John Pilger - The Mirror : THE COLDER WAR - Joe Stevens and David B. Ottaway - The Washington Post: FROM U.S., THE ABC'S OF JIHAD - Between 1979 and 1989 the C.I.A. was authorized to spend $4.5 billions in order to set up Islamic religious training schools in Pakistan ("taliban" means student in Pashto) and to teach "sabotage skills", i.e. TERRORISM, to hundreds of young Moslems at a spy training camp in Virginia and in Afghanistan. Funded by the U.S. Congress year after year under the code name "Operation Cyclone", this was the first massive program of Moslem terrorist training and continued until the Soviet defeat in 1990. One of the program's top recruiters was a young Saudi named Osama bin Laden, who also became responsible for the fortification of hundreds of mountain caves *, financed by the C.I.A. with U.S. taxpayers' money.
Is Mr. Bush going to retaliate by dropping 7-ton "daisy-cutter" bombs on Langley, Virginia, in keeping with his "Total War" doctrine? Or are the bombs (including the heinous cluster bombs that kill or mutilate unsuspecting children) reserved only for lower life forms, unpeople in Orwellian parlance, such as Afghans, Pakistanis and Arabs, as well as Filipinos, Somalis and Iranians in the near future? There are persistent rumors that Mr. Bush's underlings have constructed a list of potential targets comprising over 50 countries. But why stop there? There are about 190 countries and almost all of them are inhabited by lower life forms, unpeople, despicable creatures who cannot even speak the fifth-grade English used as standard language in America, do not understand baseball and are in dire need of being taught abject fear of and servile subjection to Israel and the U.S., the hegemons of our times.
Bombing all those alien countries back to the stone age would generate an enormous demand for smart bombs (JDAMs), cruise missiles and other pusillanimous weapon systems ( The Burning Bush has requested an additional $50 billions for 2002), which in turn could trigger a recovery of the recessionary economy. Not to mention the millions of cages we must build to lock up the "non-prisoners of war" and other recalcitrants. On the other hand, an excessive number of casualties ("collateral damage") could frustrate the efforts to lobotomize the surviving aliens through the use of television, Hollywood motion pictures and other mass media, which have turned out to be spectacularly successful in fostering the U.S. natives' lemming-like conformism.
* Steve Vogel - The Washington Post: AL QAEDA TUNNELS, ARMS CACHE TOTALED - This enormous complex of underground tunnels, arsenals and fortifications at Zhawar Kili is one of the several complexes built under C.I.A. supervision at a cost of billions of U.S. taxpayers' dollars. It cost over a hundred million dollars so far to destroy most of them, now that Osama bin Laden is no longer on the C.I.A. payroll. A true "win-win" situation for the U.S. taxpayers who should take great patriotic pride in the competence and perspicacity of the U.S. government agencies. They stimulated the U.S. economy by spending billions of dollars to build the Al Qaeda training camps and fortifications in the 1980's. They are spending billions of dollars in 2002 to destroy them as well as most of Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Georgia, Iraq, Iran, North Korea et alia, to the delight of the military-industrial complex. Economic recovery must be right around the corner...What's good for the military-industrial complex is good for America and what's good for America is good for all countries the world over! (Particularly good for the civilian "collateral damage".)
"HAS THE U.S. LOST ITS WAY?" asks Paul Kennedy CBE, Professor of History and Director of International Security Studies at Yale University.
"AMERICA'S MORALITY HAS BEEN DISTORTED BY 11 SEPTEMBER" says Robert Fisk, the dean of Middle East press correspondents.
"WHY DO WE NEED A STATE OF ISRAEL AT ALL?" asks David Aaronovitch, columnist of "The Independent".
MR. BUSH PLANS TO USE NUCLEAR ARMS AGAINST CHINA, RUSSIA, IRAQ, IRAN, NORTH KOREA, LYBIA AND SYRIA. - William M. Arkin
RATTLING NEW SABERS - A radical and dangerous shift to a nuclear first-strike policy. - John H. Cushman
ISRAEL'S STATE TERRORISM - 'The state terrorism is carried out by the Israeli Government through the implementation of cold and "rational" decisions of a State and a military apparatus of occupation, well equipped, financed and backed by the only superpower in the world.' - Lev Grinberg, Director of the Humphrey Institute for Social Research at Ben Gurion University, Israel. - APARTHEID IN THE HOLY LAND by Bishop Desmond Tutu.
Professor Michael Ratner teaches Civil Law at Columbia University, New York, and is vice-president of the Centre for Constitutional Rights, which defends civil and constitutional rights and is based in New York.
Mr. Ignacio Ramonet and Ms. Monique Chemillier-Gendreau are editors of "Le Monde Diplomatique", the prestigious French publication.
Michael Ratner: US: NO LONGER THE LAND OF THE FREE - November 2001
Paul Kennedy - The Observer: HAS THE U.S. LOST ITS WAY?- DOES EVERYBODY HATE AMERICA? MAYBE THE WORLD IS JUST CONCERNED AT THE LACK OF VISIONARY LEADERSHIP FROM SUCH A POWERFUL NATION. - 3 March 2002
Ignacio Ramonet: PEACE GETS BURIED - April 2002
Olivier Audeoud: U.S. BREAKS THE LAWS OF WAR - April 2002
Vicken Cheterian: CHECHNYA: RUSSIA GET OUT NOW - April 2002
Yasser Abed Rabbo and Yossi Beilin: AN ISRAELI-PALESTINIAN PEACE COALTION - April 2002
Mahmoud Darwish: STATE OF SIEGE - April 2002
Axel Kahn: GETTIN ON, GETTING BY - April 2002
Wang Hui: HOW TIANANMEN PROTESTS LED TO THE NEW MARKET ECONOMY - April 2002
Ignacio Ramonet: THE OTHER AXIS OF EVIL - March 2002
Paul-Marie de la Gorce: MAKING ENEMIES - March 2002
Robert James Parsons: AMERICA'S BIG DIRTY SECRET - March 2002
José Saramago: JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY DENIED - March 2002
Joseph Algazy: ISRAEL'S ARMY REFUSNIKS - March 2002
Isabelle Avran: TO PROTECT AND SERVE - March 2002
Dominique Godrèche: DEHUMANIZED IN GAZA - March 2002
Christine Delphy: AMERICA NEVER CARED ABOUT AFGHAN WOMEN - March 2002
Cedric Gouverneur: THE ENEMY WITHIN - March 2002
Cedric Gouverneur: IRAN LOSES ITS DRUG WAR - March 2002
Cedric Gouverneur: THE EUROPEAN MARKET - March 2002
Yossi Beilin: WHY ISRAEL STILL NEEDS ARAFAT - February 2002
Amnon Kapeliouk: CONDUCTING CATASTROPHE - February 2002
John Brown: THE EUROPEAN LAW WRONGLY DEFINES TERRORISM - February 2002
Ilaria Maria Sala: UIGHURS RESIST AS CHINESE SETTLE THE FRONTIER LANDS - February 2002
Le Monde: LES ARABES D'AMÉRIQUE DÉNONCENT DES DISCRIMINATIONS CROISSANTES - 17 Janvier 2002
Le Monde: TROIS QUESTIONS À JAMES ZOGBY - 17 Janvier 2002
Ignacio Ramonet: FAREWELL LIBERTY - January 2002
Ignacio Ramonet: ADIEU LIBERTÉS - Janvier 2002
Philip Golub: AMERICAN CAESAR - January 2002
Pierre Abramovici: THE U.S. AND THE TALIBAN: A DONE DEAL - January 2002
Pierre Conesa: AL QAIDA, THE SECT - January 2002
Janette Habel: LATIN AMERICA RECOLONISED - January 2002
Carlos Gabetta: ARGENTINA: IMF SHOW STATE REVOLTS - January 2002
Serge Halimi: THERE IS AN ALTERNATIVE - January 2002
Ignacio Ramonet: THE WORLD'S NEW LOOK - December 2001
Amira Hass: CONCRETE REALITIES - December 2001
Éric Rouleau: GULF STATES: AMBIVALENT ALLIES - December 2001
Jean-Louis Peninou: ETHIOPIA AND ERITREEA 'UNDER NOTICE' FROM THE U.S. - December 2001
Gilbert Achcar: A TRIO OF SOLOISTS - December 2001
Jean Ziegler: UN: STILL HUNGRY TO BED - November 2001
Ignacio Ramonet: UNJUSTIFIED MEANS - November 2001
Monique Chemillier-Gendreau: UN: THE END OF COLLECTIVE ACTION - November 2001
Vicken Cheterian: AFGHANISTAN: THE FAULT LINES - November 2001
Paul-Marie de la Gorce: UNCIVIL WAR IN WASHINGTON - November 2001
Nina Bachkatov: RUSSIA: WINNING WITHOUT FIGHTING - November 2001
Vicken Cheterian: THE NEW GREAT GAME - November 2001
Éric Rouleau: POLITICS IN THE NAME OF THE PROPHET - November 2001
Ibrahim Warde: CLEAN MONEY, JUST A LITTLE SOILED - November 2001
Ibrahim Warde: GRAINS OF SAND - November 2001
Ignacio Ramonet: AN ENEMY. AT LAST - October 2001
Steven C. Clemons: UNITED STATES: ALL-POWERFUL BUT POWERLESS - October 2001
Tariq Ali: BLOOD AND BELIEF - October 2001
Saskia Sassen: GOLD AND BOMBS - October 2001
Selig S. Harrison: PAKISTAN: THE DESTABILIZATION GAME - October 2001
Marwan Bishara: AN ENEMY WITH NO FORWARDING ADDRESS - October 2001