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Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction ... The chain reaction - of evil-hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

... love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.

............................................................Martin Luther King, Jr.

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In September of 2001 Thich Nhat Hanh gave a talk, in NYC, in response to the events of 9/11. He spoke about 'deep listening' as a way of achieving peace. If your computer system accomodates Real Player streamed audio you can hear the talk, which was originally broadcast on a NYC radio program, Democracy Now ², and is now archived in two parts, accessible at the following links - [Streamed Audio Part 1] [Part 2]

Martin Luther King came out against the war in Vietnam in 1967. Why? For many of the same reasons that persons today oppose the war in Afghanistan, as you will discover if you listen to the following excerpt from his April 4th speech, entitled Why I Oppose the War in Vietnam: a Time to Break Silence. It was broadcast again recently [01/15/02] in celebration of his 73rd birthday: [Streamed Audio].

A few of the many talks given by other speakers at post-9/11 peace rallies:

1. John Galtung, founder of the academic discipline of 'peace studies', established the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo in 1959 and the Journal of Peace Research in 1964. A consultant to several UN agencies, he has mediated 45 major conflicts around the world over the past four decades. He recently founded TRANSCEND, a global network of 150 experts trained in conflict resolution. In a weekend-long October workshop on peaceful conflict transformation and reconciliation at Pace University in New York Galtung offered six steps toward peace. Political violence of the sort that we call 'terrorism' has causes, he argues, and if one side in an international conflict is not prepared to listen to the grievances of the other, so as to understand and address the root causes, the violence itself is nearly impossible to eradicate.[Downloadable Audio]

   On the six-month anniversary of 9/11, Galtung spoke again [3/18/02]: [Streamed Audio Part1] [3/19/02]: [Part2]

2. On October 13th, Michio Kaku ³, a physicist at City University of New York, spoke in NYC at the Washington Square Park rally against military retaliation and the proposed US 'star wars' program. The gathering was one of 111 rallies held on that day at cities around the world. Kaku, an internationally recognized authority in theoretical physics, is a founder of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space. In this talk he proposes a six point plan for peace.[Downloadable Audio]

3. Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University and author of People's History of the United States, delivered an anti-war address to an audience of 1,000 at the University of Vermont on October 21st. He talked about the necessity of speaking out during times such as these. In the atmosphere of intimidation that has accompanied the domestic call for unity within the US - unity at all costs - free speech and democracy are being attacked from all sides, Zinn observed. A unity of this sort, which seeks primarily to silence dissent regarding present US foreign policy, is a spurious unity. If we are ever to move from being a mere 'military super-power' to being a 'moral super-power', he advises, genuine debate about foreign policy will be absolutely necessary and our freedom to engage in such dialogue must continue to be cherished and defended.[Downloadable Audio]

4. Harvard professor Cornel West, author of the best-selling book, Race Matters, offered an insightful analysis of post-9/11 America in a talk that was philosophically, politically, and psychologically profound [11/20/01]. "We need the courage to think critically, even in a time of insecurity," he argues. "[Yet] even as we affirm the courage to think critically we must never allow the intellect to become a refuge for the emotionally deprived... You have to think as a whole person."[Downloadable Audio]

5. Many have indeed spoken out about US policy since 9/11, despite the risks. Hear, for instance, about the [12/11/01] Hampshire College resolution condemning the so-called 'war on terrorism' that is being conducted by the US:[Downloadable Audio]

   Or find out why longtime anti-war activist Philip Berrigan calls the US war on terror 'one of the largest swindles in American history' [1/03/02]:[Downloadable Audio]. Michael Moore agrees [1/04/02]:[Downloadable Audio].

   Berrigan, a pacifist and former priest, was a member of the 'Catonsville Nine', who burned draft records during the Vietnam War. He has spent over 10 years in prison for his anti-war activities:[1][2][3][4] He was in prison on 9/11/01 and was placed in solitary confinement as a result of the events that occured on that day:[5] Read what Father Daniel Berrigan has to say on the subject of his brother, Philip, and on Bush and State-sponsored Terrorism:[6]

1. In a radio interview on October 22nd David Gibbs, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Arizona, discussed revelations about US foreign policy in Afghanistan that come out of statements made by Zbignew Brezinski, Jimmy Carter's security advisor, in a French newspaper interview that was recently translated into English by Gibbs and a colleague.

   It is common knowledge that in the 1980s the US funded the mujahadeen, a loosely-knit group of rebel factions in Afghanistan which included the present-day Taliban and Osama bin Laden. According to the official version of history, the purpose of the funding was to oust the Soviet Union from Afghanistan after its invasion of that country in 1979. But Brezinski's statements suggest that US funding began 6 months before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan - a tactic that was intended to draw the Soviet Union into an extended and unwinnable conflict like the one in which the US had become embroiled in Vietnam in the 1960s. This operation was undertaken, according to Brezinski, in order to weaken the Soviet Union and bring about its collapse. When the French journalist conducting the interview with Brezinksi asked him if he regretted 'having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists', Brezinski replied, 'What is more important in world history - the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? - some agitated Muslims or the liberation of central Europe and the end of the Cold War?' [Downloadable Audio]

2. On October 9th M.I.T. professor Noam Chomsky, renowned linguist and political analyst, offered a critique of US foreign policy that dares to ask some very basic questions:
   • What is happening right now, as seven to eight million people in Afghanistan stand on the verge of starvation? And what can we do about it? ⁵
   • Why, precisely, is Sept 11th an historic event?
   • What is terrorism and who conducts it?
   • What are the origins of the crimes committed on Sept. 11th?
   • What policy options are there in fighting the war against terrorism and dealing with the situations that led to it?
   [Downloadable Audio Part 1] [Part 2]

   In a December lecture [12/17/01], Chomsky argued that if one wants to reach some kind of sensible assessment of what may lie ahead in the world after 9/11, we should attend to several crucial factors:

   1. The premises on which policy choices are based.
   2. The roots of these choices in institutions and ideologies.
   3. The way these doctrines and institutions have led to action in the very recent past, including actions taken by the people who are the leading decision-makers today.

   "The new millenium," he begins, "quickly offered two new and monstrous crimes, adding them to plenty of lingering ones. The first was, of course, the terrorist attacks of September 11th. The second was the response to them, which surely took a far greater toll and will take an even greater toll of innocent civilians lives - people who are innocent of any crime and who are themselves victims of the suspected perpetrators of the crimes of September 11th."[Downloadable Audio]

3. More than 3,500 innocent persons have now [12/10/01] been killed in the US attack on Afghanistan, according to professor Mark Herold - surpassing the number killed in the September 11th attacks on the WTC and Pentagon, which currently stands at 2,885.[Downloadable Audio] But the media refuses to report this. [1/18/02][Streamed Audio]

   On 1/08/02 Rita Lasar, a New Yorker who lost her brother in the 9/11 attack on the WTC, met Masuda Sultan, an Afghan-American who lost 19 family members in the US bombing of Afghanistan.[Streamed Audio] A few weeks later Rita, Derrill Bodley (whose daughter, Deora, was on United Airlines flight 93, which went down in Pennsylvania), and two other Americans who lost loved ones in the 9/11 attacks journeyed to Afghanistan to meet persons who lost loved ones in the US bombing. [1/18/02][Streamed Audio] [1/29/02:][Streamed Audio]

4. In September the US vowed to hunt down the alleged perpetrators of the 9/11 arocities in New York and Washington. And in November the US began to carpet bomb Afghanistan in the name of fighting terrorism.

   But it was a different story when the people of East Timor voted overwhelmingly for independence after 24 years of brutal Indonesian occupation. Indonesian troops burned the country to the ground, killing thousands and displacing most of the population. But in this case the US brushed off calls for the international prosecution of the terrorists. Instead, they worked to establish warm relations with them, even as they continued to murder and torture. Amy Goodman and Alan Nairn.[Downloadable Audio]

5. What exactly is a 'terrorist', anyway? Jane Franklin, historian and author of Cuba and the United States: A Chronological History, tells about how, for the past 43 years, persons who live in the US and carry out acts of terrorism against Cuba have been protected by the US government instead of sought out and prosecuted. [12/14/01][Downloadable Audio]

   A year later, attorney Leonard Weinglass calls for the release of five Cuban men who tried to investigate terrorist bombings in Cuba.[10/29/02] [Streamed Audio].

   Journalists who would dare to report on what Israel doesn't want the world to see are apparently at high risk of being executed by the Israeli military [3/14/02].[Streamed Audio] And new documents [11/30/01] have been said to provide 'watertight evidence' implicating Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in the massacre of 900 innocent refugees in Lebanon - a charge for which Sharon is being sued for genocide. But will he and the Israeli military personnel responsible for the executions be pursued as a terrorists by the US in its 'war on terror'?[Downloadable Audio]

   Apparently not. But Israeli Knesset member Azmi Bishara was recently [2/28/02] put on trial for 'supporting a terrorist organization' after making two speeches in which he allegedly praised Hezbollah. Bishara is the only representative to date to have his parliamentary right to freedom of speech revoked.[Streamed Audio]

   In similar fashion, new Canadian laws would define peaceful acts of civil disobedience as 'terrorism' and thus subject demonstrators to draconian 'anti-terrorist' measures, according to syndicated columnist Naomi Klein [12/14/091].[Downloadable Audio]

6. Jeremy Glick blames the Bush administration and US policy for the death of his father, who perished in the attack on the World Trade Center. Find out why: [Downloadable Audio]. Glick, who teaches at Rutgers, is one of the editors of a new book, Another World is Possible: Conversations in a Time of Terror.

7. Are you eager to have a little entertainment break and at the same time help revive the US economy by spending money? If you can't afford the family trip to Disneyland that George Bush suggested that you take to stimulate the economy consider going instead to a local movie theatre and seeing Lumumba. Learn how the CIA reacted when Belgium conceded the Congo's independence in 1960 and the first democratic elections in that country peacefully selected Patrice Lumumba as the country's Prime Minister. According to the US Senate's Church Committee (1975) it was Allen Dulles, CIA Director from 1953 to 1961, who ordered Lumumba's assassination [1]. Belgian officials recently [2/07/02] apologized for Belgium's role in the killing of Lumumba; the US has not yet done so.[Streamed Audio] More info on Lumumba: [2][3] [4]

   Or go to Blockbuster's and rent a video of the 1970 film 'Burn!'. Despite the fact that this film stars Marlon Brando and is the work of acclaimed director Gillo Pontecorvo it never saw the light of day in US theaters. The Vietnam War was still raging at that time and this powerful movie provided an incisive in-depth study of how colonialist powers orchestrate coups in foreign lands for the benefit of corporate interests. The story line apparently struck too close to home. An earlier film by Pontecorvo - his award winning masterpiece, 'The Battle of Algiers' (1965) - was banned in France; it told the story of the guerrilla struggle against the French colonialists in Algeria in the 1950s, resulting in independence in 1962.

   But if you are interested in seeing Black Hawk Down, the new [1/29/02] box-office hit on the US invasion of Somalia in 1993, you may want to listen to the following report before you do:[Streamed Audio] Bill Clinton called the incident, which involved the massacre of thousands of Somali civilians in Mogadishu, one of the darkest hours of his administration. Yet the Hollywood film unreservedly celebrates the event. Professor Claudia Carr, a leading scholar on Somalia, and Somali activist Omar Jamal, who is calling for the film's boycott, characterize this cinematic product of the joint efforts of Hollywood and the US government as 'a gross distortion of history' - intentionally crafted propaganda in the service of the socalled 'war on terrorism'.

   Some background on Somalia:

   "In 1991, unfortunately for the oil giants, Siad Barre [the head of Somalia, a despotic US puppet who held power for 17 years] was overthrown, and he fled the country. Somalia - as a functioning nation state with which they could do business - fell apart. The oil giants' exclusive concessions to explore and drill were worthless in the absence of a viable government to enforce their claims."[1]

   The Pentagon sees Black Hawk Down as, basically, a recruitment film. But one of the actors in it raises questions about the racist manner in which the Somalis were portrayed [2/19/02].[Streamed Audio] More on US propaganda efforts below.

8. Countries from yet other continents fared as badly at the hands of the CIA:
   • In August of 1953, seventeen years before the Lumumba incident, the CIA overthrew Iran's democratically elected Mohammed Mossadegh in a military coup after he threatened to nationalize British oil. The CIA replaced him with a dictator, the Shah of Iran, whose secret police was as brutal as the Gestapo. Ervand Abrahmian, Professor of History at CUNY, explains [10/22/01]: [Downloadable Audio]. General Schwartzkopf, Sr. played a significant role in this affair.[1]

   • In 1954, the US overthrew the democratic capitalist government in Guatemala, and has maintained support for brutal state terror there ever since.[1] Among the documents found in the declassified CIA training files of 'Operation PBSUCCESS', as this covert action was called , is a 'Study of Assassination'[2] - a how-to guidebook in the art of political killing, with detailed descriptions of the procedures, instruments, and implementation of assassination.

   • In 1957, President Sukarno, the man who had led Indonesia since its struggle for independence from the Dutch in 1954, was assassinated. The CIA and the Pentagon were attempting to undermine Sukarno as early as 1955. [1] A 1975 US Senate Committee investigating the CIA reported that it had "evidence of CIA involvement in plans to assassinate President Sukarno of Indonesia." [2]

   • In 1964, the US collaborated actively with the military plotters who overthrew the democratic regime of Brazilian President Joŕo Goulart because of his commitment to socially progressive reforms. [1]

   • On September 11th, 1973, thirteen years after Lumumba was killed, Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected president was assassinated in a CIA-backed coup that resulted in the death, by firing squad, of approximately 10,000 persons. [1] Michael Parenti describes the event:[Downloadable Audio].

   • In 1980, CIA-trained death squads roamed the countryside of El Salvador. They committed atrocities like the one in El Mazote in 1982, where between 700 and 1000 men, women and children were killed. By 1992, some 63,000 Salvadorans had been massacred.[1]

   • In 1981, the US government engineered the overthrow of the Sandanistas in Nicaragua:

     "In 1979, the Sandanistas, a left-wing revolutionary army, defeated the US-trained army of dictator Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua. Less than two years later, according to the WASHINGTON POST (March 10, 1982), on November 16, 1981, CIA Director William Casey proposed to President Reagan that he approve $19 million for the CIA to organize a counter-revolutionary force to overthrow the leftist Sandanista government. The POST reported that President Reagan accepted Casey's proposal and authorized the CIA to finance and train a paramilitary commando force to provoke a counter-revolution in Nicaragua. According to TIME magazine, throughout 1982 the CIA rallied anti-Sandanista military forces, creating bases of operation in Honduras, on Nicaragua's border. This became known as 'Ronald Reagan's Secret War,' but it wasn't much of a secret. In fact, it was so public that on December 8, 1982, the US House of Representatives unanimously passed the 'Boland Amendment' to the 1983 military appropriations bill stating that none of the appropriated defense funds could be used to 'train, arm, or support persons not members of the regular army for the purpose of overthrowing the government of Nicaragua.' This amendment made it illegal for the CIA to continue funding its anti-Sandanista army, which by then was calling itself the FDN (Nicaraguan Democratic Forces), but was better known as the Contras. After passage of the Boland amendment, the Contras desperately needed a new source of funds. (This was several years before Oliver North set up his Iran connection to divert money from arms sales to the Contras.) According to a year-long investigation by the SAN JOSE (California) MERCURY NEWS based on court records, recently declassified documents, undercover audio tapes, and files retrieved via the Freedom of Information Act, the FDN solved its problem by opening the first pipeline from the Colombian cocaine cartels to black gangs --the Crips and the Bloods --on the streets of Los Angeles." [1]

   • On November 11th, 2001, Daniel Ortega - president of Nicaragua from 1985-1990, and one of the commanders of the Sandinista forces that ousted Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza - again ran for president, in a very close election. And in a reprise of the Reagan-Bush administration's approach to US foreign policy in Nicaragua in the 1980s the US once again did everything in its power to prevent him from being elected. In a manner that is starkly reminiscent of the Reagan-Bush years this was done in the name of a 'war against terrorism'. ⁴ The Bush administration and Nicragua's ruling party tried to link their Sandanista opponent in the presidential election to 'terrorism'. Ironically, it is the US-backed Contras who, in the 1980s, operated in a manner that is more aptly characterized as 'terrorist', according to Thomas Walker, Director of the Latin American Studies Program at Ohio University and author of Nicaragua, Land of Sandino.[Downloadable Audio].

     The stage was set for the current intervention in Nicaraguan elections when George Bush Junior made the decision to bring back into active service many of the culprits from the dark period of US history when it was most heavily involved in Latin American countries against the will of their peoples -

     • Elliot Abrams has been reinstalled in the White House, as senior director of the National Security Council's Office for Democracy, Human Rights and International Operations. Abrams, once Assistant Secretary of State under Reagan and a shaper of that Administration's controversial and deadly policies on Latin America and human rights, pled guilty to two misdemeanor counts of lying to Congress during the Iran Contra hearings and was subsequently pardoned by George Bush Senior.[1]

     • George Bush Junior's recent choice for US ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, was also involved in Nicaragua in the 1980s. The New York Times credited Negroponte with "carrying out the covert strategy of the Reagan administration to crush the Sandinista government in Nicaragua" during his tenure as US Ambassador to Honduras from 1981 and 1985. "Negroponte played a significant role in the CIA-sponsored terrorism of Hondurans during the Nicaraguan Contra War. He falsified State Department human rights reports throughout his time in Honduras. US missionaries and many people of faith and conscience were murdered by the CIA-trained Honduran Battalion 3-16, which Negroponte at best overlooked and at worst oversaw."[1][2].

     • Otto Reich, Bush's candidate for Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, is another retread from the Reagan era. Reich’s previous tenure at the Office of Public Diplomacy generated "major controversy during the exposure of the Iran-contra scandal, leaving an extensive document trail".[1].

     • Richard Armitage, current US Deputy Secretary of State, is yet another dark figure from this unhappy era. "It is generally believed that Mr.Armitage actually served in the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) till 1978 and from 1976, after a cover resignation from the CIA, worked for some private companies of the CIA, which were being used by it for covert actions in Indo-China. His critics had alleged in the past that he was the author of the idea of using heroin to weaken the fighting capability of the communists in Indo-China and then in Afghanistan ..."[1]

   • Eight months after the democratic election of Aristede in Haiti in 1990 the US "moved at once to reverse Haiti's hopeful democratic experiment," according to Noam Chomsky. It "undermined the OAS [Organization of American States] embargo while the military junta tortured and murdered, and finally [after 3 years] restored the elected president on the condition that he adopt the policies of Washington's defeated candidate in the 1990 election, who had received 14 percent of the vote." (Chomsky, Rogue States, page 10). Aristede remained in office 16 months before term limits forced him to step down in 1996. He was replaced by his protégé, who governed until elections once again placed Aristide in power last year. Yesterday [12/17/01] there was another attempted coup in Haiti, leading some to fear that Aristede's time in office will again be brought abruptly to an end as a result of US foreign policy decisions that are a throwback to the type of interventions characteristic of the Reagan-Bush era.[Downloadable Audio]

9. Who is leading the socalled 'war on terrorism' that is being conducted by the US? Many of the same people who were condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and the UN Security Council, according to Noam Chomsky [1/07/02] - including the US Ambassador to the UN, and the US Secretary of Defense.[Streamed Audio]

   The question about who is in charge of the US government, and who will be in charge in the future, took a new twist when Bush recently disclosed the existence of a secret 'shadow government' that is now [3/05/02] at work behind the scenes.[Streamed Audio] Its reason d'etre is presumably to insure 'continuity of (federal) government' in the US in case of a nuclear attack. But is the Shadow Government really but the first step toward the establishing of martial law in the US? [3/06/02]: [Streamed Audio]

10. For a more comprehensive timeline (1929-1993) of CIA atrocities at home and abroad: [1]. For more information about US government assassination plots in particular: [2]. For information about how the US trains foreign military officers to conduct coups and use torture and murder in interrogation have a look at what is going on in the 'School of the Americas' [3] [4], which operates out of Fort Benning in Georgia. Panama's Manuel Noriega is a graduate of the SOA.[5]

    Twenty-two years ago Archbishop Oscar Romero was assassinated in San Salvador by graduates of the School [3/19/02], recently renamed the 'Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISC).' [Streamed Audio]

11. Did the US government have anything to do with Martin Luther King's assassination? A jury in a US court case found that it did. At the official Martin Luther King web site[1] and elsewhere[2] it was reported that "on December 8, 1999, a jury of twelve citizens of Memphis, Shelby County, TN concluded in Coretta Scott King, Martin Luther King, III, Bernice King, Dexter Scott King and Yolanda King Vs. Loyd Jowers and Other Unknown Conspirators that Loyd Jowers and governmental agencies including the City of Memphis, the State of Tennessee, and the federal government were party to the conspiracy to assassinate Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." In Volume 9 [3] of the court transcripts [4], one finds testimony regarding the relationship between the CIA forces that backed the Contras and the Martin Luther King assassination. "The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal government agencies, were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband," said Coretta Scott King on 12/9/99, in a press conference [5] following the jury's verdict.

12. Washington has been striving to create an international coalition to support the US attack on Afghanistan. Are members of the coalition guilty of human rights atrocities? Russia killed tens of thousands of people in Chechnya. China is currently killing and torturing Muslims in its northwest provinces. Uzbekistan has 7,000 political prisoners. And Turkey killed thousands of Kurds and destroyed hundreds of villages in southern Turkey [see below]. In Indonesia, home to one of the most brutal militaries in the world, thousands of people were killed in recent years in West Papua and Aceh. Mohammed Nazar, founder of the Student Referendum Information Center in Aceh, and John Rumbiak, a leading human rights activist from West Papua, elaborate [11/07/01]:[Downloadable Audio]

    In fact, U.N. officials and human rights advocates charge that demands by the Security Council that U.N. members act against global terrorism are being used by some regimes to JUSTIFY repression of domestic dissent. William Orme, United Nations correspondent for the LA Times, and John Peck, member of the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars discuss this issue [1/03/02]: [Downloadable Audio], as the so-called 'war on terror' moves from Afghanistan to:

    • the PHILIPPINES [11/19/01]: [Downloadable Audio] Fidel Ramos, former president of the Philippines, is involved in the notorious 'Carlyle Group' [see below]. He stands to profit from the 'war on terrorism'.[1] [1/31/02]: [Streamed Audio]

    • COLOMBIA [1/11/02][Streamed Audio]

    • UZBEKISTAN [1/11/02][Streamed Audio]

    • IRAQ [2/06/02] British papers report a plan that the Pentagon has for an invasion of Iraq that would involve 100,000 US troops.[Streamed Audio]. Shortly thereafter [2/07/02] Secretary of State Colin Powell declares that there should be a regime change in Iraq.[Streamed Audio] The NY Times now [2/13/02] reports that the Bush administration has reached a consensus on the need to overthrow Saddam Hussein, and that plans to achieve that goal are being drawn up.[Streamed Audio] From what country will ground troops for an invasion of Iraq most likely come? Turkey. Iraq has the second largest oil reserves in the world and Turkey, its neighbor, has received massive infusions of US military aid in recent years [2/14/02]:[Streamed Audio]

      Iraqi newspapers say [2/19/02] that the US is waging psychological war on Iraq in preparation for military action.[Streamed Audio] Should the US invade Iraq? Ramsey Clark (Former US Attorney General), Hussein Ibish (Communications Director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee), and James Woolsey (Former CIA Director) debate [3/20/02] the issue.[Streamed Audio]

      Is it Iraqi oil that the US is interested in [see above]? For a report [3/21/02] on Iraq, big oil, and Dick Cheney:[Streamed Audio]

      "A decade ago while the United States government made noisy preparations to go to war against Saddam Hussein, it was also purposefully planning another war--on the constitutional freedoms of the US media during Operation Desert Storm". Designing War - a conversation with John Macarthur, publisher of HARPER'S and author of Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the Gulf War Part I - [9/24/02] [Audio - 9/24/02] Part II - [9/26/02] [Audio - 9/26/02]

      Republican Ron Paul, US Representative from Texas, comes out against the war in Iraq. [9/24/02] [Streamed Audio]

      Cynthia McKinney, member of the US Congress, on why she opposes war in Iraq. [9/24/02] [Streamed Audio]

      A history of the US relationship with Saddam Hussein, including the illegal arming of Saddam Hussein by the US [10/23/02] [Streamed Audio].

      "Chile suffered from one-bullet diplomacy. Gandhi and King died from one-bullet diplomacy. Lincoln died from one-bullet diplomacy. John and Robert Kennedy died from one-bullet diplomany. We must have a higher more moral order of conflict resolution, not one-bullet diplomacy." - Reverend Jesse Jackson, at a demonstration in Washington D.C., where upward of 150,000 persons came out to demonstrate against a possible invasion of Iraq.[10/28/02] [Streamed Audio].

      [10/29/02] Washington will send Iraq into Armageddon to capture the country's oil fields says the director of Iraq's oil ministry [Streamed Audio]. Meanwhile, Germany's justice minister is alleged to have compared George W. Bush's stance on Iraq to Hitler's use of international policy to hide domestic woes. [1][2]

    • SOMALIA [2/19/02][Streamed Audio] [See below]

    • KOREA [2/19/02][Streamed Audio] In his State of the Union message Bush labeled North Korea as part of an 'axis of evil' that also presumably includes Iraq and Iran. Amidst large protests in Seoul's streets Bush opened a visit to Korea today. More on the visit, and the Bush administration demonization of Korea [2/20/02]:[Streamed Audio]

    • CUBA, LIBYA, and SERYA [5/07/02] were added by the US to its 'Axis of Evil': [Streamed Audio]

13. For more on how the US government continues to provide massive military aid to foreign countries such as Turkey and Colombia, countries that make it a habit of torturing and terrorizing their own citizens, see Noam Chomsky's Rogue States: The Rule of Force in World Affairs (South End Press, Cambridge, 2000). The more military aid a country gets from the US, Chomsky demonstrates, the more egregious the offenses it commits against human rights.[Downloadable Audio]. Turkish parliamentarian Leyla Zana, for example, is now in her eighth year of a fifteen year sentence that she received for speaking Kurdish in the Turkish parliament, on the occasion of her swearing-in ceremony [2/14/02].[Streamed Audio] Hear a chilling tape of this ignominious historic event [2/14/02]:[Streamed Audio]

    "How do we reduce terrorism?" asked Chomsky in a talk recently broadcast on C-span [1/27/02]. "One way to reduce terrorism," he dryly said in response to his own question, "is to not participate in it." This good advice was apparently lost on Turkish authorities, however, who would rather spend their time targeting Chomsky himself. Turkey's 'Chief of Terrorism Prosecution' is using new anti-terrorist legislation to prosecute Chomsky's Turkish publisher for publishing Chomsky's comments on Turkish repression of the Kurds [1/25/02]:[Streamed Audio] The publisher, Fatih Tas, is later [2/13/02] acquitted.[Streamed Audio] After his acquittal, Tas credited Chomsky with aiding in his release. Chomsky traveled to Istanbul to stand in court with Tas yesterday, despite the fact that by doing so he had by Turkish law technically become a co-defendent and thus himself risked going to jail. Chomsky talked by telephone from Turkey about the ordeal on [2/14/02] :[Streamed Audio]

14. In late November [11/30/01] some began suggesting that suspected terrorists in the US should be extradited to precisely these countries, where authorities have no qualms about using torture in interrogation. Others, like Jonathan Altar and Harvard's Alan Dershowitz, argue that the time has come for the US itself to utilize torture in its interrogation methods.[Downloadable Audio]

    Harvey Silverglate, criminal defense and civil liberties attorney and co-author of The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, debates Dershowitz about whether it is a good idea to legalize torture in the US (12/21/01): [Downloadable Audio].

    And on 1/21/02 the US government released photographs that have caused an international uproar over treatment of prisoners held at US camps in Guantanamo Bay. The pictures show the detainees being subjected to sensory deprivation. Amnesty International says the photographs are reminiscent of torture methods used in Eastern Europe in the 1970s.[1][2][3][4][5][Streamed Audio] The Red Cross accused the US of violating the Geneva Convention in this case [1/22/02]:[Streamed Audio] A week later, while Colin Powell was asking Bush to reconsider his decision that the Geneva Convention not be applied to captives, an inspection team from Physicians for Human Rights condemned the US for substandard conditions in an Afghan jail housing more than 3,000 Taliban and Al Qaeda. [1/29/02] [Streamed Audio]

    "The thing we have to see as we talk about the open and enjoyed violation of the human rights of these prisoners at Guantanamo," remarked former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark on 1/23/02, "is that the United States has placed itself above the law now; it systematically violates the law ..."[Streamed Audio]

15. Wars are never a solution, argues Columbia University professor Edward Said, they simply produce further wars, in an inevitable 'cycle of violence'. Hear him speak on this subject at a conference [12/26/01] on the present escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.[Downloadable Audio].

    Are there alternatives to the US employment of military force in Afghanistan (and elsewhere)? Michael Ratner, international human rights attorney, presents them: [1] Ralph Nader [3/15/02] discusses the need to rethink the mentality that holds aggressive military action as the only foreign policy alternative available to the US:[Streamed Audio]

Regarding the role that oil plays in the US policy toward Central Asia:

1. Is the REAL purpose of the US 'war on terrorism' to make Afghanistan an American oil colony like Saudi Arabia? So says renowned British journalist John Pilger, former chief foreign correspondent for the Mirror, in an article [10/31/01] in the Mirror entitled "This War is a Fraud". The potential profits for the West are enormous.[Downloadable Audio]

   Listen to Ahmed Rashad, author of Taliban: Militant Islam, Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia, for a brief history of how, since the fall of the Soviet Union, Western oil companies have been 'romancing the Taliban' and competing for access to oil in Central Asia:[Downloadable Audio]

   And read a BBC report about how Hamid Karzai, the present [1/28/02] head of the new provisional government that the US recently installed in Afghanistan, was a consultant for Unocal, the the huge US oil group. Unocal, which had supported the Taliban at the time, sought to construct a pipeline to transport oil and gas from the Islamic republics of Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.[1]

2. US troops have been present in Saudia Arabia ever since the Gulf War. The Saudis were never at ease with the arrangement, and resentment has continued to increase. But while these troops now [1/22/02] finally face eviction from that country, they have in effect been replaced by 'a ring of new and expanded [US] military bases that encircle Afghanistan', according to a piece by Bill Arkin, correspondent for the LA Times and a weekly columnist for the Washington Post.[Streamed Audio]

3. What is the relationship between the Bush family, the bin Laden family, and the Saudi royal family? Bob Vitalis, Director of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, Gwenn Okruhlik, professor of Political Science at the University of Arkansas, and Fareed Mohamedi, Chief Economist with Petroleum Finance Company, discussed this matter in detail on 11/03/01.[Downloadable Audio]

   They were joined by Chris Ayres, New York correspondent for the Times of London. He described the role that former CIA director President George Bush Senior now plays in promoting the business interests of the Carlyle Group[1], a lucrative $12 billion private equity firm with connections to the Bin Laden family.[Downloadable Audio] Another report [1/04/02] tells how, in the wake of the events of September 11th, the power and influence of the Carlyle Group has become significantly stronger:[Downloadable Audio]

4. In a secret meeting that occured before 9/11, between representatives of the US government and the Taliban, the Taliban was told "either you accept our offer of a carpet of gold, or we bury you under a carpet of bombs," according to Jean-Charles Brisard. A new book that Brisard coauthored with Guillaume Dasquie, entitled Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth, explains how the pre-9/11 objective of US policy in Afghanistan, a policy influenced in the main by US oil interests, was to consolidate the power of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Brisard worked for the French Secret Services and in 1997 wrote a report for them on Bin Laden's Al Qaeda network. [Streamed Audio] [1/10/02]

   From the book you will learn, amongst other things, how the Taliban employed a US expert on public relations, Laila Helms, neice of Richard Helms, former Director of the CIA. And how so many members of the Bush administration, from Vice President Dick Cheney [see below] and Director of the National Security Council Condoleezza Rice, to the secretaries of commerce and energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abraham, all worked for US oil companies.

   You'll also find out why Libya was the first State to officially prosecute Bin Laden (on charges of terrorism), and how Libya's Muammar Qadhafi "demanded that Western police institutions, such as Interpol, pursue the IFG and bin Laden, but never obtained cooperation."

   According to one review, "The authors claim that John O'Neill [Deputy Director of the FBI] told them that 'the main obstacles to investigate Islamic terrorism were U.S. oil corporate interests and the role played by Saudi Arabia in it.'" In July, O'Neill resigned in protest over the obstruction, according to Brisard and Dasquie. He took a new job as head of security at the World Trade Center, where he died in the September 11th attack. Three reviews of the Brisard/Dasquie book:[1]

5. Osama bin Laden's assets may not be the only funds subject to being frozen. According to the Associated Press, there is currently a move afoot to freeze monies allegedly gained fraudulently by George Bush Junior's close friend Ken Lay, Enron chairman and chief executive. The AP article reads as follows:

   HOUSTON - Dec. 8, 2001 -
   A bid to freeze more than $1 billion allegedly gained by top Enron Corp officials who sold millions of shares before the former energy giant collapsed was set to go before a federal judge here Friday.

   New York-based Amalgamated Band has sued 29 current and former top Enron Corp executives and board members, including Ken Lay, Enron chairman and chief executive, and Texas Senator Phil Gramm's wife, Wendy Gramm, an Enron board member and former chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a federal agency that oversees commody and options trading to protect markets from fraud and manipulation.

   The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Houston, alleges that the named executives and board members engaged in a three-year pattern of fraud and deception that caused Enron share prices to fall from a high of about $90 a year ago to less than a dollar.

   Enron filed for bankruptcy protection earlier this month in one of the largest corporate bankruptcies ever. - Associated Press

   While top management at Enron made out like bandits when the company went bankrupt, and Lay personally has 'millions socked away in lawsuit-proof investments' [2/22/02] [1], employees lower in the company hierarchy lost everything. Their stock-based pensions disappeared as share prices plummeted. Listen to an early report [11/16/01] on the effect of this situation on Enron workers.[Downloadable Audio]

   According to Time Magazine [12/18/01, page 72]:

   $1/3 Billion
   was the "approximate decline in value of Enron Stock in 401(k) plans held by some 11,000 employees at the start of 2001"

   $56.2 Million
   was the "approximate earnings of three top Enron executives through the exercise of stock options during 2001".

   Too few analysts ask why Lay and other executives were eager to sell their personal holdings of Enron stock during the first part of 2000, according to the Time Magazine article - which also observed that in the US Congress there is currently no talk of bailing out the workers' pension fund.

   Top executives of Enron are now [1/11/02] under investigation for possible criminal activity. The entire US Attorneys Office in Houston, however, admitting close connections to Enron, has had to recuse itself - as did US Attorney General John Aschroft.[Streamed Audio] As Congressional hearings on the scandal begin [1/25/02] Lay resigns [Streamed Audio]. And amid mounting evidence of criminal activity he eventually [2/04/02] refuses to testify before Congress[Streamed Audio]; protests take place in NY, in front of the offices of Arthur Andersen[Streamed Audio]; Lay is subpoened to appear [2/06/02][Streamed Audio], but takes the fifth amidst a bi-partisan oral barrage [2/13/02] from twenty one US Senators[Streamed Audio]. There is now [2/07/02] evidence that top Enron executives knew early on that there were problems with the financial partnerships [see below] that are currently at the center of congressional and criminal investigations.[Streamed Audio]

   A decade ago Ken Lay's good friend George W. Bush was himself the subject of an SEC investigation into energy trading. According to a [1/16/02] report:

   "In 1990, Bush sat on the board of directors of Harkin Energy Company and on their audit committee. Just before the company announced a $23 million loss, Bush sold some $850,000 worth of stock, which he later used to purchase the Texas Rangers baseball team. As in the Enron case, the SEC investigated the possible insider deal. But it brought no charges.

   the Pretzel of Complexity

   Perhaps this isn't surprising: the head of the SEC at the time was appointed by Bush the elder. And the SEC's general counsel at the time, James Doty, actually helped to engineer George W. Bush to buy the Texas Rangers with the Harkin stock money. Doty also hails from the law firm, Baker and Botts, the law firm of former Secretary of State James Baker fame. James Baker, one of the most prominent figures in the first Bush administration, represented George W. Bush in the legal battle for the presidency.

   "Baker and Botts is also implicated in today's Enron scandal. It is the same law firm that produced President Bush's appointee Lee Rosenthal, the Texas judge who was assigned to the employee and shareholder lawsuits against Enron. Just last week, Judge Rosenthal denied a motion to freeze the assets of Enron executives and board members. She has since recused herself from the case."[Streamed Audio]

   In January [1/25/02], a former Enron executive, J. Clifford Baxter, died of a gunshot wound to the head that was apparently self-inflicted. He was found in his Mercedes-Benz, parked not far from his home in an affluent Houston neighborhood. By his side lay a .38-caliber revolver and a suicide note. The contents of the note have not been disclosed. The Associated Press reports [1/27/02] that Baxter resigned from Enron last May, after reportedly complaining about the company's dubious accounting practices.[1]

   While cartoonists suggest that the toughest pretzel for Bush to swallow may be the Enron-related one yet to come [1], US Vice President Cheney continues to refuse to release secret documents that would reveal which industry executives he privately met with while drawing up the Administration's energy plan [1/28/02]. Is the White House lying about its involvement with Enron? Most Americans believe that it is, according to an opinion poll conducted by the New York Times and CBS.[1]

6. Now [1/31/02] the General Accounting Office (GAO) threatens to sue the White House for Cheney's records of his meetings with Enron and others who sought to influence the administration in its energy policy. It also appears that the Bank of America is implicated in the Enron affair. [Streamed Audio]

7. Hear investigative journalist Greg Palast [02/05/02] discuss Enron. [Streamed Audio] Various topics are covered, including but not limited to -
   • Enron's role in the privatization and impending total collapse of Argentina;
     
   • how George W. Bush pimped for Enron in Argentina during his father's presidency;
     
   • and the role Neil Bush played in one of the biggest financial scandals to date in US history - the Savings and Loan debacle that took place in the 1980s during the Reagan/Bush administration. The same kinds of fraudulent acts that Enron is now accused of were also at the bottom of that earlier scandal.

8. Texas populist Jim Hightower, author of If the Gods had Meant us to Vote They Would Have Given us Candidates, discusses George W. Bush's questionable Texas Rangers deal [also see above] in the context of the close relationship between the Bushes and Lay [2/06/02].[Streamed Audio] More on this lifelong friendship, including a picture of Lay with both Georges prior to the Houston Astros' opening game at their new home, 'Enron Field', in April of 2000: [1] More yet: [2][3]

   Hightower on the subject of Enron's fiscal practices:

   There's a fun web site (www.haveagoodlaugh.com) that tries to explain economics in terms of cows. Here's how it describes the inner workings of Enron: "You have two cows. You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so you get all four cows back with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island company secretly owned by the majority shareholders who sell the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option to buy one more."[1]

   Hear the following report [3/22/02] on how public institutions bankrolled Enron's globalization game, with devastating affects on developing countries around the world:[Streamed Audio]

   Ralph Nader, [3/15/02] proposes corporate reforms that are solutions to deep-seated problems associated with capitalism, problems most clearly revealed by the recent Enron debacle.[Streamed Audio]

9. Enron fraudulently manipulated California's electricity market in order to drive up power prices, contributing to that state's energy crisis last year, according to internal Enron documents released yesterday. [5/07/02] [Streamed Audio]

On the US home front:

1. Is what we now need in the US more tax cuts for the wealthy and extensive tax rebates for large corporations? This is precisely what President George Bush Junior suggested in his 100 billion dollar 'economic stimulus package'. It proposed giving hundreds of millions of dollars each to companies such as IBM, General Electric, Chevron, and Enron - while leaving low wage workers on their own to suffer the immediate effects of the 9/11 attack. US Congressman Gerald Nadler (NY) called this an 'immoral' proposal that amounts to nothing short of 'war profiteering'. The stimulus bill even includes a provision to repeal the 'corporate alternative minimum tax' retroactively to 1982 - this provision will, in effect, return to corporations like the ones mentioned above ALL of the taxes that they have paid since 1982. [10/20/01]: [Downloadable Audio] [12/12/01]:[Downloadable Audio] For more details on the 'stimulus' package:[1]

   Meanwhile, the 2003 budget proposed by Bush [2/04/02] seeks record increases in military spending offset by deep cuts in domestic programs [1]. 'Homeland security' is being invoked [2/07/02] as an excuse to slash environmental protection measures, for instance.[Streamed Audio]

2. For more on war profiteering - see the following article on Bayer, the company that holds the patent rights to Cipro, the antibiotic used to fight anthrax[1]. Hear how multinational banks have put profits ahead of fighting terrorist financing by resisting tougher money laundering laws: [Downloadable Audio]

   "Terrified as I am of Muslim fundamentalism," says Farid Esack, a leading Muslim figure in the anti-Apartheid struggle who spent four years as the head of South Africa's commission on gender equality, "I must also say that I am equally terrified of the fundamentalism of the market."[Downloadable Audio]

3. For a chronology of state use of biological and chemical weapons (429 BC to 1998) see the timeline supplied by The Center for Non-Proliferation Studies: [1]. And in order to start to understand the role that the US has played in the development and use of biowarfare consult The United States and Biological Warfare: Secrets from the Early Cold War and Korea (1999, University of Indiana Press, 273 pp.), by Endicott and Hagerman.

   "Begun with an inital grant of $250,000, modest by wartime standards, the [US] biological warfare program quickly grew to be one of the largest wartime scientific projects in American history, second only to the Manhattan Project, which created the atomic bomb," write the authors. Read a (1999) review of Endicott and Hagerman's book: [2]; and then listen to John Tirman of the Social Science Research Council, author of Spoils of War: The Human Cost of America’s Arms Trade, tell how the US and Western companies sold bioweapons to Iraq in the 1980s: [Downloadable Audio].

   Meanwhile, amidst the confusion and fear that accompanies the current anthrax threat as it quickly spreads across the US, the Pentagon has quietly approved the development of a genetically modified 'super-anthrax' bacteria to test US defenses against biological attack, overriding concerns that such research could violate a 1972 germ warfare treaty. [10/24/2001][Downloadable Audio] And scientists now say that the US is also developing an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons in violation of international treaties on biological and chemical warfare.[10/29/02][Streamed Audio].

   In addition, the Washington Post reported [12/16/01] that genetic fingerprinting studies indicate that the anthrax spores mailed to Capital Hill match perfectly the stocks of the deadly bacteria maintained by the US army since 1980.[Downloadable Audio]

4. Did you know that on November 11th ABC News reported that "In the early 1960s, America's top military leaders reportedly drafted plans to kill innocent people and commit acts of terrorism in US cities to create public support for a war against Cuba"? [1] Details of the plan, code-named 'Operation Northwoods', are described in a new book by James Bamford called Body of Secrets (Doubleday), about the history of America's largest spy agency, the National Security Agency. The NSA is the top-secret arm of the US Department of Defense; its job is to monitor billions of electronic communications around the world. For a [1/10/02] report on the NSA and its role in the socalled 'war on terror':[Streamed Audio]

5. On 11/08/01, US Attorney General John Ashcroft announced a far-reaching "wartime reorganization and mobilization" of the Justice Department. The primary mission of immigration officers, FBI agents, and federal prosecutors must become the thwarting of future terrorist attacks, declared Ashcroft. And so the department will abandon or reduce manpower devoted to traditional Justice Department responsibilities - such as Civil Rights enforcement and the prosecution of environmental polluters.[Downloadable Audio]

   According to syndicated columnist Molly Ivins [12/15/01, Albany Times Union]:

   The EPA has diverted about 40 percent of its criminal enforcement division to anti-terrorist activities, also moving hazardous waste inspectors to the World Trade Center site. This may well be advisable as we all struggle to get a grip on 'homeland security,' but it also may be smart to remember that more people were killed by the 1984 chemical plant accident in Bhopal India (3,000 died immediately and 200,000 were injured - more have died every day since, so the tally is not final. It's generally put at 5,000) than died on Sept. 11 (3,273, according to The New York Times).

   "I suspect," Ivins concludes, "that when the history of this era is written, the lack of vision on the part of our government will be deemed the greatest tragedy of all."

6. On 12/03/01, Ashcroft announced that he was seeking to expand the powers of the FBI in a way that many find reminiscent of the 'counterintelligence program' operated by the FBI in the 1950s and 60s. 'Cointelpro', as this secret operation was know, conducted CIA-style covert actions against dissidents in the US. Massive secret surveillance was conducted, and numerous law-abiding organizations were infiltrated by FBI agents in an attempt to control political discourse in the US. Agents spread malicious rumors about individuals (such as Martin Luther King) and groups, conducted comprehensive disinformation campaigns designed to discredit them, and attempted to instigate persons to partcipate in illegal activites. Legal political activities of US citizens were disrupted in a manner that was later decreed unconstitutional and prohibited by guidelines drafted by the US Senate's 'Church Committee'. Native rights activist Ward Chruchill, former Black Panther member Akua Njeri, and senior analyst at Political Research Associates Chip Berlet discuss this:[Downloadable Audio]

   US antecedents to 'cointelpro' run back at least as far as the Civil War. A brief history of 'intelligence' and the 'security culture' in the US, starting with the Pinkertons in the 1860s - by co-author of 'The Cointelpro Papers', Professor of Ethnic Studies Ward Churchill:[Streamed Audio]. [2/28/02]

7. Since 9/11 civil liberties in the US have increasingly come under attack. In November, President Bush signed an order allowing secret military tribunals to try non-citizens accused of terrorism. A tribunal is a trial before military judges that is likely to be non-public, one in which 'due process' for the accused is severely limited - he/she has no right to a civilian attorney of his or her choice, limited opportunity to see the evidence against him/her, no right to appeal, and so on. Millions of non-citizens who are LEGALLY present in the US are subject to such tribunals.[Downloadable Audio]

   "Leave aside whether the tribunals would be good or bad, kangaroo courts or simply streamlined procedure;" argues George C. Fletcher, "the president has no authority to create them". [1]

   The rights of people who are detained or questioned by authorities are detailed in a a pamphlet put out by the National Lawyers Guild [11/15/01], read here by actor Peter Coyote.[Downloadable Audio]

8. On 11/14/01 a report entitled 'Defending Civilization' was issued by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, a right-wing organization founded by Lynn Cheney and US Senator Joe Lieberman. The report identifies by name university professors, students, and others who have made statements that the organization deems 'unpatriotic'. Here are three rather harmless statements with which the report finds fault:
   • "Ignorance breeds hate."

   • "It's good for the government to know that there are people who want peace instead of bloodshed; not all Americans want revenge."

   • "We need to hear more than one perspective on how we can make the world a safer place. We need to understand the reasons behind the terrifying hatred directed against the United States and find ways to act that will not foment more hatred for generations to come."[Downloadable Audio]

9. In October, Arab and Muslim students faced widespread discrimination at colleges; many had their records pulled by the FBI.[Downloadable Audio] Also in October, the City University of New York's Chancellor and Board of Trustees denounced professors critical of US Foreign Policy.[Downloadable Audio] Such incidents continued to occur in November and December. A West Virgina high school student, Katie Sierra, was suspended [12/11/01] from school simply for wearing a tee-shirt on which she had written the following statement: "When I saw the dead and dying Afghani children on TV, I felt a newly recovered sense of national security. God Bless America."[Downloadable Audio] In Miami, Florida, Michael Italie was fired [12/12/01] for stating that he opposed the war in Afghanistan. He was explicitly told that he was being fired because management didn't agree with his views about the US government.[Downloadable Audio] And after university professor Sami Al-Arian appeared on a Fox news show called The O'Reilly Factor, where the host drew connections between him and terrorist groups, the university received hundreds of threats and put him on paid leave. Hear his son, Abdullah Al-Arian, previously an intern with Representative David Bonier, speak on how unwarranted imprisonments show that civil liberties need protecting:[Downloadable Audio]

   And then there is the case [12/24/01] of Barry Reingold, a retired PG&E worker who was visited by the FBI for discussing US foreign policy in an informal discussion at his local gym in San Francisco.[Downloadable Audio]

   Finally, what did actor Danny Glover say, in a speech to a packed audience at Princeton, to offend the likes of Oliver North and make Glover one of the latest victim of the war on free speech?[Downloadable Audio]

10. Earlier this year Attorney General John Ashcroft instituted morning prayer groups at the Justice Department. Now [3/05/02] he is asking his staff there to start the day by singing patriotic songs that he himself has written.[Streamed Audio]

11. Have you heard the PSA (public service announcement) that encourages listeners to turn in suspicious persons in exchange for reward money? It is a product of the efforts of the US State Department:[Downloadable Audio]

12. Matthew Rothschild, editor of The Progressive Magazine, reports on the New McCarthyism in the US [1/09/02]:[1][2] Amongst the incidents that he mentions in the piece:
    • Cartoonist Aaron McGruder's syndicated comic strip, 'Boondocks [1]' is pulled from newspapers after September 11th because it dared to present anti-war content on occasion.[Streamed Audio]

    • The FBI and Secret Service pay a visit to the Art Car Museum, an avant-garde gallery in Houston. It is running a show called "Secret Wars," which contains anti-war statements commissioned before September 11th. The government agents tell the guide there that they'd received several reports of 'anti-American activity' at the museum.[Streamed Audio]

    • The Secret Service knocks on the apartment door of A.J. Brown, a college student who was suspected of having an anti-Bush poster on her wall. 'We're here because we have a report that you have un-American material in your apartment,' she recalls them having said.[Streamed Audio]

    • Barbara Wien, a longtime conflict resolution trainer at The United States Institute of Peace, is told that it is time for her to leave the Institute. She spoke out against US military retaliation. According to the Institute's website [1], it is a 'non-partisan federal institution created and funded by Congress to strengthen the nation's capabilities to promote the peaceful resolution of international conflicts.'[Streamed Audio]

    • On November 1st, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) sends a disturbing letter to its members:

      "Dear Bookseller," it begins. "Last week, President Bush signed into law an antiterrorism bill that gives the federal government expanded authority to search your business records, including the titles of the books purchased by your customers. ... There is no opportunity for you or your lawyer to object in court. You cannot object publicly, either. The new law includes a gag order that prevents you from disclosing 'to any person' the fact that you have received an order to produce documents."[Streamed Audio]

    Hear Ellen Schrecker, recognized as one of the leading experts on McCarthyism in the 1950's, speak on that subject:[Downloadable Audio]. She is the author of Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America and No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities.

13. What is mainstream media NOT telling us? Although the Peace Movement in the US and abroad is strong, active, and rapidly growing, it receives little TV coverage. Jeff Cohen, founder of the media watchdog group Fairness And Accuracy In Reporting, discusses this bias in reporting - which, in the extreme form in which it is now occuring, is tantamount to a form of domestic propaganda.[Downloadable Audio] How is Hollywood contributing to the rewriting of Somalian history [see above]?

    Hear about how people led by family members of victims of the September 11th attack marched for peace [12/03/01], from the Pentagon to the WTC. And learn about how the NY Times, in reporting the march, suppressed the anti-war message that was clearly presented as the purpose of this event by those who organized and participated in it.[Downloadable Audio] What did CNN and The New York Times say when asked [12/07/01] why they don't cover the anti-war movement?[Downloadable Audio]

    Recently [2/07/02] a 'Voice of America' journalist who interviewed Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar was taken off the air.[Streamed Audio]

14. For a brief history of CIA manipulation of the media during the war in Vietnam, the US invasion of Grenada, and in Cuba and elsewhere: Jane Franklin, historian.[Downloadable Audio]

    And for more information about the newly created [2/19/02] propaganda arm of the Pentagon - the 'Office of Strategic Influence' - and the Bush administration's 'Psychological Operations Program' (known as 'Psy-Ops') listen to the following report:[Streamed Audio] One of the proposals under consideration calls for the planting of news items favorable to the US through organizations that do not have obvious ties to the Pentagon; also called for is the use of 'disinformation' and other covert activities. For more on The Rendon Group, which has been hired (at approximately $100,000 per month) to assist the administration in its psychological operations efforts: [1].

    Why did US missiles destroy the Kabul office of 'Al Jazeera', the 'CNN of the Arab World' on 11/14/01? [Downloadable Audio]

15. What inspired Indiana Republican Congressman Dan Burton to declare, "We've got a dictatorial president and a Justice Department that does not want Congress involved [in investigating abuses in the Boston FBI office]"? [12/17/01] [Downloadable Audio]

16. Physicians for Social Responsibility believe that a report that the US War Department sent to Congress [12/19/01] shows that the Bush administration views possible nuclear strikes as an intrinsic part of its future strategy for countering chemical and biological weapons. Conventional weapons are not powerful enough, say Department officials, to get at deep underground facilities - and so low-yield nuclear bombs are now being considered for this purpose.[Downloadable Audio] According to a more recent statement by Bush [3/14/02], the use of nuclear weapons by the US remains a real option.[Streamed Audio]

    Meanwhile, the use of 'depleted uranium (DU)' weaponry in Iraq, Kosovo, and now Afghanistan has reportedly [3/14/02] caused irreversible environmental contamination in these areas. "Radiation emitted by DU threatens the human body because, once DU dust has been inhaled, it becomes an internal radiation source."[1] An early report on the use of depleted uranium weaponry by the US [11/16/01]: [Downloadable Audio]

17. New Yorkers at 'ground zero' continue [1/17/02] to experience a variety of medical symptoms - including nosebleed, asthma, and chronic cough - that some doctors are now calling 'World Trade Center Syndrome'? Why is the EPA (Enviromental Proctection Agency) downplaying this? Why have authorities failed to adequately monitor the environmental fallout of the 9/11 attack?[Streamed Audio]. More on the level of toxicity in lower Manhattan, and serious allegations regarding the corporate connections of EPA head Christine Todd Whitman[3/14/02]:[Streamed Audio] [Audio2]

18. A bill presently [1/24/02] in the US Congress would restore the draft for men between the ages of 18 to 22.[Streamed Audio]

19. Against a backdrop of bi-partisan Congressional applause, Bush promises us an endless war, a war on...... everyone? Howard Zinn, Blanche Wiesen Cook, Adolf Reed Jr., Sonali Kolhathar, and Ralph Nader respond to Bush's State of the Union message [1/30/02].[Streamed Audio]

20. Creating community in violent times. [2/08/02] Luis Rodriguez [Streamed Audio]

21. In a 1964 debate at the University of Oxford Malcolm X said, "They make war look like an act of humanitarianism" - a statement that rings even truer now, in the wake of the approach to war developed during the Clinton presidency. Listen to the Oxford talk today [2/21/02], on the 37th anniversary of Malcolm's assassination: [Streamed Audio]

    In 1969 Black Panther Fred Hampton, Sr. was assassinated by Chicago police while he lay sleeping in bed. [1] [2] In a more recent case against his son - Fred Hampton, Jr. - the prosecution asked the court to '[treat] the defendent as a terrorist and sentence [him] to ...the maximum possible under the law' [3/05/02]: [Streamed Audio]

• What is an ENEMY?
• How are we to go about identifying WHO our enemies are?
• How are we to TREAT those who we've identified as enemies?

The dictionary defines an enemy as one who hates us, wishes us ill, and/or seeks to injure us;an adversary, an opponent. Historian Howard Zinn, considering facts like the ones presented throughout this page, has arrived at an admittedly 'startling' idea about who our most deadly enemies may indeed be.

It is an idea that is premised on the observation that many of the most horrific atrocities that have occured during the past 6 months, unlike the highly publicized events of 9/11, have gone virtually unnoticed and unreported. For instance, on that one day in September made infamous when 3,000 people were killed in the Twin Towers 11,000 children also died of starvation worldwide. 11,000 children in fact die of starvation every single day of the year. And every single minute of every single day of the year another child is now orphaned to AIDS in Africa. Millions have succumbed to this epidemic, which continues to take the lives of a large number of people on a daily basis.

"It's not a matter of diminishing our compassion for the people who died in the Twin Towers," Zinn explains, "its a matter of enlarging our compassion to consider that there are people all over the world who have been enduring [other] terrible things."

"[Yet] while the perpetrators of the Twin Towers are not easily identifiable, the cause of hunger and sickness is identifiable, and it's the system of profit - of corporate profit - of greed - of privatization - a system in which the profits made by corporations come before the needs of human beings. And so, yes, we face real terrorism in the form of people who will blow up buildings. And yet we face also, at the same time, a silent terrorism - or as the World Health Organization put it (thinking of the millions who die each year as a result of sickness and hunger) ... the 'silent genocide' that is taking place. And to not be aware of that and to focus our attention solely on 'terrorism', solely on what happened on September 11th, deflects our attention from these other victims...."

"Our attention is being deflected from that because if we thought about that, if we asked questions about that ... we'd be asking, Why is this necessary? ... Why in a world so rich are so many people hungry and so many people sick? ... People might ask those questions and if they did ask those questions they might then conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with the systems which now rule the world. These are systems run by the business interests, the corporate interests of the world that are represented by those people who gather in these luxurious world economic forums - here and there and everywhere. And if people were permitted to turn from the war on terrorism to think about the cause of the greater terrorism that has been going on - the silent genocide all over the world - that would be very dangerous for the people who now hold power, and who now hold the wealth of the world in their hands."

"And so I'm suggesting," Zinn concludes, "that we've been diverted from an idea that maybe more and more people [are beginning] to recognize as true - and it's a startling idea - that our most deadly enemies are not in caves and compounds abroad. Although we may have enemies in caves and compounds abroad, we have even more deadly enemies in the corporate board rooms and government offices, where the decisions [that led to these other atrocities -
the atrocities of rampant world hunger and global epidemics of inconceivable proportion] were made." Hear more of Zinn's talk [2/22/02]:[Streamed Audio]

1. Thich Nhat Hanh was previously mentioned in a 1995 paper of mine on personality type entitled Nine Qualities of the 'Enlightened' Being.
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2. All the audio presented in this piece - and much more - is provided by Democracy Now!, which can be found on the internet at http://democracynow.org The DN! programs from which the audio is excerpted are archived, in their entirety, at -

• http://www.democracynow.org/browsebydate.pl

3. Michio Kaku has been previously mentioned in a 1999 paper of mine on physics and the structure of consciousness, entitled A Conversation with Physicist Brian Greene.
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4. The 'war on terrorism' is not new. Precisely that phrase was the one that was indeed used in the Reagan-Bush years to characterize US foreign policy after the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the 'cold war'. In his pre-9/11 book, Rogue States, Noam Chomsky explains:

From the early 1980s, it was clear that the conventional techniques of mass mobilization - JFK's appeal to 'monolithic and ruthless conspiracy,' Reagan's 'evil empire' - were losing their effectiveness: New enemies were needed.

... Abroad the threats were to be 'international terrorism,' 'Hispanic narcotraffickers,' and most serious of all 'rogue states'.

In the years between Reagan's 'secret war' on Nicaragua and George Bush Junior's new 'war on terrorism', the US continued to interfere in democratic experiments in Latin America. Chomsky writes:

... the policies continue with only tactical modification when the Cold War can no longer be invoked, as in 1991, when Washington moved at once to reverse Haiti's hopeful democratic experiment, then undermined the OAS embargo while the military junta tortured and murdered, and finally restored the elected president on the condition that he adopt the policies of Washington's defeated candidate in the 1990 elections, who had received 14 percent of the vote.

5. A few months later [1/11/02] it is reported that at Maslakh camp alone (translated as 'slaughterhouse' in English) 100 displaced Afghans are dying each day of exposure and starvation:[Streamed Audio].
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6. "War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige as the warrior does today," said John F. Kennedy. About conscientious objectors in the socalled 'good war' (WWII):[Streamed Audio]