|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
By Robert Kuttner
$17.79
 . '/' . substr('9780061429255',-6,3) . '/' . '9780061429255' . '.jpg'; ?>)
By Ron Suskind
$35
|
|
|
|
abc.net.au
|
A judge in Pakistan has dropped the terrorism charges against one of the alleged leaders of the London airline bomb plot. Britain, undeterred by the ruling in favor of Rashid Rauf, says it will move ahead with its case against co-conspiracy suspects in its custody.
|
news.wisc.edu
|
Sen. Russ Feingold critiques the Iraq Study Group report and argues for a more holistic approach to counter-terrorism: “The Iraq Study Group essentially sees Iraq the same way that most of official Washington does—as the be-all and end-all of our foreign and national security policy. Nothing could be further from the truth….”
|
|
Flipping through the news channels on Wednesday, one would have seen an endless parade of pundits and politicians praising the Iraq Study Group’s report. One exception was a man who was critical of the war before it was in style, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), who told “Countdown’s” Keith Olbermann: “The fact is, this commission was composed apparently entirely of people who did not have the judgment to oppose this Iraq war in the first place….” Watch it
|
New York Times
|
By Robert Scheer — The Founding Fathers won a war, but their true contribution to human history was to tackle head-on the reality that humans and their institutions can so easily become that which they despise.
|
AP Photo / Chris O'Meara
|
By Chris Hedges — The show trial of Sami Al-Arian speaks to the government’s persecution of Muslims after 9/11, and the perils of dissent in a world gone mad with terror.
|
truthinjustice.org
|
An Oregon lawyer and convert to Islam has settled his lawsuit against the FBI for $2 million. Brandon Mayfield, who sued after he was falsely linked to the Madrid train bombings, described his experiences as an Orwellian nightmare where “an act that strips you of your civil rights could be called a Patriot Act.”
|
telegraph.co.uk
|
A classified U.S. government report leaked to The New York Times says the insurgency in Iraq has funds to sustain itself annually, thanks to oil smuggling, kidnapping and other nefarious activities. What’s more, the report finds insurgents may have enough money left over to finance terrorist activity outside Iraq—all while spending less in a year than the U.S. spends per day.
|
Huffington Post
|
Read an excerpt of the explosive new book “Triple Cross,” which tells the story of Ali Abdel Saoud Mohamed, Osama bin Laden’s most trusted security adviser, who infiltrated the U.S. Army Special Forces and served as an FBI informant—all the while overseeing some of the most infamous Al Qaeda terror strikes of the last decade. (Excerpt, and more info).
|
|
Conservative website WorldNetDaily claims someone paid Palestinian terrorist organizations $2 million for the release of two Fox News reporters. The payment was then allegedly used to buy weapons, meaning—if the claim is accurate—that someone financed terrorists on behalf of Fox News. (h/t: Americablog)
|
|
Bush still doesn’t seem to realize that millions of Americans voted to signal their displeasure with the GOP for abandoning the poor and middle class.
|
|
 The majority of voters disapprove of the war in Iraq ... “and believe the U.S. should withdraw some or all troops,” according to New York Times exit polls. The economy was the No. 1 concern, followed closely by terrorism and the Iraq war. In congressional decisions, corruption and scandal were also highly important.
|
|
A few things from this season that I will miss: Katherine Harris wearing less and less blue eye shadow as she went through her Senate race; waking up each morning to a new GOP indictment; and the head of the House’s exploited children panel being revealed as a child exploiter.
|
nwa.com
|
Christopher Soghoian created a boarding pass generator, allowing visitors to his website to sneak through airport security with fake documents. Though the FBI has shut down Soghoian’s site, the flaw that enabled it remains a security threat.
|
thestandard.com.hk
|
Indian police have accused Pakistan’s intelligence agency of planning the July train bombings in Mumbai, which killed 186 people. According to Mumbai’s police commissioner: “We have solved the 11 July bombings case. The whole attack was planned by Pakistan’s ISI and carried out by Lashkar-e-Toiba and their operatives in India….”
Posted on Sep 30, 2006
READ MORE 
|
|
A provision that would grant President Bush the discretion of deciding what is and isn’t torture is likely to land on his desk by the weekend unless there’s a legislative miracle.
We can only hope that the Supreme Court will toss out this travesty.
|
|
A terrorism memo sent from Richard Clarke to Condoleezza Rice in 2001 directly contradicts what the secretary of state told reporters Monday. Raw Story has the details.
|
|
Remember the scene toward the end of “The American President” in which Michael Douglas, playing President Andrew Shepherd, delivers a stand-up-and-cheer tongue-lashing of his critics? Watch as Bill Clinton demolishes Fox News’ Chris Wallace in a similar manner.
|
|
The latest National Intelligence Estimate blames the Iraq War for the expansion of terrorist threats. According to the consensus gathered from 16 intelligence agencies, “jihadism” has increased since Sept. 11, 2001, due especially to the war in Iraq.
|
|
Stephen Colbert sank his teeth into the “Path to 9/11” controversy on Monday, shaming ABC’s truth-challenged drama: “What better way to commemorate a national tragedy than turning it into a miniseries?”
|
Illustration: Peter Scheer/Photos: Wikipedia.org/artlex.com
|
Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice each went on TV Sunday to perform CPR on the administration?s legacy. Though both admitted to more dogged resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan than expected, the pair defended the administration?s decision-making and claimed we are safer now thanks to Bush?s policies.
|
Illustration by Peter Scheer
|
In 2002 Abu Zubaydah, a captured Bin Laden henchman, experienced two radically different kinds of interrogation as the FBI and the CIA secretly engaged in a debate that continues today. As one official put it: ?When you rough these guys up, all you do is fulfill their fantasies about what to expect from us.?
Posted on Sep 9, 2006
READ MORE
|
|
Rush Limbaugh said something stupid again, only this time on CBS nightly Free Speech segment, where the radio show host railed against those evil people who are more interested in punishing this country over a few incidents of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay than they are in defeating those who want to kill us. (Video & Transcript)
|
|
Legislation put forward by the Bush administration this week would legalize the same torture techniques recently banned by the Army. By selectively interpreting the Geneva Conventions, the legislation would allow CIA operatives and even the Army, should it decide to revert to previous rules, to conduct interrogations using unsavory methods.
|
|
By Ellen Goodman — Here is something I never imagined five years ago: that America would lose its status as the good guy in the struggle against terrorism.
|
|
Elizabeth Dole was asked by Fox News to name a Democrat who was appeasing terrorists. She couldnt, but instead launched into a nonsensical yarn, loosely linking opposition to the long-ineffective missile defense program and the Patriot Act to appeasement.
|
smh.com.au
|
The Education Department has admitted to searching through millions of student loan records on behalf of the FBI. The government says the operation, known as ?Project Strike Back,? was meant to uncover information on individuals allegedly related to terror investigations.
|
|
Dutch authorities detained 12 passengers on a flight headed to Mumbai, India, after the plane was turned around under fighter escort. The passengers were reported to have behaved suspiciously?using and exchanging cellphones midflight. Later, authorities said the incident probably had nothing to do with terrorism and that the 12 passengers would be released today.
|
|
In a reversal of the national sentiment of 2003, Americans now favor Democrats over Republicans on the Iraq war by 47% to 41%, according to a CNN poll. On the issue of terrorism, however, Republicans come out on top, 48 to 38.
|
|
The U.S. Embassy has told India that it has information suggesting that terror attacks might occur in the political and economic capitals—Delhi and Mumbai. The Indian government has yet to receive any specific information. The warning comes only a month after more than 180 people were killed when a series of bombs exploded on a commuter train in Mumbai.
Posted on Aug 11, 2006
READ MORE
|
AP / Matt Dunham
|
Scotland Yard has upset a terrorist plot to explode planes in mid-flight from the UK to the U.S. As part of an operation lasting several months, authorities arrested 18 people and raised the threat level in the UK to critical, the highest possible.
Update: Bush raised America’s threat level to red—the highest. It’s a first for America.
|
|
The official anti-terrorism database is so flawed that it lists 8,591 potential terrorism targets in Indiana—50% more than in New York and twice as many as in California. Examples: “Old MacDonalds Petting Zoo, the Amish Country Popcorn factory and the Mule Day Parade.”
|
From MSNBC
|
He’s been described as “the most powerful person you’ve never heard of,” and “Cheney’s Cheney.” He’s David Addington, the vice president’s chief of staff, and he’s behind the legal arguments to support presidential-sanctioned torture, the attempt to discredit Joe Wilson, and the bogus Niger uranium story. The New Yorker has a must-read profile.
|
|
Post 9/11, the U.S. penned a deal demanding that airlines submit 34 pieces of passenger information including names, addresses and credit card info. The EU Parliament has opposed the deal from the beginning, arguing that it does not guarantee adequate data protection, and now the European Court of Justice has annulled it. Washington has threatened big fines for noncompliance in the past. Privacy? Data protection? How un-American!
|
From the N.Y. Times
|
Bush’s 31% rating (which echoes a USA Today/Gallup poll) equals the low-water mark of his father’s presidency, and is the third-lowest approval rating of any president in the last 50 years.
|
|
You may want to swallow your food before reading this….
Just as he did with the anti-torture law, Bush placed an addendum on the Patriot Act saying he doesn’t have to obey parts of the law.
|
|
In an updated version of his national security strategy, the president gives no ground on the policy that led us into Iraq, and identifies Iran as being the country that poses the biggest challenge to the U.S.
|
From pravda.ru
|
As part of Bush & Co.‘s campaign to turn Iran into the next imminent threat, Condoleezza Rice calls Tehran a “central banker for terrorism.”
So, just to get this straight: Iran is the new Iraq, which was the new Afghanistan, which was the new Russia?
|
|
The American Prospect’s Greg Sargent calls Bush “truly despicable” for saying in a speech— disingenuously —that an L.A. Times article had tipped off Iraqi enemies to some of our anti-insurgent technology.
Posted on Mar 14, 2006
READ MORE
|
Karen Spector
|
By Juan Cole — Truthdig’s Middle Eastern affairs expert argues that the Iranian nuclear issue “has not reached the point of crisis, and therefore other motivations must be sought for the Bush administration’s breathless rhetoric.”
UPDATE: Cole says that Bush’s recent linking of Iran to Iraqi roadside bombs is “wholly implausible.”
|
Zuade Kaufman
|
By Sheerly Avni — Gore Vidal on fascism, terrorism and wartime propaganda. Part II of Truthdig’s interview with the award-winning novelist. (earlier: part I)
|
Zuade Kaufman |
By Sheerly Avni — Gore Vidal on fascism, terrorism and wartime propaganda. Part II of Truthdig’s interview with the award-winning novelist. (earlier: part I)
Posted on Mar 7, 2006
READ MORE 
|
|
The cliffhanger vote caught Republican leaders by surprise. The president is expected to sign the legislation into law before Friday.
With the nation’s attention trained squarely on the Dubai Ports fiasco (not that it’s an unimportant issue), Congress has passed the most sweeping abridgement of American freedoms in a generation—with barely a peep from the public.
|
Ken Catalino
|
By Robert Scheer — It’s the season’s big hit, a zany farce with pompous officials in the Bush administration and their hysterical courtiers in the mass media asserting positions that are patently absurd but hilarious to watch.
|
View the most popular tags overall?
|
|
Global Capital and the Nation State
Newsletter 
Like Us
Follow Us
Get Our Feed
