YearZeroMagazine UK writes:

The Shadow Show

If you wanted to control the media,if you wanted to make sure debate was held at a minimum, what would you do? You could try the old Soviet trick of burning books, smashing down doors and taking people away. But most times people see that. They can hear the screams, smell the smoke, see the fire. Now sure you can still get away with this in both the pro and anti-coalition countiries. In antagonist and alllied states like Algeria, Iran or Indonesia they prefer the firey version of suppression. Of course it would never do for a country like ours, or the US. But not because our governments and elites desire free speech, because our governments and elites prefer a show of free speech. The two ideas are very different.

For a start play heavily with words. Call the US and the UK `democracies` when every ancient Athenian worth their salt would be turning in their graves at such an idea. Once you call `our` countries democracies then of course, by inference, other countries are not. Of course this totally dispenses with the word `oligarchy`. An oligarchy is a state, elected, voted or not, where a smallish group of people control most of the power. This is the UK, even more so in the USA.

hydrarchist writes: "
... the following article was written by two respected Republicans who have each served long sentences for Irish republican activity. They are also representative of the section of the movement which has most radically reorientated itself towards social radicality and an embrace of a concept of republicanism which goes far beyond the limits of nationalism. There is a lot of spin around the negoiations in Ireland and anyone interested in the subject is strongly advised to treat only the official statements of the protagonists as indicative of current thinking. In tis context, Gerry Adams speech just before last weeks act of decommissioning, and the IRA statement which accompanied the same act are important documents.

Other articles and analysis by these two commentators and otheres are available from Fourthwrite and The Blanket.

Tommy Gorman & Anthony McIntyre


Belfast Irish News, 3 November 2001

In the immediate wake of Provisional IRA decommissioning the Continuity IRA launched a 1971 style bomb attack against a RUC base in West Belfast. On the same day a former loyalist prisoner was killed in front of his partner in Strabane. There have been suggestions that others from the physical force tradition were responsible for this. Alex Maskey and Pat Doherty of Sinn Fein quickly condemned both attacks. Perhaps those who carried them out will only take consolation from that condemnation feeling that such activity is one up the nose for Sinn Fein.

Anonymous Comrade writes: "cryptome.org has posted the near-complete trial transcript of USA v. Usama bin Laden, et al, and has provided additional links to the testimony on
alleged attempts by bin Laden agents to purchase uranium:

Day 3, pp. 357
ff.

Day 4, pp. 464 ff., p.
528.

Day 7, pp. 982 ff., p.
1041.

The US prosecutors refer to the uranium as "nuclear material," or "components
for a nuclear weapon," or a "nuclear weapon." See
Day 37, p. 5253;
Day 65, p. 7464;
Day 72, p. 8680."

Louis Lingg writes: "The Lebanese group 'Platform on the WTO' and the 'Arab NGO Network for Development' are organizing a counter-forum to the WTO meeting in Qatar: the World Forum on the WTO, in Beirut from November 5 thru November 8.

They've posted their 'call for action' to civil society activists around the world: 'Countdown to Qatar!!!...The meeting will be highlighted by corporate lobbying and Northern government attempts
to bully many developing countries into a new round of trade talks...The WTO can run away, but they cannot hide! Activists around the world will plan events in the run up of Qatar to stop a new round of trade talks, to turn trade around and to demonstrate our
peaceful and informed nature of protest.'

The Lebanese paper The Daily Star has posted an article on the World Forum on the WTO, the Arab world's first anti-globalization forum."

Anonymous Comrade offers: "(actually Fidel Castro says--with some "editing" by the Anonymous Comrade) After 26 days of relentless bombing, those who have been following
events from day to day can see that what has happened up until now is
exactly as we predicted.

The war began inexorably. We knew that it was extremely unlikely,
practically impossible, that it would not happen. Nevertheless, this
has not led us, either before or after, to become discouraged or
renounce our stance.

An Anonymous Comrade says, "This is a personal testimony written by a U.S. citizen living in India.
It's long, and emotional but definitely worth reading..."

Dear friends,



Everything I hear from "back home" suggests that visual images of the pale
corpses of seven (need I say civilian?) babies and children killed two
days ago by yet another US "smart bomb" explosion in residential Kabul are
not making it onto American television screens. Nor the visual coverage of
Jalalabad, Kabul and Kandahar hospitals presently flooded with innocent
Afghan civilians burned, maimed, disfigured and dying from direct US bomb
explosions on their homes. Nor the picture of an orphaned Afghan baby
whose face is half skin, half shrapnel from a US bomb, that greeted me on
the Telugu news station (not a CNN affiliate) when I woke up this morning.



Everything I hear coming out of the US seems to support Harper's Magazine
publisher John Macarthur's recent comment that the current US aggression
in Afghanistan is "the most censored war." When I turn on CNN (we do have
a television in the flat where I live in Hyderabad, but the neighborhood
monkeys sometimes tear up the wires, so it doesn't always work), I see
affirmation of that which is rapidly making the US "free press" the shame
of the international media community. Parochialism of fantastic
proportions, 10 second soundbytes at the expense of context and substance,
all-terror-all-the-time (as one friend of mine put it), and most insidious
in the current context, shameful dependence on and uncritical acceptance
of Pentagon handouts instead of substantial, critical coverage of the
ground situation in Afghanistan.

Interview with Günter Grass

Der Spiegel, 10 October 2001

http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,1 61444,00.html

(Translated from German by Kermit Snelson)

SPIEGEL ONLINE: Do you think this war is justified, Mr. Grass?



Günter Grass: There's a politician who has described very cleverly how a
civil society should react to an attack like that on New York: civilly. It
was Johannes Rau [currently Federal President of Germany -- trans.]



SPIEGEL ONLINE: And how civil is this military attack?



Günter Grass: Military attacks are never civil. Dropping packages of food
doesn't obscure that fact. What the UN had been accomplishing in that
country, together with other relief agencies, doing far more to alleviate
misery -- that was civil. But now they can no longer be there or work
there, for fear of the attacks.

"Small nukes biggest threat to mankind: Chomsky"

Rezaul H Laskar in New Delhi

Indo-Asian News Service

Noted intellectual Noam Chomsky on Saturday said weapons of
mass destruction, especially small nuclear devices, posed
the greatest threat to countries all over the world.



One of America's most prominent political dissidents,
Chomsky said small nuclear weapons, particularly those
weighing less than 15 pounds, could be smuggled into almost
any country with relative ease.



Even in a highly advanced country like the US, studies had
shown that the possibility of such a nuclear weapon being
smuggled in had a greater chance of succeeding than a
military strike using ballistic missiles, he said while
delivering the D T Lakdawala memorial lecture.

World War III Report, #6

Nov. 3, 2001

Bill Weinberg



THE AFGHANISTAN FRONT



CIVILIAN CASUALTIES: PROPAGANDA PAWNS?

The Pentagon denies Taliban claims of 1,500 civilian casualties in the US air raids, the New York Times reported Nov. 1. The paper said "facts prove elusive" on Taliban press tours of war damage in Afghanistan's cities. The article acknowledged a tour through the rubble of a destroyed Red Crescent clinic and two adjacent houses in Kandahar, but quoted local residents who said only 3 were killed in the raid--not the 11 claimed by tour leaders. The Times said the houses were destroyed because Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar, now changing residences nightly, was believed to be there. This was the third time buildings were hit in efforts to kill the Mullah.



On Nov. 2, the paper reported the story of Mehmood, a Kandahar merchant who brought his family to his ancestral village of Chowkar-Karez to escape the air raids. His extended family, crowded into six cars, arrived at village just as it was "flattened" in an air raid. Ironically, the cars arriving in the night may have prompted the raid. Said Mehmood: "I brought my family here for safety, and now there are 19 dead, including my wife, my two children, my brother, sister, sister-in-law, nieces, nephews, my uncle... What am I supposed to do now?" Several refugees from the village fled to Quetta, Pakistan, where they were interviewed by journalists in the local hospital, but the Times did not hazard a guess at the death toll in the raid.



On Oct. 29, the Times ran a photo of a man preparing for burial the bodies of four young children--victims air strikes that killed 13 civilians in Kabul. "I have lost all my family," said a sobbing woman in Qalaye Khatir neighborhood. "I am finished."

Anonymous Comrade writes: "Can anyone out there translate German? Two towering Germans, critical theorist Jurgen Habermas and Nobel-winning novelist Gunter Grass, have written on September 11th. I for one would *love* to be able to read them! They'd be great additions to this site, wouldn't they?

Jurgen Habermas's article: http://www.sueddeutsche.de/aktuell/sz/artikel86740 .php

The Gunter Grass interview: http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/gesellschaft/0,1518,1 61444,00.html

desocimr@email.uc.ecu"

Well, If any of our readers can translate from the german, please post it as a comment to this article.-- Uncle Fluffy