Putting a lid on broadband use By John Borland Staff Writer, CNET News.com http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5079624.html

Earlier this month, a Philadelphia Comcast broadband subscriber got a letter from his service provider, telling him he’d been using the Internet too much.

Keith, who asked to keep his full name private, said he’d subscribed to the service for four years and never had a complaint before. Now he was being labeled a network “abuser.”

Worse, he said, Comcast refused to tell him how much downloading was allowed under his contract. A customer service representative had told him there was no specific cap, he said, adding that he might avoid being suspended if he cut his bandwidth usage in half. But even then, the lack of a hard number gave Keith no guarantee.

What’s new: Cable Internet service subscribers are quietly capping the volume of downloading they allow their subscribers to do. So far, it’s only affecting the heaviest users.

Bottom line: As broadband providers strive for ever-speedier and economical service–and bandwidth-hogging features such as video on demand become more popular–these caps may become more common. And they may affect digital subscriber line (DSL) providers as well.

“I don’t mind restrictions, but how can Comcast expect users to stick to a limit when they don’t say what the limit is?” he said. “If they’re going to impose limits, that’s one thing, but at least tell us what they are.”

Keith isn’t alone in his newfound position under the Internet service provider (ISP) microscope. Other high-volume Comcast subscribers have been getting letters since late summer warning them of overuse. A few others have even had their service suspended after the first warning. Comcast spokeswoman Sarah Eder said that its new enforcement policy was barely two months old.

As Keith and other frustrated users found, the company’s warnings to subscribers were not triggered by any “predetermined bandwidth usage threshold,” Eder added. Only about 1 percent of subscribers received letters, which were based on having exceeded average usage patterns rather than a specific number, she said.

For now, this quiet imposition of usage caps affects only a tiny fraction of extraordinarily high-volume users. But it goes to the heart of the competitive decisions cable and telephone companies are making as they struggle for broadband dominance . Comcast in particular is working to provide ever-increasing download speeds , and as result it is struggling to contain busy file swappers and others who are putting stress on their networks.

It is not something the broadband providers are eager to talk about. Even as Comcast sends out letters to its customers targeting high-volume users, the company bristles at the notion that the policy is a cap.

It’s easy to see why: As cable and DSL companies race to bulk up on subscribers, companies tagged as “bandwidth cappers” could be at a disadvantage. The problem is particularly awkward for cable companies, which have tried to avoid a price war with the telephone companies by promising better quality of service.

“The industry is leery of explicit caps, because even people who don’t come anywhere near the caps feel like something is being taken away from them,” Jupiter Research analyst Joe Laszlo said. As consumers grow more used to broadband services and begin understanding what to expect from their connections, companies “can’t claim their service is unlimited if there is some kind of informal limit,” Laszlo added.

Hard caps and fuzzy ones Different ISPs are taking widely different approaches to this issue, although caps seem for now to be limited to the cable companies.

Cox Communications started phasing in hard usage limits in February, and now a majority of that company’s subscribers are limited to downloading 2 gigabytes a day–the equivalent of about two compressed feature-length movies or about 400 MP3 songs. AOL Time Warner’s Road Runner cable modem service has no caps yet, although sources say the idea is being discussed internally.

Comcast’s policy has proven most controversial. The company’s terms of service say only that users cannot “represent (in the sole judgment of Comcast) an unusually large burden on the network.” According to a spokeswoman, the company began sending notes about two months ago to the top 1 percent of the heaviest users–people who collectively use about 28 percent of the company’s bandwidth–telling them they were violating their terms of service.

Eder said there was no specific line crossed by these subscribers, but she added that some of those people were downloading the equivalent of 90 movies in a given month.

Comcast customer Keith, a British immigrant, said he used his cable modem service to watch the BBC, have video conversations and trade DVD-quality home movies with his family in the United Kingdom.

Comcast defended the policy of having the unstated–but still enforceable–limitation on bandwidth use, saying that any hard cap would have to change in any case as high-bandwidth applications such as video on demand became popular.

“The Internet is growing, and there are more broadband applications every day,” Eder said. “If we were to set an arbitrary number today, we could be changing it tomorrow.”

Both Cox and Comcast have a policy of sending warning letters to subscribers before suspending or terminating service. No subscriber would be affected without substantial warning, spokespeople from both companies said.

Some smaller cable companies are imposing much lower caps. Alaska’s GCI Cable , for instance, limits its subscribers to transferring just 5 gigabytes a month.

Telephone companies offering DSL service in the United States say they have no limits in place for their users, unlike Canadian, British or Australian counterparts that routinely cap their subscribers’ usage. Verizon Communications and SBC Communications, the largest DSL providers in the United States, both said their services remain unlimited.

“The customers buy the lines,” SBC spokesman Michael Coe said. “We make whatever bandwidth they need available to them.”

There’s a limit The caps are a small but crucial part in the latest round of skirmishing among broadband companies over price and features. Cable companies have had a lead in the consumer market for years, but they’re now nervously watching telephone companies’ DSL services–particularly co-branded offerings like the SBC Yahoo service–start to close the gap.

Both sides are trying to figure out how best to attract and then support the mainstream dial-up Internet audience, which is finally starting to come to broadband in droves.

DSL companies have brought deeply discounted prices into their arsenal. It’s now rare not to see a $29.95 per month offer from the likes of SBC or Verizon, and that’s helping bring subscribers in quickly. The cable companies, on the other hand, tout faster download speeds and Web surfing than the average DSL connection provides, and they are working to make their networks even faster.

Comcast, leading the way, has promised to double the average Net surfer’s top speeds, from 1.5 megabits per second to 3 megabits per second, and to get even faster in future years. Analysts say the drive to keep very high-volume users under control is necessary if the company is to reach this goal economically.

Most broadband subscribers use their service for some music or video downloading, to send and receive digital photos or for other high-bandwidth applications. But ISPs say that a tiny percentage of people are using an enormous percentage of their total bandwidth. According to Comcast, just 6 percent of subscribers use about 78 percent of the company’s bandwidth.

Cable networks are particularly susceptible to the dangers of this imbalanced usage, because all the homes in a given neighborhood share access to the same local network. One extremely high-volume user can therefore have a Net-slowing impact on his neighbors.

Nor are DSL companies exempt from this issue, despite their rhetorical distain for caps today. Even if their subscribers don’t share their local wires, DSL uploads and downloads do wind up merging into a shared network a little farther upstream, and so heavy users can wind up having a negative impact on others’ speeds.

For this reason, some analysts think that bandwidth usage caps will ultimately be a far more common part of the Net’s daily life, particularly at the lowest tiers of service.

“It’s partly just so the economics make sense,” Jupiter’s Laszlo said. “If you’ve got someone downloading 60 gigabytes a month and paying $29.95, it’s hard to make it work.”

Related News Broadband adoption skyrockets worldwide   September 16, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5077230.html

Comcast: Faster downloads by year’s end   September 8, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1034-5072641.html

Survey: Users want DSL but can’t get it   August 6, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1023-5060701.html

Endless summer of DSL discounts   July 7, 2003 http://news.com.com/2100-1034-1023465.html

Get this story’s “Big Picture”

Give people choice and freedom and they’ll pay. Try to sue your own frickin’ customers into oblivion and we’ll see you in bankruptcy.

-Ian.

—— http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/washpost/20030909/ tc_washpost/a47297_2003sep9&e=1 RIAA vs. the People Tue Sep 9,11:06 AM ET

By Cynthia L. Webb, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer

The Recording Industry Association of America ( news -web sites )made good on its promise to prosecute Americans who engage in the illegal downloading and trading of pirated music, filing 261 copyright violation suits yesterday.

“Legal actions have been taken on a sporadic basis against operators of pirate servers or sites, but ordinary computer users have never before been at serious risk of liability for widespread behavior. The RIAA said that’s the point it’s underlining with the unprecedented legal action,” CNET’s News.com reported.

But in an editorial today, the San Jose Mercury News said the RIAA’s legal campaign is bad policy: “Suing your customers, as a long-term strategy, is dumb — even if they bring misfortune upon themselves. … The suits are the unfortunate, but predictable response of an industry that failed to see the Internet until it stared it in the face. Since Napster ( news -web sites ) first appeared four years ago and declared the death of the compact disc, music CD sales have fallen more than 25 percent. A generation of music fans don’t think twice about copyrights, which they associate with overpriced CDs and parasitic studio execs.”

According to the Mercury News editorial board, the music labels “won’t win back many of those customers until they make their full catalog of tunes easily accessible over the Internet, in formats that people want, at prices they’re willing to pay. That’s starting to happen — Apple Computer ‘s iTunes Music Store and BuyMusic.com are offering songs from 49 cents to $1 — but the offerings are limited. The music studios are still dragging their feet. For now, the big labels hope to scare people straight, particularly parents, since copyright owners can sue children for theft.”

The New York Times pointed out an even larger implication of the RIAA suits: “With the club of lawsuits and the olive branch of an amnesty program, the music industry is waging a campaign against online piracy that relies on both public relations and economics to attack the idea that everything in cyberspace can be free,” the article said. “That will not be easy. The Internet sprang from a research culture where information of all kinds was freely shared. That mentality still resonates with the millions of Internet users who routinely download music onto their computers. But the emphatic message of the music industry’s two-step program announced yesterday is that the days of plucking copyrighted songs off the Internet without paying for them are numbered.”

An Escalating Fight Against Ordinary People

Thousands more lawsuits against fileswappers are expected in the coming months as the RIAA looks to make examples of the worst digital pirates: People accused of downloading and sharing on average more than 1,000 illegally downloaded songs, thanks to Gnutella ( news -web sites ),Kazaa ,Grokster and other popular file-trading services.

The Washington Post said the “legal offensive aims to stem the tide of online song sharing launched by Napster in the late 1990s, and it is likely to strike fear into the hearts of parents who have not closely monitored their teenagers’ computer habits. That’s because the lawsuits were filed against the holders of Internet service accounts, regardless of who in the household was responsible for swapping the songs.”

The Los Angeles Times said the “cases — the first of thousands the labels expect to file in federal courts — mark a turning point in the music industry’s four-year battle against rampant piracy on the Internet. For the first time, the recording industry is training its considerable legal firepower on individuals, not the companies profiting from the public’s hunger for free music,” The Los Angeles Times said. “One quirk in the process, though, is that the defendants named aren’t necessarily the people using file-sharing networks. That’s because the Recording Industry Assn. of America’s investigation identified only the people whose Internet access accounts were being used to share files. They might be the parents, roommates or spouses of the alleged pirates.”

The RIAA suits hit the young and old and stretched across economic lines too. Among those sued is the Bassett family from Northern California. ” Scott Bassett said neither he nor his wife used the family PC in Redwood City, Calif., for music, but their teenagers and dozens of their friends do. Had he known what was going on, he said, ‘I would have pulled the plug,'” The Los Angeles Times reported, quoting the former junkyard operator who, like other targets of the suits, was confused about what to do. “Do I really need to hire a lawyer? Can I just call them up and say I’m sorry and give them back all the music that was downloaded? I’m just a little guy,” Bassett told the paper.

The Bassetts were darlings of the media yesterday, appearing in a number of articles, perhaps since they illustrated so nicely the ironic twist of the suits, which can target people who own the ISP accounts, not necessarily the file-swappers themselves. “I can’t believe this,” Vonnie Bassett , mother of a 17-year-old file-swapper, told The San Jose Mercury News. “To think I might actually have to pay money to these people. I think it’s the stupidest thing that the recording industry would do this.”

Lisa Schamis , a 26-year-old New Yorker, “said her Internet provider warned her two months ago that record industry lawyers had asked for her name and address, but she said she had no idea she might be sued. She acknowledged downloading ‘lots’ of music over file-sharing networks,” the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported. “This is ridiculous,” Schamis said. “People like me who did this, I didn’t understand it was illegal.” Neither did Nancy Davis , a Sanol, Calif. schoolbus driver. “From what I understood — and I’m not the most computer-savvy person in the world — I thought it was becoming legal,” Davis told The San Francisco Chronicle. “I’m completely shocked by the whole thing,” Heather McGough , a single mom of two children from Santa Clarita, Calif., told The Los Angeles Times. She “figured that the music-sharing services that survived after Napster was shut down must be legal. She said she let a friend install a program for the Kazaa file-sharing network on her computer so that she could listen to music — songs she already owned on CDs — while she worked.”

Paying the Piper

So what’s in store for those snared in the RIAA lawsuits? “The RIAA suits seek an injunction to stop the defendants’ file sharing, as well as damages and court costs. Copyright law allows for damages of up to $150,000 per infringement — in other words, per swapped song,” The Washington Post noted. More from The Boston Globe: “Accusing the defendants of copyright infringement, the music association is requesting statutory damages of $750 to $150,000 for each song, bringing the potential liability of some file-sharers into the millions of dollars.”

“Individuals, I’m sure no matter who they are, simply don’t have that kind of money,” Atlanta attorney Doug Isenberg , who specializes in Internet law, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And there’s no way possible the RIAA can sue even a meaningful number of people, because there are tens of millions of potential defendants.”

Perhaps some good news for those being sued: The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that the “RIAA has been settling for less: Yesterday, it announced $3,000 agreements with fewer than 10 people whose Internet service providers had received subpoenas.”

RIAA President Cary Sherman told The Los Angeles Times “he would welcome cases going to trial because it would help establish for the public that file sharing is illegal. The proceeds from any trials or settlements will be kept by the RIAA to cover the cost of its anti-piracy campaigns, he said, rather than being used to compensate labels and artists. Several lawyers warned that the RIAA’s amnesty offer may be a bad deal. Those who apply for amnesty from the RIAA must confess their past transgressions, but that won’t protect them from being pursued by music publishers, independent labels or even federal prosecutors.” The RIAA is offering amnesty to those who admitted to file-swapping, erase their digital libraries of songs and sign a notarized promise not to do it again.

Criticism From the Usual Suspects

Critics of the RIAA’s move were vocal in their objections to yesterday’s developments. The Electronic Frontier Foundation clearly hates the idea of the lawsuits. “Does anyone think that suing 60 million American file-sharers is going to motivate them to buy more CDs?,” EFF Staff Attorney Wendy Seltzer asked in a statement . “File sharing networks represent the greatest library of music in history, and music fans would be happy to pay for access to it, if only the recording industry would let them.”

Bill Evans , founder of Boycott-RIAA.com , told The Baltimore Sun that the lawsuits amount to a witch hunt. “They are trying to intimidate people and to stop file-sharing because they can’t control it,” Evans said. “If that’s the case, we believe they should take over a portion of the market and make it more affordable to people.”

Elan Oren , chief executive of file-sharing site iMesh , told The New York Times that “rather than filing huge lawsuits, record labels should work with file-sharing services to devise a method of compensation in exchange for legally distributing their music over the peer-to-peer networks. But record companies say creating a compensation system for file sharing — for instance, imposing a tax that could be redistributed to copyright holders — would be extremely difficult.”

“Michael McGuire , research director at the GartnerG2 research firm, said the threat of legal action needs to be just one part of a more widespread effort by the recording industry to deal with illegal Internet music swapping,” The Chicago Tribune said. “Are hard-core traders going to see the light and see the error of their ways?” McGuire told the paper. “I don’t think so.”

RIAA Strategy Paying Off

The music industry’s tactics, while controversial, have made a dent to some file-swapping. “Still, there is little agreement about whether the industry’s tactics are having much impact on music piracy. The recording industry has cited data from research firm NPD Group that estimated the number of households downloading music from the Internet declined 28% to 10.4 million in June from 14.5 million in April, around the time music companies began publicizing a campaign to target individual file sharers. Music companies have also been trying to wean music fans off file-sharing programs by licensing their songs to commercial music sites like Apple Computer Inc.’s Music Store,” The Wall Street Journal reported. “But services like Morpheus, LimeWire and Grokster all report that usage of their services has grown, especially as students have returned from vacation.”

But the music industry has a long way to go before it stamps out piracy. “From the rise of Napster until today, tens of millions of people have started trading songs, movies and software online through services such as Kazaa with little thought for the legality of their actions,” News.com noted. “Even as the threat of Monday’s lawsuits loomed, more than 2.8 million copies of the Kazaa software were downloaded last week, according to Download.com , a software aggregation site operated by CNET News.com publisher CNET Networks . Indeed, a recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that 67 percent of people downloading music said they did not care whether the music was copyrighted or not.”

The Future of E-Music?

Apple’s iTunes is being held up as a successful, legal alternative to secret file-swapping. The pay-for-play service has been a hit with music fans and everyone from Sony to Microsoft is looking for a comparable match to compete with the service. Apple’s service has sold 10 million songs since its launch in May. “Legally selling 10 million songs online in just four months is a historic milestone for the music industry, musicians and music lovers everywhere,” Apple head Steve Jobs ( news -web sites )said, according to BBC News Online, which noted (how ironic, in light of the complications of the RIAA’s legal suits) that the 10 millionth song sold on the service was “Complicated,” by Avril Lavigne .

-Ian.

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Tom
> Date: Fri Aug 1, 2003 9:32:24 AM US/Pacific
> To: fork [at] xent [dot] com
> Subject: Can You Here Me Now
>
>> From http://www.arstechnica.com/
>
> Middle East mobile firm shut out in Iraq
>
> Posted 8/1/2003 – 2:09AM, by Fred “zAmboni” Locklear
> Getting a foot in the door can lead to opportunities, but it can also
> lead
> to some squashed toes. Using the confusion in a Iraq as a cover screen
> the
> Bahriani mobile firm Batelco spent $5 million setting up and beginning
> GSM
> service in Baghdad on July 22. One problem. Batelco had not obtained a
> license to start services and promptly told to cease service. The U.S.
> started seeking bids for three mobile phone licenses on Sunday, so
> Betelco
> could just apply, right? Watch out toes, here comes the crunch.
>
> Batelco was probably trying to get the jump on others since licensing
> rules had not been set up and there have been rumblings the U.S. would
> craft rules to favor other U.S. companies. It was a $5 million gamble
> that
> could have been parlayed into a lucrative mobile license and contract.
> On
> Thursday, rules were set up for Iraqi mobile phone licenses and
> Batelco,
> along with some of Europe’s largest mobile companies will be left out
> of
> the bidding.
>
> ” The rules – issued by the coalition authorities ahead of a
> bidders’
> conference in Jordan on Thursday – ban governments from “directly
> or
> indirectly own(ing) more than 5% of any single bidding company or
> single company in consortia”.
>
> That rules out – among others – Orange and T-Mobile, two of
> Europe’s
> biggest operators, because the French and German governments still
> own
> significant stakes in their parent companies.”
>
> The BBC also suggests the rules have stipulations which will favor U.S.
> companies. The restrictions could be seen as preventing a government
> from
> having influence over services provided to Iraq. On the other hand, one
> could argue companies from coalition nations should be barred,
> especially
> since they are the ones setting up the rules.
>
> [1]http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/news/special_packages/iraq/
> 6402112.htm
> [2]http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/3114591.stm
>

By Peter Greste BBC correspondent in Baghdad It was a single shot – nothing spectacular – but that split-second act of Iraqi resistance might well be recorded as the point at which America turned from liberator to occupier.

The soldier who died was on a foot patrol through the Baghdad University.

There was no sign of imminent danger, according to the politics and engineering students who saw what happened.

The soldier was almost certainly feeling relaxed and at ease as he sipped his soft-drink in the stifling heat.

Like all American troops on patrol here, he was sweating beneath his Kevlar flak-jacket and helmet.

They provided no protection whatsoever from the man who walked through the lunch-time crowd, put a pistol to the back of the soldier’s skull, and pulled the trigger.

Options narrow

The killing was an audacious strike that forced the US military planners here to once more re-think their strategy across Iraq.

We’ve learned, to our cost, that as soon as you let your guard down, the bad guys whack us out of nowhere US soldier “Every time there’s another attack, our bosses look at it and work out how to avoid the same thing happening again,” said Lieutenant Brian Kendrick of the 1st Armoured Division.

“We’re getting new orders all the time, but I’m not sure how you stop that kind of thing, unless we give up the foot patrols. But they are the best way of getting in touch with people, and gathering intel (intelligence)”.

As the steady drum-beat of attacks strike the coalition forces each day, the options for the military planners narrow.

‘Hard to fight back’

There are no more foot patrols through the Baghdad University now.

Soldiers hardly ever leave their armoured Humvee vehicles, and every Iraqi civilian is treated as a potential attacker.

And for every death, there are at least a dozen other attacks that do not make the daily press bulletins.

In military terms, they are barely a pinprick on the rump of the American military, but they are taking their toll on the individual soldiers.

“You can’t ever relax here,” said one.

“There’s no obvious danger, but we’ve learned to our cost that as soon as you let your guard down, the bad guys whack us out of nowhere. But with so many civilians around, it’s hard to fight back.”

But some American troops are.

Sapping morale

Soldiers at a checkpoint recently believed they had spotted a sniper preparing to attack from the roof of a nearby building.

They fired at the position, and went to see what was there.

They found they had indeed killed someone – an 11-year-old boy.

It is a complex, messy and badly defined battlefield that is driving the Americans ever further from the very people they are supposed to be liberating, and sapping morale at the same time.

“I don’t mind doing my duty. That’s why I signed up,” Sergeant Todd Lewis said.

“But the problem is I don’t know how long I’m going to have to do it. I was married two years ago, and I’ve only seen my wife for six months in that time.

“We usually know how long we’re going to be away, but the most our bosses are telling us now is ‘We’ll try to have you home before Christmas’. I don’t think they really know what they’re doing. I certainly don’t,” he said.

In and out?

And so, the question of an exit strategy has now become central to the issue of flagging troop morale.

It exists in broad theoretical terms – the plan is to set up political structures, draft a new constitution, hold elections and then pray that the result will be a Western friendly and oil-rich government in Baghdad.

But that is not the kind of clear “roadmap”, to borrow a term, with defined timetables and obvious way-points along the route that the Iraqi people or coalition soldiers want to see.

“First they said we’d be in and out as quickly as possible,” said Sergeant Lewis.

“Now they’re saying that we’ll be here for as long as it takes to establish freedom and democracy. The longer I’m here, the less sure I am that it will happen.”

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/middle_east/3055553.stm

Published: 2003/07/10 11:42:31 GMT

© BBC MMIII

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Ruth Seymour
> Date: Thu Mar 20, 2003 5:59:10 PM US/Pacific
> To: kcrw [at] ianbell [dot] com
> Subject: Iraq Coverage on KCRW
> Reply-To: Ruth Seymour
>
> Dear KCRW listener:
>
> You can hear rolling coverage from NPR, the BBC and CNN on KCRW. We
> are cherry-picking from among these broadcast services, the AP
> newswire, and internet sources to bring you the most current and
> accurate information. Warren Olney and his news producers will add
> special segments as well.
>
> You can also log on to KCRWworldnews.com 24/7 for continuous live
> reports from NPR, the BBC, and the Voice of America. Check out our
> “Iraq Watch” Webpage for additional information.
>
> KCRW will continue to broadcast rolling coverage as events dictate.
> Keep tuned to KCRW on air and online for the latest developments. And
> if you’re a subscriber–please accept our sincere thanks for enabling
> us to produce and present this coverage.
>
>  
> Ruth Seymour
>
> General Manager

Punk’s rebel with a cause dies at 50

Fiachra Gibbons, arts correspondent Tuesday December 24, 2002 The Guardian

Joe Strummer “Every cheap hood strikes a bargain with the world And ends up making payments on a sofa or a girl Love ‘n’ hate tattooed across the knuckles of his hands The hands that slap his kids around ’cause they don’t understand How death or glory becomes just another story” – From Death Or Glory by Joe Strummer and The Clash

Joe Strummer, the political conscience of punk, and one half of its greatest songwriting partnership, is no more. He is said to have died peacefully in a chair in his kitchen after suffering what appears to have been heart attack while walking his dogs near his remote farmhouse in Broomfield, Somerset, on Sunday afternoon. His wife Lucinda and stepdaughter Elize were with him.

His passing at the age of 50 leaves Shane MacGowan as the last man standing of the songwriting tyros who turned the music industry upside down in the late 1970s.

Tributes poured in yesterday for the rebel with a cause who wrote such rousing and intelligent songs as Death Or Glory, Should I Stay Or Should I Go?, White Riot and Spanish Bombs. London Calling, The Clash’s third and greatest album, was the US magazine Rolling Stone’s album of the 1980s and was regularly voted one of the best of all time.

But a poor early record deal, and The Clash’s commitment to leftwing causes, meant that neither Strummer nor the rest of the band fully reaped the rewards of their success.

Bono, who was about to work with Strummer on a tribute to Nelson Mandela in South Africa, and who never made a secret of how he modelled his own band on The Clash, said: “It’s such a shock. The Clash was the greatest rock band. They wrote the rule book for U2.”

Unlike the Sex Pistols, with whom they were often compared, Strummer and The Clash were not the result of clever media manipulation but the authentic voice of protest and rebellion. His leftwing credentials, forged in the Elgin Avenue squatters’ occupation in west London in the mid-70s, were heartfelt and real and never left him. The music he created with songwriting partner Mick Jones – the “Sound of the Westway”, as he dubbed it – was equally revolutionary, mixing dub, rockabilly and ska into a multicultural roar of anger against poverty and racial discrimination.

Notting Hill was then the home to ethnic tension, incendiary street-protest politics and reggae legend Bob Marley, a powerful social and political brew from which Strummer and The Clash drank deeply. The Clash followed up London Calling with Sandinista!, which attacked American attempts to undermine the Nicaraguan revolution and berated Mrs Thatcher the year after she walked into Downing Street.

Not that Strummer, born John Mellor in Ankara, Turkey, the son of a senior diplomat, was your textbook working-class punk hero. While Brixton boy Jones fitted the bill more, Strummer was in many ways an early prototype of a radical Notting Hill trustafarian. He first changed his name to Woody Mellor, in honour of Woody Guthrie, the American folk legend, before evolving into Joe Strummer after forming a pub band called the 101ers – named after their squat at 101 Walterton Road, Maida Vale – who ending up playing support to the Sex Pistols.

Protest singer Billy Bragg said last night that Strummer fired his youthful political imagination after seeing The Clash at the first Rock Against Racism concert in Victoria Park in London’s East End.

“I have a great admiration for the man. Joe was the political engine of the band, and without Joe there’s no political Clash and without The Clash the whole political edge of punk would have been severely dulled.

“His most recent records are as political and edgy as anything he did with The Clash. His take on multicultural Britain in the 21st century is far ahead of anybody else,” he added.

Unlike the Sex Pistols, The Clash never reformed after splitting up in 1986, three years after the band imploded when Strummer sacked Jones – a decision he later bitterly regretted. Until then they were the Lennon and McCartney of punk, sharing top billing and duties as lead singer. “I stabbed him in the back,” Strummer later admitted.

Bob Geldof, another squatter-turned-rock star, said yesterday that he admired their refusal to sell out. “I know for a fact they were offered huge amounts of money [to reform],” he told the BBC. “They just said ‘No, that isn’t really what we stood for’. That’s truly admirable. They were very important musically but as a person, he was a very nice man.”

Despite Strummer’s resistance to reforming, The Clash were believed to be considering a one-off reunion next year at their induction ceremony into the the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. They will be only the second punk band, after the Ramones, credited with founding the movement in New York, to be honoured there.

Strummer always resisted revisiting past glories and insisted that he would rather get on with his work with his new band The Mescaleros, where he continued to experiment with world music. “I never look back. There’s no point,” he said.

He also carved a colourful niche for himself outside his own bands, fronting The Pogues for a time after MacGowan left, as well as making several memorable acting cameos in Martin Scorsese’s film The King Of Comedy, Alex Cox’s Walker and Straight To Hell, and Jim Jarmusch’s 1989 Mystery Train, where he played an Elvis-quiffed armed robber.

———–

Cairo dispatch: The papers that cried wolf Brian Whitaker looks at how the American media are softening up public attitudes to war with Iraq

Monday December 16, 2002

Last week brought yet another terrifying headline from an American newspaper: “US suspects al-Qaida got nerve agent from Iraqis”.

The 1,800-word story in the Washington Post last Thursday got off to a reasonably promising start by saying: “The Bush administration has received a credible report that Islamic extremists affiliated with al-Qaida took possession of a chemical weapon in Iraq last month or late in October, according to two officials with firsthand knowledge of the report and its source.”

Less promisingly, the second paragraph begins: “If the report proves true … ” The remaining 28 paragraphs offer little to suggest that it actually is true, and several reasons for thinking it may not be. Paragraph six tells us: “Like most intelligence, the reported chemical weapon transfer is not backed by definitive evidence.”

Paragraph eight says: “Even authorised spokesmen, with one exception, addressed the report on the condition of anonymity. They said the principal source on the chemical transfer was uncorroborated, and that indications it involved a nerve agent were open to interpretation.”

In paragraph 12, we are told that the report may be connected to a warning message circulated to American forces overseas and an unnamed official is cited as saying that the message resulted only from an analyst’s hypothetical concern.

As one would expect from the Washington Post, the story is carefully written and meticulously researched. But it’s basically worthless.

The reporter had clearly spoken to a lot of different people but he failed – not for want of effort – to substantiate the claim that Iraq provided al-Qaida with nerve gas. Although some officials were happy to describe the claim as “credible”, none appeared willing to stand up and say that they, personally, believed it.

The sensible course of action at that stage would have been to abandon the story, or at least file it away in the hope of more evidence coming to light. That might have happened with any other story, but in the case of Iraq at present the temptation to publish is hard to resist.

This particular story was more tempting than many because it carried, as the American military would say, a multiple warhead. It not only suggested that Iraq – contrary to its recent declaration – does possess chemical weapons but, additionally, that it has close links with al-Qaida.

The effect, if not the intention, of publishing the story was to give currency to both these ideas. Stories in the Washington Post are instantly regurgitated by other news organisations around the world, usually at much shorter length and without all the cautionary nuances of the original.

Iraq itself helped the story along by issuing a denial which – since it could produce no evidence by way of rebuttal – simply sounded unconvincing.

The Post’s story is also discussed on the BBC website. Under the headline “Wanted: an Iraqi link to al-Qaida “, Paul Reynolds, the website’s world affairs correspondent, views it as part of a long and unsuccessful effort to link Iraq with al-Qaida.

“One of the most intriguing questions in the ‘war on terrorism’,” he writes, “is whether there are contacts between Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. Intelligence agencies are constantly looking for the ‘missing link’.”

The quotation marks around “missing link” distance the BBC from the idea that such a link exists, though the definite article preceding it suggests otherwise. Why are intelligence agencies looking for “the” missing link and not “a” missing link?

Journalistically, it’s more interesting to talk about a “missing” link than a “possible” link but even when the tone of discussion is sceptical – as it was in the BBC’s case – there’s still a drip effect. The more we mention missing links, the more people will assume they are out there somewhere, waiting to be found.

The risk of giving currency to false or questionable claims is now a daily problem for those of us who try to write about Iraq without turning into other people’s weapons of mass deception.

Even a simple reference to Iraq’s weaponry can be problematic. Some readers object that “weapons of mass destruction” is a tendentious phrase. “Chemical, biological and nuclear” is accurately descriptive, though it becomes too much of a mouthful when used repeatedly in a story. Reuters news agency and others increasingly – and rather emotively – talk about “doomsday weapons”. In practice, “doomsday” is beginning to mean anything nasty possessed by Iraq, though not by the United States.

Last Wednesday, for example, a Reuters report stated: “The United States threatened possible nuclear retaliation against Iraq if its forces or allies were attacked with doomsday weapons.” Let’s see how that looks the other way round: “The United States threatened retaliation with doomsday weapons against Iraq if its forces or allies were attacked with chemicals.”

In terms of mass death, it takes 28 Halabjas to make one Hiroshima.

Meanwhile, to the delight of pharmaceutical companies, the United States is pressing ahead with its smallpox vaccination programme – though the recent New York Times “scoop” about an Iraqi smallpox threat looks increasingly shaky. On December 3, Judith Miller, the paper’s “bioterrorism expert” reported an unverified claim that a Russian scientist, who once had access to the Soviet Union’s entire collection of 120 strains of smallpox, may have visited Iraq in 1990 and may have provided the Iraqis with a version of the virus that could be resistant to vaccines and could be more easily transmitted as a biological weapon. (See “Poisoning the Air”, World Dispatch, December 9.)

Since the article was published, colleagues of the now-dead scientist, Nelja Maltseva, have said that she last visited Iraq in 1971-72 (as part of a global smallpox eradication effort) and last travelled abroad (to Finland) in 1982.

Another of Ms Miller’s scoops, on November 12, cited “senior Bush administration officials” as saying that Iraq had ordered a million doses of atropine, which is an antidote to nerve gas, but also a routine drug for treating heart patients. This was interpreted as evidence that Iraq not only possesses nerve gas but intends to use it in a conflict with the United States – hence the need to protect its own forces from accidental injury.

The US then threatened to block a continuation of Iraq’s oil-for-food programme unless atropine were included in the list of “suspect” items that Iraq cannot import without permission from the United Nations’ sanctions committee.

As I pointed out in world dispatch last week, the sudden horror over atropine was very strange, given that the US had previously allowed Iraq to buy large quantities on normal medical grounds, and that UN had lifted all restrictions on Iraqi purchases of the drug only six months earlier.

This highly relevant information, which Ms Miller had failed to mention, eventually found its way into the Washington Post and the wires of Associated Press. The response from the New York Times was to run the Associated Press report without reference to Ms Miller’s flawed scoop.

By no means do all the dubious scare stories about Iraq come from shadowy intelligence sources or officials who can’t be named.

Last September, Turkish police announced the arrest of two men in a taxi who were apparently smuggling 35lb of weapons-grade uranium to Iraq from somewhere near the Syrian border. But a few days later it emerged that the material was harmless, containing only zinc, iron, zirconium and manganese. Its actual weight was only 5lb but the police, in their excitement, had weighed the lead container as well.

One day, perhaps, one of these scare stories may turn out to be true – but don’t hold your breath waiting for it. In the meantime, readers are welcome to send more examples by email, to the address below.

———–

The US space agency (Nasa) has cancelled the book intended to challenge the conspiracy theorists who claim the Moon landings were a hoax.

Nasa declined to comment specifically on the reasons for dropping the publication, but it is understood the decision resulted from the bad publicity that followed the announcement of the project.

Criticism that Nasa was displaying poor judgement and a lack of confidence in commissioning the book caused it to abort the project, agency spokesman Bob Jacobs said.

Astronaut on moonwalk, Nasa Oberg will still write the book Nasa had hired aerospace writer Jim Oberg for the job on a fee of $15,000.

He says he will still do the work, although it will now be an unofficial publication with alternative funding.

The book will deliver a point-by-point rebuttal of the theory that the Apollo landings were faked in a movie studio, to convince the world that the US had beaten the Soviets to the Moon.

It will explain why in still and video footage of the landings, no stars can be seen in the Moon sky, why a flag appears to ripple on the atmosphere-free satellite and why shadows fall in strange directions – all “facts”, conspiracy theorists say, point to a hoax.

Some commentators had said that in making the Oberg book an official Nasa publication, the agency was actually giving a certain credibility to the hoax theory.

On Thursday, November 7, 2002, at 02:02 PM, Ian Andrew Bell wrote:

> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2410431.stm
>
> Thursday, 7 November, 2002, 19:16 GMT
> Nasa challenges Moon hoax claims
> Training for the Moonlandings, Nasa
> Lights, camera, action: Training for the Moon landings
> By Dr David Whitehouse
> BBC News Online science editor
>
> For years there have been rumours that the Apollo lunar landings were
> faked, staged on a movie set to convince the world that the US had
> beaten the Soviets to the Moon.
>
> And, despite evidence to the contrary, the belief that the “one small
> step for man” was a sham continues to spread.
>
> Now, having tried to stay above the rumours, the US space agency
> (Nasa) has finally got fed up with the conspiracy theorists and asked
> James Oberg, a leading aerospace writer, to produce a book that it
> hopes will settle the issue.
>
> Buzz Aldrin – former US astronaut and second man on Moon
> Buzz Aldrin: Angry at claims that landing was faked
>
> But will it work, or will it just add a certain credibility to the
> hoax theory?
>
> Flags that ripple on the airless Moon, discrepancies in the part
> numbers of lunar lander components, shadows that point in the wrong
> direction, the lack of stars seen in the sky – these are all “facts”
> that have fuelled the conspiracy theory.
>
> It is claimed that the six Apollo landings took place in a hangar on a
> secret military base.
>
> Over the years, every one of the lines of evidence has been
> discredited but the rumours refuse to go away.
>
> In September, Buzz Aldrin, the second man to walk on the Moon, punched
> a man in the face after he had confronted the former astronaut at a
> Beverly Hills hotel.
>
> Bart Sibrel – who has made a film questioning the Apollo Moon missions
> – had demanded that Mr Aldrin, 72, swear on the Bible that he had in
> fact walked on the Moon.
>
> Prosecutors declined to file assault charges against Mr Aldrin.
>
> Truth out there
>
> Tackling the conspiracy theory head-on in an official book was the
> idea of Nasa’s former chief historian Roger Launius.
>
> Flag, Nasa
> Lunar flag: Not fluttering
>
> He says that hardcore conspiracy theorists are not the book’s main
> audience, as they will never be convinced of the truth.
>
> Instead, it will be aimed at the general public and especially
> teachers, giving them the science to answer questions in class.
>
> Doubters will no doubt dismiss the new book as just another attempt by
> the establishment to cover up the truth.
>
> Nasa says the rippling flag is easily explained by the fact that the
> astronauts twisted it as they planted it in the soil.
>
> The stars are not visible in the lunar sky because of the bright
> landscape and the light from the Earth drowning them out.
>
> In a few years a definite answer could be possible.
>
> A private company, Transorbital, will place a private high-resolution
> satellite into orbit around the Moon. It should have the power to see
> the Apollo hardware left on the surface.
>
>
> ———–
> FoIB mailing list — Bits, Analysis, Digital Group Therapy
> https://ianbell.com:8888/foib.html

———–

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety. – Ben Franklin (1706-1790) Historical Review of Constitution and Government of Pennsylvania.

On 27 October 2002

The Observer, London

The ENEMY WITHIN by Gore Vidal

On 24 August, 1814, things looked very dark for freedom1s land. That was the day the British captured Washington DC and set fire to the Capitol and the White House. President Madison took refuge in the nearby Virginia woods where he waited patiently for the notoriously short attention span of the Brits to kick in, which it did. They moved on and what might have been a Day of Utter Darkness turned out to be something of a bonanza for the DC building trades and up-market realtors.

One year after 9/11, we still don’t know by whom we were struck that infamous Tuesday, or for what true purpose. But it is fairly plain to many civil libertarians that 9/11 put paid not only to much of our fragile Bill of Rights but also to our once-envied system of government which had taken a mortal blow the previous year when the Supreme Court did a little dance in 5/4 time and replaced a popularly elected president with the oil and gas Cheney-Bush junta.

Meanwhile, our more and more unaccountable government is pursuing all sorts of games around the world that we the spear- carriers (formerly the people) will never learn of. Even so, we have been getting some answers to the question: why weren1t we warned in advance of 9/11? Apparently, we were, repeatedly; for the better part of a year, we were told there would be unfriendly visitors to our skies some time in September 2001, but the government neither informed nor protected us despite Mayday warnings from Presidents Putin and Mubarak, from Mossad and even from elements of our own FBI. A joint panel of congressional intelligence committees reported (19 September 2002, New York Times) that as early as 1996, Pakistani terrorist Abdul Hakim Murad confessed to federal agents that he was learning to fly in order to crash a plane into CIA HQ.

Only CIA director George Tenet seemed to take the various threats seriously. In December 1998, he wrote to his deputies that “we are at war” with Osama bin Laden. So impressed was the FBI by his warnings that by 20 September 2001, “the FBI still had only one analyst assigned full time to al-Qaeda”.

From a briefing prepared for Bush at the beginning of July 2001: “We believe that OBL (Osama bin Laden) will launch a significant terrorist attack against US and/or Israeli interests in the coming weeks. The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against US facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.” And so it came to pass; yet Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, says she never suspected that this meant anything more than the kidnapping of planes.

Happily, somewhere over the Beltway, there is Europe-recently declared anti-semitic by the US media because most of Europe wants no war with Iraq and the junta does, for reasons we may now begin to understand thanks to European and Asian investigators with their relatively free media.

On the subject, “how and why America was attacked on 11 September 2001”, the best, most balanced report, thus far is by Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed… Yes, yes, I know he is one of Them. But they often know things that we don1t-particularly about what we are up to. A political scientist, Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research and Development “a think-tank dedicated to the protection of human rights, justice and peace” in Brighton. His book, The War on Freedom, has just been published in the US by a small, but reputable publisher.

Ahmed provides a background for our ongoing war against Afghanistan, a view that in no way coincides with what the administration has told us. He has drawn on many sources, most tellingly on American whistle-blowers who are beginning to come forth and bear witness ? like those FBI agents who warned their superiors that al-Qaeda was planning a kamikaze strike against New York and Washington only to be told that if they went public with these warnings under the National Security Act. Several of these agents have engaged David P. Schippers, chief investigative counsel for the US House Judiciary Committee, to represent them in court. That majestic Schippers managed the successful impeachment of President Clinton in the House of Representatives. He may, if the Iraqi war should go wrong, be obliged to perform the same high service for Bush, who allowed the American people to go unwarned about an imminent attack upon two of our cities as preemption of a planned military strike by the US against the Taliban.

The Guardian (26 September 2001) reported that in July 2001, a group of interested parties met in a Berlin hotel to listen to a former State Department official, Lee Coldren, as he passed on a message from the Bush administration that “the United States was so disgusted with the Taliban that they might be considering some military action the chilling quality of this private warning was that it came-according to one of those present, the Pakistani diplomat Niaz Naik-accompanied by specific details of how Bush would succeed…” Four days earlier, the guardian had reported that “Osama bin Laden and the Taliban received threats of possible American military action against them two months before the terrorist assaults on New York and Washington… (which) raises the possibility that bin Laden was launching a pre-emptive strike in response to what he saw as US threats.” A replay of the ‘day of infamy’ in the Pacific 62 years earlier?

Why the US needed a Eurasian adventure

On 9 September 2001, Bush was presented with a draft of a national security presidential directive outlining a global campaign of military, diplomatic and intelligence action targeting al-Qaeda, buttressed by the threat of war. According to NBC News: ‘President Bush’ was expected to sign detailed plans for a worldwide war against al-Qaeda but did not have a chance before the terrorist attacks… The directive, as described to NBC News, was essentially the same war plan as the one put into action after 11 September. The administration most likely was able to respond so quickly… because it simply had to pull the plans “off the shelf”.”

Finally, BBC News, 18 September 2001: “Niaz Naik, a former Pakistani foreign secretary, “was told by senior American officials in mid-July that military action against Afghanistan would go ahead by the middle of October. It was Naik1s view that Washington would not drop its war for Afghanistan even if bin Laden were to be surrendered immediately by the Taliban.”

Was Afghanistan then turned to rubble in order to avenge the 3,000 Americans slaughtered by Osama? Hardly. The administration is convinced that Americans are so simple minded that they can deal with no scenario more complex than the venerable lone, crazed killer (this time with zombie helpers) who does evil just for the fun of it ’cause he hates us, ’cause we’re rich ‘n and free ‘n he’s not, Osama was chosen on aesthetic grounds to be the frightening logo for our long-contemplated invasion and conquest of Afghanistan, planning for which had been “contingency” some years before 9/11 and, again, from 20 December 2000, when Clinton1s outgoing team devised a plan to strike at al-Qaeda in retaliation for the assault on the warship Cole. Clinton1s National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger, personally briefed his successor on the plan but Rice, still very much in her role as a director of Chevron-Texaco, with special duties regarding Pakistan and Uzbekistan, now denies any such briefing. A year and a half later (12 August 2002), fearless Time magazine reported this odd memory lapse.

Osama, if it was he and not a nation, simply provided the necessary shock to put in train a war of conquest. But conquest of what? What is there in dismal in dry sandy Afghanistan worth conquering? Zbigniew Brzezinski tells us exactly what in a 1997 Council on Foreign Relations study called The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperitives.

The Polish-born Brzezinski was the hawkish National Security Adviser to President Carter. In The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski gives a little history lesson. “Ever sense the continents started interacting politically, some 500 years ago, Eurasia has been the centre of world power.” Eurasia is all the territory east of Germany. This means Russia, the Middle East, China, and parts of India. Brzezinski acknowledges that Russia and China, bordering oil rich central Asia, are the two main powers threatening US hegemony in that area.

He takes it for granted that the US must exert control over the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia, know to those who love them as “the Stans”: Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikstan and Kyrgyzstan all ‘of importance from the standpoint of security and historical ambitions to at least three of their most immediate and most powerful neighbors-Russia, Turkey and Iran, with China signaling’. Brzezinski notes how the world’s energy consumption keeps increasing; hence, who controls Caspian oil/gas will control the world economy. Brzezinski then, reflexively, goes into the standard American rationalization for empire. We want nothing, ever, for ourselves, only to keep bad people from getting good things with which to hurt good people. It follows that Americas primary interest is to help ensure that no single (other) power comes to control the geopolitical space and that the global community has unhindered financial and economic access to it.”

Brzezinski is quite aware that American leaders are wonderfully ignorant of history and geography so he really lays it on, stopping just short of invoking politically incorrect manifest destiny. He reminds the Council just how big Eurasia is. Seventy-five percent of the worlds population is Eurasian. If I have done the sums right, that means weve only got control, to date, of a mere 25 percent of the world1s folks. More! Eurasia accounts for 60% of the worlds GNP and three-fourths of the world1s known energy resources.”

Brzezinskis master plan for our globe has obviously been accepted by the Cheney-Bush junta. Corporate America, long over-excited by Eurasian mineral wealth, has been aboard from the beginning.

Ahmed sums up: Brzezinski clearly envisaged that the establishment, consolidation and expansion of US military hegemony over Eurasia through Central Asia would require the unprecedented open-ended militarisation of foreign policy, coupled with an unprecedented manufacture of domestic support and consensus on this militarisation campaign.

Afghanistan is the gateway of all these riches. Will we fight to seize them? It should never be forgotten that the American people in either of the twentieth century1s world wars but President Wilson maneuvered us into the first while Roosevelt maneuvered the Japanese into striking the first blow at Pearl Harbor, causing us to enter the second as the result of a massive external attack. Brzezinski understands all this and, in 1997, he is thinking ahead-as well as backward. “Moreover, as America becomes an increasingly multicultural society, it may find it more difficult to fashion a consensus on foreign policy issues, except in the circumstance of a truly massive and widely perceived direct external threat.” Thus was the symbolic gun produced that belched black smoke over Manhattan and the Pentagon.

Since the Iran-Iraq wars, Islam has been demonised as a Satanic terrorist cult that encourages suicide attacks – contrary, it should be noted, to the Islamic religion. Osama has been portrayed, accurately, it would seem, as an Islamic zealot. In order to bring this evil-doer to justice (“dead or alive”), Afghanistan, the object of the exercise, was made safe not only for democracy but for Union oil of California whose proposed pipeline from Turkmenistan to Afghanistan to Pakistan and the Indian Ocean port of Karachi, had been abandoned under the Taliban1s chaotic regime. Currently, the pipeline is a go-project thanks to the junta’s installation of a Unocal employee (John J. Maresca) as US envoy to the newly born democracy whose president, Hamid Karzai, is also, according to Le Monde, a former employee of a Unocal subsidiary. Conspiracy? Coincidence!

Once Afghanistan looked to be within the fold, the junta, which had managed to pull off a complex diplomatic-military caper, abruptly replaced Osama, the personification of evil, with Saddam. This has been hard to explain since there is nothing to connect Iraq with 9/11. Happily, “evidence” is now being invented, but it is uphill work, not helped by stories in the press about the vast oil wealth of Iraq which must ? for the sake of the free world- be reassigned to us and European Consortiums.

As Brzezinski foretold, “a truly and massive and widely perceived direct external threat made it possible for the president to do a war dance before congress. “A long war!” he shouted with glee. Then he named and incoherent axis of evil to be fought. Although Congress did not give him the FDR Special-a declaration of war-he did get permission to go after Osama who may now be skulking in Iraq.

Bush and the dog that did not bark

Post – 9/11, the American media were filled with pre-emptory denunciations of unpatriotic conspiracy theorists, who not only are always with us but are usually easy for the media to discredit since it is an article of faith that there are no conspiracies in American life. Yet, a year or so ago, who would have thought that the most corporate America had been conspiring with accountants to cook their books since ? well, at least the bright dawn of the age of Reagen and deregulation. Ironically, less that a year after the massive danger from without, we were confronted with an even greater enemy from within: Golden Calf Capitalism. Transparency? One fears that greater transparency will only reveal armies of maggots at work beneath the skin of a culture that needs a bit of a lie-down in order to collect itself before taking its next giant step which is to conquer Eurasia, a potentially fatal adventure not only for our frazzled institutions but for us the presently living.

Complicity. The behavior of President George W. Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to all sorts of not unnatural suspicions. I can think of no other modern chief of state who would continue to pose for warm pictures of himself listening to a young girl telling stories about her pet goat while hijacked planes were into three famous buildings.

Constitutionally, Bush is not only chief of state, he is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Normally, a commander in such a crisis would go straight to headquarters and direct operations while receiving the latest intelligence.

This is what Bush actually did-or did not do-according to Stan Goff, a retired US Army veteran who has taught military science and doctrine at West Point. Goff writes, in The So-called Evidence is a Farce: “I have no idea why people arent asking some very specific questions about the actions of Bush and company on the day of the attacks. Four planes get hijacked and deviate from their plan, all the while on FAA radar.”

Goff, incidentally, like the other astonished military experts, cannot fathom why the government’s automatic ‘standard order of procedure in the event of a hijacking’ was not followed. Once a plane has deviated from its flight-plan, fighter planes are sent up to find out why. That is law and does not require presidential approval, which only needs to be given if there is a decision to shoot down a plane. Goff spells it out: The planes were hijacked between 7:45 and 8:10 am. Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the President is not notified and going to a Florida elementary school to hear children read.

By around 8:15 am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handing teachers. By 8:45 when American Airlines Flight 11 crashes into the North Tower, Bush is settling in with children for his photo op. Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously and one has just dived into the twin towers, and still no one notifies the nominal Commander-in-Chief. ‘No one has apparently scrambled (sent aloft) Air Force interceptors either. At 9:03, Flight 175 crashes into the South Tower. At 9:05 Andrew Card, the Chief of Staff whispers to Bush (who) ‘briefly turns sombre’ according to reporters. Does he cancel the school visit and convene an emergency meeting? No. He resumes listening to second graders… and continues the banality even as American Airlines Flight 77 conducts an unscheduled point turn over Ohio and heads in the direction of Washington DC.

‘Has he instructed Card to scramble the Air Force? No. An excruciating 25 minutes later, he finally deigns to give a public statement telling the United States what they have already figured out ? that there1s been an attack on the World Trade Centre. There1s a hijacked plane bee-lining to Washington, but has the Air Force been scrambled to defend anything yet? No.

At 9:35, this plane conducts another turn, 360 degree over the Pentagon, all the while being tracked by radar, and the Pentagon is not evacuated, and there are still no fast-movers from the Air Force in the sky over Alexandria and DC. Now the real kicker: a pilot they want us to believe was trained at a Florida puddle-jumper school Piper Cubs and Cessnas, conducts a well-controlled downward spiral descending the last 7,000 feet in two-and-a-half minutes, brings the plane in so low and flat that it clips the electrical wires from across the street from the Pentagon, and flies it with pinpoint accuracy into the side of the building at 460 knots.

When the theory about learning to fly this well at the puddle-jumper school began to lose ground, it was added that they received further training on a flight simulator. This is like saying you prepared your teenager for her first drive on the freeway at rush hour by buying her a video driving game There is a story being constructed about these events.

There is indeed and the more it is added to the darker it becomes. The nonchalance of General Richard B. Myers, acting Joint Chief of Staff, is as puzzling as the Presidents campaigning-as-usual act. Meyers was at the Capitol chatting with Senator Max Cleland. A sergeant, writing later in the AFPS (American Forces Press Service) describes Myers at the Capitol. While in an outer office, he said, he saw a television report that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre. “They thought it was a small plane or something like that,” Myers said. So the two men went ahead with the office call.

Whatever Myers and Cleland had to say to each other (more funds for the military?) must have been riveting because, during their chat, the AFPS reports, the second tower was hit by another jet. “nobody informed us of that,” Myers said. “But when we came out, that was obvious. Then, right at that time, somebody said the Pentagon had been hit.” Finally, somebody thrust a cellphone in Myers hand and, as if by magic, the commanding general of Norad ? our Airspace Command ? was on the line just as the hijackers mission had been successfully completed except for the failed one in Pennsylvania. In later testimony to the Senate Armed Forces Committee, Myers says he thinks that, as of his cellphone talk with Norad, the decision was at that point to start launching aircraft, It was 9:40 AM. One hour and 20 minutes after air controllers knew that Flight 11 had been hijacked; 50 minutes after the North Tower was struck.

This statement would have been quite enough in our old serious army/air force to launch a number of courts martial with an impeachment or two thrown in. First, Myers claims to be uninformed until the third strike. But the Pentagon had been overseeing the hijacked planes from at least the moment of the strike at the first tower: yet not until the third strike, at the Pentagon, was the decision made to get the fighter planes up. Finally, this one is the dog that did not bark. By law, the fighters should have been up at around 8:15. If they had, all the hijacked planes might have been diverted or shot down. I don1t think Goff is being unduly picky when he wonders who and what kept the Air Force from following its normal procedure instead of waiting an hour and 20 minutes until the damage was done and only then launching the fighters. Obviously, somebody had ordered the Air Force to make no move to intercept those hijackings until… what?

On 21 January 2002, the Canadian media analyst Barry Zwicker summed up on CBS-TV: That morning no interceptors responded in a timely fashion to the highest alert situation. This includes the Andrews squadrons which are 12 miles from the White House Whatever the explanation for the huge failure, there have been no reports, to my knowledge, of reprimands. This further weakens the “Incompetence Theory”. Incompetence usually earns reprimands. This causes me to ask whether there were “stand down” orders.?? On 29 August 2002, the BBC reports that on 9/11 there were only four-fighters on ready status in the north-eastern US. Conspiracy? Coincidence? Error?

It is interesting how often in our history, when disaster strikes, incompetence is considered a better alibi than well, yes, there are worse things. After Pearl Harbor, Congress moved to find out why Hawaiis two military commanders, General Short and Admiral Kimmel, had not anticipated the Japanese attack. But President Roosevelt pre-empted that investigation with one of his own. Short and Kimmel were broken for incompetence. The truth is still obscured to this day.

The medias weapons of mass distraction

BUT PEARL HARBOR has been much studied. 11 September, it is plain, is never going to be investigated if Bush has anything to say about it. In January 2002, CNN reported that Bush personally asked Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle to limit the Congressional investigation into the events of 11 September The request was made at a private meeting with Congressional leaders Sources said Bush initiated the conversation He asked that only the House and Senate intelligence committees look into the potential breakdowns among federal agencies that could have allowed the terrorist attacks to occur, rather than a broader inquiry Tuesdays discussion followed a rare call from Vice President Dick Cheney last Friday to make the same request

The excuse given, according to Daschle, was that resources and personnel would be taken away from the war on terrorism in the event of a wider inquiry. So for reasons that we must never know, those breakdowns are to be the goat. That they were more likely to be not break- but stand-downs is not for us to pry. Certainly the one-hour 20-minute failure to put fighter planes in the air could not have been due to a breakdown throughout the entire Air Force along the East Coast. Mandatory standard operating procedure had been told to cease and desist.

Meanwhile, the media were assigned their familiar task of inciting public opinion against bin Laden, still not the proven mastermind. These media blitzes often resemble the magicians classic gesture of distraction: as you watch the rippling bright colours of his silk handkerchief in one hand, he is planting the rabbit in your pocket with the other. We were quickly assured that Osamas enormous family with its enormous wealth had broken with him, as had the royal family of his native Saudi Arabia. The CIA swore, hand on heart, that Osama had not worked for them in the war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Finally, the rumour that Bush family had in any way profited by its long involvement with bin Laden family was ? what else? ? simply partisan bad taste.

But Bush Jrs involvement goes back at least to 1979 when his first failed attempt to become a player in the big Texas oil league brought him together with one James Bath of Houston, a family friend, who gave Bush Jr. $50,000 for a 5 per cent stake in Bushs firm Arbusto Energy. At this time, according to Wayne Madsen (In These Times ? Institute for Public Affairs No. 25), Bath was the sole US business representative for Salem bin Laden, head of the family and a brother (one of 17) to Osama bin Laden In a statement issued shortly after the 11 September attacks, the White House vehemently denied the connection, insisting that Bath invested his own money, not Salem bin Ladens in Arbusto. In conflicting statements, Bush at first denied ever knowing Bath, then acknowledged his stake in Arbusto and that he was aware Bath represented Saudi interests after several reincarnations, Arbusto emerged in 1986 as Harken Energy Corporation.

Behind the junior Bush is the senior Bush, gainfully employed by the Carlyle Group which has ownership in at least 164 companies worldwide, inspiring admiration in that staunch friend to the wealthy, the Wall Street Journal, which noted, as early as 27 September 2001, If the US boosts defence spending in its quest to stop Osama bin Ladens alleged terrorist activities, there may be one unexpected beneficiary: bin Ladens family is an investor in a fund established by Carlyle Group, a well connected Washington merchant bank specialising in buyouts of defence and aerospace companies Osama is one of more than 50 children of Mohammed bin Laden, who built the familys $5 billion business.

But Bush pere et fils, in pursuit of wealth and office, are beyond shame or, one cannot help but think, good sense. There is a suggestion that they are blocking investigation of the bin Laden connection with terrorism. Agence France Press reported on 4 November 2001: FBI agents probing relatives of Saudi-born terror suspect Osama were told to back off soon after George W. Bush became president According to BBC TVs News-night (6 Nov 2001), just days after the hijackers took off from Boston aiming for the Twin Towers, a special charter flight out of the same airport whisked 11 members of Osamas family off to Saudi Arabia. That did not concern the White House, whose official line is that the bin Ladens are above suspicion. Above the Law (Green Press, 14 February 2002) sums up: We had what looked like the biggest failure of the intelligence community since Pearl Harbor but what we are learning now is it wasnt a failure, it was a directive. True? False? Bush Jr will be under oath during the impeachment interrogation. Will we hear What is a directive? What is is?

Although the US had, for some years, fingered Osama as a master-mind terrorist, no serious attempt had been made pre-9/11 to bring him to justice dead or alive, innocent or guilty, as Texan law of the jungle requires. Clintons plan to act was given to Condoleezza Rice by Sandy Berger, you will recall, but she says she does not.

As far back as March 1996 when Osama was in Sudan, Major General Elfatih Erwa, Sudanese Minister for Defense, offered to extradite him. According to the Washington Post (3 October 2001), “Erwa said he would happily keep close watch on bin Laden for the United States. But if that would not suffice, the government was prepared to place him in custody and hand him over (US officials) said, “just ask him to leave the country. Just dont let him go to Somalia”, where he had once been given credit for the successful al-Qaeda attack on American forces in 93 that killed 18 Rangers.” Erwa said in an interview, “We said he will go to Afghanistan, and they (US officials) said, “Let him.”

In 1996 Sudan expelled Osama and 3,000 of his associates. Two years later the Clinton administration, in the great American tradition of never having to say thank you for Sudans offer to hand over Osama, proceeded to missile-attack Sudans al-Shifa pharmaceutical factory on the grounds that Sudan was harboring bin Laden terrorists who were making chemical and biological weapons when the factory was simply making vaccines for the UN.

Four years later, John ONeill, a much admired FBI agent complained in the Irish Times a month before the attacks, “The US State Department-and behind it the off lobby who make up President Bushs entourage ? blocked attempts to prove bin Ladens guilt. The US ambassador to Yemen forbade ONeill (and his FBI team) from entering Yemen in August 2001. ONeill resigned in frustration and took on a new job as head of security at the World Trade Centre. He died in the 11 September attack.” Obviously, Osama has enjoyed bipartisan American support since his enlistment in the CIA1s war to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan. But by 9/11 there was no Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, indeed there was no Soviet Union.

A World Made Safe for Peace and Pipelines

I watched Bush and Cheney on CNN when the Axis of Evil speech was given and the long war proclaimed. Iraq, Iran and North Korea were fingered as enemies to be clobbered because they might or might not be harboring terrorists who might or might not destroy us in the night. So we must strike first whenever it pleases us. Thus, we declared “war on terrorism” ? an abstract noun which cannot be a war at all as you need a country for that. Of course, there was innocent Afghanistan, which was leveled from a great height, but then whats collateral damage ? like an entire country ? when youre targeting the personification of all evil according to Time and the NY Times and the networks?

As it proved, the conquest of Afghanistan had nothing to do with Osama. He was simply a pretext for replacing the Taliban with a relatively stable government that would allow Union Oil of California to lay its pipeline for the profit of, among others, the Cheney-Bush junta.

Background? All right. The headquarters of Unocal are, as might be expected, in Texas. In December 1997, Taliban representatives were invited to Sugarland, Texas. At that time, Unocal had already begun training Afghan men in pipeline construction, with US government approval. BBC News, (4 December 1997): A spokesperson for the company Unocal said the Taliban were expected to spend several days at the companys (Texas) Headquarters a BBC regional correspondent says the proposal to build a pipeline across Afghanistan is part of an international scramble to profit from developing the rich energy resources of the Caspian Sea. The Inter Press Service (IPS) reported: some Western businesses are warming up to the Taliban despite the movements institutionalization of terror, massacres, abductions and impoverishment. CNN (6 October 1996): The United States wants good ties (with the Taliban) but cant openly seek them while women are being oppressed.

The Taliban, rather better organized than rumoured, hired for PR one Leila Helms, a niece of Richard Helms, former Director of the CIA. In October 1996, the Frankfurter Rundschau reported that Unocal has been given the go ahead from the new holders of power in Kabul to build a pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan to Pakistan This was a real coup for Unocal as well as other candidates for pipelines, including Condoleezzas old employer Chevron. Although the Taliban was already notorious for its imaginative crimes against the human race, the Wall Street Journal, scenting big bucks, fearlessly announced: “Like them or not, the Taliban are the players most capable of achieving peace in Afghanistan at this moment in history.” The NY Times (26 May 1997) leapt aboard the pipeline juggernaut. The Clinton administration has taken the view that a Taliban victory would act as counterweight to Iran and would offer the possibility of new trade routes that could weaken Russian and Iranian influence in the region.

But by 1999, it was clear that the Taliban could never provide us the security we would need to protect our fragile pipelines. The arrival of Osama as warrior for Allah on the scene refocused, as it were, the bidding. New alliances were now being made. The Bush administration soon buys the idea of an invasion of Afghanistan, Frederick Starr, head of the Central Asia Institute at Johns Hopkins University, wrote in the Washington Post (19 December, 2000): The US has quietly begun to align itself with those in the Russian government calling for military action against Afghanistan and has toyed with the idea of a new raid to wipe out bin Laden.

Although with much fanfare we went forth to wreak our vengeance on the crazed sadistic religious zealot who slaughtered 3,000 American citizens, once that war was under way, Osama was dropped as irrelevant and so we are back to the Unocal pipeline, now a go-project. In the light of what we know today, it is unlikely that the junta was ever going to capture Osama alive: he has tales to tell. One Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld1s best number now is: “Where is he? Somewhere? Here? There? Somewhere? Who knows?” And we get his best twinkle. He must also be delighted ? and amazed ? that the media have bought the absurd story that Osama, If alive, would still be in Afghanistan, underground, waiting to be flushed out instead of in a comfortable mansion in Osama-loving Jakarta, 2,000 miles to the East and easily accessible by the Flying Carpet One.

Many commentators of a certain age have noted how Hitlerian our junta sounds as it threatens first one country for harbouring terrorists and then another. It is true that Hitler liked to pretend to be the injured ? or threatened ? party before he struck. But he had many great predecessors not lest Imperial Rome. Stephen Gowans War in Afghanistan : A $28 Billion Racket quotes Joseph Schumpeter who, “in 1919, described ancient Rome in a way that sounds eerily like the United States in 2001: “There was no corner of the known world where some interest was not alleged to be in danger or under actual attack. If the interests were not Roman, they were those of Romes allies; and if Rome had no allies, the allies would be invented The fight was always invested with an aura of legality. Rome was always being attacked by evil-minded neighbors.” We have only outdone the Romans in turning metaphors such as the war on terrorism, or poverty, or Aids into actual wars on targets we appear, often, to pick at random in order to maintain turbulence in foreign lands.

As of 1 August 2002, trial balloons were going up all over Washington DC to get world opinion used to the idea the Bush of Afghanistan had gained a title as mighty as his fathers Bush of the Persian Gulf and Junior was now eager to add Iraq-Babylon to his diadem. These various balloons fell upon Europe and the Arab world like so many lead weights. But something new has been added since the classic Roman Hitlerian mantra, they are threatening us, we must attack first. Now everyone is more or less out in the open. The International Herald Tribune wrote in August 2002: The leaks began in earnest on 5 July, when the New York Times described a tentative Pentagon plan that it said called for an invasion by a US force of up to 250,000 that would attack Iraq from the north, south and west. On 10 July, the Times said that Jordan might be used as a base for the invasion. The Washington Post reported, 28 July, that “many senior US military officers contend that Saddam Hussein poses no immediate threat” And the status quo should be maintained. Incidentally, this is the sort of debate that the founding fathers intended the Congress, not the military bureaucrats, to conduct in the name of we the people. But that sort of debate has, for a long time, been denied us.

One refreshing note is now being struck in a fashion unthinkable in imperial Rome: the cheerful admission that we habitually resort to provocation. The Tribune continues: Donald Rumsfeld has threatened to jail anyone found to have been behind the leaks. But a retired army general, Fred Woerner, tends to see a method behind the leaks. “We may already be executing a plan,” he said recently. “Are we involved in a preliminary psychological dimension of causing Iraq to do something to justify a US attack or make concessions? Somebody knows. That is plain.

Elsewhere in this interesting edition of the Herald Tribune wise William Pfaff writes: A second Washington debate is whether to make an unprovoked attack on Iran to destroy a nuclear power reactor being built with Russian assistance, under inspection by the International Atomic Energy Agency, within the terms of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty of which Iran is a signatory No other government would support such an action, other than Israil’ (which) would do so not because it expected to be attacked by Iran but because it, not unjustifiably, opposes any nuclear capacity in the hands of any Islamic government.

Suspect states and the tom-toms of revenge

Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instrument for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, or the people Thus, James Madison warned us at the dawn of our republic.

Post 9/11, thanks to the domination of the few, Congress and the media are silent while the executives, through propaganda and skewed polls, seduces the public mind as hitherto unthinkable centres of power like Homeland Defence (a new Cabinet post to be placed on top of the Defence Department) are being constructed and 4 percent of the country has recently been invited to join Tips, a civilian spy system to report on anyone who looks suspicious or who objects to what the executive is doing at home or abroad?

Although every nation knows how ? if it has the means and the will ? to protect itself from thugs of the sort that brought us 9/11, war is not an option. Wars are for nations not rootless gangs. You put a price on their heads and hunt them down. In recent years, Italy has been doing just that with the Sicilian Mafia; and no one has yet suggested bombing Palermo.

But the Cheney-Bush junta wants a war in order to dominate Afghanistan, build a pipeline, gain control of the oil of Eurasias Stans for their business associates as well as to do as much damage to Iraq and Iran on the grounds that one day those evil countries may carpet our fields of amber, grain with anthrax or something.

The media, never much good at analysis, are more and more breathless and incoherent. On CNN, even the stolid Jim Clancy started to hyperventilate when an Indian academic tried to explain how Iraq was once our ally and friend in its war against our Satanic enemy Iran. None of that conspiracy stuff snarled Clancy. Apparently, conspiracy stuff is now shorthand for unspeakable truth.

As of August, at least among economists, a censensus was growing that, considering our vast national debt (we borrow $2 billion a day to keep the government going) and a tax base seriously reduced by the junta in order to benefit the 1 per cent who own most of the national wealth, there is no way that we could ever find the billions needed to destroy Iraq in a long war or even a short one, with most of Europe lined up against us. Germany and Japan paid for the Gulf War, reluctantly ? with Japan, at the last moment, irritably quarreling over the exchange rate at the time of the contract. Now Germanys Schroder has said no. Japan is mute.

But the tom-toms keep beating revenge; and the fact that most of the world is opposed to our war seems only to bring hectic roses to the cheeks of the Bush administration (Bush Snr of the Carlyle Group, Bush Jnr formerly of Harken, Cheney, formerly of Halliburton, Rice, formerly of Chevron, Rumsfeld, formerly of Occidental). If ever an administration should recluse itself in matters dealing with energy, it is the current junta. But this is unlike any administration in our history. Their hearts are plainly elsewhere, making money, far from our mock Roman temples, while we, alas, are left only with their heads, dreaming of war, preferably against weak peripheral states.

Mohammed Heikel is a brilliant Egyptian journalist-observer, and sometime Foreign Minister, On 10 October 2001, he said to the Guardian: Bin Laden does not have the capabilities for an operation of this magnitude. When I hear Bush talking about al-Qaeda as if it were Nazi Germany or the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, I laugh because I know what is there. Bin Laden has been under surveillance for years: every telephone call was monitored and al-Qaeda has been penetrated by US intelligence, Pakistani intelligence, Saudi intelligence, Egyptian intelligence. They could not have kept secret an operation that required such a degree of organization and sophistication.

The former president of Germanys domestic intelligence service, Eckehardt Werthebach ( American Free Press, 4 December 2001) spells it out. The 9/11 attacks required years of planning while their scale indicates that they were a product of state-organized actions. There it is. Perhaps, after all, Bush Jnr was right to call it a war. But which state attacked us?

Will the suspects please line up. Saudi Arabia? No, no. Why we are paying you $50 million a year for training the royal bodyguard on our own holy if arid soil. True the kingdom contains many wealthy well-educated enemies but Bush Snr and Jnr exchange a knowing look. Egypt? No way. Dead broke despite US baksheesh. Syria? No funds. Iran? Too proud to bother with a parvenu state like the US. Israel? Sharon is capable of anything. But he lacks the guts and the grace of the true kamikaze. Anyway, Sharon was not in charge when this operation began with the planting of sleepers around the US flight schools 5 or 6 years ago. The United States? Elements of corporate America would undeniably prosper from a massive external attack that would make it possible for us to go to war whenever the President sees fit while suspending civil liberties. (The 342 pages of the USA Patriot Act were plainly prepared before 9/11.) Bush Snr and Jnr are giggling now. Why? Because Clinton was president back then. As the former president leaves the line of suspects, he says, more in anger than in sorrow: “When we left the White House we had a plan for an all-out war on al-Queda. We turned it over to this administration and they did nothing. Why Biting his lip, he goes. The Bushes no longer giggle. Pakistan breaks down: I did it! I confess! I couldnt help myself. Save me. I am an evil-doer!

Apparently, Pakistan did do it ? or some of it. We must now go back to 1979 when the largest covert operation in history of the CIA was launched in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Central Asia specialist Ahmed Rashid wrote (Foreign Affairs, November-December 1999): With the active encouragement of the CIA and Pakistans ISI (Inter Services Intelligence) who wanted to turn the Afghan jihad into a global war, waged by all Muslim states against the Soviet Union, some 35,000 Muslim radicals, from 40 Islamic countries joined Afghanistans fight between 1982 and 92 more than 100,000 foreign Muslim radicals were directly influenced by the Afghanistan jihad. The CIA covertly trained and sponsored these warriors.

In March 1985, President Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166, increasing military aid while CIA specialists met with the ISI counterparts near Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Janes Defence Weekly (14 September 2001) gives the best overview: The trainers were mainly from Pakistans ISI agency who learnt their craft from American Green Beret commandos and Navy Seals in various US training establishments. This explains the reluctance of the administration to explain why so many unqualified persons, over so long a time, got visas to visit our hospitable shores. While in Pakistan, mass training of Afghan (zealots) was subsequently conducted by the Pakistan army under the supervision of the elite Special Services In 1988, with US knowledge, bin Laden created al-Qaeda (The Base); a conglomerate of quasi-independent Islamic terrorist cells spread across 26 or so countries. Washington turned a blind eye to al-Qaeda.

When Mohammed Attas plane struck the World Trade Centres North Tower, George W. Bush and the child at the Florida elementary school were discussing her goat. By coincidence, our word tragedy comes from the Greek: for goat tragos plus oide for song. Goat-song. It is highly suitable that this lament, sung in ancient satyr plays, should have been heard again at the exact moment when we were struck by fire from heaven, and a tragedy whose end is nowhere in sight began for us.

Copyright Gore Vidal

www.karalla.com eme [at] karalla [dot] com 212 860 8900

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Duncan Campbell Thursday June 13, 2002 The Guardian

European satellite TV viewers can watch live broadcasts of peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations being conducted by US spyplanes over the Balkans.

Normally secret video links from the American spies-in-the-sky have a serious security problem – a problem that make it easier for terrorists to tune in to live video of US intelligence activity than to get Disney cartoons or new-release movies.

For more than six months live pictures from manned spy aircraft and drones have been broadcast through a satellite over Brazil. The satellite, Telstar 11, is a commercial TV relay. The US spyplane broadcasts are not encrypted, meaning that anyone in the region with a normal satellite TV receiver can watch surveillance operations as they happen.

The satellite feeds have also been connected to the internet, potentially allowing the missions to be watched from around the globe.

Viewers who tuned in to the unintended attraction on Tuesday could watch a sudden security alert around the US army’s Kosovan headquarters, Camp Bondsteel in Urosevac. The camp was visited last summer by President Bush and his defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

A week earlier the spyplane had provided airborne cover for a heavily protected patrol of the Macedonian-Kosovan border, near Skopje. A group of apparently high-ranking visitors were accompanied by six armoured personnel carriers and a helicopter gunship.

Nato officials, whose forces in former Yugoslavia depend on the US missions for intelligence, at first expressed disbelief at the reports. After inquiring, a Nato spokesman confirmed: “We’re aware that this imagery is put on a communications satellite. The distribution of this material is handled by the United States and we’re content that they’re following appropriate levels of security.”

This lapse in US security was discovered last year by a British engineer and satellite enthusiast, John Locker, who specialises in tracking commercial satellite services. Early in November 2001 he routinely logged the new channels.

“I thought that the US had made a deadly error,” he said. “My first thought was that they were sending their spyplane pictures through the wrong satellite by mistake, and broadcasting secret information across Europe.”

He tried repeatedly to warn British, Nato and US officials about the leak. But his warnings were set aside. One officer wrote back to tell him that the problem was a “known hardware limitation”.

The flights, conducted by US army and navy units and AirScan Inc, a Florida-based private military company, are used to monitor terrorists and smugglers trying to cross borders, to track down arms caches, and to keep watch on suspect premises. The aircraft are equipped to watch at night, using infrared.

“We seem to be transmitting this information potentially straight to our enemies,” said one US military intelligence official who was alerted to the leak, adding: “I would be worried that using this information, the people we are tracking will see what we are looking at and, much more worryingly, what we are not looking at.

“This could let people see where our forces are and what they’re doing. That’s putting our boys at risk.”

Former SAS officer Adrian Weale, who served in Northern Ireland, told BBC Newsnight last night: “I think I’d be extremely irritated to find that the planning and hard work that had gone into mounting an operation against, for instance, a war crime suspect or gun runner was being compromised by the release of this information in the form that it’s going out in.”

· Duncan Campbell is a freelance investigative journalist and a member of the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, and not the Guardian correspondent of the same name

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