by Naomi Klein

What do you call someone who believes so firmly in the promise of salvation through a set of rigid rules that he is willing to risk his own life to spread those rules?

A religious fanatic? A holy warrior? How about a U.S. trade negotiator?

On Friday, the World Trade Organization begins its meeting in Doha, Qatar. According to U.S. security briefings, there is reason to believe that al-Qaeda, which has plenty of fans in the Persian Gulf state, has managed to get some of its operatives into the country, including an explosives specialist. Some terrorists may even have infiltrated the Qatari military.

Given these threats, you might think that the United States and the WTO would have canceled the meeting. But not these true believers.

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by Mark Weisbrot

The United States' first post-September 11 foray into Latin American politics—in Nicaragua's election—provides a glimpse of how Washington's new "counter-terrorism" policy may play out in this region.

Conservative candidate Enrique Bolanos defeated the Sandinistas' Daniel Ortega, in an election that had been cast as too close to call. US officials publicly warned against a Sandinista victory, accusing them of "links to terrorism," and openly supported Bolanos.

But to understand the meaning of these events, we need a bit more history than most press accounts are providing.

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by Elliott Colla and Chris Toensing

The hijackings and mass murders of September 11 were horrible and momentous, but the world did not suddenly change on that crystal-clear morning. Existing cracks in the US-led world order widened and deepened, and lurking insecurities strode forth from the shadows. The current spectacle of the world's richest country bombing Afghanistan -- where the average life expectancy is 43 -- cannot resolve the crisis of global governance sharpened so painfully on September 11, whether or not the US achieves its military objectives of capturing or killing alleged mastermind Osama bin Laden and ridding the country of the thuggish Taliban.

In the US and abroad, opposition to the war, however nuanced, is kept outside the sphere of legitimate politics by the Manichean rhetoric of the Bush administration and the security forces of its client regimes. Most of all, the September 11 attacks highlight the inadequacy and danger of this approach to managing the contradictions generated by the imbalance of global power.

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by Dalton Camp

It could only have been Divine Providence that arranged to position CNN cheek by jowl with BBC World on my new Star Choice television.

When it comes to news about "America's New War," I have been turning to the BBC. There are two reasons for my choice. The first is that the BBC coverage carries hardly any reports that reflect propaganda values or that "sell" the war as "America's War" and, as well, is reliably informative on world news that does not reflect solely America's interests.

The second reason for preferring BBC World news to CNN is there are no commercials anywhere on the BBC. This combination of reasonably objective coverage of the war blessedly free of commercials and program promos offers the viewer considerably therapeutic benefits while making him or her better informed and with a more balanced view of the war.

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by Vincent Browne

The two most respected newspapers in America, The New York Times and The Washington Post, have carried stories in the last few days about the perpetrators of the terrorist attack on September 11th. The stories in both newspapers obviously have been based on briefings from what are known as "intelligence sources", mainly in the United States but also in Europe. Therefore they probably convey the extent of "official" knowledge of who the perpetrators were and from where they came.

The New York Times article of last Sunday identified Mohammed Atta, an Egyptian who had qualified as a city planner in Hamburg, as the ring-leader of the group. It said it was he and three others, who also died in the attacks, who chose the date of the atrocity, flew the planes, planned the whole operation and organized the logistics.

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by James Carroll

WHEN I FIRST LAID eyes on a B-52 bomber in the mid-'50s, I was struck by the motto of the Strategic Air Command emblazoned on the fuselage: ''Peace is our profession.'' Such words on a fearsome warplane were a consolation, and I wanted to believe them. Even as a boy, though, I was instinctively attuned to the moral complexity of bombing, and I wasn't that surprised when, during Vietnam, that motto was revealed to be a big lie. The profession of those planes was to wreck havoc, period.

Last week, B-52s were sent into action over Afghanistan, a first exercise in ''carpet bombing.'' The unleashing of this crude ghost plane, which drops imprecise ordnance from 40,000 feet, is a chilling harbinger. Whatever the broad justifications of the US-led war against terrorism, the way in which that war centers on an increasingly brutal bombing campaign cries out to be reconsidered.

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