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| Taking a Closer Look at the Stories Ignored by the Corporate Media |
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Archive for the Month of June, 2005.
Viewing War on Terrorism NEWS articles 1 through 40 of 40.
- Hidden Agenda behind the "War on Terrorism":
US Bombing of Afghanistan Restores Trade in Narcotics
- The U.S. government gave the slave trade a boost by offering money for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Afghan and Pakistani warlords simply rounded up people who looked Arab or foreign and sold them to the Americans as captured fighters. The "fighters" apparently included relief workers, refugees, and Arab businessmen. The Bush administration, of course, denies that it bought its detainees, as it denies everything.
- Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration ignored or dismissed Amnesty International's reports on the abuse of detainees for years, and senior officials continue to ignore the very real plight of men detained without charge or trial. - "Islamic fundamentalism is not the primary driver of suicide terrorism. Nearly all suicide terrorist attacks are committed for a secular strategic goal -- to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from territory the terrorists view as their homeland."
- Bush claims his policies are promoting democracy, but the administration’s record of human rights abuses at home and abroad suggest that freedom and the rule of law are not what he has in mind. The permanent bases the military is building in Iraq, and the influence on U.S. policy of pro-Israel fantasists such as Bolton and Wurmser, suggest that the Bush administration’s ultimate goal is U.S. domination over the oil-rich Gulf region, and an Israel free to maintain its occupation of other people’s land. A truly democratic Middle East would make it impossible to achieve these goals.
- The US government is operating an "archipelago" of prisons around the world, many of them secret camps into which people are being "literally disappeared," a top Amnesty International official said.
- This latest news about abuse at Guantanamo Bay is just another example in the never ending saga of mistreatment of prisoners that has been reported by human rights groups such as Amnesty International and the Red Cross. Which begs another question: when is someone going to toss Rumsfeld into a cage?
- The ”war on terror”, identified in Amnesty International's annual report as a new source of human rights abuses, is threatening to expand to Latin America, targeting indigenous movements that are demanding autonomy and protesting free-market policies and ”neo-liberal” globalization.
- For American neo-conservatives, rendition stories are fun. Don't be surprised if at dinner tables, they drink and laugh and talk about Muslims degrading Muslims.
- Some members of the Bush administration have taken a cue from a classic John Wayne Western and are advising their boss to take the film's advice – "Never apologize" – when dealing with Muslims."
- Hundreds of soldiers have deserted the Afghan National Army complaining of poor conditions and fierce resistance from the Taleban, US officials say.
- Ephraim Halevy, the former chief of Israel's Mossad intelligence service and the current national security adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, says plans have been made for a substantial U.S. military presence in the Middle East lasting decades.
- More than a year before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the FBI nabbed two Arab grocers loading boxes onto a tractor-trailer outside a drab gray apartment building here. The cargo: stolen Kellogg's cereal. To this day, the grocers remain on the federal government's list of terrorism cases, although they never were charged with a terrorism-related crime. Often cited to emphasize the government's success fighting terrorism, the list is made up in large part of men caught up in the post-Sept. 11 dragnet that targeted Middle Easterners.
- The document titled "Secret ORCON: Interrogation Log Detainee 063" included the following entries
- The B.C. Civil Liberties Association is sounding a warning about Washington's demand for passenger lists for domestic Canadian flights. The Americans want to check for names against its secret no-fly list.
- Lawyers representing terror suspects at the U.S. Guantanamo Bay military prison in Cuba claim there may be six minors being held there. - How feds avoid hearings for terror suspects — despite Supreme Court ruling
- While madrassas are an important issue in education and development in the Muslim world, they are not and should not be considered a threat to the United States. - Located in southeastern Uzbekistan near the border with Afghanistan, the Khanabad base is seen as key to the U.S. war on terror. Information about current day-to-day activities of U.S. forces remains shrouded in secrecy.
- YOU can easily be made to confess to being a terrorist. You may rue the day when you realize that you should have stood up with your fellow Americans and put an end to the War on Terror while it was still possible. - Fewer than 10% of the people prosecuted for terrorism in the United States since the September 11 attacks were convicted of crimes related to that or national security, according to a study conducted by the Washington Post. - The interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo Bay Detention Center in 2002 triggered concerns among senior Pentagon officials that they could face criminal prosecution under U.S. anti-torture laws, ABC News has learned. - $350,000,000,000.00 spent on the wars since Sept. 11th, 2001.
- The story of how it happened - how Tashnuba, the pious, headstrong daughter of Muslim immigrants living in a neighborhood of tidy lawns and American flags, was labeled an imminent threat to national security - is still shrouded in government secrecy. - Spec. Sean Baker, 38, was assaulted in January 2003 after he volunteered to wear an orange jumpsuit and portray an uncooperative detainee. Baker said the MPs, who were told that he was an unruly detainee who had assaulted an American sergeant, inflicted a beating that resulted in a traumatic brain injury.
- U.S. allies have begun to resist Washington's secretive role in spiriting away terror suspects: Italy is investigating the disappearance of one accused militant as a kidnapping, Sweden wrote rules to assert its authority over outside agents and Canada is holding hearings after one of its citizens was sent to Syria.
- Would the prescence of bin Laden and al-Zarqawi in Iran be enough to support an attack? We think not. We believe that there will be one more step before the Bush administration feel that they have "sold" the idea sufficiently, another 9/11.
- "He is completely innocent. He is about as much of a terrorist as my granddad. The only reason he has been treated like he has is because he is an Aljazeera journalist. The Americans have tried to make him an informant with the goal of getting him to say that Aljazeera is linked to al-Qaida."
- Falsehood #1: Abuse at Guantánamo is "minor," allegations are based on "rumor" - An Italian judge ordered the arrests of 13 people in the purported CIA abduction of an imam, who then was sent to Egypt, the Milan prosecutor's office said Friday. - Washington has for the first time acknowledged to the United Nations that prisoners have been tortured at US detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, Afghanistan and Iraq, a UN source says. - Military doctors at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, have aided interrogators in conducting and refining coercive interrogations of detainees, including providing advice on how to increase stress levels and exploit fears, according to new, detailed accounts given by former interrogators.
- Could the President of the United States ever argue that he has the power and the right – and even the duty – to take any American citizens into custody he chooses, throw them into prison forever, torture them at will, and never even charge them with a crime? The question has long been moot. It has already happened. Meet Jose Padilla.
- The Americans stayed at some of the finest hotels in Milan, sometimes for as long as six weeks, ringing up tabs of as much as $500 a day on Diners Club accounts created to match their recently forged identities, according to Italian court documents and other records. Then, after abducting their target and flying him to Cairo under the noses of Italian police, some of them rounded out their European trip with long weekends in Venice and Florence before leaving the country, the records show. - A senior Taliban commander on Sunday dismissed as false Afghan government reports that 178 guerrillas were killed in a U.S.-backed offensive in southwestern Afghanistan last week. - Although much of the inquiry has been conducted behind closed doors, a recent series of public hearings has embarrassed the Canadian government by exposing details of Arar's "extraordinary rendition" -- the phrase used by the CIA to describe the U.S. practice of secretly sending terror suspects to countries where torture is routine. The hearings have also revealed a greater Canadian role in the practice than previously acknowledged.
- The US government thrust scores of US-based Muslim men in jail without charge after the September 11, 2001 attacks, US rights groups said in a report.
- A US terror alert in late 2003 that interrupted about 30 overseas flights was triggered by a CIA analysis of what were thought to be hidden messages broadcast on Aljazeera TV, NBC Nightly News has said. - The United Nations says it has learned of serious allegations that the US is secretly detaining terrorism suspects, notably on American military ships.
- "In any criminal act one needs to look at who benefited. Surely it wasn’t we the people. We have pretty much lost our entire Bill of Rights, and The Constitution under a regime of fear and the catch all phrase “terrorism."
Pages for June, 2005
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