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After September 11 - Archived Articles
Some Articles of Interest - Archive
Disclaimer: The Jefferson County Green Party does not endorse any of the ideas or suggestion that may be advocated in the following articles. We simply provide them to you for educational and informational purposes.
OCTOBER 4
Afghan Women Speak from Behind the Media Veil By Laura Flanders - "Now that U.S. leaders are selling the nation on war against the Taliban, there are a lot of pictures of silent, shrouded Afghan women on the news. But the U.S. media veil Afghan women, too. You sure don't get to hear what any of them have to say."
Arrested Italian Cell Sheds Light
On Bin Laden’s European Network By Leo Sisti and Maud Beelman - ". . . a 100-page Italian investigative report, obtained by the Center for Public Integrity’s International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, tells a stunning story of cooperation among suspected Bin Laden cells in Europe and includes chilling wiretaps among the "brothers."
Survivors of Terrorist Victims Granted Domestic Partnership Benefits
By Matt Pyeatt - "Homosexual partners of those who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks are now eligible to receive relief funds from organizations who, along with Congress, are beginning to redefine the definition of family in the United States."
Wyden fears federal bailout could stifle airline competition By Jim Barnett - "The General Accounting Office has raised concerns that a $15 billion aid package will give big airlines new leverage to buy smaller rivals, stifle competition and raise fares, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Tuesday."
OCTOBER 3
History Warns Against Simply Arming Afghan Insurgents - By Peter Dale Scott - "The Bush administration says it will use covert forces to oust Afghanistan's Taliban government. But history -- especially the last two decades -- tells us that such efforts from abroad are doomed and counterproductive."
Intelligence Test - By David Corn "Like the Japanese raid on the US Navy base, the September 11 assault was a surprise attack, and as the rubble cooled, this tragedy, like its 1941 predecessor, prompted questions about whether agencies of the US government had profoundly failed its citizens by not foreseeing this possibility and by not reacting to what in hindsight appears to have been a variety of hints. After Pearl Harbor, Congress conducted an extensive inquiry into what had gone wrong prior to that particular day of infamy. The Congress of today ought to do likewise."
OCTOBER 2
Thugs and drugs By Robert Sheer - ". . . the failure of U.S. intelligence in thwarting Osama bin Laden is alarming, given that the CIA has been under presidential order since 1998 to incapacitate the man and his movement. That they did not come close should be the subject of a major Congressional investigation if that body ever gets around to a serious consideration of this tragedy's origins.'
Iran police crack down on "un-Islamic" women, signs of Western depravity By AFP - Iranian police Tuesday intensified their crackdown on social vices, issuing stern warnings to "un-Islamic" women who smoke in public, show their hair, wear make-up and buy lingerie from male salesmen.
OCTOBER 1
The War on the Bill of Rights By Nat Hentoff - "The more frightening reason why the government can have confidence in our support is that most Americans have only the dimmest notion of what their constitutional freedoms are - and what it took to get them. So there is little concern that they and other Americans can be caught in dragnets of suspicion by a government that has suspended much of the Bill of Rights. "
No News is Bad News by Rahul Mahajan and Robert Jensen - "As we hear talk about the United States engaging in diplomacy, we must remember this:. the U.S. conception of diplomacy does not mean seeking to avoid war, as the U.N. charter requires. It means coupling a "principled" refusal to negotiate with threats and verbal provocations designed to stiffen the spine of an enemy, so that situations cannot be resolved peacefully. It means lining up allies -- sometimes by naked coercion, sometimes by bribes of debt-restructuring or trade favors -- so that military actions can begin."
SEPTEMBER 26
An Alternative to the
U.S. Employment of Military Force By Michael Ratner - "A number of organizations and people have asked us about alternatives to the use of military force, the legality of the United States employing military force and what can and should be done under international law. Set forth below are some principles that should guide the United States actions and steps the United States can and should take that are short of using force."
SEPTEMBER 25
Liberties in a Time of Fear By David Cole - "The Bush administration has already proposed giving government greatly expanded powers, including broader authority for electronic surveillance and the ability to detain and expel immigrants not for their acts but for their associations. Others have suggested that ethnic and racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims may now be justified. . . Yet no one has made an adequate case that our intelligence agencies failed to detect the Sept. 11 plot because we lacked surveillance power. . . "
Gephardt Faces Heat Over BipartisanshipBy Ethan Wallison - "With the legislative process moving at double speed, many House Democrats are growing increasingly frustrated at being kept on the sidelines while Minority Leader Richard Gephardt (D-Mo.) cuts deals with his Republican counterparts and President Bush . . . "
National security vs. civil liberties - A Q&A with Sen. Gary Hart by Steve Rosenfeld - "Gary Hart (D-Colo.) was co-chair of the bipartisan U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, whose report earlier this year called for a sweeping restructuring of the U.S. national security."
Q&A: Mark Hatfield BY John Schrag - "The former U.S. Senator isn't about to second-guess president Bush. But he hopes that our nation's response to last week's attack goes beyond military retribution and prompts some national soul-searching about what really gives us strength . . ."
European Union to restrict civil liberties By Richard Tyler - "A European Council meeting on September 21 concluded that "the fight against terrorism will, more than ever, be a priority objective of the European Union." On this pretext, European Union (EU) ministers agreed a series of measures to step up internal security and enable the state to act more easily against alleged terrorists. The proposals represent a drastic curtailment of civil liberties, particularly in the area of extradition proceedings, also strengthening the powers of various state and police bodies at national and European level . . ."
A humanitarian catastrophe in the making in Afghanistan By WSWS correspondents - "The US has not yet fired the first shot, but among the first casualties of its war drive have been aid programs inside Afghanistan. On September 12, the day after the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, the UN World Food Program (WFP) - on which an estimated four million Afghanis depend as their primary food source - announced that it was stopping the transport of food into the country . . ."
New York Times, Washington Post suppress media recount of Florida vote By Barry Grey - "A consortium of major American news organizations, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal, has decided to withhold the results of its recount of ballots cast in Florida in the 2000 presidential election. The consortium had planned to publish its report this week, and although its decision to suppress its own findings has received virtually no media attention, the reason is made clear in a September 23 column by New York Times Washington bureau chief Richard L. Berke . . . "
SEPTEMBER 24
Journalists Worry About Limits on Information, Access By Howard Kurtz - "As the administration gears up for what President Bush has described as a new kind of war, many journalists are growing concerned that they will have less information and less access to U.S. troops than ever before. Even the use of deliberate disinformation cannot be ruled out . . . "
How can the US bomb this tragic people? By Robert Fisk - "Bush's threats have effectively forced the evacuation of every Western aid worker. Already, Afghans are dying because of their absence. Drought and starvation go on killing millions - I mean millions - and between 20 and 25 Afghans are blown up every day by the 10 million mines the Russians left behind. Of course, the Russians never went back to clear the mines. I suppose those B-52 bombs will explode a few of them. But that'll be the only humanitarian work we're likely to see in the near future . . ."
SEPTEMBER 23
The New York Talk of the Town - In the wake of last week's terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, New Yorker staff writers and contributors reflect on the tragedy and its consequences. This week's Talk of the Town is devoted entirely to the incident, and includes contributions from John Updike, Jonathan Franzen, Denis Johnson, Roger Angell, Aharon Appelfeld, Rebecca Mead, Susan Sontag, Amitav Ghosh, and Donald Antrim. (Submited by Steve)
THE TRAP By Hendrik Hertzberg & David Remnick - "Now all of us live in history. And all of us, in government and elsewhere, grope to make sense of it. Beyond the grief for what has been lost there is the need to know what to think and how to act. Part of the struggle is to put a name to this immense and indecent event . . . " (Submited by Steve)
No more street fighting man By David Moberg - "In the wake of the terrorist attacks, the anti-globalization movement is trying to rein in violence -- and preparing for a hard road ahead." (Submited by Steve)
SEPTEMBER 22
Five Arguments Against War By Michael Albert & Stephen R. Shalom
US Congress set to approve sweeping attacks on civil liberties
By Peter Daniels - ". . . Measures contemplated could "take away our protections under [the Constitution] and cast a broad surveillance net" over individuals. A spokesman for the American Civil Liberties Union said the legislation would subject immigrants to detention based on "no evidence, no hearings and no judicial review." An ACLU statement said that "there would be no hearing whatsoever and no opportunity to contest the attorney general’s decision and no meaningful criteria for him to follow in making the decision. We remain concerned that the administration still appears to want to jettison even the most basic judicial oversight in the areas of wiretapping and immigration. . ."
Where is the Bush administration taking the American people? By the WSWS Editotial Board - The siege-like setting for Bush's speech "with the Capitol ringed by troops and the sound of military helicopters seeping into the chamber" was in keeping with the administration's posture since the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. The government has gone out of its way, not to reassure the American people, but rather to create an atmosphere of panic . . ."
Anti-Americanism: The "anti-imperialism" of fools By David North and David Walsh - ". . . the reprehensible response of certain petty bourgeois opinion makers to the event underscores the gulf that divides socialist opposition to imperialism from vulgar anti-Americanism . . ."
The Democrats Dilemmina By David Corn - "Representative Barney Frank has tried to initiate one crafty strategic thrust. The liberal Democrat drafted legislation to rescind the reduction in the top income tax rate that passed as part of Bush's tax cut. That particular cut mainly benefits the top 1 percent, and Frank would devote the billions rescued to Social Security and Medicare. "This would let us spend $100 billion on reconstruction, airport security, military action, the economy, without tapping the Social Security surplus . . ."
SEPTEMBER 21
Secret memo reveals US plan to overthrow Taliban regime Ian Traynor in Tajikistan and Gary Younge in Washington for the Guardian - "The US government is pressing its European allies to agree to a military campaign to topple the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and replace it with an interim administration under United Nations auspices . . . "
Alone on the Hill - by Bill Hogan "Self-described 'Army brat' Barbara Lee explains why she cast Congress' only vote against giving the president a free hand to attack suspected terrorists."
Map - War Against Terrorism - "The United States has proposed an international coalition, with a military component, to fight against terrorism. Many countries have offered partial, if not full, backing and so far only four countries are completely opposed. An outline of countries and their willingness to participate . . ."
SEPTEMBER 20
Peace Signs Amid Calls for War By Andrew Jacobs - "The drumbeat for war, so loud in the rest of the country, is barely audible on the streets of New York . . . "
'Blank Check' Power to Wage War Will Result in More Innocent Blood -- But No Justice for the Victims.The Green Party of the United States - "Greens urge international cooperation in bringing the terrorists to justice and resolution of conflict in the Middle East . . . "
Toward the Brink By Robert Parry - "History, like a person’s life, is defined by choices, some reasoned, some thoughtless, some made in anger, some based on false premises. For the past two decades or more, the United States has marked the course of its history through choices made in a fog of propaganda . . . "
Media March to War from FAIR - "In the wake of the devastating attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, many media pundits focused on one theme: retaliation. For some, it did not matter who bears the brunt of an American attack . . ."
Draping Newscasts With the Flag By Jim Rutenberg and Bill Carter for the New York Times - "Coverage of crisis or war has always put the American media in an ambiguous position, raising the question: Should it be an unbiased broker of information or unapologetically patriotic in style and substance? . . ."
SEPTEMBER 18
Lone Voice Against 'The Spiral of Violence' by Ben Fenton in Washington - "THE only member of Congress to vote against a resolution giving President Bush a free hand in retaliating against terrorism represents a constituency that has become a byword for liberalism . . ."
SEPTEMBER 17
Bush's War: In His Own Words - I wish I could say that this man is capable of speaking for himself but I don't think that he can. And since I have been reprimanded for having only peace-loving, left-leaning & liberal points of view I have decided to provide a link to the copies (editied? Where are all those "Ahh's") of his statements.
Violence Breeds More Violence by Colman McCarthy - "In the field of conflict resolution, there are two types of violence, hot and cold . . ."
SEPTEMBER 16
Why I will not rally around the president
by Robert Jensen - "We are told that in this time of crisis, all good Americans should rally around the president and the flag. I will rally, but not around a leader calling for war or a symbol of nationalism. It is easy to understand the emotion behind the chanting of "USA, USA." But I will not chant . . ."
Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan Statement - "The US government and people should know that there is a vast difference between the poor and devastated people of Afghanistan and the terrorist Jehadi and Taliban criminals . . ."
The Belly to do what needs to be done By Tamim Ansary - "he figures if he can polarize the world into Islam and the West, he's got a billion soldiers. If the west wreaks a holocaust in those lands, that's a billion people with nothing left to lose, that's even better from Bin Laden's point of view . . ."
A Unanimous Triumph for Masters of War by Norman Solomon - "The black-and-white TV footage is grainy and faded, but it still jumps off the screen -- a portentous clash between a prominent reporter and a maverick politician. On the CBS program "Face the Nation," journalist Peter Lisagor argued with a senator who stood almost alone on Capitol Hill, strongly opposing the war in Vietnam from the outset . . ."
The Next Casualty: The Bill of Rights by Jonathan David Farley, D.Phil. NNPA Guest Columnist - "The 'they' we need to worry about are the alarmist militarists, who will use this tragedy to extort billions of dollars from us for the intelligence industry (which failed to predict the attack) and for Nuclear Missile Defense (which couldn’t have prevented it). By scaring us out of our socks, they hope to get into our wallets, too." Submitted by Gretchen
CIA's Covert War on Bin Laden By Bob Woodward and Vernon Loeb
Washington Post Staff Writers - "The CIA has been authorized since 1998 to use covert means to disrupt and preempt terrorist operations planned abroad by Saudi extremist Osama bin Laden under a directive signed by President Bill Clinton and reaffirmed by President Bush this year, according to government sources. . ."
More tears, less hate By Michael Moore - ". . . The man who occupies the White House cried today. Good. Keep crying, Mr. Bush . . . "
Missing from the Media Daily Updates by Danny Schechter - ". . . Of the 430 opinion pieces, 420 were written by right-wingers or centrists. Only ten were written by columnists one might consider left. -- What about an op-ed by the Dalai Lama? . . ."
Why the Bush Administration Wants War Statement of the WSWS Editorial Board - "In the midst of the hysterical war mongering of the US government and a state-controlled media that knows no shame, it is more than ever necessary to retain not only one’s composure, but also one’s ability to think, analyze, and reason . . ."
Terrorism, Television and the Rage for Vengeance By Norman Solomon - "We stare at TV screens and try to comprehend the suffering in the aftermath of terrorism. Much of what we see is ghastly and all too real; terrible anguish and sorrow. --At the same time, we're witnessing an onslaught of media deception . . .
SEPTEMBER 13
On the Bombings By Noam Chomsky - "As to how to react, we have a choice . . ."
The Dark Smoke By David Corn - "The hideous event will naturally dominate the national conversation. There will be little media space for other matters. The budget battle, the disappeared surplus, the Bush tax cuts, campaign finance reform, patients' bill of rights, trade tussles, global warming--Washington's agenda will be overwhelmed by the attack, to the President's distinct advantage. And the terms of political discussion will dramatically shift--again, mostly to George W. Bush's advantage . . ."
The End of the "End of History" By Jean Bricmont - "Why a truly political struggle -- not violence -- against the cultural, economic and above all military domination by a small minority over the vast majority of humanity is more necessary than ever before."
Death Downtown By Michael Moore - "I was supposed to fly today on the 4:30 PM American Airlines flight from LAX to JFK. But tonight I find myself stuck in L.A. with an incredible range of emotions over what has happened on the island where I work and live in New York City . . ."
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