1134432000Content WireadminAfghanistan,assets,Cuba,EVER,human rights,Human Rights,inevitable,integrity,intelligent content management,Iraq,love,new business,parents,People,real estate,suicide,three months,War,WorldKnockin on Guantamo's DoorTwenty-five U.S. citizens, calling themselves Witness Against Torture, are demonstrating, fasting and praying at the gates of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. They marched across Cuba to get to the prison. One of them is my husband, Danny Burns. Danny and I have two children. Finian is three years old and Francis is seven months. Danny is at Guantanamo in part because of our family. What our government is doing at Guantanamo creates an unsafe world for our children. Our government is promoting a global escalation of violence which makes increasing terrorism inevitable. Danny is risking retaliation by the U.S. government for demonstrating against the illegal actions of our government at Guantanamo. Danny and three others in our community, Clare Grady, Teresa Grady and Peter Demott, are awaiting sentencing in federal court in January for an action taken on St. Patrick’s Day in 2002 aimed at preventing the war on Iraq. Despite that, Danny and Clare and Teresa, have chosen to stand at the gates of Guantanamo. The federal government wants to send a message that dissent will be punished. We send a message back to the government. We will stand for justice again and again until our country respects international law, the law of justice and universal human rights. Danny and I think our government’s actions at Guantanamo have been marked by a disregard for international law. Our government has disregarded the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Geneva Conventions, the Nuremburg Principles and the Convention against Torture. This disregard is not just at Guantanamo but also in the “war on terror,” the war against Iraq and in many parts of our global and domestic policy. When the world’s most powerful government chooses to violate international law, rather than follow international law and serve the common good and further justice, the law of force governs the world. Danny and I know that we cannot sit back and just complain. International law tells us that we have responsibilities for what our country is doing. Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal Judge Roling wrote: “The most important principle of Nuremburg was that individuals have duties which transcend national obligations of obedience imposed by the nation-state…This means that in some cases individuals are required to substitute their own interpretation [of international obligations] for the interpretation given by the state.” The Judge went on to say: “The world has to rely on individuals to oppose the criminal commands of the government.” That is what we are trying to do. In our religious tradition, we are called to visit those in prison. Men and boys have been held at Camp Delta in Guantánamo since October 2001. They are being held with no charges. They have been denied legal counsel. Reports of torture and abuse are widespread. The prisoners do not know if or when they will ever be tried or released. By visiting the prison camp, Danny and the others can let the prisoners know they are not forgotten. I find myself thinking of the mothers of those detained. What if my sons were among boys being held at the camp? If young people in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan see that American people choose to ignore the suffering of their people under occupation and illegal detention they will be more likely to feel desperate and see suicide bombings and other acts of violence as their only recourse. Danny and I long for a world of peace built on justice for our children. Abundance, compassion and love should be the rule, not the exception. We want our world to improve, not deteriorate, as our children are growing. A hundred years from now we want our grandchildren to be able to look back at our actions and know that we tried to act with integrity and for the good of humanity. That is why my husband Danny Burns is at the gates of Guantanamo and that is why I support him. <a href="http://www.80srockstars.net/rams/gunsnroses_knockinonheavensdoor.ram">Tune</a> Jessica Stewart and her husband, Danny Burns, live in Ithaca New York in a Catholic Worker community. They are the parents of two small children. witnesstorture.org. Jessica Stewart js6076@msn.com. <script type="text/javascript">google_ad_client = "pub-7258139694566163";google_ad_width = 300;google_ad_height = 250;google_ad_format = "300x250_as";google_ad_type = "text_image";google_ad_channel ="";google_color_border = "CC99CC";google_color_bg = "E7C6E8";google_color_link = "000000";google_color_url = "00008B";google_color_text = "663366";</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"></script>http://www.content-wire.com/knockin-guantamos-door1133049600Content WireadminAfghanistan,Culture,Education,human rights,Human Rights,independently,Iraq,music,People,saturation,WorldHurricane Disaster Report: A Thousand Evictions a Day for WeeksOn Halloween night, New Orleans was very, very dark. Well over half the homes on the east bank of New Orleans sit vacant because they still do not have electricity. More do not have natural gas or runningwater. Most stoplights still do not work. Most street lights remain out. Fully armed National Guard troops refuse to allow over ten thousand people to even physically visit their property in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Despite the fact that people cannot come back, tens of thousands of people face eviction from their homes. A local judge told me that their court expects to process a thousand evictions a day for weeks. Renters still in shelters or temporary homes across the country will never see the court notice taped to the door of their home. Because they will not show up for the eviction hearing that they do not know about,their possessions will be tossed out in the street. In the street their possessions will sit alongside an estimated 3 million truck loads of downed trees, piles of mud, fiberglass insulation, crushed sheetrock,abandoned cars, spoiled mattresses, wet rugs, and horrifyingly smelly refrigerators full of food from August. There are also New Orleans renters facing evictions from landlords who want to renovate and charge higher rents to the out of town workers who populate the city. Some renters have offered to pay their rent andare still being evicted. Others question why they should have to pay rent for September when they were not allowed to return to New Orleans. New Orleans, known for its culture and food and music, is now pushing away the very people who created the culture and food and music. Mardi Gras Indians live and paraded in neighborhoods that sit withoutelectricity or water. The back room cooks for many of the most famous restaurants cannot yet return to New Orleans. Musicians remain in exile. Housing is scarce and rents are soaring. Over 245,000 people lost jobsin September. Public education in New Orleans has not restarted. The levees are not even up to their flawed level in August.Dr. Arjun Sengupta, the United Nations Human Rights Commission Special Reporter on Extreme Poverty, visited New Orleans and Baton Rouge last week. He toured the devastated areas and listened to theevacuees still in shelters and those living out of town with family.Dr. Sengupta described current conditions as "shocking" and "gross violations of human rights." The devastation itself is shocking, he explained, but even more shocking is that two months have passed and thereis little to nothing being done to reconstruct vast areas of New Orleans. "The US is the richest nation in the history of the world. Why cannot it restore electricity and water and help people rebuild theirhomes and neighborhoods? If the US can rebuild Afghanistan and Iraq, why not New Orleans?" The longer the poor and working class of New Orleans stay away, the more likely it will be that they never return. That, some say, is exactly what those in power in New Orleans and Louisiana and the US must want.Otherwise, why are they making New Orleans a ghost town? Written on 1st November 2005, republished with permission Bill Quigley teaches at Loyola University New Orleans School of Law, Quigley at loyno.edu sponsored by www.shelterfinder.org www.p2pAid.orghttp://www.content-wire.com/hurricane-disaster-report-thousand-evictions-day-weeks1048809600Content Wireadminacquisitions,Afghanistan,business patterns,China,data management,Data Management,Education,failure,images,integrity,Iran,Iraq,Japan,Kazakhstan,Kenya,Kuwait,logic,management environment,margins,Mongolia,moving away,Nigeria,North Korea,People,periods,productivity,project management,reveal,risk management,South Africa,South Korea,unprecedented,visibility,War,WorldENVIRONMENT: Deserts Advancing, Civilization RetreatingThe coalition forces advancing northward from Kuwait to Baghdad are traversing the site of the world`s first civilization--ancient Sumer. More than 5,000 years ago, the Sumerians inhabited the rich land between the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, part of the legendary Fertile Crescent. There they developed a sophisticated irrigation system, built the first cities, devised a written language, and invented the wheel. Yet the Fertile Crescent as now seen in press coverage of the war in Iraq appears to be anything but fertile. Strong winds ripping across the dusty floodplains of the Tigris and Euphrates and the surrounding area catch fine dust and sand, creating choking storms that impede movement, impair visibility, and threaten human health. Once-fertile land is now desert. Unfortunately, this situation is not unique. The pressure of the world`s 6.2 billion people is slowly turning productive land into desert on every continent. Cultivation of marginal land has eroded soils, while some 3 billion cattle, sheep, and goats have pushed pastures beyond their sustainable limits. All told, desertification plagues up to one third of the earth`s land area, affecting more than 1 billion people in 110 countries. (Data: http://www.earth-policy.org/Updates/Update23_data.htm) Although deserts regularly expand and contract, the acceleration of human-induced desertification is fast undermining rural economies. Each year, deserts claim millions of hectares of cropland and rangeland. Africa--with almost half its land area at risk--is most vulnerable, but satellite images and on-the-ground reports confirm that desertification is widespread throughout the world`s drylands. Drying Up All Around In the Sistan basin shared by Afghanistan and Iran, windblown dust and sand have buried more than 100 villages. A former oasis that only five years ago supported at least a million cattle, sheep, and goats is now nearly barren. As overgrazed pastures turn to sand, hundreds of thousands of livestock have perished, and villagers have abandoned the area. To the north, along Afghanistan`s Amu Darya River, destruction of protective vegetation has exacerbated the effects of drought and allowed the formation of a sand dune belt that is some 300 kilometers (186 miles) long and 30 kilometers wide. These dunes, moving up to 1 meter per day, are blocking roads and swallowing villages no longer shielded by local forests. In Kazakhstan, overtaxed farmland is being abandoned as productivity falls. Overplowing of marginal land during a Soviet attempt to boost grain harvests in the 1950s led to widespread wind erosion of soil. Since 1985, Kazakhstan has abandoned half of its 25 million hectares of grainland. In China, desertification threatens the livelihoods of millions and racks up direct annual economic losses of roughly $6.5 billion, including the cost of reduced farm productivity. A report from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing entitled "Desert Mergers and Acquisitions" reveals that in northwest China, prolonged dry weather, overgrazing of pastures, and rampant harvesting of wild plants have loosened sand on the edges of the country`s third and fourth largest deserts. Strong winds are pushing destabilized dunes southward from the 5-million-hectare (12-million-acre) Bardanjilin Desert toward the 3-million-hectare Tengry Desert, literally laying ground for a merger. A similar situation exists in China`s Xinjiang Autonomous Region. Excessive upstream dam building and water withdrawals for agriculture have dried up the Tarim River. As a result, large poplar groves and other vegetation that once served as a barrier between the Taklamakan and Kumtag deserts have died off. Now the two deserts are moving steadily toward each other, and they too may merge. These problems are not isolated, nor are they purely local in scope. Massive dust storms originating in China and Mongolia have traveled as far east as the continental United States. Two countries directly in the path of the suffocating dust, Japan and South Korea, have teamed up with China to promote rehabilitation of the degraded lands that feed these ocean-traversing storms. The secretariat of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification has projected that without concerted efforts to arrest and reverse desertification, Asia could lose one third of its arable land. In South America, arable land area could shrink by one fifth. In Africa, two thirds of the arable land could be lost, reinforcing poverty and food insecurity and quickly adding to the ranks of environmental refugees. Nigeria, Africa`s most populous country, loses some 350,000 hectares of land--about half the size of the U.S. state of Delaware--to the encroaching Sahara Desert each year. Desertification from a combination of excessive population pressure, poor land management, overgrazing, and drought affects over half the land in 10 of Nigeria`s northern states, which have a combined population of 29 million. As deserts expand, the competition between farmers and pastoralists for the remaining productive land intensifies. In Kenya, over 80 percent of the land is vulnerable to desertification—land that supports nearly a third of the country`s 32 million people and half of its 28 million cattle, sheep, and goats. Unprecedented population growth has led to inappropriate land use and accelerated deforestation. People and their livestock have been forced onto marginal lands, and farmers have reduced fallow periods, furthering soil degradation. The means of combating desertification varies among countries, depending on local climatic and social conditions. Efforts to turn back the deserts and break the cycle of poor land management and poverty hinge on raising the incomes of the 1 billion people worldwide who live on less than $1 per day. Reduced family size and education also play key roles in lowering pressure on the land and fostering stewardship. Though desert margins are particularly at risk, any land that is completely cleared of vegetation is vulnerable to desertification. Restoring vegetation in vulnerable areas can stabilize soils so that they do not blow away. Realizing this, the Chinese government has launched the world`s largest tree planting project in an attempt to stop the encroaching desert. To prevent wind and water erosion, farmers can practice conservation agriculture. No-till or low-till farming can replace intensive plowing, maintaining soil organic matter and moisture. Conservation agriculture is practiced on some 60 million hectares worldwide, primarily in the United States and South America, but it has great potential to reduce soil erosion and raise crop yields in dry regions in Africa and the Middle East. Careful management of livestock is necessary to protect the integrity of grasslands. In China, where grasslands are grazed and trampled by 161 million goats, 137 million sheep, and 128 million cattle and buffalo, some local governments have banned goats from feeding on open land. Villagers may receive subsidies to keep their flocks in the farmyard, feeding them with cut forage. Alternative energy also has a role to play in preventing land degradation. In developing countries, where some 2 billion people rely on wood and crop residues for cooking, simple devices like solar cookers can relieve pressure on the land. And wind turbines can provide clean energy while serving as windbreaks. The United Nations Environment Programme conservatively estimates that between 1978 and 1991, some $300-600 billion in income was lost worldwide because of the failure to combat desertification. Other analyses have estimated that the benefits from slowing desertification and rehabilitating degraded lands are at least 2.5 times higher than the costs of letting sands take over. A world where productive land area is shrinking while human demands grow is not a recipe for ecological stability or economic progress. www.earth-policy.orghttp://www.content-wire.com/environment-deserts-advancing-civilization-retreating1048464000Content WireadminAfghanistan,ecommerce,financial services,financial transactions,global economic,global reach,hackers,intelligence,Internet,internet,Iraq,Israel,launch,malware,marketing,organised,Pakistan,syndicate,Turkey,vice president,War,weaponsWar with Iraq - Boost to Criminal SyndicatesThousands of eCommerce servers with credit card databases and customer addresses have been attacked by anti-war and pro-Islamic hackers since 19th March. This is proving to be a useful lever for criminal syndicates with a global reach, who are engaged in routine surveillance and reconnaissance activities on Internet credit card sales points as well as susceptible individuals and small groups within financial services. Senior sources within financial services in Europe, Middle East and Africa have brought it to the attention of the mi2g Intelligence Unit that employees with potential anti-American feelings have been targeted by global crime syndicates this month to extract sensitive information about trading patterns, merchant IDs and customer account numbers. The abnormal level of probing based on invoking common religious and cultural ties between the interlocutors coincides with the launch of the War on Iraq and a strengthening wave of anti-American sentiments. The War on Iraq has intensified the activity of criminal syndicates as they participate in mass identity and credit card theft as well as trade in counterfeit and contraband goods. On the surface the friendly requests to insiders are made by criminals on the basis of engaging the susceptible individual to participate in charitable religious or cultural causes, but the real agenda is to garner the identities, account and credit card numbers and financial transactions of a large and disparate sample of customers handled through the targeted individual. Once equipped with stolen electronic alter-egos, criminal syndicates are crossing borders without detection and are financing trade in contraband goods and illicit materials in return for cash or weapons. The war zones of Israel/Palestine, Kashmir, Turkey/Iraq, Afghanistan/Pakistan and their neighbouring countries in Central Asia, Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa are all affected by the overwhelming force of global crime syndicates camouflaged in the barrage of anti-American cyber warfare and hacktivism. "Some of the global crime syndicates involved are larger and more spread out than the multi-nationals being targeted at present," said DK Matai, Chairman of mi2g. "Their ability to synchronise and carry out criminal actions at a particular hour across the globe is extremely sophisticated." The worldwide economic damage caused by digital attacks in March is estimated to be between $2.5 and $3.2 Billion Dollars so far. The overall economic damage from digital attacks and malware like the Slammer worm is estimated to be between $17.0 and $20.8 Billion Dollars in 2003 up until the end of March, according to Mi2ghttp://www.content-wire.com/war-iraq-boost-criminal-syndicates1032994800Content WireadminAfghanistan,Amsterdam,Cambodia,conflict,Cuba,Development,digital music,Egypt,elements,global network,global news,Guatemala,high speed,India,industry news,information exchange,Information Network International,Japan,journalism,Journalism,Kenya,key industry,Malaysia,Media,music,Nepal,new research,one of the few,organised,Pakistan,partnership,partnerships,People,recent research,relationships,research and development,segment,share information,Sri Lanka,Thailand,Uganda,War,WorldTactical Media: Gender Issues TalkWomen and their bodies are largely still seen as decorative, recreational objects. But so are men. People are sick. I never liked Playboy’s calendars, because I think they instrumentalise women and portrait them as fleshy things to be consumed and discarded, but these days there are at least as many naked boys calendars around. I think they are equally stupid. Gender issues are still trouble. A few pointers to some current work below: <a href="http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/networkingforpeace.html">Country Reports on Women and Media</a> After two decades of war, Sri Lanka is moving towards a political solution to the ethnic conflict that has caused deep scars and trauma among its people. The women, who have long suffered from the consequences of war, are now moving to help re-establish communication between communities and start the process of reconciliation. <a href="http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/networkingforpeace.html">Country Reports on Women and Media</a> Reports on the gender and media situation from the five countries of Cambodia, Malaysia, Japan, Pakistan and Nepal given by members of the steering committee of the Asian Network for Women in Communication at their recent consultation meeting in Bangkok. <a href= "http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/musimbi.html">Meet the New President of WACC</a> A Kenyan national, Dr Kanyoro has attained international standing in the areas of development, feminist thought and ecumenism. She was the first women consultant with the United Bible Societies in Kenya. Prior to her current appointment as General Secretary of the World Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA), Dr Kanyoro was Executive Secretary for Women in Church and Society at the Lutheran World Federation for nearly 10 years. <a href= "http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/digitaldivide.html"> Gender and the Digital Divide</a> With information and communication technologies (ICTs) evolving at breakneck speed as the industrial society that marked the 20th century rapidly gives way to the information society of the 21st century, the bridging of the 'digital divide' is now high on the global development agenda. One of the key elements of the concern over the digital divide is the recognition that women within developing countries are in the deepest part of this divide, further removed from the information age than the men whose poverty they share. <a href="http:/www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/indianwomen.html">Indian Women in Journalism</a> Recognising the severe lack of information on the rapidly growing number of Indian women working as journalists in different media and languages across the country, VOICES, in association with the Network to Empower Women in Journalism, Bangalore, has recently conducted a country-wide survey on the profile and experiences of women journalists in India. <a href="http://www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/knowhow.html">The Know How Conference: A Safari into the Cross-Cultural World of Women's Knowledge Exchange</a> 'We believe that by bringing all the parties to one venue, remarkable relationships between research, activism and information flow will be utilized, a lasting partnership established, and a design of learning and sharing will act as our strong future bridge.' >From 21st - 27th July of this year, the 'Know How' conference organised by ISIS-WICCE (Women's International Cross-Cultural Exchange) and assisted by the International Information Centre and Archives for the Women's Movement (IIAV) in Amsterdam and Isis International-Manila was held in Kampala, Uganda. The Conference, aimed to bridge the gap and radically affect the relationships between research, activism, information and communications. <a href= "http:/www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/cedepca.html">Creating Spaces for Women Communicators</a> Every year on 8th March, women around the world gather together to celebrate their achievements and to look ahead to the challenges still facing the women's movement. International Women's Day was marked in Guatemala this year by the creation of the Network of Women on Air at a meeting of women communicators who work in community media in the interior of Guatemala. <a href="http:/www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/supinya.html">Media at the Crossroads</a> Supinya Klangnarong, who has spent the last six years campaigning for the reform and democratisation of the state-managed media in Thailand, discusses her WACC sponsored MA in Communication Policy thesis which analyses the opportunities and challenges of the new broadcasting reform in Thailand. <a href= "http:/www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/edutainment.html">Pioneering 'Edutainment'</a> Music plays an integral part in Arab cultural identity and in recent years, songs and music videos in Arabic have developed into a large part of the Egyptian entertainment industry. Recognising these cultural trends, many non-governmental organisations in Egypt have begun to use songs, TV spots and drama as part of their efforts to promote educational messages. Like many of these NGOs, TCI sees popular media as one of the most powerful means to address development and educational issues in the region, but it is their particular slant on this approach that distinguishes them from the rest. <a href= "http:/www.wacc.org.uk/publications/mgm/11/news.html">Gender and Media News</a> A Call for Healing not Hatred, Reconciliation not Revenge. First Women's Radio Station Launched in Africa. Ban on vagina Monologues in Kuala Lumpur UNESCO Launches Network for Women in Media in Afghanistan. Network of Networks Established in Cuba. www.wacc.org.ukhttp://www.content-wire.com/tactical-media-gender-issues-talk1018998000Content WireadminAfghanistan,Business,business content,business development,business models,China,consumers,content technology,critical business,customer service,data access,data services,Development,ethics,Finland,global content,global network,global news,global technology,international markets,key business,launch,leading technology,leading the way,marketing,Marketing,mobile content,mobile data,mobile network operators,mobile operators,mobile services,models,multimedia content,network operators,new business,new data,new technology,news content,news service,Norway,People,platforms,signs,subscriber growth,Technology,technology platform,three months,twelve months,virus,voice services,War,wireless data,wireless data services,wireless multimedia,wireless services,WorldTen years since the first network launch - China leads growthThe GSM family phenomenon continues its explosive growth according to figures released today by the GSM Association, the voice of the world’s mobile network operators. The number of global GSM wireless customers is fast approaching the three quarter billion mark, establishing today’s GSM’s as the mobile technology of choice for one in nine people on the planet. In parallel with the expansion of global customers - more than 167 million new customers have been added in the last twelve months - the staggering growth of SMS (Short Message Service) continues. An astounding 75 billion text messages were sent globally in Q1 2002, representing an increase of more than 50 per cent on the same period of 2001. The total forecast for 2002 is now put at 360 billion messages, up from 250 billion reached during 2002. Scott Fox, Chairman of the GSM Association said: “This growth is simply great news for all operators especially those that have launched or are readying to launch GPRS data services today. The potential is vast for the existing customer base alone, but this together with the promise of new untapped markets and innovative new wireless data services, shows clearly the true scale and potential we have ahead of us. “For example, there is substantial potential as SMS evolves toward Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS),” said Fox. “A critical path focus for the Association’s members today. Crucially we are aiming to develop and ensure new levels of simplicity, quality, content, choice, and ubiquity that consumers have been able to enjoy with SMS.” The GSM Association points toward several key factors behind text messaging growth such as increasing competition in the wireless sector, more choice of handsets & tariff options, the spread of GSM family platforms into untapped new markets, e.g. ring tones, new business models such as premium rate SMS, wholesale marketing and new text messaging contexts such as interactive television based messaging - as seen in Norway and Finland, for example. In the Americas, the potential for growth of texting is immense with GSM/GPRS overlay on TDMA networks well under way. According to statistics from Cingular Wireless, this potential is already being realised. SMS usage has increased more than 450 per cent since last summer. With SMS interconnect between operators in North America, a development that kick started markets elsewhere in the world, the signs are extremely positive. Although Europe currently accounts for 50 per cent of the total subscriber figures - where some operators are achieving more than ten per cent of service revenues from SMS - Asia and the Americas are catching up swiftly. The largest single market for GSM remains China with more than 160 million customers. Even Afghanistan Even war torn Afghanistan now has access to GSM services, with the recent launch of the Afghan Wireless Communications Company - which has joined the GSM Association during its 47th Plenary Meeting of Members this week. The network was launched in April 2002 by Chairman Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan’s Interim Administration. The AWCC GSM network will provide Afghanistan with national and international mobile calling, voice mail, SMS text messaging and data services. “This is a very appropriate and fitting way to conclude the first decade of GSM deployment globally” says Rob Conway, CEO of the GSM Association. “GSM has proven its value beyond all expectations as the world’s leading and most capable wireless platform. Now, with 178 countries of the world deploying GSM family platforms we look confidently to a new era of wireless data services and the colossal potential ahead. GSM truly is the wireless evolution,” he adds.http://www.content-wire.com/ten-years-first-network-launch-china-leads-growth1005782400Content WireadminAfghanistan,assets,automation,conflict,Democracy,EVER,money,news service,no doubt,Odd Bin,one of the few,People,prospects,real time,respect to,Russia,The Secret,time and money,train,War,weaponsTaliban on the Run.... Or Just Digging In? Looking beyond victory, by David Ben-Aryeah 16 November 2001 There has been an almost triumphant tone in broadcasts and articles over the past few days as the Taliban "fled" Kabul and other large areas of Afghanistan with the odd aside to the ferocity of the retaliations by mysterious sections of the Northern Alliance forces. The overall picture to those who know not that beleaguered land and it's polyglot of tribes and peoples is "it's almost over -- we've got them on the run -- now we need a political solution." To which there can only be one response: "It's NOT over, don't delude yourselves that they're on the run and it's going to take years for a political solution to be reached, never mind to work!" Against a wishful scenario that the Taliban are "fleeing in confusion and disarray" comes the news that Prime Minister Tony Blair has authorized the immediate putting on 48 hours standby of thousands of British Troops to fly to Afghanistan for peace keeping and stabilization duties an act of political and military naivety that almost beggars description and displays a lack of military history that verges on the irresponsible: the British and the Soviets learned at great and bloody cost that to 'stabilize Afghanistan' is a task that can envelope as many troops and materiel as you care to send and that the relentless "low intensity conflict" [to use that wonderful U.S. phrase for non stop guerilla war] can totally demoralize even crack troops [ask the Spetznaz who served in Afghanistan] and utterly devastate ordinary run of the line personnel. It would appear that no-one caught up in the torrent of "gung ho" and "jingoism" has actually taken the time to work out how much a continuing war against experienced and fanatical fighters would cost in financial terms, never mind human ones: one of the contributory factors that ultimately lead to the financial collapse of the Soviet Union was the Afghan war which, despite using [and loosing] many mere conscripts, became a bottomless money pit into which billions of rubles were poured only to see the mighty Soviet military behemoth rattle it's way out years later back to mother Russia. There is no doubt that the "fleeing in confusion" is part of a greater plan to withdraw from far flung areas of the country where logistical support would be impossible in the approaching winter and the lack of air transport (the coalition having destroyed most of the tiny Taliban air assets) and also enable their conventional (If that word can ever be used in respect of the Taliban) forces to concentrate in depth around Kandahar their spiritual capital in the mainly Pushtun area of Afghan and where they enjoy strong local support. It is also necessary to clarify the myriad of "caves" that have been alluded to in the hunt for Osama Bin Laden...... many of these are not the cold and wind-swept natural edifices that we imagine. During the guerilla war the then "plucky" Taliban were waging against the Soviet invaders, the elite Special Air Service Regiment (SAS) deployed personnel, in secret to Afghanistan to train and supervise the construction of several complexes of tunnels near Kandahar and also in some of the more remote areas of the country where Taliban commanders could take refuge to avoid the incessant air pursuit of the Soviets. The tunnels were not that primitive, they had sound ventilation systems, good protection from even the largest of bombs and had excellent storage and accommodation. IT would be extremely stupid to assume that the Taliban didn't learn well and that in the over ten years since the original tunnels were built they haven't built others in places we DON'T know about! The Taliban fighters are extremely experienced in the adaptation (usually deadly adaptation) of weapons that western forces would consider unusable, I have seen rocket pods usually attached to Soviet helicopters reworked and mounted to deadly effect on the back of a jeep for close support fire. Given the ever changing network of tribal loyalties, and indeed the survival of various "warlords," one of whom seized a Northern town and then curtly informed the Northern Alliance to stay out "or else," the prospects of a broad spectrum Government do not look good -- an old 'Afghan hand' of many, many years experience once told me "they hate one another with an intensity that is hard to believe ...... the only thing they hate more are outsiders trying to run their lives and their country, indeed the most unifying event in the 150 years since the British in their red coats marched up the Khyber Pass was the Soviet invasion!" Osama Bin Laden has almost been dropped from the coalition pronouncements and briefings. The war, as of this week is against the Taliban and until now it has been almost entirely one sided and this has, in many observer's eyes lead to a dangerous complacency in the minds of the general public -- a complacency that will be rudely shattered when the Taliban "dig in" to their well prepared position and resist with a determination and ferocity that will come as a terrible shock to the American special forces and the American public, who appear to be in a state of ignorance that many Taliban will joyfully fight to the death in the knowledge that they shall, surely, visit celestial virgins in paradise. The "battle for Kabul" [if it could be described thus] was unbelievably quick and clean [unless you were a 'foreign' Taliban fighter where it became terminal]. Quite apart, from presenting the coalition with a real problem in respect of law, order and the establishment of democracy it also presented a great problem by far in respect of the wider reaction in both the U.S. and U.K. when -- on commencement of actual ground hostilities -- the body bags start coming home and people start asking of their leaderships apposite and probing questions. Article contributed by Globalvision.orghttp://www.content-wire.com/taliban-run-or-just-digging1004313600Content Wireadminaccommodate,accumulated,Afghanistan,business case,business information,business intelligence,business logic,business need,business opportunities,business partners,business process,business process management,business user,Cambodia,China,conflict,Congo,consumers,corporate data,corporations,Cuba,data access,data management,data sets,delegation,Democracy,diversity,easy access,El Salvador,failure,finance,game,global economic,global reach,global technology,Grenada,Guatemala,human rights,Human Rights,images,Indonesia,information technology,infrastructure,intelligence,international markets,investments,Iraq,landscape,Laos,Libya,logic,love,lucrative markets,mainstream,management environment,management infrastructure,management market,management requirements,management technology,market leaders,market share,matter experts,money,money to be made,music,new business,new data,new technology,newspapers,Nicaragua,no doubt,one of the few,Panama,People,Peru,pilot,pipeline,presence,public access,public sector,real time,respect to,retrieve information,rich media,risk management,second half,share information,six months,smart,speech,speech technology,spy,strategic alliance,strategic technology,Sudan,suicide,tap,target,target market,targets,Technology,technology alliance,technology deal,terrorist,three months,time and money,time to market,transformation,user experience,Vietnam,War,weapons,wisdom,WorldAmerica: Mastering The Art of Profitable War Making money at the expenses of poor people as an excercise of democracy and defense, could be prosecuted as passing off' in any civil court. But martial tribunal dont deal with that sort of problems. 29 October 2001 Arundhati Roy   As darkness deepened over Afghanistan on Sunday October 7 2001, the US government, backed by the International Coalition Against Terror (the new, amenable surrogate for the United Nations), launched air strikes against Afghanistan. TV channels lingered on computer-animated images of cruise missiles, stealth bombers, tomahawks, "bunker-busting" missiles and Mark 82 high drag bombs. All over the world, little boys watched goggle-eyed and stopped clamoring for new video games. The UN, reduced now to an ineffective acronym, wasn't even asked to mandate the air strikes.(As Madeleine Albright once said "We will behave multilaterally when we can, and unilaterally when we must.") The "evidence" against the terrorists was shared amongst friends in the "coalition". After conferring, they announced that it didn't matter whether or not the "evidence" would stand up in a court of law. Thus, in an instant, were centuries of jurisprudence carelessly trashed. Nothing can excuse or justify an act of terrorism, whether it is committed by religious fundamentalists, private militia, people's resistance movements - or whether it's dressed up as a war of retribution by a recognized government. The bombing of Afghanistan is not revenge for New York and Washington. It is yet another act of terror against the people of the world. Each innocent person that is killed must be added to, not set off against, the grisly toll of civilians who died in New York and Washington. People rarely win wars, governments rarely lose them. People get killed. Governments moult and regroup, hydra-headed. They use flags first to shrink-wrap people's minds and smother thought, and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury their willing dead. On both sides, in Afghanistan as well as America, civilians are now hostage to the actions of their own governments. Unknowingly, ordinary people in both countries share a common bond - they have to live with the phenomenon of blind, unpredictable terror. Each batch of bombs that is dropped on Afghanistan is matched by a corresponding escalation of mass hysteria in America about anthrax, more hijackings and other terrorist acts. There is no easy way out of the spiraling morass of terror and brutality that confronts the world today. It is time now for the human race to hold still, to delve into its wells of collective wisdom, both ancient and modern. What happened on September 11 changed the world forever. Freedom, progress, wealth, technology, war - these words have taken on new meaning. Governments have to acknowledge this transformation, and approach their new tasks with a modicum of honesty and humility. Unfortunately, up to now, there has been no sign of any introspection from the leaders of the International Coalition. Or the Taliban. When he announced the air strikes, President George Bush said: "We're a peaceful nation." America's favorite ambassador, Tony Blair, (who also holds the portfolio of prime minister of the UK), echoed him: "We're a peaceful people." So now we know. Pigs are horses. Girls are boys. War is peace. Speaking at the FBI headquarters a few days later, President Bush said: "This is our calling. This is the calling of the United States of America. The most free nation in the world. A nation built on fundamental values that reject hate, reject violence, rejects murderers and rejects evil. We will not tire." Here is a list of the countries that America has been at war with - and bombed - since the second world war: * China (1945-46, 1950-53) * Korea 1950-53) * Guatemala (1954, 1967-69), * Indonesia (1958) * Cuba (1959-60), * the Belgian Congo (1964) * Peru (1965) * Laos (1964-73) * Vietnam (1961-73) * Cambodia (1969-70) * Grenada (1983) * Libya (1986) * El Salvador (1980s) * Nicaragua (1980s) * Panama (1989) * Iraq (1991- 99) * Bosnia (1995) * Sudan (1998) * Yugoslavia (1999) Then Afghanistan. (The Iraq again. Who's going to be next? editor's note) Certainly it does not tire - this, the most free nation in the world. What freedoms does it uphold? Within its borders, the freedoms of speech, religion, thought; of artistic expression, food habits, sexual preferences (well, to some extent) and many other exemplary, wonderful things. Outside its borders, the freedom to dominate, humiliate and subjugate - usually in the service of America's real religion, the "free market". So when the US government christens a war "Operation Infinite Justice", or Operation Enduring Freedom", we in the third world feel more than a tremor of fear. Because we know that Infinite Justice for some means Infinite Injustice for others. And Enduring Freedom for some means Enduring Subjugation for others. The International Coalition Against Terror is a largely cabal of the richest countries in the world. Between them, they manufacture and sell almost all of the world's weapons, they possess the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological and nuclear. They have fought the most wars, account for most of the genocide, subjection, ethnic cleansing and human rights violations in modern history, and have sponsored, armed and financed untold numbers of dictators and despots. Between them, they have worshipped, almost deified, the cult of violence and war. For all its appalling sins, the Taliban just isn't in the same league. The Taliban was compounded in the crumbling crucible of rubble, heroin and landmines in the backwash of the cold war. Its oldest leaders are in their early 40s. Many of them are disfigured and handicapped, missing an eye, an arm or a leg. They grew up in a society scarred and devastated by war. Between the Soviet Union and America, over 20 years, about $45bn (£30bn) worth of arms and ammunition was poured into Afghanistan. The latest weaponry was the only shard of modernity to intrude upon a thoroughly medieval society. Young boys - many of them orphans - who grew up in those times, had guns for toys, never knew the security and comfort of family life, never experienced the company of women. Now, as adults and rulers, the Taliban beat, stone, rape and brutalize women, they don't seem to know what else to do with them. Years of war has stripped them of gentleness, inured them to kindness and human compassion. Now they've turned their monstrosity on their own people. They dance to the percussive rhythms of bombs raining down around them. With all due respect to President Bush, the people of the world do not have to choose between the Taliban and the US government. All the beauty of human civilization - our art, our music, our literature - lies beyond these two fundamentalist, ideological poles. There is as little chance that the people of the world can all become middle- class consumers as there is that they will all embrace any one particular religion. The issue is not about good vs. evil or Islam vs. Christianity as much as it is about space. About how to accommodate diversity, how to contain the impulse towards hegemony - every kind of hegemony, economic, military, linguistic, religious and cultural. Any ecologist will tell you how dangerous and fragile a monoculture is. A hegemonic world is like having a government without a healthy opposition. It becomes a kind of dictatorship. It's like putting a plastic bag over the world, and preventing it from breathing. Eventually, it will be torn open. One and a half million Afghan people lost their lives in the 20 years of conflict that preceded this new war. Afghanistan was reduced to rubble, and now, the rubble is being pounded into finer dust. By the second day of the air strikes, US pilots were returning to their bases without dropping their assigned payload of bombs. As one pilot put it, Afghanistan is "not a target-rich environment". At a press briefing at the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld, the US defense secretary, was asked if America had run out of targets. "First we're going to re-hit targets," he said, "and second, we're not running out of targets, Afghanistan is ..." This was greeted with gales of laughter in the briefing room. By the third day of the strikes, the US defense department boasted that it had "achieved air supremacy over Afghanistan" (Did they mean that they had destroyed both, or maybe all 16, of Afghanistan's planes?) On the ground in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance - the Taliban's old enemy, and therefore the international coalition's newest friend - is making headway in its push to capture Kabul. (For the archives, let it be said that the Northern Alliance's track record is not very different from the Taliban's. But for now, because it's inconvenient, that little detail is being glossed over.) The visible, moderate, "acceptable" leader of the alliance, Ahmed Shah Masud, was killed in a suicide-bomb attack early in September. The rest of the Northern Alliance is a brittle confederation of brutal warlords, ex- communists and unbending clerics. It is a disparate group divided along ethnic lines, some of whom have tasted power in Afghanistan in the past. Until the US air strikes, the Northern Alliance controlled about 5% of the geographical area of Afghanistan. Now, with the coalition's help and "air cover", it is poised to topple the Taliban. Meanwhile, Taliban soldiers, sensing imminent defeat, have begun to defect to the alliance. So the fighting forces are busy switching sides and changing uniforms. But in an enterprise as cynical as this one, it seems to matter hardly at all. Love is hate, north is south, peace is war. Among the global powers, there is talk of "putting in a representative government". Or, on the other hand, of "restoring" the kingdom to Afghanistan's 89-year old former king Zahir Shah, who has lived in exile in Rome since 1973. That's the way the game goes - support Saddam Hussein, then "take him out"; finance the mojahedin, then bomb them to smithereens; put in Zahir Shah and see if he's going to be a good boy. (Is it possible to "put in" a representative government? Can you place an order for democracy - with extra cheese and jalapeno peppers?) Reports have begun to trickle in about civilian casualties, about cities emptying out as Afghan civilians flock to the borders which have been closed. Main arterial roads have been blown up or sealed off. Those who have experience of working in Afghanistan say that by early November, food convoys will not be able to reach the millions of Afghans (7.5m, according to the UN) who run the very real risk of starving to death during the course of this winter. They say that in the days that are left before winter sets in, there can either be a war, or an attempt to reach food to the hungry. Not both. As a gesture of humanitarian support, the US government air-dropped 37,000 packets of emergency rations into Afghanistan. It says it plans to drop a total of 500,000 packets. That will still only add up to a single meal for half a million people out of the several million in dire need of food. Aid workers have condemned it as a cynical, dangerous, public- relations exercise. They say that air-dropping food packets is worse than futile. First, because the food will never get to those who really need it. More dangerously, those who run out to retrieve the packets risk being blown up by landmines. A tragic alms race. Nevertheless, the food packets had a photo-op all to themselves. Their contents were listed in major newspapers. They were vegetarian, we're told, as per Muslim dietary law (!) Each yellow packet, decorated with the American flag, contained: rice, peanut butter, bean salad, strawberry jam, crackers, raisins, flat bread, an apple fruit bar, seasoning, matches, a set of plastic cutlery, a serviette and illustrated user instructions. After three years of unremitting drought, an air-dropped airline meal in Jalalabad! The level of cultural ineptitude, the failure to understand what months of relentless hunger and grinding poverty really mean, the US government's attempt to use even this abject misery to boost its self-image, beggars description. Reverse the scenario for a moment. Imagine if the Taliban government was to bomb New York City, saying all the while that its real target was the US government and its policies. And suppose, during breaks between the bombing, the Taliban dropped a few thousand packets containing nan and kebabs impaled on an Afghan flag. Would the good people of New York ever find it in themselves to forgive the Afghan government? Even if they were hungry, even if they needed the food, even if they ate it, how would they ever forget the insult, the condescension? Rudi Guiliani, Mayor of New York City, returned a gift of $10m from a Saudi prince because it came with a few words of friendly advice about American policy in the Middle East. Is pride a luxury that only the rich are entitled to? Far from stamping it out, igniting this kind of rage is what creates terrorism. Hate and retribution don't go back into the box once you've let them out. For every "terrorist" or his "supporter" that is killed, hundreds of innocent people are being killed too. And for every hundred innocent people killed, there is a good chance that several future terrorists will be created. Where will it all lead? Setting aside the rhetoric for a moment, consider the fact that the world has not yet found an acceptable definition of what "terrorism" is. One country's terrorist is too often another's freedom fighter. At the heart of the matter lies the world's deep-seated ambivalence towards violence. Once violence is accepted as a legitimate political instrument, then the morality and political acceptability of terrorists (insurgents or freedom fighters) becomes contentious, bumpy terrain. The US government itself has funded, armed and sheltered plenty of rebels and insurgents around the world. The CIA and Pakistan's ISI trained and armed the mojahedin who, in the 80s, were seen as terrorists by the government in Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Today, Pakistan - America's ally in this new war - sponsors insurgents who cross the border into Kashmir in India. Pakistan lauds them as "freedom-fighters", India calls them "terrorists". India, for its part, denounces countries who sponsor and abet terrorism, but the Indian army has, in the past, trained separatist Tamil rebels asking for a homeland in Sri Lanka - the LTTE, responsible for countless acts of bloody terrorism. (Just as the CIA abandoned the mujahideen after they had served its purpose, India abruptly turned its back on the LTTE for a host of political reasons. It was an enraged LTTE suicide bomber who assassinated former Indian prime minister Rajiv Gandhi in 1989.) It is important for governments and politicians to understand that manipulating these huge, raging human feelings for their own narrow purposes may yield instant results, but eventually and inexorably, they have disastrous consequences. Igniting and exploiting religious sentiments for reasons of political expediency is the most dangerous legacy that governments or politicians can bequeath to any people - including their own. People who live in societies ravaged by religious or communal bigotry know that every religious text - from the Bible to the Bhagwad Gita - can be mined and misinterpreted to justify anything, from nuclear war to genocide to corporate globalisation. This is not to suggest that the terrorists who perpetrated the outrage on September 11 should not be hunted down and brought to book. They must be. But is war the best way to track them down? Will burning the haystack find you the needle? Or will it escalate the anger and make the world a living hell for all of us? At the end of the day, how many people can you spy on, how many bank accounts can you freeze, how many conversations can you eavesdrop on, how many emails can you intercept, how many letters can you open, how many phones can you tap? Even before September 11, the CIA had accumulated more information than is humanly possible to process. (Sometimes, too much data can actually hinder intelligence - small wonder the US spy satellites completely missed the preparation that preceded India's nuclear tests in 1998.) The sheer scale of the surveillance will become a logistical, ethical and civil rights nightmare. It will drive everybody clean crazy. And freedom - that precious, precious thing - will be the first casualty It's already hurt and hemorrhaging dangerously. Governments across the world are cynically using the prevailing paranoia to promote their own interests. All kinds of unpredictable political forces are being unleashed. In India, for instance, members of the All India People's Resistance Forum, who were distributing anti-war and anti-US pamphlets in Delhi, have been jailed. Even the printer of the leaflets was arrested. The rightwing government (while it shelters Hindu extremists groups such as the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Bajrang Dal) has banned the Islamic Students Movement of India and is trying to revive an anti- terrorist Act which had been withdrawn after the Human Rights Commission reported that it had been more abused than used. Millions of Indian citizens are Muslim. Can anything be gained by alienating them? Every day that the war goes on, raging emotions are being let loose into the world. The international press has little or no independent access to the war zone. In any case, mainstream media, particularly in the US, have more or less rolled over, allowing themselves to be tickled on the stomach with press handouts from military men and government officials. Afghan radio stations have been destroyed by the bombing. The Taliban has always been deeply suspicious of the press. In the propaganda war, there is no accurate estimate of how many people have been killed, or how much destruction has taken place. In the absence of reliable information, wild rumours spread. Put your ear to the ground in this part of the world, and you can hear the thrumming, the deadly drumbeat of burgeoning anger. Please. Please, stop the war now. Enough people have died. The smart missiles are just not smart enough. They're blowing up whole warehouses of suppressed fury. President George Bush recently boasted, "When I take action, I'm not going to fire a $2m missile at a $10 empty tent and hit a camel in the butt. It's going to be decisive." President Bush should know that there are no targets in Afghanistan that will give his missiles their money's worth. Perhaps, if only to balance his books, he should develop some cheaper missiles to use on cheaper targets and cheaper lives in the poor countries of the world. But then, that may not make good business sense to the coalition's weapons manufacturers. It wouldn't make any sense at all, for example, to the Carlyle Group - described by the Industry Standard as "the world's largest private equity firm", with $13bn under management. Carlyle invests in the defense sector and makes its money from military conflicts and weapons spending. Carlyle is run by men with impeccable credentials. Former US defense secretary Frank Carlucci is Carlyle's chairman and managing director (he was a college roommate of Donald Rumford's). Carlyle's other partners include former US secretary of state James A Baker III, George Soros and Fred Malek (George Bush Sr's campaign manager). An American paper - the Baltimore Chronicle and Sentinel - says that former president George Bush Sr is reported to be seeking investments for the Carlyle Group from Asian markets. He is reportedly paid not inconsiderable sums of money to make "presentations" to potential government-clients. Ho hum. As the tired saying goes, it's all in the family. Then there's that other branch of traditional family business - oil. Remember, President George Bush (Jr) and Vice-President Dick Cheney both made their fortunes working in the US oil industry. Turkmenistan, which borders the north-west of Afghanistan, holds the world's third largest gas reserves and an estimated six billion barrels of oil reserves. Enough, experts say, to meet American energy needs for the next 30 years (or a developing country's energy requirements for a couple of centuries.) America has always viewed oil as a security consideration, and protected it by any means it deems necessary. Few of us doubt that its military presence in the Gulf has little to do with its concern for human rights and almost entirely to do with its strategic interest in oil. Oil and gas from the Caspian region currently moves northward to European markets. Geographically and politically, Iran and Russia are major impediments to American interests. In 1998, Dick Cheney - then CEO of Halliburton, a major player in the oil industry - said, "I can't think of a time when we've had a region emerge as suddenly to become as strategically significant as the Caspian. It's almost as if the opportunities have arisen overnight." True enough. For some years now, an American oil giant called Unocal has been negotiating with the Taliban for permission to construct an oil pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan and out to the Arabian sea. From here, Unocal hopes to access the lucrative "emerging markets" in south and south-east Asia. In December 1997, a delegation of Taliban mullahs travelled to America and even met US state department officials and Unocal executives in Houston. At that time the Taliban's taste for public executions and its treatment of Afghan women were not made out to be the crimes against humanity that they are now. Over the next six months, pressure from hundreds of outraged American feminist groups was brought to bear on the Clinton administration. Fortunately, they managed to scuttle the deal. And now comes the US oil industry's big chance. In America, the arms industry, the oil industry, the major media networks, and, indeed, US foreign policy, are all controlled by the same business combines. Therefore, it would be foolish to expect this talk of guns and oil and defense deals to get any real play in the media. In any case, to a distraught, confused people whose pride has just been wounded, whose loved ones have been tragically killed,whose anger is fresh and sharp, the inanities about the "clash of civilizations" and the "good vs. evil" discourse home in unerringly. They are cynically doled out by government spokesmen like a daily dose of vitamins or anti-depressants. Regular medication ensures that mainland America continues to remain the enigma it has always been - a curiously insular people, administered by a pathologically meddlesome, promiscuous government. And what of the rest of us, the numb recipients of this onslaught of what we know to be preposterous propaganda? The daily consumers of the lies and brutality smeared in peanut butter and strawberry jam being air-dropped into our minds just like those yellow food packets. Shall we look away and eat because we're hungry, or shall we stare unblinking at the grim theatre unfolding in Afghanistan until we retch collectively and say, in one voice, that we have had enough? As the first year of the new millennium rushes to a close, one wonders - have we forfeited our right to dream? Will we ever be able to re-imagine beauty? Will it be possible ever again to watch the slow, amazed blink of a newborn gecko in the sun, or whisper back to the marmot who has just whispered in your ear - without thinking of the World Trade Center and Afghanistan? http://www.content-wire.com/america-mastering-art-profitable-war1003100400Content WireadminAfghanistan,Culture,failure,global brand,key business,newspapers,no doubt,Pakistan,People,Politics,pollution,presence,Saudi Arabia,suicide,surprise,War,WorldGlobal Politics: Bomb them with Pop Tarts The west is good at producing tons of commercial pollution, so why not use it strategically, and invade the enemy with our bad taste, suggests rather cynically Mary Madigan 15 October 2001 The idea of sending food to the Afghan people and educating them about the Taliban leadership is appealing, but accomplishing that goal is difficult.We have already been feeding them, something the Taliban has tried to stop. They stole 1,400 tons of food and medical supplies from the World Food Program, then shut down its facilities. Somehow, I doubt the Afghan people were surprised by this action. They don't need to be educated about the ruthlessness of the Taliban. They know too much already. (To see an 'inside view' of Afghanistan and the repression the people there have been living under, take a look at www.rawa.org. But don't look right after eating Pop Tarts - the photographs and descriptions are graphic.) We’re currently trying to feed the refugees in Pakistan, but what about the people still inside Afghanistan? What’s to stop the Taliban from taking whatever food is sent in? Like the well-fed, khaki clad suicide bombers, fascist fundamentalists like to declare, ad nauseum, that they are not afraid to die. So what are they afraid of? According to David Rieff, author of "Slaughterhouse: Bosnia and the Failure of the West," 'fascism is almost always based on the fear of pollution...Islamic fascism is no exception.' This explained a puzzling fact about Osama bin Laden. Supposedly, he accepted training and financial assistance from the CIA, despite the fact that we were 'godless' and friends of Israel.It explains his reaction to the U.S. stationing of troops in Saudi Arabia before the 1991 Gulf War. According to Bin Laden, and an ancient Islamic edict, our presence on Saudi soil during the Gulf War profaned the soil. We were no longer allies. We were pollution. Unlike his followers, Bin Laden is afraid to die, scurrying into a cave when the heat is on. He's afraid of our armies, but our culture is what he, and the Taliban, hate. To find their land polluted with the symbols of the American culture they despise would repulse them, and, hopefully, demoralize them. What if, instead of sending unlabelled bags of wheat, we sent Pop Tarts, Triscuits, Beefaroni, and Dinty Moore Stew. Little Debbie cakes. Brand names, prepackaged food, emblems of the Western culture they find so revolting. Imagine the ethical dilemma a Taliban soldier about to seize our offerings would face. Should he eat the Beefaroni, satanic, yet satisfying - or should he wander into a nearby minefield to hunt down some nuts and berries? Hopefully, the infidel spaghetti would be left behind for someone who needs it. The <a href="http://www.content-wire.com/Content/StandardItem.cfm?tandardItemCode">Bomb them with butter</a> idea suggests that we 'carpet the country with magazines and newspapers showing the horror of terrorism committed by [bin Laden].' Once again, they probably are already aware of that. Why not entertain them! , send them something that will distract them from dismal current events? Bomb them with back issues of Entertainment Today, Oxygen Magazine - Britney Spears CDs, movies on videotape and DVD. Donations shouldn't be hard to find - plenty of people would be happy to give this stuff away. It's likely the Afghans don't have anything to play these things on, so they would probably discard them, leaving them on Afghan soil. Defiling it. Pollution. We know how to do it, and we do it well. So let's bomb them with Pop Tarts. Rain Mountian Dew down on their heads. Let a storm of slushies flood the Khyber Pass. We won't stop until the refugees have bellies full of Whoppers and double large fries; until abandoned Taliban security checkpoints are as littered as the New Jersey Turnpike. Until happy families can gather comfortably around their television sets each evening to watch their favorite DVD. They might watch 'A Foreign Land'. Or they might watch 'Die Hard'.http://www.content-wire.com/global-politics-bomb-them-pop-tarts1002495600Content WireadminAfghanistan,assets,Development,Education,France,new release,new research,research and development,scientists,segment,subsidiary,weapons,WorldWorld’s Medics On Red Alert For Bio-TerrorismThe World Medical Association meeting, convened to discuss the role for doctors in the face of a bio-terrorism threat, has issued its proposals 8 October 2001 Doctors from around the globe met over the weekend to discuss what their role could be in combating bio-terrorism and called for an effective verification protocol under UN powers to track down and stop the development of toxins as weapons. The threat of the release of biological agents by terrorists has become a serious concern since the destruction of the World Trade Centre and now Sunday’s start of retaliatory military action in Afghanistan. The World Medical Association meeting in Ferney-Voltaire, France, today called for a new verification procedure under the UN Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. They want education of doctors and health workers about biological warfare, laboratory tests to identify pathogens, and adequate vaccines. The verification protocol would empower UN agencies to enter any suspect laboratories and confiscate materials. The doctors urged all national medical agencies to encourage their members to take a proactive approach to the whole issue and be alert to any suspicious research or examples of unexplained diseases in their communities. Meanwhile, last week scientists at various UK scientific institutions including Porton Dow, the Cambridge Sanger Centre, Barts, IC and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine finished decoding the bacterium that causes bubonic plague and are progressing to unravel the gene sequences of other diseases that might be used in bio-terrorism. The aim is to come up with vaccines against all of them. However, vaccines have to be used before exposure to a disease, which makes the WMA’s aim of preventing such threats occurring the more practical medicine. www.bma.org.uk or www.wma.nethttp://www.content-wire.com/world-s-medics-red-alert-bio-terrorism1001890800Content WireadminAfghanistan,computer,concentrate,conflict,constraints,desire,Pakistan,People,presence,program manager,real time,respect to,time spent,War,weapons,WorldBeating the Taliban with Military Tact and Good Will Tact and Good Will from a West Point of view, by Richard Kidd in Washington 1 October 2001 Washington As one of the last American citizens to have spent a great deal of time in Afghanistan, I first went in 1993 to provide relief and assistance to refugees along the Tajik border, and in this capacity traveled all along the border region. From 1998 to 1999 I was the Deputy Program Manager for the UN's mine action program in Afghanistan. This program is the largest civilian employer in the country with over 5,000 persons clearing mines and un-exploded ordinances. In this later capacity, I was somewhat ironically engaged in a "Holy War" as decreed by the Taliban, against the evil of landmines, and by a special proclamation of Mullah Omar, all those who might have died in this effort were considered "martyrs" even an "infidel" like myself. The mine action program was the most respected relief effort in the country and because of this I had the opportunity to travel extensively, without too much interference or restriction. I still have extensive contacts in the area and among the Afghan community and read a great deal on the subject. Our enemy in the upcoming conflict is not the people of Afghanistan. The country is devastated beyond what most of us can imagine. The vast majority of the people live day-to-day, hand to mouth in abject conditions of poverty, misery and deprivation. Less than 30 percent of the men are literate, the women even less. The country is exhausted, and desperately wants something like peace. They know very little of the world at large, and have no access to information or knowledge that would counter what they are being told by the Taliban. They have nothing left, nothing that is except for their pride. Who is our enemy? Well, our enemy is a group of non-Afghans, often referred to by the Afghans as “Arabs,” and a fanatical group of religious leaders and their military cohort, the Taliban. The Taliban draw their followers almost exclusively from one tribal group, the Pushtuns who make up roughly 40 percent of Afghans, and somewhat disturbingly something like 20-30 percent of Pakistanis. The non-Afghan contingent came from all over the Islamic world to fight in the war against the Russians. Many came using a covert network created with assistance by our own government. OBL (as Osama bin Laden was referred to by us in the country at the time) restored this network to bring in more fighters, this time to support the Taliban in their civil war against the former Mujahideen. Over time this military support along with financial support has allowed OBL and his "Arabs" to co-opt significant government activities and leaders. OBL is the "inspector general" of Taliban armed forces, his bodyguards protect senior Taliban leaders and he has built a system of deep bunkers for the Taliban, which were designed to withstand cruise missile strikes (ummm… where did he learn to do that?). His forces basically rule the southern city of Kandahar. This high-profile presence of OBL and his "Arabs" has, in the last two years or so, started to generate a great deal of resentment on the part of the local Afghans. At the same time the legitimacy of the Taliban regime has started to decrease as it has failed to end the war, as local humanitarian conditions have worsened and as "cultural" restrictions have become even harsher. It is my assessment that most Afghans no longer support the Taliban. Indeed the Taliban have recently had a very difficult time getting recruits for their forces and have had to rely more and more on non-Afghans, either from Pushtun tribes in Pakistan or from OBL. OBL and the Taliban, absent any U.S. action, were probably on their way to sharing the same fate that all other outsiders and outside doctrines have experienced in Afghanistan-defeat and dismemberment. During the Afghan war with the Soviets much attention was paid to the martial prowess of the Afghans. I was at West Point at the time and like most had high-minded idealistic thoughts about how we would all want to go help the brave "freedom fighters" in their struggle against the Soviets. Those concepts were naive to the extreme. The Afghans, while never conquered as a nation, are not invincible in battle. A "good" Afghan battle is one that makes a lot of noise and light. Basic military skills are rudimentary and clouded by cultural constraints that no matter what, a warrior should never lose his honor. Indeed, firing from the prone is considered distasteful (but still done). Traditionally, the Afghan order of battle is very feudal in nature, with fighters owing allegiance to a "commander" and this person owing allegiance upwards and so on. Often such allegiance is secured by payment. And while the Taliban forces have changed this somewhat, many of the units in the Taliban army are there because they are being paid to be there. All such groups have very strong loyalties along ethnic and tribal lines. A place of Honor Again, the concept of having a place of "honor" and "respect" is of paramount importance, and blood feuds between families and tribes can last for generations over a perceived or actual slight. That is one reason why there were seven groups of Mujahideen fighting the Russians. Each group reflected a different allegiance either along tribal lines or to a charismatic individual. It is very difficult to form and keep united a large bunch of Afghans into a military formation. The "real" stories that have come out of the war against the Soviets are very enlightening and a lot different from our fantastic visions. When the first batch of Stingers came in and were given to one Mujahideen group, another group -- supposedly on the same side -- attacked the first group and stole the Stingers, not so much because they wanted to use them, but because having them was a matter of prestige. Many larger coordinated attacks failed when all the various Afghan fighting groups would give up their assigned tasks (such as blocking or overwatch) and instead would join the assault group in order to seek glory. As you can tell, it is my assessment that these guys are not THAT good in a purely military sense and the "Arabs" probably even less so than the Afghans. So why is it that they have never been conquered? During their history the only events that have managed to form any semblance of unity among the Afghans is the desire to fight foreign invaders. And in doing this the Afghans have been fanatical. The Afghans’ greatest military strength is the ability to endure hardships that would, in all probability, kill most Americans and enervate the resolve of all but the most elite military units. The physical difficulties of fighting in Afghanistan, the terrain, the weather and the harshness are all weapons that our enemies will use to their advantage and use well. (NOTE: For you military planner types and armchair generals, vehicle road movement on all but the most major roads becomes exceptionally difficult starting the end of October and lasting through May. Air movement is almost as problematic with high mountain peaks forming local storm conditions with high winds and blowing snow.) Those fighting us are not afraid to fight. OBL and others do not think the U.S. has the will or the stomach for a fight. Indeed after the missile strikes of 1998, widely perceived in the region as totally worthless, the overwhelming consensus was that we were cowards, who would not risk one life in face to face combat. Rather than demonstrating our might and acting as a deterrent, that action and others of the not so recent past, have reinforced the perception that the U.S. does not have any "will" and that were are morally and spiritually chttp://www.content-wire.com/beating-taliban-military-tact-and-good-will1001372400Content Wireadminaccelerate,access control,Afghanistan,Chile,Culture,desire,economy,Economy,global economic,Grenada,human rights,Human Rights,infrastructures,Media,Mexico,Microsoft,new economy,new product,People,Politics,WarGLOBAL POLITICS: don't bomb them with butter, don't bomb them at all Saturate fats and media disinformation are not good for Afghanistan, argues Fred J. 25 September 2001 The article <a href= "http://www.content-wire.com/Home/Index.cfm?ccs=86&cs=736"> Bomb them with butter</a> urges us to think in new ways, but it looks as if it only advocates the usual western way to handle problems: bombing and bribing. Let's consider the idea, and ignore the fact that entire power infrastructures too would need to be dropped over the Afghan territory to make all the nice electrical media gadgets work. What media will be included to let the Afghan people have the full load of the proposed alternative? CNN? Time Warner? Should free access to information include porn? Should - for historical reasons - Nixon's "read my lips" be included to teach them to trust western politicians? Shots from slums and sweatshops in NYC, Manila and Mexico to give them a glance into their bright future? Footage from Chile, Grenada and the like to show that the west principally defends human rights with always the same means: bombing and bribing? Perhaps people should consider that lacking 'perspectives' may not only be denied by whatever Afghan government, but are a result of years of western politics and economics? What makes westeners think that the Afghan people desire the same future they are likely to have, a future with all the advantages of capitalist economy, starting with McDonald's, Microsoft and Walmart and not ending with devastated ecologies, privatization of formerly common goods and as a result of the attack on WTC and Pentagon the tightened control of private life? How much do they have to assimilate to be part of what it is arrogantly defined as 'civilization'? And is it possible that the religious fundamentalism is easily matched with the scary mixture of religious and economic fundamentalism that is in the back of the war likely to begin soon, a war that has been waged since decades, since colonialism and economic exploitation began? The idea of bombing Afghanistan with western culture and its instruments still is war: a pedagogical one, an oppressive one; and it solves the problem as little as a dime in the beggar's hat: you might have a good feeling, the beggar a slice of bread or a can of beer; it won't change anything else and it does not even have that goal. rather than that it is to make the problem vanish. It's gratitude and magnanimity instead of rethinking the fundaments of an inequality - with the consequence that the some roots of current problems and desasters are growing within western soil.http://www.content-wire.com/global-politics-dont-bomb-them-butter-dont-bomb-them-all1001372400Content Wireadminadvanced technology,Afghanistan,Business,business case,business information,business need,business solutions,Companies,complexity,computer,conflict,critical business,data management,Data Management,data services,demand technology,disaster recovery,ecommerce,electronic health,email,EVER,financial management,financial services,global economic,global provider,global technology,government websites,hackers,health care,help companies,Information Management,information technology,infrastructure,infrastructure software,Internet,internet,Iran,Iraq,key business,key industry,landscape,management infrastructure,management solutions,management technology,member countries,milestone,new business,new data,new technology,one of the few,Pakistan,People,proponents,public sector,risk management,sorts,style site,Technology,technology alliance,technology companies,technology provider,technology solutions,telecommunications,telecommunications services,terrorist,unprecedented,War,web based,web pages,WorldBack To Business? Evaluating the economic impact of terrorism What is the likely cost of the 11th September US attacks? A few facts help get the idea 26 September 2001 "Not only have we had to cope with the loss of friends and colleagues, we have needed to react to the most complex insurance event the world has ever seen" Saxon Riley, Chairman, Lloyd's of London Insurance Initial estimates suggest the overall cost of the tragedy will be between USD 30 bn to USD 50 bn. Considerable time may be required in order to refine these estimates. Reinsurance rates are set to rise by 30% to 40% impacting insurance rates for Property and Casualty insurance. Insurance cover for airlines is rising by 400% to 1000% forcing governments to intervene. Even before the incident, prices were firming in the insurance industry. Life insurance claims and specialized coverage on the loss of key personnel is expected to top USD 8 bn as the total number of dead or missing is now over 6,500 people. Trading of stocks in several insurance and reinsurance companies has been halted and restarted on several occasions since 11th September. Affected Financial Services Despite the overall success of Disaster Recovery (DR), some eBusiness solutions - including basic eMail - were still not working around the globe ten days after the tragedy in the case of at least one major New York based bank and several professional services firms. This is because the DR programs, in many cases, were conceived decades ago and last updated post the previous bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. Credit Lines European banks have been cutting back or removing credit lines for businesses exposed to the US tragedy. This may drive businesses with US exposure to insolvency and increase bad debts for banks. IT and Communications Short Term Impact: USD 1.5 bn to USD 2 bn Inclusive of the immediate cost of hardware and software replacement, over 20,000 IT and telecommunications contractors will support in-house teams for several weeks to ensure continuity of business for financial services. Long Term Impact on Financial Services: USD 8 bn to USD 10 bn The costs include telecommunications and computer equipment replacement, installation and support. Over 100,000 IT personnel will be relocated. There will be more investment in security, data storage, back-up and disaster recovery audits, procedures and policies. Long Term Impact to Infrastructure: USD 5 bn to USD 8bn The full extent of damage to telecommunications infrastructure in Manhattan is still not known. Underground installations will systematically need to be assessed, repaired, redesigned, replaced and re-routed as the clean up and reconstruction continues at least until 2004. Business Confidence NYSE and NASDAQ were shut for four days. This is an unprecedented event. On opening again on Monday 17th September, both NYSE and NASDAQ fell heavily. By the close of business on Monday 24th September the Dow Jones Industrial Average was 27% down on its peak of 14th January 2000, NASDAQ was 70% down on its peak of 10th March 2000, FTSE-100 was 33% off its peak of 30th December 1999. Job losses from the tragedy and its chain reaction of events are likely to be in Millions worldwide. Governments may have to intervene through old-fashioned Keynesian demand management and public sector projects may be necessary to ward off huge layoffs. What is the fallout? Although the US and other NATO member countries have declared a "War against Terrorism" the precise objectives and time-line are unclear. Building a consensus with Middle-Eastern countries will prove increasingly problematic, especially as insurrections and casualties mount. The Israel-Palestine situation is likely to create a vortex of unpredictability. Any attack against Afghanistan, Iraq or other countries harbouring "Terrorists" could further heighten complexity in the global political landscape and may create shear at the religion and energy fault lines. NATO countries are more advanced in terms of their dependence on technology infrastructure. In consequence, they are likely to suffer more from asymmetric physical, biological and electronic threats to their critical national infrastructure - including emergency services, central government, transport, telecommunications, utilities, health care and financial services. What kind of electronic attacks have taken place since 11th September? Since the physical attacks in the US on 11th September, the number of high-profile cyber attacks has been limited. Commercial websites within the UK and USA have been defaced by hackers but not to the extent seen during the Serbia-NATO conflict in 1999. 11th - 20th September 2001 A group of vigilante hackers called the "Dispatchers" have taken matters into their own hands and defaced some 200 to 300 Middle Eastern government websites and those of Palestinian Internet Service Providers. 11th - 22nd September 2001 Several websites linked both to Afghanistan's ruling Taliban militia and to Afghani opposition groups have also gone down under a barrage of hate mail and hacker attacks. The afghan-ie.com and Taleban.com sites - both pro-Taliban - and afghan.gov.af, site of the anti-Taliban Afghani Northern Alliance, have all been unreachable in the last ten days. 14th September 2001 A hacker known as "Fluffi Bunni" defaced thousands of high-profile British websites, replacing their home pages with a message mentioning Jihad and Bin Laden. The majority of the sites were re-directed to the attacker's page for at least one hour. The Internet Service Provider affected was forced to take the DNS servers offline prior to restoring normal service. 16th September 2001 "Dispatchers" vandalized two websites (terrorism.uk.com and terrorismteam.uk.com) operated by the Special Risks Terrorism Team, a unit of Aon Corporation, a Chicago-based worldwide risk management and insurance provider. 17th September 2001 "RaFa" took credit for defacing the home page of the Iranian Ministry of Interior. The attacker posted an image of Osama Bin Laden in flames with revolvers pointed at each temple. A group alled "Medanhacking" replaced the home page of the web site operated by Iran's Payame Noor University. The hackers posted a message that included the text, "from Medanhacking for US tragedy WTC and support to The dispatcher Team." 19th September 2001 The founder of a group called "The Pakistan Hackerz Club" defaced the website of World Trade Services, a California-based firm that facilitates international eCommerce. In a "greetings" section at the bottom of the defaced page, the attacker listed Osama Bin Laden. Are terrorist groups using high technology? High technology should not be discounted from the communications arsenal of international terrorists. For example, Bin Laden was known by the US National Security Agency to use a portable satellite phone in remote places in order to speak with some of his cohorts. His use of high-tech equipment tailed off a short time ago and since then, the authorities have by all accounts lost all trace of him. Bin Laden's motivational style of leadership, which encourages day-to-day leadership to be managed by the terrorist cells themselves, means that he does not need to communicate regularly with his people. It is possible that terrorist groups will increasingly use steganography to covertly distribute information to their supporters and hide messages throughout the Internet and on particular web pages. Steganography is the writing of coded mehttp://www.content-wire.com/back-business-evaluating-economic-impact-terrorism1000940400Content WireadminAfghanistan,content management,discovery,newspapers,People,perspective,Politics,WorldGlobal Politics: Bomb Them With Butter, Bribe Them With Hope New thinking is the only way forward, by Kent Madin 20 September 2001 A military response, particularly an attack on Afghanistan, is exactly what the terrorists want. It will strengthen and swell their small but fanatical ranks. Instead, bomb Afghanistan with butter, with rice, bread, clothing and medicine. It will cost less than conventional arms, poses no threat of US casualties and just might get the populace thinking that maybe the Taliban don't have the answers. After three years of drought and with starvation looming, let's offer the Afghani people the vision of a new future. One that includes full stomachs. Bomb them with information. Video players and cassettes of world leaders, particularly Islamic leaders, condemning terrorism. Carpet the country with magazines and newspapers showing the horror of terrorism committed by their "guest". Blitz them with laptop computers and DVD players filled with a perspective that is denied them by their government. Saturation bombing with hope will mean that some of it gets through. Send so much that the Taliban can't collect and hide it all. The Taliban are telling their people to prepare for Jihad. Instead, let's give the Afghani people their first good meal in years. Seeing your family fully fed and the prospect of stability in terms of food and a future is a powerful deterrent to martyrdom. All we ask in return is that they, as a people, agree to enter the civilized world. That includes handing over terrorists in their midst. In responding to terrorism we need to do something different. Something unexpected... something that addresses the root of the problem. We need to take away the well of despair, ignorance and brutality from which the Osama bin Laden's of the world water their gardens of terror.http://www.content-wire.com/global-politics-bomb-them-butter-bribe-them-hope1000422000Content WireadminAfghanistan,Bangladesh,benefit,confidence,conflict,effective communication,Egypt,global economic,hospitals,human rights,Human Rights,initially,Iraq,Israel,knowledge base,Lebanon,outsource,People,Saudi Arabia,simplistic,software platform,source of information,target,targets,terrorist,twelve months,War,World,YemenGlobal Affairs: - Knowing the adversary Islamic Jihad, what is next? Everything you need to know about the invisible adversary by Felipe Rodriquez 14 September 2001 The attack on the World Trade Center in New York is a new phase in an ongoing global religious and ideological conflict, started in 1990, with the gulf war. The mother of all wars, as Saddam Hussein called it, and is unlikely to end for some time. To understand it, we must look at the Western world's exploitation and colonization of Saudi Arabia and other Muslim nations. Economic and geopolitical moves that benefit only the western democratic capitalist structures are the primary cause of this terrible conflict. USAMA BIN MUHAMMAD BIN IN LADEN The Taliban consider Osama Bin Ladin to be a holy man, because of his incredible service in the Afghani war against the Russians, and the reconstruction of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Ladin has fought hundreds of battles in Afghanistan, and has been wounded numerous times. He went to Afghanistan around 1982, and took with him a large amount of construction equipment, and a team of engineers, to rebuild the war torn country. He is a devout Muslim, and answers to Allah and certain important Islamic teachers, such as Sheik Safar Ibn `Abd Al-Rahman Al-Hawali. He founded the "Al Qaeda" movement, with Muhammad Atef. The movement was initially setup to record the movements of Mujahedin in Afghanistan. Later the goal changed to driving the United States forces out of Saudi Arabia, where the US setup a military base since the beginning of the Gulf War. Many devout Muslims see this as a hostile invasion of the Islamic holy land, comparable to the invasions of the crusaders in the past. Some years later the goal changed once again, into what it is now; to attack Israel, the US and its allies wherever it can. The justification of these acts, in the mind of the Muslim activist, comes from the foreign occupation of the holy cities: Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem. It is simplistic and short sighted to assume that Osama Bin Laden is the great leader behind the attacks on the WTC, the Nairobi and Dar Es Salaam US embassies, the hit on USS Cole in Yemen and various other terrorist attacks. Islamic religious activism is the glue that binds this global terror movement together. Removing Osama Bin Ladin from the scene will not remove this global movement, and will not end terror. Killing him will only motivate thousands of Muslims to volunteer for the ultimate sacrifice. The Islamic radical movement resembles a hydra, A serpent represented as having many heads, one of which, when cut off, is immediately succeeded by two others. The movement cannot be eradicated by violence and retaliation, such deeds will only make it stronger and increase popular support in the Islamic world. To understand how this works, lets look at Hizbollah and Hamas. These Islamic organizations have been setup in such a way that they are almost impossible to eradicate. There is always double redundancy in the leadership, because any leader can expect to be assassinated by their enemies at any time. The effectiveness of this redundancy is demonstrated by the fact that Hizbollah and Hamas still exist today, despite the fact that many of its leaders have been assassinated by Israel and others. We must assume that the leadership of the organization that hit the WTC, and other targets in the past, is organized in a similar way, building on the experience of Islamic organizations in Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere. Hamas and Hizbollah have integrated Islamic thought in their society by providing numerous services to their communities. Schools and hospitals are provided for free or at cost. And they materially support families, widows and orphans that have been victims of aggression by their enemies. Hizbollah operates numerous businesses, that together with donations fund the activities of the organization. These social activities provide the organizations with enormous popular support, it is an effective way of disseminating the virtues of Islam, and strengthening its base. It has also created a strong platform to recruit martyrs for the violent Jihad (Holy War) against Israel and its allies. From documentation that was seized in Africa, after the Nairobi bombing, there is a strong indication that a cell structure was used to limit the risks to the terrorist organization that hit the African embassies, allegedly the same organization that hit the WTC in 2001. A cell structure is often used by violent groups. It is implemented in such a way that cell members only know a limited amount of members of the organization, and only have limited access to information about the planned activities of the group. Typically cell members only know the coordinator of the cell, and the coordinator only knows one higher placed member of the organization. The aim of the cell structure is to protect the organization, in case of arrests and torturous interrogations. The violent faction of the Islamic activist movement, such as the Islamic front for Jihad, is mostly invisible. It has been hardened through years of struggle in Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan. It is acutely aware of its security requirements, because numerous Islamic activists have been assassinated in the past. The WTC attack, and the other attacks in the past demonstrate that they have relatively good communication security; they most likely assume that all electronic communication is monitored by the US and its allies through their global Echelon surveillance system and the FBI's Carnivore software. Human infiltration of these groups is not likely either, most of these Islamic activists have been working together for many years. An infiltrator would have to speak fluent Arabic, would have to have intimate knowledge of the Quran and Islamic religious rituals, and would have to be willing to make the ultimate sacrifice, Martyrdom, to earn the trust of the organization. In 1853 adventurer Richard Burton managed to disguise himselfe as a Muslim Derwish, participate in the Pilgrimage to Mecca and Al- Madinah, and came back alive. But he was the exception to the rule, and he did not try to infiltrate a terrorist organization that expects infiltration attempts. INTENTIONS AND MOTIVATIONS "The people of Islam awakened and realized that they are the main target for the aggression of the Zionist-Crusaders alliance. All false claims and propaganda about "Human Rights" were hammered down and exposed by the massacres that took place against the Muslims in every part of the world. The latest and the greatest of these aggressions, incurred by the Muslims since the death of the Prophet (ALLAH'S BLESSING AND SALUTATIONS ON HIM) is the occupation of the land of the two Holy Places" (Source: A DECLARATION OF WAR, by Osama Bin Laden) A growing group of Islamic scholars and activists feel that the military installations of the United States in Saudi Arabia represent a hostile foreign invasion into their holy land. They believe that the three most holy places in the Islamic world, Mecca, Medina and Jerusalem, are occupied by Zionists and Christian crusaders. They also believe that most Muslim nations are victims of neo-colonialist exploitation by the capitalist western world. A holy war, Jihad, was declared in 1996 to struggle against exploitation and occupation. In 1998 a Fatwah was declared by Sheikh Usamah Bin-Muhammad Bin-Ladin, Ayman al-Zawahiri, amir of the Jihad Group in Egypt, Abu-Yasir Rifa'i Ahmad Taha, Egyptian Islamic Group, Sheikh Mir Hamzah, secretary of the Jamiat-ul-Ulema-e-Pakistan and Fazlul Rahman, amir of the Jihad Movement in Bangladesh. This Fatwah reconfirms the holy war against Israel, the US and its allies. A quote from this Fatwah: "Thehttp://www.content-wire.com/global-affairs-knowing-adversary