______________________________
ANTIFA INFO-BULLETIN
News * Analysis * Research * Action
______________________________
- AFIB No. 321, November 11, 2001 -
FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL! FREE LEONARD PELTIER!
FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS & PRISONERS OF WAR!
U.S. OUT OF VIEQUES!
The work of the Bureau of Social Science Research [at American University]
illustrates the interwoven relationship between federal programs and U.S.
mass communications studies beginning during the Korean War and continuing
throughout the 1950s. ... The BSSR contract data that have survived show
that the U.S. Air Force funded BSSR studies on "targets and vulnerabilities
in psychological warfare" of people in Eastern Europe and Kazakhstan; a
project "directed toward understanding of various social, political and
psychological aspects of violence...as it bears on control and exploitation
of military power"; a report on "captivity behavior" and psychological
collapse among prisoners of war; and a series on the relative usefulness of
drugs, electroshock, violence, and other coercive techniques during
interrogation of prisoners. The Human Ecology Fund, which was later
revealed to have been a conduit for CIA monies, underwrote BSSR's studies
of Africa and of prisoner interrogation methods. -- Christopher Simpson,
Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare
1945-1960 [New York, Oxford University Press, 1994] p. 72.
Contents: Number 321
01. SOLIDARITY WITH HUNGER STRIKERS IN TURKEY [Dublin]: Massacre in
Istanbul: Four Protesters Murdered by Turkish Police.
02. WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE [London]: U.S. Liberal Pundits Debate the
Value of Torture.
03. ZNET [Boston]: Holding Terrorists Accountable? It Depends on the Color
and the Cause.
04. ROSA ANTIFA WIEN [Vienna]: FPOE Politicians Organize a Meeting of
European Right-Wing Extremists in Austria.
05. CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALISATION [Montreal]: Extending the War to
Iraq? Canada Sends "Gun Boats" to the Persian Gulf.
06. LEONARD PELTIER DEFENSE COMMITTEE [Lawrence, KS]: Leonard Peltier's
Defense Committee Reorganizes, Files Case for Sentence Reduction.
07. SPECTREZINE [UK]: The Carlyle Group.
08. ASSOCIATED PRESS: Bin Laden Relatives Have Ties to Texas.
09. THE GUARDIAN [London]: FBI Claims Bin Laden Inquiry was Frustrated.
Officials Told to "Back Off" Saudis Before September 11.
10. MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: Imperial Foreign Policy.
* * *
SOLIDARITY WITH HUNGER STRIKERS IN TURKEY (Dublin)
E-mail: turkeysolidarity@ireland.com
Web: http://www.geocities.com/turkishhungerstrike
- Friday, 9 November 2001 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
MASSACRE IN ISTANBUL
Four Protesters Murdered by Turkish Police
____________________________________________________________________
Press Release
9th November 2001
Protests will take place in Dublin, Belfast and Derry tomorrow [Saturday,
ed.] to mark this week's massacre of four protesters by Turkish police. In
Dublin activists from 'Solidarity with Hunger Strikers in Turkey' will hold
a protest at the Bank of Ireland in at the GPO from 1pm, to inform the
public of the attack. Similar events are organised for Waterloo Place in
Derry and Belfast's City Hall.
On Monday 5th November 3,000 paramilitary police and troops attacked
Armutlu with tanks, bulldozers, automatic weapons, gas and blast bombs.
Shooting was ongoing for three hours. Eyewitnesses said the police were
"spraying the area with gunfire and killing at will" and that a massacre
was carried out.
Armutlu is a poor shanty town of Istanbul and is the base of families and
friends of the Turkish political prisoners who are on hunger strike in the
jails of Turkey. 41 hunger strikers have died in the past year in the
ongoing protest against isolation prisons, special courts and torture in
Turkey.
Four people died in the attack on Armultu. They were:
- Arzu Guler, a female death faster on the 152nd day of hunger strike. She
was killed by poison from gas bombs.
- Baris Kas was killed by a single gun shot. He was a friend of prisoners
and was visiting friends in the death fast house.
- Bulent Durgac was killed by several gunshots while visiting the house. He
was a former prisoner and took part in the1996 Hunger Strike, which left
him handicapped.
- Haydar Bozkurt set himself on fire in protest at the attack. Armed police
then opened fire, after throwing stones and other missiles at him. He died
soon afterwards in hospital.
Dozens of people were wounded by gunfire and are now in hospital. Some are
very seriously wounded and more deaths are expected. The injured were
dragged along the ground and hunger strikers, some very weak, were brutally
treated. The police then burned the death fast house and destroyed other
homes.
None of the hunger strikers or their supporters in Armutlu were armed, all
shooting was carried out by the police and Turkish troops. Amnesty
International and Human Rights Watch have condemned the attack in the
strongest terms and demanded an enquiry.
After the attack four hunger strikers in prison in North West Turkey set
themselves on fire in protest at the attack. Two died later in hospital in
Istanbul.
*****
WORLD SOCIALIST WEB SITE
Published by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI)
Web: http://www.wsws.org/
E-Mail: editor@wsws.org
- Saturday, 10 November 2001 -
-----
____________________________________________________________________
In the war to "defend civilization"
U.S. LIBERAL PUNDITS DEBATE THE VALUE OF TORTURE
____________________________________________________________________
News & Analysis: North America
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/nov2001/tort-n10.shtml
By David Walsh
A widening discussion taking place in the US media, including the liberal
press, of the proposed use of torture is an unmistakable sign of the social
and moral rot of the American establishment and its authoritarian
proclivities.
On November 5 the New York Times carried an article headlined "Torture
Seeps Into Discussion by News Media." It reported on a number of recent
instances in which the question of torturing "suspected terrorists" has
appeared in the American media:
* An article by Jonathan Alter in the November 5 issue of Newsweek
magazine, "Time To Think About Torture."
* A segment on Rupert Murdoch's Fox News Channel which anchorman Shepard
Smith introduced by asking, "Should law enforcement be allowed to do
anything, even terrible things, to make suspects spill the beans?"
* A comment on CNN's "Crossfire" program by right-winger Tucker Carlson,
who suggested that under certain circumstances, torture "may be the lesser
of two evils."
* An opinion piece in the October 23 Wall Street Journal in which historian
Jay Winik reported on the "successful" torture of an alleged terrorist
plotter in the Philippines in 1995.
* An article on Slate, the online magazine, by Dahlia Lithwick, entitled
"Tortured Justice," which discusses various moral and legal issues in the
torture debate.
To that list could be added the October 21 Washington Post
article--"Silence of 4 Terror Probe Suspects Poses Dilemma"--already
commented on by the WSWS ["US considers use of torture in interrogation of
terrorism suspects"] .
The immediate occasion for the discussion of torture has been the apparent
refusal to cooperate by four individuals--Zacarias Moussaoui, Mohammed
Jaweed Azmath, Ayub Ali Khan and Nabil Almarabh. All four are reported to
be suspects in the September 11 attacks and are currently in a New York
jail. None of them has been charged with any crimes relating to the terror
attacks.
In his article in Newsweek, Jonathan Alter writes: "In this autumn of
anger, even a liberal can find his thoughts turning to ... torture. OK, not
cattle prods or rubber hoses, at least not here in the United States, but
something to jumpstart the stalled investigation of the greatest crime in
American history. Right now, four key hijacking suspects aren't talking at
all. Couldn't we at least subject them to psychological torture, like tapes
of dying rabbits or high-decibel rap? (The military has done that in Panama
and elsewhere.) How about truth serum, administered with a mandatory IV? Or
deportation to Saudi Arabia, land of beheadings? (As the frustrated FBI has
been threatening.) Some people still argue that we needn't rethink any of
our old assumptions about law enforcement, but they're hopelessly
'Sept.10'--living in a country that no longer exists." Alter urges US law
enforcement officials to follow the example of their Israeli counterparts,
who are notorious for their savage treatment of Palestinian prisoners.
If it is remarkable to come across a column in a major US newsweekly
advocating torture, a practice that the Enlightenment figure Cesare
Beccaria called "worthy of a cannibal" 250 years ago, it is even more
remarkable that the piece provoked no outcry in liberal circles.
According to the Times article: "Mr. Alter said he was surprised that his
column did not provoke a significant flood of e-mail messages or letters.
And perhaps even more surprising, he said, was that he had been approached
by 'people who might be described as being on the left whispering, 'I agree
with you'."
The Times article notes that journalists have felt obliged to raise the
subject of torture publicly because "torture is already a topic of
discussion in bars, on commuter trains, and at dinner tables." This is a
typical response of the US media, which routinely blames its own sins on
the American people, claiming it is only responding to "public demand."
That the torture of prisoners is being talked about in the American media
is a fact of great political significance. We are already witnessing on a
wide scale such practices as arbitrary arrest and detention, mistreatment
of prisoners, incommunicado detention and denial of due process, and a vast
extension of police powers to wiretap and conduct surveillance. Now comes
an attempt to legitimize the use of torture. It is reasonable to ask:
what's next? Government sponsored death squads?
The US ruling elite, including its erstwhile liberal wing, is repudiating
any attachment--even formal--to democratic rights, and sections of it are
moving rapidly in the direction of fascism.
What lies behind this process?
The implication that US police and intelligence agencies have been
heretofore run along humanitarian and democratic lines is reactionary
nonsense. Whether it be the record of repression against political
opponents or the "everyday" brutality meted out against the poor,
particularly minorities, federal, state and local police in the US have a
long record of abuse. Violence and repression in US jails and police
stations are on the increase. In May 2000 the United Nations Convention
Against Torture in Geneva considered a 45-page report filed by Amnesty
International citing police brutality and abuses and charging the US with
violations of the convention that it ratified six years ago.
There is also the widely documented record of systematic torture (and
murder) carried out by regimes around the world that are supported and
armed by Washington. It is well known that the US military-operated School
of the Americas (SOA), otherwise known as the "School of the Assassins,"
has trained many Latin American torturers and death squad leaders.
The United Nations Truth Commission on El Salvador in 1993 revealed the
participation of dozens of SOA graduates in atrocities and massacres. Those
minimal restrictions on CIA practices presently in place are now being
removed in the wake of September 11. The 1995 ban on hiring "human rights
violators," for example, has been lifted.
Socialists have long warned that the intensification of the social and
political crisis in the US would mean the introduction domestically of the
same brutal methods that the American elite has used for decades on peoples
of the colonial and neo-colonial world. This is the process we are
currently witnessing.
The sophistries advanced by the torture advocates--that, for example,
desperate times require desperate measures--have been raised by every
regime and ruling class moving toward totalitarian rule. The assumption of
Alter and the other "torture advocates" is that the American state and its
police agencies do not lie and are infallible, that those alleged to be
guilty of crimes are indeed guilty of crimes, and that the FBI, CIA and
police forces in general should be given an entirely free hand.
In the US, under the Constitution and the legal system as it presently
stands, an individual under arrest is presumed innocent until proven
otherwise. Guilt or innocence is determined through a trial, in which the
defendant has legal counsel and a verdict is rendered by a jury of his or
her peers, after hearing and weighing the evidence. The burden of proof is
on the prosecution. In a criminal case, it must prove the defendant guilty
"beyond a reasonable doubt." All of these legal safeguards were elaborated
over many decades by democratic thinkers and incorporated into the
juridical tradition of the American Revolution in opposition to the
procedures of the star chamber and other despotic practices. The Bill of
Rights' ban on "cruel and unusual punishment" was a direct response to the
use of torture in interrogations under the European monarchies.
These are the democratic principles and traditions that are now being
repudiated and attacked. What underlies the shift by large sections of the
political establishment toward police-state methods of rule?
Social relations in the US have undergone far-reaching changes in the past
several decades. American society is sharply polarized along class lines,
and virtually all the benefits of the stock market and profit boom have
accrued to a tiny handful at the top. As a result of this, and related
ideological processes, the wealthy elite has grown increasingly alienated
from working people, including sections of what was known as the middle
class, from whom it is separated by a vast gulf. This inevitably gives rise
to a hostility to the democratic rights of the mass of the population,
which are seen as obstacles to the accumulation of even more wealth and
power.
It became obvious during the impeachment crisis that a sinister contempt
for democratic principles permeated the American political establishment.
The methods of Kenneth Starr--trampling on "due process," threats and
intimidation, harassing and hounding witnesses--were those of a would-be
inquisitor. The next logical step is physical coercion.
This contempt for democratic rights finds a particularly sharp and
grotesque form in the US media. For the most part, these well-paid, corrupt
mouthpieces of the powers that be have moved far to the right. Various
pundits, anchor people and columnists played a filthy role during the
Clinton sex scandals, assisting the ultra-right in its attempt to overturn
an elected government.
It is not simply the Afghan war that has set these people off. That
conflict and the government-manipulated hysteria accompanying it may have
triggered their sudden affinity for torture to deal with the alleged
"enemies of America," but other processes are also at work. The stock
market boom has collapsed and the social situation bound up with it is
unraveling. Alter and his ilk face the loss of income, the shrinking of
portfolios.
The pundits who once considered themselves liberals welcome the
introduction of police-state measures, in the final analysis, as a
preparation for developments in the US. What are these people really afraid
of? Osama bin Laden? No, that is largely for the purposes of duping the
public. Along with the rest of the upper echelons of American society, what
truly frightens them is the impact of economic slump on the broad layers of
the population and the political instability, radicalization and social
upheaval that must follow.
These economic and social processes have led sections of the ruling elite
to embrace torture. Of course torture "American-style" is particularly
hypocritical, requiring the insistence that the barbaric treatment will be
inflicted only in the "defense of freedom." The new watchword of its
advocates, echoing the infamous phrase from the Vietnam War, is, "We have
to destroy democracy in order to save it."
Copyright 1998-2001 World Socialist Web Site. All rights reserved.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
HOLDING TERRORISTS ACCOUNTABLE? IT DEPENDS ON THE COLOR AND THE CAUSE
____________________________________________________________________
ZNET
Commentary
Sunday, November 4, 2001
http://www.zmag.org
By Tim Wise
Members of his terrorist organization and network have killed Americans, on
American soil. Those inspired by his message have engaged in a mass
atrocity: blowing innocent people out of their offices as the building
where they worked crumbled to the ground.
He himself has called for total war against the enemy in an effort to
"cleanse" the United States. He has said that although innocent people will
die in such an effort, "it is necessary, and because it is necessary, it is
good." Seven years ago he warned of potential pending attacks when he
wrote: "New Yorkers who work in tall office buildings--anything close to
the size of the World Trade Center--might consider wearing hardhats to
work..."
Osama bin Laden? Not even close. And unlike bin Laden, who is now a marked
man despite little concrete evidence linking him to the attacks of
September 11th, this individual has not been targeted for elimination by
the United States government. No one is speaking of "bringing him to
justice," or holding him accountable for the actions attributable to his
associates and devotees.
And unlike bin Laden, whose whereabouts are unknown, the address of the
person about whom I speak is well known. He is not in hiding, and doesnít
move around. He's so easy to find that 60 Minutes' Mike Wallace simply
sauntered up to his home a couple of years ago and had a chat with him. His
phone number is (304) 653-4600.
His name is William Pierce, and he lives in Mill Point, West Virginia, with
a P.O. Box at the post office in nearby Hillsboro. He is a longtime
neo-Nazi who calls Hitler the "greatest man of our era" and advocates the
liquidation of all non-whites in the U.S.
His novel, The Turner Diaries (written under a pseudonym) apparently served
as the inspiration for Timothy McVeigh's attack on the Murrah Building in
Oklahoma City, much the way we are told Osama bin Laden's words have
inspired Islamic terrorism, even if he is not directly involved in the
planning process.
In Pierce's book, white "patriots" blow up a federal building using the
same materials as those used by McVeigh, packed in a truck like the one
McVeigh used, at the same time of day as the one exploded by McVeigh. They
then launch a race war, slaughtering non-whites, race-"mixers," gays,
lesbians and Jews, before dropping nuclear weapons on Israel.
McVeigh was, according to former soldiers who served with him in the
Persian Gulf, obsessed with the book, and inspired by its author. In the
days before the bombing he sent clippings of the book to his sister,
explaining that "something big" was going to happen, and when arrested had
copies of Turner Diaries' passages in his car.
Over the years, other followers of Pierce and members of his group, the
National Alliance, have engaged in armed robberies, shootouts with law
enforcement, and murders in at least a half dozen states. They have plotted
to commit mass murder in multiple bombings, foiled only by premature
detonation of the devices in question.
The Order--a neo-Nazi gang that committed a series of robberies and killed
Denver radio talk show host Alan Berg in 1984--was led by Alliance members,
including Robert Matthews who left Pierce $50,000 in life insurance
benefits after his death during a shootout with the FBI.
Pierce's weekly radio broadcasts regularly call for the elimination of
anyone who isn't white, and his group encourages members to raid military
bases in search of weapons and ammunition. Yet no one is calling for him to
be brought in "dead or alive" as President Bush recently did regarding bin
Laden.
While President Bush and media pundits warn of bin-Laden's associates
"living among us," the National Alliance has at least 16 active cells
nationwide, engaged in activity in at least 26 states, a membership
hovering around 1,000, and thousands more listening to their shortwave
radio broadcasts and reading the materials on their website.
On those broadcasts and the website, readers and listeners can see and hear
Pierce call for "a racially clean area of the earth for the development of
our people," with "no non-whites in our living space." They can hear him
speak of the mass slaughter that he terms the "final cleansing," and the
need to eliminate all Jews and race "traitors." For these latter groups he
says, "we must hunt them down and get rid of them."
On August 15th of this year, Pierce broadcast the following message: "We
really have become too civilized and have forgotten one of Mother Nature's
most basic rules: Two different types of animal cannot permanently occupy
exactly the same ecological niche. One eventually must drive the other into
extinction..."
"We must have exclusive possession of those portions of this planet which
constitute suitable habitat for us...in order to obtain and maintain that
exclusive possession, we must be prepared to kill, to annihilate, any and
all competitors."
But despite the open support for mass murder, and despite the actual
violence carried out by Alliance members and Pierce acolytes over the past
two decades, few people are aware of this neo-Nazi terror network, nor does
the President seem concerned about it.
One gets the impression that in the eyes of American officialdom, some
terrorists pose a threat to the country and others don't. Some terrorist
actions result in calls for racial or ethnic profiling of those "fitting
the description" and others don't.
After all, when have white guys ever been profiled just because some white
guys like McVeigh, or Pierce, or others of their ilk committed atrocities,
advocated murder, and engaged in criminal activity? The answer is never, of
course.
Profiling and war are things we offer to those who look different from us,
speak differently than us, and are easy to identify without inconveniencing
the dominant majority. Arabs, Muslims, and people of color generally, make
easy targets. Not so white guys. Not so William Pierce.
And homegrown white terrorists can't be as effectively used to justify huge
military buildups, or new powers for the CIA, as a perceived foreign threat
can. For an Administration desperately in need of an enemy to justify its
desire for massive new military expenditures, only the dark, dangerous
image of the outsider will do.
As for Pierce, like bin Laden, he has proclaimed his innocence. Regarding
the Oklahoma City bombing, he insists he had nothing to do with it. But
also like bin Laden, he has not only failed to condemn the action others
have sought to pin on him, but indeed he has all but praised it outright.
About McVeigh, Pierce says:
"He did what he did for an impersonal reason, for an ideal...he has acted
as a man of principle should act...He wanted to send the government a
message that its behavior would not be tolerated. And part of that message
would be the killing of the government's secret police agents--FBI and
ATF--who worked in the building."
"The fact that his bomb would kill not only secret police agents but also
civilians, including the 19 children in the day-care center, was
regrettable but unavoidable: collateral damage...however regrettable the
killing of innocent civilians in that bombing, Timothy McVeigh is no
monster. He is a soldier, and what he did was based on principle."
When Muslim fundamentalists say things like this about terrorism carried
out by their associates, we term it "giving aid and comfort" to the enemy,
or "supporting terrorism." With Pierce, the same rhetoric is ignored, no
matter what his loyal readers and listeners might do.
And while the media was quick to broadcast footage of select Palestinians
celebrating in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks, they said
nothing about the spirited discussions on National Alliance message boards,
where members of the group were expressing elation at the day's events.
Within minutes of the World Trade Center's collapse, Alliance members were
logging on to the group's chat room boards to say things like: "the World
Trade Centers (and) the Pentagon have had their noses removed from Jewish
rectums and smothered in the heap of shit they created! I'm sure like me
you are all jumping out of your skin with excitement right now!"
Or this, from a member in New York at the time of the attacks:
"...there is extreme chaos everywhere. Many people are helpless and in a
state of panic. I am happy to have a reservoir of deep knowledge about this
from all I have learned from the alliance...I AM STRONG, PREPARED AND IN
CONTROL!!!"
Shortly after the attack, Billy Roper, the Deputy Membership Coordinator
for the Alliance wrote: "the enemy of our enemy is, for now at least, our
friends...we may not want them marrying our daughters...but anyone who is
willing to drive a plane into a building to kill Jews is alright by me. I
wish our members had half as much testicular fortitude."
Beyond merely pointing out that there are indeed white folks every bit as
fanatical and dangerous as the members of al-Qaeda, and that indeed some of
those were pleased with the most recent terrorist attacks on America,
another point should be made.
If, as is likely, the renewed emphasis on "Arab terrorism" or "Muslim
extremism" results in heightened suspicion and profiling of those who are
Arab, Muslim, or appear to be, the result may be that America will let down
its guard to these other kinds of dangers. The Tim McVeighs and followers
of Bill Pierce will fly below the radar of the nation's new security
apparatus. No one will be looking for them.
This is not to say that such groups should literally be bombed, their
members arrested, and those who look like them profiled. Just as such
actions are ineffective and overbroad and authoritarian when applied to
presumed Arab terrorists, so too would they be when applied to white
supremacists.
But the inconsistency is worth noting, as is the danger that could
logically flow from that inconsistency. If a member of the National
Alliance, or some other group seeking to foment a race war wanted to commit
a major terrorist attack, now would be the time to do it, as they would
likely evade suspicion and detection, so busy are folks looking for danger
with dark skin, long beards and a turban.
It is in this sense that any kind of racial, ethnic, national or religious
profiling is an utter waste of time, and potentially capable of increasing
the risks to innocent people, not to mention ethically unjust.
Terrorism has many faces, more than a few of which are white, just like
those of most of the folks calling for war against Afghanistan. And yet
never have they called for war against West Virginia. Nor did they call for
war against Idaho when that state played host to the Aryan Nation's
compound: a place that had nurtured and inspired Buford Furrow, the
individual who shot up a Jewish Community Center in Los Angeles and killed
a Filipino postman two years ago.
So when you hear the President speak of "bringing the terrorists to justice
or bringing justice to the terrorists," just remember that although all
terrorists are equal in the eyes of the law, some are more equal than
others.
Tim Wise is an antiracist activist, writer and lecturer. He can be reached
at tjwise@mindspring.com
*****
ROSA ANTIFA WIEN
c/o Rosa Lila Tip
Linke Wienzeile 102
A-1060 Wien, AUSTRIA
Tel: +43 (1) 64 15 999
E-Mail: raw@raw.at
Web: http://www.raw.at
- Thursday, 8 November 2001 -
-----
_______________________________________________________________________
FPOE POLITICIANS ORGANIZE A MEETING OF EUROPEAN RIGHT-WING EXTREMISTS IN
AUSTRIA
_______________________________________________________________________
The weekly newspaper "Zur Zeit" is celebrating its fourth anniversary this
weekend. Motto: "The European Rightists and the Media". "Zur Zeit" was
developed in cooperation with the German "Junge Freiheit" and is published
by Andreas Moelzer (FPOE, ex-member of the Bundesrat and Joerg Haiders
representative for cultural agendas in Carinthia), John Gudenus (FPOE,
member of the Bundesrat) and Johann Josef Dengler (former ambassador).
Leading European right wing extremists will participate in the symposium at
the castle of Kranichberg near Gloggnitz (Lower Austria). Apart from
Andreas Moelzer, Barbara Rosenkranz (FPOE-party leader in Lower Austria and
wife of Horst-Jakob Rosenkranz, publisher of the right-wing extremist
newspaper "fakten") and Lothar Hoebelt (FPOE-advisor and historian), the
arrival of the following persons is announced:
- Heinrich Lummer, CDU-politician and former Senator for Inner Affairs in
Berlin;
- Kresmir Cosic, former deputy Minister of Defence in Croatia;
- Istvan Csurka, head of the Hungarian right-wing extremist "Party of Truth
and Life" (MIEP);
- Filip DeWinter, head of the Belgian Vlaams-Blok;
- Bruno Megret, former ideologue of Le Pens "Front National", now head of
the splinter group "Mouvement National Republicain" (MNR);
- "possibly a representative from Italy"; as well as
- "a high-ranking member of the FPOE", whoever that might be......
Rosa Antifa Wien (RAW)
*****
CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON GLOBALISATION
Behind the News, Analysis, Commentary and Intelligence on the New World Order
Web: http://globalresearch.ca/
Friday, 9 November 2001
-----
____________________________________________________________________
EXTENDING THE WAR TO IRAQ?
Canada sends "Gun Boats" to the Persian Gulf
____________________________________________________________________
by Michel Chossudovsky
Professor of Economics, University of Ottawa
http://globalresearch.ca/articles/CHO111B.html
Canadian "Gun Boats" are not equipped to Wage a War against a landlocked
Country
In Canada's biggest military deployment since the Korean War, six war ships
have been sent to the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. The Canadian gun
boats will be deployed along with those of France, Germany and Australia.
According to Canada's Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, these war ships will be
supporting "the campaign against Osama bin Laden and the ruling Taliban
militia".
Nobody seems to have noticed, however, that these Canadian "gun boats" are
not equipped to wage a war against a landlocked country.
The HMCS Iroquois is a destroyer outfitted to wage war at sea against
targets on the coast as well as against enemy vessels and aircraft. Hardly
suitable for fighting against the "Taliban Navy" in landlocked Afghanistan.
Canada is also sending three Frigates equipped with surface-to-surface
(anti-ship) and surface-to-air missiles. The frigates are also equipped
with anti-aircraft and anti-ship guns and anti-submarine torpedoes as well
as with Sea King helicopters "used in reconnaissance and anti-submarine
warfare".
Hidden Agenda
The nature of the military equipment contributed by Canada is not suited to
waging a war "against international terrorism" in the highlands of
Afghanistan. Without briefing Parliament or informing public opinion, the
Canadian government of Prime Minister Jean Chretien has accepted to
participate in a broader war in the Persian Gulf. Moreover, it also
suggests that this broader war is already in the planning stage.
Canadian officials knew exactly what they were doing when they sent the
Canadian Navy to the Gulf. The Canadian government's decision was, in this
regard, fully consistent with the Bush Administration's stated intent to
"broaden the war by targeting other countries that host terrorists, or
terror groups."
Not a word was mentioned in the Canadian media. Nobody in Parliament seemed
to have noticed that by sending Canadian war ships as part of the
Anglo-American military operation, Canada had pari passu also accepted to
embark upon a military operation in the Persian Gulf.
Copyright, Michel Chossudovsky, Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG),
November 2001. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to post this text
on non-commercial community internet sites, provided the source and the URL
are indicated, the essay remains intact and the copyright note is
displayed. To publish this text in printed and/or other forms, including
commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the Centre for Research on
Globalisation (CRG) at editor@globalresearch.ca.
*****
LEONARD PELTIER DEFENSE COMMITTEE
P.O. Box 583
Lawrence, KS 66044
Tel: 785-842-5774
E-mail: lpdc@idir.net
Web: http://www.freepeltier.org
- Monday, 5 November 2001 -
-----
__________________________________________________________________________
Peltier Press Release:
LEONARD PELTIER'S DEFENSE COMMITTEE REORGANIZES, FILES CASE FOR REDUCTION
OF SENTENCE
__________________________________________________________________________
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PRESS RELEASE
For Further Information
Contact: Debra Peebles or
Gina Chiala @
785-842-5774
The committee that has long waged the crusade for Peltier's freedom is
unveiling a restructured organization and strategic campaign. In spite of
documented FBI misconduct and President Clinton's failure to grant clemency
in January of 2001, Peltier supporters are determined to rally for justice.
Friday, November 2, 2001 in Fargo, North Dakota, Attorney Eric Seitz filed
a motion to reduce Mr. Peltier's sentence from consecutive to concurrent
life sentences. The motion argues that Peltier's sentence should be reduced
because the original trial judge was unaware of evidence proving Mr.
Peltier did not shoot the agents. The LPDC believes a reduction would
obligate Mr. Peltier's immediate release through parole.
Peltier was tried in 1976 for the killing of two FBI agents who with back
up from a swat team-like force, chased a red pick up truck onto the Jumping
Bull residence on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, June 26,
1975. The FBI claims the day of the shoot out, they entered the ranch in
search of a young Indian man accused of stealing a used pair of cowboy
boots. Peltier, with other young American Indian Movement (AIM) members -
mostly in their teens, were on the ranch to protect Mr. and Mrs. Jumping
Bull, traditional elders of the Lakota people. The Jumping Bulls had asked
for AIM protection from a community at odds over traditional versus
contemporary values. Excessive violence against Lakota traditionals had
often been reported in the years preceding the shoot out. FBI involvement
in such action was a disturbing factor in tribal disputes over land
management and sale of reservation natural resources. As the shoot out
ensued between AIM supporters and FBI agents, the leader of Pine Ridge's
tribal council, a nontraditional, signed in secret, an agreement
transferring 1/8th of the reservation, rich in minerals and uranium over to
the federal government. As for the traditional Lakota, the loss of one
young Indian man - his death never investigated, and loss of tribal lands.
Look for two more important cases to be filed on Peltier's behalf this
coming year.
Until Freedom Is Won!
The New Peltier Justice Campaign
*****
____________________________________________________________________
THE CARLYLE GROUP
____________________________________________________________________
SPECTREZINE
A Spectre is Haunting Europe...
Friday, 9 November 2001
http://www.spectrezine.org/global/carlyle.htm
Alfred Mendes looks at a single US investment corporation and asks some
pertinent questions about democracy, terrorism and power.
It is quite extraordinary, and not a little frightening, how little
attention is paid to the unexpressed aims of Corporate America in its
on-going act of achieving global economic and political domination. Whereas
its expressed aims, such as promoting a "new" and "humanitarian" world
freed of "terrorism", are constantly propounded in both print and speech,
the causal problems underlying these recent crises (of which "terrorism" is
the most prominent) are not being examined rationally. That Americas'
expressed aims are false can be readily proven: (1) financed to the tune of
$2 billion and armed by the USA, its NATO ally, Turkey, has been
"ethnically cleansing" its Kurdish minority for the past decade & a half -
within view, as it were, of a US Intelligence Base just outside Diyarbakir
- while it, the USA, has been bringing its "humanitarian values" to the
Balkans; (2) those two paradigms of "terrorism" - Osama bin Laden and
Saddam Hussein - could not have achieved power without the active
assistance of the USA.
To understand more clearly the role being played by this superpower, it is
first necessary to accept the fact that the US Administration is - and has
been for decades - under the control of its capitalist corporations, a
group wielding enormous power due to its vast industrial capacity - and
world-wide capital investments - to say nothing of its cabalistic, cohesive
nature. To confirm this, one has only to scan the lists of the top
individuals in both the US Administration and the corporate boards over the
past few decades to see the close linkage between the two. As for the post
of President: this is an executive post carrying such autocratic power that
the Corporate Establishment ensures that "their man" is elected. This
election is, in effect, an auction, as exemplified by the fact that oil
companies contributed $1.8 million towards George W. Bush's campaign in the
year 2000 - thirteen times as much as they gave his opponent! Again, the
Electric utilities donated $447,000 to Bush, but only $65,000 to Al Gore,
etc. And, inasmuch as the President-to-be appoints administrators who are,
in effect, the policy-makers, the Corporate Establishment - as the highest
bidder in the "auction" - ensures that it is well-placed in the
seat-of-power. Is this the form of democracy the Athenians had in mind!?
The following recent news report epitomises this close bond between
government and business concisely: on the 27th September '01, the Wall
Street Journal revealed that the bin Laden family firm in Saudi Arabia was
a major investor (1 of 450 such investors) in the prestigious American
investment firm, the Carlyle Group, and that George Bush Snr., on behalf of
this group, had brokered the deal. The report added that the FBI had
subpoenaed the bin Laden family's bank records, there being doubt that the
family had broken all ties with Osama. This calls for a closer examination
of the Carlyle Group in order to unearth more germane facts., and an
efficient way to accomplish this is to begin by listing the senior officers
of the company - with very brief (incomplete) C.V's added. (It should be
noted here that the European Chairman is John Major, the ex-British PM, but
he warrants no further mention in this article as he is of little import to
the subject in hand).
Chairman: Frank C. Carlucci: His ties with the US Administration go back
to the '70's, (Dept. of Health, Education & Welfare, etc.) and - more
importantly - includes stints as Deputy Director of CIA ('78-'81) under
Carter; Deputy Secretary of Defense ('81 -'82) and National Security
Adviser ('87-'89) both under Reagan.
Senior Counselor: James Baker III. Chief of Staff ('81-'85), and Secretary
of Treasury ('85-'89) both under Reagan; and Secretary of State ('89-'93)
under Bush Snr.
Broker: George Bush Snr. Director of CIA ('76-'77) under Ford;
Vice-President ('81-'89) under Reagan; and President ('89-93).
The Corporate Establishment can readily be portrayed as a complex web of
interlinked companies and executives, and the fact that Carlyle holds
ownership stakes in 164 companies and ranks as the eleventh largest defence
contractor in the US further emphasises its pre-eminence within this web,
and the somewhat disproportionate links to the intelligence services listed
above is reflected in its ownership - via BDM International - of the
CIA-front company, Vinnell Corp., which has been operating under contract
in Saudi Arabia since 1975. It is of pertinence to note here (if only to
stress the close relationship between the Administration and the corporate
establishment) that BDM's President & CEO is one Philip Odeen who served as
Chairman of Clinton's National Defense Panel. Another filament of this web:
in 1990 George W. Bush - now President - was on the board of directors of
one of Carlyle Group's subsidiaries, Caterair, an airline catering company.
It needs little delving into the background of the senior Carlyle officers
listed above to trigger memories of events that have a direct bearing on
today's crisis of "terrorism". (1) One week after his inauguration as
President, and with Vice-President Bush Snr. by his side, Reagan called a
cabinet meeting to discuss "terrorism" - the overthrow of Iran's Shah by
the Ayatollah Khomeini still fresh in memory. As reported by Bob Woodward
in his book Veil, Anthony Quaint, the State department's expert on
terrorism, stated at that discussion that "it's possible for a terrorist
group to strike directly at the United States in the United States. The
United States is vulnerable". Now, 20 years later, the US government can
hardly claim they were not forewarned! (2) As reported by Leslie Cockburn
in her book Out Of Control covering the Nicaraguan Iran/Contra crisis:
while the notorious Lt. Col. Oliver North was serving "on the
Interdepartmental Group on Terrorism and on the Terrorist Incident Working
Group, both of which reported to the Crisis Pre-Planning Group and the
Special Situation Group, both of which in turn shared the same chairman:
Vice-President George Bush", the US government was, at the same time,
engaged in trading guns for drugs, as revealed by one of the pilots so
engaged, "Mickey" Tolliver, in a CBS interview in 1987 (Cockburn had worked
for CBS since 1978). On one trip he had carried 28,000 lbs. of guns and
ammunition to the Contra supply base in Honduras, and returned with a
25,360 lb. load of marijuana - landing at Homestead Air Force Base in
Florida! (3) In the aftermath of the disastrous bombing of both the US
Embassy and the US Marine Base in Beirut in '83, there ensued a spate of
hostage-taking. America accused Iran of aiding the suspect "terrorist"
groups guilty of these activities. Result: America arranged for Israel to
sell 508 TOW missiles to Iran in exchange for the release of the hostages!
(4) In the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing in '86, America for the first
2 or 3 years accused Iran (once again) and Syria of responsibility for the
act - only to drop all accusations against them when it became necessary to
co-opt Syria as an ally in the inevitable war against Iraq, the new "Satan".
There were a number of other subsequent events of a similar "terrorist"
nature, and in retrospect, it is clear that America was using the term
"terrorism" in order to conceal their real aim, which was to achieve
economic and political domination on a global scale - as expressed in the
opening sentence of this article. This subject of terrorism is best treated
by drawing attention to the crux of the problem - the inequity and bias
inherent within the capitalist system itself, whereby a comparative few
garner profit from the labour of many, inevitably fostering that most
dangerous of emotions: frustration. Is not frustration the mother of
terrorism? And would not the most rational means of solving this problem be
to examine the source of this frustration? Which is precisely why America
cannot afford to take this rational road: to do so would mean questioning
the system itself - Mammon forbid! In view of the foregoing, is it not thus
reasonable to harbour grave doubts as to the validity of America's declared
aim in this conflict with Afghanistan?
A further delving into the background of the listed Carlyle officers is
called for here - and whom better to start with than its chairman,
Carlucci. As noted in his C.V. above, he had strong ties with the
intelligence agencies, as confirmed by Philip Agee in his book, "On The
Run": "Carlucci had been on the team in Kinshasa when Patrick Lumumba was
assassinated and the Congolese revolution stopped. Then he worked four
years in Brasil following the military coup in 1964". Agee was in Portugal
not long after the April '75 coup by the communist-led Armed Forces
Movement had overthrown the dictatorship of Salazar - as a result of which,
President Ford had sent Carlucci as ambassador to Portugal. As Agee writes:
"If the new ambassador, Frank Carlucci, was any indication, the Ford
administration was determined, both alone and in concert with European
allies to stop the revolution ... He would be in charge of coordinating all
efforts to 'save Portugal'." But more pertinent to his role in later years
were the many directorships he held, among which were General Dynamics,
Westinghouse Electrics, the Rand Corp. - and Ashland Oil (among others). He
had also been a college classmate of Donald Rumsfeld, the present Secretary
of Defense. Perhaps his most interesting relationship was with the very
right-wing Dr. Constantine Menges of the Hudson Institute who had worked
for Carlucci in the Department for Health, Education and Welfare. As Bob
Woodward revealed in "The Veil: "In a 1980 article (The New York Times),
Menges stated that events in Iran, Afghanistan and Nicaragua marked a
'turning point in the invisible war between radical and moderate forces'
for control of oil (this author's italics), the Middle East and Central
America". This was a significant slip-of-the-tongue on the part of Menges,
and was to prove correct. After the collapse of the USSR, the American oil
companies wasted no time in moving in on the Caucasian oil & gas fields
(see author's article "The Thin End Of The Wedge"). In '81, William Casey,
Director of CIA, made Menges Intelligence Officer for Latin America, a
position he held until,...In 1983, and on the advice of Carlucci, he was
transferred to the National Security Council, under Reagan.
It is of significance to note that Carlucci was not the only one of the
three Carlyle officers covered by this article to be connected to an oil
company (he was chairman of Ashland Oil); Bush Snr., had founded the oil
drilling firm, Zapata; and last - but not least - Baker is on the board of
the Azerbaijan International Oil Co. (AIOC) as legal representative, which
should please him as his good friend from the days of the USSR, Eduard
Shervardnadze, is President of neighbouring Georgia. It is necessary to
note here that, contrary to the generally accepted belief that the US
troops recently deployed in Uzbekistan was the first such deployment on
ex-Soviet soil, Reuters reported, in June of this year, 2001, that 4000
troops from eleven countries (including the USA) held NATO exercises near
the Georgian port of Poti on the Black Sea, and were welcomed
whole-heartedly by Shervardnadze, who stated that this was "confirmation of
the readiness of our country to move towards deeper Euro-Atlantic
integration", This, from the man who was Foreign Minister of the USSR when
it collapsed! (Any causal linkage here?).
The filaments of the oil web are too numerous to be covered in detail in an
article of this length, but, with the AIOC fresh in mind, a few more
examples of the role played by oil companies in the sensitive area of the
Caucasus region would not be amiss. As its name implies, AIOC is an
Azerbaijan consortium - in which US oil companies hold a 40% stake. Two of
these companies are Amoco and Pennzoil. (1) Zbigniew Brzezinski, who had
been National Security Advisor to Jimmy Carter, was on Amoco's payroll, and
(2) General Brent Scowcroft, who had been National Security Advisor to
George Bush Snr., was on Pennzoil's payroll. But, had not the US Congress
in '92 passed Section 907 of the Freedom Support Act to restrict US
assistance to Azerbaijan until such time as it, Azerbaijan, stopped its
offensive and adopted a more "humanitarian" attitude to its neighbours,
Armenia and Ngorno Karabahk? The answer is found in the short paragraph of
the Act which reads: "Section 907 does not prevent Trade and Development
Agency guarantees and insurance for US firms, or Foreign Commercial Service
operations, or the activities of the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation (OPIC) and the Export-Import Bank. Thus, US businesses are not
placed at a competitive disadvantage." (authors' italics).
1997 saw the formation of the Central Asia Gas Pipeline consortium
(Centgas) with the intention of running a 790-mile-long pipeline from the
gas fields of Turkmenistan through neighbouring Afghanistan to Multan, in
Pakistan (at a cost of $1.9 billion) - with a possible future extension to
New Delhi, in India (cost: $600 million). This was a project under the
control of the California oil company, UNOCAL, who held the controlling
stake of 46.5% in the consortium. At the instigation of UNOCAL, a Taliban
ministerial delegation held talks in Washington with the US Undersecretary
of State, Karl Underforth, in December 1997 to discuss this pipeline
project - but, due to the ever-worsening instability in Afghanistan, UNOCAL
aborted the project in December 1998. However, as reported in the Pakistani
publication "Business Recorder" in 2000, the remaining members of Centgas -
Delta Oil Group of Saudi Arabia, the Turkmenistan government, Indonesian
Petroleum, ITOCHU of Japan, Hyundai of South Korea and the Crescent Group
of Pakistan - had not given up hope. The crucial point to note here is
that, without the participation of an American oil partner such a project
is impossible, and given the very influential clout carried by the oil
industry in the US Administration (as noted above), it is reasonable to
assume that these considerations would have been in the forefront of the
minds of the US government officials, and would thus have played a crucial
role in determining America's response to Afghanistan in the aftermath of
the WTC bombing. This attack, in affect, had supplied the US with a
convenient reason for taking control of Afghanistan under the pretext of
destroying "terrorism" when, in fact, already well-ensconced in the nearby
ex-Soviet republics of the Caucasus region, this was merely another step in
Corporate America's inexorable advance eastwards in its search for more
lucrative markets - for its oil industry in particular.
This poses the obvious, crucial question: which of the two protagonists in
this struggle is the real terrorist?
Alfred Mendes was born in Trinidad in 1920 and is of Portuguese extraction.
His varied career included wartime service both at sea and in the British
Army and work as a coal miner and oil driller in several parts of the
world. He has been retired for twenty years.
Copyright 2001 Spectrezine
*****
____________________________________________________________________
BIN LADEN RELATIVES HAVE TIES TO TEXAS
Terrorist's half-brother did business - and met his death - in state
____________________________________________________________________
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Friday, November 9, 2001
http://www.statesman.com
By Mike Ward
Associated Press
KINGSLAND -- In an earlier time, the Binladen name didn't stir up the
locals in this Hill Country hamlet, and the famous Saudi family and the
Bushes of Texas moved in similar financial circles down in Houston.
Twenty-eight years ago, long before Osama bin Laden gained infamy as an
accused terrorist mastermind, his oldest half-brother, Salem -- whose side
of the family spelled its last name Binladen or Binladin -- came to Texas
on a simple quest to recruit his father's former pilot to fly the family's
corporate jet.
Instead, the family ended up with a business toehold in Texas that included
ownership of a small Houston airport and a San Antonio aviation services
company, along with a modest riverside house in a subdivision called
Enchanted Valley.
Gerald Auerbach had worked for family patriarch Mohammad Bin-Awad bin Laden
during the 1950s and 1960s, in the days when he was a TWA pilot stationed
in Saudi Arabia. After Mohammad died in a plane crash in 1968, Salem, the
oldest of 54 children, took over as head of the family business.
Five years later, the family acquired another plane. Salem (pronounced
Sa-LEEM) looked to San Antonio for his father's trusted pilot to fly it.
"He came here to find me and take me back to Saudi Arabia," Auerbach
recalled in a phone call from his San Antonio home. "I was kind of a father
figure to him, I think. He always took care of me."
As a boy, Salem sometimes rode with Auerbach and became fascinated with
aviation. Like his father, he became a pilot.
Auerbach wanted to stay in Texas, so Salem established Binladen Aviation,
an aircraft services company at San Antonio International Airport, and put
Auerbach in charge. In 1981, he built the house near Kingsland on a lot he
bought from Auerbach.
"I had owned (the lot) for several years, but I couldn't afford to build a
house myself," Auerbach said. "I really think he did it for me . . . He let
us use it when he wasn't there."
Salem Binladen jetted in two or three times a year for brief stays at the
two-bedroom lodge. Most neighbors never knew the billionaire Saudi
businessman was there, except when a chartered helicopter occasionally
landed in an adjacent lot.
But times have changed, and the once-gold family name has been tarnished by
Osama. Last month, a few miles up the road from Kingsland, one sign
decorated with small American flags was pointed: "Bomb Bin Laden."
Had it not been played out in the Middle East, the Binladen family story
could have been pure Texas -- a business dynasty linked to power, politics
and big money. Besides its business ties to the Lone Star state, the family
acquired holdings that range from waterfront condos in Boston to property
in California to holdings in medical research firms and a U.S. private
investment firm to which former President Bush serves as an adviser. The
family's high-level connections were longstanding and well-known: The
former president visited the Binladen family in Saudi Arabia in 1998 and
2000.
The current President Bush and Salem Binladen happen to have a common
business associate in Texas: James Bath, a Houston entrepreneur who once
was in the Texas Air National Guard with George W. Bush.
At one point, Salem oversaw a $92 million contract in Texas to outfit the
"head of state" Boeing 747 for the Saudi royal family, with whom the
Binladens were close. He designated Bath as his business representative in
Houston -- where Salem's holdings came to include the single-runway Houston
Gulf Airport.
The Binladen family profile in Texas drew little attention until 1992, when
federal authorities investigated allegations that Bath may have illegally
lobbied for Saudi interests in the United States. The inquiry ended without
any charges.
In sworn depositions, Bath said he represented four prominent Saudis as a
trustee and would use his name on their investments. In return, he said, he
received a 5 percent stake in their deals.
One of the Saudis was Salem Binladen, according to court documents widely
reported in newspapers at the time.
Bath has repeatedly declined to discuss his business interests.
In the early 1980s, Bath was a $50,000, 5 percent investor in two limited
oil exploration partnerships controlled by George W. Bush. Bush's oil
exploration firm eventually evolved into Dallas-based Harken Energy, which
was granted lucrative offshore drilling rights off the coast of Bahrain in
the Persian Gulf.
The partnerships were known as Arbusto, for "bush" in Spanish.
While Bath has remained mum about his business affairs, a White House
spokesman reiterated last week what Bush said years ago when the issue came
up as he prepared to run for president: The investment money was Bath's,
not Binladen's.
Throughout Salem Binladen's dealings in Texas, he cloaked himself in third
parties and offshore companies that gave few clues to his identity. The
Kingsland house was owned by Socrates Ltd., a firm in Florida where Salem
and at least one other brother had homes. It was sold in 1990 after Salem
Binladen's death. Other Texas investments were listed in the names of
trustees, not Salem. The Houston airport is owned by two obscure offshore
companies headquartered in the Netherlands Antilles, HGA Investments and
Binco Investments.
"The only thing we knew was that the owner was a Saudi family living in
London," said Linda Howard, with the Texas Department of Transportation
division that oversees airports. But Helen Paige, the manager of the
airport, confirmed that the Binladen family still owns the landing field.
"It was put in a trust for his children after (Salem) died," she said.
Public access to business registration, aviation and other federal records
that might have provided more detail about the Binladen family's Texas
connections has been restricted by various federal agencies at the
direction of Attorney General John Ashcroft, in the aftermath of the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks.
For years the family has been one of the world's best-connected power
players, successful at linking the Muslim and Western worlds. By the time
Salem took over the family businesses, he was close friends with King Saud.
He also helped the king's sons get started in business -- a good bet to
keep the clan close to the Saudi throne for years to come.
Like his father, Salem was described by associates as an adventurous spirit
with a keen eye for business. And for airplanes.
"He could fly most any type of plane there was -- Learjets, 111s, Hawkers,
you name it," Auerbach said. "He also had a glider in Egypt, and he flew
ultralights."
It was the latter that proved his eventual undoing. On May 29, 1988, Salem
perused a new craft at the Kitty Hawk Ultralight Flying Field at the
southwest tip of Comal County and, after eating breakfast at a hangar snack
bar, took off for a short flight in another ultralight he owned.
Inexplicably, the experienced pilot suddenly veered into power lines, then
crashed.
Witnesses who ran to the crash scene found him still strapped in his seat,
unconscious and bleeding from his ears, his eyes still open.
Rushed to San Antonio's Brooke Army Medical Center, Salem Binladen, 42, was
pronounced dead at 3:52 p.m.
"He was a good pilot," airstrip owner Earl Mayfield recalled at the time.
"We just can't understand why he decided to go right instead of left."
After Salem's death, a younger brother, Bakr, took over the family's vast
business empire, which he runs with 13 other brothers. Salem's funeral in
1988 marked the last time most family members saw Osama, the 17th of 25
sons. After spending years in Afghanistan helping oust the Soviet
occupation forces, his politics had become radical, his Islamic beliefs
fundamentalist, his views hostile to the pro-Western capitalism that had
built his family's riches.
Banished from Saudi Arabia in 1991 for fomenting unrest, then stripped of
his citizenship three years later, Osama was disowned by his family in
1994. Attacking the very trappings of wealth and power his relatives hold
dear, Osama has assumed the role of apostate -- "like someone with the name
of Rockefeller turning communist," said Adil Najam, a Boston University
professor who has studied the Binladen family.
He became an outcast, retreating with his millions into Sudan, where U.S.
officials allege he began financing terrorist training camps. By 1996, he
was reported to be living in Afghanistan.
A federal indictment in November 1998 charged that Osama and his al Qaeda
network had been conspiring for 10 years to obtain the components of
nuclear and chemical weapons as part of an ongoing terror campaign against
American targets. Two years later, U.S. investigators implicated Osama's
network in the bombing of the USS Cole while it was docked in Yemen.
And although his family denounced and distanced themselves from him,
questions have lingered about whether some relatives were sympathetic to
his views.
In 1998, Osama's brother-in-law was accused of helping finance the
Philippine fundamentalist group Abu Sayyaf in an aborted plot to
assassinate Pope John Paul II during his visit to the island nation three
years earlier. Sad al-Sharif, another brother-in-law, has been suspected of
having financial connections with al Qaeda.
Those Texans who knew Salem Binladen have been troubled at seeing the
family name in headlines. The Binladens they knew are the antithesis of
what Osama has become.
Najam estimates that Osama has cost his family business billions of
dollars. "Twenty years ago, their name was their biggest asset. Now, it's
their biggest liability," he said.
"Every family has a black sheep," Auerbach said. "(Osama) went ape."
Despite his long association with the family, Auerbach saw Osama only once,
in the early 1970s, when he walked through a hotel room in Dubai or Abu
Dhabi. Osama was just a teen-ager.
"Oh, that's Osama," Auerbach said he was told. "He's going to pray."
Copyright 2001 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. Courtesy of an
AFIB subscriber.
*****
____________________________________________________________________
FBI CLAIMS BIN LADEN INQUIRY WAS FRUSTRATED
Officials told to 'back off' on Saudis before September 11
____________________________________________________________________
THE GUARDIAN
International News
Wednesday, 7 November 2001
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,589168,00.html
Greg Palast and David Pallister
FBI and military intelligence officials in Washington say they were
prevented for political reasons from carrying out full investigations into
members of the Bin Laden family in the US before the terrorist attacks of
September 11.
US intelligence agencies have come under criticism for their wholesale
failure to predict the catastrophe at the World Trade Centre. But some are
complaining that their hands were tied.
FBI documents shown on BBC Newsnight last night and obtained by the
Guardian show that they had earlier sought to investigate two of Osama bin
Laden's relatives in Washington and a Muslim organisation, the World
Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), with which they were linked.
The FBI file, marked Secret and coded 199, which means a case involving
national security, records that Abdullah bin Laden, who lived in
Washington, had originally had a file opened on him "because of his
relationship with the World Assembly of Muslim Youth - a suspected
terrorist organisation".
WAMY members deny they have been involved with terrorist activities, and
WAMY has not been placed on the latest list of terrorist organisations
whose assets are being frozen.
Abdullah, who lived with his brother Omar at the time in Falls Church, a
town just outside Washington, was the US director of WAMY, whose offices
were in a basement nearby.
But the FBI files were closed in 1996 apparently before any conclusions
could be reached on either the Bin Laden brothers or the organisation
itself. High-placed intelligence sources in Washington told the Guardian
this week: "There were always constraints on investigating the Saudis".
They said the restrictions became worse after the Bush administration took
over this year. The intelligence agencies had been told to "back off" from
investigations involving other members of the Bin Laden family, the Saudi
royals, and possible Saudi links to the acquisition of nuclear weapons by
Pakistan.
"There were particular investigations that were effectively killed."
Only after the September 11 attacks was the stance of political and
commercial closeness reversed towards the other members of the large Bin
Laden clan, who have classed Osama bin Laden as their "black sheep".
Yesterday, the head of the Saudi-based WAMY's London office, Nouredine
Miladi, said the charity was totally against Bin Laden's violent methods.
"We seek social change through education and cooperation, not force."
He said Abdullah bin Laden had ceased to run WAMY's US operation a year ago.
Neither Abdullah nor Omar bin Laden could be contacted in Saudi Arabia for
comment.
WAMY was founded in 1972 in a Saudi effort to prevent the "corrupting"
ideas of the west ern world influencing young Muslims. With official
backing it grew to embrace 450 youth and student organisations with 34
offices worldwide.
Its aim was to encourage "concerned Muslims to take up the challenge by
arming the youth with sound understanding of Islam, guarding them against
destructive ideologies, and instilling in them level-headed wisdom".
In Britain it has 20 associated organisations, many highly respectable.
But as long as 10 years ago it was named as a discreet channel for public
and private Saudi donations to hardline Islamic organisations. One of the
recipients of its largesse has been the militant Students Islamic Movement
of India, which has lent support to Pakistani-backed terrorists in Kashmir
and seeks to set up an Islamic state in India.
Since September 11 WAMY has been investigated in the US along with a number
of other Muslim charities. There have been several grand jury
investigations but no findings have been made against any of them.
Current FBI interest in WAMY is shown in their agents' interrogation of a
radiologist from San Antonio, Texas, Dr Al Badr al-Hazmi, who was arrested
on September 12 and released without charge two weeks later. He had the
same surname as two of the plane hijackers.
He was also questioned about his contacts with Abdullah bin Laden at the US
WAMY office.
Mr Al-Hazmi said that he had made phone calls to Abdullah bin Laden in 1999
trying to obtain books and videotapes about Islamic teachings for the
Islamic Centre of San Antonio.
Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
*****
____________________________________________________________________
IMPERIAL FOREIGN POLICY
____________________________________________________________________
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
[Col. Writ. 11/4/01]
Source: Afrikan Frontline Network, nattyreb1@home.com
- Saturday, 10 November 2001 -
In a time of war, especially this present
war-without-end-against-terrorism, the United States is cozying up with a
bevy of nations that it has recently damned as violators of human rights.
One need look no further than Russia.
The Russian war against Muslim minorities in Chechnya has been condemned by
the United States in recent months as "genocide," and wholesale torture,
and an impediment to closer relations between NATO and the U.S. According
to a Soviet-era human rights activist, Sergie Grigoryants, "The human
rights situation in Chechnya has become catastrophic and seems to grow
worse every time the Russian authorities declare the war is over and life
in Chechnya is normalizing." Grigoryants, head of the Glasnost Foundation,
explained, "To be a Chechnan anywhere in Russia today is to be damned to
pain and persecution." (Weir, Fred, "Forgotten Terror," In These Times
(11/3/01).
Russian soldiers and officers have kidnapped, robbed, raped and murdered
Chechens in the midst of its ugly war, witihout serious prosecution. Over
200,000 Chechens have been sent away from their homeland into neighboring
countries as refugees from the Russian war machine. Tens of thousands have
been killed in the two years of war.
But in the wake of 11 September, 2001 all of this is now irrelevant.
Russia, erstwhile human rights violator, has now become, America's ally.
Her human rights record be damned.
Russia, in an effort to harmonize its national security objectives, has
painted the Chechen nationalist and separatist movement as a "terrorist
movement."
Eric Margolis, writing in the Toronto Star, gives quite another
perspective, "Russia crushed all revolts with ruthless ferocity and twice
attempted genocide ..." Margolis added, "Muslim peoples of the Caucasus -
Chechen, Ingush, Circassians, Abkhaz, Dagestanis - have been in almost
constant revolt against their Russian colonial rulers for three centuries."
[fr. Enver Masud, The War on Islam (Arlington, VA: Madrasah Books, 2000),
p. 126]
If the 20th Century has taught the world anything, it was that
nation-states are fully capable of committing terrorism: The Turkish
treatment of the Armenians, the German treatment of the Jews, the Cambodian
treatment of its own people, the list is long and bloody.
But nations look out for their own interests first.
In order to wage a withering and destructive war in Afghanistan, the U.S.
needs allies, and Russia fits the bill. And as Russian human rights
violations are ignored, the principle of quid pro quo demands the same for
the U.S.
Copyright 2001 Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved.
THEY ARE PLANNING TO MURDER MUMIA!!
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PLEASE PASS THE WORD!
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PLEASE CONTACT: International Concerned Family & Friends of MAJ; P.O. Box
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Send our brotha some LOVE and LIGHT at:
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!! PEOPLE GET READY !!
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