News

May I recommend:

• World News
• Technorati Current Events
• Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Liberty
• The Age, Melbourne
• Asahi Shimbun, Tokyo
• Silicon Valley
• Dan Gilmor's weblog
• The Guardian, London
• Stratfor, for real analysis on things others sensationalize
• Debka: We start where the media stop.
• Al Hayat from Saudi Arabia
• Al Jazeera in English from Qatar
• Middle East Times
• TIDES Middle East report
• World Press Review
• Le Monde diplomatique
• Pagina/12, Buenos Aires
• Clarin
• El Tiempo, Colombia
• ALyC newspapers
• Univision's focus on Latin America Univision on ALyC
• CNN en Espanol
• CNN
• The Memory Hole
• New Scientist
• Schism matrix (Bruce Sterling's brief daily blog)
• Dave ``e-mail pamphleteer'' Farber's Interesting People list; all about technology and politics.

September 11

• Stories

• SPOT infrared satellite image of Manhattan, acquired on September 11 at 11:55 AM ET. Image may be freely reproduced with "Copyright CNES/SPOT Image 2001 ".
• from ISS ISS a ISS b

• the tragedy

Backgrounders

Anthrax

• What to do about anthrax
• Anthrax Case Six Steps to Take When Envelope is Opened and thePowder Is Found
• Anthrax vaccine immunization program

Terrorism

• Fighting Terror, a perspective from a nation that has done it

• Tony Blair's speech to the Labour Party

  ``So I believe this is a fight for freedom. And I want to make it a fight for justice too.

  ``Justice not only to punish the guilty.

  ``But justice to bring those same values of democracy and freedom to people round the world.

• Benjamin Netanyahu

  ``The first and most crucial thing to understand is this: There is no international terrorism without the support of sovereign states.''

• Joe Biden

  ``It is about draining the swamp,'' he said. ``(Biden) is looking ahead, thinking strategically about what comes next for the region.''

• Pentagon Seeks Ideas on Combatting Terrorism

Afghanistan

• Fighting Terror

  Hard lessons about fighting terror learned by the British over many years.

• Military Perspective on Afghanistan, by Richard Kidd, the last American in Afghanistan

  ``This will not be a pretty war; it will be a war of wills, of resolve and somewhat conversely of compassion and of a character. Towards our enemies, we must show a level of ruthlessness that has not been part of our military character for a long time. But to those who are not our enemies we must show a level of compassion probably unheard of during war. We should do this not for humanitarian reasons, even though there are many, but for shrewd military logic.''

• Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998 Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001

  ``Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.''

• David Corn

  ``A few days ago, I called Brzezinski, and he told me he still has no regrets. He maintained that the Carter Administration funded the moderates, not the fundamentalists. The true problem, he asserted, was that the Soviet Union, then supporting terrorists around the world, "pulverized" Afghanistan society through the 1980s, and that set the stage for the ugly infighting of the 1990s and the subsequent rise of the Taliban. How can you assume, he asked, that there would be no terrorism today, had there been no U.S.-supported resistance to the Soviets in Afghanistan? Perhaps if the Soviets had not been confronted and drained in Afghanistan, he suggested, the Soviet Union might have lived on a little longer and might have, in that time, fostered other sorts of terrorism.

  ``Perhaps. Historical what-ifs are impossible to prove. But Brzezinski is quick to note that the policymakers who succeeded him in subsequent administrations screwed up by bugging out once the Soviets had departed: "That was immoral." In other words, they messed up the project he began. Here, then, is the lesson for Brzezinski and the CIA and the other muj-backers (past and present): be careful when you start (or underwrite) a secret war, for the consequences of such action can extend far beyond your intentions.''

• First Anglo-Afghan War

• Second Anglo-Afghan War

• Third Anglo-Afghan War

Islam

• Karen Armstrong's books: Understanding Islam and The Battle for God

  ``In my travels around the states, I'm astonished about the lack of interest in the rest of the world. If you're staying in Denver the local paper seems totally local; there's lots of commentary and very little news. That's all got to change because this attack has shown that if you ignore the world, the world will come to you.''

Liberty

• An ode to America, by by Cornel Nistorescu

  ``What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic power? Money? I tried for hours to find an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases which risk of sounding like commonplaces. I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion.

  ``Only freedom can work such miracles!''

• An Act of Barbarism, and America's Response

  ``If law enforcement and national security agencies declare war on the American people in the process, they will give the terrorists a gift. The despicable people who planned this will triumph if we add to the damage.''

• The problem is the premise.

  ``We are having one of those circular arguments about how many civil liberties we can trade away in order to make ourselves safe from terrorism, without even looking at the assumption -- can we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free? There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack.''

• Sen. Russ Feingold, Chairman of the Constitution Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee

  ``We must maintain our vigilance to preserve our laws and our basic rights.

  ``We in this body have a duty to analyze, to test, to weigh new laws that the zealous and often sincere advocates of security would suggest to us. This is what I have tried to do with this anti-terrorism bill. And that is why I will vote against this bill when the roll is called.''

• John W. Dean, Liberties lost: Unintended consequences of the anti-terror law

  ``The reach of this new law is far beyond those who appear involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. The USA PATRIOT Act adds a new, and fourth, definition of "domestic terrorism." In doing so, they have made many home-grown political activists that have protested their opposition to the programs of the World Trade Organization on the streets of Seattle and Washington into terrorists.''

• Pastor Niemoller

  First they came for the Communists,     and I didn't speak up,        because I wasn't a Communist. Then they came for the Jews,     and I didn't speak up,        because I wasn't a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics,     and I didn't speak up,        because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me,     and by that time there was no one        left to speak up for me. —Rev. Martin Niemoller, 1945