Bombing of farming village undermines U.S. credibility. This is not accidental collateral damage from bombs gone astray from nearby targets of strategic significance! The US is bombing remote villages far from anything of strategic significance with low-flying AC-130 Spectre gunships, and firing on villagers as they flee from the bombs. ‘Later, unidentified Pentagon officials told CNN that Chowkar-Karez was “a fully legitimate target” because it was a nest of Taliban and al-Qaeda sympathizers. “The people there are dead because we wanted them dead,” an official said.’ Toronto Globe and Mail And the civilian fatalities are being documented by respected NGOs like Human Rights Watch, not just reported by the Taliban.

Reaping the whirlwind: ‘Around the country, the far right reacts to September?s terror with anti-Semitic hatred, threats and conspiracy theories

.’ Southern Poverty Law Center And James Ridgeway in the Village Voice gives us some choice excerpts from the far right’s online reactions; for example, regret that they did not carry out the attack on “Jew York” themselves. ‘ “Please be advised that the time for Aryans to attack is now, not later.’ “

Here’s more, from the Ridgeway article, on the possible intersection in the paths of the WTC bombers and the Oklahoma City bombers about which I wrote yesterday:

Last week, U.S. News & World Report revealed that officials at the Defense Department were speculating that the late Timothy McVeigh, a Gulf War veteran, acted as an Iraqi agent when he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. That might seem a far-fetched idea, but federal agents initially put out a global dragnet, thinking the terrorists might have been Middle Eastern. Later, in preparation for McVeigh’s trial, defense attorney Stephen Jones traveled around the world, stopping off in London, Tel Aviv, Belfast, and Manila.

In the Philippines, Jones found people who told him Terry Nichols had met there with Middle Eastern terrorists, including Ramzi Yousef (the kingpin of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing) and, possibly, Osama bin Laden himself. Al Qaeda was using the Philippines partly as an auxiliary base and partly as a pool of new recruits. McVeigh ridiculed the idea of Nichols’s involvement in the Philippines, but Jones reports that his client later admitted it was possible.

What makes these theories even more bizarre is that the leaders seem to have crossed paths and exchanged notes. At one moment, they all came together in one wing of a federal prison in Colorado. There, McVeigh, Yousef, and the Unabomber met and became buds.

Differences emerge between US and Britain over war. The British are becoming more and more cool to the bombing campaign given the tide of negative world opinion, the civilian casualties and the inflated American claims of success. “A command control unit claimed to have been destroyed by the Americans has meant usually a phone inside a hut that does not work.” Asia Times (Hong Kong)

Declan McCullagh:
Terror Law Foes Mull Strategies Because parts of the spy law are so invasive that they arguably violate Americans’ privacy rights, opponents of the so-called USA Patriot Act have begun to weigh how to mount a legal challenge. Wired

Military Bars Green Party Leader from Flying: ‘As one of the U.S. Green Party’s top officials, Nancy Oden is used to controversy. But Oden never expected to be hassled by National Guard troops at her hometown airport of Bangor, Maine on Thursday and barred from flying out of it. She thinks it’s because of a Green Party statement she co-authored that ran in a the local newspaper. The statement calls for universal health care, limitations on free trade, and a stop to “U.S. military incursions” including the bombing of Afghanistan.’ wartimeliberty.com

Steven Weinberg:
The Future of Science, and the Universe. The grand unified theory is coming, and then we’ll be able to predict how the universe will end. New York Review of Books

An Enforceable Ban on Bioterror: “The attacks of Sept. 11 and the spread of anthrax have forced the Bush administration to reconsider its ill-advised antipathy to strengthening the 1972 treaty that bans the development, production and possession of biological weapons. This week President Bush proposed ways to assure international compliance with the accord. Unfortunately, the suggestions still leave the United States opposed to a critical enforcement mechanism.” NY Times editorial

Da Vinci bridge finally built after 500 years. New Scientist To paraphrase something one commentator somewhere (perhaps MetaFilter?) said, it makes modern bridge architecture look old.

Europe may ban internet cookies: ‘European Parliament members think the software tags may invade privacy, but others warn web surfing would be much slower.’ New Scientist IMHO, if you’re concerned about the ways the ‘net invades your privacy, cookies are largely a red herring issue.

Go West — ‘Amid appreciative coos and respectful nods, (Cornel) West, who teaches African-American studies and philosophy of religion at Harvard, is holding forth on hip-hop culture; when he isn’t speaking, he’s playing tracks of an album he recently put out with his brother Clifton West, songwriter Michael Dailey (a childhood friend), and producer Derek “DOA” Allen, who has worked with R&B singers Tyrese and Bobby Brown, among others. The album, called Sketches of My Culture, has 10 songs that mix hip-hop beats with touches of jazz, soul, and blues, and tell stories about the cultural legacy of black music.’ Boston Phoenix

Experts on Islam pointing fingers at one another. Did political biases and wishful thinking among scholars cause them to miss the most significant new developments in Middle Eastern politics and society over several decades, and in particular fail to recognize the predictable threat to the West from extremist terrorists?

And in some pseudo-punditry, Nobel literature laureate V.S. Naipaul’s contentious comments on Islam:

Ramadan Won’t Slow U.S. Offensive, Bush Declares. And Turkey, the only Islamic NATO member, will send forces to join the assault on Afghanistan and supports fighting through Ramadan. However, Attacks During Ramadan May Be Costly: “But as civilian casualties in Afghanistan grow, the U.S. is on the verge of losing whatever fragile goodwill exists across the Muslim world. The final transformation–from victim to aggressor–could come in mid-November if American forces continue the attacks into the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.” LA Times

Firefighters, NYPD Clash; 12 Arrested: “crime scene’, ‘disaster area’, ‘burial ground’, or ‘a steaming slag heap’? The facade of solidarity among the heroes collapses in dispute over ‘a new plan announced by city officials that would reduce the number of police, fire and emergency crew “spotters”–those who pinpoint possible human remains in the wreckage–at the World Trade Center site. Whenever they identify such remains, which continue to be taken out of the ruins, construction crews halt their work and special rescue teams remove the remains. Debris that does not contain remains is carted away.’ LA Times

Va. Supreme Court Overturns Law Against Cross-Burnings. They’re legal forms of first-amendment speech again, according to this court opinion which, parenthetically, also gives the nod to flag-burning. The dissenting opinion (by the court’s sole African American justice), of course, hinges on the concept that words — if threatening as opposed to merely offensive — should be treated not as speech but behavior. Where we as a society stand on this idea has broad import, starting with the cases, some still in litigation, of ‘free speech’ inciting zealots to murder health care personnel who perform abortions. Are we on a slippery slope to arbitrary infringement of civil liberties if we allow any words to be interpreted as deeds, or can a standard be defined?

‘Three Strikes’ Sentence Overturned by a San Francisco federal appeals court, the first time such a penalty has been successfully challenged on constitutional (the ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ clause) grounds in a case of a fifty-year mandatory minimum sentence for a heroin addict who had financed his habit with shoplifting and nonviolent burglaries. Washington Post

Why colds are sweeping your office

: “Offices whose workers are ravaged by a series of autumn coughs and sneezes may be hotbeds of chronic stress, warn scientists.

Any increase in the number of blocked noses and colds could well be due to the increased pressures of modern life, they say.

One expert even believes that the events of 11 September may lead to more colds and flu this year as the threat of terrorist attack adds to the general burden of winter worries.”

I’m actually more concerned about the converse message, that we need healthy immune systems to cope with the current crisis. While the field of neuropsychoimmunology attempts to articulate the little-understood links between the immune system and cognitive-emotional functioning, this new meme is popping up in all sorts of less sophisticated ways, e.g. television advertisements for vitamin supplements. (“Now, more than ever…”) One more group of profiteers blatantly exploiting fears of bioterrorism, little more.

OSHA halts mask use in Postal Service: “On the advice of health officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, the Postal Service bought 4.8 million of the spore-proof masks for its workers who handle mail and began offering workers the masks last week.

But according to OSHA officials and regulations, the workers must undergo hours of training and pass a “fit test” before they can be allowed to use the protective masks, which are like those worn by construction workers who install drywall and can be purchased at hardware stores.” Washington Times

The rumor busters — a portrait of Snopes.com‘s resident debunkers Barbara and David Mikkelson. Salon

Defense Sec. Rumsfeld wants the American people to be patient. He chooses to underscore it, however, through a strained and specious comparison with a very different war in a very different era:

“Consider some historical perspective:

• After the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, it took four months before the United States responded to that attack with the Doolittle raid of April 1942.
• It took eight months after Pearl Harbor before the U.S. began a land campaign against the Japanese — with the invasion of Guadalcanal in August of 1942.
• The U.S. bombed Japan for three-and-a-half years — until August 1945 — before we accomplished our objectives in the Pacific.
• On the European front, the allies bombed Germany continually for nearly five years — from September of 1940 until May of 1945.
• It took 11 months to start the land campaign against the Germans — with the invasion of North Africa in November of 1942.
• It took the United States two years and six months after Hitler declared war on us before we landed in France on June 6, 1944.”

DoD News

William Saletan thinks the press is to blame for putting the impatient spin on things. Journalists’ reports of skepticism and frustration are a “self-escalating cycle” of “vicarious doubt.” For example:

• The fallacy of subjectivity — seeing the Taliban mind only from the outside but the American mind from the inside, the press can highlight the doubts and reassessments only of the latter. Our enemy always seems more resolute.
  

• The war’s progress “falling short of expectations” is often seen as an indicator it is not viable to continue, but Saletan argues “the public’s lowered expectations make the war on terror more sustainable, not less.”
  

• The side with the coalition of necessity has the more ‘fragile coalition’ than the side without one.
  

• A stalemate is inevitably interpreted as a victory for the defense (them) rather than the offense (us).
  

• Because journalists demand news, “If the United States fails to provide news in the form of measurable success, journalists will make that failure itself the news.”

Slate

Analysis: Why use cluster bombs? by BBC defense correspondent Jonathan Marcus. In a word, for their imprecision, the terror and collateral damage they sow.

Case Settled: Justice to Break Up Apple for Making Microsoft a Monopoly. “Do you punish the monster, or Dr. Frankenstein? We chose the doctor,” said Connecticut Atty. Gen. Richard Blumenthal. SatireWire

As you know, I’ve been on the lookout for indications of the response of the far right to the Sept. 11th attacks and their aftermath. Here’s the come-on to a piece Joe Conason writes in Salon premium, to which I don’t subscribe, The real “fifth column”:

‘The true domestic threat is posed …by an unknown number of organizations and individuals on the farthest fringes of the right, with ideologies that echo Nazism and rap sheets that include every crime from bank robberies to bombings. Having repeatedly declared their determination to overthrow the United States Government and exterminate the “racially impure,” these outfits hailed the September 11 attacks as the opening salvo in a conflagration they hope will engulf us.’

David Farber, from whose mailing list I was pointed to this, comments on speculation of other links between the American paramilitary movement and Islamic extremists, for example that Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols learned bomb-making from Ramsey Yousef. Supposedly, McVeigh’s attorney explored a line of defense for his client arising from reports by one of the leaders of the Philippines’ Abu Sayyef Islamic guerrilla movement (subsequently killed, apparently by his own people) that he was at a meeting with Nichols that also involved Yousef, discussing bomb-making. Here’s a Google search on ‘ “Timothy McVeigh” and Yousef ‘. [When I used the Americanized misspelling of his name, “Ramsey Yousef”, this search only came up with four hits. Thanks to Dan for pointing out the error of my ways.] This discussion thread on the “conservative news forum” freerepublic.com has some interesting speculation for right-wing conspiracy buffs.

US elite troops helicopter crashes: “A team of US special forces had to be rescued

after their helicopter crashed in Afghanistan.

The Pentagon said it was one of two

helicopters on a special operation inside

Afghanistan, and was forced down by bad

weather.” BBC [and winter hasn’t even started yet…]