Date: 29 Sep 2001 02:44:00 +0200
From: ASWAD-AT-anarch.free.de (catkawin)
Subject: Hamburg, 09/27



Nothing in the papers re the 'Hamburg connection'.

Papers cover the issue of civil liberties in the US being endangered by  
hastened legal adjustments; today's 'taz' (left-liberal) covers this issue  
with a detailed one-page article on plans to undermine civil liberties and  
opposition to them.
In a special box on that page, there's a quote by Rep John Cooksey on  
criteria of suspicion: 'Now, if there's a guy in the car wearing a nappy  
round his head, then of course he'll be pulled out." Further comments  
unneccessary.

There's also articles about Italian president Berlusconi putting both feet  
firmly in some nasty substance with a remark during his visit in Berlin  
when he said that European civilisation was superior to Islam and  
Europeans should be aware of this superiority, and due to this Europe will  
defeat Islam. He added that one must not regard all civilisations as  
equal. Only the West had a set of values that produced prosperity in those  
countries observing these values. Also: "The West is meant to westernize  
the peoples and conquest them for itself. This the West already managed to  
do with the communist and with a part of the Islamic world. But there is  
another part of this [the Islamic] world that stopped at a stage of 1,400  
years ago."

Berlusconi also is reported to have equated the protest movement against  
globalisation to Bin Laden. I suppose we must not get suspicious in any  
way when remembering that US government sources did not want to comment  
the rumours reported yesterday (Fini's info that they had been warned re  
an attack against Bush being planned) in this light...
Berlusconi said: "One of the aims of terrorism is the fight against  
Western corruption. There is an apparent correspondence between these  
actions [the terrorist attacks] and the movement of globalisation  
opponents. In the West, of all places, criticism against the way of  
thinking and the way of life of the Western world has been brought  
forward. They put the West in the dock, as if the poverty which is seen in  
vast parts of the world was just the fault of market economy".

While Berlusconi is severely criticized at home by many social and  
political sectors, the rightwing movements and papers in Italy (some of  
them in Berlusconi's ownership) are completely on his side, calling e.g.  
globalisation opponents the 'useful idots' of Bin Laden who share the view  
of Western civilisation being the enemy.

BBC World today also seems to present us with diverging info: during the  
late news show, they said that Berlusconi meanwhile apologized, while the  
late-late said Berlusconi gave a public explanation more or less  
reinforcing his earlier remarks which had been taken out of context (of  
course!), but did not apologize explicitly.
Berlusconi meanwhile receives whackings from almost everybody around; EU  
countries strongly rejected this world view, and there's of course been  
protest from Arab politicians. Berlusconi's remarks, of course, are very  
much bound to nourish fears all over the world, and will not exactly  
further the planned global coalition against terror.


There was another report on Afghan refugees on BBC World. They showed a  
group who managed to escape to Baluchistan (sp?) in Pakistan. It was a  
group of 12 wymyn, 50 children, and one old man. They were from the ethnic  
group of Hazara from central Afghanistan and it took them three months to  
wander to the Pakistani border. They were of course exhausted after this  
march and in resp state of health; one womyn had been injured back at home  
by parts of a grenade shell which hit her face, leaving her more or less  
faceless.
Those people lost everything, and they stay at a village where there's no  
help from aid organisations available, so they camp in the ruin of a  
mosque without roof and they have to sleep on the bare ground without  
blankets or tents. All they had food-wise was a bread a passer-by had  
given them that day to share between them all. The journalist asked them  
where their husbands or other myn in the families were, and the wymyn  
answered they were dead: part of them were said to have died of diseases,  
the others were killed by the Taliban. The report also mentioned that  
although these refugees were presently suffering from the heat during  
days, it was already pretty cold during nights and winter will be there  
soon.

Daily paper 'taz' today reports there are several hundredthousand people  
within Afghanistan who are internally displaced persons. All those who  
don't have the money to buy transport to the borders, or hold no  
passports, are heading for one of 25 camps within Afghanistan. Food  
supplies in Afghanistan will only last until the beginning of October. But  
already distribution of seeds was difficult over the last months, and as  
farmers' families suffered from hunger, most of them had already eaten wat  
seeds they had, so few or even none at all has been sowed.


BBC World tonight broadcast a special on reactions of US citizens after  
the WTC attacks in which they also interviewed someone from higher up with  
Washington Post. The journalist mentioned something about the USA's  
isolation, and that bloke from WP contradicted the USA were not isolated  
since its economy was so much linked with economy globally, but specified  
that the USA did not pay attention to what happened in the outside world.  
I almost dropped from me chair when he went on to say that most big US  
papers had stopped to carry international news some years ago! It's hard  
for me to imagine that - most of our papers here, I daresay all of them,  
have international news first and then home news. Incredible. I mean, what  
do they put into papers then - just ads, ads, and ads and in between a few  
reports about Bush suffering from a bad case of flatulence, Congress  
feeling compelled to follow suit and then specifying who farted in which  
order?

Must be something to it, though, that lack of international news - I bin  
watching CNN for quite some time tonight now, and I didn't pick up  
anything of Berlusconi's remarks so far (nor did I see all that much about  
the situation of Afghan refugees on CNN over the days), but there were  
repeated appearances of Asscraft giving info on that letter found in  
Atta's left behind luggage.
They do, however, seem to be better with names: while BBC World kept  
mispronouncing the one arrested person's name as 'Lofty', at least they  
say and even write Lotfi Raissi;))

Tomorrow's report will most probably have to be postponed - someone we  
know opens a pub tomorrow night, and we're - hicc... - invited, so I'm not  
certain about the time I'll be back tomorrow, let alone in which state.  
Don't worry about me being picked up for d and d - if I feel like singing  
songs unfit for middle-aged ladies' knowledge, I'll be singing them in  
English to be on the safe side....

catkawin





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