MANHATTAN 911

(Pages A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S)

Reflections conducive to a nonviolent future,
following the massacre of Sept. 11, 2001.

• People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments molt and regroup, hydra-headed. They first use flags to shrink-wrap peoples’ minds and smother real thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to cover the mangled remains of the willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments. Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond—they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts.
     --Arundhati Roy (In These Times 11/3/2001).
  
  
• The Arab League secretary general, Amr Moussa, also reproached Mr. bin Laden, the prime suspect in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, saying he "does not speak for Arabs and Muslims."...
  
  Mr. Moussa later reiterated the Arab League's opposition to the spreading of the American-led campaign inside Afghanistan to any Arab nation.
     --AP (NYTimes Online 11/5/2001).
  
  
• Ultimately, administration officials say, the cooperation of the Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and other nations in monitoring financial transactions may prove as significant as a special-forces strike or a new round of arrests.
     --Jeff Gerth & Judith Miller (NYTimes 11/5/2001).
  
  
• "I don't think there has ever been a bombing campaign as effective and precise,'' Rumsfeld said at a news conference with India's Defense Minister George Fernandes, who has been quoted as calling the U.S. bombing raids in Afghanistan a ``waste of explosives."
     --AP (NYTimes Online 11/5/2001).
  
  
• There is no lobby in Washington as large, as powerful or as well-financed as the pharmaceutical lobby. Battle-honed over a number of health care initiatives that began with the creation of the Medicare program in the 1960's, the industry spent $177 million on lobbying in 1999 and 2000 — a good $50 million more than its nearest rivals, the insurance and telecommunications industries.
     --Leslie Wayne & Melodie Peterson (NYTimes 11/4/2001).
  
  
• There is still much that investigators do not know. While they contend, for instance, that the plot cost nearly $500,000, they have been able to trace only half of it back to a suspected Al Qaeda source. They know where the leaders met, but not what information they exchanged — among hundreds of e-mail messages seized from computers in Florida and Las Vegas, there is no "smoking gun" or reference to the Sept. 11 attacks, a senior investigator said....
  
  Investigators say their best theory is that Sept. 11 was a franchise operation, and that the leaders hewed closely to the dictates of Al Qaeda's terror manual....
  
  The plot was first pieced together, they say, at least two years ago, in Hamburg, Germany, where three of the men who would later be leaders and pilots — Mr. Atta, Mr. Shehhi and Ziad Jarrahi — were part of a terrorist cell. Three other suspected members of that cell fled in early September and are being sought as accomplices.
  
  Senior law enforcement officials say the Hamburg plotters received the blessing — and, crucially, cash — from Al Qaeda, although investigators say they do not know who in Osama bin Laden's organization approved the operation. Several officials say they suspect it was Mr. bin Laden himself, and investigators have also said his top three associates were involved in the planning. "They met with somebody else who was calling the shots" in Germany, one official said. "But we don't know who that person is.'...
  
  The money for the operation began arriving at branches of the SunTrust Bank and Century Bank in Florida, in the summer of 2000. Mr. Atta received slightly more than $100,000, Mr. Shehhi just less than that amount. About half of the $500,000 used to pay for the operation, senior Federal Bureau of Investigation officials say, was wired by an important bin Laden operative, Mustafa Ahmad, from the United Arab Emirates, and much of the rest from Germany. However, one official said the authorities suspected the money trail began in Pakistan. Travel records show each of the men making several trips in and out of the United States in 2000 and early 2001 — to Spain, Prague, Bangkok and Saudi Arabia. Mr. Atta took seven international trips; Mr. Shehhi took five. In this country, they all had begun taking flying lessons, in Phoenix, San Diego and South Florida....
  
  Investigators say they can confirm only one overlapping visit to Las Vegas, on Aug. 13 and 14, although they say the picture may not be complete. An Algerian who is believed to have helped train the pilots, Lotfi Raissi, drove from Phoenix to Las Vegas at least once last summer, and hijackers may have done the same....
  
  Four of the five men on American Flight 77, the jet that plowed into the Pentagon, had helped with the logistics or are considered by investigators to have been leaders. It is assumed that several of the logistics people, including Mr. Midhar, also carried box cutters and served as muscle....
  
  One F.B.I. official said the prayers found at the crash sites seemed to exhort the foot soldiers to be strong in prison — unlike the four-page set of instructions and prayers found in Mr. Atta's luggage, which made it clear he believed he was going to his eternal paradise.
     --Don Van Natta, Jr. & Kate Zernike (NYTimes 11/4/2001).
  
  
• The eight-hour visit to Moscow was Mr. Rumsfeld's first stop in a four-day tour that is scheduled to take him to Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Pakistan and India, all critical allies in the American antiterror effort.
     --(NYTimes 11/4/2001).
  
  
• The great debate within the Bush administration is between those who want to confine military action to Afghanistan and those who seek a wider war, especially against Iraq. The struggle for the presidential soul is between Tony Blair, Colin Powell and, perhaps, President Bush the elder, versus a gang of armchair hawks led by Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defence, and Richard Perle of the White House. The eventual decision is up to Bush the younger.
     --Arthur Schlesinger (Independent 11/2/2001).
  
  
• The C.I.A.'s undercover New York station was in the 47-story building at 7 World Trade Center, one of the smaller office towers destroyed in the aftermath of the collapse of the twin towers that morning. All of the agency's employees at the site were safely evacuated soon after the hijacked planes hit the twin towers, the officials said....
  
  In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, morale suffered badly within the C.I.A., some officials said, as the agency began to confront what critics have called an intelligence failure on the scale of Pearl Harbor.
     --James Risen (NYTimes 11/3/2001).
  
  
• Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim calendar. It is during this month that Muslims observe the Fast of Ramadan. Lasting for the entire month, Muslims fast during the daylight hours and in the evening eat small meals and visit with friends and family. It is a time of worship and contemplation. A time to strengthen family and community ties.
  
  According to the Islamic Society of North America the first day of fasting for Ramadan is expected to be November 17, 2001.
     --Ramadan on the Net (holidays.net).
  
  
• Fasting was a symbol of sadness, mourning, atonement for the sins, a reminder of disasters as well as self - mortification in Judaism and Christianity. Islam radicalized this doom and gloom concept of fasting, into an enlightened concept of triumph over the forces of evil. The month of fasting in Islam is a month of worship Muslims welcome each year with energy and happiness, and are saddened only when the month departs. This is contrary to the atmosphere of mourning. Fasting is for the living.
     --Tajuddin B. Shu`aib (Essentials of Ramadon usc.edu).
  
  
• In short, prolonged, scientific fasting has proved itself, over millennia, as humanity's oldest, fastest, safest (biochemically), and the most effective weight-loss, detoxification, healing and longevity-enhancing modality known to our species--both curative, as well as preventive medicine of the very first order--and here are the reasons why:
     --Dennis Paulson (Fasting Center International fasting.com).
  
  
• Mercy demands that the scholar and teacher should be gentle toward his students and lead them to the easiest and best ways to love him and benefit from his teachings. If he does this Allah will decree for him the most excellent and abounding reward. Listen to the manner in which Allah praises His Prophet sallallahu `alaihi wa sallam : 'And it was by God's grace that thou [O Prophet] didst deal gently with thy followers: for if thou hadst been harsh and hard of heart, they would indeed have broken away from thee' (3:159).
     --Shaykh `Aa'id Abdullah al-Qarnee (Ramadan: Month of Mercy islaam.com).
  
  
• As Central Asian expert Ahmed Rashid describes in his book "Taliban," published last year, the United States and Pakistan decided to install a stable regime in place in Afghanistan around 1994 -- a regime that would end the country's civil war and thus ensure the safety of the Unocal pipeline project. Impressed by the ruthlessness and willingness of the then-emerging Taliban to cut a pipeline deal, the State Department and Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency agreed to funnel arms and funding to the Taliban in their war against the ethnically Tajik Northern Alliance. As recently as 1999, U.S. taxpayers paid the entire annual salary of every single Taliban government official, all in the hopes of returning to the days of dollar-a-gallon gas. Pakistan, naturally, would pick up revenues from a Karachi oil port facility. Harkening back to 19th century power politics between Russia and British India, Rashid dubbed the struggle for control of post-Soviet Central Asia "the new Great Game."
     --Ted Rall (SFChronicle 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Overall, the [Washington] Post was more militaristic, running at least 32 columns urging military action, compared to 12 in the [New York] Times. But the Post also provided the only two columns we could find in the first three weeks after September 11 that argued for non-military responses; the Times had no such columns. Both dissenting columns were written by guest writers.
     --FAIR (11/2/2001).
  
  
• Let me address what I perceive as quite divergent worldviews from within white mainstream America and that of black Americans. I have preached in numerous black churches since the events of September 11th, saying that the Christian faith calls for us to seek alternative and less violent ways to solve crises. I have emphasized the basic Christian message, calling for us to "love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you," "blessed are the peacemakers," and "do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Black audiences have reacted with enthusiasm, while mainstream white audiences with great hostility. And I must ask: why?
     --Rev. Graylan Scott Hagler (TomPaine.com).
  
  
• However, what we will NOT support under any circumstances is the kind of airline passenger profiling that occurred on 9/20/01. We condemn such acts as morally outrageous, and as contrary to the constitutional ideals of the United States of America. Just as we grieve the traumatic loss of lives on 9/11/01, we lament the temporary suspension of civil rights for the minority people of America, and specifically, for those Arab Americans and Muslim Americans who are singled out as victims of harassment during this time of "extra sensitivity."
     --Petition by Professors Douglas De Witt Kilgore, IU Dept. of English & Ranu Samantrai, Claremont Graduate Univ. Dept. of Cultural Studies (To FAA).
  
  
• According to BBC News, 80 percent of the residents of Kandahar--a city of 400,000 that is considered a Taliban stronghold--have fled. The story is the same in other cities.
     --Elizabeth Lalasz & Nicole Colson (11/2/2001).
  
  
• Survivors said the bombing was carried out not only by jets, but also by helicopters. All of them denied the Pentagon's assertion that the village was a base for Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
     --CNN (11/2/2001).
  
  
• A strategy to "squeeze" Afghanistan, through bombing and starvation, "until the people of the country themselves . . . get the leadership changed" would certainly qualify as terrorism under this definition.
     --Mark Weisbrot (11/1/2001).
  
  
• The Taliban regime in Afghanistan is responsible for bringing war, fear, tyrannical oppression, and starvation to their people. However, as a result of US military actions, this responsibility has been taken off the Taliban's shoulders and now falls directly into the laps of the officials in charge of the U.S. "War on Terrorism."
     --Erich Marquardt (Yellow Times 11/1/2001).
  
  
• But since the start of the "war on terrorism", the [Carlyle Group] firm - unofficially valued at $3.5bn - has taken on an added significance. Carlyle has become the thread which indirectly links American military policy in Afghanistan to the personal financial fortunes of its celebrity employees, not least the current president's father. And, until earlier this month, Carlyle provided another curious link to the Afghan crisis: among the firm's multi-million-dollar investors were members of the family of Osama bin Laden.
     -- Oliver Burkeman & Julian Borger (10/31/2001).
  
  
• Is there a CIA connection to 9-11? Reporter Michael Ruppert (former Los Angeles Police Officer) released a story days ago about the "Insider Trading" that profited off the 9-11 horror, and how those illegal profits lead to the investment house of Banker's Trust-AB Brown , once chaired by AB Krongard, now 3rd highest man in the CIA. $2.5 million is still unclaimed (?) This week a book came out on released documents that the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff actually devised a plan to foment domestic terror in order to whip America into a pro-war frenzy for political purposes.
     --Home Page (Yahoo WTC Group).
  
  
• In another conversation, months before the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Ben Heni hinted that the "Sheik" was planning a major attack. "He is planning something because he has wished for a goal and he wants to carry it out. It is not a small thing."
     --John Miller (ABC 10/31/2001).
  
  
• Under the Taliban regime, women are not allowed to hold jobs or receive an education. They can only appear in public if they are accompanied by male relatives and clothed in burqas, full-length coverings that drape the entire body, including the face. Under the Taliban regime, women cannot laugh, talk out loud in public, or make noise when they walk. If they wear makeup or show their ankles, they are subject to being whipped.
     --ABC (10/30/2001).
  
  
• Under their new and unusual arrangement, the F.B.I. has ceded much of its traditional independence to the Justice Department, with Mr. Ashcroft taking command of the investigation, even as he defers to Mr. Mueller on strategic decisions....
  
  For weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Ashcroft spent most waking hours in the F.B.I.'s Strategic Information Operations Center, a heavily fortified cluster of offices surrounded by video screens and banks of computer terminals. His predecessors rarely set foot there....
  
  His around-the-clock supervision of the case also reflects the wishes of President Bush, who rescued Mr. Ashcroft from forced political retirement 10 months ago, after he lost a race for the Senate in Missouri.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• White House officials confirmed today that Mr. Bush's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, has made a series of calls around Capitol Hill in hopes of arranging a quick vote on revoking the main economic sanction against Russia remaining from the cold war.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Government officials intercepted telephone conversations in recent days in which members of Osama bin Laden's terrorist network, Al Qaeda, spoke urgently of an imminent attack against American targets even larger than the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, senior government officials say.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Highly motivated organizations of Muslim men (oh, for the voices of Muslim women to be heard!) have been engaged over the last 30 years or so in growing radical political movements out of this mulch of "belief." These Islamists — we must get used to this word, "Islamists," meaning those who are engaged upon such political projects, and learn to distinguish it from the more general and politically neutral "Muslim" — include the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, the blood-soaked combatants of the Islamic Salvation Front and Armed Islamic Group in Algeria, the Shiite revolutionaries of Iran, and the Taliban. Poverty is their great helper, and the fruit of their efforts is paranoia. This paranoid Islam, which blames outsiders, "infidels," for all the ills of Muslim societies, and whose proposed remedy is the closing of those societies to the rival project of modernity, is presently the fastest growing version of Islam in the world.
     --Salman Rushdie (NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Gov. Gray Davis warned today that there was "credible evidence" that terrorists were plotting a rush-hour attack in the next seven days on one or more of California's most prominent bridges, including the Golden Gate and Bay Bridges.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Twelve firefighters were arrested Friday after a scuffle with police at ground zero, where firefighters denounced cutbacks in the number of people searching for remains.
     --AP (NYTimes Online 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Campbell Brown, who covers the White House for NBC News, said that after she asked Mr. Ridge tough questions during a press briefing last week she received a rare phone call from a senior administration official who "gently chided" her for doing so. "To get an unsolicited phone call from a senior official at this White House is very unusual," she said.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• The Pakistani government appears to have abandoned any immediate hope of uniting rival Afghan groups in a new government, Western diplomats said today. Instead, they said, it has shifted toward increased support for American bombing as the best way to topple the Taliban.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• Fog and sandstorms with 100 mile-per-hour winds and sub-freezing temperatures in the north have grounded American helicopters that ferry Special Forces to their landing areas inside Northern Alliance-held territory, military officials said.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).
  
  
• An opposition commander watching the Kabul raids today from the roof of his house in the village of Rabat told Reuters, "These attacks are spot on!" He said he saw flames and smoke rise from positions used by the Taliban to shell the Northern Alliance opposition at the Bagram airbase, about 35 miles north of the capital...
  
  Mr. Karzai, who was educated in India, has argued that in order to demolish the Taliban, their fighters have to be presented with a credible alternative.
  
  A leader of the Populzai ethnic group in Afghanistan, a subgroup of the Pashtun, Mr. Karzai has the potential to wield significant power in Afghanistan. His strength is in his ancestral lands, which coincide with much of those of Mullah Muhammad Omar, the spiritual leader of the Taliban.
     --(NYTimes 11/2/2001).