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Waves
of Jets Herald Start of Northern Alliance Offensive
Excerpt
from article describing the reported start of Northern Alliance
efforts to overtake Mazar-i Sharif and ...
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The
long-awaited Northern Alliance offensive was ushered in yesterday
with an American bombing raid and a volley of tank fire.
After
weeks of procrastination, anti-Taliban commanders said the campaign
to drive terrorism from Afghanistan had finally begun.
The
Northern Alliance appears to have given up on overrunning Kabul
from its positions in the Panjshir valley, at least for this
year.
Two
American bombs hit the town of Yuzbashi, 2 kilometers southest
of Bagram, near the front with the Northern Alliance
But
on the dusty plains south of the Tajik border, it has amassed
tens of thousands of soldiers for an assault on the northern
town of Mazar-i-Sharif in the hope that it will change the course
of the long civil war.
...
The first US strikes came late in the morning, 24 hours behind
schedule. On Saturday bombing was postponed as high winds swept
through the area choking the air with dust. At dawn, the weather
cleared just enough to allow artillery spotters to target enemy
positions.
From
the heights of Ai Khanum - in the time of Alexander the Great
one of the world's most beautiful cities, now a sandy ruin -
old model Russian tanks blasted the Taliban four miles away.
In
front-line bunkers, Northern Alliance soldiers, who had waited
for this moment for weeks, sheltered against the cold and the
American bombs, waiting for the order to go over the top.
...
"This is the beginning of the attack," Cmdr Shirindel
Sahil said with satisfaction. "We will wait for more bombing
and then we move. This time we will succeed. First Taloqan,
then Kunduz, then the whole of Afghanistan."
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Source:
US
Post Office to Decontaminate Mail with Electron Beams
Excerpt
from article describing electron beam irradiation devices being
purchased by the US post office to counter the bacterial threat
which has yet to be tracked down as to culprit(s) or motivation(s)
...
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The
US post office is to buy eight electron-beam devices to sanitize
letters and packages as a result of the anthrax crisis.
(click for large size image)
The
$40m (£33.4m) worth of equipment will be used first in
Washington, where the anthrax scare has spread from mail centres
that sort post for Congress and the White House to mailrooms
for the supreme court and the CIA.
About
68 tons of letters and other material from Washington is being
trucked to a plant in Lima, Ohio, to be decontaminated with
electron beams normally used to sterilize hospital equipment.
Letters
will be put in packages, put on a conveyor belt and irradiated
for about five minutes, killing bacteria - including anthrax
- that might be present.
...
Questions remain over whether the anthrax letters were part
of a foreign act of terror or domestic.
Handwriting
analysis and profiling are leading investigators increasingly
to suspect that one person wrote the three letters contaminated
with anthrax and that the person spent a significant amount
of time in the US.
The
officials cautioned that they have not identified specific suspects
and continue to consider a variety of theories, including that
a deranged US resident with a biochemical background, a terrorist
or hate group, a foreign country or some combination carried
out the attacks.
However,
the Washington Post reported that top FBI and CIA officials
believe that the anthrax attacks are probably the work of one
or more extremists in the US who are probably not connected
to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist organization.
It
said that senior officials were increasingly concerned that
the bioterrorism is diverting public attention from the larger
threat posed by Bin Laden and his network, who are believed
to be planning a second wave of attacks that could come at any
time.
None
of the 60 to 80 threat reports gathered daily by US intelligence
agencies has connected the envelopes containing anthrax spores
to al-Qaida or other known organized terrorist groups, and the
evidence gleaned from the spore samples so far provides no solid
link to a foreign government or laboratory, officials told the
Washington Post.
The
postal service has announced that it will test an additional
30 mail-processing and distribution centres across the country
for anthrax.
...
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Source:
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Best
of CNN Videos (October 22 to 28)
Pop-up
windows for some of the best of recent CNN web videos (Note
- CNN adds videos frequently - see their web
sites for links to all of their video selections):
Christians
massacred in Pakistan
(1:49)
Pakistan blames Islamic militants for slaughtering Christian
worshippers in a church. CNN's Bill Delaney reports (October
28)
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Hard
work in Afghanistan
(2:20)
CNN's Chris Burns interviews taxi drivers and other ordinary
Afghans about life under drought, poverty and war (October
27)
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Afghan
Alliance wants help from Russia
(2:40)
CNN's Satinder Bindra reports on the stalemate near the
northern city of Mazar-e Sharif between the Taliban and
the Northern Alliance (October 27)
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Senate
passes anti-terror bill
(2:18)
Legislation gives authorities new powers that have critics
concerned over civil liberties, privacy. CNN's Jonathan
Karl reports (October 26)
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NORAD
changes its focus
(2:50)
CNN's Frank Buckley examines how NORAD, built to monitor
missile activity during the Cold War, is now focused on
new threats since September 11 (October 26)
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Bombing
continues in Afghanistan
(2:18)
As U.S.-led bombings continue in Afghanistan, Britain
and Russia are offering assistance. CNN's Jamie McIntyre
reports (October 26)
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U.S.
beefing up postal security
(2:05)
The U.S. postal service is buying more scanners that irradiate
mail and kills anthrax. CNN's Natalie Pawelski reports
(October 24)
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Videophone
provides remote access
(1:40)
CNNfn's Steve Young examines how the videophone, media's
newest high-tech toy, allows news coverage in even in
the remotest of places (October 22 )
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FBI
Considers Rethink on Extremist Muslim Leaders
The
FBI has, until now, been hesitant to investigate terrorist links
to or from extremist elements in Islamic circles. Per the following
article, the FBI may rethink that policy ...
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Fearing
charges of religious persecution, the FBI for years has hesitated
to investigate radical Islamic clerics in the United States
despite evidence that their mosques have been used to recruit
and fund suspected terrorists, present and former law enforcement
officials said.
Even
after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "the veil of religion
that has been draped over mosques . . . will be tough to move
off," an FBI official said last week. "The Arab American
community can become enraged and beat on the FBI."
President
Bush, American Muslim leaders and clerics of many other faiths
have stressed that Islam is a religion of peace and the United
States a land of tolerance. Yet U.S. intelligence and law enforcement
officials suspect that a small number of American mosques with
extremist leaders, or imams, have played a role in terrorism.
The
religious doctrine preached inside Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda
network has drawn its adherents into "a divinely ordained
battle to liberate Muslim lands," said Daniel Benjamin,
a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies who was a terrorism expert in the Clinton National Security
Council.
"This
outlook, and the violence at its core, is rejected by most modern
Islamic authorities and an anathema to most Muslims. But it
reflects how deeply alienated these extremists are," Benjamin
said.
Under
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the FBI has broad
powers to wiretap or bug any site where foreign terrorist activity
is suspected. But some law enforcement experts believe the FBI
has hamstrung itself by excessive sensitivity about possible
criticism because religious figures are involved.
"You
can't be in a struggle with a segment of a religious movement
and not pursue them as you would any other suspected criminal,"
said Phillip B. Heymann, a professor of criminal law at Harvard
Law School.
...
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Source:
Neurotheology
/ God, Are They All In the Mind?
One
of the results of early Greek philosophy was to ask "Did
God create humans or did humans create God?" Here, thousands
of years later, the question has moved from the realm of philosophy
to science, kind of sort of ... a few excerpts from a lengthy
article follow ...
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Brain
storm - Neurotheology is the belief that religion is all in
the mind. ... “The explanation for religious beliefs and
behaviours is to be found in the way all human minds work,”
declares Pascal Boyer, an anthropology professor at Washington
University.
...
His is an audacious attempt to demystify spirituality by saying
that it is a throwback to the way that our ancestors’ brains
were wired up. The thesis could hardly be more challenging to
theologians — instead of God creating our brains, he claims
that our brains created God.
The
architecture of this complex organ, Boyer states, has made it
receptive to “supernatural” ideas. For example, every
human being exists today because his or her ancestor was able
to outwit predators. This requires a wariness, a vigilance,
against unseen enemies.
Such
a way of thinking, Boyer argues, can foster a belief in similarly
invisible spirits and gods. As a result, our brains have developed
into willing receptacles for the “airy nothing” of
religion, and eager hosts for illusions of the divine.
To
his mind, this explains handily why religion sprang up more
than 50,000 years ago, in tandem with an-atomically modern human
beings. Like a kind of cerebral virus, religious thinking began
to manifest itself as soon as the human brain was sufficiently
evolved to embrace it.
Boyer’s
is far from a lone voice, however. Since the brain is the vehicle
through which we process all our experiences, several scientists
have tried to seek the neurological basis for religion, which
is one aspect of the human experience. Even in its infancy,
this contentious field is seeing some answers emerge.
... Equally provocative is research conducted by Michael Persinger.
... “We have system-atically removed most of the illusions
about ourselves, such as being at the centre of the Universe,”
says Persinger, who is not religious.
“The
last illusion, or delusion, is that we are special creations
who are looked after by someone in a big-parent kind of way.
The only way to verify this is by the scientific method, and
my research shows that religious experiences are created by
the brain. The experiences are real enough to the person undergoing
the experiment, but we are activating the areas of the brain
that produce the phenomenon.”
Religious
volunteers, he says, fit their feelings around their beliefs,
so they attribute them to God. Less religious individuals tend
to feel that there was a benevolent stranger, or per-haps a
dead relative, standing over them. ...
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Source:
- The Times
[link inactive]
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