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January
10, 2002
Marina Mayakova
Russia's
Top Military Astrologer Predicts More Attacks from OBL
January
9, 2002
David
Vest
The
Super-Burqa
and the Big Tent
ND Jayaprakash
Winnable
Nuclear War?
Rafiq
Kathwari
Kashmir
Will Make Ground Zero Look Like a Bonfire
January
8, 2002
Prudence
Crowther
Sting
Like a B-52
Nelson
Valdés
Al-Qaeda
at Guantanamo Bay
John Chuckman
Dark
Tales from the
Ministry of Truth
Richard
Corn-Revere
Do
We Fear Freedom?
Joan Hoff
The
Nixon You Haven't Heard
January
7, 2002
Lawrence
McGuire
Confusing
Economic Tales About Argentina
Wael Masri
They
Are Taking
Our Rights Away
Philip
Farruggio
Better
Medicine
January
6, 2002
Ralph
Nader
Students
Put the Heat on Foreign Sweatshops
Tariq
Ali
Battleground
Kashmir
January
5, 2002
Mark Schneider
Kifah:
The Movie Star
Israel Killed
Edward
Said
Is
Israel More Secure Now?
January
4, 2002
CG Estabrook
Anti-War
= Anti-Globalization
Jordan
Green
What's
Changed in New York
January
3, 2002
Walt Brasch
Exit
Cheney, Enter Ridge
Mokhiber
and Weissman
The
10 Worst Corporations
of 2001
Robert
Hunter Wade
America's
Empire Rules an Unbalanced World
Shahid
Alam
Is
There an Islamic Problem?
January
2, 2002
Ross Regnart
Patriot
Act Redefines the Mob as "Terrorist Associates"
John Chuckman
The
Republicans' Secret Plan X
David
Vest
Turn,
Turn, Turn
January
1, 2002
Kathy
Kelly
Iraq's
New Year
December
31, 2001
John Absood
An
Alternative to War in Iraq
Ramzi
Kysia
Iraq
Goes Radioactive
December
28, 2001
John Chuckman
Observing
George Bush
Suren
Pillay
Civilian
Bodies
Aaron
Lehmer
Inviting
Future Terrorism
December
27, 2001
Patrick
McNamara
Palestinian
Children Bear Brunt of Mideast Violence
Nelson
Valdés
A
Possible Scenario on the Location of bin Laden
Jensen
and Mahajan
Remember
the Afghan Dead
Philip
Farruggio
A
New Year's Resolution
Ramzi
Kysia
The
People of the Valley
December 26, 2001
John Chuckman
In
Praise of the Unspeakable
Sam Bahour
2002:
Year of the Twos
December 25, 2001
Jennifer Loewenstein
Israel's
Human Rights Record
December 24, 2001
Sam Bahour
It
Happened One Morning
Yair Khilou
Why I Resisted
Being Drafted into the Israeli Army
Michael
Chisari
War
as Diversionary Tactic
Cockburn/St. Clair
Enron
and the Green Seal
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
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Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
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Pakistan
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Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
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January
10, 2002
A Creeping Collapse in Credibility
at the White House:
From
ENRON Entanglements to UNOCAL Bringing the Taliban to Texas and
Controlling Afghanistan
By Tom Turnipseed
The Bush Administration's entanglement with ENRON
is beginning to unravel as it finally admits that Enron executives
entered the White House six times last year to secretly plan
the Administration's energy policy with Vice-President Cheney
before the collapse of the Texas-based energy giant. Meanwhile,
even more trouble for our former-Texas-oil-man-turned-President
is brewing with reports that unveil UNOCAL, another big energy
company, for being in bed with the Taliban, along with the U.S.
government in a major, continuing effort to construct pipelines
through Afghanistan from the petroleum-rich Caspian Basin in
Central Asia. Beneath their burkas, UNOCAL is being exposed for
giving the five star treatment to Taliban Mullahs in the Lone
Star State in 1997. The "evil-ones" were also invited
to meet with U.S. government officials in Washington, D.C.
According to a December 17, 1997 article
in the British paper, The Telegraph, headlined, "Oil barons
court Taliban in Texas," the Taliban was about to sign a
"£2 billion contract with an American oil company
to build a pipeline across the war-torn country. ... The Islamic
warriors appear to have been persuaded to close the deal, not
through delicate negotiation but by old-fashioned Texan hospitality.
... Dressed in traditional salwar khameez,Afghan waistcoats and
loose, black turbans, the high-ranking delegation was given VIP
treatment during the four-day stay."
At the same time, U.S. government documents
reveal that the Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden as their
"guest" since June 1996. By then, bin Laden had: been
expelled by Sudan in early 1996 in response to US insistence
and the threat of UN sanctions; publicly declared war against
the U.S. on or about August 23, 1996; pronounced the bombings
in Riyadh and at Khobar in Saudi Arabia killing 19 US servicemen
as 'praiseworthy terrorism', promising that other attacks would
follow in November 1996 and further admitted carrying out attacks
on U.S. military personnel in Somalia in 1993 and Yemen in 1992,
declaring that "we used to hunt them down in Mogadishu";
stated in an interview broadcast in February 1997 that "if
someone can kill an American soldier, it is better than wasting
time on other matters." Evidence was also developing which
linked bin Laden to: the 1995 bombing of a U.S. military barracks
in Riyadh which killed five; Ramzi Yuosef, who led the 1993 World
Trade Center attacks; and a 1994 assassination plot against President
Clinton in the Philippines.
Back in Houston, the Taliban was learning
how the "other half lives," and according to The Telegraph,
"stayed in a five-star hotel and were chauffeured in a company
minibus." The Taliban representatives "...were amazed
by the luxurious homes of Texan oil barons. Invited to dinner
at the palatial home of Martin Miller, a vice-president of Unocal,
they marveled at his swimming pool, views of the golf course
and six bathrooms." Mr. Miller, said he hoped that UNOCAL
had clinched the deal.
Dick Cheney was then CEO of Haliburton
Corporation, a pipeline services vendor based in Texas. Gushed
Cheney in 1998, "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. The good Lord didn't see fit to put oil and gas only
where there are democratically elected regimes friendly to the
United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where,
all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But
we go where the business is." Would Cheney bargain with
the harborers of U.S. troop killers if that's where the business
was?
The Telegraph reported that Unocal had
promised to start building the pipeline and paying the Taliban
immediately, with the added inducements and a donation of £500,000
to the University of Nebraska for courses in Afghanistan to train
400 teachers, electricians, carpenters and pipefitters.
The Telegraph also reported, "The
US government, which in the past has branded the Taliban's policies
against women and children "despicable", appears anxious
to please the fundamentalists to clinch the lucrative pipeline
contract." In a paper prepared by Neamatollah Nojumi, at
the Tufts University Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Nojumi
wrote in August 1997 that Madeline Albright sat in a "full-dress
CIA briefing" on the Caspian region. CIA agents then accompanied
"some well-trained petroleum engineers" to the region.
Albright concluded that shaping the region's policies was "one
of the most exciting things that we can do."
It's also exciting to the Bush Administration.
According to the authors of Bin Laden, the Hidden Truth, one
of the FBI's leading counter terrorism agents, John O'Neill,
resigned last year in protest over the Bush Administration's
alleged obstruction of his investigation into bin Laden. (A similar
complaint has been filed on behalf of another unidentified FBI
Agent by the conservative Judicial Watch public interest group.)
Supposedly the Bush Administration had been meeting since January
2001 with the Taliban, and was also reluctant to offend Saudi
Arabians who O'Neill had linked to bin Laden. Mr. O'Neill, after
leaving the FBI, assumed the position of security director at
the World Trade Center, where he was killed in the 911 attacks.
As America's New War now begins focusing
on other "rogue nations," UNOCAL's stars have magically
aligned. About two months after the Houston parties, UNOCAL executive
John Maresca addressed the House Subcommittee on Asia and the
Pacific and urged support for establishment of an investor-friendly
climate in Afghanistan, "... we have made it clear that
construction of our proposed pipeline cannot begin until a recognized
government is in place that has the confidence of governments,
lenders and our company." Meaning that UNOCAL's ability
to construct the Afghan pipeline was a cause worthy of U.S. taxpayer
dollars.
Maresca's prayers have been answered
with the Taliban's replacement. As reported in Le Monde, the
new Afghan government's head, Hamid Karzai, formerly served as
a UNOCAL consultant. Only nine days after Karzai's ascension,
President Bush nominated another UNOCAL consultant and former
Taliban defender, Zalmay Khalilzad, as his special envoy to Afghanistan.
When UNOCAL makes big bucks from the
pipeline they should donate 50% of all pretax profits to the
911 Fund. And they should also cut a very special check to the
widow of FBI Agent O'Neill.
Tom Turnipseed
is a civil rights lawyer in South Carolina. Visit Tom's website
at www.turnipseed.net
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