In Afghanistan, pressure by the Northern Alliance is gaining against the Taliban on the ground.

World leaders reacted generally positively to Bush's call in a speech at the United Nations for all nations and faiths to join forces against those responsible for the Sept. 11 carnage at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Many UN leaders expressed uneasiness about the toll the US strikes were taking on the shattered Afghan people.

After the latest advances, the Northern Alliance said it would allow the United Nations and nongovernmental agencies to return to areas now under its control and resume providing aid to local populations.

The poorest nations are leading protests and creating negotiating obstacles for the World Trade Organization talks going on in Qatar. African and Caribbean nations, as well as India, were determined to block a new drive by the US and the European Union. Developing countries protest that rich ones failed to live up to promises made in the 1994 agreement, while holding the poorest nations to commitments that they cannot put into effect for lack of resources.

The European Commission announced it is giving 25 million euros ($22.50 million) to the World Food Program (WFP) for relief operations in Afghanistan. However, fuel prices, a shortage of trucks, lawlessness, a shortage of willing drivers, and the early onset of winter reduced food deliveries by WFP in Afghanistan to a trickle.

It is difficult to find quality news about the refugees and civilian victims in this war. The mainstream press is ignoring the very real concerns that there are innocent victims in this war in Afghanistan and that many will soon starve with many thousands of starvation deaths likely in December and January. Landmines too are a BIG problem for refugees in Afghanistan.

Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf again promised his people that he will continue to persuade Bush to suspend bombing during Ramadan.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair politely brushed off calls on Thursday from Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf for a pause in U.S. attacks in Afghanistan, saying the campaign must go on until its goals were met.

President Bush wants more National Guard troops at airports. Bush said. ''The first attack against America came by plane, and we are now making our airports and airplanes safer." Bush is taking action. Meantime the House and Senate disagree on airport security.

The Democratic-controlled Senate unanimously passed a bill on October 11 that would make thousands of airport security workers federal employees.

The version passed by the Republican-led House last week would increase federal oversight of airport security but would let the president decide whether to put some workers on public payrolls. Democrats express confounded doubt that the Republican president would ever use that authority.

Intelligence sources revealed that the regions where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet is being used as a haven and a source of funding for terrorists with links to Iran's Party of God and organizations that work with Osama bin Laden. The US and many allies today moved on terrorist suspects and moved against sources for funding and moving funds. Saudi Arabia still is not moving to freeze terrorist finances there. Some in power say there is not enough proof and dispute estimates of the wealth that bin Laden commands.

In the US, terrorist suspects are being detained under immigration law if there are immigration issues. This because the time allowed to hold a person is often longer under the immigration laws.

The Red Cross is attempting a defense against allegations of misuse of funds collected for the victims of September 11.

The U.S. Postal Service says it has been plagued in recent days by nearly 12,000 hoaxes, threats and suspicious mail incidents -- an average of 654 daily -- that have resulted in the evacuation of 429 postal facilities for varying amounts of time. Lawmakers are considering legislation aimed at stopping the flood of hoaxes.

Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, is considering making a unilateral declaration of statehood at the UN General Assembly meeting scheduled for this weekend. Palestinians now believe that many countries will immediately declare their support for an independent Palestine, and the declaration will create a new reality in the Middle East!

The United Arab Emirates has agreed to cooperate in freezing out al Qaeda financially. They, like in Saudi Arabia, have done nothing in these weeks. Nothing has been frozen. Investigators may have traced $500,000 that paid for hijacking attacks of 9/11 back to the Emirates.

NUCLEAR NEWS
United States said on Tuesday it had doubled its elite force of special operations troops on the ground in Afghanistan, and President Bush for the first time accused Osama bin Laden of seeking nuclear weapons. Now, all of the news media picked up on that bin Laden is seeking nuclear weapons. There have been plenty of reports that he's got them. As the nation is seeking support internationally, the president came out with that bin Laden is looking... and also said that if bin Laden has them the US will work on preventing his using them.

You may remember, the government of Pakistan arrested the country's three top atomic scientists last month. They are suspected of helping Osama bin Laden with obtaining nuclear technology. The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Central Intelligence Agency will continue in questioning the scientists.

ECONOMIC $ENSE
Financial markets responded enthusiastically as the Federal Reserve cut US interest rates 1/2 point to the lowest level in 40 years, 2 percent. If this isn't enough to brake away from a probable recession another cut may follow. Some analysts said that if the Fed was not done lowering rates, it might slow down to conserve for conditions worsen. Banks reduced prime lending rates for their best corporate customers to 5 percent from 5.5 percent.

The latest cut comes against an increasingly grim backdrop of rising unemployment and eroding consumer confidence. In the third quarter, the United States logged its sharpest quarterly contraction in national economic activity since the last recession in 1990-91. 415,000 jobs are lost. Industry and manufacturing are not going to build new jobs just because interest rates are low!

Bush vowed to veto any legislation that exceeds the $40 billion Congress has already provided for anti-terrorism. He said at a White House meeting, $40 billion is enough. He is putting himself in the position of opposing Democrats and some Republicans who say more money is needed to finance an escalating war in Afghanistan and to protect the country from bio-terrorism, airline hijackings and other threats. About $3 billion of the original $40 billion appropriation has been spent so far.

The spending dispute has been escalating for weeks, even as the federal budget outlook for the new year has steadily dimmed. Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Robert Byrd, D-W VA, is proposing $20 billion aimed at securing highways, airports, water systems, food safety and buttressing law enforcement and other programs. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Bill Young, R-FL, is calling for more money for the FBI, Coast Guard, the border patrol and airline security. These needs and the need for more aid for Afghan refugees and to feed the Afghans through the winter are overwhelming.

American Leader Blames US For 9/11 Attacks
New Black Panther Party leader Malik Shabazz has developed a discourse that some former allies are dismissing as inexplicable. He blames the US for the 9/11 attacks, saying it is related to racial discrimination against in America. "I don’t remember the Taliban calling me nigger anytime recently," Shabazz said. Says Shabazz, there is, "no proof that bin Laden or the Taliban had anything to do with September 11."

The intensive ground war is not expected soon, perhaps not during the brutal winter of Afghanistan. Meanwhile bombing and opposition forces with special forces lay strategic inroads into Taliban defenses and the terrain. Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon has doubled the number of commandos operating throughout the country.

Heavy-duty bombs and targeting aided by special forces on the ground have helped the United States hit hidden Taliban arms depots and command centers.

A Pentagon official said Russians handed over information to identify caves, tunnels and other command centers that had been used by Afghan forces during their ten-year war.

Over generations, the Afghans have become masters at hiding crucial supplies of food, fuel and weapons in hundreds, perhaps thousands of caves around the country. Troops and their commanders use the caves for shelter. By attacking those complexes, the Pentagon is hoping to kill militia fighters and destroy many of their essential supplies.

ANTHRAX and...
A wave of letters laced with powdery anthrax spores has been sent by unknown perpetrators through the US mail since the September 11 attacks on the America.

A leading medical research institute, the Mayo Clinic, announced that it developed a test for anthrax that works in one hour. The test can be used both on people and in the environment. Current tests can take days. There have been 17 confirmed anthrax cases in what President Bush has called a second wave of terrorism.

Cleanup sometimes is proving difficult. EPA spokesman Patrick Boyle said plans to decontaminate the entire Hart building with chlorine dioxide gas have been shelved. This because more incremental steps such as wiping with bleach are thought to be best on the scale of a building like this.

The US continues to look at smallpox and other biological concerns.

Anthrax Found at Pentagon
Authorities said traces of anthrax were found in two mail rental boxes at a public post office located inside the Pentagon. Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood said the two positive samples at the post office were among 17 taken at the facility on October 30. Of the two rental mailboxes, one is unassigned and one is rented by a sailor who is being tested for possible anthrax exposure. The facility was decontaminated over the weekend and remained closed despite being give a clean bill of health.

New Artillery Technology
An artillery technology that rocked the world with its 39km range in the 1980s is to deliver ranges of 50km to 70km using new ammunition and a long barrel development. This according to an exclusive report in Jane’s Review. War analyst Charles Cutshaw offers views on a special forces ground war... visit the archive.

The United States continued carpet bombing strikes at Taliban front lines in Afghanistan on Sunday. Air Force Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the United States had significantly increased the number of special forces troops operating inside Afghanistan in recent days.

Bio-Terror

Officials warn that the anthrax attacks will cost the post office billions of dollars as fears emerge that the spores may be spreading in the mail.

In the United States, small traces of the anthrax germ warfare bacteria keep turning up in new buildings, keeping many people on edge. The deadly spores, sent through the mail to media outlets and politicians, have infected at least 16 people, four of whom have died.

On Sunday, authorities said trace amounts were found at a mailroom in the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Washington but it was unlikely the center's 200 patients were at risk for contamination.

The number of confirmed anthrax cases in the United States has reached 17, of which seven have been skin anthrax and 10 have been the more serious inhaled type. Four of the people infected with inhaled anthrax have died.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said that key front-line medical workers are being vaccinated against smallpox to be called on to go into action at the first sign of a smallpox outbreak.

Terrorist Targets

Security has been tightened at all 103 nuclear power plants in the United States. Lynnette Hendricks, director of licensing at Nuclear Energy Institute, told Reuters the plants' fuel dumps are far more vulnerable than reactors to attack by anyone trying to spread radioactivity. Over the years, the pile of spent fuel from U.S. reactors has grown to more than 40,000 metric tons.

About two-thirds of this fuel is kept in underground pools, which provide far better containment than for the third stored in above-ground buildings. Though the walls of waste storage pools are thick, reinforced concrete lined with steel, the roofs are made of insubstantial material like sheet metal.

When most of the country's nuclear reactors were designed in the 1960s and 1970s, it was assumed their radioactive waste would be shipped off to a central repository or reprocessing facility.

There is no longer doubt that Bin Laden has nuclear ‘suitcase bombs," says Yossef Bodansky, head of the Congressional Task Force on Non-Conventional Terrorism in Washington. In a recent book, Bodansky reports that Bin Laden’s associates acquired the devices through Chechnya, paying the Chechens $30 million in cash and two tons of Afghan heroin, worth about $70 million in Afghanistan and about 10 times that on the street in Western cities.

President Bush on Saturday called the anthrax cases "a second wave of terrorist attacks.''

Bin Laden's latest call to arms includes all Muslims. In a videotaped press release, he appealed on Saturday to the world's 1.2 billion Muslims to join him in a religious war against the "infidel'' Christians and Jews. His comments were laced with Koranic verses and the sayings of Prophet Mohammad. He widened his attack to include the United Nations as he stated that Muslims must denounce the United Nations and that Islam is at war with all Christians and Jews. He's openly declared war on citizens!

Pro-Western Arab leaders are anxious to counter such talk of religious war against the West. Muslim militants among the populations sympathize with bin Laden.

According to reports from the World Tribune, there are Islamic extremists now operating in the United States under forged Israeli passports. The Director of International Atomic Energy Agency told reporters that the willingness of the terrorists to die in exchange for inflicting massive casualties means the possibility of a nuclear related attack are much more likely now.

As reported below, bin Laden possibly has crude nuclear capable devices and technology.

Security including National Guard troops remains in place at San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge and Oakland-San Francisco Bay Bridge, the Coronado Bridge in San Diego and the Vincent Thomas Bridge at the Port of Los Angeles, even though commuters were not up against any weekday rush-hour traffic jams. California's National Guard troops, dressed in full battle fatigues and armed with M-16 rifles.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, speaking at a news conference after talks with Uzbek President Islam Karimov, said: "The effort to deal with terrorist networks is proceeding at a pace that is showing measurable progress.''

Reliable reports on losses and gains remain difficult to access. There is a constant stream of conflicting information being reported throughout the media and official government reports.

For example, according to a story in the Drudge Report, the Delta Force attack on Mullah Omar's complex outside Khandahar resulted in a dozen Delta Force commandos being wounded, three of them seriously. The Pentagon showed combat video of the raid, but did not release or mention a casualty list.

The Taliban are taking verifiable hits. In Islamabad, aid workers said the bombing of Taliban positions north of Kabul had wounded or killed between 200 and 300 Taliban fighters since B-52s began carpet bombing last week.

Iranian papers are reporting that Iran will deploy military assistance to the Taliban. According to the Iran Press Service, the government of Iran is planning to equip and send some 1,500 members of its Revolutionary Guards to Afghanistan to fight on the side of the Taliban against the US and British forces in the coming ground war.

End Terrorism... but how?

The situation is deeply complex with perhaps Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran involvements in the network of terrorism. Thousands of Pakistanis are joining in the fighting with the Taliban.

In Britain, a poll published by the Guardian newspaper shows that more than 50 percent of respondents want the bombing to stop for humanitarian reasons. British support for America may wane if Iraq is involved by distribution of the anthrax... and if America takes major military action against Iraq. The British may continue support but the European partners are unlikely to jump in. World leaders agree that ending the war fast is best.

More than 15,000 Americans already were taking an anti-biotic for possible contact with anthrax. Anthrax "hot spots'' have been found in mailrooms at the Supreme Court, the State Department and possibly the Department of Health and Human Services and lately at a VA Medical Center. New Jersey sites including the latest at Bellmawr add to this along with other sites in NY, NJ, MD, and DC. There are a host of unconfirmed site being investigated.

Federal and state authorities are investigating an explosion of Internet sites that are preying on the public's fear of anthrax by illegally selling the antibiotic Cipro without requiring a proper prescription. Report suspicious activity (FBI)!

 ANTHRAX
DC and NJ Linked

Evidence of anthrax was found in Washington, in the mailroom of the House of Representatives, and at Post Offices near Capitol Hill.  Antibiotics are being dispersed.

The release of deadly anthrax in this country may involve bin Laden terrorists and perhaps others too. Apparently there is evidence linking anthrax to other radicals, perhaps anti-abortionists. 

Scientists will be prominent in telling the American people about bio-terrorism after the Bush administration responded to heavy criticism of its statements about anthrax. Meanwhile, the US will tighten restrictions on hazardous biological agents and this has some researchers nervous by the extent of the clampdown.

Be on the alert for these creeps, "Army of God, you've been exposed to anthrax, you're dead." That message was inside a letter laced with anthrax powder sent by the Army of God, fellow Americans. Forward leads to the FBI. More: Anthrax 

Bio-terrorism experts, say we should expect that anthrax attacks so far are the beginning of an escalating plan; that the plan is supported by sophisticated scientists cranking out potent anthrax. Mehmood Sham, editor of Pakistan's largest Urdu-language newspaper Daily Jang, announced last week, "We received a press release envelope which contained white powder... and it has tested positive for containing anthrax spores.'' Two suspects are being held.

Sham reports that the Agha Khan University Hospital identified anthrax spores and that staff are getting medication. This following reports of a letter from bin Laden, certified as authentic by Qatar's Al-Jazeera television station, calling for Muslims to defend Islam against a Christian crusade and stating that Pakistan is "standing beneath the Christian banner."

Since the delivery of anthrax to the news media is perhaps a significant piece of the anthrax puzzle, officials in DC are now linking the anthrax more directly to bin Laden terrorism. However, the US cases still have not been linked solely to bin Laden and the jihad terrorists.

A report in the London Times says that Mohamed Atta 'may' have been given a flask of anthrax spores by an Iraqi agent during a meeting between the two in Prague several months before the 9/11 attack.