Tag: 9/11



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2008-09-27 “More and more questions are being raised as to what is going on in Afghanistan. First and foremost, what is the acceptable price for losses among civilians in the ongoing anti-terrorist operation? Who decides on criteria for determining the proportionality of the use of force?

These and other factors give reasons to believe that the anti-terrorism coalition is in the face of crisis. Looking at the core of the problem, it seems that this coalition lacks collective arrangements - ie equality among all its members in decision-making on the strategy and, especially, operational tactics. It so happens that in order to control a totally new situation as it evolved after 9/11, instead of the required genuine cooperative effort, including a joint analysis and coordination of practical steps, the mechanisms designed for a unipolar world started to be used, where all decisions were to be taken in a single center while the rest were merely to follow. The solidarity of the international community fostered on the wave of struggle against terrorism turned out to be somehow "privatized"."
-- Sergei Lavrov, Russian foreign minister, at the annual United Nations General Assembly forum
2008-08-05 There’s going to be an i-9/11 event. Which doesn’t necessarily mean an Al Qaeda attack, it means an event where the instability or the insecurity of the internet becomes manifest during a malicious event which then inspires the government into a response. You’ve got to remember that after 9/11 the government drew up the Patriot Act within 20 days and it was passed.

The Patriot Act is huge and I remember someone asking a Justice Department official how did they write such a large statute so quickly, and of course the answer was that it has been sitting in the drawers of the Justice Department for the last 20 years waiting for the event where they would pull it out.

Of course, the Patriot Act is filled with all sorts of insanity about changing the way civil rights are protected, or not protected in this instance. So I was having dinner with Richard Clarke and I asked him if there is an equivalent, is there an i-Patriot Act just sitting waiting for some substantial event as an excuse to radically change the way the internet works. He said “of course there is”.
-- Lawrence Lessig, Law Professor from Stanford University, told an audience at this years Fortune’s Brainstorm Tech conference in Half Moon Bay, California
2008-03-27 In the Netherlands, Geert Wilders, aka the anti-Islam politician, on the Internet his highly charged and much-anticipated anti-Koran 17-minute film titled “Fitna”, Arabic for civil strife.

The first 10 minutes of the film consist of a compilation of video fragments showing the victims of terrorist attacks in New York, Madrid and London. This is interspersed with translations of verses from the Koran and recordings of Islamic leaders calling for violence against non-believers.

In the last five minutes, Wilders focuses on Islam in the Netherlands. There are images of blocks of flats dotted with satellite dishes, policemen removing their shoes before entering a mosque, recordings of preaching and a selection of newspaper headlines.
2007-11-06 "Don’t expect to hear this from the White House any time soon, but the global war on terrorism conceived in the wake of 9/11 has effectively ended."
-- Andrew J. Bacevich, professor of history and international relations at Boston University, in his article, "Fighting the real fight"
2007-11-01 The central driver of American policy since September 11, 2001 is an overestimation of the threat posed both by al-Qaeda, and by rogue state proliferators like Iraq, Iran and North Korea.
-- Francis Fukuyama, in his response to Barry Posen
2007-09-11 During a 14-minute statement, Osama bin Laden praised one of the hijackers who flew jetliners into the World Trade Center, Waleed al-Shehri, as “one of the 19 champions,” and urged others to join him in the “caravan” of martyrs.
Osama bin Laden’s voice is heard in the video playing as an audio track over an image apparently taped for last week’s video, but there are no obvious time elements included in the videotape that would confirm when the audio was recorded
2007-03-30 United Nations Human Rights Council member Pakistan proposed a new resolution on the need to combat the “defamation of religions”.

After voicing concern at “attempts to identify Islam with terrorism, violence and human-rights violations.”

The resolution noted "with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions, and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities, in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001."

It urged states "to take resolute action to prohibit the dissemination including through political institutions and organisations of racist and xenophobic ideas and material aimed at any religion or its followers that constitute incitement to racial and religious hatred, hostility or violence ... "

It goes on to say that free expression should be exercised “with responsibility”, and may be limited in regard to “public health and morals”, and, worse still, “respect for religions and beliefs”.

Of the 17 members of the Organisation of Islamic Conference on the council, all but one voted for the resolution, along with China, Russia and South Africa. Fourteen Western countries voted against, including all eight EU states, plus Japan, Ukraine and South Korea (home of the UN's new secretary-general). Nine countries, all from the developing world, abstained.
2007 I believe that we're close to a tipping point right now. What happened to the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 could easily be happening to us for essentially the same reasons. Imperial overreach, inability to reform, rigid economic ideology. ... The world's balance of power didn't change one iota on September 11, 2001. The only way we could lose the power and influence we had at that time was through our own actions, and that's what we did.
-- Chalmers Johnson, author of 'Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic'
2006-12-18 “I saw extremely similar behavior and extremely similar problems in an Islamic insurgency in West Java and a Christian-separatist insurgency in East Timor. After 9/11, when a lot of people were saying, ‘The problem is Islam,’ I was thinking, It’s something deeper than that. It’s about human social networks and the way that they operate.
[ … I]t’s not about theology. There are elements in human psychological and social makeup that drive what’s happening. The Islamic bit is secondary. This is human behavior in an Islamic setting. This is not ‘Islamic behavior.”
-- David Kilcullen, leading contemporary practitioner and theorist of counterinsurgency and counterterrorism
2006-10-17 President Bush signed into law the Military Commissions Act. This created a new legal defense against lawsuits for misconduct arising from the “detention and interrogation of aliens” between September 11, 2001, and December 30, 2005. That covered the interrogation of al-Qahtani at Guantanamo Bay, and no doubt much else.

President Bush, "The Military Commissions Act of 2006 is one of the most important pieces of legislation in the war on terror. This bill will allow the Central Intelligence Agency to continue its program for questioning key terrorist leaders and operatives [...]."

President Bush explained that it provided “legal protections that ensure our military and intelligence personnel will not have to fear lawsuits filed by terrorists simply for doing their jobs.”

In a word, the interrogators and their superiors were granted immunity from prosecution. Some of the lawyers who contributed to this legislation were immunizing themselves. The hitch, and it is a big one, is that the immunity is good only within the borders of the United States.












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