Several related headings and items on the U.S. vs. Taliban theme:
The Toronto Globe and Mail -
1. January 16, 2002: "U.S. goes after Islamic rebels in Philippines."
2. January 23, 2002: "Captives treated well, U.S. says - Rumsfeld goes on offensive against critics who question prisoner treatment in Cuba."
3. January 25, 2002: "Opium crop blossoms in void left by Taliban.
Under the Taliban regime, opium production ground to a near halt after leader Mullah Mohammed Omar banned Afghan farmers from growing the country's most lucrative cash crop. Ever since the Taliban were ousted by the U.S.-led bombing campaign, opium cultivation has resumed with a fervour."

COMMENT: Maps for 2000 and 2001 show the areas of Afghanistan concerned, in the illustrated article which covered six columns.

The Weekly Telegraph -
1. January 30-February 5, 2002, No. 549: "Rumsfeld at odds with Powell over prisoners' status"

2. "Afghans to carry on stoning criminals by Alex Spillius in Herat - CRIMINALS in Afghanistan will face Taliban-style punishments including amputations and stonings as part of the interim government's drive to keep down crime, the chief justice said last week."
The remarks will raise concern among Western donors who have made the restoration of the rule of law a priority in the shattered country's reconstruction... ."

3. "Misery of 'slaughterhouse city' - The struggle against deprivation has barely begun, writes Alex Spillius:
THE MASLAKH refugee camp stretches for three and a half miles on barren stony land alongside a rutted road that leads to Herat. Anything from 150,000 to 324,000 people live there, some in small mud huts, some in United Nations-issued all-weather tents, some under shabby tarpaulin held down with rocks. Seven to eight hundred families arrive every week... . Most of the camp city have fled a four-year drought... . Across Afghanistan the UN and other agencies are now feeding six million of an estimated 25 million population. The drought, civil war and the US bombing campaign has moved 950,000 people from their homes.
In the early stages of the drought farming families sold their chickens to buy food. That deprived them of protein. Then they sold their farm equipment. Then they ate or sold off cheaply their livestock. Next to go were their work animals - horses, donkeys and oxen. Some still held on in their remote mountain villages, selling the beams of their roofs to buy food. By this winter, even if the rains had not let them down again, they would have had insufficient funds to revive their agriculture. There was then no alternative to Maslakh. With grim appropriateness, the name Maslakh means 'slaughterhouse'... ."

4. "King to go home after 30 years - by Christina Lamb in Kandahar: AFGHANISTAN'S former king, Zahir Shah, is to end almost 30 years of exile and return to his home country where he hopes to become head of state again. The 87-year-old ex-monarch will fly from Italy to Kabul and plans to make his first public appearance on March 21... .

In the same issue of The Weekly Telegraph:
Obituary 1. - Prof Robert Hanbury Brown: PROFESSOR ROBERT HANBURY BROWN, who has died aged 85, was one of the most important figures in the development of radar and of observational astronomy. He is perhaps best known for his invention of the optical intensity interferometer. This was not only a brilliant conception in itself, but also proved a crucial factor in the advancement of the understanding of fundamental physical optics... . Born in India, 1916, ... London University BSc in engineering, 1935. As one of the brightest young engineers of the time, he was invited to join the original team working with Sir Robert Watson-Watt on radar development at the Air Ministry. ... Professorship of Physics (Astronomy) at Sydney University, (in Australia) ... President of the International Astronomical Union 1982-1985.

Obituary 2. Edward Lee, 87, built Britain's first infrared spectrometer and later developed the detection system which proved crucial to the identification of enemy aircraft in the Second World War. ... At the outbreak of war, Lee joined the Admiralty Research Laboratory in Teddington, working initially on radar; then, using the research from his work on the spectrometer, he worked on developing the type F infrared rays recognition system to help allied pilots distinguish enemy aircraft from their own planes at night. The system employed the transmission of intermittent infrared light beams from lamps attached to aircrafts' tailfins. The beams were invisible to the naked eye, but could be detected by fellow pilots via a special receiver.

The Toronto Globe & Mail of February 26, 2002:
"Greasing conquest's wheels - A secure oil route exists through Afghanistan says André Gerolymatos.
But the U.S. could be recreating the turmoil of the Middle East. Was the American intervention in Afghanistan motivated in large part by oil? Petroleum is a strategic factor in U.S. foreign policy, and access to the vast Caspian Sea petroleum resources in Central Asia is drawing the Bush administration (as it did the Clinton one) to focus on the once obscure region."

COMMENT: The four-column article is illustrated by a map stretching from Turkey to India. It explains that the Caspian area holds oil and gas potential equal to that of the Persian Gulf states, Iran and Iraq. The problem was to get this bonanza to the American, and the world's, hungry markets while avoiding the political jeopardy inherent in pipeline control.
One route led northwest through Russia to the Black Sea, under Russian dominance. A shorter route would bring oil southward, but use Iran, which was felt politically unreliable. A pipeline from Baku through Azerbaijan, and Georgia to Ceyhan the Turkish port on the Mediterranean, is longer, but relies on NATO (and Israeli) ally, Turkey. The closest route, from Turkmenbashi in Turkmenistan, through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, was not available so long as the Taliban held power in Afghanistan. The fierce U.S. strikes, and military presence in the whole region now create an exceedingly "fortuitous" opportunity! It has solved a significant economic problem.

The Toronto Globe & Mail of February 27, 2002:
1. Obituary: Jonas Savimbi - 'Warlord, paramount chief, demagogue and statesman' - by Barry Hatton, Lisbon.
"Jonas Savimbi, Angola's charismatic rebel leader who was backed by the United States as an ally in Africa's Cold war struggles but later became a pariah when he refused to end his country's devastating civil war, has been killed in battle. He was 67. Mr. Savimbi, an astute fighter who let Angola's UNITA guerrillas, died in a firefight with the army after evading government troops for more than three decades, the Angolan government said. Mr. Savimbi devoted his life to the struggle for power in oil- and diamond-rich Angola - first against its colonial ruler, Portugal, then against the government. His long battle crippled the southwest African nation's economy and caused a humanitarian crisis... . He traveled widely, ... became the proxy of the United States and South Africa in the Cold war battle against the then-Marxist government. In 1986, was received at the White House... .

2. "Pentagon's propaganda office closed" - by Paul Koring, Washington

COMMENT: The office, which was to be in charge of "Deception, disruption and disinformation" (i.e. lying) propaganda to non-US or alien governments, and the existence of which had become public, is to be closed. "The office 'has clearly been so damaged that it's pretty clear to me that it could not function effectively.' - U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday." [One product was that doctored bin Laden digitized photograph in western garb, sans beard, which was dropped widely over Afghanistan to mislead the inhabitants into thinking that bin Laden had abandoned them.] A Globe & Mail Editorial of February 20 was headed "The Pentagon wants to earn your mistrust."

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 553, February 27-March 5, 2002:
Peter Simple writes: Then and now:
"SANCTIONS are beginning to bite." Now that sanctions are again imposed on the country once called Rhodesia, that parrot cry from Harold Wilson's time is echoing in my mind. It is all ancient history now. Who remembers the days of 39 years ago, when the Rhodesians, heroic in their unheroic plainness, stood alone, still undefeated, against a world of lies? Who remembers how Jeremy Thorpe and the legions of Hampstead thinkers bravely called for the bombing of Rhodesia? How the "Beira Patrol", celebrated in many a stirring, salt-caked liberal legend of the sea, vainly strove to block the passage of supplies to Rhodesia by wicked "sanctions busters" through the Portuguese colony of Mozambique?
Those sanctions never bit anybody at all. The resourceful Rhodesians took to manufacturing their own essential goods with great success. Will the present sanctions against Mugabe bite more deeply? Whereas the sanctions against the Rhodesians were intended to starve them out, those against Mugabe seem designed mainly to prevent him from visiting London and staying in his usual suite at Claridge's. Can a "Mayfair patrol" of seconded policemen and traffic wardens keep him out?
Seen at a distance of 30 years, the Rhodesians' achievement in holding out so long against such odds seems even more remarkable and even more admirable than it did then.. The policy of our own government seems even more shameful. In 1980, after sham elections hardly more "fair and free" from intimidation than Mugabe's elections are likely to be, the deed was done. A country prosperous and well governed enough was handed over to that hero of Hampstead and symbol of Western self-laceration, "Bob" Mugabe, and in due course succumbed to savagery and confusion. No word of protest was then heard. No contrite word is heard now from those who approved and carried out that base act of surrender.

Scientific American, Vol. 286, No. 3, March, 2002, p. 30
contains a coloured map and an article by Rodger Doyle, describing the Rating of Evolution Treatment in State Public School Science Standards across the U.S. under the heading "Down with Evolution! - Creationists are changing State Educational Standards."

The Weekly Telegraph, No. 553, February 27-March 5, 2002 carries some items of interest:
1. - Chinese relax one-child rule:
SHANGHAI is to relax regulations governing China's one-child policy, allowing more parents to have a second baby but at a cost of about £9,000 a child, it was announced in the city.
2. - New deal secures Glastonbury:
THE Glastonbury Festival will continue for another five years after a deal between the organiser and a private promoter.
The farmer Michael Eavis will continue making artistic arrangements and the Moan Fiddler group will control fans after recent festivals were blighted by crowd problems.
3. - Dominicans examine Inquisition:
THE DOMINICAN religious order was locked in secret conclave last week to re-examine its role in the Inquisition, but said the crimes of its members who tried people for heresy had been greatly exaggerated. The Dominicans, or Order of Preachers, said a three-day symposium in Rome had been inspired by the Pope's request "for the Church to cleanse its historic memory".
4. - 'Metric martyrs' lose in High Court by Joshua Rozenberg, Legal Editor:
FIVE market traders who wanted to continue weighing goods in pounds and ounces have lost their appeals against European laws requiring them to use metric measures. A High Court judge confirmed that the specific rights and obligations created by European law were incorporated into Britain's legal system by the European Communities Act 1972 and now "rank supreme".
The act was a constitutional statute, which meant it could not be "impliedly repealed" without specific legislation.
The five so-called "metric martyrs" were ordered to pay the full costs, estimated at £100,000, of the local authorities that had prosecuted four of them under weights and measures legislation
Lord Justice Laws said the case involved the relationship between EU and domestic laws... .

COMMENT: The rest of this six-column article, and a related one which was headed "Survival of the pint 'a disgrace' - Lord Howe", by Andrew Sparrow, were accompanied by a photograph of the "martyrs", and an adjacent cartoon by Matt which caught our attention. It showed a traffic policeman saying to a surprised driver, "I'm arresting you for driving in miles instead of kilometres" - a perfect British response by The Telegraph to this ridiculous application of the heavy-handed EU law to British Freedoms.

5. - Three related articles on the destruction of British livestock, grouped with a photograph of a huge burning stack of slaughtered cattle in Derbyshire:
(a) Foot and mouth disease crisis - Secrecy stays after list of blunders, - by Robert Uhlig Farming Correspondent and Charles Clover,
(b) Animal slaughter was based on wrong assumptions, says expert,
(c) Ruling against inquiry was flawed, judges told, - by Joshua Rosenberg, Legal Editor.

COMMENT: The articles, covering an entire page, are too long to quote in detail, but the headings of all three will give the sense of the matter to our readers, who will undoubtedly "get the picture". It would seem that the British Government was happy to receive advice which coincided with its planned removal of animal husbandry from Britain in compliance with EU directives which are designed to break down self reliant British national independence by substituting submissive interdependence.

The Globe and Mail, March 1, 2002:
Obituary - Desmond Plunkett - RAF pilot helped to plot the 'great escape' Desmond Plunkett, a Royal Air Force flier who helped plot the daring Second World War prison camp breakout that inspired the Steve McQueen film The Great Escape, has died. He was 86. The mapmaker for the "escape committee" at Stalag Luft III, he was in charge of making a required 1,500 maps that the men would need to get to safety after tunnelling to freedom. ... [They used ink made from melted crayons and gelatin taken from Red cross food packages... .]
After the war, Mr. Plunkett lived briefly in Pakistan and India ... then moved to Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe, where he started what became a successful flying company. He later took up beekeeping. Born in India in 1915, educated in England. Retired in west Sussex, he co-wrote a book ... titled The Man Who Would Not Die.