The truth is out there

A year for terror…

As tensions, speculations, exposures and denials mounted over just how much President Bush knew about terrorist plots pre-11 September, hardly a day went by this last week without some high-level US official forecasting further acts of terrorism on the US mainland.

Dick Cheney (Vice-Pres.) said further strikes like those of 11 September were “not a matter of if, but when”. Condoleeza Rice (White House National Security Advisor) told the nation that it was (necessarily) on a far higher state of alert now than before last fall. Senator Bob Graham (Democrat Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee) predicted a “likelihood almost to the point of certainty” that the US would be attacked again soon by others than al-Qaeda (such as Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah). Robert Mueller (FBI Director) said it was “inevitable” that “there will be another terrorist attack” and “We will not be able to stop it”. And the nation, unnerved by reports that al-Qaeda cells were suddenly, hurriedly and voluminously communicating at a level similar to just before the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks (“There’s just a lot chatter in the system again,” a senior Bush administration official was quoted as saying), braced itself for the possibility of Palestinian-style suicide bombings (predicted by Mueller and Graham), and the bombing of high-rise apartment buildings (predicted by Cheney).

All in all it was some week for the US. The post-11 September bi-partisanship began to come apart at the seams, as concern rose over alleged White House and intelligence community inaction when faced with repeated warnings of the attacks. The press, Democrats, and even some Republicans, openly voiced their worries. The White House struck back. The criticisms were “thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in time of war” and any suggestion that Bush could have prevented the attacks “strikes me as beyond the pale”, said Cheney.

“I take my job very seriously,” Bush assured the voters, “Had I known that the enemy was going to use airplanes to kill on that fateful morning, I would have done everything in my power to protect the American people.” First Lady, Laura Bush, defended her husband against the ‘criticisms’ of her predecessor Senator Hillary Clinton, “it is very sad that people would play upon the victims’ families’ emotions.”

To coincide with the gloom, the State Department issued its annual Patterns of Terrorism report. It confirmed that more people were killed in terrorist attacks in 2001 than in any year in history. 3,457 lost their lives worldwide, the vast majority in the US on 11 September. People from seventy-eight different countries around the world died in the attack on the World Trade Center.

The report singled out Iran as the world’s foremost sponsor of terrorism. It based this assessment on a suggested rise in Iranian support for groups opposed to Israel, supplying them with weapons, training and money. The other labelled countries were Sudan, Libya, Iraq, North Korea, Cuba and Syria.

Libya and Syria were said to have taken steps to distance themselves from terrorist activity. Indeed, the Diary has been told that the recent summit between the leaders of Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia made headlines in the Arab press, as Syria signed up to a rejection of violence “from whatever source”. This was seen as a significant u-turn by the country on the issue of Palestinian action against Israel. However, the Diary understands that Syria did its best to play down this part of the communiqué, aware of its controversial nature, and focused more on the parts that celebrated the Palestinian intifada.

(Some sources: BBC, International Herald Tribune, New York Times, Richard Cohen’s column in the Washington Post. Also see Paul Rogers' latest column 'An arc of conflict')

…and a chance to cash in

Meanwhile, 11 September continues to be exploited for financial gain.

First up in the tasteless rush to cash in: the Republican Party. That’s right, this week a row emerged after it was disclosed that a picture of George Bush aboard Air Force One on 11 September is given pride of place in a one hundred and fifty dollar photographic package depicting “the defining moments” of Dubya’s first year in office. The pricey memorial is being offered to Republican Party donors, as part of a fundraising effort for the November mid-term elections.

The picture shows Bush talking to Vice-Prez Cheney as he criss-crosses the country by air, trying to find a safe place to land (or not). The Commander-in-Chief is looking out of the cabin window.

Terry McAuliffe, head of the Democratic National Committee called the decision to use the photograph “nothing short of grotesque.” Not mincing his words, he continued, “We know it’s the Republican’s strategy to use the war for political gain, but I would hope that even the most cynical partisan operative would have cowered at the notion of exploiting the September 11 tragedy in this way.”

While not objecting to the use of the photo, Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman, said that “nobody in the White House knew that those specific pictures were going to be used.”

The next guilty party: the fashion industry. Never one to pass up the chance to exploit human tragedy for the sake of ‘artistic’ catwalk sensationalism, the fashion world was on the defensive this week after the press noticed that a handbag which depicts the attacks on World Trade Center was a best-selling accessory.

The bag is on sale at Australian fashion chain Quick Brown Fox, and is a snip at A$159. It depicts the twin towers, the first being hit by a hijacked plane and the second about to be hit by another. A beaded star-spangled banner sits across the bottom of the towers.

Relatives of the victims of 11 September are reported to have responded with outrage. But Quick Brown Fox has defended the bag as “an artistic interpretation of what is a tragic event.” Bags have nearly sold out in shops in Sydney and Melbourne. Tess Reeves, owner of Quick Brown Fox, said of the bags “They are the sort of thing high fashion would do and thousands of them are being shipped to Europe every day … it’s a collector’s item.”

Silvi censors again?

Owning the majority of the Italian press clearly isn’t enough for Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi. This week he once again found himself at the centre of a row over censorship.

The latest accusation comes from Luca Ronconi, one of Italy’s top theatre directors. Signor Ronconi is staging a production of Aristophanes’ fifth century Greek play ‘The Frogs’, in Syracuse, Sicily. The set designs have not gone down well with the authorities.

The stage was filled with five metre high caricatures of Berlusconi, Deputy Premier Gianfranco Fini, and Northern League Leader Umberto Bossi. Ronconi claims he was ordered to take them down by Economics Undersecretary, Gianfranco Micciche, Silvio’s right-hand man in Sicily.

But Berlusconi has denied the allegations, and to prove his innocence, even suggested that Ronconi re-erect his posters. “I hope Luca Ronconi … puts back that portrait of that Aristophanes-like tyrant soon,” he said.

At the same time, over in Cannes, Berlusconi was coming under fire from filmmaker Marco Giusti. Giusti claimed that the government had tried to suppress his documentary about the alleged police brutality at the G8 summit in Genoa last year.

Bersluconi stood firm. “The government, the whole government, doesn’t even know what censorship is.”

Mmm…

Alien talk

Had enough of it all? Well, help, or otherwise, may be at hand. New Scientist reports this week that there may well be more alien life out there than once thought.

In case you hadn’t heard, the new weapon in mankind’s knowledge arsenal is statistical analysis. Previous attempts to discover whether we are alone fell short because we only had one point of reference on life: ours on earth. Happily, Charles Lineweaver and Tamara Davis of the University of New South Wales know better. They assessed the probability of life developing elsewhere through the perspective of the rapid beginning of life on earth.

But there is rapid and then there is rapid. For Lineweaver, rapid means a billion years.

Still, the findings are impressive. Given that life began here somewhere between twenty-five to six hundred million years after the earth became inhabitable, and that recent discoveries show that planets are common around sun-like stars, the chances are good that life is out there – somewhere.

So, despite the appearance given by the above items in this week’s Diary, life on earth might not be a freak accident. Lineweaver compares the chance of life to winning the lottery (although less subject to press exposure). He says that given the speed of life beginning on earth, we can calculate better. He is now ninety-five per cent certain that within a billion years, the chance of life starting on an inhabitable planet is at least one in three.

One in three! Those are good odds. It’s enough to make you think about buying a lottery ticket.

Jumpp for joy!

And boy do we need some hope. In a week when we learnt that Pakistan had deployed nuclear weapons for an attack on India in 1999, until President Clinton persuaded Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif not to launch them, there was no shortage of examples of human idiocy.

So the Diary thought it would bring you the story of Alvin Jumpp, who was arrested this week by FBI agents as he took out his trash. Alvin Jumpp is a high-school teacher in Philadelphia. But the FBI suspect him of moonlighting outside of school hours, and have charged him with robbing three banks over a five-month period.

Jumpp told the authorities he was $116,000 in debt. His teachers salary wasn’t going to cover it. His three robberies pulled in only $16,240.

Students and teachers came out in support of the public servant, and apparently no-one had anything bad to say about him. Sixteen-year-old Tyrone Jerkins put it best, “Jumpp was cool. You would never expect him to do something like that.”

Best wishes to you, Alvin. The list of criminals has been long this week. You don’t make it. But at least we now know what the FBI get up to. No wonder they failed to prevent the terrorist attacks of 11 September. No wonder they failed to listen to warnings from overseas. No wonder they failed to act, despite knowing all those extremists were learning how to fly – but not land – planes in all those flight schools. No wonder they can’t complete the investigation into who exactly sent the anthrax letters. No wonder an anonymous top official from another agency said this week that “It’s awfully hard to connect the dots if people don’t give you the dots.”

There’s no conspiracy here. They were just in hot pursuit of poor old Alvin Jumpp, protecting the nation from the high-school teacher’s evil-doings.

(source: Weird News Online)

Quotes of the Week

“You know what’s interesting in Washington? It’s a town, unfortunately, it’s the kind of place where second-guessing has become second nature.”
President George Bush, responding to the allegations that his administration had advanced warning of imminent al-Qaeda attacks prior to 11 September.

“He doesn’t recall seeing anything.”
National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice, referring to President Bush’s memory of a July 2001 memorandum from an FBI agent in Phoenix, warning of plans to hijack planes by Arab extremists in the flight schools there. It later emerged that FBI Director Robert Mueller and Attorney General John Ashcroft were told of the Phoenix memo a few days after 11 September, and only told the President recently.

“I don’t believe America or any of the other countries were sufficiently sensitive in the beginning or for a long time.”
Bill Clinton, speaking at the inauguration ceremony of East Timor’s new President Xanana Gusmao. East Timor gained independence this week, after twenty-four years of Indonesian rule. In 1975, the day before Indonesian forces invaded the island, President Suharto met with President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger. Despite denying that he gave a green light to Suharto, Kissinger said that day, “It is important that whatever you do succeeds quickly. We would be able to influence the reaction in America if whatever happens happens after we return.”

Contact the Diary editor: dominic.hilton@opendemocracy.net