrights.uksecurity1  

4/25/08

Outsourcing torture: New documents appear in court filings:.  Documents show that the CIA anticipated legal questions about their program of "extraordinary rendition" to allow terrorism detainees to be interrogated in other countries that use torture methods.  They also show the intention of the Agency to continue to operate such programs.

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/CIA_knew_secret_detention_interrogation_program_0424.html  

3/18/08

What's "new" in U.S. counter-terrorism? Sounds a lot like the old Cointelproand nuclear deterrence stuff: New York Times interviews with counter-terrorist officials paint a picture of changed thinking about how terrorist attacks can be curbed; if we can't capture or kill 'em, we will engage in counterintelligence operations that will disgrace 'em among their own followers.  While they don't hold any "territory" that we could hit with nuclear bombs if they hit our "territory," they do have reputations to uphold among their peers and that can be "hit" with operations the likes of "amplifying" the voices of Muslim critics and engaging in cyperspace mischief like putting decoy messages on websites. (Or, come to think of it, using FBI provocateurs to incite fantasied "territory attacks" the likes of the Liberty 7 "conspiracy.")  In an "information age," counter-terrorism needs to be ready with the weapon of disinformation.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/18/washington/18terror.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th  

3/17/08

A Dairy Queen waitress in Southern California is killed by a "surgical strike" from the air and Iran announces proudly that it has killed another American terrorist:   Sci-fi fantasy? Of course but how about the reality of a recent such "surgical" U.S. strike in Somalia that killed numerous innocent civilians, not to mention recurring such strikes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and numerous illegal kidnappings of "terrorist" suspects in European countries?  The American policy of "assassination by war" has separated the country from any pretense of operating by international law requiring recognition of other countries' sovereignty; and while you can call this a "Bush" policy, it won't change with the next President, be his/her name McCain, Clinton or Obama.

http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174906/philip_k_dick_meet_george_w_bush  

3/17/08

Turkish residents in Bulgaria are victims of the "war on terror" and Bulgaria's entrance into the European Union:  A "model" of ethnic peacefulness during the Balkan wars of the 1990s, Bulgaria has fallen into decline with the economic effects of its EU entry, and convenient scapegoats are found among suspected "terrorists" in the country's Turkish (Muslim) population, as a bomb threat disturbs the peace of a mosque.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41607  

3/15/08

Issue whether insurgents in Somalia are freedom fighters or terrorists is raised in Norway as three Somalias are accused of terrorism for sending funds to Somalia.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=41603

3/11/08

The fear factor in presidential politics: Whose ox is gored?  In its issue dated 3/24/08, Nation magazine editors do two things: (a) in an editorial they, avowed supporters of Barak Obama, condemn Hillary Clinton for her "scorched earth tactics" of raising fears about Obama's capacity to deal with natural security emergencies; and (b) publish an article titled "Hothead McCain" that uses interviews with Republican insiders to characterize McCain as more dangerous than Bush in his proclivity to wage war on any pretext and (in the print version of the same issue) accompanying the article with a cartoonized version of McCain as a lunatic warrior.  The Clinton condemnation:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/editors

HOTHEAD MCCAIN

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080324/dreyfuss  

3/7/08

A terrorist attack and a cancelled U.S. presidential election?  Betsy Hartmann raises the spectre of this possibility, as one of the "scenarios" under which an election cancellation could occur after an attack that would activate an existing emergency plan.  Following Thursday morning's alarming small-bore IED explosion at the military recruiting station at Times Square, many people weigh in on this issue on the "comments" section of a Common Dreams article.  Many of these commentators express skepticism about whether "they" would resort to the cancellation of an election, since the same "they" already control the outcome of the election and a cancellation would be counter-productive to that control.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/06/7525/

2/15/08

"Which attack would they have hoped we wouldn't have prevented?" asks President Bush in a BBC interview in which he implicitly justifies torture interrogation techniques as having saved lives in London's July 7 bomb attacks.  Meanwhile at home, he threatens to veto a congressional bill allowing waterboarding, even as an official of his own Justice Department admits that it is illegal.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/feb/15/terrorism.usa1 

2/14/08

Harvard Crimson opinion: World jihadists don't envy us for our freedoms, they hate us for our interventions:   Writer cites results of studies indicating that terrorist attacks did not come from most impoverished countries or individuals, and that there was a spike in jihadist attacks following the Iraqi invasion.  The lesson not learned by American policy makers is that the prediction has come fully true uttered by Egypt's Mubarak at the time of that invasion: "by killing one bin Laden, you'll create a hundred bin Ladens."

http://www.thecrimson.com/article.aspx?ref=521852  

2/13/08

AT&T buys itself some immunity in latest action of Senate on intelligence surveillance:. Senate passes, 68-29, a White House-pushed measure that provides legal immunity for telecommunication firms now being sued for cooperating with illegal government wire-tap operations. Though most Democrats opposed, 19 (including Florida's Bill Nelson) supported it, including Jay Rockefeller who recently got a $42,000 campaign contribution from A.T.&T. McCain voted for, Clinton and Obama missed vote, too busy campaigning.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/13/us/13fisa.html?th&emc=th

The Vote:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=110&session=2&vote=00020

2/12/08

Politicizing the war on terror: Round X.  For the last year of his presidency, President Bush seems determined to push his agenda of "toughness" on terrorism, highlighted now with the capital crimes charges against 6 long-term detainees at Quantanamo for alleged involvement in the 9/11 incident.  Unrepentant and undaunted by charges of his own administration's incompetence in allowing the incident to happen and then escalating a response into a bungled war, the President seems to adopting again his bellicose "bring it on" attitude toward the Iraqi insurgency, indeed seems to be trying to make political capital for the next (Republican) occupant of the White House, the most likely one of whom (McCain), though a past avowed critic of torture methods, can gain credentials of his own "toughness" by supporting the very "harsh" interrogation methods the details of which will no doubt come out in the course of the trials. Democrats are sputtering about "politicization," but will have their own "toughness" credentials threatened if they protest too much.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/washington/12assess.html?th&emc=th

2/6/08

Justice Department tries to cover CIA's involvement with blanket of "national security"."  Agency intervenes in an ACLU suit against Boeing Corporation subsidiary for alleged involvement with the Company in its "rendition flights" that allowed terrorist suspects to be interrogated in other countries.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/05/AR2008020502983_pf.html  

2/4/08

New book on 9/11 panel alleges that executive director Philip Zelikow may have "skewed" the report toward exoneration of his friends in Bush administration.

http://www.gainesvillesun.com/article/20080204/NEWS/802040320/1082  

2/1/08

Reflecting uncertainty from official reports on the matter, BBC says a top al-Qaeda operative was "killed" in Pakistan, presumably from a U.S. drone bomber.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7220823.stm

1/31/08

Denmark's foreign minister demands explanation from U.S. of why CIA used Greenland as re-fuelling top on international terrorist rendition flights without Danish approval.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/105365.html

1/24/08

U.S.military assistance to Pakistan to shore up the "stability" of that country?:   Commander of U.S. Central (Asia) Command makes an unusually explicit statement of U.S. plans to give Pakistan help in countering the "instability" arising from an internal Muslim insurgency.  No silly prattle about spreading "democracy" here, just an in-your-face statement that the U.S. will support any government at any level of democracy so long as it has decent credentials of being an ally in the "war on terrorism."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080124/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/us_afghanistan_pakistan_8

1/24/08

Recent evidence suggests a link between the U.S. and Thailand in pre- and post-9/11 cooperation on anti-terrorist intelligence, possible use of a Thai facility for torture interrogations, and U.S. support of anti-Muslim insurgency operations of Thai military.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JA25Ae01.html  

1/22/08

Congress fusses, travellers sit in traffic backups and DHS persists in reqiring passport identification and other documents at Canadian border:   Michael Chertoff defies Congress by implementing on January 31 tightened security practices that Congress had required to be delayed until 2009; trade and travel backlogs are cited as results.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/21/AR2008012101961.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

1/22/08

Canadian government apologizes for inclusion on a "torture watch list" of two of its closest allies, the U.S.A. and Israel.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7198435.stm

1/17/08

Canadian government puts Guantanamo prison on "torture watch list."

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080116/khadr_torture_080116/20080116  

1/12/08

As world "celebrates" 6th year of Guantanamo...  Los Angeles woman who advocates for homeless describes her experience with an overnight stay in an LA jail and wonders how it would be possible for a prisoner like Jose Padilla, who was imprisoned without charges for 3 1/2 years, to be "competent" to stand trial after the agony of those years.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/11/6315/  

1/3/08

The floundering of "material support" prosecutions in anti-terrorism cases: .   A mistrial for the Liberty 7 in Miami, deadlocks and acquittals of defendants from a Muslim charity in Texas after years of legal persecution...these end-of-2007 failures highlight the reluctance of jurors to convict on the basis of prosecutions that provide only tenuous links between defendants' actions and specific terrorist acts.  To the extent these prosecutions are "effective," they seem to be most effective in terrorizing any would-be contributors to Muslim charities.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40662  

12/21/07

"They're giving out punishment to a man they couldn't convict":"  So says a  lawyer for Florida professor Sami Al-Arian who was exonerated of perjury charges yet still remains imprisoned nearly 5 years after his arrest which AG John Ashcroft described as a landmark event in the "Justice" Department's war on terrorism.

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=40560  

12/21/07

Australian government finally allows cleared terrorist suspect Mohamed Haneef to resume his visa allowing him to work as a doctor in the country.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22958472-2,00.html  

12/21/07

Nightmare not yet over for one of Liberty 7 man so far acquitted in Miami's "homegrown terrorism" trial: a legal Haitian immigrant being held for deportation on vaguely specified grounds.

http://www.miamiherald.com/top_stories/story/352667.html  

12/12/07

Alla visited a top Al Qaeda operative's cell and told him to co-operate with U.S. interragators:   So says a former CIA operative, noting that the deity's intervention and the detainee's cooperation were secured a day after he was water-boarded, a procedure that the agent claims was used with full approval of highest government levels, including the White House.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/284485

12/5/07

Key decisions concerning the U.S. prosecution of the "war on terror" loom before the Supreme Court: Two cases challenge the suspension of habeas corpus rights for detainees held as "enemy combatants."  Depending on the way they are decided, the government may have to appear in court to air its interrogation methods...or immediately release the detainees.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1205/p01s02-usju.html

12/4/07

Pakistani correspondent says government agents are in Washington trying to scare U.S. into supporting Musharaff regime by raising the spectre of Islamic extremist capture of Pakistani nuclear weapons.

http://www.dawn.com/2007/12/04/top9.htm  

12/2/07

Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act is described as a "tutorial in Orwellian newsspeak":NEWSSPEAK."  An act passed by the House and now being considered in the Senate establishes a Commission to make recommendations for legislation to combat terrorism.  One writer sees in the act's wording the "sheer cloudy vagueness" that Orwell condemned as the language by which authoritarians consolidate their political control. The opening phrase of the act, saying it is enacted "for other purposes," should raise alarms for civil libertarians, as the vagueness of those "purposes" might mask the intention of its users to extend the concept of "terrorism" to cover any dissent against government policies.  This is especially the case since a prime sponsor of the legislation, Jane Harman, has a long history of association with the Rand Corporation, one of whose reports notoriously equated the dangers of dissent against capitalism with the dangers from al-Qaeda.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/01/5551/

12/1/07

What's the Violent Radicalizationand Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act of 2007?  It's a measure passed by the House on a 404-6 vote establishing a commission responsible for promoting anti-terrorism action.  A critic says the measure is at the same time redundant, since such crimes are already outlawed, and dangerous, since it looks to the diminishment of rights to dissent.  One of the 6 voting against was Dennis Kucinich, the "fringe" Democratic candidate for President.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/15/30/5526/

THE VOTE:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll993.xml

11/24/07

New question to be asked by U.S. firefighters:  Not "are there any kids in the house," but "are there any terrorists here?"  Associated Press reports that many U.S. cities are training their firefighters to look for terrorist activity at fire scenes and, since they enter premises under emergency conditions, theirs' many be the ultimate in "warrantless searches."

http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/11/24/america/NA-GEN-US-Firefighters-Terrorists.php

11/13/07

Australian prosecutors were ordered to "lay as many charges as possible" to test out an anti-terrorism law:.  This admission comes as an Australian court dismisses charges against a Sydney medical student arrested on terrorist charges in 2004.  Court now accuses the government of "false imprisonment" in the case.

http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22747968-2,00.html  

11/13/07

Amnesty International denounces NATO countries' transfer of detainees to Afghan prisons, where it says they are tortured.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7091928.stm

11/11/07

Jim Lobe: the Bush "war on terror" may be going a bit better in Iraq, but it is increasingly failing in "peripheral" areas like Pakistan, Turkey and the Horn of
Africa.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IK10Ak04.html  

11/4/07

Close Guantanamo? Now there's a "radical" alternative.:.  Bush administration considering the granting of detainees some legal rights that might grant many detainees the opportunity to be transferred to the mainland U.S. legal system where they would supposedly be granted more "protection" while in custody.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/04/us/nationalspecial3/04gitmo.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin  

10/24/07

Is Guantanamo moving to London?  UK may be taking a play-book from U.S. "war on terror" by quietly setting up two prisons specifically for "foreign" prisoners, with special procedures for their treatment pending actions to deport them. (Cite has numerous links to articles about problems of the prison service in Britain).

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/7059283.stm  

10/24/07

U.S. envoy to Japan urges the country not to "opt out of the war on terrorism" by refusing to support a U.S. naval mission in the Far East.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-10-24T092058Z_01_T74401_RTRUKOC_0_US-JAPAN-AFGHAN.xml  

10/18/07

Smuggled underwear stymies Guantanamo investigators, as prison officials worry that the material in briefs and speedo bathing suits may be used for fashioning nooses, a concern raised by the fact that 4 inmates have hung themselves in recent months.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2007-10-18T100858Z_01_NASUA1701_RTRUKOC_0_US-BG-GUANTANAMO-UNDERWEAR.xml&pageNumber=0&imageid=&cap=&sz=13&WTModLoc=NewsArt-C1-ArticlePage2  

10/18/07

Senate Democrats and Republicans agree on legislation that would provide legal immunity for telecommunications firms that provide information about their customers to government surveillance programs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/17/AR2007101702438.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

10/9/07

"Nervous"emocrats in Congress appear ready to yield to Bush on wiretap powers: A few months after vowing to "roll back" surveillance techniques used in the "war on terror," many Democrats are now described as nervous that they will thought of as "soft on terror" and are preparing their own legislation to extend the life of those techniques.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/09/washington/09nsa.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

10/5/07

Justice Department refuses to turn over documents with legal opinions authorizing coercive CIA interrorgation techniques:   Justice stands by its official position that "torture is abhorrent" and a spokeswoman says "we don't do torture."  Do "we"? Depends on what the meaning of is is.  The opinions apparently say that practices like simulated drownings are not torture and therefore can be "done."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/10/04/AR2007100400979.html?wpisrc=newsletter  

10/4/07

Homeland Security getting set to undertake large terrorism drill called "Topoff":  Simulated dirty bombs will be detonated in Portland OR, Phoenix and Guam in a periodic drill mandated by Congress.  Members of that body are wondering why there is still no "after action report" from the last such exercise, conducted in April, 2005.  Critics note that the "lessons" of the 2005 drill were apparently not available to officials in dealing with New Orleans hurricane in August, 2005.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-10-03-terror-exercise_N.htm

9/15/07

Nebojsa Malic, a U.S. refugee from Bosnia, continues his writings about a jihadist element in Bosnia, encouraged by an Islamist regime in that country with the complicity of both the Clinton and Bush administrations and of all mainstream media, which allowed the jihadist build-up in that country to occur as it did in Afghanistan, as the "evil Serbs" of Yugoslavia were made the equivalent of the "evil Reds" of Russia.  This blind eye to Bosnia-based radicalism extended to failures to see the Bosnian connections of both the New Jersey-based plotters and the Valentine's Day massacre in a Salt Lake City shopping mall

http://www.antiwar.com/malic/?articleid=11617

9/7/07

Osama Bin Laden gets within yards of George Bush at APEC meeting in Sydney. (Actually it was a costumed member of an Australian TV comedy show team, whose members were arrested for having committed a "dangerous stunt.")

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6982897.stm  

9/5/07

Arrest of 8 men in Copenhagen Denmark is said to have prevented a terrorist attack there.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/103353.html  

9/4/07

As 9/11 approaches, is it possible that a government-sponsored false flag act of terrorism will be used to provide a pretext to invade Iran?  It may sound far-fetched, but there are plenty of instances in the history of the U.S. and other countries and numerous warnings from people savvy about clandestine operations that are detailed in this richly-linked article.

http://www.wanttoknow.info/falseflag

8/23/07

A British expatriate artist returns from Turkey to London to find the city awash in anti-terrorist signs and PA announcements in the Underground, and surveillance cameras, including drones in flight, in numbers that come out to 1 for every 14 people.

http://www.counterpunch.org/dickinson08222007.html

8/22/07

Foreign Policy article asserting that the "war on terrorism" is being lost spurs calls for changes in anti-terror strategy.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0822/p03s03-usmi.html

8/22/07

They went to a meeting of social activists without their cellphones.  On the basis of this and some other equally dubious grounds of suspicion, Berlin police arrest two German sociologists for alleged "terrorist" activities or intentions.

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/richard_sennett_and_saskia_sassen/2007/08/the_war_on_shapeless_terror.html

8/18/07

Federal judge ;laments that "prosecutors seem to have conspiracy on their owrd processors as count 1“ and the just-concluded Padilla trial seems to show they clicked their "count 1" button with a vengeance.  The only "overt act" proven was the defendant's filling out of an application to attend a 2000 Al-Qaeda training camp.  The case actually represented a "new model" for conspiracy anti-terrorism cases, as the court recognized the legitimacy of "preventive detention" for a criminal act that might have been committed, and the exclusion of legal representation for the defendant on grounds that it might interfere with the interrogation process.  Meaty issues for a Supreme Court review; don't hold your breath on the outcome. Hamdan was then (O'Connor), Padilla is now (Alito).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/18/us/nationalspecial3/18legal.html?hp

8/17/07

Jose Padilla has been found guilty of terrorism charges and may face "life" imprisonment:  Amy Goodman asserts, based on extended interview with a forensic psychiatrist, that Padilla's life has effectively ended by the conditions of his torture incarceration that have driven him insane.

http://www.alternet.org/story/59958/

8/16/07

Iran denounces U.S. plan to designate its Army a "terrorist group;"  European Union will not join any such U.S. action.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/6949902.stm

8/15/07

Ivan Eland: In American politics since 9/11, nothing succeeds like failure:.  "Blunders" in international relations like the invasion of Iraq and "travesties" in domestic civil rights like government intrusion on citizen privacy are actually rewarded by the political establishment as both parties, while some members decry these "failures," effectively ratify them lest they lose political support by appearing too "soft" on terrorism

http://www.antiwar.com/eland/?articleid=11447

8/13/07

Psychiatrists say that Jose Padilla's mental condition sharply deteriorated under harsh conditions of his incarceration as an enemy combatant.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0813/p01s03-usju.html  

8/11/07

New release of uncensored documents on Maher Arar case show the Canadian was deported for torture rendition to Jordan with the collaboration of intelligence agencies in both Canada and the U.S.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/081007B.shtml  

8/8/07

Canadian judge orders Attorney General to release uncensored documents which may throw much light on the government's controversial arrest and prosecution of Maher Aran.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070807.woconnor0807/BNStory/National/home

8/5/07

"Protecting America is our most solemn obligation" says President Bush as he receives a congressional bill allowing for warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens.  House passes the bill 227-183 with 41 Democrats joining 186 Republicans in its support.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20126385/

The vote:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2007/roll836.xml  

7/29/07

Australian police defend themselves for responsibility in abortive prosecution of accused terrorist Mohammed Haneef, saying their actions were based on "mistaken" information from British police.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6920956.stm  

7/19/07

Pakistan's contribution to the "war on terror" appears to be the arrest and "disappearance" of men whose offense seems to be "living while religious."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/19/world/asia/19missing.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin  

7/18/07

Australian doctor on trial in India for involvement in UK terrorist plot denies involvement, says he tried unsuccessfully to contact British police before his arrest.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/FullcoverageStoryPage.aspx?id=5e1bb9c2-04c3-4ecb-af34-62ef46b89c5findiandocsinukterrorplot  

7/12/07

UK woman marries man she claims to be the son of Osama bin Laden, and says she experiences travel difficulties because her name in bin Laden.

http://www.thestar.com/News/article/235103

7/11/07

"9/11 changed everything": Paul Campos notes that those who terrorize Americans about terrorism use the more or less foiled terrorist plots in the U.S. and Britain to propagate nonsense about our "vulnerability" to terrorist attacks, when in fact they demonstrate just how "pathetic" and non-threatening those terrorist wannabes actually are.

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/opinion_columnists/article/0,2777,DRMN_23972_5622100,00.html

7/11/07

New York City expected to install a London-style system of extensive camera surveillance by the end of this year.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0711/p01s04-ussc.html  

7/10/07

What the TSA in America learn from UK's latest round of "terrorist plots"?: Apparently, not much where airport security is concerned.  To help improve the "bottom line" of airlines' profits by luring business travelers fed up with security check delays back to flying the protected skies, U.S. airports are developing "registered traveller" systems that allow pre-screened travellers to pass through security check points without the usual inspections.  This system assumes that terrorists would not pass the required security check but, considering the prominence of NHS personnel in the UK "plot," it is entirely possible that would-be terrorists in "sleeper cells" could obtain the necessary background clearance to sail through the checkpoints as registered travellers.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0710/p02s01-usgn.html  

7/9/07

Without citing any specific threats, Australian PM Howard warns Australians against travel to Indonesia because of likelihood of terrorist attacks.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/detailtoplatest.asp?fileid=20070709133916&irec=0  

7/7/07

"Before the passage of this law, somebody like me could take a trip to the Caribbean and on the strength of my Staten Island accentand my golds Gym card talk my back into the United States": says the Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs.  With the new system of requiring passports for travellers returning from Mexico, Canada and the Caribbean, there is some doubt whether "this law" has actually resulted in improved security from terrorists entering the country.  Backlog of passport applications and lack of effective data-sharing of information on passport-holders are among the problems in creating such a secure situation, as it's yet to be proven that "talking your way" through immigration stations is inferior to the new system.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0706/p02s01-usgn.html  

7/5/07

British PM Gordon Brown, in aftermath of London and Glasgow incidents, wants an examination of how foreign doctors are recruited to the country.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=PU13FHK5CMDU3QFIQMGSFF4AVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/07/05/nterror105.xml  

7/3/07

U.S. intelligence officials apparently had access to warning of a terrorism "spectacular" similar to what happened in Glasgow but failed to pass it along to Scottish officials.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XVVOMXR2KZXKBQFIQMFSFFOAVCBQ0IV0?xml=/news/2007/07/02/nterror1102.xml

7/2/07

British officials continue to "see" an Al Qaeda link to bomb plots in London and Glasgow: However, they have yet to produce any evidence of this "link" as the identities of arrested suspects remain unclear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/02/world/europe/02britain.html?pagewanted=1

7/1/07

High school student, one of 140 who went to the White House to receive a Presidential Scholarship award, hands President Bush a letter signed by 40 of the Scholars decrying the use of torture in the "war on terrorism."  Bush read the letter and said, "We agree. America doesn't torture people."  (We out-source it)

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/06/30/presidential_scholar_confronts_the_president/

6/30/07

In the latest "foiled" terrorist plot in London's Haymarket, two cars wired for explosion are found in two separate locations.  There have been no arrests or identified suspects, but the police surmise that it may have been an al Qaeda operation, some of whose (alleged) other operations used such "linked" simultaneous explosions in different places.  Also, the New York Times reports the ominous observation that a videotaped image of a man seen leaving one of the cars "resembles" a suspect arrested and later released in another alleged plot and who has since "disappeared." Does the word "Haymarket" mean anything to anyone from the annals of phony bomb plots?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/30/world/europe/30britain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

6/29/07

Refugees from Myanmar in Thailand are among the victims of an expansion of U.S. definition of "terrorist" organizations that hampers the immigration prospects of many people whose home-country "terrorism" is compared with that of American patriots.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/IF30Ae01.html

6/21/07

With the FBI's focus on investigation of terrorism cases, a 30% drop is noted in investigations of other types of crime.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0621/p01s02-usju.html

6/20/07

Canadian leaders debate whether a video showing a "graduation" ceremony at a Taliban school of jihadists accurately reflects a likely targeting of jihadists for Canada.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=042d1ff1-2524-4870-9cf2-cd340728d3ba  

6/18/07

Profiling of Muslim "terrorists" in the US prison system.  In a story uncovered by Gainesville's "own" Jennifer Van Bergen, a special prisons unit at Terre Haute Indiana was set up in December 2006 which contained stringent restrictions on outside communication of the prisoners, a change instituted without public comment in violation of federal law.  A Syracuse oncologist, Rafil Dhafir, active in humanitarian aid in the Middle East, is among those so held, as are the "Lackwanna Six" arrested for supposed attendance at a terrorist training camp in Afghanistan

http://www.countercurrents.org/hughes180607.htm

For Van Bergen's Feb. '07 story on the subject, see:

http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/Documents_show_new_secretive_new_US_0216.html

6/17/07

South Asian commentator returns to Pakistan and finds many young men eager to jihad in Afghanistan, and many Pakistani authorities willing to tolerate or encourage their plans.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IF16Df01.html  

6/13/07

So what's happening with those four "terrorist plotters" against the JFK airport? A Brooklyn man is in U.S.custody.  Three of them, citizens of Trinidad, are in custody in Port of Spain, awaiting results of a proceeding for extradition to U.S.  A Trinidad judge denies bail for the three, after their lawyer presents evidence of their good community standing, testimonials of their innocence, and their upright appearances.  In turning them down, judge says appearances can deceive

http://www.newsday.co.tt/news/0,58638.html    

6/12/07

"Military detention of Al-Marri must cease" is a Virginia federal appeals court's ringing rebuke of the U.S. policy of indefinite detention as a terrorist suspect without charges being filed.  Court says integrity of U.S. Consitution requires that such detainees be charged and tried or released.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/12/washington/12combatant.html?th&emc=th

6/8/07

Evil ate at table eight.  One of the screaming headlines in New York City tabloids following the FBI's action to "thwart" still another terrorist plot, this one directed at JFK airport.  The headline, based on an interview of a waitresses who had served one of the plotters, matches the alarmist rhetoric of the prosecutor who described a plot of "unthinkable" and "unfathomable" consequences. As with such earlier plots as those resulting in arrests in Miami and New Jersey, this one's "mastermind" was an elderly and sometimes homeless man of questionable mental stability, and the case rested on testimony of an unnamed person called "the source," almost surely an FBI informant and agent provacateur. The New York Times found this story "fit to print" only on its Metro page, and public skepticism about the plot leads a writer to the ominous fear that the Bush administration may need to encourage or ignore some more drastic incident to divert public attention from its failures.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5904  

6/8/07

Backup on processing of passport applications lead to change in Federal policy.  In its zeal to "protect our borders" against terrorists, U.S. in January began requiring passports for U.S. citizens returning from trips to Mexico and Caribbean.  With delays in application processing threatening the vacation plans of those who can afford such vacations, government is now allowing waiver of actual passport if traveller shows a receipt that he/she has applied for a passport. So much for passport "screening" of security dangers.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-te.passport08jun08,0,1720407.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines  

6/6/07

Last week's U.S. air strike inside Somalia goes largely uncriticized by bush's war critics.  While Democratic and Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress criticize Bush for his "handling" of the Iraqi War, they generally ignore the context of such military action: the enabling of actions at the President's discretion to carry out campaigns in the "war on terror" without explicit congressional approval...the ultimate "blank check" for militarism.

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?pid=201802  

6/6/07

U.K's proposed new counter-terrorism law comes under fire for its expansion of police powers to stop and question, a measure that critics say will make the law a "recruiting Sergeant for terrorism."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2096509,00.html  

6/5/07

How did the United States come to be so hated?  Gore Vidal joins a panel of academics in an Independent Institute discussion of this question...an hour and a half laced with humor and profundity about the "terrorist" crisis of our time; a video of the event.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article17828.htm

6/5/07

Hamdan II ruling grounds Guantanamo trials again.  Ruling by judge results in dropping of charges against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose case had earlier resulted in alteration of trials of accused terrorists. Charges also dropped against man who was 15 when criminal act allegedly occurred.  Future of trials now very much in doubt, as no suspects have yet been brought successfully to trial, though they may still be detained indefinitely.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N04481007.htm

6/3/07

A terrorist action that "could have happened" is once again broken up.  FBI arrests 4 men who allegedly planned to blow up fuel facilities at JFK airport in NYC.  Like the New Jersey plotters, they had neither equipment or money to carry out their planes, but one official said they were engaged in actions that were a "bit further along" toward a realized terrorist act than in the case of the New Jersey arrestees.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/nyregion/03plot.html?ex=1338523200&en=9522fc045e7db3b3&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss  

6/3/07

Can the acts of a child of 15 result in war crimes prosecution?  A pending case before the Guantanamo tribunal may help answer this question.  One jurist argues that children must be treated as the victims and not the perpetrators of war crimes, with "adult influences" perhaps the only actionable behaviors.  (Who gave the kid the gun?)

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/us/03gitmo.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=th

5/31/07

"Reverse engineering" said to have converted survival trainig for US troops into a model for torture of detainees.  Pentagon IG report notes that a program, advised and supervised by psychologists, to prepare troops for enemy torture techniques like water boarding were easily converted into the use of such techniques against  "enemies" in the "war on terror."

http://www.counterpunch.org/soldz05292007.html

5/29/07

Alabama Department of Homeland Security lists anti-war activists, environmentalists, animal rights activists and opponents of abortion as among the groups that should be suspected of terrorist intentions.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070527/ap_on_re_us/web_site_terror;_ylt=Amah4aApKr99AAqJ2VjXidXMWM0F

5/18/07

Did the US even try to capture bin Laden at Tora Bora?  Not according to the chief CIA field commander at the time.  In a new book, he says he made repeated and rejected efforts to initiative a capture that could have been made.

http://www.antiwar.com/sperry/?articleid=10981  

5/18/07

Oregon prosecutors are seeking "terrorism enhancements" to sentences of environmental activists convicted in series of attacks on targets of environmental condemnation.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0518/p02s01-ussc.html   

5/18/07

World Tamil Movement head says in Montreal that he admires the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka as "freedom fighters," but denies that his organization has sent them money to support terrorist activities.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=9ea1602e-0d56-4448-96ee-7f80df932e56  

5/12/07

FBI Director Robert Mueller says that, increasingly, terrorist plot are "home grown," with plotters having little or no connection to al-Qaeda.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/9a98d8a2-fe57-11db-bdc7-000b5df10621,dwp_uuid=fc3334c0-2f7a-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html

5/12/07

U.S. and  European governments are negotiating for exchange of passenger information in connection with terrorist investigations.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070512/ap_on_re_eu/italy_us_terrorism;_ylt=AticLBsOLH0duI3U8qzavBCs0NUE  

5/8/07

As Bush administration insists on its anti-missile shield emplacements in Europe, security experts note that the new "rules of engagement" in nuclear war may have to account for threats coming from dispersed elements not necessarily controlled by "rogue governments."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/08/washington/08nuke.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

5/4/07

A Jihadists dead friends are the lucky ones.  Jarqa Jordan is a center of development of Sunni jihadist action in Iraq, as young men recruit one another and are encouraged by imams to develop an implacable hatred of both Americans and Shiites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/04/world/middleeast/04bombers.html?th&emc=th

5/2/07

Delaware County Community College, in suburban Philadelphia, is re-opened after being closed down for a day following e-mailed terrorist threats.

http://www.philly.com/inquirer/local/20070502_Delco_college_to_reopen.html

4/30/07

Five are convicted in fertiliser bomb plot in UK, in a year-long trial in which prosecution did not mention possible connections of same suspects to the July 7 train station bombing in London.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/6195914.stm  

4/28/07

Another terrorist "mastermind" arrested in Iraq.  This one as the ringleader of the 7/7 suicide bombing in London.  The details of this arrest are murky, as usual.  The al-Queda associate. formerly an officer in Saddam Hussein's army,  is said to have been detained last year and kept in "spook" CIA detention facilities for many months.  With his current arrest he is whisked off to the "high-value detainee center" in Guantanamo where British officials may not have access to interrogating him since the UK government is advocating for the closing of that center.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1717571.ece

4/27/07

British anti-terrorism court rules that government cannot deport 2 accused Libyan terrorists to their home country because of likely torture there; and the 2 will be released on bail in the next few days.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=XR44JDKJCKVPFQFIQMFCFFWAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2007/04/27/nlibya127.xml

4/23/07

Airline industry in Canada is pushing for installation of "biometric scans" of passengers to facilitate their movement through security checkpoints.

http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/story.html?id=5dc80490-27a0-46bb-905d-750da2817d39  

4/23/07

According to series of "alerts" from FalseFlagNews, massive counter-terrorism drills will begin today with the detonation of a nuclear device off the Virginia coast, another such drill to follow in May in Indiana.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyyOWBBvKj8

4/22/07

Trial of four men arrested last year in Denmark on charges of planning a terrorist incident in Europe is stymied by the suspected mental illness of the government's prime witness.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/101380.html  

4/16/07

As Jose Padilla terrorism trial begins today, prosecutors are facing the exclusion of much of their "evidence" which is based on coerced statements of the defendant.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0416/p01s03-usju.html

4/9/07

Selective outrage about torture.  David Lindorff notes that public outrage in Britain and the U.S. over the treatment of British captives in Iran may be appropriate, but their treatment in captivity pales before the treatment of terrorist suspects in Guantanamo and other U.S. security detention facilities...and where has been the media and popular outrage there? (But then, the men of Guantanamo were the "worst of the worst" while the Brits in Iran were the pride of the Royal Navy.)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/08/379/  

4/8/07

Ffrom the persecution of Sami al-Arian to censorship of school plays; there's a concerted effort in the U.S. to cast a pall over free speech about the realities of the Middle East.

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/07/370/  

4/8/07

Despite it own efforts to push sanctions against North Korea for its military activities, U.S. tacitly agrees to a deal in which Ethiopia, which is fighting "Islamic terrorism" in Somalia, obtained weapons from North Korea.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/08/world/africa/08ethiopia.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

4/6/07

"Worst of the worst" is about to walk on a plea deal: "Conviction" of Australian David Hicks with additional 9 months to serve in Australia demonstrates the total bankruptcy of the Military Tribunal established by the U.S. to try terrorism suspects in Guantanamo.  Terms of the "deal" include a gag order on his ability for a year to speak to the media; and a statement that his treatment in detention was "not illegal" (Since the U.S. government declared that torture methods if not "life-threatening" were legal, this is not a denial of abuse, which he has claimed to have suffered.)

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/05/327/

4/4/07

Guantanamo in the Horn of Africa.  U.S. intelligence agencies are working at Ethiopian detention facilities to identify al-Qaida terrorists who may have been swept up in Ethiopia's operations against an Islamist insurgency in Somalia as well as one in Kenya and other places from which suspects have been "out-sourced."  Human rights agencies have condemned the Guantanamo-like practices of torture and detention without legal assistance or formal charges having been made.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17935971/  

4/2/07

US military tribunal finally convicts one of the "worst of the worst" at Guantanamo:.  And it turns out to be David Hicks, a hapless adventurer whose "trial" turned out to be a trial without defense counsel, one of whom was barred because he refused to abide by court "rules" that had not yet been promulgated; and who got a 9-month sentence that he will serve in his native Australia (or not).

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/04/01/235/

4/1/07

British resident released from Guantanamo says his confinement was "profoundly difficult" to endure.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070401/ap_on_re_eu/britain_guantanamo;_ylt=AqOpj_iLsAaFWzWkGzrGOsZw24cA  

4/1/07

Opposition political leader in Australia claims that government arranged the "timing" of the conviction of David Hicks on terrorist charges to be delayed until after national elections.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/liberals-sought-hicks-gag-order-brown/2007/04/01/1175366067833.html  

3/31/07

On apologies, confessions, and guilty pleas: Three cases  

ONE: Second British Marine apologizes on Iranian TV for participation in UK naval incursion in Iranian waters, and British government denounces the broadcast as "blatant propaganda."

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-03-30-british-iran_N.htm 

TWO:  Saudi Arabian who confessed to terrorist acts says he made up his story to escape the torture of his U.S. interrogators, and no U.S. official has yet referred to terrorist confessions as "blatant propaganda."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070331/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/guantanamo_terror_hearing;_ylt=AkZjAntbl1FazUGGH0CY8a5I2ocA

THREE:  Australian David Hicks, after 5 years of incarceration without officially being charged with terrorist acts, finally comes to trial and pleads guilty to one charge, apparently hoping thereby to return to Australia on a reduced sentence, and Australian PM John Howard says the plea "vindicates" his government's claim that Hicks is a "dangerous terrorist."

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/local/17003089.htm  

3/31/07

As part of the "plea deal" by which Australian David Hicks was sentenced to a 9-month jail term to be served in Australia, he renounces his earlier claims that he had been tortured while in custody, an agreement condemned by human rights organizations as indication of "cover up" in the treatment of detainees.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6512945.stm

3/27/07

"Socially responsible" investing can cut two ways.  People hoping their investment portfolios will promote social causes are accustomed to express their "responsibility" by investing in environmentally-friendly companies or by "divestment" in countries with alleged human rights violations like Israel or South Africa.  In an evolving new form, a movement is developing to discourage investment in those countries like Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria which the U.S. government designates as "terror-supporting" states.  For its part, the government itself discourages the movement which it sees as interference with efforts to maintain "relations" with those countries (some of them).

http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0326/p01s02-usec.html?page=1

3/26/07

Jose Padilla is imprisoned for years on vaguely defined "support for terrorism" charges, while the Chiquita Banana company, a major funder of a right-wing para-military group in Colombia that has been on the U.S. "foreign terrrorist group" list since 2001, gets off with a tiny fine and its executives are protected from extradition to Colombia.  The company claims the funding was "protection" money for the safety of its employees, but the history of the funding indicates it was to finance the extermination of leftist insurgents in the country who were hostile to the company's operations.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/chiq-m24.shtml  

3/23/07

Three arrested in London under suspicion of involvement in July 2005 terror attacks, a crime for which no one has yet been charged.

http://sg.news.yahoo.com/070323/1/47gk3.html

3/19/07

Wagging the dog (again):.  Timing of the Pentagon's release last week of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's "confession" of terrorist crimes is suspected of being motivated by Bush administration's desire to divert public attention from the Alberto Gonzales "scandal."

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=VAN20070318&articleId=5107  

3/17/07

He told the truth, but how was the truth obtained?  So say two Senators---Levin (D) and Graham (R)---in calling for investigations of terrorist suspect Khalid Sheik Mohammed's charges that he and his family were tortured during his four years of incarceration.  At the same time the Senators join Secretary of Defense Gates in their confidence that Mohammed had indeed committed the string of at least 30 terrorist actions that he confessed to planning or helping to execute.  Is anybody doing any forensics investigation on the evidence of his actual involvement in these events? (Where was Mohammed on the night of xx, etc.?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/16/AR2007031602033.html?referrer=email

3/17/07

Terrorist alert (but don't be alarmed): FBI warns that some members of "extremist groups" are signing up to drive school buses.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2007-03-16-school-bus-extremists_N.htm    

3/16/07

Wide-ranging admissions of terror plot involvements by Khalid Shaikh Mohammed may complicate the prosecution of other accused terrorists.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/us/16legal.html?th&emc=th

3/16/07

Suspects in Orlando International Airport security breach are painted in broadly different strokes by police and by their associates.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/orl-gunrunner16x07mar16,0,4999103.story?coll=orl-news-headlines  

3/15/07

One confession to fit all terrorist crimes: The making of a scapegoat.   Khalid Shaikh Mohammed is said to have confessed to a military tribunal that he was responsible from "A to Z" for the terrorist attacks of 9/11; as well as a string of attacks including the earlier attack on the WTC, Madrid and London bombings and even several of the "abortive" bomb plots that emerged post-9/11, the anthrax attacks, the killing of Daniel Perlman  and an effort to assassinate Clinton in the Philippines in 1994. The good news: he only "shared" responsibility for attack on the Pope in 1995.  Did we mention:  Mohammed has been isolated in the CIA secret security prison system since March 1, 2003, and has been noted by his captors as subject to have "extravagant ambitions"?

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/15/us/15gitmo.html?th&emc=th  

3/12/07

Woes of a terrorist profiler.  European Union officials are noting that it is more difficult to profile terrorists when the demographic profile of the "typical" terrorist is changing.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/11/AR2007031101618.html?referrer=email

3/11/07

Getting tough on terrorism, Turkish-style:.  As Turkey's national elections approach, its political leaders are making threats to deal with Kurdish rebels within the country by making military incursions into their alleged hide-outs in the Kurdish section of Iraq.

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L10593224.htm  

3/10/07

"If the Justice Department is going to enforce the law, it must follow it as well ".  A Republican congressman expresses outrage at report of the Justice Department's Inspector General of numerous FBI violations of the Patriot Act in its issuance of "national security  letters" to terrorism suspects. Both AG Gonzales and FBI Director Mueller apologize and promise "accountability."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070310/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/national_security_letters

3/9/07

Jose Padilla is ruled to be "competent" to stand trial on terrorism charges; But is the government competent to conduct a prosecution?   Elaine Cassel reviews the tortured history of the country's most notorious effort to try a terrorist suspect.

http://counterpunch.org/cassel03082007.html 

3/8/07

Security at Orlando airport is increased concern as employees are charged with carrying a bag of weapons aboard a flight.

http://www.miamiherald.com/416/story/35128.html

3/7/07

Canadian government already thinking seriously about anti-terrorist security precautions at 2010 Olympics in Vancouver.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070307.wolympics07/BNStory/National/home  

3/4/07

Pentagon has a developed a secret special operations unit that employs 1000 people in seeking out terrorists world-wide.

http://www.examiner.com/a-594773~Secret_unit_hunts_terrorists_overseas.html

3/3/07

Muammar Gaddafi has a warning for North Korea and Iran: don't count on the West's offering of incentives for changing their policies, saying Libya has never been "properly compensated" for renouncing terrorism and nuclear weapons development in 2003.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6413813.stm  

3/2/07

Swift justice, Guantanamo style.  After being held in detention for over 5 years, Australian government pressure finally results in indictment of David Hicks on charges of "material support for terrorism."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/us-files-charges-against-hicks/2007/03/02/1172338828728.html  

3/2/07

Asia Times report says that al Qaeda, whose relationship with Taliban has "cooled" since the latter's "deal" with Pakistan to support Afghan insurgency, is planning to move into Iraq, which it sees as the new "epicenter" of worldwide operations.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC03Ak01.html  

2/27/07

Danish judges overturn for insufficient evidence convictions of three of four men accused of plotting terorist plot in a trial conducted under Denmark's tough new anti-terrorism law.

http://www.cphpost.dk/get/100559.html  

2/26/07

"The Democrats made me do it". President Bush is expected to tell Pakistan that the country must show better results in tracking down Al Qaeda and Taliban elements operating within the country.  He cites the threat by Democrats in Congress to cut off aid to Pakistan unless these results are forthcoming.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/26/world/asia/26pakistan.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin  

2/25/07

In the war on terror, is turnabout fair play? After U.S. has accused Iran of supporting terrorist activities in Iraq, Iranian official charges that U.S. and British weapons were found among those used by terrorist groups in Iran for an attack that killed 11 members of Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Iranian government believes that clandestine agents of these goverments are generally encouraging sectarian violence in Iran.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HDZB2432Z4F1LQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/02/25/wiran25.xml

2/25/07

Islamic charities: Not all that anti-terrorist "experts" have them cracked up to be: McGill University Economics Professor shows that these charities, labelled as "paymasters" of 9/11, some of whose officials were locked away in Guantanamo, actually had little or nothing to do with the financing of terrorism and that the pressure of the U.S. on Saudi Arabian and other governments to freeze their assets and criminalize donations to them did not hurt the financing of terrorists but did have disastrous effects on these charities, whose operations were antithetical to western ideas of appropriate banking practices.

http://counterpunch.org/naylor02242007.html  

2/25/07

Secret intelligence documents viewed by London Sunday Telegraph indicate that the threat of terrorist attack in Britain is higher than it has ever been since 9/11.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=HDZB2432Z4F1LQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2007/02/25/nterr25.xml

2/24/07

Canadian court's decision invalidating the indefinite holding of terrorists suspects without charges being filed is described as a "striking difference" with judicial procedures in the U.S. in dealing with such persons.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/world/americas/24ottawa.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin  

2/21/07

Federal appeals court upholds constitutionality of 2006 Military Tribunal Commissions Act that denies the use of habeas corpus petitions by foreigners detained as terrorist suspects.  Case appears headed for Supreme Court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/21/washington/21gitmo.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin  

2/16/07

26 U.S. citizens are ordered by an Italian judge to put on trial for illegal kidnapping of a terror suspect; extradition proceedings are uncertain.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6368269.stm  

2/15/07

Marvels of a terrorist-obsessed world: In the U.S., you can go to jail for having contributed money to a group that the Department of State has designated a "terrorist organization," even though it was not so designated when you made your contribution and even though prosecutors admit that the designation was an erroneous one.

http://counterpunch.org/brauchli02142007.html  

2/14/07

Canada report criticizes both passport office and Coast Guard for failing to deal with security issues related to international traffic.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20070214.wxauditor1414/BNStory/National/home  

2/1/07

"Cooperate or be executed like Saddam." This message, along with a photo of Saddam Hussein at the gallows was, according to lawyer for Australian David Hicks, shown in the exercise yard at Quantanamo to Hicks and other detainees.  Australian government denies knowledge of this from its own talks with Hicks.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/01/AR2007020100082.html  

2/1/07

In Boston, Turner Broadcasting launches advertising for a new Cartoon Network program by placing magnet lights with cartoon characters making obscene gestures around Boston's public spaces, prompting a terrorism scare that effectively shut down the city for a short period.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2007/02/01/froth_fear_and_fury/

1/29/07

Australian political leaders spar over whether  terrorism suspect David Hicks, detained at Guantanamo for five years without charges, should be returned to Australia for trial or release.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/070129/21/128ei.html  

1/23/07

Starting today, Americans who fly to Mexico, Canada or the Caribbean will need passports to get back into the U.S.A.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070123/ap_on_re_us/new_passport_rules

1/22/07

Are you a British Muslim and headed for pilgrimage in Mecca?  UK's M16 and M5 will be watching you: all of you!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2558373,00.html

1/18/07

U.S. expected to trim in half its lengthy "no fly" list for terrorist suspect: ACLU says "nice but not enough."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070118/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/aviation_security

1/15/07

Trial of 6 Muslim men accused in failed bomb plot is about to begin in London.

http://asia.news.yahoo.com/070115/afp/070115103457top.html  

1/14/07

U.S. Army guidelines manual for intelligence-gathering procedures is updated with a provision that warrantless wiretapping can be undertaken on the authority of the Attorney General (as an alternative to FISA approval, as required by law).

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/washington/14spyside.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

1/14/07

Opinion: If at first you don't succeed: Massive failure of company contracted by Project Bioshield to produce anthrax vaccine does not justify renewing the failed company's contract, but rather a diversion of those funds into other projects in combatting biological warfare.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/13/AR2007011300956.html?referrer=email  

1/13/07

Defense Department assistant secretary for detainee affairs says in radio interview that U.S. law firms (named) which represent Guantanamo detainees should expect retaliation from U.S. corporations to deny them their legal business in retaliation for their work for detainees.  This elicits angry condemnation from civil rights organizations and Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy. Link includes Miami Herald article, audio of the interview and Leahy's letter to the Secretary of Defense.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16449466.htm  

1/13/07

Oxfam confirms that 70 nomadic herdsmen in Somalia were killed by an American operation aimed against 3 suspected al-Qaeda terrorists. U.S. official confirms that none of the intended target were killed.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/africa/article2149716.ece  

1/12/07

U.S. boots hit the ground in Somalia:  Following a U.S. air strike aimed at killing suspected al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia (actually killing nomadic herdsmen and their families in a remote part of the country) , a small search team of ground troops has entered the country to assess the effects of the strike (the first such incursion since 1994). An unidentified source says that, so far,  "no one can confirm a high-value target."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/11/AR2007011102329.html?referrer=email

1/11/07

ABC News reports that U.S. Special  Forces are operating at a base within Somalia from which both surveillance and air strike operations are being conducted.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/us_special_forc.html

1/10/06

Doing war the way the U.S. likes to do war: U.S. airstrikes hit "remnants" of the Islamist Movement in Somalia which was deposed two weeks ago when Ethiopian troops invaded the country, and installed a western-backed "transitional government."  The remnant consisted of men in "armed trucks" which got stuck in the mud making them "easy targets" for the strike, but also made easy targets of nomadic herdsmen and their families in the area. Transitional government said "dozens" killed in the strike, U.S. says "about" a dozen including (maybe) some Al-Qaeda leaders being harbored in the "failed" state of Somalia.  Final result: some evidence of successful prosecution of the war on terrorism, plenty of U.S. ammunition expended, no complaint from the pesky "anti-war" crowd, no American casualties and leaving it to Ethiopia's occupying troops to bear the brunt of any "insurgency" fallout. Mission accomplished, now that's the way to do a war!

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/world/africa/10somalia.html?th&emc=th  

1/9/06

With a new majority in Congress, Democrats re-cycle legislative proposals that failed in the last Congress to require enhanced security with inspections for cargo travelling by common carriers. In the Wonderland known as DC, the "Homeland Security" department opposes these homeland security measures because they are too expensive and would "impede the free flow of commerce."

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/09/washington/09terror.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

1/9/06

Jitters at Port of  Miami-Dade: another "false alarm" for terrorists: one day after a "miscommunication" resulted in arrest of a truck driver (and as the driver was released without charges), a package among cargo to be loaded on a cruise ship tests positively for an explosive, the test later labelled a "false positive" after determination that the package was actually sprinkler parts.  Official says these incidents show how diligent are the security forces there.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16414644.htm

1/9/06

"Bomb threat" at Port of Miami-Dade fizzles  after the port closes for the day, delaying departures of cruise ships, when an Iraqi truck driver experiences a "miscommunication" with security officials about the nature of his cargo and passengers.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/16407140.htm

1/6/07

Pay more, get less security hassle: Orlando FL pioneering a program that allows travellers, for $100 fee, to skip security lines at the airport by undergoing security checks before hand and checking security automatically with hi-tech personal identification devices.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/F/FL_SHOE_SCANNER_FLOL-?SITE=FLTAM&SECTION=US

12/31/06

Coast Guard's expensive plan to use a "control tower" approach to coastal security is a failure as its radar is unable to distinguish between boats and waves on the water.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/30/us/30domain.html

12/31/06

"Intelligence-led policing" to combat terrorism that is springing up in many U.S. states and cities could involve some of the same abuses as those of the "red squads" at the local level which operated against communist and student protest targets in the 1950s and 1960s.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/30/AR2006123000238.html?referrer=email

12/27/06

U.S. tries to re-assure allies that extraordinary renditions and prison torture practices have been ended; some are skeptical of this.

http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ft.com%2Fcms%2Fs%2Fb0ab3116-954e-11db-a911-0000779e2340.html  

12/20/06

U.S. BioShield project, to deal with bio-terrorism, suffers a blow as a contract is cancelled with a company which failed to meet a deadline for development of an anti-anthrax vaccine.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/12/19/AR2006121901689.html

12/19/06

''Among the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.''  Donald Rumsfeld's description of Gitmo prisoners.  An Associated Press study tracks the 245 of these "most vicious" people who were released for trial in their home countries.  Most have been set free, only 14 trials have occurred, 8 of these were acquitted, 6 are pending verdicts. Many, as in Afghanistan, were apparently totally innocent people who were captured by tribesmen and sold to Americans.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/world/175562,CST-NWS-gitmo17.article  

12/19/06

Study of contrast in two "terrorist" trials. 1. Jose Padilla remains in legal limbo as government lawyers claim he isn't mentally competent to face a competency hearing. 2. Demetrius Crocker is convicted of "dirty bomb" plans, at a trial in Tennessee in which he received all his legal rights; a trial which produced almost no notice because his connections were to right wing militants like Timothy McVeigh rather than to al-Qaeda.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/12/18/tennessee_terrorist/index.html  

12/17/06

Senior State Department official says that some 200 detainees at Guantanamo will be held indefinitely as a "hard core" of security threats, even though there is insufficient evidence to bring them to trial under Military Tribunes Act.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/15/wguan15.xml  

12/15/06

Homeland Security, citing technical and financial problems, is giving up on implementing a 1996 Act of Congress that required an "exit monitoring" system to determine when visitors to the U.S. leave, a system essential to effective border security and immigration control.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/15/washington/15exit.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

12/13/06

U.S. offshore oil workers are finding that, as of January 23, they will have to have passports to re-enter the United States.

http://www.hattiesburgamerican.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061213/NEWS01/612130317  

12/11/06

British official declares that a terrorist attack during the Christmas season is "very highly likely."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/ureid110.xml  

12/10/06

100,000 frontline UK police are directed to obtain and carry hoods to give them 20 minutes of protection before evacuating a "dirty bomb"-infested area.  This won't protect those who have duties requiring them to stay in such areas, and so far the company that makes the hoods has only produced 1,000 of them. So who is being terrorized?

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2496487,00.html  

12/9/06

The fleecing of America: naval engineer's description of a million-billion dollar plan to modernize the U.S. Coast Guard whose implementation was privatized to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. The failure has compromised the level of U.S. coastal security.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/09/us/09ship.html?th&emc=th

12/5/06

Jose Padilla's excellent day for a root canal:  His treatment has apparently not improved after the Bush administration, chastened by Supreme Court decision against holding "enemy combatants" without charge, last year charged him with a crime and he is still held shackled in isolation.  A trip to the dentist in May (when he was no longer legally an enemy combatant) is shown on a video-tape in which one of his guards duly intoned a "header" to the tape saying this is "our enemy combatant," headed for the dentist.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/04/us/04detain.html?th&emc=th  

12/2/06

USA Today reports that TSA expects to begin to use "back-scatter" technology at selected airports and perhaps later in subways that will allow screeners to detect weapons under the clothing of passengers.  ACLU condemns this as "virtual strip search" which could potentially lead to privacy invasions.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-11-30-tsa-xray_x.htm

12/2/06

Eating falafel or hummus can help get you on a Homeland Security "terrorist list" risk as different passenger "behaviors" go into HSA's profiling of terrorist suspects.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/TRAVEL/11/30/traveler.screening.ap/index.html?fark  

12/2/06

Irish Parliament gets evidence that 147 CIA rendition flights over the country have occurred, and that these were protested to U.S.government in 2004.

http://archives.tcm.ie/irishexaminer/2006/12/01/story19691.asp

11/26/06

Pakistani official tells London Sunday Times reporter that U.S. carried out bomb attack on a madrasah in which 82 students were killed, on information that suicide bombers were trained there and  Qaeda leader al-Zawarhari may have been there; and that Pakistan took the blame to protect its relations with U.S.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-2471863,00.html

11/22/06

Single bullet man, CYA for Bush as for Warren:  Arlen Specter, whose "single bullet theory" provided necessaary cover for the credibility of the Warren Commission's "lone gunman" view of the JFK assassination, is ending his chairmanship of Senate Judiciary Committee, having acquiesced in the appointments of Supreme Court Justices whose views he disliked and, among other acts of expediency, sponsored a "compromise" version of the surveillance act that was virtually identical with the one he publicly criticized.

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/forumy/2006/07/no-compromise-arlen-specters.php

For Wikipedia summary of his career, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlen_Specter  

11/19/06

California company is called "travel agent" for CIA for its alleged role in arranging to fly terror detainees to torture locations like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

http://cbs5.com/topstories/local_story_321002154.html

11/13/06

Renditions planes or "torture taxis" are shown by Las Vegas television station to be operating out of the airport in that city.

http://www.klas-tv.com/Global/story.asp?S=5660267

11/5/06

Seven retired federal judges join Guantanamo detainees in challenging the constitutionality of Military Tribunals Law.

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-detainees-lawsuits,0,1054841.story

11/4/06

Novel take on "national security:" U.S. asks courts to forbid terror detainees from speaking publicly about methods used in their interrogation, claiming that these statements endanger American security by giving information to the enemy that could help them train terrorists to "resist" U.S. efforts to get information from them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110301793.html?referrer=email

11/3/06

Terrorist "cookbook":  Website set up by U.S. government, designed to "prove" that Iraq had WMD, actually provided information that security experts say would be useful to would-be bomb makers. Now seen as a security threat, it has been shut down

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/03/world/middleeast/03documents.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&th&emc=thwn.  

11/3/06

Israel is added to list of countries which cooperated with CIA's "extraordinary rendition: program, as Israeli airport authority acknowledges that several flights used Ben Gurion airport.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20061102&articleId=3669  

10/28/06

What the word is is (apologies to Clinton): Vice President Cheney says he didn't endorse water-boarding, but only a "dunk in the water" for terrorist suspects.  White House Press Secretary, asked to define dunk in the water, "explains" that "a dunk in the water is a dunk in the water."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/27/AR2006102700560.html?referrer=email

10/28/06

Maher Arar, Canadian citizen seized at JFK airport in September 2002 on unspecified "terrorist" suspicions and finally released over a year later describes in detail the horrors of his "extraordinary rendition" in Syria and Jordan.

http://counterpunch.org/arar10272006.html  

10/28/06

Investigations in Italy and Germany produce new evidence of these countriy's  complicity in CIA "renditions" program for terrorism detainees.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,444878,00.html   

10/27/06

Penniless purgatory:  Reporter for Miami New Times interviews wife of Narseale Batiste, alleged leader of the Liberty Seven terrorist plot, awaiting a trial scheduled for Mar 5, 2007.  The wife describes Batiste as a minister to the helpless and totally non-violent, reporter reviews the flimsy case against him, based on information from paid informants. The family was left in destitution after Batiste's arrest.

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/Issues/2006-10-26/news/strouse_2.html

10/26/06

No brainer: VP Cheney says in interview that U.S. has subjected top al-Qaida terrorist suspects to water-boarding and that the decision to do so is a "no brainer."

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/15847918.htm

10/24/06

UN torture investigator says he is told by several govenments around the world that their interrogation practices are following the example set by the United States.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/UN_TORTURE?SITE=FLTAM

10/21/06

Justice Department cites provision of newly-enacted Military Commission Act to "inform" a U.S. Court of Appeals that it may not consider pending habeas corpus petitions for Guantanamo detainees (what happened to separation of powers?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901692.html

10/18/06

ACLU lawyers declare just-signed bill on treatment of terrorist detainees as "blatantly unconstituional" and pledge intense legal challenges.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/10/18/battles_brewing_on_torture_detainees/

10/18/06

Lynne Stewart, convicted of  illegal actions in defending a terrorist suspect, is sentenced to 28 months after federal prosecutor asked for 30 years. Sentence may be suspended, her followers treat verdict as great "victory."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/17/nyregion/17stewart.html?hp&ex=homepage

10/16/06

Pentagon orders two military lawyers investigating Guantanamo detainees on behalf of a client not to discuss the prison situation or anything about military tribunals to the press.  U.S. says the military is investigating their allegations.

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/20061015071709990003?ncid=NWS00010000000001

10/13/06

"Flight control" for small planes in NYC: day after one crashed into a Manhattan high-rise, a critic says the only regulation for small plane traffic is the admonition: "Don't run into anything."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061013/ap_on_re_us/plane_crash_airspace  

10/12/06

Lawyer for David Hicks, Australian national held as an enemy combatant at Guantamano,  tells a Sydney newspaper that, contrary to a U.S. Navy investigative report, Hicks was severely beaten and that the report is a massive "cover up."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1010-06.htm

Details of Hicks case:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Hicks#Hicks.27s_position

10/11/06

Lawyers for Jose Padilla, suspected terrorist held as enemy combatant for three and a half years and finally turned over to U.S. courts for prosecution, say he was tortured and given a "truth serum" including an LSD ingredient during his interrogations.

http://www.nysun.com/article/41305  

10/11/06

Unsafe at Any Altitude:  book by this title referenced in a Bring It On posting which notes that the TSA's "No Fly Lists" for airport "security" will stop flyers with names similar to others on the list and omit people who are actually terrorist suspects on "security" grounds.

http://www.teambio.org/2006/10/the-tsa-idiocy-in-action-at-an-airport-near-you/

10/11/06

Five years after 9/11, only 1% of FBI agents have any Arab linguistic skill and none of those work with the agency charged with investigating foreign terrorism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001388.html?referrer=email  

10/10/06

Recently-passed Military Commissions Act gives the President authority to declare even U.S. citizens as "enemy combatants" and Halliburton subsidiary is now building a huge prison at an undisclosed location, possibly to facilitate executive exercise of that authority.

http://www.alternet.org/rights/42458/  

10/8/06

Luis Posada Carilles, held by U.S. as terrorist suspect in bombing of a Venezuela passenger plane, may soon be released from custody.  U.S. apparently wants to deport him, but no country other than Venezuela and Cuba, which would try him, will accept custody. Meantime his lawyer says that his devotion to Castro's destruction aligns him with U.S. policy and to prosecute him would be like prosecuting Benjamin Franklin or Paul Revere.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/08/world/americas/08posada.html?th&emc=th  

10/7/06

Article and video-clip from BBC's The Power of Nightmares suggests that al Qaeda is not an actually existing group but a name given by the U.S. to a "database" of criminal suspects and adopted by bin Laden as a convenience for his own scare propaganda after 9/11.

http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/october2006/061006alqaedacrap.htm  

10/7/06

Report says thousands of people have mistakenly been placed on terrorist watch lists.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/100706Z.shtml  

10/3/06

Amnesty International says majority of detainees at Guantanamo were captured by Afghan warlords for U.S. bounty of $5,000 with only the word of their captors that they were terrorists.

http://www.metimes.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060929-082627-3789r

9/29/06

Last word from (appropriately) Molly Ivins, her epitaph for democracy:

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0928-20.htm

9/29/06

Bring it on!  Democrats (most of them) who were outvoted on these constitutional issues seem (cross your fingers) to be willing to stand on their principled opposition to Bush assaults on constitutional rights (even Joe Lieberman of all people)...as Bush is already framing the campaign by castigating the "cut and run" Democrats. Question: will they cut and run (from standing on these principles) when push comes to shove in November?

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/us/politics/29assess.html?th&emc=th

9/29/06

House of Representatives contribution  to Constitution-busting: passes 232-191 the Electronic Surveillance Modernization Act (euphemism for Bush's wire-tapping bill) with vote of 214 Republicans and 18 Democrats (none from Florida). Vote:

http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll502.xml  

9/29/06

Day the Constitution died...or headline hyberbole?  Senate passes 65-34 a Military s Commission Act that would give the President most of the extrarodinary authority he requested in dealing with terrorist suspects.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/29/washington/29detain.html?n=T%

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&sessionfiltered=2&vote=00259

As predicted in yesterday's headlines, Florida's Bill Nelson joined 11 other Democrats (and all other Republicans except Lincoln Chafee) in voting for the measure. He did, however, join almost every Democrat in voting for (narrowly defeated) amendments that would limit certain provisioms of the bill.

Votes on these amendments:

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&sessionfiltered=2&vote=00255   http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&sessionfiltered=2&vote=00258 http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&sessionfiltered=2&vote=00257

9/28/06

Senator Russell Feingold's remarks to the U.S. Senate in opposition to passage of the Military Tribunal Commissions Act. The suspension of the right of habeas corpus for enemy combatants is only the most egregious of many flaws.

http://counterpunch.org/feingold09282006.html  

9/28/06

Last minute addition to terrorism detainee bill, to be voted on today in the Senate, would allow foreigners in the United States as legal holders of green cards to be detained as "enemy combatants" and deprived of opportunity to seek habeas corpus for their release.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/09/28/legal_residents_rights_curbed_in_detainee_bill/

9/28/06

In an almost party-line vote, 48-51-1, Senate sustains the provision of the Military Tribunals Commission Act which denies the right to habeas corpus for terror suspects held as enemy combatants. Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska the only Democrat supporting the provision, while Republican Senators Chafee, Specter, Sununu and Smith (Oregon) were only Republicans opposing it; Rep.Snowe didn't vote.

http://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=109&sessionfiltered=2&vote=00255  

9/27/06

Under intense pressure to release a National Intelligence Estimate that suggests that the Iraqi war has increased the threat of jihadism world-wide, President Bush releases a portion thereof and claims it justifies his decision to prosecute the war. Democrats disagree.

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt482.html

Text of the released document, read it for yourself:

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2006/images/09/26/nie.declass.pdf

Note: the NIE is dated April 2006, before the "spike" in insurgency violence in Iraq this summer, and speculates on effects on the insurgency should al-Zarqawi be killed or captured, which of course has already happened.

9/27/06

Rep. John Conyers introduces Resolution of Inquiry aimed at release of April NIE  with grim assessment of effects of Iraq war on terrorism, along with "other pending intelligence reports."

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=73226  

9/26/06

White House, through press secretary Tony Snow, gives this self-defending reaction to the report of the National Intelligence Estimate that the Iraqi war has strengthened jihadism: "should jihadists be perceived to have failed in Iraq, fewer will be inspired to carry on the fight," Hasn't Snow heard of "if at first you don't succeed....?"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060925/ts_alt_afp/usattacksiraq

9/26/06

Getting down to cases: Jennifer Van Bergen discusses three instances of perversion of justice in the Bush "war on terror." Two of them are people whose "crime" was essentially that they tried to "do good": a New York lawyer (Lynne Stewart) who issued a press release favorable to her terrorism-accused client, and an Iraqi-American who was arrested for sending aid to Iraqis suffering from sanctions against the country.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/09/25/web_of_terror.php 

9/26/06

Indonesian PM tells UN that terrorism must not be associated with any particular faith.

http://www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=20012&Cr=general&Cr1=debate  

9/25/06

Eric Margolis, first western journalist granted access to Soviet KGB prisons after Soviet Union's fall in 1981, reflects on a fear that the torture techniques whose results he observed there could, under recent liberalization in the use of such methods of terrorist interrogations, convert the U.S. into a "Sovietized" country.

http://www.torontosun.com/News/Columnists/Margolis_Eric/2006/09/24/pf-1888587.html

9/22/06

Detainee 1009: 78-year-old Afghan man, imprisoned at Guantanamo for three years, is suddenly released after his son, a provincial official in Kabul, intervened on his behalf. The UK Guardian details his story.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1878415,00.html  

9/22/06

Pakistani President Musharraf says that, after 9/11, Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage threatened to bomb Pakistan "back to the Stone Age" if the country wouldn't cooperate with U.S. war on Taliban. This will air on CBS "60 minutes" on 9/24/06.

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2006-09-21T182900Z_01_N21359284_RTRUKOC_0_US-PAKISTAN-USA-MUSHARRAF.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-2

9/21/06

More defections of support in an unlikely place for Bush's military tribunals for Guantanomo detainees: three Republicans join seventeen Democrats on a House Committee to send the tribunals bill to House floor with an "unfavorable" recommendation.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aWWaMyGDaAwo

9/20/06

Eugene Robinson's commentary on the current "debate" in Congress on the use of torture in terrorism suspect interrogations: "civilized" people don't "debate" torture any more than they would debate slavery or genocide.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091800995.html

9/19/06

Facing with growing opposition in the Senate from members of his own party, President Bush presents a "revised" version of his proposal to exempt intelligence agencies from Geneva Convention standards in the interrogation of terrorism suspects. Even staunch conservative Henry Hyde wants to examine a little-noticed provision denying habeas corpus rights to such detainees.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/18/AR2006091801132.html?referrer=email  

9/19/06

Retired Army Colonel describes effort of a Bush civilian appointee, William Haynes, to "browbeat" senior military officers into signing a "do not object" letter regarding the President's request for authority to use coercive interrogation methods on terror detainees.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0918-25.htm  

9/14/06

Are we safer now than before 9/11/01?  Cato Institute essayist takes on that question and concludes that alarmism about the possibility of further attacks may well be our greatest danger.

http://www.cato-unbound.org/2006/09/11/john-mueller/are-we-safer/  

9/11/06

Are we any better prepared to resist a terrorist attack than we were on 9/11/01?  Extended report in Boston Globe gives the answer for that city: "No."

http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2006/09/10/despite_millions_spent_boston_is_vulnerable/  

9/11/06

Stringent British visa-granting procedures and backlogs in Homeland Security processing are making life difficult to British citizens trying to do business in central Florida.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/southwest/orl-swbritwoes1006sep10,0,4433794.story?coll=orl-news-headlines-swest

9/10/06

"Elvis" bin Laden: despite U.S. efforts to "flood the zone" to capture him and numerous "wishful thinking" citings, no one knows exactly where is "the zone" and the trail is said to have gone "stone cold."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14724112/#storyContinued  

9/9/06

Batten down the hatches! Hurricane coming? No.  Five year anniversary of 9/11 is, and Orlando area theme parks are beefing up security measures, but officials worry about whether it is enough.

http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-911parks0906sep09,0,503542.story?coll=orl-home-headlines

9/8/06

White House and Pentagon are described as a "Jekyll and Hyde routine" on terrorist interrogation techniques, as Pentagon bans practices that the White House proposes as legislation on the same day.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/08/washington/08legal.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin  

9/8/06

That lady bussing tables at a lunch counter at Miami International Airport?  Soon she will be one of the 1500 MIA employees who have been trained by Rafi Ron's "Behavior Pattern Recognition" program to spot terrorist suspects....the first such program in the nation.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15464905.htm

9/7/06

A "timed" arrest:  U.S. military spokesman says second in command of al-Qaida, who the Iraq government said was arrested "a few days ago," was actually arrested in June.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060906/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iraq_arrest_2  

9/7/06

Bush approves transfer of 14 "high profile" detainees to Guantanamo who had been held in a CIA secret custody program not previously acknowleged by the administration. He seeks authorization from Congress to set up military tribunals, the use of which has already been rejected by the Supreme Court.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/07/us/07detain.html?pagewanted=2&_r=1&th&emc=th

9/6/06

As London police pursue a shadowy "terror training camp network" in Britain, a number of suspects apparently got a little extra something with their fortune cookies as Reuters reports: Twelve of the men were held at a packed Chinese restaurant on Friday night as part of what police said was a "pre-planned, intelligence-led operation" that followed months of surveillance.

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-09-04T071253Z_01_L0360205_RTRUKOC_0_UK-SECURITY-BRITAIN.xml 

9/6/06

New White House National Strategy for Combating Terrorism is unveiled: it acknowledges that terrorism threats reside in many small terrorist groups, not necessarily linked to one another; emphasizes ideology as their motivator and advocates "democracy" as a weapon against them.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501399.html?referrer=email  

9/2/06

"I want to fight some jihad."  These words, uttered by Narseal Batiste to an undercover FBI agent in a Miami warehouse, led to his and others' arrests on terrorist charges.  Court records of his trial show that the Bureau was actively involved in promoting the "plot," with financing, encouragement and incitements to specific acts of terrorism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/01/AR2006090101764.html?referrer=email

9/1/06

Something else to worry about: Senator Conrad Burns says terrorists are "faceless" people who "drive taxicabs in the daytime and kill at night."

http://www.forbes.com/home/feeds/ap/2006/08/31/ap2986239.html

8/31/06

Terrorist suspects being held for involvement with "terrorist" charity groups that are not clearly of that nature.

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2006/08/31/detentions_over_charity_ties_questioned/  

8/30/06

White House learns a new word instead of "war on terrorism" and plays with it. The enemy now is "Islamic fascism."

http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_9482.shtml

8/30/06

Iraqi architect on air flight from New York to California required to change a t-shirt says "we will not be silent" in English and Arabic.  Officials said others "might be offended."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060829/us_nm/security_tshirt_dc  

8/28/06

Both U.S. and Canadian government have designated Tamil Tiger groups, insurgents in Sri Lanka, as "terrorists," and a writer notes  that "attacks on civilians" are  called war when conducted by the powerful and terrorism when conducted by the poor.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0827-24.htm  

8/24/06

Language problems: Iraqi passenger at Chicago's O'Hare Field, as his luggage is being search, whispers "pump" to his mother, referring to a penis pump in his luggage; security thought he whispered "bomb" and detained him as terrorist suspect.

http://counterpunch.org/pump08242006.html  

8/24/06

Vulnerability to terrorist attack is shown in a Lynn Massachusetts incident in which a liquified natural gas plant was broken into and the intrusion was not discovered until security officials looked at their surveillance tape five days later.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/08/24/lng_facility_intruders_go_unnoticed/  

8/24/06

Nuclear power plant now under scrutiny as evidence of Iranian nuclear power development was furnished as a "cold war gift" to the Shah of Iran in the 1960s.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0608240188aug24,1,1982129.story?ctrack=1&cset=true

8/23/06

Putting pressure on U.S. intelligence agencies to find evidence of Iran's intentions to develop nuclear weapons and its ties to terrorism: Sound familiar?  This time it isn't the Bush administration, but a GOP-dominated House Committee on Intelligence.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/23/AR2006082301309.html?referrer=email

8/23/06

U.S. Army Sergeant gets an e-mail from someone defending the 9/11 Commission's conclusions, answers critically and faces charges of using his government e-mail account for personal business and disloyalty to the U.S.

http://www.lonestaricon.com/absolutenm/anmviewer.asp?a=426&z=54  

8/22/06

Justice delayed (again) in "war on terror": UK charges 11 of 23 arrested suspects on charges of "intent" to carry out explosives assaults on airlines; one woman is released, 11 others remain in detention without charge for 28 days; the 11 charged so far will not have the credibility of those charges tested until their trials which may be in a couple of years. (Remember how the British protested our holding of their nationals under those conditions in Guantanamo?))

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/world/europe/22britain.html?th&emc=th  

8/22/06

U.S. and British officials are pushing plans to allow national security forces to scan airline records and create an available database including all kinds of personal information on travellers, including their credit histories. Civil libertarians protest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/22/washington/22data.html?th&emc=th  

8/22/06

The recent terrorist scare could have been much worse: a cartoon showing what very nearly happened:

http://gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?category=editorials

8/21/06

S&T at DHS: Washington Post report conveys a situation of miserable failure of Department to Homeland Security's Science and Technology Section in being able to find solutions to neutralizing terrorist's weapons other than nuclear and biological ones.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900846.html

8/21/06

British M15 plays whack-a-mole against terrorists as Home Secretary says they are investigating "dozens" more terror plots.

http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1220486.ece

8/21/06

How a 23-year-old Army grunt-turned-film producer (Loose Change) is undermining the 9/11 Commission Report with $8,000 and a laptop, an interview.

http://www.alternet.org/story/40476/  

8/18/06

British Deputy Prime Minister admits that some of the suspects arrested in last week's "bomb plot" will not face "serious charges."   http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/08/16/nterror216.xml

8/17/06

Making it safe to fly:  TSA is now employing "behavior detection officers" at some U.S. airports to scan people's faces and mannerisms to detect those with "evil intent." (leave your twitch at home).

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17screeners.html  

8/16/06

Craig Murray, former British Ambassador: UK's terrorism incident is "more propaganda than plot."  The arrested plotters had no bombs nor airline tickets nor (many of them) passports.  These facts, along with the likely coerced testimony of Pakistani tipsters, mean that cases against them would probably never hold up in court.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0815-36.htm  

8/16/06

Foreign ministers of several European nations are told that schools should make greater efforts against the "radicalizing" of Muslim students.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/4799371.stm

8/15/06

Cell-phones and terrorism; cases against entrepreneurs who bought and sold phones for a living blow up in Michigan and Ohio.  http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_9302.shtml  

8/14/06

William Greider references a comment from an article two years ago on a similar theme, the political use of the fear of "terrorism," citing retired diplomat Ronald Spiers' statement that: "A war on terrorism is a permanent engagement against an always-available tool."

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0813-24.htm

8/14/06

Amid heightened security concerns in UK, Whitehall report shows that 24,500 government-issued security passes have "gone missing."  Their report may have been submitted during 76 day break in UK governmental activity to avoid "embarrassment."  http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=1180692006  

8/13/06

Timing of terrorist plot arrests continues to be controversial.  U.S. demanded immediate arrest because of an "imminent" execution of the plot; a British officials says arrested men had not purchased airline tickets and some didn't even have passports.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14320452/

8/13/06

Terrorism expert on attempts to "link" recent terrorism plot to Al_Qaeda:  “We won the war against the old Al Qaeda. But we’re not winning against the global social movement that Al Qaeda was part of, because more and more kids are joining the movement.”

http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt8_13_06_6.htm

8/13/06

British airlines say that air travel in UK is "grinding to a halt" and appeals for screening assistance by police and military reservists. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14325655/

8/12/06

Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is engaged in a controversial advertising campaign to associate drug trafficking with terrorism.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/11/AR2006081101524.html?referrer=email

8/12/06

Homeless people in Phoenix being given liquid materials confiscated from airplanes, supposedly material that might be explosive.  Does this say more about callousness in treatment of the homeless; or the sincerity of belief that material confiscated from citizens might be explosive?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2006/08/how-can-they-give-confiscated-airport.html

8/11/06

Terror plot "thickens" as British announce identity of 19 arrested, all apparently men of Pakistani origin. A version is offered of the "trigger" that initiated arrest after the plot had been under surveillance for more than a year: a week ago Britain arrested two suspects and a message came from Pakistan to "do your attacks now." Plotters were planning a "trial run" within two days to test their ability to take bomb equipment on board airplane, the actual attacks would occur "just days later."  There is still no mention of any plotters having reservations on any airlines; did they expect to do "walk on" trans-Atlantic flights---round trip flights for the test run, a suspicious one-way ticket when they did the "real" thing?

http://articles.news.aol.com/news/_a/19-suspects-in-british-terror-plot/20060810015209990001?ncid=NWS00010000000001  

8/11/06

As Bush seeks political gain for the "foiled terrorist plot" by shifting public attention from the unpopular war in Iraq to the continuing assault of "Islamic fascists,"

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060810/pl_afp/britainattacksairline_060810185330

questions are raised about the timing of terrorist arrests.  Washington Post writer notes that the plot had been under surveillance since July 2005 and they only recently decided that the plot was close to execution. But what triggered this urgency? If the plotters were to board trans-Atlantic planes for a simultaneous assault on 10 planes, where is the evidence that this was about to happen?  The reporter is told that:  "there was no evidence that those arrested had bought tickets or made reservations."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/10/AR2006081001654_pf.html

It may be like the missing "hijackers" on the manifests of the planes that crashed on 9/11: if that "evidence" can't be produced, "conspiracy theorists" will be justified in their suspicions of a politically "timed" catastrophe (averted catastrophe).  

8/11/06

Those missing Egyptian students who didn't show up at a Montana college in which they were enrolled? Apparently they were part of a "plot," not a terrorist one but a ruse to use college admission to enter the U.S. and get jobs.  http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.visas11aug11,0,2801934.story?page=2&coll=bal-local-headlines

8/10/06

A young intern for Federation of American Scientists analyzes the much-lampooned "readiness" website of the Department of Homeland Security and proposes that obvious and redundant advice be replaced with more clear and realistic emergency guidelines.  A DHS official derogates her ideas as those of a mere intern.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/09/AR2006080901706.html?referrer=email&referrer=email&referrer=email

8/6/06

Hawaii to host a simulated nuclear explosion drill in mid-August amid concerns of some that a "drill" could turn into a "live" event (think 9/11)

http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060711/NEWS08/607110337/1001/NEWS    

8/3/06

New poll shows that 36% of Americans believe that federal officials had prior knowledge of and/or were involved in planning the 9/11 attacks.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/national/279827_conspiracy02ww.html

8/3/06

Newly released 9-11 tapes detailing military response to hijacked planes that crashed in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania shows confusion and delay in that response

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03norad.html?th&emc=th

For extended analysis from Vanity Fair article and samples of the tapes, see: http://www.vanityfair.com/features/general/060801fege01  

8/3/06

War on terrorism gets a cease-fire in Port Everglades, Florida as security fence surrounding a docking area for oil tankers is removed with nothing obvious to replace it. Shades of attack on USS Cole at a re-fueling stop in Yemen are suggested.

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-cport03aug03,0,4609780.story?coll=sfla-home-headlines

8/2/06

9-11 Commission chairman calls the Defense Department's apparent deceptions about response to attacks "one of those loose ends that never got tied," as criminal action against DOD is contemplated.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/01/AR2006080101300.html?referrer=email

8/2/06

General Geoffrey Miller, at center of scandal of treatment of Quantanamo and Iraqi detainees, retires and receives the Distinguished Service Medal.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/31/AR2006073101183.html

8/1/06

Conservative politicians fire away against the University of Wisconsin for allowing its allowing a junior instructor to teach who has presented evidence that 9/11 was an "inside job."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/education/01madison.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

7/30/06

Bush says he'd "like to close" Guantanamo but the reality on the ground is different: Halliburton (that's right, the company that got booted from Iraqi contracts) is building a state of the art maximum security facility for indefinite detention of 200 prisoners.  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1204499.ece  

7/27/06

Bi-partisan congressional report charges extensive waste and mismanagment in contracts from Homeland Security Department.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/26/AR2006072601683.html?referrer=email      

7/26/06

New bill drafted by White House would set up military tribunals to try terrorism detainees which would grant some but not all the due process protections granted defendants in regular courts-martial.  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/26/washington/26detain.html?th&emc=th

7/25/06

Air marshals tell a Denver TV station that they are expected to fill a "quota" every month of placing somebody on a terrorist watch list.

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/9559707/detail.html

7/19/06

FBI is watching Hizbollah in the U.S. with the thought it may launch attack against U.S. targets.  http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=topNews&storyID=2006-07-18T210731Z_01_N18440948_RTRUKOC_0_US-SECURITY-HIZBOLLAH-USA.xml  

7/19/06

Hezbollah in Iran claims to have numerous volunteers being trained to attack Israel and United States if situation demands.   http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/storypage.aspx?StoryId=44822

7/16/06

From his home in Beirut, the West's best reporter on the Middle East, Robert Fisk, describes what it was like when the "war on terror" came to Lebanon

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0715-26.htm  

7/13/06

A day after announing that terror war detainees would be accorded Geneva Convention rights, Administration officials go before Congress to ask for legislation restricting those rights.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/13/washington/13gitmo.html?th&emc=th

7/13/06

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham attacks Bush's choice for a U.S. Appeals Court nomination  because of his record of arguing for harsh interrogation methods while he worked for the Pentagon:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/11/AR2006071101026.html  

7/12/06

Former hipster Stewart Brand is promoting a San Francisco appearance of John Rendon, head of the shadowy Rendon Group that groomed Chalabi as an agent to promote misinformation about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.   http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0711-32.htm

7/11/06

Embattled Bush administration is struggling to find a "way forward" for its war on terrorism in light  of  an avalanche of criticism from courts and from Congress:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/10/AR2006071001349_pf.html

7/9/06

Terrorism experts say that alleged "extremist Muslim" plot to bomb NYC tunnels was a matter of "hate chatter" on an open jihadist website, a number of "unaffiliated" individuals with no training, financing or coherent plans to carry out the "plot."   http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/No_Plot_for_NYC_Just_Hate_0707.html

7/8/06

Can you spell a-g-e-n-t   p-r-o-v-o-c-a-t-e-u-r?  Maybe not, but you'll recognize the pattern: FBI informant of Miami-based "terrorist plot" urged the group to bomb FBI buildings throughout the country:

http://www.nydailynews.com/front/story/432918p-364663c.html

7/7/06

If your name is Mohammed or Ahmed, you're likely to have Western Union do a cash transfer for you, simply because of your name.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,201850,00.html

7/6/06

European Union Parliament delegation goes to Washington D.C. to investigate charges of E.U. countries' involvement with CIA "rendition" flights.  It encounters a virtual stone wall from the Administration and tepid interest  in Congress. Author of new book says E.U. turns blind eye to CIA renditions to avoid confrontation with U.S.A.

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2690/

7/5/06

Italian police arrest an intelligence agency director for helping CIA kidnap a suspected terrorist in Milan.  http://rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Freuters.myway.com%2Farticle%2F20060705%2F2006-07-05T093858Z_01_L05822254_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-ITALY-USA-DC.html      

7/3/06

British M15 (intelligence) is investigating 8000 Britons believed to be Al Qaeda "sympathisers" and as being "groomed" for active terrorist involvement.  Are you spying on the Muslim community? "Oh my, no!"   http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1155174.ece

7/1/06

Court hearing for Miami "terror plot" suspects produces contrasting images of them as "die-hards" or "dupes."  Evidence is presented for their active involvement in terrorist schemes but also the decisive role in their activities of their government undercover informant. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/01/us/01terror.html?th&emc=th  

7/1/06

Victory from the jaws of defeat: GOP hopes to convert an adverse Supreme Court decision on Guantanamo detainees into a political advantage by highlighting their commitment to "national security." (Better hope too many people didn't tune into last night's NOW segment on lack of security on roadways, rail lines and shipping facilities). 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/30/AR2006063001737.html?referrer=email    

6/29/06

After a Supreme Court decision overruling war crimes trials for Guantanamo Bay detainees, President Bush suggests he will ask Congress for approval to try terrorism suspects before military tribunals.  

http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2134115  

6/29/06

While U.S. Supreme Court nears a decision on the legality of indefinite detainment of terrorism suspect, U.K. court rules that the British equivalent, the Government's "control orders" which allow just such detentions, are unconstitutional.  http://rawstory.com/showarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.timesonline.co.uk%2Farticle%2F0%2C%2C17129-2247622%2C00.html

6/29/06

A Salon investigation has revealed that U.S. interrogators at Guantanamo Bay prison were instructed in torture techniques by a secretive U.S. military school that specializes in torture survival training. The U.S. miltary refuses to respond. Yet more proof that Gitmo is a troture center:

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2006/06/29/torture/index_np.html

6/29/06

Credibility of Miami "terror plot" continues to erode.  TV channel 10 in Miami films inside the warehouse in Liberty City where the plot was supposedly hatched, and finds a facility of a community activist who distributed food to the poor and bubble gum to children. (Includes video of filming) Question now is: will the case be thrown out of or laughed out of court?  http://www.local10.com/news/9428938/detail.html

6/19/06

The case against the "Miami 7" group of suspected "terrorists" is falling apart, with the FBI finding no weapons, explosives, or any real plans for action by the group:

http://www.bradenton.com/mld/bradenton/news/local/14891198.htm  

6/14/06

Pressure increases on the Bush administration to shut down the Guantanamo Bay "terrorist" prison. Both the UN...

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2006-06--GUANTANAMO.xml

...and the EU now repeat calls for the closure of Gitmo after new concerns about torture and the suicides of three inmates there:

http://www.noticias.info/asp/aspComunicados.asp?nid=188075&src=0

6/13/06

In his commentary on the three detainees who committed suicide under his command at Guantanamo, U.S. admiral epitomizes the inhumanity to which the "war on terror" has reduced us: describing the suicidal acts as "smart, dedicated and committed" acts of our enemies rather than as human reactions to prolonged inhuman treatment.  

http://www.counterpunch.org/alessandrini06132006.html

6/11/06

Three Guantanamo detainees commit suicide.  Camp commander says it was  "an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us."  Detainee advocates say it reflects the despair of people imprisoned for years without charges lodged against them.   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/us/11gitmo.html?th&emc=th

6/11/06

Secrecy in court trials involving terrorism suspects is growing around the U.S.   http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--trialsecrecy0611jun11,0,1089108.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork

6/8/06

Professor Michael Chossudovsky has been studying al Zarqawi for several years, and his research suggests that his life as well as his death may have been fabricated for U.S. propaganda purposes. 

http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO405B.html     http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20060418&articleId=2275

6/8/06

Fourteen European countries colluded in or tolerated the secret transfer of terrorist suspects by the United States, and two of them - Poland and Romania - may have harbored CIA detention centers, according to a Council of Europe report released on Wednesday.  http://www.metimes.com/articles/normal.php?StoryID=20060607-084540-4663r

6/7/06

ACLU says proposed Privacy Act will "look like Swiss cheese" if it includes an exemption, approved by Senate Intelligence Committee, to allow an exemption from its provisions when federal agencies are dealing with "counter-terrorism" cases. 

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060605-111134-6429r.htm

6/6/06

Terrorism quiz: which country in the world has done 15 terrorist things? 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13505.htm

6/4/06

Future of Freedom commentator predicts that any new terrorist attack would re-awaken congressional and public support for another aggressive response to people who are attacking us because they "hate our freedom."  Question is: how many people will be gullible enough to accept this line again?  

http://www.fff.org/comment/com0606a.asp

6/3/06

Protecting our monuments: New York City gets 40% cut in Homeland Security funding because it has no "national monuments or icons" worth protecting. 

http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2006/06/no_icons_no_mon.html

6/1/06

New Zogby poll shows that 42% of Americans believe that some or all aspects of the 9/11 attacks were covered up, and 45% think that there should be a new investigation of the attacks, one that focuses on if any U.S. government officials "conciously allowed (the attacks) or helped facilitate their success":

http://www.prweb.com/releases/2006/5/prweb388743.htm

5/31/06

Homeland Security places Orlando and Ft. Lauderdale on its list of cities "at risk" for terrorist attacks, joining Miami, Jacksonville and Tampa which are already there. As Orlando police official says, it's "kind of a negative thing" to make that list, but cities around the country still compete for inclusion, since there is gold (funding for local emergency services) to be mined from them thar DHS funding hills. 

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060531/LOCAL/205310325/1078

5/28/06

Bush administration, the press and the public ignore the UN's call for the U.S. to close the prison camp at Guantanomo, thereby sacrificing the country's dignity and self-respect. 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0528-25.htm

5/27/06

D.C. police lock down Capitol and public schools throughout the city after Congressman report gun shots that were apparently the sounds of construction work in the area. 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/26/AR2006052601988.html?referrer=email          

5/22/06

A veteran of the Dutch resistance in World War II says "the Nazis called us terrorists" and a writer notes how Cheney and other neo-conservatives are labelling insurgency movements as terrorist in order to promote a global police state.  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=PHI20060520&articleId=2481

5/22/06

New information on violence at Guantanamo prison challenges the official story of its being a coordinated uprising.  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article549504.ece

5/21/06

Reviewers of United Flight 93 say the film demonstrates the total incompetence of the military response to the emergency of 9/11. 

http://counterpunch.org/landau05202006.html

5/20/06

U.S. Coast Guard, under pressure from shipping companies, has been "facilitating commerce" by informing ship operators of inspections that were supposed to have been surprises. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/20/us/20ships.html?th&emc=th

5/20/06

38 detainees at Guantanamo are still being held although now labelled NLEC (no longer enemy combatants) without any apparent reason for their continued detention. Many of them were captured by "terror fighting" profiteers and sold into U.S. custody.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/19/AR2006051901603.html?referrer=email

5/19/06

European Parliament is investigation war crimes charges against the American C.I.A. in connection with the war on terrorism. http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0620,hentoff,73206,6.html

5/19/06

Virginia throws out suit against CIA of a German national who was kidnapped and  sent by "extraordinary rendition" to Afghanistan where he alleges he was tortured. Without ruling on the "merits" of his case, the Judge says that it might compromise national security and  "private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets".  This formula will cover a multitude of civil rights infringements.   http://rawstory.com/showoutarticle.php?src=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2F2%2Fhi%2Famericas%2F4996140.stm  

5/18/06

Would you rather die in a terrorist attack or have your telephone tapped?  Polls pose a false dichotomy that can be used to indicate public support for invasions of privacy.

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0518-21.htm

5/17/06

Pentagon finally releases video that supposedly shows Boeing jet-liner crashing into the building on 9/11, a release at the behest of a conservative watchdog group, Judicial Watch, which wanted its release to counter "conspiracy theory."  Here is a sample of skeptical reactions by "conspiracy-oriented" bloggers:  http://www.alternet.org/blogs/themix/36342/?comments=view&cID=122613&pID=122584#c122613 

But a Capitol Hill Blue columnist was at the Pentagon that day and he knows that it was an airplane that hit the building. http://www.capitolhillblue.com/artman/publish/article_8649.shtml

5/16/06

Only in America?  No, British intelligence agency is charged with having concealed from Parliament their knowledge months before the London bombing of the activities of those planning the attack: 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article13050.htm

5/14/06

A NYT report shows that immediate;y after 9/11, VP Cheney orchestrated the expansion of illegal domestic NSA eavesdropping and the recording of all phone calls made in the U.S:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/14/washington/14nsa.html  

5/13/06

International Red Cross says U.S. government is still denying them access to detainees being held at secret detention centers. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0512-03.htm

5/10/06

The NSA has been illegally keeping a database of tens of millions of phone calls made in the U.S.:

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2006-05-10-nsa_x.htm?csp=34

5/9/06

New State Department report shows that suicide terrorism reached an all-time high incidence level last year, and that this form of terror was more effective than other methods in producing high mortality rates  

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060507-102037-9660r.htm  

5/7/06

George Will pronounces the viewing of United Flight 93 as a "civic duty." Its central message is in the reputed words of a passenger: ''No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves.'' Will seems to take this as a mandate for citizen vigilantism in suppressing terrorism. Haven't we heard this before, with other authoritarian regimes?   

http://www.suntimes.com/output/will/cst-edt-geo07.html 

5/7/06

War on Terror brings the U.S. ever closer to some of the world's most repressive regimes:  http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0505-03.htm

5/5/06

Human Rights Watch and ACLU allege U.S. torture against terrorism suspects as American officials appear before UN panel on torture to answer charges: 

http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=topNews&storyid=2006-05-04T171146Z_01_L04572367_RTRUKOC_0_US-RIGHTS-US-TORTURE.xml&rpc=22

5/2/06

Former U.S. spy Mike Scheuer says Zarqawhi was allowed to escape before 2003 invasion because U.S. wanted to use him to prove an Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda and 9/11: 

 http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050106G.shtml

5/1/06

Protesters in New Hampshire use political theatre with Nazi costumes to portray national ID plan as beginning of fascism:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/30/AR2006043000906_pf.html

5/1/06

Former U.S. spy Mike Scheuer says Zarqawhi was allowed to escape before 2003 invasion because U.S. wanted to use him to prove an Iraqi link to Al-Qaeda and 9/11: 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050106G.shtml

5/1/06

Can you spell i-r-o-n-y?  U.S. delays release of many Guantanomo detainees cleared of terrorism charge until they can be assured of their humane treatment in countries of origin like Saudi Arabia and Yemen:   http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2006%5C05%5C01%5Cstory_1-5-2006_pg4_2

4/30/06

Lee Harvey Oswald redux: how were the 9/11 hi-jackers identified so quickly? By a stash of self and Al Qaeda-incriminating papers found in suitcases "providentially" left behind in their luggage; the mark of a classic "false flag" operation: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_748.shtml  

4/28/06

Human Rights Watch briefing paper says that more than 600 Americans are implicated in detainee abuses world-wide: http://www.hrw.org/english/docs/2006/04/26/usint13268.htm

4/28/06

What the film United 93, opening this weekend, doesn't show: that the airline did absolutely nothing to save the flight or its passengers, instead trying to keep the hijacking secret: 

http://counterpunch.org/ridgeway04282006.html

4/28/06

Bush administration's protection of Cuban terrorists Bosch and Posada reveals the hypocrisy of its denunciation of those countries which "harbor" terrorists:

http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/042606.html

4/27/06

Responding to a defense filing in Moussaoui case, judge suggests she may help remove some of the veil of secrecy of government-restricted  documents related to 9/11:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/LAW/04/26/moussaoui.aviation/index.html

4/27/06

Five Cubans who went to the U.S. to try to stop American terrorist acts against Cuba in 1998  were arrested and given long prison sentences; and they are still awaiting justice in U.S. courts: 

http://counterpunch.org/pertierra04272006.html

4/25/06

Former CIA official Drumheller, interviewed on 60 Minutes, says he was interviewed by the entire Robb-Silberman Commission on prewar intelligence and WMD but none of his highly critical claims about Administration intelligence manipulation appeared in the report of that committee: 

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/008288.php

4/24/06

German intelligence expert says U.S. intelligence used WTC Building 7 to coordinate the 9/11 attacks, then destroyed the building to cover the evidence: 

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/april2006/210406runattack.htm

4/24/06

Details of secret Pentagon plans to develop Special Operations for the war on terrorism continue to emerge: expect to use U.S. embassies as headquarters for such operations:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/042406L.shtml

4/23/06

Special Forces operations become more special in Pentagon's planning for their expanded use in anti-terrorist campaigns beyond the current war zones: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/22/AR2006042201124.html?referrer=email

4/22/06

30% of detainees cleared of charges at Quantanamo remain jailed because U.S. cannot arrange their return home: http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,18891475%5E1702,00.html

4/22/06

Watchdog group notes Halliburton is given "velvet glove" treatment for dealing illegally with Iran, while Muslim charities are treated as dangerous terrorists: 

http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=32949

4/22/06

Winning the war on terror?  Dramatic increase in number of terrorist attacks worldwide: 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12430800/

4/21/06

Profiteering on counter-terrorism: IntelCenter to sell its database information on terrorist threats to U.S. Air Force Space Command: http://blogs.washingtonpost.com/earlywarning/2006/04/counterterroris.html

4/21/06

Pentagon's release of names of 558 detainees at Quantanamo has NO key Islamic extremists included, critics say they are foot soldiers with no usable information about terrorism. Did you ever wonder what happened to all those "deck of cards" folks whose capture was so highly touted? 

http://www.politicalgateway.com/news/read/8376  

4/20/06

Former A.T.&T. technicians says the company was "ensnared" in deep involvement in Bush administration's NSA spy agency surveillance:

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33847

4/18/06

Israel takes over the job of defining an "axis of terror": names Syria, Iran and Hamas-run Palestine as engaged in plan to begin a new world war: 

http://www.abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=1853302

4/17/06

9/`11 researcher asks: where is the wreckage of the plane that hit the Pentagon; did it just "vaporize?"  http://tvnewslies.org/blog/?p=355  

4/14/06

Bill which would remove parliamentary oversight of government actions and institute a national ID system is quietly making its way through Parliament as British "freedom dies":

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12719.htm

4/12/06

Writer calls for accountability of aircraft operators around the world in participating in CIA anti-terror rendition flights: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0412-27.htm

4/11/06

U.S. military secrets for sale at Afghan bazaar set up just outside Bagram base and offering computer and other data purloined from the base:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/041006E.shtml

4/9/06

In class action suit filed in San Francisco, A.T.&T. whistleblower claims the company cooperated fully with NSA in using the company's electronic equipment in illegal spying operations: 

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,70619-0.html?tw=wn_index_1  

4/7/06

Amnesty International releases report on CIA's vast program of rendition of terror suspects for interrogation in other countries:  http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=8819

4/7/06

Iraqi spy suspect worked for U.S. immigration agency overseeing applications of political asylum, including some countries unfriendly to U.S.:

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060406-124611-8863r.htm

4/7/06

Two British grandparents are first people to face imprisonment under UK's new anti-terrorism law: they walked 15 feet across a sentry line at a U.S. military base:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0406-02.htm

4/4/06

British Defence Secretary says Geneva Convention rules need to be revised to match the realities of a war on terrorism; maybe he thinks they are "quaint" as did Gonzalez: 

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/040406F.shtml

4/4/06

Supreme Court averts showdown vote in Padilla case  on Administration's war powers and enemy combatants: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/03/AR2006040300525.html?referrer=email

4/2/06

U.S. intelligence experts warn that nuclear attack on Iran might trigger Iran's promotion of terrorist attacks around the world: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/01/AR2006040100981.html?referrer=email

4/2/06

Collateral damage of the war on terror: Middle East restauranteur in Hollywood FL has his business and life ruined by false terrorist accusations:

http://www.newtimesbpb.com/Issues/2006-03-30/news/feature.html

3/31/06

In the war on terror "victory" can never be declared because the "enemy" can never surrender: no wonder the Pentagon talks about the "long war."

http://www.mises.org/story/1822

3/31/06

Released documents at Moussauoi terrorism trial provide detail on the "lumbering bureaucracy" of U.S. intelligence agencies in contrast with efficiency of terrorist operatives:   http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/us/nationalspecial3/31plot.html?_r=1&th&emc=th&oref=slogin

3/31/06

American billionaire and WTC survivor plan to collaborate with a Venezuelan government investigation of 9/11: http://www.propagandamatrix.com/articles/march2006/310306launchinvestigation.htm

3/29/06

Feds bugged bedroom and phones of Florida International University professor and his counseler wife for two years in Miami "Cuban spy case." 

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/14209765.htm

3/28/06

Supreme Court begins hearings on case that will help determine the nature of U.S. treatment of detainees in the "war on terror": http://www.antiwar.com/ips/fisher.php?articleid=8768

3/27/06

Saddam Hussein's chauffeur at Supreme Court challenges government's power to try him by a military tribunal, claimed to be an un-constitutional arrogation of presidential power: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/25/AR2006032501106.html?referrer=email  

3/24/06

"9-11 truth" analysis hits the media mainstream: Tarpley and Sheen interviewed on CNN:

http://www.free-press-release.com/news/200603/1143065487.html

3/23/06

Lodi California case highlights string of prosecutions for "material support" cases against accused terrorists, involving attendance at an Al-Qaeda terrorist camp and an infiltrator informant:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/22/AR2006032202020.html?referrer=email

3/22/06

Testifying under immunity at an MP Sergeant's trial, top intelligence official at Abu Ghraib admits he "inappropriately" authorized use of dogs to intimdate detainees:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/032106T.shtml

3/21/06

FBI agent in Texas lecture lists Indymedia and Food Not Bombs two group on a "terrorist watch list":  http://www.agrnews.org/?section=news&news_section=5&

3/19/06

Former member of U.S. Special Operations unit describe the development of a "Black Room" detention center that encouraged detainee torture before and after Abu Ghraib:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html?th&emc=th

3/17/06

GOP plan would allow President to do warrantless wiretaps by consulting with a few members of Congress: 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/16/AR2006031601861.html?referrer=email

3/15/06

Letter by Guantanomo detainee who attempted suicide details the despair of inmates there:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/14/AR2006031401517.html?referrer=email

3/14/06

Credibility of U.S. State Department report on human rights abuses worldwide is tarnished by America's own record of abuses in the "war on terrorism":

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031406L.shtml

3/12/06

Contrary to recent news reports, U.S. has no immediate plans to close Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2006/20060309_4434.html

3/11/06

Opinion: Government propaganda has "anesthestized" U.S. public into believing that Iraqi war is "revenge" for Iraq's involvement in 9/11; U.S. troops mostly want the war ended because it is not "winnable," not because unjustified: http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/030406a.html

3/11/06

NORAD orders deletion of a website transcript of a hearing on air activity restrictions around Washington DC at which many negative views were expressed:

http://news.com.com/NORAD+orders+Web+deletion+of+transcript/2100-1028_3-6048254.html?tag=nefd.top

3/10/06

U.S. removal of prisoners from Abu Ghraib will not end not end prisoner abuse which goes on, among others, at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and Gitmo:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/3/9/131226/7274

3/10/06

Doctors from around the world urge U.S. to stop "barbaric" practice of force-feeding Guantanamo prisoners:  http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article350367.ece

3/9/06

Flight 93 on 9/11: did it crash during passenger struggle with highjackers; or was it shot down on Pentagon orders?  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0308-26.htm

3/9/06

Bipartisan Congress declares war on ports deal:   

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/09/port.security/index.html

3/7/06

Willie Brand, on trial for torture, claims he did it under orders:

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030606D.shtml

3/7/06

At its annual convention, AIPAC ignores all mention of its modern founder soon to be tried for espionage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/03/06/AR2006030601466.html?referrer=email

3/6/06

Detainees at Guantanamo range from defiant zealots avowing revenge against America to a Pakistani chicken farmer who happened to have the same last name as a Taliban leader:  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/06/international/americas/06gitmo.html?th&emc=th

3/6/06

New documents show many people caught in net of terror arrests who had no involvement in terrorism:  http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11674324/

3/3/06

Pentagon's top General for war on terrorism says terrorists are growing faster than we can kill them; calls for more coordinated anti-terrorist efforts:  

http://www.washingtontimes.com/world/20060301-113323-8165r.htm

3/3/06

Rhode Island couple find themselves "terrorism" suspects when they try to pay down credit card debt:  http://www.shns.com/shns/g_index2.cfm?action=detail&pk=RAISEALARM-02-28-06

3/1/06

AG Gonzales: Extensive secret spy programs, outside of the already revealed NSA program, are operating in the U.S.

Programs are "probably" illegal

http://www.opednews.com/link.html?pg=http%3A//www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/28/AR2006022801587_pf.html

2/28/06

Eminent Indian scientist, humiliated over questioning by U.S. authorities on ties to chemical weapons, cancels participation in international chemistry conference at University of Florida:  http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060228/LOCAL/202280329/1078

2/26/06

Bush's fundamental mistake on terrorist attacks: treating the not as crimes to be dealt with by law enforcement but as acts of war requiring military action: 

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12071.htm

2/26/06

Port Everglades Florida's sea-port has been operated by UAE-based firm for 5 years, seeks license renewal with increased controversy:

http://www.gainesville.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060225/APN/602250681&cachetime=5

2/26/06

Michael Chertoff's hand seen in many battlefields in the War on Terror:

http://counterpunch.org/rajiva02252006.html

2/25/06

Senators want to force vote on port deal

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/02/25/MNGF6HEPTB1.DTL

2/25/06

Newly released notes show Rumsfeld was targeting Iraq for "hit" hours after attack on 9/11/0l: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1716840,00.html?gusrc=rss#article_continue

2/24/06

Released FBI Memos Reveal Allegations of Abusive Interrogation Techniques:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0224-06.htm

2/24/06

Germany admits that its intelligence agency helped U.S. in Iraqi war:  http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060223/ts_nm/iraq_usa_germany_dc

2/23/06

The Dubai Port debacle: was the deal  "corruption as usual" in supporting actions that will benefit the Administration's corporate allies? 

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0222-28.htm

2/23/06

Human rights

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0222-05.htm    

2/23/06

British filmmakers' The Road to Guantamano depicts abusive treatment in the U.S. prison: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468094/

2/22/06

Homeland security funding is becoming a boondoggle to support expenditures unrelated to the war on terrorism:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/INGDDH8E311.DTL  

2/22/06

Is bipartisan political opposition to Dubai deal security fear-driven or driven by Arab hate and/or business rivalry? 

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=8587     

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022101575.html?referrer=email

2/22/06

Homeland security funding is becoming a boondoggle to support expenditures unrelated to the war on terrorism:  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/19/INGDDH8E311.DTL  

2/22/06

Bush threatens veto of a bill, with strong bipartisan support, to turn over port security to Dubai firm: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/21/AR2006022100722.html?referrer=email

2/21/06

Corporate not Arab control of U.S. ports is the real problem: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0221-27.htm

2/21/06

Cheney shooting incident highlights a "quailhawk" rhetoric of comparing military to hunting operations:  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0221-23.htm

2/21/06

Pentagon "long war" paper says Islamic extremism may be supported by 12 million Muslims worldwide:  http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20060220-121019-1000r.htm

2/20/06

New Yorker report: 2004 memo from Navy counsel warned White House that its prisoner detention and treatment policies were illegal   

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/19/AR2006021901002.html?referrer=email   

2/20/06

Werther: a half dozen questions about 9/11 they don't want you to ask: http://counterpunch.org/werther02182006.html

2/18/06

Conservatives endorse the Fuhrer principle in war on terror: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11968.htm  

2/18/06

Ben of Ben and Jerry's graphic depiction of our nuclear arsenal: http://www.truemajorityaction.org/bensbbs/  

2/17/06

Contrary to Pentagon claims, "bunker busting" nuclear weapons are not "safe for civilians." http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=20060217&articleId=1988     http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=NEL20060212&articleId=1963

2/16/06

U.S. special forces operations in Northwest Africa presage more "anti-terrorism" activity as American dependence on African oil increases:  http://www.antiwar.com/ips/lasker.php?articleid=8554

2/16/06

Pressure over Guantanamo rises, UN alleges torture

http://today.reuters.com/business/newsarticle.aspx?type=tnBusinessNews&storyID=nL16444703&imageid=&cap=

2/16/06

With its emphasis on strategic nuclear weapons, the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review is more appropriate to a 1986 cold war struggle with another super-power than with national security realities today:  http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11119

2/15/06

325,000 names reported to be on counter-terrorism data base: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/14/AR2006021402125.html?referrer=email

2/13/06

Upcoming UN Report: Close Guantanamo, prosecute torturers:  http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/02/13/wguan13.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/13/ixnewstop.html

2/12/06

Intelligence sources: U.S. helping Morocco build detainee interrogation centers:  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2036185,00.html

2/12/06

National security issues raised as Arab company plans to take over 6 U.S. port operations:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/politics/2002800202_ports12.html

2/10/06

Bait and Switch: Bush and L.A. terror plot

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/2006/02/09/BL2006020901085.html

2/9/06

Former Saudi official al-Faisal, whom 9/11 families claim was implicated in the attack, is in the gallery for Bush's State of the Union address: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0202-32.htm

2/9/06

U.S. military force-feeds hunger striking detainees at Guantanamo: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/09/politics/09gitmo.html?hp&ex=1139547600&en=cccf8cfc8f39c100&ei=5094&partner=homepage

2/6/06

Life or death? penalty phase begins in trial of convicted terrorist, Zacarias Moussaoui:  http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/05/AR2006020501195.html?referrer=email

2/6/06

Warrant officer found guilty of negligent homicide in death of Iraqi detainee, gets no prison time:  http://counterpunch.org/brauchli02062006.html

2/6/06

NSA's hunt for terrorists scrutinizes thousands of Americans, but most are later cleared: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/04/AR2006020401373.html?referrer=email

1/30/06

Police behavior in "mistaken identity" terrorist shooting in London subway: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/30/nmenez30.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/30/ixnewstop.html    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060129/ts_afp/britainattacksbrazilpolice

1/30/06

War on terror set to take on the internet: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BRO20060129&articleId=1842

1/30/06

David Ray Griffin, Official account of 9/11 can't be true:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=GRI20060129&articleId=1846

1/28/06

Internet surveilliance may join the war on terrorism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm

1/26/06

Analysis: White House Tries to Spin Spying

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/25/AR2006012501689.html

1/23/06

Republicans hoping to capitalize on domestic spying issue as a political "asset": http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/23/politics/23spy.html?hp&ex=1138078800&en=13bae8a4c732a973&ei=5094&partner=homepage

1/23/06   

Sympathy for al-Qaida surges in Pakistan, locals say no terrorists killed in U.S. strikes: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060122/ap_on_re_as/pakistan_al_qaida_attack

1/21/06     

Compensating victims in the war on terror: 9/11 families big-time, Iraqis a pittance, Pakistanis, forget it.  http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0121-20.htm

1/21/06     

CIA bombs Pakistan, hits America:  http://counterpunch.org/cloughley01212006.html

1/21/06     

Bin Laden's "message" and the U.S. response: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HA21Ak02.html

1/21/06     

Pakistani PM says "no evidence" that al-Qaeda operatives killed in U.S. raid in Pakistan (contrary to Pakistani intelligence claims): http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060120/ap_on_re_as/un_pakistan_al_qaida  "Confusion" in identity of those killed is cited: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/84757338-8927-11da-94a6-0000779e2340.html
 

1/21/06     

War on terrorism compared to "Indian wars" of U.S. history, especially as Hollywood-depicted:  http://www.antiwar.com/engelhardt/?articleid=8420

1/21/06     

Blaming PM Musharaff's policy of collaboration with U.S. "war on terrorism" for air raids on Pakistani targets: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11627.htm

1/20/06    

Why not a "truce" in the war on terrorism?  http://www.counterpunch.org/foley01202006.html

1/20/06    

Full text of Bin Laden January 2006 tape: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11615.htm  

1/18/06     

U.S. media coverage of CIA attack on a "terrorist" site in Pakistan: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=50064

1/17/06     

Two civil rights group sue U.S. government over domestic spying on defense attorneys:  http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news5/nyt64.htm

1/17/06      

NSA spying after 9-11 led to investigative "dead ends": http://fairuse.1accesshost.com/news5/nyt65.htm

1/16/06     

People's investigation of 9-11, Portland Indymedia with many links: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/topic/911investigation/

1/16/06       

Pounding Pakistan to Soften the "high value Target" http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/25243

1/16/06     

Council of Europe: investigation of clandestine CIA prisons in Europe: http://www.theage.com.au/news/war-on-terror/us-policies-break-human-rights-law/2006/01/14/1137118993725.html

1/16/06    

Chomsky: "There is No War on Terror" http://www.alternet.org/story/30487/

1/16/06     

General Geoffrey Miller and Abu Ghraib: http://www.antiwar.com/orig/giraldi.php?articleid=8391

1/14/06    

Pentagon database targets anti-war protesters as terrorism suspects: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10834915/#storyContinued

1/13/06      

Articles on media coverage of war on terrorism: http://www.questia.com/search/media-and-terrorism

1/12/06    

Terrorism bill in U.K.  http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/legal/article338019.ece

1/11/06    

 Private mail-opening program in war on terrorism: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11510.htm 

1/10/06     

NSA spy program, "Echelon" will greatly expand electronic monitoring in war on terrorism: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11500.htm

1/10/06    

Ineffectiveness of wiretapping in war on terrorism: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11502.htm

1/10/06     

Ineffectiveness of wiretapping in war on terrorism: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11502.htm

1/10/06    

Losing the war on terrorism: http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=47757

1/7/06     

Suppression of dissent under British Terrorism Act: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0107-29.htm

1/7/06    

Exchanging "security" for civil rights: what's the exchange rate? http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0107-30.htm

1/6/06     

Selective prosecution of terrorists: Posada about to "walk": http://counterpunch.org/pertierra01062006.html

1/6/06     

NSA destroys records of domestic surveillance operations: http://www.counterpunch.org/leopold01062006.html

1/4/06     

 Bush says spying necessary to determine terrorist's intentions, but ignored strong evidence of their aggressive intentions before 9/11. http://counterpunch.org/ridgeway01032006.html

1/2/06     

War on terrorism: motives of terrorists and U.S. foreign policy: http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=10751

1/2/06     

Robert Fisk: war on terrorism is endless: http://www.commondreams.org/views06/0102-20.html

1/2/06    

Results of illegal NSA wire-taps on thousands of U.S.citizens were revealed to various government officials:  http://counterpunch.org/roberts01022006.html

1/1/06     

Congress permits torture for Guantanamo detainees:  http://www.commondreams.org/news2005/1223-03.htm

12/31/05      

Illegal spying endangers terrorism prosectuions:  http://counterpunch.org/lindorff12302005.html

12/31/05       

Terrorism: Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax set free: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060109/scheer1228

12/31/05      

Illegal spying endangers terrorism prosectuions:  http://counterpunch.org/lindorff12302005.html

12/31/05      

The media and Bush's 9/11/war on terrorism mistakes: http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060102/alterman

12/15/05       

"Rendition" of U.S. detainees to other countries using torture techniques: http://www.counterpunch.org/rajiva12052005.html

11/11/05      

Terrorism and McCarthyism:  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=WEI20051025&articleId=1138

Books:

Books by Tarpley, Brockers and Felton on "synthetic" war on terrorism: http://www.waronfreedom.org/newrels.html

9-11 Bookshelf: http://www.waronfreedom.org/bookshelf.html

Books on 9/11, promoting and challenging official explanation: http://911research.wtc7.net/index.html

 James Risen, State of War on fabricated war on terrorism: http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/6558  Ray McGovern reviews: http://www.antiwar.com/mcgovern/?articleid=8407

William Thomas, All Fall (book on terrorism): http://www.willthomas.net/Books_Videos/index.htm

Rahul Mahajan, The New Crusade: America's War on Terrorism (2002) http://www.monthlyreview.org/newcrusade.htm

Books on media coverage of war on terrorism: http://www.questia.com/search/media-and-terrorism

Articles on media coverage of war on terrorism: http://www.questia.com/search/media-and-terrorism

Books on 9/11 and War on Terror: http://waronfreedom.org/protest.html http://waronfreedom.org/protest.html

http://www.reopen911.org/books_dvds.htm

Video, Films:

Film America: Freedom to Fascism, a hit of the Cannes Festival, opens in selected U.S. markets (including Tampa) on July 28. It shows how the war on terror has become a war on our freedoms and personal privacy. Here is a hard-hitting review by Steve Yates. http://www.newswithviews.com/Yates/steven20.htm

Listen here to a video clip depicting the ordering of a pizza to a vendor who is "wired into" the database of information about the caller and uses it to jack up the price for delivery to a "dangerous" customer.

http://www.freedomtofascism.com/  (scroll left side to pizza order graphic)

Tampa showings (beginning July 29 are listed in Events calendar:

http://www.sunstateactivist.org/events.php

British filmmakers' The Road to Guantamano depicts abusive treatment in the U.S. prison: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468094/

The Power of Nightmares, BBC series on linked rise of Islamic fundamentalism and U.S. neo-conservatism: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/3755686.stm

Confronting the Evidence: 9-11 and the Search for Truth, video of 9/11/04 conference in NYC:  http://www.plaguepuppy.net/public_html/Confronting%20the%20Evidence/

Videos on 9/11: http://911research.wtc7.net/resources/videos/index.html

"Paradise Now": A film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

http://europeanfilms.net/reviews/2005/paradise.html

Ahmed on war on terrorism: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article9626.htm

9-11 Special: Dutch Television Documentary: European skeptics:  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11222.htm

Kidnap and torture American style: U.S. (with British complicity) kidnapping and coerced interrogation of non-U.S. nationals http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11314.htm

Loose change  9-11: evidence of falsified official version of 9-11  attacks:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023320890224991194&q=loose+change

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