The Spirit of the Internet Weekly

Click here for opinions from prior weeks.

[Note: The following news and opinions primarily came from email sent by our friends. Thank you Sirius and all the others who have forwarded these messages to us. Due to the large volume of email we are receiving, we can only post a sampling here, but we thank everyone for sending stories like this. We read them all and post what we can as time permits.]

The right sort (Eric Alterman, The Guardian, December 15, 2001)
“The US is still a nation where an early reaction to the crisis was to insist on billions in tax breaks for big business and the wealthiest 1% of Americans, and next to nothing for the millions who lost their jobs as a result of the attacks. . . . Democrats fear they risk appearing unpatriotic merely by opposing Bush. There is no longer any significant opposition to increased military spending, and even the opposition to the dangerous and completely useless missile-defence boondoggle is lying low. . . . Today, Bush is reported to believe that he has been charged by God to win the war against terrorism. But that is a relatively new vocation. Before September 11, it was hard to know what Bush truly believed about anything, or if he had any fixed beliefs at all. According to friends, he chose to run for Congress for the first time in 1978, because he ‘thought that it would be cool to be a congressman’, while the rest of his career options appeared to be petering out.”

‘Objectivity’ RIP: Stop the Presses (Eric Alterman, The Nation, December 24, 2001)
“Barnes is quite understandably excited about Dan Rather's post-9/11 appearance on the David Letterman show, when the anchor declared: ‘Wherever [the President] wants me to line up, just tell me where. And he'll make the call.’ Given that Presidents routinely lie about matters of war and peace, Rather is volunteering here to be a mindless propagandist rather than a thinking journalist. Rather also explained to Letterman that the terrorists attacked us because they're evil, and because they're jealous of us. Such anti-intellectual pronouncements may warm the cockles of right-wing hearts, but they signal the death of a journalist's commitment to the ideal of objectivity. . . . Following Bill Maher's craven apology for speaking his mind on Politically Incorrect, the rest of the media's message to the patriotic correctness police appears to be, ‘ain't nobody here but us chickens.’ Don't forget that these are not nobodies or typical Murdoch mouthpieces. They are the nation's best-known anchor and the president of one of its top network news divisions. They make the rules. . . . Most infuriating about the right's capture of the media since the war is the fact that, according to the Pew study, nearly three-quarters of the respondents say they want news that includes the views of America's enemies, and just over half say reporters should dig hard for information rather than trust official sources. So just why are the media wimping out exactly when tough, critical reporting is not only crucial for the functioning of democracy but is also being demanded by their audience? . . . In other words, conservative hysteria has made America all-but ungovernable for anyone but conservatives.”

The US State Department’s Human Rights Reports on Israel and the Occupied Territories (Jennifer Loewenstein, Media Monitors Network, December 19, 2001)
“On Saturday, 15 December 2001, the United States vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have cleared the way for international monitors in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Many believe that such monitors would help reduce the violence in the increasingly bloody low-intensity war Israel is waging against Palestinians living in the Occupied Territories, as well as stop the devastating suicide bombings against Israeli civilians. . . . Most people in the Arab and Muslim worlds know that this is a standard example of US hypocrisy and support for unjust regimes. The United States government is well aware of Israel’s poor human rights record both towards the Palestinians living under its 34-year-old occupation and towards Palestinian citizens of Israel itself. Our politicians and pundits regularly distort the reality of the situation, however, ignoring or overlooking carefully documented records of Israeli human rights abuses. . . . Often lauded as the only democracy in the Middle East, Israel nevertheless appears to have difficulty applying its high human rights standards to non-Jews. . . . The description of human rights abuses conducted by the Israeli government, security forces, and civilians against Palestinians in the Occupied Territories goes on for twenty pages of tiny, single-spaced print. The list includes home demolitions; lengthy and damaging military ‘closures’ on Palestinian cities, towns, and villages; the restriction of freedom of worship and of travel; the arbitrary closing of schools and universities; the state-sponsored destruction of olive and citrus orchards; censorship of Palestinian media; restrictions on freedom of assembly; extradition of Palestinian prisoners to prisons in Israel and the difficulty of obtaining proper legal counsel; it takes note of the IDF killings of hundreds of demonstrators and of the policy of assassinating terror suspects without ever attempting to bring them to trial.”

What does Israel want in the War against Terrorism? (Al-Hewar Editorial, January 2002)
“Israel and its followers in the US and the West have been trying to convince the West that the new ‘enemy’ is the entire Islamic World! And that the new ‘enemy’ carries political, security and cultural dangers, exactly as was the case with the communist USSR. . . . The tragedy of September 11 came as a gift from the sky to Israel and its supporters. They used the Taliban as a representation of all Islam and Muslim nations. . . . By pushing the West into a state of war with the ‘Arab and Islamic Terror,’ Israel would have an important role to play. . . . President Bush said he was surprised by how much the United States is disliked in both the Arab and the Islamic Worlds. The US must realize that ordinary Arab and Muslim people admire the US and its citizens, but that the problem lies in US foreign policies towards them, especially over the past 30 years. . . . Palestine will remain the key to any future conflicts or a solution; there is no way around it. . . . It will also depend on whether the US will decide to continue with its current policies of blindly supporting Israel or deciding that Israel must not be above the law and must obey international laws like the rest of us!”

A Dossier on Civilian Victims of United States’ Aerial Bombing of Afghanistan: A Comprehensive Accounting (Professor Marc W. Herold)
“A heavy bombing onslaught must necessarily result in substantial numbers of civilian casualties simply by virtue of proximity to ‘military targets’, a reality exacerbated by the admitted occasional poor targeting, human error, equipment malfunction, and the irresponsible use of out-dated Soviet maps. But, the critical element remains the very low value put upon Afghan civilian lives by U.S. military planners and the political elite, as clearly revealed by U.S. willingness to bomb heavily populated regions. . . . We shall document how Afghanistan has been subjected to a barbarous air bombardment which has killed an average of 62 civilians per day since that fateful evening of Sunday, October 7th. When the sun set on December 6th, at least 3,767 Afghan civilians had died in U.S bombing attacks. . . . The report raises trenchant questions about mainstream U.S reporting and official government claims, about the alleged accuracy of so-called ‘smart’ weapons, and about the revealed differential values put upon human lives by U.S military strategists and their political bosses. . . . But, I believe the argument goes deeper and that race enters the calculation. The sacrificed Afghan civilians are not ‘white’ whereas the overwhelming number of U.S. pilots and elite ground troups are white. This ‘reality’ serves to amplify the positive benefit-cost ratio of certainly sacrificing darker Afghans today [and Indochinese, Iraqis yesterday] for the benefit of probably saving American soldier-citizens tomorrow. What I am saying is that when the ‘other’ is non-white, the scale of violence used by the U.S. government to achieve its state objectives at minimum cost knows no limits. . . . The widespread, un-focused bombing and missile attacks by the United States, besides killing close to 4’000 Afghan civilians since October 7th, has contributed to wholesale panic amongst residents of villages and cities, leading to floods of refugees seeking to escape. Both Kabul and Kandahar were reported as having only 20% of their populations remaining, comprising primarily those too poor to flee.”

Global poll finds most think America brought terror attacks on itself (Rupert Cornwell, The Independent, 21 December 2001)
“Did America somehow ask for the terrorist outrages in New York and Washington? Not surprisingly, nearly all leading Americans think not. But most people of influence in the rest of the world, and nearly 80 per cent in the Middle East and Islamic world, believe that, to a certain extent, the US was asking for it. . . . which brings out an important subtext of the tragedy and its aftermath – the difference between how Americans think they are seen, and the way the rest of the world sees them. . . . But the most interesting themes that emerged were a barely disguised resentment at America's massive power in the world, and a gulf between Americans' views of how the world sees them and the world's actual feelings. . . . Most striking, though, is the gulf in perceptions. In countless speeches, including by President Bush, American spokesmen have portrayed the war as a battle between good and evil, with the terrorists bent on destroying America's way of life. Its position as a beacon of freedom and democracy, Americans believe, is the reason the rest of the world most admires their country. . . . But this is not so. The biggest appeal of America lies in its technological prowess, large majorities of those interviewed in the rest of the world said. A majority of Americans said people believed the US was admired because ‘it does a lot of good around the world’.”

The New McCarthyism (Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive)
“Donna Huanca works as a docent at the Art Car Museum, an avant-garde gallery in Houston. Around 10:30 on the morning of November 7, before she opened the museum, two men wearing suits and carrying leather portfolios came to her door. . . . The two men were Terrence Donahue of the FBI and Steven Smith of the Secret Service. . . . All in all, they were there for about an hour. ‘As they were leaving, they asked me where I went to school, and if my parents knew if I worked at a place like this, and who funded us, and how many people came in to see the exhibit,’ she says. ‘I was definitely pale. It was scary because I was alone, and they were really big guys.’ . . . She is a freshman at Durham Tech in North Carolina. Her name is A.J. Brown. She’s gotten a scholarship from the ACLU to help her attend college. But that didn’t prepare her for the knock on the door that came on October 26. ‘It was 5:00 on Friday, and I was getting ready for a date,’ she says. When she heard the knock, she opened the door. Here’s her account. ‘Hi, we’re from the Raleigh branch of the Secret Service,’ two agents said. . . . ‘We’re here because we have a report that you have un-American material in your apartment.’ . . . The poster they seemed interested in was one that depicted Bush holding a rope, with the words: ‘We Hang on Your Every Word. George Bush, Wanted: 152 Dead.’ The poster has sketches of people being hanged, and it refers to the number who were put to death in Texas while Bush was governor. . . . ‘Then they asked, ‘Do you have any pro-Taliban stuff in your apartment, any posters, any maps?’ . . . Welcome to the New McCarthyism. A chill is descending across the country, and it’s frostbiting immigrants, students, journalists, academics, and booksellers. . . . You are no longer free to patronize a bookstore without fear of government scrutiny. On November 1, the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) sent a disturbing letter to its members. . . . ‘Dear Bookseller,’ it begins. ‘Last week, President Bush signed into law an antiterrorism bill that gives the federal government expanded authority to search your business records, including the titles of the books purchased by your customers. . . . There is no opportunity for you or your lawyer to object in court. You cannot object publicly, either. The new law includes a gag order that prevents you from disclosing ‘to any person’ the fact that you have received an order to produce documents.’ . . . ‘What’s analogous to McCarthyism is the self-appointed guardians who are engaging in private blacklisting,’ says Eric Foner, professor of history at Columbia University. ‘That’s why the Lynne Cheney thing is so disturbing: Her group is trying to intimidate individuals who hold different points of view. There aren’t loyalty oaths being demanded of teachers yet, but we seem to be at the beginning of a process that could get a lot worse and is already cause for considerable alarm.’ ”

Clearing up America's mess: New evidence of US dealings with the Taliban highlights the role of oil (Mark Seddon, The Guardian, December 18, 2001)
“The Bush administration may also harbour some guilty secrets over its determination to put America's economic and strategic interests ahead of tracking down Islamist terrorists - at least before September 11. In a new book, Bin Laden - the Forbidden Truth, two French intelligence analysts, Jean Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquié, claim that the administration initially blocked US secret service investigations into Islamist terrorism, under the influence of powerful oil corporations, many of whom had stumped up wads of cash for the Bush campaign. . . . Oil interests are heavily represented in the Bush administration. Aside from the president himself, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, the national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the ministers for commerce and energy, Donald Evans and Stanley Abrahams, have all worked for US oil companies. Bush's family has a strong oil background. The corporate giants have not only wanted to keep the Saudis on side, but had their eyes fixed on the rich oil fields of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. . . . Brisard and Dasquié describe how weeks before the September 11 attacks, the US administration was bargaining with the Taliban for the delivery of Bin Laden, in return for aid and political recognition of a broad-based Afghan government - which would have included the Taliban. That bargaining process had begun in February, almost as soon as Bush was sworn in.”

Terror and Empire: The Imperial Presidency and National Messianism (Robin Blackburn, CounterPunch)
“It soon became clear that the Bush White House was taking advantage of the shock at what had happened to demand global ‘war powers’ and the financial and constitutional means to employ them. . . . When Bush arrived in the White House its allies were unhappy to discover that the new president, despite his own criticisms of the Clinton-Albright interventions, had an even more vigorous notion of America’s special destiny. He regarded international treaties as scraps of paper (ABM or Kyoto), spurned agreements on land-mines, biological warfare and terrorism or, as in Durban, simply left the room when dialogue was required. . . . So the Presidency came to enjoy almost complete freedom of action and was able to give shape and direction to the widespread sense of shock, anger and alarm. Moreover Bush repeatedly insisted that the campaign against international terrorism would be a long one, presumably requiring indefinite extension of his special powers. . . . Whether or not a different president might have acted differently, Congress could have acted differently. One suspects that a Republican Senate faced with such demands from a Democratic president would have retained more of a say over future developments, or at least secured an informal agreement that the text of the President’s speech would have to be agreed beforehand. . . . The unilateralist conclusions drawn by Bush were superficially at odds with one theme of his speech on September 20: ‘This is not, however, just America’s fight. And what is at stake is not just America’s freedom. This is the world’s fight. This is civilisation’s fight.’ Given this claim it might seem strange that a world body, such as the United Nations, was not entrusted with conducting the fight. The explanation, of course, was the doctrine of national messianism. The United States is the leader and representative of humanity and civilisation, acting in their name.”

Up to 60 die as US bombs tribal leaders by mistake (Paul Harris and Peter Beaumont, The Observer, December 23, 2001)
“Evidence was growing last night that US planes mistakenly bombed a convoy of Afghan tribal leaders travelling to Kabul for the inauguration of the new Afghanistan government, leaving up to 60 dead. . . . US officials insist the 15 vehicles in the convoy in the eastern province of Paktia contained Taliban and al-Qaeda leaders. But residents in the nearby village of Asmani Kilai said the convoy was made up of local elders and civilians. They said 10 houses and a mosque were destroyed in the seven-hour bombardment. . . . villagers said the convoy had set out for the Afghan capital from the town of Khost with tribal elders who were unarmed. . . . News of the tragedy is likely to strain relations between the West and the new Afghan government of Karzai, who has said he will investigate the attack on the convoy. That could hurt the hunt for Osama bin Laden since US forces rely on local Afghans for gathering much intelligence.”

Strange snub to US at inaugural ceremony (Kim Sengupta, The Independent, 23 December 2001)
“They thanked the UN, the EU, each other and even the Chancellor of Germany. But when Aghanistan's new interim government took power yesterday, at a colourful ceremony at the Grand Hall of the Ministry of the Interior in Kabul, there was no mention of the US, the country that had made it all possible. . . . To add to the surreal note, American representatives overwhelmed those of every other country at the inauguration ceremony. There was General Tommy Franks - who might have expected a victor ludorum after vanquishing the Taliban - the US ambassador, State Department officials, secret service men and armed uniformed soldiers. . . . Speech after speech passed without any reference to the Americans and how they had changed Afghanistan.”

Brace yourself for Part Two of the War for Civilisation (Robert Fisk, The Independent, 22 December 2001)
“We could ignore the fact that, save for a few brave female souls, almost all Afghan women in Kabul continued to wear the burqa. We could certainly close our eyes to the massive preponderance of Northern Alliance killers represented in the new UN-supported, pro-western Government in Kabul. We could clap our hands when a mere 50 Royal Marines arrived in Afghanistan this weekend to support a UN-mandated British-led ‘peace’ force of only a few thousand men who will need the Kabul government's permission to operate . . . The ‘peace’ force thinks it will have to defend humanitarian aid convoys from robbers and dissident Taliban. In fact, it will have to fight off the Northern Alliance mafia and drug-growers and warlords, as well as the vicious guerrillas sent out to strike them by bin Laden's survivors. If nothing else, the Taliban made the roads and villages of Afghanistan safe for Afghans and foreigners alike. Now, you can scarcely drive from Kabul to Jalalabad. . . . Fortunately for us, the civilian victims of America's B52s will remain unknown in their newly dug graves. Even before the war ended, around 3,700 of them – not counting Mullah Omar's and bin Laden's gunmen – had been ripped to pieces in our War for Civilisation. A few scattered signs of discontent – the crowd that assaulted me two weeks ago, for example, outraged at the killing of their families – can be quickly erased from the record.”

The Sharon files (Julie Flint, The Guardian, November 28, 2001)
“It is September 19 1982, the day after the Lebanese Forces militia left Beirut's Palestinian camps after a 38-hour orgy of killing, and it is finally possible to see what the Israeli soldiers surrounding the camps claimed they had been unable to see. Streets carpeted with bodies. Men, women and children shot and hacked to death. Pregnant women eviscerated. In Christian East Beirut, Israel's chief of staff, Lieutenant General Rafael Eitan, the commander of the Northern District, Major General Amir Drori, and a senior Mossad officer, Menahem Navot, codenamed Mr R, meet the deputy chief of staff of the Lebanese Forces, Antoine Breidi - ‘Toto’ - and Joseph abu Khalil, the man who made the first contact with the Israelis in March 1976. What ensues is a cynical damage-limitation conference in which senior officers of the Israeli Defence Forces utter not one word of reproach for a massacre in which mili tiamen trained, armed and sent into the camps by them killed at least 900 defenceless civilians. . . . ‘The documents give a very detailed account of a number of events which would be very difficult to fabricate - especially in that very short period of time,’ says Verhaeghe. Investigations by the Guardian in Israel and Lebanon have confirmed the identity of the intelligence officers named in the documents as well as the dates, times and locations of some of the meetings, those who attended them and some of their content. The typescript of the Hebrew documents matches that used at the time of Kahan. And the voices of many of the protagonists are unmistakable - among them the courtly Pierre Gemayel, patriarch of the Gemayel family, and Sharon, referred to throughout as DM. . . . Thus, even as the first PLO fighters left Beirut on August 21, Sharon met Bashir and Pierre Gemayel to demand a new strike against the Palestinian presence in Lebanon. Minutes of the meeting quote Sharon as saying: ‘A question was raised before, what would happen to the Palestinian camps once the terrorists withdraw... You've got to act... So that there be no terrorists you've got to clean the camps.’ Pierre Gemayel prevaricated: ‘We are in the midst of a political process of presidential elections... Bashir is the nominee... It is very important that calm is kept.’ Sharon insisted: ‘What would you do about the camps?’ Bashir: ‘We are planning a real zoo.’ ”

Hail George, Conqueror of Evildoers! (Michael Moore, Alternet.org, December 20, 2001)

[EDITORIAL NOTE: To our friends overseas, as you can tell be reading this article, Michael Moore is one of the leading satirists in the U.S.]

“But Mr. Bush, I am most impressed with how you have used those who died on September 11th to justify your lining the pockets of your rich friends and campaign contributors. Your ‘Economic Stimulus Bill’ -- pure genius! You actually got the House of Representatives to pass a bill eliminating the law that said corporations have to pay at least a token minimum tax every year. See, most people forget that back in your daddy's day (when he was VP) thousands of companies were able to lawyer their way out of paying any taxes at all! Then a law was passed to stop that. Now you got the House to agree to give all these corporations back ALL the minimum taxes they have paid since 1986!! That's $140 billion of givebacks ($1.4 billion to IBM, a billion to Ford, $800 million to GM, etc.). And you got this passed, all under the guise of ‘September 11th!’ How do you get away with this without the American public whoopin' your behind? Man, you are THE MAN! . . . Hey, and tell your top sheriff, Big John Ashcroft, that his refusal to let the FBI look at the files of gun background checks that the Justice Department keeps -- to see if any of the terrorists or suspected terrorists have purchased weapons in the past two years -- took some balls! Even though checking those files might turn up information that could protect us in possible future attacks, Ashcroft was more concerned with not upsetting the NRA than in helping his own FBI catch the bad guys. Now that's what I call getting your priorities straight. Big John may have lost his Senate seat last year to a dead guy, but he sure as heck ain't gonna lose me as a huge admirer! . . . Well, I better go before someone from the Office of Homeland Security mistakes me for someone who needs to be ‘interviewed!’ Rest assured I'm doing my part for the country by shopping my sorry ass off in this week before Christmas. Buy! Buy! Buy! Tora! Tora! Tora! Bora! Whoo-hoo, Prince O' Peace!! Fight Team Fight! Go get 'em, George, Jr. — we're counting on you to kill all evildoers!”

Terrorism, weapon of the powerful, United States, Global Bully (Noam Chomsky, Le Monde Diplomatique, December 2001)
“Let us start with Afghanistan, where seven or eight million people are on the verge of starvation, and surviving on international aid since way before 11 September. On 16 September the US demanded that Pakistan stop the truck convoys providing much of the food and supplies to Afghanistan's civilian population. As far as I can determine, there was no reaction to this in the US or Europe. . . . By October Western civilisation was resigned to the idea of the death of hundreds of thousands of Afghans. . . . To understand the origins of 11 September, we have to distinguish between the agents of the crime and the reservoir of sympathy, sometimes support, from which they draw, a reservoir that exists even among people who oppose both the criminals and their actions. Let us assume the crimes' perpetrators come from Bin Laden's network. Nobody knows about their origins better than the CIA, because it helped organise and nurture them. . . . These people are angry at the US because it supports authoritarian and brutal regimes (and is in its 35th year of supporting Israel's harsh military occupation), and because its policies devastate the civilian society of Iraq while strengthening Saddam Hussein. The New York Times asked "Why do they hate us?"; on the same day, the Wall Street Journal published a survey of bankers, professionals and international lawyers, who said they hate us because we are blocking democracy, preventing economic development, and supporting terrorist regimes. . . . To combat terrorism we must start by reducing the level of terror, rather than by escalating it. When the IRA detonates bombs in London, London does not destroy Boston, although it is the source of most of the IRA finance, nor does it wipe out West Belfast. The UK hunts the perpetrators, brings them to trial and looks for the reasons for the violence. . . . There is one easy way to reduce the level of terror: stop participating in it.”

Too many rooms at the inn (Esther Addley, The Guardian, December 24, 2001)
“The main door into the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, the holiest site in all of Christendom, is only a little over four feet high, so even relatively short sinners have to stoop to get inside. . . . According to the Pope on the day of the funeral, in the 2,000 or so years since Christ was supposedly born in a grotto under the site of the Church of the Nativity, no one has ever died violently on the sacred ground of Manger Square. Until Johnny Thaljieh. The teenager had just left the church following the late afternoon Orthodox service when he met his father in the square, then ran into his cousin Elias and his toddler son, whom he picked up to fling playfully in the air. He was holding the child above his head when a single bullet struck him, passing through his body just under his left armpit. He managed to set the screaming child on the ground before he fell, dying minutes later in the arms of his father. . . . A little over two months ago, on October 19, Israeli troops moved into Bethlehem and its western suburb Beit Jala in force, occupying hotels and homes in the town and placing tanks and snipers in high positions. . . . Under the terms of the Oslo agreement, Bethlehem is designated ‘area A’, under the sole security control of the Palestinian Authority, and entirely out of bounds to the Israeli Defence Force. The invasion provoked immediate criticism from international governments and church leaders, but Israel's Prime Minster Ariel Sharon resisted all calls to withdraw, and his retaliation was severe. By the time the IDF tanks finally left Bethlehem nine days later, 23 people from the town were dead, Johnny Thaljieh among them. . . . Like Jerusalem a few kilometres to the north, Bethlehem is a place which seems to creak under the sheer weight of significance, ancient and modern, loaded on to it. To wander its narrow streets is to be reminded of snatches of childhood carols, of Eliot's Magi and Yeats's rough beast and Christina Rosetti. And of Phillips Brooks, the American preacher who in 1867 wrote the most famous Christmas lyric about the ‘little town of Bethlehem ’, two years after travelling from Jerusalem on horseback and standing rapt in the grotto of the nativity. ‘The hopes and fears of all the years,’ he wrote in his paean, ‘are met in thee tonight.’ ”

Israel's dead end (Edward Said, Media Monitors Network, December 24, 2001)
“Nineteen years later, what was happening then to the Palestinians in Lebanon is happening to them in Palestine. Since the Al-Aqsa Intifada began last September, Palestinians have been sequestered by the Israeli army in no fewer than 220 discontinuous little ghettos, and subjected to intermittent curfews often lasting for weeks at a stretch. No one, young or old, sick or well, dying or pregnant, student or doctor, can move without spending hours at barricades, manned by rude and deliberately humiliating Israeli soldiers. As I write, 200 Palestinians are unable to receive kidney dialysis, because for ‘security reasons’ the Israeli military won't allow them to travel to medical centres. Have any of the innumerable members of the foreign media covering the conflict done a story about these brutalised young Israelis conscripts, trained to punish Palestinian civilians as the main part of their military duty? I think not. . . . The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest such occupation in history and the only one anywhere in the world today. This is the original and continuing violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed. . . . The crucial point in all this is that Israel has been in illegal military occupation since 1967; it is the longest such occupation in history and the only one anywhere in the world today. This is the original and continuing violence against which all the Palestinian acts of violence have been directed. . . . For the first time, a major Palestinian challenge on Palestinian rights is being mounted inside Israel (not on the West Bank), with all eyes on the proceedings. At the same time, the Belgian attorney-general's office has confirmed that a war crimes case against Sharon can go forward in that country's courts. A painstaking mobilisation of secular Palestinian opinion is underway and will slowly overtake the Palestinian Authority. The moral high ground will soon be reclaimed from Israel, as the occupation becomes the focus of attention and as more and more Israelis realise that there is no way to continue indefinitely a 35-year occupation. . . . Besides, as the US war against terrorism spreads, more unrest is almost certain; far from closing things down, US power is likely to stir them up in ways that may not be containable. It's no mean irony that the renewed attention on Palestine came about because the US and Europeans need to maintain an anti-Taliban coalition.”

Predicting 9-11 (Chris Wright, BostonPhoenix, December 13, 2001)

“In June 2000, Lynne Palmer, a 69-year-old Las Vegas resident, published her Astrological Almanac for 2001 (Star Bright Publishers). On page 95 of the book, buried among advice on the best days to go to the movies and worst days to lend people money, Palmer had written, in an odd combination of the obvious and the prophetic: ‘Avoid terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.’ . . . ‘Only one person predicted the date of the attacks, and that was Lynne Palmer,’ says veteran astrologer Robert Hand, a relatively highbrow practitioner of the art. ‘I don't know how she did it. Things looked chaotic, but I could not have foreseen September 11. I looked and looked and I don't know how anyone could have predicted it to the day.’ . . . Palmer, meanwhile, remains unfazed by her astrological coup. ‘There are certain planets that rule certain things,’ she says, ‘and those planets were in alignment.’ In fact, Palmer didn't even know the attacks had occurred until a friend told her. ‘I don't look at the news much,’ she says. ‘My friend called me. I looked in my [2001] almanac and I had it. I make all sorts of predictions and I forget about them. But I had 'Watch for danger falling from above,' 'Avoid fire.' It was eerie.’ . . . Though Hand's dates were not as specific as Palmer's -- he saw strife occurring between August 5, 2001, and May 26, 2002 -- his predictions were nonetheless chillingly prescient: ‘Things pass away and then something new comes into being. We have times when things seem to reach a period of stability and permanence; then there is a period of decay, when they begin to break down and go wrong.... It is as though we were driving down a well-defined road with a clear objective, and either something we did not anticipate is forcing us onto another road or the road itself is being transformed.’ ”

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