Anthrax Events Continue in U.S.

Excerpts of news stories regarding the continued impacts of anthrax in the U.S.:

House to Shut Down 5 Days for Anthrax Sweep

Excerpts (from the Washington Post) ...

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Anthrax Envelopes sent to
Tom Brokaw and Tom Daschle

... The decision to conduct widespread environmental testing in and around the Capitol came in response to Daschle's announcement that 31 people – most of them members of his staff and a few Capitol police officers – were exposed to the potentially deadly bacteria when a contaminated letter was opened there Monday.

Those exposures were confirmed on the basis of nasal swab tests, which indicate the presence of bacterial spores in the nose but do not necessarily indicate infection or disease.

Later in the day, Sen. Russell Feingold's (D-Wis.) office announced that two members of his staff also tested positively for exposure to the bacteria. Feingold's office is next to Daschle's in the Hart Senate Office Building.

In addition, anthrax spores were also detected in a Senate mail room in the Senate Dirksen building, sources said.

Hastert also reported that a suspicious package that came to his office has been removed by police, the office had been quarantined and that some of his staff who came in contact with the package are being tested for exposure to anthrax.

... As the hunt for anthrax-causing bacteria widens across the country, New York Gov. George Pataki announced today that bacteria spores had been discovered at his Manhattan office. Pataki said the spore was discovered in a "secure area" of the office used by the state police. Pataki said that none of the 75 to 80 people working in the office have tested positive for exposure but that the office would be closed temporarily. ...

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Biological and Chemical Weapons Are Not Primary Weapons of Choice

Excerpts (from the Guardian Unlimited) ...

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... Chemical and biological weapons attack human beings or animals primarily by the dissemination of the agent into the atmosphere and its carriage downwind to the target population.

In the case of chemicals, sufficient has to be delivered to cause harm to the victims and, for an effective attack, significant quantities - tons - need to be available and spread at the right time and in the right way.

With biological agents, enough to infect an individual has to be inhaled and quantities needed are correspondingly less - typically kilograms.

It is, however, misleading to hold up a bag of sugar and suggest that if this were biological agent then it could kill everyone in the UK - the analogy is to a sharp sword which can kill a lot of people but the sword has to be taken to each and every individual.

There are significant technical problems with biological attacks - the agent has to be obtained, enough has to be grown, then it has to be disseminated and for effective infection the particle size has not to be so large that they fall harmlessly to the ground or so small that they are inhaled and exhaled without being retained in the lungs.

As biological agents are living micro-organisms, they are fragile and may be killed through the forces needed to disseminate them or the ensuing exposure to sunlight and the open air.

Finally, local micrometeorology determines whether dispersion into a turbulent atmosphere is such that the target population fails to receive enough to be infected.

In comparison to terrorist devices using explosive, chemical and biological weapons offer few attractions and much uncertainty.

With explosive devices, the effect is immediate when the device is set off and effects can be accurately predicted.

In chemical and biological attacks, there is much uncertainty: has enough agent been disseminated, is the particle size optimum for retention in the lung, are the meteorological conditions right to spread the agent to the target?

... In summary, whilst chemical or biological attacks are possible, they present much uncertainty to the perpetrator and are unlikely to be a weapon of choice. ...

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Mazar-e Sharif Within Day or Two of Being Captured

Excerpt from article describing recent U.S. attacks and the likelihood the major Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif will soon fall to the Northern Alliance ...

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Intensified U.S. airstrikes across Afghanistan have "eviscerated" the Taliban's combat power and propelled Northern Alliance opposition forces to the outskirts of Mazar-e Sharif in northern Afghanistan, Pentagon officials said yesterday.

With Northern Alliance commanders claiming to be just miles from the center of the critical crossroad city and poised for a final attack, as many as 90 U.S. carrier-based fighter jets and 10 long-range bombers pounded Taliban military installations and troop concentrations in the second straight day of heavy day-and-night bombing.

After repeated U.S. airstrikes against Taliban targets around Mazar-e Sharif, including a tank defending the city's airport on Monday, the impending fall of the city would give the Northern Alliance control of most of northern Afghanistan.

It would likely set the stage for the fall of Herat, the major city in the west. U.S. aircraft destroyed a Taliban communications facility near Herat on Monday.

The Northern Alliance, a coalition of opposition groups dominated by ethnic Uzbeks and Tajiks, has been fighting the ruling Taliban militia since the Taliban came to power in 1996. ...

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Source:

• Washington Post

Terrifying Beast (AC-130 Gunship) Proves America Rules the Air

Excerpt from article describing the use of the AC-130 gunships over Kandahar, in southern Afghanistan ...

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THE AC130 Spectre gunship, two of which swooped over Kandahar like eagles yesterday, is the most frightening sight anyone is likely to see looming above them.

(Click for large size image)

Its sideways firing 105mm recoil-less howitzer, 40mm cannon and two 20mm Vulcan guns can lay down devastating fire on anything in its way.

Its use, flying low over Kandahar, the citadel of Taliban power, is clearly designed to persuade those members of the movement's leadership who are uncertain over the sense of taking on America, that they cannot win.

It is also an indication of the extent to which US aircraft now control Afghan airspace. ...

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Source:

• News.telegraph.co.uk

Roots of Jihad

Excerpts from article describing the way in which the religion of Islam has combined with other factors and yielded the present day extremist Islamist mindset:

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The Arabic word jihad means literally "struggle" and Islamic scholars have long been divided on how it should be interpreted.

For some it means the struggle to defend one's faith and ideals against harmful outside influences.

For others it has come to represent the duty of Muslims to fight to rid the Islamic world of western influence in the form of corrupt and despotic leaders and occupying armies.

This is a view that has come to be widely accepted among the more militant Muslim groups, although most would not agree with the methods adopted by Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda movement.

Modern jihad

The origins of Bin Laden's concept of jihad can be traced back to two early 20th century figures, who started powerful Islamic revivalist movements in response to colonialism and its aftermath.

Pakistan and Egypt - both Muslim countries with a strong intellectual tradition - produced the movements and ideology that would transform the concept of jihad in the modern world.

In Egypt, Hassan al-Banna's Muslim Brotherhood and in Pakistan, Syed Abul Ala Maududi's Jamaat Islami sought to restore the Islamic ideal of the union of religion and state.

They blamed the western idea of the separation of religion and politics for the decline of Muslim societies.

This, they believed, could only be corrected through a return to Islam in its traditional form, in which society was governed by a strict code of Islamic law.

Al-Banna and Maudoudi breathed new life into the concept of jihad as a holy war to end the foreign occupation of Muslim lands.

... 'Mentality of jihad'

Saudi Arabia, which follows the fundamentalist Wahhabi school of Islam, had become a natural haven for radical Islamist scholars, including the radical Egyptian Islamist Ayman al-Zawahri.

The ruling family, which had been criticised for its pro-western stance, seized upon the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a cause which could rally Islamist support and deflect internal criticism.

... the Islamic scholars in Saudi Arabia were careful at that time not to talk in terms of a jihad against anyone other than the Soviet occupiers of Afghanistan.

... the war in Afghanistan created a longer-term "mentality of jihad" which some found hard to abandon.

... Gulf war blow

... followers of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad movement, an extremist offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood led by al-Zawahri, argued that "Afghanistan should be a platform for the liberation of the entire Muslim world".

... Zawahri's cause was strengthened by the 1991 Gulf war, which brought US troops to Saudi Arabia.

After devoting their lives to the liberation of Muslim territory from foreign occupation, it was a bitter blow for Bin Laden and his Arab mujahideen to see land they regarded as sacred occupied by "infidel" soldiers.

Zawahri's growing influence over Osama Bin Laden and the al-Qaeda organisation paved the way for the notorious 1998 "declaration of war" against the United States and the spate of terrorist attacks on American targets that followed.

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Source:

• BBC

Excepts from Bishop John Shelby Spong's comments regarding religion on the Oct. 16, 2001 edition of Politically Incorrect ...

Participants:

• Bill Maher (host)

• Peter Roff (Political Analyst, United Press International)

• Bishop John Shelby Spong (author, lecturer, retired Bishop of the Episcopal diocese of Newark)

• David Schenker (Research Fellow at Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
  

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Bill Maher: Okay, now, let's get to your book. You know, I've read everything you wrote, and I think it's great. The book --
the first thing I thought when I read the title of this book, "A New Christianity For A New World," is that, when people say all the
religions are basically alike.

You know, they try to poo-poo the differences now that we're in battle with people of muslim extraction. I think this proves that they're not all alike. Because, if you tried to write a book called "A New Islam For A New World," you would be dead on both counts.

[ Light laughter ]

They would put a fatwa on your head so fast.
There is no such thing as a new Islam. You couldn't -- Salman Rushdie, they tried to kill for ten years. And he just wrote a novel where a guy had a thought about allah.

Peter Roff: Revisionism does not do very well among Islams. There is no Martin Luther.
There is no John Calvin. There is no John Wesley. They can be fairly doctrinaire.

Bill Maher: Right. I mean, in Christianity, and I've certainly had my problems with Christianity, this has really put it into perspective for me. That we can be heretics here. And I now some people think in the Christian church you are a heretic.

John Spong: That's right.

Bill Maher: But they don't kill you over it.

John Spong: Not yet.

[ Laughter ]

I've had 16 death threats. None of them have come from Buddhists or atheists. They've all come from Bible quoting true believers, which I find rather interesting.

Bill Maher: Do you -- I was going to ask you, do you think that the Christian fundamentalists in this country have more in common with the fundamentalists of a religion like Islam than they do with this society in general?

John Spong: Let me unload that a little bit and say that every religion, seems to me, to produce a fundamentalist element. And they root that fundamentalism in the claim that they possess the only truth. And they're gonna impose that truth on anybody that doesn't have it.

Now, we've done that as Christians in the past. We didn't like Galileo because we didn't think he quite understood where the sun was in relation to the Earth. We persecuted Jews.
We did inquisitions. We had religious wars.
We told women they were second-class citizens.

We today persecute gay and lesbian people constantly in the name of the God of love.
I find that attitude appalling. But it's in every religious tradition.

To me, it's a manifestation of tribal religion instead of moving beyond -- my religion, I hope, calls me into being more fully human, calls me into being able to let other people be more fully human.

David Schenker: The other difference is, of course, that in Islam there's no separation between religion and state.

John Spong: I think that's a very thin separation in this country, to be honest.

David Schenker: Oh, come on.

[ Talking over each other ]

John Spong: I would say, at the very beginning of this nation's history, there was freedom of religion, but there was never a wide toleration for those who practiced a religion different from the majority religion.
There's always sort of a state support for what is the established religion in the United States.

Bill Maher: You can't seriously compare our state religious situation with what goes on --

John Spong : No, no, I don't mean to suggest that. But it would be if our fundamentalist mentality were to achieve political power.
The great thing about this nation is we've kept that -- we've kept that in a secondary position.

Peter Roff: Bishop, with all due respect, I do have --

John Spong: I'm always sensitive when people say with all due respect.

[ Laughter ]

Peter Roff: No, I have great respect for your courage and for the burden that you have had to bear in what it is you think God has called
you -- you believe that God has called you to do in sharing this message.

But I am what would be called a Christian fundamentalist, because I believe in the fundamentals of the Bible -- that God's word is His word, and it's his way for us to live.
And it calls us not to be more human, but to be more like him as we can. And he sets out rules in the Old Testament and the New Testament.

The problem is that all of mankind is stained with sin, and we all make mistakes. And there are people who make major mistakes in trying to use what God has given us to rule our lives as a club rather than something --

Bill Maher: As long as you believe in your --

[ Applause ]

But you make the point in your book that all three religions -- Judaism, Islam, Christianity -- say basically, as Christianity does, "I am the way and the truth and the light. No one comes to the father but by me."

Okay, that's Christianity.

Judaism --"I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt.
You shall have no other Gods before me."

Islam -- "There is but one God allah and Mohammed is his prophet."

How can mankind ever get along, as long as everybody thinks, "I know the absolute truth, and my man in the sky is the man in the sky and I will not hear of it"?

Peter Roff: It's the same God.

John Spong: The difference is, we got to separate our knowledge of God from our experience of God. I don't know anything about God. No human being can tell any other human being what God is like. All anybody can tell another person is --

Bill Maher: But they're all telling each other what God is like.

John Spong: But I'd say that's idolism.

[ Talking over each other ]

John Spong: What we need to get to is a sense that we -- God is a transcendent experience that calls us beyond our limits. And if we make our understanding of God the same as God, then we go to war with anybody that disagrees. We put our wagons in a circle and begin to fire at anybody that disagrees with us.

Peter Roff: But I think --

John Spong: We claim our pope is infallible.
We claim our Bible is inerrant. We claim there's no other way. That's where the --
that's where the religious wars come from, that's where the inquisitions -- well, when you talk about --

Peter Roff: War comes from mankind's failure. God has told us what God is like in the scripture.

John Spong: Where did God tell us this? The scripture tells us that slavery is legitimate.
Scripture tells us that women are second-class citizens. Scripture tells us that homosexuals can be put to death. Scripture tells us that war is God's will. That's a human book that we have violated time and time again.

[ Applause ]

Peter Roff: And the problem -- and the problem is not with the book and it's not with God. It's with human being, which is why God sent His son to die on the cross for us in the first place.

David Schenker: I think we should get back to bin Laden.

Peter Roff: Yes, I think we should.

Bill Maher: Well, I got to get back to whoever's is sponsoring our show lately.

[ Applause ]

Bill Maher: All right, let me continue this discussion of your book and religion for just a second and give you my problem with when you say it's people's fault. I agree, but what I think it is is that religion has a sort of a built-in fail-safe for questioning it.

I was reading again about the Koran.
And it says in the Koran, "The holy prophet himself forbade people to ask questions.
So do not try to probe into such things."

Which reminded me a lot of this story in the Bible about "They ate from the tree of
knowledge," you know? That was the big sin.

In other words, "I'm going to tell you something, and if you question it, that itself is a sin." It seems to me that is a formula for not using our God given gifts.

David Schenker: Culturally, this why the Arab world is in such a horrific state right now. Because they don't question.

They don't -- they have not excelled at science, because it's stagnant. It's unfortunate.
Some of the better parts of the society have really focused on -- in shiism, for example, reanalyzing the roots of religion and reinterpreting and doing all these things.
It's a dynamic religion, and it's a dynamic society.

Bill Maher: Right. But if you say it out loud there, if you thought about it -- and people must think about it. It is human. You cannot stop questions from coming into your mind.

John Spong: Sigmund Freud said an interesting thing. He said, if you believe -- if your truth is so fragile that you have to say, "I have my truth by divine revelation, and nobody can challenge my source. And, of course, I am the only one who can interrupt this divine revelation, because it comes specifically to me. And I'm the truth faith."

He said, if you got to put that much protection around truth, that means you really don't believe it. That's hysterical. You're trying to protect something. You believe in believing in God far more than you actually believe in God. And I think that's where we are today.

[ Applause ]

Peter Roff: When you do that -- when you do that, it's also when Janet Reno and her friends come after you.

The larger point -- the larger point though, on the discussion that David opened up is, is the religious component to the war that we're currently in. And, from my view, this is not a war of the West against muslims. This is a war of people who believe in freedom and individual rights against people who want to oppress and rule through terror.

[ Applause ]

They don't treat women well over there. They beat people over there. They gas people over there. They steal their property. They cut them into little pieces.

And those people are muslims, too. The person who wants this to be a religious war is Osama bin Laden, because he wants to say, "This is the West coming against Islam. My brothers united in the Koran. Let's go get 'em."

David Schenker: You've pulled a page right out of Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War. He invaded Kuwait and said it's all about Palestine. You know, it has nothing to do with the other.

Bill Maher: I agree. He's a propagandist, and he that he just wants to kill. And he would find a reason to kill no matter what religion he was.

However, it is also true that terrorists are finding support in a large pool called the culture of Islam. That is what nourishes them.
I'm not saying the pool is all bad. But they would not have a leg to stand on unless they had that to draw from. I mean, you cannot deny the place of religion in this battle.

John Spong: I think that's absolutely correct.
But what I want to make clear is that all religions have this hysterical quality where they want to impose their truth on the whole world, because if they can't do that, then they're not sure that they have the truth. It sort of validates the religious response.

Peter Roff: Again, I don't wanna impose my truth on anyone. I want to share my truth with people, because I can't make you -- no offense intended -- I can't make you a Christian by anything I do. It's a decision that you make in your relationship with God.

And all I can do is share the knowledge that I have. Now, there are other people who are running around this world, including people who do this in the name of Christianity, which they defame, trying to make people Christian. And you can't do that.

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Source:

• Politically Incorrect

Voting On 'God Bless America'

The House voted 404-0 to endorse 'God Bless America' on Tuesday and shut down for 5 days in response to anthrax attacks on Wednesday. Excerpts from an article on the 'God Bless America' issues follows:

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... The House on Tuesday gave its blessing to "God Bless America," urging public schools to display the expression as a show of support for the nation.

The nonbinding House resolution, passed 404-0, responds to several cases around the country where people have objected to displaying the words at schools, saying that religion and patriotism should not be intermixed. ...

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Source:

• CBS News [link inactive]

Excerpt from a counter view to the desire to mix god and state: In God We Trust?

... Should our national motto be about god / religion or should it be about human beings / human rights?

Should our national motto be about god / religion or should it be about love and caring and sharing with one another, as free and sentient beings, in a world of wonder?

Should our national motto be about god / religion or should it be about values and goals that *all* citizens have in common?

Should our national motto encourage delusion and promote religion or should it hold in the highest esteem the human desire to reason, investigate, explore, and responsibly address the challenges and solutions to our plight on this earth, at this time, in this life? ...