Two useful websites, in which the following paper
appeared. www.fpif.org & www.utne.com - Loeb's
book looks interesting too & he's Board Chair of
Peace Action (www.peace-action.org).
beena

Hope Out of Quagmire
Paul Rogat Loeb,  July 29, 2003

In the glow of the Iraq war's initial military
success, most American peace activists felt
profoundly demoralized. Between the war being
portrayed as a glamorous spectacle and Bush's
seemingly overwhelming popular support, many
who'd recently marched by the millions felt
isolated, defensive, and powerless, fearing their
voices no longer mattered.

Now, as Bush's occupation faces a deepening
quagmire, shifting public sentiment opens up
major new opportunities for activism. Just two
months ago, the national mood felt so resistant
that it was hard to raise the most cautious
dissenting questions. But polls now suggest the
beginning of a very different national mood,
where large numbers of Americans are having
significant doubts. This gives us a chance to
challenge the core fallacies of Bush's foreign
policy, revitalize peace movement activism, and
perhaps change some of our national directions.
We can do this by launching a grassroots campaign
to replace the U.S. control over Iraq with an
international transitional authority under United
Nations command--an authority that would control
not only military operations, but also Iraq's
political and economic affairs, including its
oil-fields. We can work to transform a beachhead
for American empire into an interim government
that would actually have a shot at bringing
democracy.

The recent shifts in the polls are staggering.
They open up major opportunities, even if most
peace activists haven't yet recognized this.
Driven by the steady U.S. casualties in Iraq and
continuing chaos, a late June Gallup poll found
42% of Americans now believing things are going
badly in Iraq, up from just 13% in early May.
Only 56%, according to the same poll, now believe
it was worth going to war in the first place,
down from 73% in April. In a Washington Post-ABC
News poll taken in mid-July, six in ten said the
war damaged the image of the United States
abroad, half said the conflict caused permanent
damage to U.S. relations with key allies, and 52%
considered the level of U.S. casualties
"unacceptable." All this was before Congress
finally began acknowledging the occupation's
political, economic, and human costs.

Before the war, we had something we could fight
for--trying to stop it. When it finally began,
this radically limited the peace movement's
immediate possibilities. There was little we
could do to influence its immediate outcome. All
we could do was bear witness for the future. But
now the landscape has shifted once again, to one
far more hospitable toward dissenting views.
Americans are developing significant reservations
despite scant critical media coverage, no major
peace actions since the end of February, and
minimal questioning by Democratic leaders. If we
can begin coalescing public concern around an
alternative to U.S. troops remaining indefinitely
in Iraq, we have a real chance to influence
national debate.

Moving Beyond "I told you so."

Although the war has created precisely the kind
of mess we predicted, we need to do more than
just repeat, "I told you so," as the casualties
continue to mount. Or gloat about how Bush's
imperial dream is unraveling. We need to offer
our own vision of what needs to be done,
supporting the Europeans in pushing to end the
current U.S. control of Iraq, and instead placing
the country under UN charge, policing it with a
multinational force that would include
significant Islamic representation. If the U.S.
were no longer calling the shots, this might even
allow a process like that which occurred when UN
forces finally ended the East Timor carnage and
supervised that country's transition to
democracy.

U.S. troops are now symbols of empire,
colonialism, and chaos. The longer they stay, the
more they become targets, and the more Iraqis
will resent the U.S. for imposing our will while
failing to secure the basics of survival, like
electricity, clean water, and physical safety. By
contrast, administration by the United
Nations--which represents the entire
international community, including eighteen Arab
states--is less likely to be seen as a foreign
military occupation but a transitional
administration and is therefore less likely to
encourage armed opposition. Although the new
forces will probably still face some opposition,
they won't be tarred with the same neocolonial
agenda. Iraqis won't view them as simply in it to
control the oil or project American domination.
Without the disruption of a growing armed
insurgency, efforts at restoring basic services,
maintaining stability, and setting up a
democratic and representative Iraqi government
would be far easier.

A shift away from unilateral U.S. control already
has broad potential support. In a late-June
Knowledge Network poll, 64% of Americans wanted
the UN to take a leadership role in Iraq, up from
50% in April. Pushing for such a shift will also
let us reach out to American soldiers who are
increasingly frustrated at being given a mission
with no defined end and no clear boundaries
between friend and foe. And to military families
angry that they see no clear timetable for the
return of their loved ones. We might even work to
replace Bush's chickenhawk bluster of "Bring them
on," with our own call to "Bring them Home," so
long as we make clear that we're arguing for
something more than just abandoning Iraq to
chaos.

Ideally, this campaign would be a broad-based
effort through which citizens would reach out
both in their communities and to elected
officials. Citizens could gather petitions, write
letters to local papers, meet with editorial
boards and congressional representatives, table,
canvass, and vigil in local neighborhoods, pass
resolutions in local governmental and civic
groups, and build toward major marches and
rallies. In short, we can reach out through the
same kinds of civic networks that were beginning
to foster so much national dialogue on the eve of
the war. We'd work to make sure Iraq stays a
front-and-center issue, in a way that builds on
Bush's newfound vulnerability.

Once citizen groups got moving, they could then
pressure key elected officials to take a stand,
including Democratic presidential candidates and
independent-minded Republicans. It will take work
to get the more conservative Democratic
presidential candidates and elected
representatives to embrace this demand. But given
the shifting polls, if we muster enough citizen
pressure, at least a few will decide that the
call to pull U.S. troops out is popular enough to
risk embracing. We'd want to offer even the more
conservative candidates and elected officials the
opportunity to say: "I supported Bush in good
faith, assuming the intelligence reports were
correct, and that he would go in good faith to
enlist a broad coalition of support. I'm glad
Saddam Hussein is out, but now that the evidence
on the WMD's still hasn't surfaced, we're
alienating the rest of the world, and the Iraqis
want us out. It's time to stop putting our brave
young soldiers at risk."

Could this campaign actually succeed in getting
Bush to turn Iraq over to the UN? Assuming that
the situation continues to be a morass, Bush will
face increasing pressure to cut his losses,
declare victory, and leave. Although some in his
administration are ideologically opposed to any
key UN role whatsoever, with enough citizen
pressure and media debate the pragmatist wing
might actually view withdrawal as politically
preferable to being stuck with an increasingly
unpopular occupation and daily death tolls.
Republican leaders don't want to face an election
year with American soldiers coming home from Iraq
in body bags, week after week with no clear end
in sight.


Trade-offs in the Campaign

This raises a difficult question. Is it the job
of the peace movement--or the global
community--to help Bush clean up the mess that
he's created? Shouldn't we simply let him stew in
it?

If we do succeed in convincing the Bush
administration to immediately let the United
Nations administer Iraq, it might increase his
re-election prospects and those of members of
Congress who supported the war. However, it's
extremely unlikely that the administration will
instantly accede to these demands. Powerful
economic, strategic, and ideological motivations
led to them to attack this oil-rich nation to
begin with. These motivations make it extremely
unlikely that they'll give up the opportunity to
try to control Iraq's political and economic
future without a fight. And the more they dig in
their heels and resist, the more time the peace
movement will have to expose the ways in which
the U.S. invasion of Iraq was not about bringing
freedom and democracy to a long-oppressed people,
but about controlling the country and its natural
resources, and exerting our unilateral will on
the world. Forcing the U.S. to genuinely release
its control over Iraq would be a major setback
for the
  politics of empire.

While arguing to bring the troops home, we'll
also have a chance to address related questions,
like the missing WMD's, America's long tradition
of arming dictators, the key role of oil
politics, and the lies and manipulations that
fueled our rush to war--like the magnification of
Saddam Hussein's threat, the notion that we'd be
universally hailed as liberators, and the attacks
on generals who accurately warned of massive
post-war troop deployments. Raising these issues
will lead to larger questions about the dangers
of Bush's belligerent unilateralism, and the
contrast between the $4 billion a month he's
spending in Iraq and his total neglect of a
sinking domestic economy. The more we succeed in
this task, the more we have a chance to breach
Bush's image as a national protector.

In response to our arguments, the administration
and its supporters will first insist that things
are proceeding fine as they are, and then
probably attack the very idea that the United
Nations could to a better job. Such attacks
against the UN will likely further alienate much
of the UN membership, including key American
allies, and embolden them to pursue more
independent foreign policies. This tactic is also
likely to backfire here at home, given that
public opinion polls suggest the U.S. still has
broad support among U.S. citizens, and that
increasing majorities lean toward exactly the
solution we'll be pushing.

If Bush does eventually withdraw after sustained
citizen pressure, his administration will have
been significantly tarnished. And we'll have a
major peace movement victory, which will itself
empower further action. A key value of this
campaign would be its ability to help recover
activist momentum and morale--giving people
concrete tasks where they feel their voices can
be heard. This is critical. There's a huge
reservoir of citizens who became active in the
opposition to the war, but who've since melted
back to private life. If we can get them
re-engaged at this point, they have a chance to
become long-term activists. They may not yet have
taken up the particular issue of troop
withdrawal, but that's because most were so
demoralized by the war's quick initial progress
and seemingly overwhelming support that they felt
that what happened in Iraq was totally out of
their hands. Now it isn't. Citizens once again
can begin to have a voice, but in a far more
potentially receptive
  environment.


Activists not Spectators

During the countdown to the war, the clock was
running against us. Our movement grew at an
amazing pace, but ran out of time before we could
become powerful enough to reverse the
administration's course. Now time should work in
our favor. Unless Iraq suddenly becomes
miraculously pacified, the longer our troops are
in there, the more casualties they will take, and
the stronger the case for withdrawal. Iraqi
resistance is unlikely to die down, since the
more houses we raid and civilians we round up the
more resentment we stoke--which in a country as
heavily armed as Iraq means more attacks on our
soldiers. Bush is already calling for increased
military deployments. Because the pressure should
get greater the longer our troops stay as
occupiers, time is on our side now in a way that
it wasn't during the period leading up to the
war. We would want to start such a campaign
quickly, however, because once we approach the
2004 elections much of the citizen energy we need
to draw on will necessarily be diverted toward
defeating Bush in the November election. But if
we begin now, we can erode his standing enough to
significantly increase our chances of doing this.


Finally, working to replacing U.S. control with a
UN mandate is a sufficiently mainstream demand
that it should allow us to reassemble the
powerful coalitions created on the eve of the
war. It will also exclude some of the crazier
fringes who reject the United Nations as much as
do the neoconservatives. Whether or not we can
actually convince the administration to pursue a
wiser course, taking up this issue gives us the
chance to get people moving again, challenge the
core politics of empire, and support policies
that would actually make for a safer world. It
gives us the chance to do far more than watch
from the sidelines as passive spectators.
-----
Paul Rogat Loeb (www.soulofacitizen.org) is the
author of "Soul of a Citizen: Living With
Conviction in a Cynical Time". He wrote this
contribution for Foreign Policy in Focus, where
article originally appeared.

To receive Loeb's articles directly, send a blank
message to paulloeb-articles-subscribe@...


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OUTRAGE... against George W. Bush's remark about
"bring 'em on"  led to Stan Goff writing an
article about it, leading to the "Bring Them Home
Now!" movement (www.bringthemhomenow.org)

OUTRAGE... against India's invitation to Ariel
Sharon, by friend N.D. Jayaprakash

Both articles in counterpunch.com - excerpts &
links below. beena

1) July 26, 2003

Don't Extend Them & Don't Replace Them
Just Bring 'Em on Home Now!
By STAN GOFF

...

The "Counterpunch" column about this Texas
preppy's remark elicited a stunning reaction. My
email was hit by a tidal wave, hundreds of
responses an hour at first, reactions of empathy
and outrage that told me there is a vast
reservoir of doubt, fear, and rage filling up
beyond the ken of the cringing institution that
calls itself the press. Around 40 percent of
those responses came from troops, military
families, and veterans. There is a great well of
sullen anger smoldering out there against these
pop-opera generalissimos. Now, as parents facing
our son's first combat tour, we are even more
part of that burning.

The recent news stories about the Bush
adminstration's mountain of lies was not news to
those of us who learned long ago to seek sources
outside offcialdom. Millions of us said they were
lying over a year ago. And we parents --many of
us --know that our enemies are not in Iraq. Our
enemies are in office, and they have the blood of
children --some of them ours --on their hands.
Everyone is someone's child, even when they are
grown. Even when they take paths we don't approve
of. Even when they become soldiers, and are sent
to pay for lies with their bodies and hearts and
the blood of others.

I replied to every email, most perfunctorily,
some at length. I skimmed at first, until I
realized I had overlooked a letter from a woman
whose son struggled for four years with post
traumatic stress disorder before he took his own
life. Not long after, his young wife did the
same. This bereaved mother wrote to say thanks
for giving her a voice. But it was she and others
like her who are giving us a voice.

http://www.counterpunch.com/goff07262003.html

2) India Rolls Out the Red Carpet
Feting Sharon
By N.D. JAYAPRAKASH

It is absolutely shocking to note that the
Government of India has extended an invitation to
Mr. Ariel Sharon, Prime Minister of Israel, to
pay an official visit to India. This fact was
first revealed by Mr. Brajesh Mishra, India's
'National Security Advisor', on 8 May 2003 in New
York, while addressing the gathering at the
Annual Dinner held by the American Jewish
Committee (AJC), a rabid Zionist organization
[1].

Promoting better relations with the people of
Israel is one thing but trying to white-wash the
heinous crimes of Ariel Sharon, and those of the
fascist Likud Party he represents, is quite
another. By extending an invitation to Ariel
Sharon to visit India, the Indian Government has
committed the cardinal sin of bestowing honour on
a war-criminal, who is deeply detested by the
vast majority of the global community because of
his unsavoury reputation. In fact Sharon cannot
travel to most countries even in Europe because
of the extreme passions such a visit would
arouse. It cannot be that the Government of India
is unaware of the criminal record of Ariel Sharon
or of the notorious Likud Party he has been
leading. Therefore, the motives for inviting
Ariel Sharon to India are highly suspicious.

http://www.counterpunch.com/jayaprakash07302003.html



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Why has the Bush Administration covered up for
Saudi 'charity' operations linked to Al-Qaeda -
see this is an informative as well as funny
article by the American journalist Greg Palast,
posted to the MilitaryFamiliesSpeakOut list --
MilitaryFamiliesSpeakOut@yahoogroups.com
as was the following link to full-page ads taken
out in NY and LA Times:
http://www.wedeservethetruth.com/docs/wdtt.pdf
beena

Sent: Friday, August 01, 2003 8:39 PM
Subject: [MilitaryFamiliesSpeakOut] Bush & the
Saudis, sittin' in a tree

Greg Palast: 'Bush and the Saudis, sittin' in a
tree'
(Date: 2003-08-01 10:04:47)
Topic: War & Terrorism

The President Exempts Gays from Marriage, Saudis
from Guilt
By Greg Palast, GregPalast.com

Well, well, well. President George was in one
hell of bind this week when it turned that that
Saudi Arabia funded Al Queda, not Iraq. Realizing
we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the
honorable thing: he's come out against gay
marriages.

This caused some real confusion in my staff where
a gay member of our investigations team announced
he was changing his allegiance from Howard Dean
to George Bush. "Bush Saves Gays from Marriage!
Bush Saves Gays!" he rushed around the office
beaming. "Gay people exempt from going to in-laws
for Thanksgiving dinner! Gay-mericans exempt from
PTA meetings and hiring divorce lawyers!"

But then I had to bring him down to earth. ('Had
to' because, while Bush announced last month that
our conquest of Iraq had made 'the world a safer
place', our President mentioned THIS week there's
now a 'real threat' of new Al Queda hijackings.
So America is safer ? as long as one stays
indoors.)

But here's the real kick in the head. Turns out
that unlike the 18 minutes missing from the Nixon
tape, the 28 pages missing from Congress'
publicly released report on the September 11
attack has been found. And it turns out to be a
summary of Saudi Arabia's financing of terrorist
fronts including the 'charities' supporting Al
Queda.

And now, the New York Times tells us, the US
Senate has been embarrassed into holding hearings
on those Saudi charity fronts including one named
WAMY.

Of course, this is ancient news to those who
watched my report on WAMY and Saudi funding of
terror -- broadcast on BBC's evening news on
November 9, 2001. (In the USA, that report earned
me the title of 'conspiracy nut.' In America, a
'conspiracy nut' is defined as a journalist who
reports the news two years before the New York
Times.)

And here's the ugly little punchline to the story
you WON'T read in the Times. Why has the Bush
Administration covered up for WAMY and the
Saudi's other blood-soaked 'charity' operations?

For the answer, let me take you back to Midland,
Texas, 1986. A young old man, George W. Bush,
seems to have trouble finding oil. But he strikes
it rich when his flailing drilling partnership is
bought out by Harken Oil. Despite the addition of
the business acumen of Bush Jr., Harken faces
collapse; but is pulled from the brink by a cash
infusion from a Saudi, Sheik Bakhsh. The money
from Arabia has nothing to do, we must assume,
with Dubya's daddy at the time holding the post
of Vice-President of the Free World.

The Bakhsh booty continued a pattern of the young
Bush being saved from his dire business decisions
by a line of Sheik angels. His first oil company,
Arbusto, going bust-o, was aided by the American
financial representative of the bin Ladin family.

And on BBC TV last month, I reported this:
following the bombing of our embassies, the
Clinton Administration sent two delegations to
Saudi Arabia to tell their royal highnesses to
stop giving money to the guys who are killing us.
But Mr. Bush, once in office, put the kibosh on
unfriendly words to the Saudis.

Furthermore, in the summer of 2001, Mr. Bush
disbanded the US intelligence unit tracking
funding of Al Queda. What is it our G-men were
uncovering? According to two separate sources
speaking to BBC, the funders of Al Queda fronts
include those who have previously funded Bush
family business and political ventures.

Now that's a wee bit embarrassing. Something you
wouldn't want in a congressional report.
Something you may not want the FBI to dwell on.
(And you can unlock the womens and children: the
BBC reports will NOT be broadcast on US
television.)

And there's this: a document marked "Secret" and
"199I" (meaning 'national security') which found
its way out of the offices of the FBI in into the
office of our BBC/Guardian newspaper team. It
indicates (and whistleblowers confirmed) that,
prior to the September 11 attack, the Bush
Administration held back agents of the FBI from
tracking two members of the bin Ladin family.
According to the buried FBI report, the bin Laden
lads were operating in the USA for "a suspected
terrorist organization", WAMY.

But we mus'n't ask too many questions of the Bush
Administration's blindfolding the FBI, nor,
Heaven forbid, discomfit the Saudis over their
contributions to Terror-R-Us. After all, in
BushWorld, Saudi Arabia and America have shared
values: we want our boys to kill, not to kiss.

Greg Palast is author of the New York Times
bestseller, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy,
which includes the award-winning report, "Did Our
President Spike the Investigation of bin Laden?"
View his report for BBC Television's Newsnight on
Bush, WAMY and the bin Ladens at
www.GregPalast.com.

Reprinted from GregPalast.com:

http://www.gregpalast.com/
detail.cfm?artid=253&row=0

You can read interesting articles at The Smirking
Chimp
http://www.SmirkingChimp.com

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http://www.himalmag.com/2003/july/opinion_2.htm

OPINION
The word of god for benighted Muslims
‘Missionary’ activity is stepped up in order to
‘save’ the Ishmaelites

by Yoginder Sikand

As a thinly-veiled mouthpiece of the American
establishment, Time magazine is strictly outside
the purview of my regular reading. I must,
however, confess that I was tempted into breaking
my vow of abstinence last month. The 30 June 2003
issue of the magazine carried too provocative a
cover to resist. It pictured an upheld fist
clenching a cross, nudging against a slogan
asking a cryptic query: “Should Christians
Convert Muslims?” Now, inter-religious polemics
have ceased to interest me lately, tired as I am
of loud-mouthed fanatics peddling their wares.
However, since the niggling issue of relations
between Muslims and others continues to exercise
a fascination for me, I shed my scruples about
the venerable Time, and clicked on its web-page
to go through the cover story.

The gist of the story, based on reports filed by
correspondents in North America and West Asia,
was, to put it in a nutshell, this: Western,
largely American, Christian evangelist
fundamentalists appear to be convinced that the
time has now come to wage an all-out spiritual
war against Islam. Islam, as many of them see it,
is a satan-inspired programme of terrorism that
bodes ill for all humankind, and represents the
greatest challenge to Christianity and
Christiandom. As an American evangelist,
identified simply as “Barbara”, puts it, Islam is
in itself the ultimate “weapon of mass
destruction”. Gripped by a fanatic zeal to spread
their faith to “benighted” Muslims, the story
speaks of scores of Christian evangelists
following close on the heels of American soldiers
in Iraq and Afghanistan, offering ‘aid’, both
material as well as ‘spiritual’, with the latter,
predictably, being tied to the former. The
report, quoting the Massachusetts-based
Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminary, suggests
that there are today more than 27,000 Christian
missionaries working in Muslim countries, almost
double the number two decades ago.

The events of September 2001, Time tells us, seem
to have galvanised the American Christian right
wing to take its evangelical duty of ‘saving’ the
Muslims more seriously. There can be no doubt
that growing unrest in many Muslim countries, and
the threat that the West perceives from this, is
a, if not, the, major factor in stirring the
missionary zeal of the evangelicals. As in
classical colonial times, in these days of
American global neo-colonialism, a symbiotic
relationship appears to bind the imperial
ambitions of the American military establishment
with the missionary fervour of the proselytising
Christian right wing. Evangelical fundamentalists
today enjoy the warm endorsement of the American
president. In turn, they faithfully serve
American goals abroad, propagating an extremely
conservative, ultra-reactionary theology, based
on the deeply rooted conviction of the ultimate
superiority of the American ‘way of life’, on the
one hand, and the firm belief that all religions
other than (their own edition of) Christianity
are wholly false, if not downright ‘satanic’.

Little wonder, then, that evangelists are often
the most fanatic defenders of American foreign
policy, from zealously supporting Israel to
excitedly welcoming the invasion of Iraq, seeing
in all this both a triumph over the ‘forces of
evil’ represented by Islam, as well as an
opportunity to proclaim their ‘good news’. If
Bush proclaims, in the war against terrorism,
that those “not with us are against us”, so too
the evangelicals announce: in the war against the
‘powers of darkness’, if you are not one of us –
if you choose to remain Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu
or anything other than Christian –then you are a
minion of the devil.

Personally, I have no problem at all with anyone
wishing to change her or his faith, or even with
anyone eager to advertise the virtues of their
faith over all others. As an opponent of
‘inherited religiosity’, the fact that one is
doomed to follow or identify with a certain
religion simply because one is born into it, I
believe that change of religious affiliation is
really a very basic human right. In that sense,
then, the passion that fires Christian
evangelicals to spread the ‘good word’ is
unexceptionable. That said, however, I must
hasten to add that any sort of proselytisation
that disguises itself and conceals its ultimate
goals is thoroughly condemnable. To use what some
might consider a rather ‘un-Islamic’ metaphor, it
is as unethical as palming off bootleg arrack as
French wine. And yet, that is precisely what, as
the Time story suggests, many evangelicals do. In
order to escape strict visa regulations, they
often travel to and reside in Muslim countries in
the guise of businessmen or altruistic social
workers. A good part of their time and money is
spent on ‘development’ work, which is generally a
cover for pursuing their missionary goals. The
Time story speaks of missionaries even going to
the extent of distributing toys to unsuspecting
children and using that as a means to get their
message across. They are careful to keep their
real identities concealed, and some even attempt
to pass of as Muslims to dupe their potential
converts.

Christian evangelists face an uphill task making
themselves acceptable to the communities they
work with, who often see them, and generally with
some truth, as propagating and imposing alien
cultural norms along with their faith. Since
many, and not just Muslims alone, regard the
evangelists as propagandists for ‘Western’
culture, the evangelical project has come up
against major hurdles. As a way around this
barrier, a growing number of evangelists working
in Muslim countries are today experimenting with
what is in evangelical circles fashionably called
“inculturation” or “contextualisation”. Put
simply, what this means is that the evangelist
seeks to disguise his message in the cultural
forms of the population he targets. By doing so,
Christianity is made to be appear culturally
familiar and therefore more easily acceptable. In
India, for instance, numerous evangelists are now
engaged in articulating a ‘Hindu’ Christianity:
Mother Mary abandons her long, flowing gown for a
rich silk sari, Jesus is painted brown and the Om
appears alongside the cross atop the steeple of
the church, which is now made to look like a
temple. Time tells us of similar experiments
being made by evangelists in Muslim lands. Some
evangelists disguise themselves as Sufis and hope
to be able to pass off as Muslim mystics; others
set up what they call “Jesus mosques”; and yet
others go to the extent of publicly reciting the
Muslim creed: “There is no god but God, and
Muhammad is His prophet”!

Connaught Place cartoons
In the course of my travels, which have taken me
across large parts of India, I have had numerous
encounters with fiery evangelicals on the lookout
for unsuspecting victims. Some years ago one
could find them loitering around in Connaught
Place, New Delhi, passing around pamphlets and
glossy tracts, proclaiming the end of the world
and the impending dawn of the day of judgment.
This literature was specially designed to catch
the unsuspecting eye, keenly aware of the Indian
penchant for vibrant colours. It was filled with
brightly coloured cartoons of a bearded stern
Jesus perched atop a fluffy cloud brandishing a
sinister-looking sword; swarms of red-cheeked,
white-faced, distinctly European-looking angels
astride galloping horses, their manes blowing
wildly in the wind; hordes of men and women
wearing crosses around their necks being lifted
up to heaven on angelic wings; and a large swathe
of humanity, dark-faced and ghoulish most of
them, going up in a ball of flame and smoke in
hell. In all, more amusing than instructive. Even
more amusing, were the missionaries’ reactions to
the way in which I responded to their earnest
entreaties. I would first be greeted by a
well-fed face displaying a strained plastic
smile. “Are you in distress?”, he would ask,
somewhat disconcertingly, and then, without
caring to hear my tale of woe, would look up to
heaven with half-closed eyes and a beatific smile
and whisper: “Oh Lord Jesus in heaven, help this
brother cross the river of woe”. Then, a bundle
of colourful leaflets would be thrust into my
hands, the way virtuous missionaries dole out
chocolates to starving village children.
Hurriedly glancing through the mass of propaganda
material, I would curl them into a ball and toss
them into the nearest rubbish heap. The angelic
smile on the cherubic face would then curl up
into a snarl, and all at once a pair of angry,
stone-cold eyes would pierce me. “Hey man! That’s
no way to enter the kingdom of heaven!”

If Time is to be believed and if Western
evangelists are really now investing heavily in
targeting the Muslim world for ‘spiritual
warfare’ or ‘crusade’ as they still call it, it
is very likely that India, with its vast Muslim
population, figures prominently on their map.
Personally, I must admit to knowing little about
their activities among the Indian Muslims. I have
heard of several groups engaged in such work, but
I have not really got down to seriously studying
them. I do, however, know that many of them, like
their counterparts working among the Hindus, are
often money-raking ventures, set up by
enterprising envangelists with access to generous
donors in the West. For purposes of illustration,
let me describe two such groups, both based in
Bangalore, in south India, about which I know
something. Although they may not be
representative of the evangelical camp in
general, they do offer insights into the ways in
which the evangelists seek to spearhead their
contemporary ‘crusade’.

The first of these is called the Dar ul-Nejath,
an Arabic term meaning ‘the House of Salvation’.
Headed by a Dr Fazal Sheikh, probably a Muslim
convert to Christianity, this is a branch of the
global organisation, Call of Hope: Mission to
Muslims. In order to ‘reach out’ with the ‘good
news’ of the Bible to Muslims, it has set up what
it calls the Muslim Masihi Fellowship. In order
to present the Christian message to Muslims, the
Dar ul-Nejath undertakes an impressive range of
activities. These include ‘outreach’ work,
involving door-to-door visits to Muslim homes by
Christian missionaries, as well as a
comprehensive correspondence course in Islam and
Christianity. It also conducts an advanced level
course on Islam, in association with the
evangelical body, Christian Light of Life Bible
College, Austria, to train Christian missionaries
in the art of polemics, arming them with
knowledge of Islam so that they can present the
Christian message to their prospective Muslim
converts in a manner more intelligible to them.
Plans are afoot now to have a regular three-week
residential advanced-level course on Islam and
Christianity at Bangalore. Initial work has
already started in the form of classes in
“Islamic theology and Christian Evangelism”, with
the help of the Bangalore-based Asia Evangelical
Bible College and Seminary.

The Dar ul-Nejath claims to have a number of
“honorary evangelists” (whatever that may mean,
presumably unpaid workers) who are engaged in
missionary work among the Muslims of Bangalore.
In a circular issued some years ago, it says,
“This ministry has reached out [to] each and
every corner of Bangalore district and the
surrounding areas of other districts”. Within
Bangalore city, it runs several centres. In order
to attract young Muslims, it has set up a special
Muslim school named Madrasat ul-asih, in which a
Reverend Dr Fazal Masih teaches Urdu and the
Bible to destitute Muslim children. The name of
the school is itself striking: seeking to pass
off as an innocuous Muslim-style madrasa. It has
also a small medical centre, St Peter’s Clinic,
which is visited mainly by poor Muslim patients.
Even in this apparently purely humanitarian
effort, the ultimate goal of conversion is
paramount, for as the circular says, “through
that [the medical centre] it is easy to make
friends and share the gospel”.


Evangelists are
among the most fanatic defenders of American
foreign policy, from zealously supporting Israel
to excitedly welcoming the invasion of Iraq


The second Bangalore-based Christian evangelical
organisation specially working among Muslims that
I have come across goes by the benign and
unexceptionable name of Helping Hands
International. Among its declared aims are the
setting up of children’s homes, schools and craft
centres, conducting agricultural training
programmes and engaging in relief and medical
projects. Yet, behind these noble ventures the
ultimate goal remains one of “evangelism and
Church-planting among Muslims”. In a letter
addressed to “the Heads of Evangelical Mission
and Bible Teaching Institutions”, dated 27 March
1996, the organisation’s executive secretary, GM
Dhanaraj, remarks that the “Ishmaelites” (the
children of Isma’il, meaning Muslims) are, for
the Christian missionaries, “the most un-reached
people of India”. Of India’s vast Muslim
population, 98 percent, he notes with profound
regret, has as yet not been brought into contact
with the Christian message, so much so that
“there is not even one Christian evangelist to
work for one lakh Ishmaelites”. Note the
paternalistic concern for the hapless
‘Ishmaelites’. Muslims are not even allowed to
call themselves as they wish. Almost none of them
would recognise themselves by the ‘Ishmaelite’
label that is forced on them! As the biblical
story has it, the Arabs are descended from
Isma’il, who the Bible describes (contrary to the
Qur’an) as the son of Hagar, slave-woman of
Abraham, with all the negative connotations that
go with this status. All Muslims are then
collapsed together as Arabs, and all Arabs as
offspring of a mere slave. Given their base
origins, they beg, or so we are led to believe,
to be delivered from the shackles of their
bondage by saviours sent by the Christian lord.

Having taken serious note of this lamentable
state of affairs, Helping Hands International
has, in its magnanimity, Dhanaraj suggests, taken
upon itself the onerous task of “working for the
salvation of the Ishmaelites”, a euphemism, of
course, for attempting to convert Muslims to
Christianity. The “motto” of his organisation, he
reveals, is “tell Jesus about Ishmaelites and
tell Ishmaelites about Jesus”. In pursuance of
this goal, the organisation claims to have spread
its activities to eight states and two union
territories of India. It has put before itself
the ambitious task of opening its centres in all
the states and union territories of the country.
In order to do this, Dhanaraj writes, the
organisation has launched a training programme
for Christian missionaries who will later be
dispatched to engage in proselytising work among
Muslims all over India. The main training
programme is of a year’s duration, but there are
also several short-term courses to choose from.
These are conducted at two locations – Bangalore,
for volunteers from south India, and Nagpur, for
those from the north. Volunteers are often
sponsored by various churches and upon finishing
their training they go back to their “mission
fields” to put into practice what they have
learnt. The training programmes are divided into
several levels. The basic level course entails
three days of lectures, followed by six months of
practical work. The purpose of the latter is “to
meet one Ishmaelite for one day everyday for one
hour and tell [him] about Jesus”. This is to be
supplemented by the use and dissemination of
suitable literature provided by the centre. The
advanced level and research level training
programmes are similar in nature, though more
intensive.

To assist the trainees, the organisation has a
very well-stocked library called by the Arabic
term al-Noor (‘the Light’), which, apparently,
has “a vast collection of books from all over the
world on more than 50 different subjects”,
including, and especially, on “Evangelism Among
Ishmaelites”, “Reaching out to the Ishmaelites”
and testimonies of Muslim converts to
Christianity. In addition, it has a large
collection of audio and video cassettes on
similar topics. Besides its numerous training
programmes for Christian missionaries working
among Muslims, Helping Hands International has
set up what it has christened the Ishmaelite
Salvation Association (ISA) – a cleverly chosen
acronym meaning Jesus in Arabic and Urdu. Till
date ISA has published 37 gospel pamphlets, 18
books and one comprehensive correspondence
course, all, of course, tailored to the ultimate
aim of converting Muslims to Christianity. In an
effort to sensitise Christian missions to the
need for greater evangelical effort among Muslims
in particular, it has, according to a leaflet
setting out the various services it offers,
organised numerous lectures on ‘how to evangelise
Ishmaelites’. Apparently, much intensive research
and careful planning has gone into all this, for
it says that these lectures consist of no less
than “three different sets of teachings on 21
subjects”. These lectures have been delivered at
various “Bible Colleges, Theological Seminaries
and Missionary Training Societies in different
parts of the world”. So far the ISA claims to
have conducted almost 200 “challenging” seminars
on the above themes at various places under its
suggestively titled MECCA programme, or the
‘Middle East Culture and Christian Approach’.

Having at its command such “expertise”, the ISA
provides free consultation to missionary groups
keen on “Ishmaelite Evangelism”, “follow-up
ministry”, “discipleship” and “church-planting”
among “Ishmaelites”. It offers to impart advice
and training on “how to share the gospel” with
Muslims, particularly such vulnerable groups as
students, patients, prisoners and women. The ISA
has, or so it claims, gifted preachers who can
give excellent speeches in gospel meetings and
“open crusades”, and makes available their
services to Christian churches who wish to engage
in conversion activity among Muslims. Like many
other Christian organisations, the ISA too runs
various social service projects whose final aim
is, of course, to assist in conversions and to
prevent those who have already converted from
“relapsing”. These services for “Poor Ishmaelite
Children” are said to include boys’ homes, girls’
hostels, training courses in carpentry,
agriculture, tailoring and so on, as well as
temporary shelter, jobs and medical assistance to
“Ex-Ishmaelite families”. These facilities are
currently provided by six centres of the ISA,
under the Siraj (Social, Industrial,
Rehabilitational, Agricultural and Job)
programme.

As I said at the outset, I have no problem at all
with those who want to change the religion into
which they were born. Nor have I any quarrels
with those who see themselves as being anointed
with the divine responsibility of communicating
what they take to be the ‘truth’ to others. That
said, however, I have the most serious
differences with right-wing evangelist
‘crusaders’ for whom all those outside their
narrowly inscribed circle of chosen followers are
doomed to eternal perdition. There is a surfeit
of such paranoid megalomaniacs in the country –
among Hindus, Muslims, Christians and others – to
deserve any more! If this is the road to
salvation, then I, at least, would rather remain
among the damned!



________________________________________________________________________
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The Centre for Science & Environment in New Delhi
has been doing pioneering work for some time. The
press release below reveals their findings after
testing soft drinks in the market - and finding
pesticide residues. Obviously, if this is the
case in India, Pakistand and the rest of South
Asia must have similar stories. The same brands
in the West, when tested, did not have such
residues. beena

From: database@...
To: cse@...
Date: Tue, 05 Aug 2003 12:33:19 +0530
Subject: Pesticides Found in Coke and Pepsi

  PRESS RELEASE

Hard Truths about Soft Drinks

Laboratory test finds pesticide residues in all
cold drinks tested. Just as it had in bottled
water six months ago.
How hollow are the quality claims of soft drink
multinationals?
How can Indian consumers be saddled with
sub-standard products?
How can companies get away with such bad
practices?


New Delhi, August 5, 2003: After bottled water,
it's aerated water that has plugged the purity
test. In another exposé, Down To Earth has
found that 12 major cold drink brands sold in and
around Delhi contain a deadly cocktail of
pesticide residues. The results are based on
tests
conducted by the Pollution Monitoring Laboratory
(PML) of the Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE). In February this year, CSE had blasted the
bottled water industry's claims of being 'pure'
when its laboratory had found pesticide residues
in bottled water sold in Delhi and Mumbai.

This time, it analysed the contents of 12 cold
drink brands sold in and around the capital. They
were tested for organochlorine and
organophosphorus pesticides and synthetic
pyrethroids - all commonly used in India as
insecticides.

The test results were as shocking as those of
bottled water.

All samples contained residues of four extremely
toxic pesticides and insecticides: lindane, DDT,
malathion and chlorpyrifos. In all samples,
levels of pesticide residues far exceeded the
maximum residue limit for pesticides in water
used as 'food', set down by the European Economic
Commission (EEC). Each sample had enough poison
to cause - in the long term - cancer, damage to
the nervous and reproductive systems,
birth defects and severe disruption of the immune
system.

What we found
- Market leaders Coca-Cola and Pepsi had almost
similar concentrations of pesticide residues.
Total pesticides in all PepsiCo brands on an
average were 0.0180 mg/l (milligramme per litre),
36 times higher than the EEC limit for total
pesticides (0.0005 mg/l).
Total pesticides in all Coca-Cola brands on an
average were 0.0150 mg/l, 30 times higher than
the EEC limit.

- While contaminants in the 'Dil mange more'
Pepsi were 37 times higher than the EEC limit,
they exceeded the norms by 45 times in the
'Thanda matlab Coca-Cola' product.

- Mirinda Lemon topped the chart among all the
tested brand samples, with a total pesticide
concentration of 0.0352 mg/l.

The cold drinks sector in India is a much bigger
money-spinner than the bottled water segment. In
2001, Indians consumed over 6,500
million bottles of cold drinks. Its growing
popularity means that children
and teenagers, who glug these bottles, are
drinking a toxic potion.

PML also tested two soft drink brands sold in the
US, to see if they contained pesticides. They
didn't.

The question, therefore, is: how can apparently
quality-conscious multinationals market products
unfit for human consumption?

CSE found that the regulations for the powerful
and massive soft drinks industry are much weaker,
indeed non-existent, as compared to those for the
bottled water industry. The norms that exist to
regulate the quality of cold drinks are a maze of
meaningless definitions. This "food" sector is
virtually unregulated.

The Prevention of Food Adulteration (PFA) Act of
1954, or the Fruit Products Order (FPO) of 1955 -
both mandatory acts aimed at regulating the
quality of contents in beverages such as cold
drinks - do not even provide any scope for
regulating pesticides in soft drinks.
The FPO, under which the industry gets its
licence to operate, has standards for lead and
arsenic that are 50 times higher than those
allowed for the bottled water industry.

What's more, the sector is also exempted from the
provisions of industrial licensing under the
Industries (Development and Regulation)
Act, 1951. It gets a one-time licence to operate
from the ministry of food processing industries;
this licence includes a no-objection
certificate from the local government as well as
the state pollution control board, and a water
analysis report. There are no environmental
impact assessments, or siting regulations. The
industry's use of water, therefore, is not
regulated.

It is clear that the regulations have been
designed in total disregard  for
public health. But what is unfortunate is that
the global players - two giant corporations, who
swear by the principles of corporate
responsibility and global standards - have been
caught in the act, taking advantage of the weak
and nonsensical regulatory standards in
India. Or, may we say, by fixing the standards to
compromise our health.

---


Date: Wed, 06 Aug 2003 15:08:30 +0530
Subject: No Rights to Clean Water

PRESS RELEASE

Drinking water quality is critical to human life

But the Indian government does not think so.

Hazy regulations and pure inaction today play
havoc with public health


New Delhi, August 6, 2003:
Is "clean" water a fundamental "right" of all
Indians? No, the
government would have us believe. This
unbelievable truth is what the
Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) has
found out.

"Even after 55 years of Independence, India does
not have legal
standards that would help to clearly define
'clean' and 'potable'
water.
Municipalities can supply water that is neither
potable nor drinkable,
but there's precious little a citizen can do.
Under the law, no
institution
can be ultimately held responsible for quality,
because nobody has
defined standards that can be legally enforced,"
says Sunita Narain,
director, CSE .

The Central Public Health and Environmental
Engineering
Organisation (CPHEEO) under the Union ministry of
urban
development and poverty alleviation sets
guidelines for drinking water
quality. But these are merely guidelines. "Also,
the guidelines include
two sets of criteria, allowing much room for
laxity. In effect,
municipalities are free to choose and supply as
they will or want or
can," says Chandrabhushan, co-ordinator, Green
Rating Project, CSE.

In fact, municipalities say as much. For
instance, section 42 of the
Rajasthan Water Supply and Sewerage Corporation
Act absolves the
department of not supplying water in case of
accidents, obstruction in
supply during summer or a labour strike. Section
234 of the Calcutta
Municipal Corporation Act, 1980 says the
municipality should take
steps to provide, "as far as possible", a supply
of wholesome water.
Tripura Municipality Act says it will "try to
supply".

"Clearly," says Narain, "Everyone is busy
absolving themselves of any
responsibility, if it at all exists."

In 1996, a parliamentary Committee on Subordinate
Legislation
suggested that water treated and supplied by
local authorities should
be included under 'food' as "the agency
responsible for supplying
drinking water to the public has to ensure purity
and the statute
should
bind it to do so". But in its deposition before
the committee, the
ministry
of urban development (which is responsible for
drinking water quality
in
cities) averred that the inclusion of water under
food would impose, on
the agencies that supply water, a legal
commitment to adhere to
recognised standards. The agencies, it surmised,
could not possibly
meet such standards as they lacked the necessary
financial resources.
Today, more children die from ingesting dirty
water than any other
substance. "No wonder, therefore, that
authorities avoid
responsibility,"
says Chandrabhushan. "Because they would then
have to also take
responsibility for the death and disease that
shame this country
today."

"We demand legally enforceable safe drinking
water standards," says
Narain. "The time has come for citizens to fight
for this in right
earnest."


Please visit
http://www.cseindia.org/html/cola-indepth/index.htm
l For the complete Down To Earth cover story on
pesticides in
soft drinks
l For the complete CSE lab report
l For the press conference presentation
l To view this Press Release online, download
pictures, or to
send it to friends

If you have questions, e-mail us at
media@... or call us on
9810098142.




________________________________________________________________________
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Friends:

first - pls don't open any attachments that seem
to come from me on this list. There's either a
virus or a spammer using my name with innocuous
domains (bsarwar1@..., bsarwar1@...
etc.) which are not me.

Second: the Yogindar Sikand piece I sent out
(response to Time magazine) is also available in
he July 2003 issue of Qalandar. Check it out on
www.islaminterfaith.org - the site includes other
interesting stuff including an interview with
Asma Barlas on a Gender-Sensitive Reading of the
Qur'an.

Last, but not least: an interesting analysis on
the Pakistan-USA-India-Afghanistan
situation(thanks Abdul Aziz)

beena.

http://www.atimes.com

Why the US needs the Taliban
By Ramtanu Maitra

Since Pakistani President General Pervez
Musharraf made his much-acclaimed visit to Camp
David and met US President George W Bush on June
24, new elements have begun to emerge in the
Afghan theater. US troops in Afghanistan are now
encountering more enemy attacks than ever before,
and clashes between Pakistani and Afghan troops
along the tribal borders have been reported
regularly.

On July 16, speaking to Electronic Telegraph of
the United Kingdom, US troop commander General
Frank "Buster" Hagenbeck, based at Bagram Air
Base in Afghanistan, reported increased attacks
over recent weeks on US and Afghan forces by the
Taliban, al-Qaeda and other anti-US groups that
have joined hands. He also revealed some other
very interesting information: the Taliban and its
allies have regrouped in Pakistan and are
recruiting fighters from religious schools in
Quetta in a campaign funded by drug trafficking.
Hagenbeck also said that these enemies of US and
Afghan forces have been joined by Al-Qaeda
commanders who are establishing new cells and
sponsoring the attempted capture of American
troops. One other piece of news of import from
Hagenbeck is that the Taliban have seized whole
swathes of the country.

Reliable intelligence
Hagenbeck's statements were virtually ignored in
Washington. Also ignored were a number of similar
statements issued from Kabul by Afghan President
Hamid Karzai and his cabinet colleagues. On July
17, presidential spokesman Jawed Ludin spoke to
the Pakistani newspaper The News of the Afghan
government's concern over the volatile situation
on its border with Pakistan. Ludin urged Pakistan
to "take steps" to prevent the Taliban fighters
from crossing over to launch terrorist attacks
against Kabul. "We will take it seriously to
confront it," he warned. "So our expectation is
for all those involved in the war against terror
to take serious steps," Ludin added, clearly
addressing the Bush administration.

A week later, on July 24, in an article for The
Nation, a Pakistani news daily, Ahmed Rashid, the
well known expert on the Taliban and Afghanistan,
quoted President Hamid Karzai, during an
interview at Kabul, as saying: "As much as we
want good relations with Pakistan and other
neighbors, we also oppose extremism, terrorism
and fundamentalism coming into Afghanistan from
outside. We have one page where there is a
tremendous desire for friendship and the need for
each other. But there is the other page, of the
consequences if intervention continues,
cross-border terrorism continues, violence and
extremism continue. Afghans will have no choice
but to stand up and stop it."

Among Americans, only the special envoy of the US
president to Afghanistan and a good friend of
President Karzai, Zalmay Khalilzad, has shown any
concern about the recent developments. Khalilzad
has little choice but to keep up a bold front to
the Afghans, telling them how his bosses in
Washington are doing their best to rebuild
Afghanistan, and attributes the present crisis to
the security situation. Like everyone else,
Khalilzad has little in reality to offer and,
given the opportunity, falls back on what "must
be done" and "should be done". At a July 15 press
conference at Kabul, Khalilzad said every effort
has to be made by Pakistan not to allow its
territory to be used by the Taliban elements.
This "should not be allowed", he said. "We need
100 percent assurances [from Pakistan] on this,
not 50 percent assurances, and we know the
Taliban are planning in Quetta."

What is happening? Both Hagenbeck, who boasts to
the media about the high quality of his
intelligence, and Khalilzad, who is
unquestionably in a position to know, have stated
that the Taliban and al-Qaeda are being nurtured,
not in some inaccessible terrain along the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border but in Quetta, the
capital of Pakistan's Balochistan province where
the Pakistan Army and the ISI have a major
presence. Yet, President Bush and his
neo-conservative henchmen have remained strangely
quiet, allowing Pakistan to strengthen the
Taliban in Quetta, and, as a consequence,
re-energize al-Qaeda - the killers of thousands
of Americans in the fall of 2001.

Recall for a moment: Following the September 11
terrorist attacks in the United States, no other
terrorist was portrayed by the United States as
more dangerous than al-Qaeda leader Osama bin
Laden and no other Islamic fundamentalist group
was presented to the American people as more
despicable than the Taliban. Within a month the
United States invaded Afghanistan to "take out"
the Taliban, al-Qaeda and bin Laden, while the
world lined up behind the new anti-terrorist
messiahs from Washington, providing it the
necessary moral and vocal support. Why, then, is
Washington now weakening President Karzai and
allowing the strengthening and re-emergence of
the Taliban?

Karzai shared with Ahmed Rashid his belief, like
that of the average Afghan today, that the answer
to that question lies in an understanding reached
between the United States and Pakistan during
Musharraf's visit to Camp David, that Afghanistan
could be, in effect, "sub-contracted" to
Pakistan. Karzai also told Rashid that
Musharraf's critical remarks about the Karzai
regime during his visit to the United States
reminded him of the pre-September 11 days when
Pakistan was fully backing the Taliban and
exercising ever-more-strident control over
Afghanistan. Musharraf had said, among other
things, that the Afghan president does not have
much control over Afghanistan beyond Kabul. But,
Karzai added in the interview with Rashid, no
matter what the outsiders are planning or
plotting, as of now, "I want nobody to be under
any illusion that Afghanistan will allow any
other country to control it." Is Karzai
overreacting? Most likely, he is not. He has seen
the writing on the wall. It is arguable whether
the Taliban's return to power is inevitable, but
there is little doubt that under the
circumstances it is very convenient for the US.

Bowing to realities
To begin with, it was clear from the outset that
the United States never really wanted to be in
Afghanistan. It was basically a jumping-off point
for the "big enchilada", the re-shaping of the
Middle East's politics and regimes. The Afghan
reconstruction talk was mostly wishful thinking.
For anyone familiar with present-day Afghanistan
- its security situation, the drug production and
trafficking, its destroyed infrastructure, its
rampant illiteracy and poverty - its
reconstruction by foreigners is either a dream or
a string of motivated lies.

Now, after a half-hearted effort that lasted for
almost 18 months, the Bush administration has
come to realize that it is impossible to keep
Pakistan as a friend and simultaneously keep the
Northern Alliance-backed government in power in
Kabul. The "puppet" Pashtun leader in Kabul,
Hamid Karzai, does not have the approval of
Pakistan and the majority of the rest of the
Pashtun community straddling both sides of the
Pakistan-Afghanistan border. So, either one has
Pakistan as a friend with an Islamabad-backed
Pashtun group in power in Kabul, or one gets
Pakistan as an enemy. There should be no doubt in
anyone's mind how the Bush administration would
act when confronted with such a choice.

Secondly, look at the Northern Alliance (NA)
allies. The best ally of the NA is Russia, the
Bush administration's key contestant for
supremacy in Central Asia. In the 1980s, the
United States spent billions of dollars to get
Afghanistan out of the Russian orbit. It is
ridiculous to believe that the Bush
administration would act differently now to
protect the NA and Karzai. Much better is to have
Afghanistan sub-contracted to Pakistan and keep
the Russians at bay, than to yield ground to
Moscow, who is hardly friendly to Pakistan.

Thirdly, the NA, and particularly the Shi'ites of
the Hazara region of Afghanistan, are close to
Iran. Iran is building a road which will connect
the Iranian port of Chahbahar to the city of
Herat in central Afghanistan and link up with
Kandahar in the southeast. While this is going
on, some neo-conservatives in Washington are
screaming for Iranian blood. Even if the Bush
administration is not quite willing right now to
spill that blood, it is nonetheless a certainty
that Washington will be more than eager to see
the Iranian influence in Afghanistan curbed. If
the NA-backed Karzai government stays in power
for long, Iran would most definitely enhance its
influence. The Taliban do not want that and they
have sent a message recently by slaughtering the
Shi'ites in Quetta with the full knowledge of the
Pakistani authorities. Besides being anti-Russia,
the Taliban are also anti-Shi'ite, or anti-Iran.
This added "virtue" of the Taliban has not gone
unnoticed in the corridors of intrigue-makers in
Washington.

Finally, there is the India factor. A minor
factor, it does, however, come into play in
calculating the pluses and minuses of the
resurgent Taliban option. The Bush administration
wants closer relations with India - not on New
Delhi's terms, but on Washington's terms. Indian
activity in Afghanistan has increased multifold
since the Karzai government came to power in the
winter of 2001. These developments are being eyed
suspiciously by Islamabad. While Washington would
not make a federal case out of it, it surely does
not like to see India forming a strategic
alliance with Russia and Iran in Afghanistan.
Washington would rather like to break such an
alliance quickly, particularly if its ally, in
this case Pakistan, wants such an alliance
broken. Significantly, a well-connected relative
of Musharraf, Brigadier Feroz Hassan Khan,
formerly at the Wilson Center and now a fellow at
the Monterey Institute of International Studies,
addressed these issues directly in a recent
publication.

Not just whistling in the dark
In the January issue of Strategic Insight, a
publication for the Center for Contemporary
Conflict, Khan observed: "In Iran, President
Khatami is moving in tandem and cooperation with
Pakistan in supporting the Karzai government as
manifest in the recent visit to Pakistan. However
there are hardliners in Iran who would want to
continue with the old game of supporting warlords
and factions and consider Pakistan as rival
vis-a-vis Afghanistan, and who are still
suspicious of the Saudi role. Iran is pitching
its bid, by constructing a road from Chahbahar
Port in the Persian Gulf through Iran's
Balochistan area to link up eventually with
Kandahar in the hope of 'breaking the monopoly of
Pakistan'. Afghanistan is currently sustained
primarily through the Karachi-Quetta/Peshawar
routes - Bolan and Khyber passes respectively -
which has provided Afghanistan with trade and
transit with the outside world for centuries."

Furthermore, Khan pointed out, "Russia remains
involved with the major warlords [of
Afghanistan]. One such warlord, Rashid Dostum,
was recently on a shopping spree for arms and
equipment from Moscow. Russia believes it has its
own experience and expertise in Afghanistan and
must reestablish its interests. Given the
history, Pakistan is very uncomfortable with this
development."

Of course, the Khan's treatise would not have
been complete without pointing to the devious
role of the Indians in Afghanistan. He said:
"India is a major proactive player now. It is
providing well-coordinated military supplies to
the Northern Alliance thorough the air base in
Tajikistan. This includes weapons, equipment and
spare parts aimed at strengthening those elements
that had become the sworn enemies of Pakistan
during the Taliban's rule. Fear in Pakistan is
that despite Afghanistan's changed policies, some
elements still hold a grudge against Pakistan and
would be willing to do India's bidding. This
would bring the India-Pakistan rivalry into the
Afghan imbroglio."

It is safe to assume that Khan, who has an
extensive background in arms control, disarmament
and international treaties, and who formulated
Pakistan's security policy on nuclear war, arms
control and strategic stability in South Asia, is
not merely whistling in the dark.

The terms of convenience
Now the question remains, what might Pakistan be
expected to deliver in return for the Bush
administration granting it control over
Afghanistan once more? In the real world,
Pakistan can help the United States
significantly. It has already agreed not to
provide nuclear technology to Islamic nations.
Musharraf may have to give the United States
control of its nuclear research facility, among
other things. More important will be to hand over
Osama bin Laden to the United States and send two
brigades of Pakistani troops to Iraq to help out
the beleaguered US troops there. The arrest of
Osama would surely justify the US mission to
Afghanistan, and could set the stage for
America's eventual withdrawal from that country.
Another likely item on the agenda is Pakistani
recognition of Israel.

Would this new arrangement of "sub-contracting"
(to use Karzai's apt term) Afghanistan to the
Pakistan-Taliban combination complicate the
already complex situation any further? Probably
not. It was evident in October 2001, when the
United States went pell-mell into Afghanistan
with the help of the Northern Alliance, that
America's hastily-organized arrangement there was
unsustainable. It was clear that no matter what
Islamabad says, or how much pressure is brought
to bear on it, Pakistan has absolutely no reason
whatsoever to agree to such an arrangement.

Washington came to appreciate the
non-sustainability of this arrangement when
Musharraf, in a sleight of hand, brought the
Muttahida Majlis-e Amal - the MMA, also known as
"Musharraf, Mullahs and the Army" - to power in
the two provinces bordering Afghanistan. At that
point, Karzai's tenure as president of
Afghanistan shrank abruptly, and Washington
deemed it time to give up the "Marshall Plan for
Afghanistan" and settle for next best - Taliban
rule in Afghanistan under Pakistani control, once
again.

(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact
content@... for information on our sales
and syndication policies.)



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From the Shobak news list (info below). beena

http://news.independent.co.uk/low_res/story.jsp?story=430073&host=3&dir=70

US anti-war activists hit by secret airport ban

By Andrew Gumbel in Los Angeles
03 August 2003

After more than a year of complaints by some US
anti-war activists that they were being unfairly
targeted by airport security, Washington has
admitted the existence of a list, possibly
hundreds or even thousands of names long, of
people it deems worthy of special scrutiny at
airports.

The list had been kept secret until its
disclosure last week by the new US agency in
charge of aviation safety, the Transportation
Security Administration (TSA). And it is entirely
separate from the relatively well-publicised
"no-fly" list, which covers about 1,000 people
believed to
have criminal or terrorist ties that could
endanger the safety of their fellow passengers.

The strong suspicion of such groups as the
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is
suing the government to try to learn more, is
that the second list has been used to target
political activists who challenge the government
in ! entirely legal ways. The TSA acknowledged
the existence of the
list in response to a Freedom of Information Act
request concerning two anti-war activists from
San Francisco who were stopped and briefly
detained at the airport last autumn and told they
were on an FBI no-fly list.

The activists, Rebecca Gordon and Jan Adams, work
for a small pacifist magazine called War Times
and say they have never been arrested, let alone
have criminal records. Others who have filed
complaints with the ACLU include a left-wing
constitutional lawyer who has been strip-searched
repeatedly when travelling through US airports,
and a 71-year-old nun from Milwaukee who was
prevented from flying to Washington to join an
anti-government protest.

It is impossible to know for sure who might be on
the list, or why. The ACLU says a list kept by
security personnel at Oakland airport ran to 88
pages. More than 300 people have been subject to
special questioning at San Francisco airport, !
and another 24 at Oakland, according to police
records.
In no case does it appear that a wanted criminal
was apprehended.

The ACLU's senior lawyer on the case, Jayashri
Srikantiah, said she is troubled by several
answers that the TSA gave to her questions. The
agency, she said, had no way of making sure that
people did not end up on the list simply because
of things they had said or organisations they
belonged to.
Once people were on the list, there was no
procedure for trying to get off it. The TSA did
not even think it was important to keep track of
people singled out in error for a security
grilling. According to documents the agency
released, it saw "no pressing need to do so".

It is not just left-wingers who feel unfairly
targeted. Right-wing civil libertarians have
spoken out against the secret list, and at least
one conservative organisation, the Eagle Forum,
says its members have been interrogated by
security staff.

The complaints by the ! ACLU form part of a
pattern of protest since the 11 September
attacks, with the Bush administration repeatedly
under fire for detaining people on the flimsiest
of grounds in the name of the "war on terror".
Many Muslims have had a hard time, especially if
they have a surname such as Hussein.

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Two-year old Pakistani Noor's succesful heart surgery in India has been held
up as a symbol for peace between the two countries. Her story contrasts
to the treatment meted out to a young Pakistani boy who strayed into Indian
territory and was imprisoned some months ago. Since this was reported
in The Hindu a few weeks ago, many in India and Pakistan have lobbied hard
with both governments for his release and repatriation -- which is finally
happening this coming Tuesday. The case has many other implications too,
writes the well known columnist Praful Bidwai (see article below), who hopes
the Indian government's releasing of Munir "generates a decent momentum for
further unsordid actions."  Amen.
Also: Yet another peace delegation of Indian politicians, including the
colourful Laloo Prasad Yadav is now touring Pakistan, and peace groups here
as well as in India plan to hold candle-light vigils for peace on Aug 14,
the date that we celebrate our independence from British rule. Maybe one day
we'll celebrate our independence from those who have continued to keep our
peoples enslaved in the web of ignorance, poverty, hunger, unemployment and
debt.
beena
-------
The Hindustan Times, New Delhi, August 8, 2003

PLATFORM/ Praful Bidwai

Do a Noor to Munir

The innocent boy who strayed across the border deserves the same compassion
and care as little Noor. This is a test for our rulers to prove they can be
decent and humane

*******
In just 20 days, little Noor Fatima has done more for India-Pakistan
people-to-people relations than all our diplomats, political leaders and
Track-II participants put together have in as many years! The two-year-old
who came to this country for heart surgery produced a near-magical effect on
the Indian lay public's attitude to the people of Pakistan.

It's as if Noor suddenly liberated us from deep, long-felt prejudices about
our neighbours and made us see them as human beings-much like ourselves,
without horns, capable and worthy of human contact and friendship, and above
all, ordinary decency. Yes, Pakistanis!

This changed perception-and not merely empathy and goodwill for her and her
parents-explains the staggering reception Noor got from every nook and
corner of India. There was no petty-minded carping about the unprecedented
welcome accorded to her even from those who nurture a visceral hatred of
Pakistan.

More gifts, toys and money poured in for Noor than her parents knew what to
do with. In reverse, they, equally generously, created a special fund to
support Indian children in medical distress.

Noor embodies the kind of innocence which instantly disarms. For many
Indians, she was a child to be just as naturally adored, loved and cared for
as their own babies. She became an icon of hope and the symbol of a possible
new dawn.

Only the mean-spirited and bloody-minded can remain unaffected by the Noor
Phenomenon. Noor and the 20 other children India has promised to medically
treat gratis, will be welcomed again and again to this country.

Contrast this with the treatment accorded to Munir (13), from Vatu in
Bahawalpur in Pakistan, who on June 26 accidentally strayed across the
border into Rajasthan's Sri Ganganagar district. His account of straying was
authenticated by as many as five official Indian agencies. Yet, he was
immediately jailed.

More than five weeks later, he is still under detention. Those who have seen
him on television could not have failed to be impressed either by his charm
or his dismay at his detention.

The contrast is, partly, directly about class. Unlike middle-class Noor,
Munir is desperately poor. His father Bilal Mohammed comes from a family of
cowherds, and sells kulfi in distant Lahore to survive. Munir is also
illiterate. He possesses no documents.

On June 26, he lost his way from Vatu to Mochipur village to which he was
despatched by his mother to borrow Rs 500 from her brother.

Munir's plight is also about entrenched bureaucratic cussedness, bad laws
and anti-citizen legal procedures and practices. He was first charged with
vagrancy, although the Juvenile Justice Act 2000 explicitly prohibits this.
In contravention of the law, he was not produced before a magistrate or the
Juvenile Justice Board. (The Juvenile Justice Act mandates the second).

Munir was illegally incarcerated in a regular (adult) jail for a whole
month. His treatment violated the international Convention for the Rights of
the Child to which India is a signatory since 1992. Separating a child from
its family in an alien country is surely an infringement of its fundamental
right to life and liberty. This right is guaranteed by the Constitution of
India under Article 21 to all persons, not just Indian citizens.

However, it's a safe bet that nobody will be held accountable nor even
mildly punished for causing avoidable suffering to a child-such is the
supremely callous administrative system we inherit in all of South Asia.

But ordinary citizens of Rajasthan were moved by Munir's story. Some spent
their own money to get legal and humanitarian help for him. Thanks to the
intervention of the People's Union of Civil Liberties, Munir was transferred
a week ago to a Juvenile Observation Home.

On August 4, a special meeting of the Child Welfare Committee was called. It
recommended that Munir should be repatriated to Pakistan by the government
of Rajasthan or India, or alternatively, kept in the Juvenile Home till he
turns 18!

Those who know anything about Juvenile Homes in India know that prolonged
detention in them is the surest recipe for the brutalisation and
transformation of children into hardened criminals. But children's
repatriation, say Rajasthan bureaucrats from actual experience, can take a
year-if "expedited", at least three months. This is also true of innocent
fisherfolk from both countries who regularly stray into each other's
territorial waters and are detained for two, five, 10 years.

Noor returned to her family in Pakistan with what her doctors called a
"happy heart". Both Indians and Pakistanis felt pleased at and proud of
this.

So here's a chance for their governments to prove they too can be unsordid
and humane, and act like most decent people would. The two countries' High
Commissioners should immediately pick up the phone, and call each other, and
their respective home secretaries.

Even better, Prime Minister Vajpayee should call his counterpart Jamali and
bring Munir's plight to a happy end. A BSF unit should escort him across the
border and hand him over ceremoniously to the Pakistan Rangers.

Munir, I am told, immensely enjoyed the kheer he was served by the Rajasthan
villagers who were bewitched by his simplicity, innocence-and yes, cuteness.
Surely he deserves yet other helpings of kheer on both sides of the border.

------

Compiling below some recent efforts for peace.

PLEASE JOIN US - pass the word to friends in
other cities too.

Aug 14 2003,
Candlelight Vigil for Peace
QA Mazar (Sh-e-Quaideen gate) Karachi
7.00 pm (organisers pls be there by 6.30 pm with
banners)

Organisers in Karachi include Joint Action
Committee and the Youth Initiative for Peace
(YIP).

The event also marks the 10th anniversary of the
founding of the Pakistan-India People's Forum for
Peace & Democracy (PIPFPD) - see msg below.

As Pakistan and India gear up to celebrate their
independence on Aug 14 and 15 efforts for peace
between the two acquire greater momentum. A huge
delegation of Indian parliamentarians and
mediapersons was recently in Pakistan, and
stressed the people's need and desire for peace
(organised by the South Asia Free Media
Association).

Veteran Indian journalist Kuldeep Nayar is at the
forefront of the Indian group which has been
lighting candles at the Wagah border for the last
ten years. So far Pakistanis have not been
allowed to join in this activity - maybe things
will change this year.

Chapters of the Pakistan India Peoples Forum for
Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD) will hold
simultaneous candle-lit vigils on Aug 14. (see
details of West Bengal and Karachi actions below)

In the USA, the Association of Pakistani
Physicians of North America (APPNA)have got
together with the Association of American Indian
Physicians (AAPI) to form APSA- Action group for
Physicians of South Asia and - they're organising
joint celebrations in California, Houston, Boston
and Atlanta. see
http://www.dawn.com/2003/08/07/nat23.htm

[snip]
A group of Pakistani and Indian physicians living
in North America plan to organize a joint
celebration of "Independence Day" of both
countries from Aug 14 to Aug 16 in California,
Houston, Boston and Atlanta.

The events are being organized by an Action group
of Physicians of South Asia (APSA) which is also
coordinating with other non-physician groups for
such an event, Dr Zaffar Iqbal a convener of the
group said. [end snip]

beena
karachi

-----
From Tapan Bose in Ktm

Dear friends,
Our West Bengal Chapter has decided to hold a
candle light vigil on the night of August 14 to
mark the year long programme for the 10th
anniversary of the founding of PIPFPD. They have
also suggested that other chapters of PIPFPD in
India and Pakistan should plan similar
programmes on the night of 14th of August this
year.  I agree with their suggestion.

Holding a candle light vigil in the cities and
towns where we live and work is a good way to
reaffirm our commitment to the core concept
of the Forum - war and attempts to create war
hysteria must be outlawed. This is the first
pledge of the September 2, 1994 joint
statement of Lahore that founded the Forum. The
five-points enshrined in that joint statement
need to be reaffirmed again and again and
should become the main plank of our interaction
with wider public in the tenth year of our
founding.

During the last three years some of our friends
have been observing candle light vigil at the
Wagha/Atarai border in Punjab. I understand
this is being done this year also.  I humbly
suggest that  those who would like to go to the
Wagha/Atari border post to participate in the
candle light visit should do so. At the same time
I will request members of the provincial/state
chapters of the forum in India and to hold
similar programmes in their own places.
With best wishes
Tapan Kumar Bose
General Secretary
PIPFPD
Indian National Committee


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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4368.htm

The Terrorism Of Debt

The genocide happening in the third world today
is even more horrifying than the death camps in
Nazi Germany. This time the objective is not to
"cleanse the master race", but to make the
masters wealthier.

By Wanda Fish: 08/06/03

Imagine two scenes in different parts of the
world.

In our first scenario, three hooded gunmen raid
an embassy. After a bloody gun battle, the
terrorists take the Ambassador and other
survivors as hostages. They demand the release of
certain prisoners, or they will destroy the
embassy and kill their hostages.

In our second scenario, three grey-suited
executives raid a country. The collapsing economy
has left the government powerless to administer
essential services. Failed crops, internal
corruption, and natural disasters have taken
their toll. People are desperate and dying. The
IMF and World Bank executives outline the terms
and conditions of the $50 billion loan.

The terrorists in the first scene are eventually
captured and executed for terrorist crimes. The
bankers in the second scene are rewarded for
their successful hijacking of the country’s
economy. Their corporations will be paid many
times the loan over the next decade. The debt
trap will cripple and imprison the country’s
future earning capacity. The executives receive
bonuses and promotions that take their collective
salary to a sum greater than the salaries of all
the lowest paid workers in the country they had
signed up to the debt trap.

Over the past fifty years, the IMF and the World
Bank have forced economic "development" that
benefits the wealthy lenders and multinational
corporations in the industrialized north and
enslaves the world's poor majority in developing
and third world countries. These international
loan sharks have hijacked the economies of more
than 60 countries. Loans, international
assistance, and debt relief are given only when
countries agree to conditions set by the Bank and
Fund. Free trade, market liberalization, and
privatisation of essential resources and services
are demanded if "financial stability" is to be
achieved. While crippling interest payments force
cuts in health care, education and other social
services for millions of people around the globe;
the banks and corporations that "rescued" those
countries report record profits. Humanitarian
crises, like wars, have become lucrative business
for those who have money to lend.

Ten years ago, economist J. W. Smith warned, "The
size of the debt trap can be controlled to claim
all surplus production of a society, but if
allowed to continue to grow the magic of compound
interest dictates it is unsustainable. The third
world debt has been compounding at over 20
percent per year between 1973 and 1993, from $100
billion to $1.5 trillion [only $400 billion of
the $1.5 trillion was actually borrowed money.
The rest was runaway compound interest]. If Third
World debt continues to compound at 20 percent
per year, the $117 trillion debt will be reached
in eighteen years and the $13.78 quadrillion debt
in thirty-four years."

More shocking than the magnitude of the figures
(how does one fathom a quadrillion dollars?) is
the chilling fact that the debt trap robs all the
surplus production of an entire society. Debt
does much more than forcing a country to work for
nothing. This form of terrorism punishes the
children, abandons the sick, and enslaves the
adults.

Every hour, one Filipino child dies because of
debt-related poverty. Millions of children die
every year in the Third World because they are
too poor to buy food or medicines. Their families
work extraordinary hours to earn less than $2 a
day. Filthy slums with inhumane living conditions
are prolific in most countries in the world, and
are no longer exclusive to the third world.

An estimated 100 million children live and work
on the streets in the developing world, including
40 million in Latin America. Although many of
these street children have some family links,
they spend most of their lives on the streets
begging, selling trinkets, shining shoes or
washing cars to supplement their families'
income. These children rarely go beyond a
fourth-grade education. The 25 million children
without families live in the streets with other
street children. They sleep in abandoned
buildings, under bridges, in doorways, or in
public parks.

These young victims of debt resort to petty theft
and prostitution to survive. Many are addicted to
inhalants which offer them an escape from reality
and hunger pains -- in exchange for a host of
physical and psychological problems, including
hallucinations, pulmonary edema, kidney failure,
and irreversible brain damage. These children are
abused, even murdered, by the people who are
supposed to protect them.

"His name was Nahamán, a 13 year old in
Guatemala. One night, while walking on the
streets, he was kicked to death by four policemen
who found him and decided to punish him. His
crime? He was a street kid ... a subhuman without
pedigree, a vexing reminder of Guatemala's
malignant inclinations, the mortifying embodiment
of a fallen society, a scapegoat. And, in death,
a martyr. When we buried Nahamán on March 14th,
1990, his gravestone read: ‘I only wanted to be a
child, but they wouldn't let me’."

While indebted countries struggle to pay mounting
interest on debt loans, their hospitals, schools,
water supply, electricity, and public transport
deteriorate rapidly with reduced budgets.
Disease, destitution and general lack of
sanitation characterise many Third World cities.
The children who do survive are unable to read
and write as government budgets for health and
education are cut to the bone as a result of debt
service. In Niger, one of the poorest countries
in the world, the government spends three times
more on debt repayment than on health and
education.

Sub-Saharan Africa pays $10 billion every year in
debt service. The countries of Sub-Saharan Africa
are experiencing a pandemic with terrible
consequences. In South Africa one in five people
has HIV-AIDS, and in Zimbabwe one in four. One in
seven Kenyans has the virus. In Botswana, the
country with the highest rate of infection in the
world, more than one-third of all adults are HIV
positive. Twenty million people, or the entire
population of Australia, have died in Sub-Saharan
Africa since the pandemic began. If current
trends continue, there will be than 40 million
AIDS orphans in Africa by the end of this decade.

Despite their extreme health crisis, 23 African
countries spend more money on debt repayment than
they spend on healthcare, which attracts only
$2.5 billion, or a quarter of their debt service.
This does not concern the banks that loaned the
money. Their only objective is to make their rich
clients even richer. The Kenyan widow dying of
aids and leaving five orphans is not entered into
the ledger books. However, the GM food that the
starving widow and her children are forced to eat
is entered into the ledger books. The
humanitarian crisis has created a market for
modified food that the rest of the world didn’t
want. After all, beggars can’t be choosey.

By contrast, the wealthiest individuals in the
world can choose or buy anything they want. At
the top of the list is Bill Gates whose net worth
in 2003 is forty billion dollars, or four times
the annual debt service of sub-Saharan Africa and
sixteen times the annual expenditure on health
and education in those countries. The world's 497
billionaires in 2001 registered a combined wealth
of $1.54 trillion, well over the combined gross
national products of all the nations of
sub-Saharan Africa ($929.3 billion) or those of
the oil-rich regions of the Middle East and North
Africa ($1.34 trillion). These five hundred
people also possess greater wealth than the
combined incomes of the poorest half of humanity.

Think about that fact for just a minute. Five
hundred obnoxiously wealthy people have too much
while nearly three billion people have nothing.
Allow the full meaning to play out in your mind.
While five hundred people have enough money to
buy several countries, half of humanity struggles
on less than $2 a day and can barely buy enough
food to stay alive. It gets worse. Anything extra
our third-world worker can earn will go into debt
service payments. The banks profit, and the
shareholders increase their wealth. The five
hundred at the top of the tree have just made a
profit out of poverty.

After the G8 summit in Okinawa in 2000, President
Obasanjo of Nigeria made this comment on
Nigeria’s debt: "All that we had borrowed up to
1985 or 1986 was around $5 billion and we have
paid about $16 billion yet we are still being
told that we owe about $28 billion. That $28
billion came about because of the injustice in
the foreign creditors' interest rates. If you ask
me what is the worst thing in the world, I will
say it is compound interest."

When President Obasanjo spoke out, the developing
world was spending $13 on debt repayment for
every one dollar it received in grants.

While most people would be aware of the debt
burden of the third world, they would be
surprised to learn that the United States is also
a heavily indebted country. The accumulated debt
of the world’s ‘richest’ country, the USA, is
more than two trillion dollars. The exact amount
owed by the whole of the developing world,
including India, China and Brazil, is $2.5
trillion. This means that three hundred million
Americans owe as much to the rest of the world as
do five billion people in all the developing
countries. The inequity doesn’t stop there. While
developing country economies struggle with debt
service repayments totaling more than $300
billion per year, the US must only pay $20
billion to service an almost equivalent amount of
debt. Jubilee, an international movement working
to remove the third world debt, classifies the
United States as a "heavily indebted prosperous
country".

If the money is not coming from the United
States, where is it coming from? Who actually
owns the money that was loaned in the first
place? Some of it comes from illegal activities
and is recognised as "dirty money". US and
European banks launder between $500 billion and
$1 trillion of dirty money each year, half of
which enters the coffers of American banks.
According to Catherine Austin Fitts, a
contributing editor to "From the Wilderness", and
formerly Assistant Secretary of Housing under
George Bush, the four largest states for the
importation of drugs are New York, Florida, Texas
and California. She points out that the top four
money-laundering states in the U.S. (good for
between 100 and 260 billion per year in 1999)
were New York, Florida, Texas and California. The
connection goes on. Eighty per cent of all
Presidential campaign funds also come from New
York, Florida, Texas and California.

While the World Bank and IMF are the main targets
of activists working to remove third world debt,
these two international banking institutions are
influenced by various national banks, financial
consultancies, and former politicians who manage
the wealth of the world for their wealthy
clients. The "Group of Thirty" established in
1978 is a private, nonprofit, international body
composed of very senior representatives of the
financial private, public and academic sectors.
This select group of controllers aims "to deepen
understanding of international economic and
financial issues…and to examine the choices
available to market practitioners and
policymakers". The most powerful decision-makers
and influencers in the financial world are
members of this magic circle, which includes
major national banks, universities, former
politicians, and global consultancies.

Despite the impressive collection of financial
wizardry and power, The Group of Thirty and
annual Economic Summits have failed to neutralise
the terrorism of third world debt. Those who
manage the global economic system are focused on
the shareholder value of banks and corporations.
The system is "successful" as long as it returns
more wealth to the wealthy. Yet these financial
experts are myopic about the future. The current
level of debt worldwide is unsustainable and must
eventually lead to the total collapse of a global
economy that expects increased productivity from
the poorest and unhealthiest workers on the
planet.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in
1948, is built on the principle that human rights
come from the "inherent dignity" of every person.
The Declaration states, "Everyone has the right
to a standard of living adequate for the health
and well-being of himself and of his family,
including food, clothing, housing and medical
care and necessary social services, and the right
to security in the event of unemployment,
sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other
lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his
control."

When the United Nations wrote that declaration 55
years ago, mankind was recovering from the trauma
of a world war and the horrifying genocide of
millions of innocent civilians. At that time it
was necessary for mankind to ratify basic human
rights and the principle of human dignity.

The genocide happening in the third world today
is even more horrifying than the death camps in
Nazi Germany. This time the objective is not to
"cleanse the master race", but to make the
masters wealthier.

The banks, in pursuit of more wealth and power,
terrorise the third world. Those of us who live
comfortable lives in developed countries are part
of the crime. Our lifestyle, and our expectation
that our savings will grow, feed the terrorism of
debt. We might save a few dollars with the cheap
imported clothes we wear, the coffee we drink,
and the oil we put into the car; but those
savings have made slaves of children and started
wars. Our humanity has been hijacked by the
dollar and the pursuit of wealth has become more
important than human lives.

How then do we wage war on the "terrorism of
debt"? The Global Exchange website suggests ten
actions that will democratize the global economy.
These are not easy or quick fixes, and each
action will require dedication and persistence.
The following summary is a starting point.

1. The WTO (World Trade Organisation) must be
replaced by a body that is fully democratic,
transparent, and accountable to citizens of the
entire world instead of to corporations. We must
build support for trade policies that protect
workers, human rights, and the environment.

2. Mandate corporate responsibility so that
corporations have to prove their worth to society
or be dismantled. Now many corporations advocate
weakening of labor and environmental laws and
their pursuit of free trade has delivered a
global economy of sweatshops and environmental
devastation. Corporations must be accountable to
public needs, be open to public scrutiny, provide
living wage jobs, abide by all environmental and
labor regulations, and be subject to all laws
governing them. Shareholder activism is an
excellent tool for challenging corporate
behavior.

3. Restructure the Global Financial Architecture.
Currency speculation earns short term profits for
wealthy investors but does nothing for long term
development. A tax of .1% to .25% on currency
transactions would be a disincentive for
speculation, would not affect real capital
investment, and could create a huge fund for
building schools and medical clinics throughout
the world.

4. Support the Jubilee action to cancel all third
world debt, end structural adjustment, and defend
a country’s right to make economic decisions that
will benefit the welfare of its people, not
multinational corporations.

5. Prioritise human rights in trade agreements.
Trade rules must comply with higher laws on human
rights as well as economic and labor rights
included in the United Nations Declaration of
Human Rights. We should promote alternative trade
agreements that include fair trade, debt
cancellation, micro-credit, and local control
over development policies.

6. Promote sustainable development, not
consumption, as the key to the progress.
International development should not be
export-driven, but rather should prioritize food
security, sustainability, and democratic
participation.

7. Integrate women’s needs in economic
structuring. Family survival around the world
depends on the economic independence of women.
Economic policies need to take into account
women's important role in nutrition, education,
and development.

8. Build free and strong labor unions
internationally and domestically. The union
movement needs to be reborn. As corporations
increase their multinational strength, unions are
struggling to build bridges across borders and
organize globally. Activists can support their
efforts and ensure that free labor is an
essential component of any 'free trade'
agreements.

9. Develop community control over capital and
promote socially responsible investment.
Communities should be able to develop investment
and development programs that suit local needs
including passing anti-sweatshop purchasing
restrictions, promoting local credit unions and
local barter currency, and implementing
investment policies for their city, church, and
union that reflect social responsibility
criteria.

10. Promote fair trade instead of free trade. We
need to build networks of support and education
for grassroots trade and trade in environmentally
sustainable goods. We can promote labeling of
goods such as Fair Trade Certified, organic, and
sustainably harvested.

It is time to reclaim our humanity and to
"equalize" the economy so that we can fairly run,
not unfairly ruin, our world. Economic theory
will not feed, clothe or shelter us when we have
used up the last poor worker. The current system
is doomed to fail and will cost more millions of
lives. If we start now, our grandchildren will be
able to enjoy a world where human dignity is the
most valued currency.

Let’s start to fix it today.
------
Wanda Fish is a freelance journalist who now
dedicates her writing to the pursuit of a fair
world, without wars and with equality. This
article is offered freely for distribution and
publication. Wanda can be contacted on
cleverfish@...



________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/

Two well researched articles by the US journalist
Jay Shaft - Coalition For Free Thought In Media
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia
- he lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. A friend
in California sent the first piece on poverty
within the USA, & I found the second on the net.
I think it's fantastic that such work is being
done in the USA, even if it doesn't make it to
the mainstream spaces.
beena

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4305.htm

US Homelessness and Poverty Rates Skyrocket
While Billions are Spent Overseas on Occupation

By: Jay Shaft---Coalition For Free Thought In
Media
7/30/03

As I watch far away images of body bags being
filled, I see much closer images of bodies. I
went by a local park the other day and it looked
like a concentration camp crossed with a mass
murder scene.

There were people in rags and covered with filth
lying scattered all over the place. At least
twenty people were on crutches, had parts
bandaged, or with open wounds not even covered.
They were all hungry and a large majority was
sick.

All around this city I live in, and nationwide,
the level of homelessness and poverty is growing
alarmingly. From the last counts and estimates
nation wide, there has been at least a 35-45%
increase in homelessness and poverty. The
increases have come over the last two years with
the biggest increases being in 2002 and
especially in the first six months of 2003.

Add to that the barely subsisting or borderline
homeless/poor and we start to see a very alarming
trend that shows no sign of going away. Over 30%
of Americans are on the borderline of poverty. A
lot just do not quite make the cut to receive
food stamps or some kind of benefits and live on
a razor edge of desperation and starvation.

I have talked to people that run food banks, soup
kitchens, and homeless shelters. Places like Day
Star, Catholic Charities, St, Vincent De Paul,
and many other major support agencies. They all
tell me they have seen a vast increase in people
that would starve or be without clothes if not
for their services.

The most shocking sight to see is homeless and
starving children, living right near some of the
richest neighborhoods!!!!! Right here in
"humanitarian" America, home of the worlds
largest "humanitarian" and "liberating" force (or
is it FARCE?).

This country is putting more and more of our
citizens on the brink of homelessness and
desperate poverty. In addition, it seems that we
have pushed countless others over the brink and
into the bottomless pit of despair and need. All
you have to do is look around, open your eyes,
and you will see the vast sea of hungry and
destitute.

I have seen more and more children and families
out on the street or in feeding centers and at
food handouts. To think that the world’s richest
country allows this to happen is Sickening! To
think that we turn a blind eye to starving
children because it is easier to tolerate than do
something about it!

We cannot afford to hire teachers, build new
schools, or even maintain the ones we have. Our
children slip farther into the void of illiteracy
and neglect. We are the lowest among the
industrialized "first" world nations in literacy
scores! Many "third" world countries now have
higher literacy rates than the U.S.

We are setting ourselves up to turn the world’s
richest country into a third world quagmire. This
country is sinking into a swamp of drowning poor
and so-called "Economically Challenged!” The rich
meanwhile buy bigger S.U.Vs (self indulgent
ubiquitous vulture mobiles), and bigger gated
houses to keep out the flotsam and detritus of
the cast aways.

Homelessness Reaches New Levels

3.5 million people, 39% of them children,
currently experience homelessness every year. 60%
of all new homeless cases are single mothers with
children.

Recent studies suggest that the United States
generates homelessness at a much higher rate than
previously thought. By its very nature,
homelessness is impossible to measure with 100%
accuracy. More important than actually knowing
the precise number of people who experience
homelessness is how to go about ending it.

A growing number of cities, including Los
Angeles, Seattle, and Atlanta, are criminalizing
activities of the homeless, according to the
National Coalition for the Homeless. More than 60
cities are introducing measures to make it
illegal to beg or sleep on the streets, to sit in
a bus shelter for more than an hour, or to walk
across a parking lot if the person doesn't have a
car parked there.

In 2002 the US Conference of Mayors reported a
19% increase in shelter requests due to
homelessness in 25 surveyed cities. Requests for
shelter by families increased by 20%.

On average 30% of all requests for shelter went
unmet in 2002, with 38% of requests by families
going unmet. In 60% of the reporting cities,
emergency shelters had to turn away families due
to lack of resources, with 56% reporting they had
to turn away other homeless people.

People are remaining homeless for at least 6
months on average with 82% of cities reporting an
increase in the length of time people are
homeless.

There has been a 40% increase in the Berkeley,
California homeless population over the last two
years. New York City has reported a 42% increase
over the last two years, Boston a 37% increase,
Los Angeles, CA a 47% increase, San Diego, CA
41%, Washington, D.C. 39%, Seattle, WA. 43%,
Portland, OR 36%, Chicago, IL 47%, St. Louis, MO
34%, Atlanta, GA 40%, Tampa, FL 46%, St.
Petersburg, Fl 45%, Miami, FL 49%, New Orleans,
LA 41%, Phoenix, AZ a staggering 56%, with most
other major cities reporting at least a 25-30%
increase over the last two years.

41% of all homeless are single males, 41%
families, 13% single females, and 5% being
unaccompanied minors. The homeless population is
estimated to be 50% African American, 35% white,
12% Hispanic, 2% Native American, and 1% Asian.

An average of 23% suffer from mental illness, 38%
suffer from substance abuse, 10% are veterans,
and 22% are employed.

Over 40% of homeless persons are eligible for
disability benefits, but only 11% actually
receive them. Most are eligible for food stamps,
but only 37% receive them. Most homeless families
are eligible for welfare benefits, but only 52%
receive them.

Published reports suggest that most homeless
families with children are headed by single women
between the ages of 26 and 30 who have never been
married and have two children. According to one
study, homeless women are significantly more
likely to have low birth weight babies than are
similar poor women who have housing.

Lack of affordable housing leads the list of
causes for homelessness, with mental illness and
lack of needed services, substance abuse, low
paying jobs, domestic violence, unemployment,
poverty, prison release, down turn in economy,
limited life skills and cuts in public assistance
being the other top reported causes.

The average wait for public housing was 19
months; the average wait for Section 8
certificates and vouchers was 21-23 months. 45%
of cities have stopped taking public housing
applications in at least one assisted housing
program due to extensive waiting lists.

The other group sometimes considered homeless is
the precariously housed population. People who
are precariously housed are in danger of becoming
literally homeless because they have no place of
their own to live or their current housing
situation is tenuous. This group includes, among
others, people who are doubled up... those who
are living for short periods of time with friends
or relatives and thus lack a fixed, regular
nighttime residence.

Children often appear among the precariously
housed population because parents who become
homeless may place their children with friends or
relatives in order to avoid literal homelessness
for them. Because some individuals and families
choose to share housing as a regular, stable, and
long-term arrangement, distinguishing the
precariously housed from those in stable sharing
arrangements is difficult.

President Bush claimed that his FY2004 budget
"helps America meet its goals both at home and
overseas." Yet, upon examination of the budget
numbers, the goals of many Americans appear not
to have been included.

At a time when unprecedented numbers of families
and individuals are homeless or at risk of
becoming homeless, the President proposed no new
resources to meet their needs. His budget
maintains funding levels for most homeless
assistance programs; levels so woefully
inadequate that each year record numbers of
people are turned away from life-sustaining
services.

In releasing his FY2004 budget, President Bush
claimed "human compassion cannot be summarized in
dollars and cents." Neither, can the untold
suffering of the 1.35 million children whose
lives will be disrupted by loss of housing and
health care this year, or the sorrow of their
parents, who struggle against the odds to provide
stability and hope, or the frustration and pain
of those who work but cannot afford housing, or
the fear of those whose health conditions,
coupled with lack of housing, threaten their very
survival.

In particular, the President's Medicaid proposal
threatens to leave many more families and
children uninsured, dramatically increasing their
risk of becoming homeless due to illness or
injury. Children are especially vulnerable to
losing coverage under the proposed merging of
Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance
Program.

Hunger and Starvation Increasing, Especially For
Children

In 2001, the USDA reported that the number of
Americans who were food insecure or hungry or at
risk of hunger was 33.6 million. In the last year
it is estimated that there has been an additional
5-10 million additional people who are now in
jeopardy of hunger and starvation. The government
has a benign description of this situation,
calling the hungry and starving "Food Critical.”

The 2002 survey of 25 cities by the US Conference
of Mayors recorded a 19% increase in the requests
for emergency food has risen by 19% in 2002. 100%
of the cities reported these increases. Requests
for food by families increased by 17% while
requests for food by the elderly increased by
19%.

48% of people requesting food were families with
children. 38% were currently employed at the time
of the request.

In 2002, 16% of all food requests went unmet due
to lack of resources. 14% of families did not
have their requests met adequately.

The leading reason for hunger was high housing
costs, along with low paying jobs, unemployment
and other employment related issues, economic
downturn, medical and health costs, homelessness,
poverty or lack of income, substance abuse,
reduced public benefits, child care costs, mental
health problems, and limited life skills being
cited as the other leading causes of hunger.

I have talked to various groups doing feedings,
both in fixed locations and out on the street.
All the groups I talked to said they had
experienced a 30-50% increase in the amount of
people seeking food and nutritional resources.

According to America’s Second Harvest, a group
dedicated to ending hunger and starvation, one in
every four people in feeding lines are children.
Over 9 million children are the recipients of
food from a pantry, kitchen, or shelter within
the network of America's Second Harvest.

A survey of America's Second Harvest affiliates
in late 2001 and early 2002 found that 86% had
seen an increase in requests for food assistance
during the past year. I contacted them recently
and they said the level of food requests has
risen even more in 2002- mid 2003.

New York City's soup kitchens and food pantries
fed 45% more people in 2002 than in 2000. In the
one year following September 11, 73% of the
agencies fed more children, with 39% saying the
number of children they fed increased "greatly."

America's Second Harvest's Hunger in America 2001
report found that 23.3 million people sought and
received emergency hunger relief from the network
of charities in 2001. 23 million people receiving
emergency food assistance is equivalent to the
combined populations of the 10 largest U.S.
cities: New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston,
Philadelphia, San Diego, Phoenix, San Antonio,
Dallas, and Detroit.

According to some surveys and partial reports for
the first six months of 2003, the figure is now
over 40 million people in America that have to
seek some form of daily feeding or nutritional
supplementation

Poverty and Unemployment Growing at Alarming Rate


Between 2000 and 2001, poverty rose to 11.7% of
the population, or 32.9 million people, up from
11.3% and 31.6 million. The poverty rate for 2002
was 13.9% equaling about 35.1 million Americans
living in poverty with over 14 million of those
being children. In 2003 the poverty rate is
expected to average 14.2% or 35.8 million people.
(US CENSUS BUREAU)

18% of American children, almost 15 million, live
in poverty, meaning their parents' income is at
or below the federal poverty level. This is about
the same number of children who lived in poverty
in 1980. 8% of America’s children, 6 million,
live in extreme poverty. This is a 19% increase
from 2000. The parents of these children make
half the federal poverty level, or $8,980 for a
family of four.  39% of American children, 28
million, live in low-income families. This is a
3% increase from 2000.

According to the newest figures released by the
Labor Department on 7/3/03, 9.2 million people
are now unemployed by adjusted figures and if you
include the unemployed who are not receiving any
assistance like unemployment compensation or
Workman's Comp, the figure is 13.9 million.

Average unemployment rates in the past 2 years
have risen: in 2001, the rate was 4.8%, but
jumped to 5.7% in 2002, and to 6.5% in 2003. (US
BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS)

57% of African American children are low-income
(down 3% from 2000), 64% of Latino (up 7%), and
34% of white children (up 3%) are low-income.

As low-income families increase their earnings,
they rapidly lose eligibility for assistance such
as childcare subsidies and health benefits. It is
not until a two-parent family of four reaches
roughly $36,000 a year in income that parents can
provide the basic necessities for their children.
That’s double the federal poverty level.

68% of all workers receiving help under the
Temporary Emergency Unemployment Compensation
program have exhausted their unemployment
benefits before finding another job.

A survey by National Employment Law Project,
"Unemployed in America," conducted April 17-28,
2003 also found that more than half of all
unemployed workers had cut back on spending on
food and more than half had also postponed
medical or dental care.

A January 2001 report by the Department of
Housing and Urban Development (HUD) found that
4.9 million low-income American households had
worst case housing needs, paying more than 50% of
their income on rent, while HUD estimates that
this figure should be no more than 30%.

Following years of decline, participation in the
food stamp program has been on the rise over the
past two years. In December 2002, the last month
for which data are available, 20.5 million people
participated in the food stamp program. October
2002 was the first month since March 1998 in
which the number of food stamp participants
exceeded 20 million.  Since its recent low point
in July 2000, participation has increased by 3.6
million people, or 22 percent.

According to the National Bureau of Economic
Research, the current recession began in March
2001.  Between that date and December 2002, food
stamp participation increased by 3.3 million
people, or 19 percent, nationally.  Participation
increased between March 2001 and December 2002 in
47 states and the District of Columbia.

More than 35 states have made cuts in programs
funded with TANF and childcare block grant funds,
and most of these cuts are in programs that
promote the goals of welfare reform. The cuts
reflect both the exhaustion of many states’
surplus TANF funds from prior years and the large
budget gaps many states face.

With many single mothers losing their child care,
they cannot find work or maintain adequate
employment and are in extreme danger of losing
their housing.

4 Billion a month to occupy Iraq, 1.9 billion to
occupy Afghanistan

America is bleeding money into foreign
occupation, while cutting back on the programs
that provide a safety net for America's poorest
citizens. The military budget is expected to top
$450 million for the fiscal year 2004.

The costs of occupying and improving conditions
in Iraq and Afghanistan are not even factored
into the latest military expenditure proposals.
The US is pledged to rebuilding Iraq's electrical
and water infrastructure at estimated costs of
$10 Billion for the electrical grid and $500
Million to rebuild the water system and supply
clean water to the population of Iraq.

While the US is committed to at least two years
of occupation in Iraq and possibly up to ten
years, our own people slip into further poverty
and starvation.

If the US spent just three months occupation
costs, they could wipe out hunger and
homelessness completely for ten years. However,
it does not seem like feeding and sheltering our
own citizens has a very high priority.

If the US took just 25% of their annual military
budget, it could go a long way to wiping out
hunger and homelessness around the world. Just
10% of our military budget spent yearly on
America could give every high school graduate a
college education for four years.

It seems like it is not a priority to protect our
children from starvation and living on the
streets. Our education system is crumbling and
the school breakfast and lunch programs are being
slashed mercilessly.

Increasingly in America, private foundations and
organizations are stepping in to take up the
slack that the government fails to adjust for.
Most charities are reporting budget shortfalls
due to the government cutting their funding and
resources.

If this crisis continues, we are in danger of
actually having worse hunger and homelessness
than some third world countries. The military
expansion and occupation must stop so that we can
salvage our future before it is too late to stop
the landslide of poor and starving.

We must put our priorities in line with the
welfare of all our citizens. We cannot afford to
neglect the children or any citizen any longer.
There must be a call of reckoning to stop this
depriving of anyone their basic needs to exist.

Jay Shaft, editor, Coalition For Free Thought In
Media

freethoughtinmedia@...

Coalition For Free Thought In Media home:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/coalitionforfreethoughtinmedia/


The following websites were used to research this
article. They contain a wealth of information on
the current problems faced by America and the
solutions that can be taken.
http://www.nationalhomeless.org/index.html
http://www.nlchp.org/
http://www.secondharvest.org/whoshungry/current_stats.html


http://www.urban.org/

http://www.nccp.org/  http://www.census.gov/

http://www.cbpp.org/index.html

"Having A Free Thought Is The Most Radical Act
You Can Commit! "
"Expressing That Free Thought Is Your Right As A
Human Being!"

---
also check out:

http://www.progressivedailynews.com/Opinion/Jay_Shaft/Afghanistan_Not_Just_Failu\
re.htm

Coalition For Free Thought In Media
Afghanistan: Not Just a Failure, an Outright
Humanitarian Disaster
6/10/03, By: Jay Shaft

Taliban Back, Just Like Old Times

  [snip]
There seems to be no help to come from the
occupying US. All promises in the end are
forgotten and blow away like the dust in the
drought stricken areas. It has been a year and a
half since the bombing started and no relief from
America is to be seen.

The very same conditions that have been stated to
cause terrorism prevail again in Afghanistan.
Poverty, starvation, death of children, and
occupation by a foreign force, all root causes of
terrorist acts.
[snip]




________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
Messenger http://uk.messenger.yahoo.com/

thanks to Kalpana Sharma in Bombay for the first
piece (fwded by Peace Now activist Sylvia
Piterman) and Sandy Tarlin in Houston for the
second.
beena

-----

Will the bulldozers come today?

by Victoria Buch, Jerusalem, Israel

An open letter telling about the sad reality of
the occupation and Israeli resistance against
house demolitions.

Jerusalem August 5, 2003

Friends,

Today we spent a morning in Bet Hanina, in the
house of Khader, which is subject to a "ticking"
demolition order, for a month. Bulldozers may
come on any of the mornings. Our group consists
of Jerusalem left wing and human rights activists
- Rabbi Arik Ascherman of Rabbis for Human
Rights, Jeff Halper of the Israel Committee
Against House Demolitions and people from Peace
Now, Ta'ayush, Machsom Watch and other
organizations. The group has come every day since
Sunday, before sunrise, and has been waiting with
Khader for a few hours: Will the bulldozers come
today?

So: we arrive early in the morning.  Cars are
parked near a silent clump of houses; we trot in
the darkness to a rickety entrance of Khader's
house. Khader opens the door. He tells me later
he has not slept normally for the last year and a
half. "It is like if you know you have cancer -
the thought does not let you sleep, really." His
eyes are red.  People come to stay with him
through these terrible nights. Last time the
elderly in-laws were present, this time - a young
friend.

Coffee is served, plans for passive resistance
made, should the bulldozers come today. Khader
notes my disposable camera and asks me to
photograph the house. Taking photos has a
ritualistic quality - Khader with Arik and Jeff
in the living room; Khader with the group.
Khader calls Arik - "my father", which is weird -
Khader is older.  Then a guided tour of the house
- I with a camera, Khader pointing. Empty
children's bedroom - kids were scared and went to
sleep with their mom. In the parents' bedroom,
three small children are sleeping in the big bed
with mom, and the remaining bunch - on the floor
around it. Khader wakes some for better photos. A
girl is taken to her bedroom, to pose with
stuffed toys. The house is a strange combination
of poverty (scanty furniture, pile of rubble
instead of entrance steps, bare walls) and an
effort for luxury (beautiful tiles in a huge
living room - Khader is a tile-man).

We climb the roof, joined by a neighbor - also
named Khader, also with a ticking demolition
order - ten days to go. The other Khader seems to
take it better - he can sleep in the afternoon,
and he can smile. I am told that there are ways
to avoid it all - by huge bribes, or
collaboration with the police.

The sun rises over the little valley. There is a
long lake at the bottom; it is polluted by
sewage. A distant man is measuring a plot of land
at the bank - "The crazy guy wants to build a
house there!" I am told.

We view together the morning man-hunt.  People
with Palestinian IDs are trying to sneak to
Jerusalem side through the neighborhood. Border
Policemen in patrol cars are catching them. A
woman is stopped and sent back, we hear her
curses from a distance. A patrol car arrives
slowly from the right, a "catch" of some ten
laborers with plastic lunch-bags marches meekly
behind. Their IDs were already taken by the BP
"for inspection". A precious workday is lost.
They will be detained for hours in the side
street, waiting for their ID return.

The patrol car stops directly in front, on the
other side of the valley. We see the boots of the
resting Border Policeman sticking out of the
window.  Noises like gunshots emanate from there,
produced by the BP by tapping on a loudspeaker
mike "for fun", I am told by Khader. Then a
Hebrew song is broad casted, loud enough to wake
the neighborhood. I am told that the BP
repertoire includes in addition imitating the
muezzin call for prayers, and ejaculations in
Arabic such as "Feyn baba?" ("Where is daddy?").
Then the car disappears and we see a seller of
bagels, with a tray on his head, running
frantically to the other side, followed by some
hurrying people.

The time crawls. Finally we decide "not today".
"Go to rest, man" I suggest to Khader. "Cannot,
going to meet a guy from the municipality".  We
leave to our free world, where houses are not
demolished, and people are not hunted on the way
to work.

Victoria Buch, Jerusalem, Israel

----- Original Message -----
From: "Gush Shalom (Israeli Peace Bloc)"
<info@...>
To: <gush-shalom-intl@...>
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:43 PM
Subject: [GushShalom] Thursday morning Qualqilia,
joint action against the
wall


> GUSH SHALOM  pob 3322, Tel-Aviv 61033
www.gush-shalom.org
>
> Thursday, July 31 - Gush Shalom will join the
protest of the Qalqiliya
> inhabitants and international peace activists
against The Wall.
>
> When (and if) Qualqilia might soon be handed to
Palestinian rule it does
not
> make a difference for it's suffering
strangulation from The Wall.
>
>
>                        BREAKING THROUGH THE
WALL
>
>    Palestinian, Israeli, International Groups
to Rally in Qalqiliya,
>                     Demand End to Separation
Wall,
>                    Expose Realities in West
Bank City
>
> When:    10:00 AM, THURSDAY JULY 31, 2003
> Where:  Qalqiliya, West Bank
> What:    Giant Balloon Banner Launch, March,
Rally, Paint on Wall,
> Performances
> Who:      Palestinians, Israelis, International
Activists
>
> Participating Organizations from Qalqiliya:
> Palestine Red Crescent Society, Al-Amal Deaf
Association, Palestine
General
> Federation of Trade Unions, Palestinian
Prisoners' Club, Farmer's Union,
> State Information Services, Al-Quds Open
University, National Institutions
> Office
>
> Participating Organizations from Israel:
> Gush Shalom, Kvisa Shchora (Black Laundry)
>
> International Solidarity Movement
>
> Palestinian residents and community
organizations from Qalqiliya, Israeli
> Peace groups, and Human Rights activists with
the International Solidarity
> Movement will come together to demonstrate
against the Separation Wall,
> which is now surrounding Qalqiliya and which
Israel is using to annex 10%
> of the Occupied West Bank, attack the
Palestinian economy and civil life,
and
> force Palestinians to abandon their land.
>
> Palestinians and internationals will gather in
Qalqiliya at 10:00 AM on
> Thursday and march with balloons, banners, and
kites to the  Separation
> Wall, where art performances, a balloon launch,
speeches, and a dramatic
> painting of the wall will take place.  Israeli
groups will convene at the
same
> point along the wall, on the opposite side.
Palestinian and Israeli
groups will
> attempt to reach a point where they can see
each other.
>
> A 6x4 meter banner reading "No Apartheid Wall "
in Arabic, Hebrew, and
> English will rise over the wall, lifted by
giant helium balloons, in
addition to
> smaller balloons carrying the names of
Palestinian prisoners from
Qalqiliya.
> The floating banner, escaping Qalqiliya, will
send an urgent plea to the
world
> on behalf of Palestinians throughout the West
Bank imprisoned behind the
> Wall.
>
> The Separation Wall has laid siege to
Qalqiliya's population of 45,000,
now
> isolated within concrete and barbed wire,
severely limiting or preventing
> movement between Palestinian cities and
villages.  The wall, which lies
far
> inside the Green Line, has confiscated 35% the
city's arable land and 33%
of
> the city's water resources.  Qalqiliya, once
known as the "bread basket"
of
> the West Bank now faces dire food and water
shortages while the
> settlements that surround it enjoy a rich
supply of these resources.  The
wall
> has torn apart the local economy, causing a
sharp rise in unemployment and
> stifling business.
>
>
> EnglishPress Contact:
> AdamKeller (Gush Shalom) 056-709603
>     (also for transportation from Tel-Aviv)
> LisaBhungalia:  055 673 452
> (international:972-55-673-452)
>
>   Arabic Press Contact:
> Mohamed Qubaa:  054 379 876
> (international:  972-54-379-876)
>
> Hebrew Press Contact:
> Adam Keller (Gush Shalom) 056-709603
>     (also for transportation from Tel-Aviv)
> Ady Ben-Israel  058 459 780
> (international:  972-58-459-780)
>
>
>
> --
> A map of the separation wall:
>
> http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/hebrew.html
(òáøéú)
> http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/index.html
(English)
>
> --
> Our site:
> http://www.gush-shalom.org/ (òáøéú)
> http://www.gush-shalom.org/english/index.html
(English)
>
> with
> \\photos - of actions or otherwise informative
> \\the weekly Gush Shalom ad - in Hebrew and
English
> \\the columns of Uri Avnery - in Hebrew, Arab
and English
> \\and an archive full of interesting documents
>
> N.B.:
> On the Gush Shalom website links for:
> Articles and documents in German, French and
Spanish
>
> In order to receive our Hebrew-language
> press releases [mostly WORD documents -
> not always same as English] mail to:
> gush-shalom-heb-request@...
> + NB: write the word "subscribe" in the subject
line.
>
> To get more of the forwarded reports and
announcements
> which we receive from other organizations + a
selection of
> English-language articles, send one blank mail
to:
> TOI_Billboard-subscribe@...
>
> If you want to support Gush Shalom's activities
you can
> send a cheque or cash, wrapped well in an extra
piece
> of paper to:
>
> Gush Shalom
> pob 3322
> Tel-Aviv 61033
> Israel
>
> or ask us for charities in your country which
receive
> donations on behalf of Gush Shalom
>
> Please, add your email address where to send
our
> confirmation of receipt. More official receipts
at
> request only.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> If you got this forwarded and you want to
subscribe, send mail to
>
>
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>
> and write "subscribe" in the subject line.
>
> --
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>
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>
> For assistance: info@...



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Hello all

We had a good demonstration in Karachi yesterday
for peace between India and Pakistan (I’ll send
out what I’m writing soon); there was also a
peace demonstration at Wagah border, well covered
in the media. Joint demos by Indians and
Pakistanis are planned or have been held in
several North American cities, demonstrating the
ever-growing pressure for peace.

This posting carries a note and link to an
article looking at why American lives are more
valued, sent by Jay Shaft (Coalition For Free
Thought In Media) for this list -- it's good for
all of us that such voices are being raised
within the USA too.

Below that is another thought-provoking piece, by
George Monbiot, which should be of particular
interest to friends in the USA and Canada who
experienced that power breakdown.

beena

---
Here is another article I wrote that got some
good reviews and comments. I hope you can post it
and get it exposed to more people.
Peace,
Jay

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3898.htm

6/23/03: (Coalition For Free Thought In Media)
Many innocent lives have been lost recently in
Iraq and Afghanistan due to US bombs and weapons.
There has been little or no outcry over this. In
this article I will examine why it seems American
lives are more valued and have more importance.


[go to link for full article - it has good
statistics and facts - b.]

"Having A Free Thought Is The Most Radical Act
You Can Commit! "
"Expressing That Free Thought Is Your Right As A
Human Being!"

-----
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=26&ItemID=4034

ZNet
Sleepwalking To Extinction
by George Monbiot; August 11, 2003

Something about the human mind appears to prevent
us from grasping the reality of climate change

We live in a dreamworld. With a small, rational
part of the brain, we recognise that our
existence is governed by material realities, and
that, as those realities change, so will our
lives. But underlying this awareness is the deep
semi-consciousness which absorbs the moment in
which we live then generalises it, projecting our
future lives as repeated instances of the
present. This, not the superficial world of our
reason, is our true reality. All that separates
us from the indigenous people of Australia is
that they recognise this and we do not.

Our dreaming will, as it has begun to do already,
destroy the conditions necessary for human life
on earth. Were we governed by reason, we would be
on the barricades today, dragging the drivers of
Range Rovers and Nissan Patrols out of their
seats, occupying and shutting down the
coal-burning power stations, bursting in upon the
Blairs' retreat from reality in Barbados and
demanding a reversal of economic life as dramatic
as the one we bore when we went to war with
Hitler. Instead, we whine about the heat and
thumb through the brochures for holidays in
Iceland. The future has been laid out before us,
but the deep eye with which we place ourselves on
earth will not see it.

Of course, we cannot say that the remarkable
temperatures in Europe this week are the result
of global warming. What we can say is that they
correspond to the predictions made by climate
scientists. As the Met Office reported on Sunday,
"all our models have suggested that this type of
event will happen more frequently."1 In December
it predicted that, as a result of climate change,
2003 would be the warmest year on record.2 Two
weeks ago its research centre reported that the
temperature rises on every continent matched the
predicted effects of climate change caused by
human activities, and showed that natural
impacts, such as sunspots or volcanic activity,
could not account for them.3 Last month the World
Meteorological Organisation announced that "the
increase in temperature in the 20th century is
likely to have been the largest in any century
during the past 1000 years", while " the trend
for the period since 1976 is roughly three times
that for the past 100 years as a whole."4 Climate
change, the WMO suggests, provides an explanation
not only for record temperatures in Europe and
India but also for the frequency of tornadoes in
the United States and the severity of the recent
floods in Sri Lanka.5

There are, of course, still those who deny that
any warming is taking place, or who maintain that
it can be explained by natural phenomena. But few
of them are climatologists, fewer still are
climatologists who do not receive funding from
the fossil fuel industry. Their credibility among
professionals is now little higher than that of
the people who claim that there is no link
between smoking and cancer. Yet the prominence
the media gives them reflects not only the
demands of the car advertisers. We want to
believe them, because we wish to reconcile our
reason with our dreaming.

The extreme events to which climate change
appears to have contributed reflect an average
rise in global temperatures of 0.6C.6 The
consensus among climatologists is that
temperatures will rise in the 21st century by
between 1.4 and 5.8C: by up to ten times, in
other words, the increase we have suffered so
far.7 Some climate scientists, recognizing that
global warming has been retarded by industrial
soot, whose levels are now declining, suggest
that the maximum should instead be placed between
7 and 10C.8 We are not contemplating the end of
holidays in Seville. We are contemplating the end
of the circumstances which permit most human
beings to remain on earth.

Climate change of this magnitude will devastate
the earth's productivity. New research in
Australia suggests that the amount of water
reaching the rivers will decline by up to four
times as fast as the percentage reduction of
rainfall in dry areas.9 This, alongside the
disappearance of the glaciers, spells the end of
irrigated agriculture. Winter flooding and the
evaporation of soil moisture in the summer will
exert similar effects on rainfed farming. Like
crops, humans will simply wilt in some of the
hotter parts of the world: the 1500 deaths in
India through heat exhaustion this summer may
prefigure the necessary evacuation, as
temperatures rise, of many of the places
currently considered habitable. There is no
chance of continuity here; somehow we must
persuade our dreamselves to confront the end of
life as we know it.

Paradoxically, the approach of this crisis
corresponds with the approach of another. The
global demand for oil is likely to outstrip
supply within the next 10 or 20 years. Some
geologists believe it may have started already.10
It is tempting to knock the two impending crises
together, and to conclude that the second will
solve the first. But this is wishful thinking.
There is enough oil under the surface of the
earth to cook the planet and, as the price rises,
the incentive to extract it will increase.
Business will turn to even more polluting means
of obtaining energy, such as the use of tar sand
and oil shale, or "underground coal gasification"
(setting fire to coal seams). But because oil in
the early stages of extraction is the cheapest
and most efficient fuel, the costs of energy will
soar, ensuring that we can no longer buy our way
out of trouble with air conditioning, water
pumping and fuel-intensive farming.

So instead we place our faith in technology. In
an age in which science is as authoritative but,
to most, as inscrutable as God once was, we look
to its products much as the people of the Middle
Ages looked to divine providence. Somehow "they"
will produce and install the devices - the wind
turbines or solar panels or tidal barrages -
which will solve both problems while ensuring
that we need make no change to way we live.

But the widespread deployment of these
technologies will not happen until rising prices
ensure that it becomes a commercial imperative,
and by then it is too late. Even so, we could not
meet our current levels of consumption without
covering almost every yard of land and shallow
sea with generating devices. In other words, if
we leave the market to govern our politics, we
are finished. Only if we take control of our
economic lives, and demand and create the means
by which we may cut our energy use to 10 or 20%
of current levels will we prevent the catastrophe
which our rational selves can comprehend. This
requires draconian regulation, rationing and
prohibition: all the measures which our existing
politics, informed by our dreaming, forbid.

So we slumber through the crisis. Waking up
demands that we upset the seat of our
consciousness, that we dethrone our deep unreason
and usurp it with our rational and predictive
minds. Are we capable of this, or are we destined
to sleepwalk to extinction?

www.monbiot.com

References:

1. Reuters, 8th August 2003. Europe's Heatwave
Doesn't Prove Global Warming.

2. Geoffrey Lean, 29 December 2002. Official:
next year will be the hottest since records
began. The Independent on Sunday.

3. Meteorological Office, 28th July 2003. Europe
and North America warming due to human activity.
Press release.

4. World Meteorological Organisation, 2nd July
2003. Extreme Weather Events Might Increase.
Press release.

5. ibid.

6. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,
2001. Climate Change 2001, Synthesis Report.

7. ibid

8. Fred Pearce, 4th June 2003. Global warming's
sooty smokescreen revealed. New Scientist.
http://www.newscientist.com/
news/news.jsp?id=ns99993798

9. Research by the Cooperative Research Centre
for Catchment Hydrology, cited in The Institute
for Sustainable Futures, 2003. Impacts of Climate
Change on Water Supplies and Soil. Sydney.

10. See for example Richard Heinburg, 2003. The
Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial
Societies. New Society Publishers, Canada;
Kenneth S. Deffeyes, 2001. Hubbert's Peak: The
Impending World Oil Shortage. Princeton
University Press; Bob Holmes and Nicola Jones,
2nd August 2003. Brace Yourself for the End of
Cheap Oil. New Scientist.

George Monbiot's book The Age of Consent: a
manifesto for a new world order is now published



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hello all,
Got this from the British peace activist Jo
Wilding - 28-yr old British woman who was in
Baghdad as a human rights observer during the
bombing; sent out a series of very moving diaries
(some of which I posted) to let the world know
what was happening there. To friends on the bcc
list (who are not on my postings list, thought
you'd like to pass this on to your lists).
Her website is: www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire/
beena
---

Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 13:44:35 +0000
From: "Jo" <wildthing@...>
Subject: I'm going back to Iraq

Iraqnophobia

Hello

I want to thank everyone for the emails and
support you’ve all sent while I was in Iraq and
since I got back. Lots of them I never replied
to, because we had very limited internet time
over there, because we were using a satellite
modem completely illegal in Iraq, smuggled into
the country with a 10 Euro bribe, which we were
very keen not to be caught with. It meant a lot
though, to know that people were thinking of me
and of all the people there, and also to know
that what I saw was being read and was getting
out. So thank you.

If anyone’s received this twice or doesn’t want
to hear from me again, sorry, and please let me
know.

I’m going back to Iraq in October for eight or
nine months to do the following:

1. More writing and talking to people and finding
out what needs doing.

I want to find out and write about what the
situation is now for ordinary people, as opposed
to what I’m hearing on the news. Again it’s all
about politicians, soldiers, guerrilla fighters,
but nothing about street children, doctors,
teachers, secretaries, taxi drivers, students,
schoolkids, parents, big Saif and small Saif and
Asmaa and Zaid and everyone.

As well I want to see what people outside Iraq
can best do to support people in Iraq and pass
that on.

2. Set up a twinning programme.

I want to make links between schools,
universities, hospitals, towns, sports teams,
anything and everything.

I think it’s important that people get to know
each other, humanise one another, learn about
each other and make peace directly, bypassing the
warmongering governments that have come between
us. Iraqi people have been isolated
internationally for 12 and a half years and a lot
of kids growing up now have never had any
international contact. Likewise a lot of people
here don’t know any Iraqi people.

It will mean Iraqi people can tell their stories
directly to people here. The schoolkids in
Britain were great when they came out against the
war and school twinning would be a really good
way to build on that, having them communicating
directly with schoolkids in Iraq.

I hope I’ll be able to facilitate things like
exchange visits, art exhibitions and football
tours between the countries, which a lot of
people have been keen to organise but find it
difficult without a contact in the country.

Iraqi people are proud and, being a wealthy
country, those I’ve spoken to hate to hear of
people collecting charity for them, bringing them
aid as if they were a backward country not able
to do things for themselves. They have the money
and expertise they need, but are stopped from
using it. So I think the information exchange
that twinning can create is potentially much more
valuable.

For example the doctors are well educated but
haven’t been able to travel to get the most
up-to-date research from international
conferences and so on. If hospitals were twinned,
the hospital outside Iraq could maybe bring an
Iraqi doctor to an international conference.
Likewise with universities, the libraries there
have no journals more recent than 1990, because
of the sanctions. It would be good if, for
example, students here could raise money and buy
10 years worth of a particular journal on CD-Rom
and send it to the Iraqi university.

I think it would be very hard to set up the links
without having someone in Iraq to go to the
schools and such like over there and set up the
contact. I won’t be able to sort out hundreds all
in the first month, so you’ll have to be patient,
but I think it’ll be really positive.

Last time, just before the war, I and some Iraqi
friends tried to set up an individual twinning
project between students – essentially a pen-pal
arrangement, but the war got in the way. My
friends had all the names and e mail addresses on
disk, and I haven’t been able to get in touch
with them since I was kicked out at the beginning
of April, but hopefully we’ll be able to get that
going as well.

3. We’re going to take a circus to Iraq.

For more on this, look at www.circus2iraq.org
It’s in an early stage of planning but the reason
is that playfulness and normality are vitally
important to the healing process for children
(and adults) who have been traumatised by the war
and all that’s come since and all that went
before. It’s not practical for most of us to take
the medical and food aid that, in any case, are
the responsibility of the occupying forces to
provide, but what we can take them is some
healing, some laughter, some play, love,
solidarity, colour.

A couple of circuses and theatre groups went to
Serbia and one to East Timor, with positive
results – look at www.risephoenix.org

So… here’s the blag. If you want to help me,
these are the things I need:

1. Funds.

Thankyou so much to the people who have already
sponsored me, especially at the talks I’ve given.
I need to raise a few thousand pounds, for
getting there, getting around to make contacts
and set up the links, paying a translator to
translate the letters between schoolkids, etc. I
don’t have to have all of it before I leave and
it’s hard at this stage to know, with the cost of
living over there fluctuating daily, to know
exactly how much it’s going to cost. I know the
flight to Jordan will be about £400 ($600).

For people in the UK, cheques can be sent to Jo
Wilding, co. 14 Robertson Rd, Easton, Bristol BS5
6JY.

For people elsewhere, money can be paid into UK
Co-operative Bank Account no. 88026462, sort code
08-92-73. Your bank will be able to tell you the
most effective means of doing this – draft or
transfer or whatever – it seems to vary from
country to country.

Please e mail and let me know so I can keep track
of things and please know I’ll put it to good use
if you do, and thankyou.

2. Publication
I’ll be sending out my writing by e mail while
I’m there. If you’ve received this directly then
you’re already on my e mail list, so let me know
if you’d like me to take you off it. If you’ve
got it from someone else and would like to be on
my list, e mail me on wildthing@... and
I’ll add you on. Please pass this on to anyone
else you think might be interested.

I’m happy for any of my writing to be used and
published for not-for-profit purposes and to
discuss publication with commercial things. You
can read what I wrote on the last trip at
www.bristolfoe.org.uk/wildfire/ It was going out
in the New Zealand Herald, Guardian Unlimited,
several local papers in various countries and
also translated into Japanese, Korean and others.


If anyone is reading this who might be able to
help me get articles / columns into any
publications that’d be great.

3. Twinning
Let me know if you’re interested in being
twinned. As I said above, it won’t all happen in
the first month, but I’ll do my best to make as
many links as I can. I’d love to have sports
teams visit, maybe have some kind of Peace Games
go on, perhaps get school and university exchange
visits going on, although I don’t yet know what
the visa situation will be for Iraqi people
coming abroad or foreigners getting in to Iraq,
but it’s all ideas to think about.

4. Any other clever ideas and cunning plans that
you’d like to share.

There’s still so much for us to do and focus our
energy on, both to support the Iraqi people and
to make sure that this doesn’t happen again,
anywhere in the world. Thanks for reading,

Jo


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For the News op-ed, Aug 17 2003

`Build bridges, not bombs'

Beena Sarwar

This year, there was an unusual addition to the crowds thronging
Quaid-e-Azam's Mazar on August 14. As the sun set, a small group
(women of assorted ages, plus two visiting Nepali teachers) arrived
with peace placards and candles. The Nepalis looked around, bemused
at the hordes of men, families with children, vendors and flag
sellers milling about, the women climbed onto the road divider
opposite the Shahra-e-Quaideen gate. The young men standing around
were curious: "Aunty, what's this for?"

"We want peace between India and Pakistan."

The discussion continued through the din as the group handed out
placards mounted on thin bamboo sticks and candles. More activists -
men, women and children - arrived to join the vigil. Around them,
rivers of human forms flowed towards the illuminated Mazar, or away
from it. Silencer-less motorcycles roared between private vehicles
packed with families and buses, their rooftops loaded with shouting,
whistling, flag wavers. "Amazing enthusiasm," observed one of the
Nepalis.

An activist produced a camera, and the young boys clamoured to be
photographed. "Where will these pictures be printed?" asked one.
There was no media present, except one participant who was there in a
personal capacity. "So who are we doing this for?"

"For ourselves, for people here, and friends in India and around the
world... Can't we do something for ourselves?"

"Sure, why not? We want peace. But there's no leadership, and the
people don't want it either. We'll follow anyone who brings us peace."

"Who doesn't want peace – politicians, bureaucracy, army? Who gains
from the tension? Aren't we, you and me, the people also?"

Those who have until now been preaching hatred can suddenly become
peace envoys, but ordinary people continue to face hurdles, with air
and rail links still disrupted, and demand for visas far outstripping
supply. Visas, once granted, are for just three cities, not for the
country! Travelers still have to report to police on arrival and
departure. When this condition is waived, as for the delegates to the
recent South Asia Free Media Association meeting in Islamabad,
visitors are still kept under such strict surveillance that there is
panic when one person (Mani Shankar Ayer this time!) goes `missing'
for a couple of days.

The Karachi vigil brought together private citizens, responding to a
call from the West Bengal chapter of the Pakistan-India People's
Forum for Peace and Democracy (PIPFPD). It was just one manifestation
of the desire for an end to tensions. Similar events were held in
India – Delhi, Ahmadabad, Calcutta, Pune, Bombay, while the Wagah-
Atari border crossing demonstration drew an unprecedented number of
people on both sides, as Pakistani parliamentarians and minority
representatives joined Indians in celebrating the two independence
days together.
Veteran journalist Kuldeep Nayar has been lighting candles at the
border on Aug 14 for ten years; this was the first time that Pakistan
allowed similar activity from this side. Last year, Pakistani border
officials attacked peace activists with lathis and abuses, not even
sparing figures of international stature like Asma Jahangir, Hina
Jillani and Dr Mubashir Hasan. This time, it was a changed
atmosphere. Grp Capt. (r.) Cecil Chowdhry, a 1965 war hero turned
peace activist, wrote to the AsiaPeace email list: "Government
officials were very cooperative in allowing all of us to see off our
delegation right up to the gate of no man's land."
The India-Pakistan rivalry is reflected in expatriate communities –
who often meet `the other' for the first time abroad. But many are
working to break the barriers of distrust and bigotry. They include
citizens "from all walks of life- physicians, students, academicians,
social workers, shopkeepers and journalists, men and women, Hindus,
Muslims, Sikhs, Christians and others who celebrate their unity in
diversity," says a press release from the new USA-based Develop in
Peace (DiP) campaign. DiP pulls together many "common people turned
campaigners", including groups like Friends of South Asia, Action
group of Physicians of South Asia, and the Alliance for a Secular and
Democratic South Asia.

This year, they organized activities in the USA, UK and Canada to
jointly celebrate their countries' independence. In the USA, citizens
participated from Houston, Madison, San Francisco, Boston, Charlotte,
St Louis, Ann Arbor, Minneapolis, Madison, Atlanta, and Palo Alto.
National anthems were jointly sung, flags hoisted, and meetings held,
with poetry, music and food. These activities culminate today, August
17, in a conference call from Houston connecting all the
participating cities.

The campaign rejects "hatred, violence and distrust in the name of
religion, caste, regional, national or any other identities", and
denounces the arms race; "demanding development, not destruction,
with the poorest of the poor in sight; asking governments and
politicians to build bridges, not bombs; and provide security through
food, not propaganda."

They are aiming for thousands of signatures for their online petition
(http://www.petitiononline.com/DIP81415/petition.html), to be
submitted to policy makers on September 21, the UN International Day
of Peace. The campaign will continue to the January 2004 Islamabad
Indo-Pak summit and SAARC meeting "and beyond".

But even if our politicians continue the peace process that has
begun, it will take a long time, and much sustained interaction
before the wall of suspicion and hatred is knocked down.

At the Karachi vigil, the peace vigil is joined by a couple of
youngsters, one of them waving a giant flag mounted on a six-foot
pole. "We want peace," he said.

"And friendship with India?"

"Are you crazy? Would I be here if I wanted dosti? The Indians always
deceive us," he replied, barely saving his flag from being snatched
up by youngster the crowded roof of a bus lumbering by. "Oye, stop
that!"

"They say that we deceive them, like with Kargil."

"Well. Maybe you are right. Maybe they are right. I suppose they are
people like us," he replied, waving his flag at another bus rolling
by, its roof crammed with revelers.

This time, he wasn't able to save his flag. "OYE!!!" he yelled,
brandishing the bereft flag-pole.

"Yaar, just leave it," shrugged his friend.

They smiled and waved before disappearing into the crowd.
------

  The writer is a staff member - beena.sarwar@...

check out:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/index.html

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4428.htm

"Learning to Be Stupid in the Culture of Cash"

By Luciana Bohne

08/12/03: You might think that reading about a
Podunk University's English teacher's attempt to
connect the dots between the poverty of American
education and the gullibility of the American
public may be a little trivial, considering we've
embarked on the first, openly-confessed imperial
adventure of senescent capitalism in the US, but
bear with me. The question my experiences in the
classroom raise is why have these young people
been educated to such abysmal depths of
ignorance.

"I don't read," says a junior without the
slightest self-consciousness. She has not the
smallest hint that professing a habitual
preference for not reading at a university is
like bragging in ordinary life that one chooses
not to breathe. She is in my "World Literature"
class. She has to read novels by African, Latin
American, and Asian authors. She is not there by
choice: it's just a "distribution" requirement
for graduation, and it's easier than philosophy
-she thinks.

The novel she has trouble reading is Isabel
Allende's "Of Love and Shadows," set in the
post-coup terror of Pinochet's junta's Nazi-style
regime in Chile, 1973-1989. No one in the class,
including the English majors, can write a focused
essay of analysis, so I have to teach that. No
one in the class knows where Chile is, so I make
photocopies of general information from world
guide surveys. No one knows what socialism or
fascism is, so I spend time writing up digestible
definitions. No one knows what Plato's "Allegory
of the Cave" is, and I supply it because it's
impossible to understand the theme of the novel
without a basic knowledge of that work - which
used to be required reading a few generations
ago. And no one in the class has ever heard of 11
September 1973, the CIA-sponsored coup which
terminated Chile's mature democracy. There is
complete shock when I supply US de-classified
documents proving US collusion with the generals'
coup and the assassination of elected president,
Salvador Allende.

Geography, history, philosophy, and political
science - all missing from their preparation. I
realize that my students are, in fact, the
oppressed, as Paulo Freire's "The Pedagogy of the
Oppressed" pointed out, and that they are paying
for their own oppression. So, I patiently
explain: no, our government has not been the
friend of democracy in Chile; yes, our government
did fund both the coup and the junta
torture-machine; yes, the same goes for most of
Latin America. Then, one student asks, "Why?"
Well, I say, the CIA and the corporations run
roughshod over the world in part because of the
ignorance of the people of the United States,
which apparently is induced by formal education,
reinforced by the media, and cheered by
Hollywood. As the more people read, the less they
know and the more indoctrinated they become, you
get this national enabling stupidity to attain
which they go into bottomless pools of debt. If
it weren't tragic, it would be funny.

Meanwhile, this expensive stupidity facilitates
US funding of the bloody work of death squads,
juntas, and terror regimes abroad. It permits the
war we are waging - an unfair, illegal, unjust,
illogical, and expensive war, which announces to
the world the failure of our intelligence and, by
the way, the creeping weakness of our economic
system. Every man, woman, and child killed by a
bomb, bullet, famine, or polluted water is a
murder - and a war crime. And it signals the
impotence of American education to produce brains
equipped with the bare necessities for democratic
survival: analyzing and asking questions.

Let me put it succinctly: I don't think serious
education is possible in America. Anything you
touch in the annals of knowledge is a foe of this
system of commerce and profit, run amok. The only
education that can be permitted is if it
acculturates to the status quo, as happens in the
expensive schools, or if it produces people to
police and enforce the status quo, as in the
state school where I teach. Significantly, at my
school, which is a third-tier university,
servicing working-class, first-generation college
graduates who enter lower-echelon jobs in the
civil service, education, or middle management,
the favored academic concentrations are
communications, criminal justice, and social
work--basically how to mystify, cage, and control
the masses.

This education is a vast waste of the resources
and potential of the young. It is boring beyond
belief and useless--except to the powers and
interests that depend on it. When A Ukranian
student, a three-week arrival on these shores,
writes the best-organized and most profound essay
in English of the class, American education has
something to answer for--especially to our youth.


But the detritus and debris that American
education has become is both planned and
instrumental. It's why our media succeeds in
telling lies. It's why our secretary of state can
quote from a graduate-student paper, claiming
confidently that the stolen data came from the
highest intelligence sources. It's why Picasso's
"Guernica" can be covered up during his
preposterous "report" to the UN without anyone
guessing the political significance of this
gesture and the fascist sensibility that it
protects.

Cultural fascism manifests itself in an aversion
to thought and cultural refinement. "When I hear
the word 'culture,'" Goebbels said, "I reach for
my revolver." One of the infamous and telling
reforms the Pinochet regime implemented was
educational reform. The basic goal was to end the
university's role as a source of social criticism
and political opposition. The order came to
dismantle the departments of philosophy, social
and political science, humanities and the
arts--areas in which political discussions were
likely to occur. The universities were ordered to
issue degrees only in business management,
computer programming, engineering, medicine and
dentistry - vocational training schools, which in
reality is what American education has come to
resemble, at least at the level of mass
education. Our students can graduate without ever
touching a foreign language, philosophy, elements
of any science, music or art, history, and
political science, or economics. In fact, our
students learn to live in an electoral democracy
devoid of politics - a feature the dwindling
crowds at the voting booths well illustrate.

The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote that, in the
rapacity that the industrial revolution created,
people first surrendered their minds or the
capacity to reason, then their hearts or the
capacity to empathize, until all that was left of
the original human equipment was the senses or
their selfish demands for gratification. At that
point, humans entered the stage of market
commodities and market consumers--one more thing
in the commercial landscape. Without minds or
hearts, they are instrumentalized to buy whatever
deadens their clamoring and frightened
senses--official lies, immoral wars, Barbies, and
bankrupt educations.

Meanwhile, in my state, the governor has ordered
a 10% cut across the board for all departments in
the state - including education.

----
Luciana Bohne teaches film and literature at
Edinboro University in Pennsylvania.

http://www.marchforjustice.com/8.8.03.learning.php


________________________________________________________________________
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Excellent piece in the Guardian on media
manipulation, which was also reprinted in today's
News, Pakistan. The opening para reminded me of
the Zia days here.

beena

p.s. Also see report : "US admits shooting
Reuters cameraman" at
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4468.htm)

----
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1020303,00.html

Comment
--------------------------------------------
Lessons in how to lie about Iraq

The problem is not propaganda but the relentless
control of the kind of things we think about

Brian Eno
Sunday August 17, 2003
The Observer

When I first visited Russia, in 1986, I made
friends with a musician whose father had been
Brezhnev's personal doctor. One day we were
talking about life during 'the period of
stagnation' - the Brezhnev era. 'It must have
been strange being so completely immersed in
propaganda,' I said.
'Ah, but there is the difference. We knew it was
propaganda,' replied Sacha.

That is the difference. Russian propaganda was so
obvious that most Russians were able to ignore
it. They took it for granted that the government
operated in its own interests and any message
coming from it was probably slanted - and they
discounted it.

In the West the calculated manipulation of public
opinion to serve political and ideological
interests is much more covert and therefore much
more effective. Its greatest triumph is that we
generally don't notice it - or laugh at the
notion it even exists. We watch the democratic
process taking place - heated debates in which we
feel we could have a voice - and think that,
because we have 'free' media, it would be hard
for the Government to get away with anything very
devious without someone calling them on it.

It takes something as dramatic as the invasion of
Iraq to make us look a bit more closely and ask:
'How did we get here?' How exactly did it come
about that, in a world of Aids, global warming,
30-plus active wars, several famines, cloning,
genetic engineering, and two billion people in
poverty, practically the only thing we all talked
about for a year was Iraq and Saddam Hussein? Was
it really that big a problem? Or were we somehow
manipulated into believing the Iraq issue was
important and had to be fixed right now - even
though a few months before few had mentioned it,
and nothing had changed in the interim.

In the wake of the events of 11 September 2001,
it now seems clear that the shock of the attacks
was exploited in America. According to Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber in their new book
Weapons of Mass Deception , it was used to
engineer a state of emergency that would justify
an invasion of Iraq. Rampton and Stauber expose
how news was fabricated and made to seem real.
But they also demonstrate how a coalition of the
willing - far-Right officials, neo-con
think-tanks, insanely pugilistic media
commentators and of course well-paid PR companies
- worked together to pull off a sensational piece
of intellectual dishonesty. Theirs is a study of
modern propaganda.

What occurs to me in reading their book is that
the new American approach to social control is so
much more sophisticated and pervasive that it
really deserves a new name. It isn't just
propaganda any more, it's 'prop-agenda '. It's
not so much the control of what we think, but the
control of what we think about. When our
governments want to sell us a course of action,
they do it by making sure it's the only thing on
the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking
about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion
with highly selected images, devious and
prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or
false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'. (What
else can the spat between the BBC and Alastair
Campbell be but a prime example of this?)

With the ground thus prepared, governments are
happy if you then 'use the democratic process' to
agree or disagree - for, after all, their
intention is to mobilise enough headlines and
conversation to make the whole thing seem real
and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the
better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands
action.

An example of this process is one highlighted by
Rampton and Stauber which, more than any other,
consolidated public and congressional approval
for the 1991 Gulf war. We recall the horrifying
stories, incessantly repeated, of babies in
Kuwaiti hospitals ripped out of their incubators
and left to die while the Iraqis shipped the
incubators back to Baghdad - 312 babies, we were
told.

The story was brought to public attention by
Nayirah, a 15-year-old 'nurse' who, it turned out
later, was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador
to the US and a member of the Kuwaiti royal
family. Nayirah had been tutored and rehearsed by
the Hill & Knowlton PR agency (which in turn
received $14 million from the American government
for their work in promoting the war). Her story
was entirely discredited within weeks but by then
its purpose had been served: it had created an
outraged and emotional mindset within America
which overwhelmed rational discussion.

As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war
entailed many similar deceits: false linkages
made between Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories
of ready-to-launch weapons that didn't exist, of
nuclear programmes never embarked upon. As
Rampton and Stauber show, many of these
allegations were discredited as they were being
made, not least by this newspaper, but
nevertheless were retold.

Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies
were busy, preconditioning the emotional
landscape. Their marketing talents were
particularly useful in the large-scale
manipulation of language that the campaign
entailed. The Bushites realised, as all
ideologues do, that words create realities, and
that the right words can over whelm any chance of
balanced discussion. Guided by the overtly
imperial vision of the Project for a New American
Century (whose members now form the core of the
American administration), the PR companies helped
finesse the language to create an atmosphere of
simmering panic where American imperialism would
come to seem not only acceptable but right,
obvious, inevitable and even somehow kind.

Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass
destruction', there were 'regime change'
(military invasion), 'pre-emptive defence'
(attacking a country that is not attacking you),
'critical regions' (countries we want to
control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want
to attack), 'shock and awe' (massive
obliteration) and 'the war on terror' (a hold-all
excuse for projecting American military force
anywhere).

Meanwhile, US federal employees and military
personnel were told to refer to the invasion as
'a war of liberation' and to the Iraqi
paramilitaries as 'death squads', while the
reliably sycophantic American TV networks spoke
of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' - just as the
Pentagon asked them to - thus consolidating the
supposition that Iraqi freedom was the point of
the war. Anybody questioning the invasion was
'soft on terror' (liberal) or, in the case of the
UN, 'in danger of losing its relevance'.

When I was young, an eccentric uncle decided to
teach me how to lie. Not, he explained, because
he wanted me to lie, but because he thought I
should know how it's done so I would recognise
when I was being lied to. I hope writers such as
Rampton and Stauber and others may have the same
effect and help to emasculate the culture of spin
and dissembling that is overtaking our political
establishments.

· © Brian Eno 2003
A longer version of this article will appear in
the new literary magazine, Zembla. Weapons of
Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John
Stauber is published by Robinson at £6.99

---
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4468.htm


________________________________________________________________________
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Sounds like a case for the ACLU...
beena
---
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/18/international/asia/18STAN.html?ex=1062174839&e\
i=1&en=79bd560f7d23798c

August 18, 2003
Pakistani Detainee Enjoyed Deep U.S. Roots
By DAVID ROHDE

KARACHI, Pakistan, Aug. 12 — Uzair Paracha, a
23-year-old member of Pakistan's elite, was more
American than he was Pakistani, his friends said.

He almost always spoke English, not Urdu, the
national language. He stayed up late at night in
his parents' comfortable Karachi home watching
American movies on cable television. He shuttled
between Karachi and New York, attending preschool
in New York City and managing a gas station there
during summer breaks from college in Pakistan.

"I would describe him as everybody would, as an
American," said a college friend. "He had
thoughts like an American, not a Pakistani."

His New York roots stemmed from his father,
Saifullah Paracha, a Pakistani businessman who
was a New York striver throughout the 1970's.
After running a travel agency and other small
businesses in the city for eight years, he
returned to Pakistan in the early 1980's, raised
a family and made a small fortune exporting
clothes to Kmart and other American stores with
an American partner.

"He very clearly knew I was Jewish," the elder
Mr. Paracha's business partner wrote in a recent
e-mail message to co-workers that was released by
the family. "We had friendly talks on religion
and he never has shown any animosity at all to
Jewish people or to America. The opposite — he
spoke very highly of America."

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan recently charged
the younger Mr. Paracha with trying to help an
associate of Al Qaeda enter the United States. He
has been in custody since March. His father, who
one law enforcement official said was the prime
suspect in the case, disappeared in July and
Pakistani officials and the son's lawyer said he
was believed to be in American detention,
possibly in Afghanistan, though American
officials have not confirmed it.

To American investigators, the father and son
represent a dangerous new type of Qaeda
sympathizer — affluent Pakistanis with long
histories of shuttling in and out of the United
States. To their relatives and friends, the two
are victims of a post-Sept. 11 American paranoia
that they say alienates moderate Muslims.

"It's a very normal family," Farhat Paracha,
Saifullah's wife and Uzair's mother, said in an
interview. "There is nothing to hide. We are all
as shocked as anyone else."

The family, she said, has a long history in the
United States — in New York, in particular.

Mrs. Paracha, 49, who is struggling to run the
family business and care for her three other
children, brightens when she remembers the day
she met her husband.

She said she was a graduate student in sociology
at New York University in the late 1970's when a
friend of her sister's suggested that she apply
for a job at a Pakistani-run travel agency in
Midtown Manhattan. Her sister later became a
doctor and settled in Connecticut.

The elder Mr. Paracha, the owner of the business,
refused to hire her, she said, smiling. "He
wouldn't hire me because I was illegal," she
said, referring to the fact that she had only a
student's visa.

Mr. Paracha stayed in contact with her, however,
and a romance blossomed. After Mrs. Paracha
received her degree in 1979, the couple returned
to Pakistan, married and eventually settled in
Karachi.

"It was a love marriage," Mrs. Paracha said,
rather than a traditional arranged one.

Uzair, the first of their four children, was born
in Pakistan on Jan. 7, 1980. At the age of 3
weeks, he made his first trip to the United
States, where his father still had business, his
mother said. He attended the Rainbow Montessori
preschool in Queens before the family returned to
Karachi.

The family eventually settled in a comfortable
two-story home in the Defense Housing Authority
area, a wealthy enclave in this impoverished city
of 14 million. As a teenager, Uzair attended
B.V.S. Parsi High School, an above-average
institution, but not one of the city's finest. He
had an 81 percent grade average, according to a
copy of his résumé provided by his mother.

After high school he talked of starting his own
business, his mother and friends said. He
enrolled in a business administration program at
the Institute of Business Management. The school,
created with foreign aid money from the United
States in 1955, has a neat, tree-lined campus, an
oasis of calm in gritty Karachi.

Its students are also a who's who of the city's
elite. Graduates typically go on to run family
businesses or work for multinational
corporations.

Uzair's friends describe him as "pretty vocal"
and "very confident."

His mother said he wore jeans and Western
clothes, loved American music and drove a modest
Japanese-built car his parents gave him.

"We don't believe it," said Mirza Fahad Beg, one
of Uzair's classmates, referring to the charges
against him.

He acted in and even directed school skits,
collected charity money during an internship and
did internships with leading trading and
advertising firms in Karachi. He socialized with
a circle of friends that included women,
something more conservative Pakistani men often
avoid.

"He was not very religious," said Syed Fazle
Hasan, Uzair's professor who teaches managerial
accounting. "I didn't see him run for prayers
during prayer breaks."

After graduating last year, Uzair went to work at
his father's clothing company, International
Merchandise Group.

His father, as he grew older, became more
religious and more involved in charity work, Mrs.
Paracha said. He built a hospital in his hometown
in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province, near
the border with Afghanistan. Twice in the late
1990's he visited Afghanistan while it was under
Taliban rule. His wife insists he only engaged in
charity work.

Anthony L. Ricco, the lawyer representing the
younger Mr. Paracha in New York, has said the
elder Mr. Paracha met Osama bin Laden in
Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Mr. Ricco said the
younger Mr. Paracha might have been at a meeting
in Pakistan attended by his father and Khalid
Shaikh Mohammed, Al Qaeda's chief of operations,
who was captured in March.

Mr. Ricco added that the son never agreed to
carry out any tasks for Mr. Mohammed. The lawyer
also has suggested that the young man was duped
into carrying out the scheme.

Prosecutors have not commented on the elder Mr.
Paracha or whom he may have met. They have said
only that the younger Mr. Paracha admitted to
F.B.I. agents that he knew he was helping an
associate of Al Qaeda.

The father's longtime American business partner
did not respond to a telephone call requesting
comment. But he expressed his feelings in the
Aug. 9 e-mail message to one of Mr. Paracha's
employees in Pakistan that was released by the
family.

"I was shocked and scared by the allegations and
find them very hard to believe," wrote the
businessman. He ended the message by referring to
his longtime business partner by his nickname.
"Saif is my friend," the American businessman
wrote. "And he knows it."

----


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Succinct piece that just about sums up
everything. beena

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/081903A.shtml

What I Want
   By Marc Ash
   t r u t h o u t | Perspective

   Tuesday 19 August 2003

   I am often asked by readers, "Why are you doing
this? What do you want?" It's a good question. My
friend and colleague, William Rivers Pitt,
recently called upon the words of John F.
Kennedy, who said it far better than I could hope
to. This is the quote that Will drew upon:

"What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace
do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the
world by American weapons of war. Not the peace
of the grave or the security of the slave. I am
talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace
that makes life on earth worth living, the kind
that enables men and nations to grow and to hope
and to build a better life for their children -
not merely peace for Americans but peace for all
men and women - not merely peace in our time but
peace for all time."

   -- President John F. Kennedy at American
University 10 June 1963

   We are, as a nation, challenged as never
before. We are squarely confronted by a
Presidential administration that bears no
resemblance to any of its predecessors. Do not be
lured into that grey cavern of political
analysis. Understand without doubt that to view
those who now control our federal government in
the same light as those who have gone before them
is to invite total disaster.

   What do I want? I want a Presidential
administration that is not above the law.

   Preemptive warfare is an advertising slogan
designed to sell ruthless and brutal aggression,
for profit, to an American public that would be
asked to give up its prosperity, its civil
liberties and the very lives of its children on a
foreign battlefield. Such warfare is an outrage
before the world. We have traded our reputation
with other nations, built over more than two
centuries, for the enrichment of arms dealers and
gasoline merchants.

   What do I want? I want freedom to be more than
a reason for killing; I want freedom to be a
reason for being.

   Word now comes of 7,000 dead across Europe,
killed not by terrorism, but by heat. For years,
scientists have warned of global warming caused
by the buildup of greenhouse gases caused by
man-made chemical pollutants. One country
generates more of these pollutants than any
other: My country. No other nation even comes
close. An international treaty to limit
production of pollutants that contribute to the
problem, the Kyoto Accord, stands ready to be
ratified by a consensus of nations. One country
stands in the way of international ratification
and implementation: My country.

   What do I want? I want my neighbors to join
with me in choosing leaders who will seek
solutions that help Man, live on earth.

   Will we cease to have a government "Of the
people, for the people and by the people?"
Privatization of our government means the end of
American democracy. You who remain silent now as
the rights of all Americans are sold to the
highest bidder, believing that your interests,
your vision of America will be preserved as all
others are forsaken, stand to reap the whirlwind.

   What do I want? America.

-------

Marc Ash is the Executive Director of t r u t h o
u t. He can be reached at: ma@...

-------


________________________________________________________________________
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I did the following report for The News today;
thanks to Naeem Sadiq for alerting us to the
award a couple of days back, and to Sabiha's
nephew Sami for helping coordinate the interview.
Congratulations, Sabiha!
beena

--

‘Pakistan conquers the Golden Leopard’

By Beena Sarwar

KARACHI: Pakistan won the top film award at the
prestigious Locarno International Film Festival
in Switzerland this year for the entry Khamosh
Pani (Silent Water) -- an honour that director
Sabiha Sumar terms as “unprecedented for any
South Asian film, in any festival.”

Talking to The News by telephone from Germany,
the filmmaker was thrilled to be the recipient of
the ‘Golden Leopard’ award, an event that she
says has been headlined in several European
newspapers as ‘Pakistan conquers the Golden
Leopard’.
The Festival, which celebrated 56 years this
year, was held from August 6-16 in Locarno,
Switzerland, attracted more than 500 films from
across the world for the 56th festival, with 27
of them world premières and 19 in competition for
the main prize, the Golden Leopard, including
films from India, Bosnia, Kazakhstan and Romania.
The Festival drew a record crowd this year.
Khamosh Pani also led to the Best Actress Award
for Kiran Kher – an award split for the first
time in the festival's history between three
competitors, the others being Holly Hunter
(Thirteen), and Diana Dumbrava (Maria).
Sabiha Sumar originally started filmmaking with
documentary – her first film, Who Will Cast the
First Stone? (1988) – is still remembered for its
hard-hitting look at the impact of the Hudood
Ordinances. She originally started work on
Khamosh Pani as a documentary also, back in 1996
when she first started to research it, but
developed it into a feature because a documentary
would unnecessarily expose the women involved,
whom she had interviewed. She worked on her idea
with Karachi-based writer and actor Khalid Ahmed
(credited with story development), while the
final script was written by Indian writer
Paromita Vohra.

The story revolves around Ayesha (played by the
Indian actress Kiran Kher), whose past comes back
to haunt her after her son Saleem (Amer Malik,
who narrowly missed Best Actor) turns to
religious extremism in the post 1979 era – Ayesha
was a young Sikh girl during the riots of 1947,
who, like so many others ended up staying on in
Pakistan and taking on a Muslim identity. The
only one who knows of her past is Ameen (Salman
Shahid). Other prominent Pakistani actors in the
film include Arshad Mahmood as the nai, and
Khursheed Shahid in a cameo role in which she
sings and dances at a wedding.

Sabiha Sumar believes that the film resonated on
a universal level with the audience, because it’s
not just about Saleem being a Muslim extremist in
Pakistan – “he could be an RSS member in India,
or a National Front guy in the UK,” she stresses.
“We got a standing ovation of over eleven minutes
because people of all backgrounds could relate to
the insecurity and fear that extremism is
creating, which is being exploited by Bush and
Blair to push for more religion in our lives.
This film is a wake up call to the world to say,
please don’t abdicate responsibility to
extremists, please keep religion and politics
separate.”

The project saw several false starts. In the year
2000, it was suspended due to financial
constraints and in 2001, the largely foreign crew
had to leave Pakistan due to security concerns
following the 9/11 attack on the World Trade
Centre. The third and final phase of filming was
in 2002, and it was “an incomplete shoot which we
put together in the editing process.”

“So a lot of energy and determination has gone
into this,” says Ms Sumar, stressing that the
idea was to build an infrastructure for serious
filmmaking in Pakistan. This infrastructure
involved acting and technical workshops with
international professionals.
Sabiha Sumar’s VidiFilms is the main producer,
while a German company, Flying Moon Film
Productions and French company, Unlimited, are
co-producers.

  (ends)


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lovely picture of Lahore - and resonates of any
city perhaps, where one grew up.

beena

http://www.time.com/time/asia/2003/journey/pakistan_lahore.html

----- Forwarded by Khusro I. Mumtaz/CEN/BSF on
08/19/03 02:56 PM -----
|-----------------------------------------------|
|The Pathos of Exile                            |
|-----------------------------------------------|
|In Lahore for a wedding, Mohsin Hamid is       |
|seduced by the city's bright lights and wonders|
|why he ever left                               |
|-----------------------------------------------|

I am dancing with my cousin Omer. my hands and
feet are on the ground; my rump is in the air. It
is that kind of party?the kind all other parties
are measured against. Around us are many of our
childhood loves: Ajoo and O.H., Saad and A.T.,
Shahid and Nippy and Booboo. These are the boys
we grew up with. The girls, our sisters and
cousins and wives and fiancés, are standing back
for a moment, letting us go at it. Our grins are
infectious.
Some of us are dancing with our eyes shut. Some
of us are barely moving, just shaking a shoulder
or arching an eyebrow to the beat. I am utterly
happy.
Omer's mother was my mother's friend before she
married my uncle. When our mothers were pregnant,
my mother had a series of dreams. She dreamed she
had two mangoes, then two apples, then two
oranges. In all of her dreams, my mother gave the
larger fruit to Omer's mother. "I know this," my
mother told Omer's. "Whatever you have, boy or
girl, I will have the same. Only mine will be
smaller."
Omer was born a week before me. As a baby, he
drank two bottles of milk and cried for more
while I struggled to finish half a bottle. We
grew up together, cousin-brothers, in a family
with nine aunts and uncles and innumerable
cousins. He turned out six inches taller, many,
many pounds heavier and several shades darker
than I. He held onto his hair better. We
shared friends and many nights on rooftops,
picking up bad habits from one another, smoking,
talking. We left for college in the U.S. around
the same time and returned to Pakistan when we
were done.
Then I went to the U.S. again, to law school, and
Omer stayed behind. I ecame a management
consultant, living first in New York and then in
London. Our lives followed different courses. And
now, nine years after we eased sharing
continents, we are back together for his wedding
in Lahore, is home and the city he lives in, my
home and the city I left behind. We
are dancing for the last time as single men. In
two days, Omer will marry.
I leave the dance floor and step outside. A tent
covers the garden, and a log fire burns in the
night. I walk away, around my uncle's house, a
house built when we were teenagers, and into the
great lawn that curves around what was my
grandfather's house. My body steams in the cold
air. We played here as children, we cousins.
There were more than enough of us at Friday
family lunches for any sport that came to mind.
It is February, not long after the kite-fighting
festival of Basant.
Lahore's winter fogs have given way to the clear
nights of spring, but there is still a chill in
the air. I sit down on a bench, stroke the wet
nose of a dog that comes to me and shut my eyes.
This is the passage of time. I am a grown man
now, 31, and I am in a place that will always be
sacred to me as the place of my childhood. I feel
an allegiance to this house, this family, this
city, this country. It makes my eyes burn. I do
not want to leave. But I know I am a wanderer,
and I have no more choice but to drift than does
a dandelion seed in the wind. It is my nature. It
is in my soul, in my eyes. Still, Lahore touches
me. I am doing well in my career abroad, and I am
able to visit often. But there is something about
Lahore, something that makes me want to be part
of this city's story. Even though I have moved
away, this is where I evolved, where my basic
notions of love and friendship were formed. A
snow leopard can be taken to zoos in other
places; it can perhaps even be well fed and
content, but it will always wear a coat designed
for the Himalayas. I see Lahore when I look in
the
mirror, and I feel the strength of my attachment
at this moment, as my cousin prepares to marry.
My sister and I had arrived on a flight from
London that morning. She busied herself with the
many errands of the wedding: flower arrangements,
tent and lighting designs, food preparations. I,
typically and lazily, claimed exhaustion and jet
lag as an excuse to go straight to bed. When I
woke it was evening. My father was on the
telephone from Islamabad, his
voice full of excitement at the prospect of
seeing me soon. I climbed up
onto the roof of my parents' house to watch the
sun set and to look out
upon my city.
Lahore had changed and was changing. From this
rooftop, where I spent many
hours struggling to get kites aloft, one used to
see only trees and the
rooftops of other houses. Now bald patches had
emerged where trees had
died, and tall office buildings had risen up not
far away, almost uniformly
hideous in their architecture but robust and
healthy signs of life, of
growth. I watched them warily and wondered what
my house would one day
become. A shop perhaps. Or maybe a small museum.
I went down to my room, showered and shaved,
slipped on a well-worn pair of
brown cords and a brown shirt and a secondhand
blazer, and headed out to
the party with my sister, who asked me what I had
been up to.
"Just thinking," I said.
"Yeah," she replied with a grin. "As usual. While
the rest of us were
working."
At 3 in the morning, after half an hour of
sitting on the bench by myself,
I rise up and return to the party. It is still
going strong, but people
have begun to leave. I linger until there are
just a few of us remaining,
the boys, standing around the speakers with our
eyes shut, hardly able to
move. Then even the boys disperse, and I head
back to Omer's room for a
chat and a cousin sleepover, an old tradition
between us.
The lights are off, and we're under the sheets.
Omer's fiancé, Natasha, is
a warm, lovely woman, with a doctorate in
microbiology and a ready smile.
Still, I ask Omer if he's nervous about getting
married. I imagine I'd be
terrified. But he tells me that it doesn't feel
like a big deal, that it
just seems natural, what was meant to be. "I'm
calm," he says, "calm and
happy." Ah, I think, calmness and happiness.
Signs of home. Very welcome to
a transcontinental mongrel like myself, soothing
me as I drift into sleep.
We're woken by my aunt banging on the door.
"Omer! Mohsin! Do you know what
time it is?" We could be 10 years old again. Omer
covers his face with his
pillow. I yell that we're already up. She opens
the door and turns on the
lights. "Up? You're never up. It's 1 o'clock.
There are a million things to
be done." And the preparations continue.
My father arrives from Islamabad that afternoon,
and I meet him at the
airport. He gives me a hug, I pick up his bags
and we make our way to the
car. He is an economist, and on our drive home
our talk turns, as usual, to
economics. Things in Pakistan are improving, he
tells me. Reserves are up.
Property and stocks are soaring. But people are
still holding back from
investing in new industries. There's a lot of
uncertainty and people don't
know what's going to happen, so they're waiting
and seeing. And while they
wait and see, millions of young men and women are
trying to enter the
workforce every year.
My father takes off his glasses and cleans them
with a white handkerchief.
His eyes are soft and unfocused, but he seems
pleased, perhaps because my
sister and I are here. "You know," he tells me.
"A year ago, you could see
troops passing through the city, heading for the
border. Trucks would go by
during the day, full of equipment and supplies.
And they would come back at
night, empty. Our driver used to drive tanks. He
was mobilized with the
reserves. It was a frightening time." He puts on
his glasses. "But things
are better now. Let's hope they stay that way.
Peace is a blessing."
Later that day, my cousin Omer comes by for tea
at our place, grabbing a
quick break from the hectic preparations. Omer
designs and manufactures
furniture. With population growth, he tells me,
comes housing growth, and
with housing growth comes furniture growth; so he
is sitting on many more
orders than he can handle. "You know one thing I
really like about what I
do?" he says, dipping a samosa in ketchup. "I get
to meet all kinds of
people. I mean, everything from types like us to
families that do full
purdah, where you can't even see the women.
Sometimes I'll be talking to
some guy about furniture he needs and he'll be so
nervous, because he's
trying to get exactly what his wife wants and she
won't come to the
showroom and he's terrified of making a mistake."
"What happens if he buys something and she isn't
satisfied?" I ask.
"I let him return it. Customer service, bro. You
have to keep the clients
happy."
I think about this, about families with husbands
who are terrified of wives
who don't go out in public, and I try to imagine
the sight of Omer, in his
shorts and T shirt, reassuring earnest young men
with beards.
Lahore has had a difficult decade and a half
since I graduated from high
school. Many of those who could leave have left,
like O.H. and Nippy and I,
who have flown in for the wedding from jobs far
away. Most of the gang who
used to go every summer to the mountains, where
we went to flee heat and
parental supervision, now live abroad. But we are
a tiny minority. And many
of those who could not leave have struggled to
find work. Some of them now
wear the physical uniforms and hard expressions
of religious intolerance. I
see them on the streets, in the markets, in front
of the mosques. They
worry me. They are frown lines of disappointment
on the face of the city.
I think about why so many of my friends left
Lahore and why so few of us
returned. None of us seemed to think, at the
time, that we were going away
for good. The universities were in bad shape, and
we went abroad for a
better education. But as the economy stagnated
and as law and order
declined, we delayed our homecomings. We began to
work. We began to settle
into new lives. And as the years passed, it
became harder and harder for us
to think of what we would do if we went back to
Lahore. The city changed
and we changed, and somehow we became voluntary
exiles. But at least in my
case, the homesickness that resulted from exile,
although not fatal, has
remained uncured.
As I dash from one friend's house to the next,
avoiding wedding chores
while catching up with people I haven't seen in a
long time, I can't help
thinking of Lahore as the girl I first fell in
love with. I have fallen in
love with other cities since: with New York, the
girl I will always lust
for but who left me exhausted; and with London,
the girl who bored me at
first but whose company I have come to savor. But
my heart will always have
a special place for my first love, for Lahore,
the love of my childhood and
teens and early 20s.
She has hardened, become more cynical, angrier.
She has lost some of her
looks. She is less complacent than she was then,
less sure of her enduring
centrality in her universe. But Lahore is still a
charmer, and she is more
urbane and cosmopolitan than she was in the days
when the opening of a new
ice-cream parlor was enough to get her excited
for months. Lahore is
speckled with Internet cafés, with billboards
offering broadband
connections, with advertisements for health clubs
featuring personal
trainers. The students of the National College of
Arts have helped restore
parts of Anarkali market and a bit of the old
city now called "Food
Street"?they look like glamorous backdrops for a
period film. The
restoration of the palace in the Lahore Fort is
also nearing completion, as
is the construction of the rather chic new
airport, done in a style someone
described to me as "modern Mughal."
No, Lahore is no longer the same girl she was
when we parted ways. And I am
no longer the same boy. But even after all these
years, even with the scars
and frown lines she has acquired, she still makes
my heart race, and I
can't help wondering what would have happened if
we hadn't broken up, what
would have happened if I had stayed.
I get a glimpse of it that night. The boys agree
to gather after the
dancing and ornamental henna-painting activities
of the mahndi for a late
session at my place. I arrive home with my
parents, who begin to play cards
in the living room while I work with Rahman, a
servant I have known for
most of my life, to set up the study. We carry
cushions up the stairs, move
the old boom box in from my bedroom, fetch
ashtrays and glasses and ice. I
put on a Joe Satriani CD we listened to on our
first big trip to the
mountains. Then I sit down in the gentle light,
surrounded by books and
wood paneling, and wait for my friends to arrive.
They come one by one, stopping to chat for a
while with my parents and then
clumping up the staircase. The study fills.
Shahid and Nippy and I discuss
women woes, or more specifically my women woes,
and the most recent
disaster in my romantic life. Booboo and Saad
argue about Pakistan's role
in the so-called war on terror. Ajoo tells O.H.
about his latest hunting
outing. A.T. gets on his mobile to his wife. The
room grows smoky. The
music switches to Neil Young. I settle back into
my cushion and relax.
This is the magic of Lahore. Maybe because of the
heat or the big families
or the social restrictions or the relative lack
of money, Lahore is a place
where bands of friends tend to form and hold
together. I would not trade
this evening in my long-disused study for a party
in the coolest nightclub
in SoHo or on the swankiest yacht off Portofino.
There is far more pleasure
and sustenance to be had here, and I gorge myself
on it tonight.
The next day I wander around the city, dropping
in on places I once visited
often. I buy a pack of cigarettes from the paan
shop in Main Market, and
I'm recognized by Saleem, the kid who used to
take my orders and let me run
a tab when I was a teenager. He comes over to say
hello and ask how London
is treating me. "How did you know I was in London
now?" I ask him. He
shrugs. From my cousins, he tells me, from my
friends, you know, word moves
around.
The shopkeeper at the bookstore in the corner of
Liberty Market recognizes
me, too, and he tells me that my novel is still
selling well. "Yeah, but
all your copies are pirated," I say. He assures
me, smiling, that this
isn't true, and he also points out that being
read is more valuable a
reward than being paid.
That evening, I turn on the water in my shower,
but the pressure is low
because my sister is taking a shower in her
bathroom and my mother is
taking a shower in hers. I turn off the water and
wait. This is what life
would have been like if I had stayed, I think:
less convenient, perhaps,
but more connected to the people I love.
After we have dressed, we meet in the living
room, my mother and sister in
saris, my father and I in suits. A cousin appears
just in time to take our
photo, and then we are off to Omer's house, where
some of the boys have
gathered in a corner of the veranda, smoking. I
join their circle. Omer
makes his appearance, looking nervous at last and
sweating slightly even
though the weather is cool.
Then the order is given, everyone disperses to
their cars, and we form a
massive convoy with the groom's flower-bedecked
vehicle in front. We drive
slowly, hazard lights flashing, and we block
traffic at busy intersections
for many minutes at a time. No one honks at us.
In Lahore, no one would.
Weddings are sacred in this place of bonds,
moments for the city to bind
itself together even more strongly.
We arrive and pass through a reception line of
flowers. Some of the
cheekier, and unmarried, girls on their side
flick their flowers at some of
the cheekier, and unmarried, boys on ours. Then
we are inside the tent,
which is holding up well against the light rain
that is falling. I wander
about saying my hellos and thinking how strange
it is that just a few
nights ago I was working on a PowerPoint
presentation in my office in
Piccadilly.
The bride and groom sit on a stage, surrounded by
family and friends. I
stand with my parents and my aunt and uncle. My
uncle looks at me, and we
share a moment of silent understanding. His son
and my cousin, the closest
person I will ever have to a twin, is marrying.
My uncle's face is full of
emotion, and I wink at him to hide the moistness
in my eyes.
When I watch Omer walk out of the tent with his
wife, I smile, happy for
him and for his life, a life much like one I
could, perhaps, have led. A
wave of nostalgia rises up in me but I wait for
it to subside, and I focus
on savoring the moment.
I am a wanderer. Soon I will again have left
Lahore. There will be time
enough then to think about the past. For now, I
accept the blessing of the
present. This is the gift my city has always
given me, a sense of home to
sustain me on my travels.


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I've been arguing for years that Hijab is not an
"Islamic" head dress - I always thought its
origins were in the Middle East. This is a rather
interesting article about what has become a
highly symbolic piece of headgear. Basically a
non-issue that is being made into an issue...
beena.
---
from farjad in Lahore:

... turns out that hijab was invented in the
seventies and was inspired by catholic nuns...
read on.....he's blunt but very interesting...

<< Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books
on the Middle East and Islam.
He's reachable through www.benadorassociates.com
>>


http://www.kikah.com/indexenglish.asp?fname=kikahenglish\live\k1\2003-08-02\6.ht\
m

August 15, 2003 --FRANCE'S Prime Minister
Jean-Pierre Raffarin has just appointed a
committee to draft a law to ban the Islamist
hijab (headgear) in state-owned establishments,
including schools and hospitals. The decision has
drawn fire from the French "church" of Islam, an
organization created by Raffarin's governme! nt
last spring. Germany is facing its hijab problem,
with a number of Islamist organizations suing
federal and state authorities for "religious
discrimination" because of bans imposed on the
controversial headgear.In the United States,
several Muslim women are suing airport-security
firms for having violated their First Amendment
rights by asking them to take off their hijab
during routine searches of passengers.

All these and other cases are based on the claim
that the controversial headgear is an essential
part of the Muslim faith and that attempts at
banning it constitute an attack on Islam.

That claim is totally false. The headgear in
question has nothing to do with Islam as a
religion. It is not sanctioned anywhere in the
Koran, the fundamental text of Islam, or the
hadith (traditions) attributed to the Prophet.

This headgear was invented in the early 1970s by
Mussa Sadr, an Iranian mullah who had won the
leadership of the Lebanese Shi'ite community.

! In an interview in 1975 in Beirut, Sadr told
this writer that the hijab he had invented was
inspired by the headgear of Lebanese Catholic
nuns, itself inspired by that of Christian women
in classical Western paintings. (A casual visit
to the Metropolitan Museum in New York, or the
Louvres in Paris, would reveal the original of
the neo-Islamist hijab in numerous paintings
depicting Virgin Mary and other female figures
from the Old and New Testament.)

Sadr's idea was that, by wearing the headgear,
Shi'ite women would be clearly marked out, and
thus spared sexual harassment, and rape, by
Yasser Arafat's Palestinian gunmen who at the
time controlled southern Lebanon.

Sadr's neo-hijab made its first appearance in
Iran in 1977 as a symbol of Islamist-Marxist
opposition to the Shah's regime. When the mullahs
seized power in Tehran in 1979, the number of
women wearing the hijab exploded into tens of
thousands.

In 1981, Abol-Hassan Bani-Sadr, the first
president of the ! Islamic Republic, announced
that "scientific research had shown that women's
hair emitted rays that drove men insane." To
protect the public, the new Islamist regime
passed a law in 1982 making the hijab mandatory
for females aged above six, regardless of
religious faith. Violating the hijab code was
made punishable by 100 lashes of the cane and six
months imprisonment.

By the mid 1980s, a form of hijab never seen in
Islam before the 1970s had become standard gear
for millions of women all over the world,
including Europe and America.

Some younger Muslim women, especially Western
converts, were duped into believing that the
neo-hijab was an essential part of the faith.
(Katherine Bullock, a Canadian, so loved the idea
of covering her hair that she converted to Islam
while studying the hijab.)

The garb is designed to promote gender apartheid.
It covers the woman's ears so that she does not
hear things properly. Styled like a hood, it
prevents the woman from having! full vision of
her surroundings. It also underlines the concept
of woman as object, all wrapped up and marked
out.

Muslim women, like women in all societies, had
covered their head with a variety of gears over
the centuries. These had such names as lachak,
chador, rusari, rubandeh, chaqchur, maqne'a and
picheh, among others.

All had tribal, ethnic and generally folkloric
origins and were never associated with religion.
(In Senegal, Muslim women wear a colorful
headgear against the sun, while working in the
fields, but go topless.)

Muslim women could easily check the fraudulent
nature of the neo-Islamist hijab by leafing
through their family albums. They will not find
the picture of a single female ancestor of theirs
who wore the cursed headgear now marketed as an
absolute "must" of Islam.

This fake Islamic hijab is nothing but a
political prop, a weapon of visual terrorism. It
is the symbol of a totalitarian ideology inspired
more by Nazism and Communis! m than by Islam. It
is as symbolic of Islam as the Mao uniform was of
Chinese civilization.

It is used as a means of exerting pressure on
Muslim women who do not wear it because they do
not share the sick ideology behind it. It is a
sign of support for extremists who wish to impose
their creed, first on Muslims, and then on the
world through psychological pressure, violence,
terror, and, ultimately, war.

The tragedy is that many of those who wear it are
not aware of its implications. They do so because
they have been brainwashed into believing that a
woman cannot be a "good Muslim" without covering
her head with the Sadr-designed hijab.

Even today, less than 1 percent of Muslim women
wear the hijab that has bewitched some Western
liberals as a symbol of multicultural diversity.
The hijab debate in Europe and the United States
comes at a time when the controversial headgear
is seriously questioned in Iran, the only country
to impose it by law.

Last year, t! he Islamist regime authorized a
number of girl colleges in Tehran to allow
students to discard the hijab while inside school
buildings. The experiment was launched after a
government study identified the hijab as the
cause of "widespread depression and falling
academic standards" and even suicide among
teenage girls.

The Ministry of Education in Tehran has just
announced that the experiment will be extended to
other girls schools next month when the new
academic year begins. Schools where the hijab was
discarded have shown "real improvements" in
academic standards reflected in a 30 percent rise
in the number of students obtaining the highest
grades.

Meanwhile, several woman members of the Iranian
Islamic Majlis (parliament) are preparing a draft
to raise the legal age for wearing the hijab from
six to 12, thus sparing millions of children the
trauma of having their heads covered.

Another sign that the Islamic Republic may be
softening its position on hijab i! s a recent
decision to allow the employees of state-owned
companies outside Iran to discard the hijab. (The
new rule has enabled hundreds of women, working
for Iran-owned companies in Paris, London, and
other European capitals, for example, to go to
work without the cursed hijab.)

The delicious irony of militant Islamists asking
"Zionist-Crusader" courts in France, Germany and
the United States to decide what is "Islamic" and
what is not will not be missed. The judges and
the juries who will be asked to decide the cases
should know that they are dealing not with Islam,
which is a religious faith, but with Islamism,
which is a political doctrine.

The hijab-wearing militants have a right to
promote their political ideology. But they have
no right to speak in the name of Islam.

----
Amir Taheri is an Iranian author of 10 books on
the Middle East and Islam.
He's reachable through www.benadorassociates.com,
his e-mail is amirtaheri@...



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http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1026152,00.html

I have a dream

On August 28 1963, Martin Luther King stood on
the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and delivered a
speech that made America - and the whole world -
sit up and listen. Gary Younge explains how it
came about, how President Kennedy tried to stop
it, and why it is as important now as it was then

Gary Younge
Thursday August 21, 2003
The Guardian

Like all great oratory its brilliance was in its
simplicity. Like all great political speeches it
understood its audience. And like all great
performances it owed as much to its delivery as
its content. But what made this performance stand
out was that it was both timely in its message
and timeless in its appeal.

Forty years on, Martin Luther King's "I have a
dream" is still a great speech. Still pertinent,
even though many of its immediate demands have
been met. Still relevant, beyond America's
borders and the racial context that it addressed.
So universal in its humanism that it spoke to
Catholics in Northern Ireland during the 60s,
black South Africans in the townships during the
70s and 80s and speaks to the Roma in eastern
Europe today.

Yet, if President John F Kennedy had had his way,
it would never have been delivered. And if King
had been left to his own devices it would
probably never have been remembered.

It was June 22 1963, when Kennedy met with the
nation's civil rights leaders. Just one month
before, segregationists in Birmingham, Alabama
had turned hoses and dogs on black teenagers.
Only a few days later the president went to
Germany where he slammed Soviet repression at the
Berlin Wall, calling for freedom abroad that he
could not secure for black people at home. The
state of America's racial politics had reached
the stage of domestic crisis and international
embarrassment. Plans for a march on Washington
for jobs and freedom on August 28 organised by
the black union leader A Philip Randolph, were
already under way. Kennedy was preparing a
civil-rights bill that would antagonise white
southerners in his own party who were opposed to
integration. "I may lose the next election
because of this," he told them. "I don't care."

The truth is that he cared very deeply. He asked
them to call the march off. "We want success in
Congress," said Kennedy. "Not just a big show at
the Capitol." Randolph refused. "The negroes are
already in the streets," he told Kennedy.

King, who deferred in age and experience to
Randolph did not speak until the end of the
meeting. "It may seem ill-timed," he said.
"Frankly, I have never engaged in a direct-action
movement that did not seem ill-timed." The march
went ahead. By the time Kennedy came back from
Europe he had decided that he would try to co-opt
what he could not cancel. He declared his support
for the march, hailing it as a "peaceful assembly
for the redress of grievances".

"Peaceful" was the operative word. The prospect
of large numbers of black protesters descending
on Washington DC terrified the white political
elite, even though the city itself was
overwhelmingly black. Life magazine described the
capital as suffering "its worse case of invasion
jitters since the first battle of Bull Run". The
Pentagon put 19,000 troops on standby in the
suburbs; hospitals postponed elective surgery.

From the quarter of a million who turned up
police recorded only four arrests - all white
people. It was a balmy day - 84 degrees, clear
skies and a light breeze, and there were some
familiar faces in the crowd. Sidney Poitier,
Charlton Heston, Lena Horne and Sammy Davis Jr
were there. Marlon Brando carried an electric
cattle prod in his hands to symbolise police
brutality. King was the day's final speaker and
everything in his speech from the cadence of his
delivery to the lyrical repetition of its most
vital refrains ("We have come", "I have a dream",
"Let freedom ring") drew on the religious
traditions of black American politics that merge
the pulpit with the podium. It was a basic
message made beautiful by his mastery of
metaphor. Words to him were like stone to a
skilled sculptor; raw material which he
apparently effortlessly and deftly chiselled away
to mould, shape and define something of aesthetic
as well as practical value.

By most accounts it was not his greatest speech.
Indeed, he had actually started to wind it up
without its signature passage when the singer
Mahalia Jackson, who stood nearby, encouraged him
to go on. When he began to tell the crowd: "Go
back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama," she
urged him: "Tell them about your dream Martin.
Tell them about the dream."

With encouragement from the audience King went on
to draw upon a version of a speech he had made
many times before (he had delivered it to
insurance executives in Detroit only a week
before) which centred on his dream of a society
in which race was no longer a boundary to
individual opportunity and collective strength.

But on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, with
the eyes and the ears of the world upon him, the
substance of the words rose to the symbolism of
the occasion. In a nation apprehensive about its
global status in a decade that would see its
attempts to assert its military and political
hegemony rebuffed, the speech was a precision
strike. Starting with Lincoln and ending with "a
dream rooted in the American dream" it challenged
segregation but left almost everything else that
white Americans held dear intact.

Not surprisingly blacks and whites understood
both the speech and the march differently.
Eighteen days later, four black girls, changing
into their choir robes after Sunday school class,
were killed during the fire bombing of a church
in Birmingham, Alabama.

A Newsweek poll shortly afterwards showed that 3%
of African-Americans and 74% of whites believed
that "Negroes were moving too fast". Given the
underlying conditions of racial inequality that
prompted the march, it is also not surprising
that many of those differences still exist.

For many white Americans the passage of
civil-rights legislation two years later drew a
line under the civil rights era. Since there were
now no legal barriers to black participation,
some chose to ignore the economic, social and
political barriers that remained. Not only would
they resist demands to address the legacy of
segregation and slavery through affirmative
action. They would do so with King's own words,
insisting that candidates for university and work
be "judged not on the colour of their skin but
the content of their character".

But King had stated clearly that "1963 is not an
end but a beginning". In an interview just a week
before his death in 1968 he outlined the
priorities that would make the dream a reality.
"In the past in the civil rights movement, we
have been dealing with segregation and all of its
humiliation," he said. "I think it is absolutely
necessary now to deal massively and militantly
with the economic problem. The grave problem
facing us is the problem of economic deprivation,
with the syndrome of bad housing and poor
education and improper health facilities all
surrounding this basic problem."

His call for "sons of former slaves and sons of
former slave owners sitting down together at the
table of brotherhood", was sincere, but not the
whole story. Integration had won
African-Americans the opportunity to eat in any
restaurant. Only equality could ensure that they
would be able to pay the bill.

Integration for them was not an end in itself but
the means towards what has proved the far more
elusive goal of equality. In King's words they
"came to the nation's capital to cash a cheque...
that will give [them] the riches of freedom and
the security of justice".

They are still waiting for America to honour it.



________________________________________________________________________
Want to chat instantly with your online friends?  Get the FREE Yahoo!
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See mail below from Joseph Gerson of United for Peace & Justice in
Boston. Also, the movement to boycott US products continues with the
slogan from For Mother Earth: US BOYCOTTS NUCLEAR TEST BAN TELL THEM
YOU BOYCOTT US PRODUCTS - <http://www.motherearth.org/nuke/ctbt1.php>
beena
----
UFPJ Nucler Disarmament Action Alert & Resource
September 4, 2003

Friends,

Once again, I am writing to appeal for you to take constructive
action block Bush Administration efforts to launch a new and more
nuclear arms race. We are within reach of blocking some of its
central and most dangerous nuclear weapons and warfighting plans.

Sometime this month, quite possibly next week, the Senate will be
voting on a authorization (funding) bill that could open the way for
research, development, and production of new nuclear weapons and to
prepare the way for the resumption of nuclear weapons tests.We
defeated this legislation in the House of Representatives last
spring, and with enough popular pressure, we can prevail in the
Senate. We need your help and the help of your friends and family who
live in the states of swing vote Senators.

Following is an action alert and fact sheet, with key web links,
prepared by the newly created Nuclear Disarmament Working Group of
United for Peace and Justice, the national coalition. Please send a
message to your senator, neighbors, friends and relatives today.

For peace and justice,

Joseph Gerson
American Friends Service Committee

September 2003
United for Peace and Justice
Nuclear Disarmament/Redefining Security Working Group

At its June 2003 national meeting in Chicago, United for Peace and
Justice adopted nuclear disarmament as an action priority and called
for a campaign to build "visible public support in the U.S. for
sweeping measures to eliminate nuclear weapons in the U.S. as well as
worldwide." That is the mission of the Nuclear Disarmament/Redefining
Security Working Group. As part of the campaign, we are writing you
now to provide information about Bush administration programs for new
nuclear weapons and to ask you to join us in urging the Senate to
block funding for those programs in the upcoming vote. The vote may
be as early as the second week of September.

ALERT AND RESOURCES
UPCOMING SENATE VOTE ON NUCLEAR WEAPONS

This month, during the second week or later, the Senate will consider
amendments to the Fiscal Year 2004 energy and water appropriations
bill that would cut back on aggressive plans for new nuclear weapons
and modernization of the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Likely to be offered
by Senator Feinstein and other senators, the amendments would track
the House version of the bill, perhaps in weaker form regarding test
readiness and pit production. Unlike the Senate appropriations
committee, the House among other things modified the administration's
request to:

* cut spending on the "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" from $15
Million (M) to $5M

* eliminate $6M for "teams" of scientists to work on "advanced
concepts" for design of nuclear weapons

* eliminate $25M for "enhanced test readiness" to reduce the time for
preparation of a full-scale nuclear test explosion from 24-36 to 18
months

* cut spending on planning and environmental review for the "Modern
Pit Production Facility" from $25M to $11M

The upcoming vote is an opportunity to let the Senate know that
modernizing the nuclear arsenal while the United States demands
nuclear disarmament by other nations is hypocritical, dangerous, and
unsustainable. The Bush administration insists that North Korea,
Iran, and other countries refrain from acquiring nuclear arms and
submit to inspections in accordance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation
Treaty (NPT). But the NPT also requires the United States and other
nuclear-armed countries to engage in a process of transparent and
irreversible reduction and elimination of their own arsenals.

As Mohamed ElBaradei, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency,
recently explained: "Double standards are being used here. The US
governments insists that other countries do not possess nuclear
weapons. On the other hand they are perfecting their own arsenal. I
do not think that corresponds with the treaty they signed."

A vote by the Senate to adopt the House position would not solve the
problem of expanding U.S. reliance on nuclear forces, much less U.S.
defiance of its NPT disarmament obligation, but it at least would be
an important step in the right direction.

Please contact your Senators. Urge them to vote for amendments to
block funding for new nuclear weapons and modernization of the U.S.
arsenal when the energy and water appropriations bill reaches the
Senate floor. While pressing all members of the Senate is important,
Senators Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Joe Lieberman (D Connecticut),
Zell Miller (D-Georgia), Evan Bayh (D-Indiana), John Breaux (D-
Louisiana), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Olympia Snowe (R-Maine), Chuck
Hagel (R-Nebraska), Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska), Gordon Smith (R-Oregon),
and Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) have been
identified as key swing votes. In addition to contacting your
senators, if you know people who live in those key swing states,
please urge them to contact their senators.

Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator

This is a nuclear bomb designed to withstand a high-speed collision
with the ground and bore through 20 - 30 feet of rock or concrete
before exploding. A "high-yield" weapon, in the range of 100-300
kilotons and perhaps much larger (the Hiroshima bomb was about 15
kilotons), it is intended to destroy deeply buried and hardened
targets. Its use would result in a large, deadly, radioactive
mushroom cloud. Research was funded by Congress for Fiscal Year 2003,
and a contest has been launched between the Lawrence Livermore (CA)
and Los Alamos (NM) National Laboratories to design the bomb by
modifying existing weapons types. Research on such weapons sends a
message to other countries that they too should consider acquiring
nuclear arms for their security. Their use would be contrary to
common sense because it would break down the nuclear taboo that
protects everyone in the world, including Americans. It would also be
immoral and illegal. (See "The Lawfulness of 'Low-Yield' Earth-
Penetrating Nuclear Weapons," www.lcnp.org/wcourt/nwlawfulness.htm)
The United States already developed and deployed, without nuclear
explosive testing, an earth-penetrating bomb in the mid-1990s. Known
as the B-61-mod-11, it is a modification of the existing B-61 bomb
and has a variable yield of up to several hundred kilotons.

Advanced Concepts Design Teams

Called for by the January 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, these teams
are only one piece of ongoing programs at the nation's laboratories
to upgrade every weapon type in the U.S. arsenal; to research
modified or new nuclear weapons, including "high-yield" as well
as "low-yield" weapons; and to refine targeting techniques.
(See "Sliding Towards the Brink,"
www.wslfweb.org/docs/nucpreppdf.pdf) Early in August 2003, at
STRATCOM, the U.S. military's nuclear command and control center at
Offutt Air Force Base
near Omaha, Nebraska, top-level Pentagon officials met to discuss
plans for the production of modified or new nuclear weapons. (See
www.wslfweb.org/nukes/stratcom.htm and
www.wslfweb.org/nukes/ssmeetexc.htm)
Both houses of Congress are poised to confirm that the laboratories
are permitted to "research," as opposed to "develop," weapons of less
than five kilotons yield. (See www.ananuclear.org/sprattfurse.html)
The laboratories' understanding seems to be that "research" is design
activities up to and including building mock bombs, and "development"
is engineering for mass production.

Enhanced Test Readiness

Despite a specific U.S. commitment to achievement of a Comprehensive
Test Ban Treaty made in the context of the NPT, the United States has
not ratified the treaty. The Senate rejected the treaty in the fall
of 1999 and the Bush administration does not want the Senate to
reconsider the matter. The administration also supports increasing
the U.S. ability to conduct full-scale underground nuclear explosive
tests by reducing the time required to prepare a test to 18 months.
While the treaty would pose a huge barrier to development and
deployment of sophisticated nuclear weapons by new states, it would
also block possible U.S. "proof" testing of new or modified nuclear
weapons. (Some such weapons likely could be deployed without nuclear
explosive tests, according to congressional testimony and other
statements by a number of senior laboratory officials.)

Modern Pit Production Facility

The Los Alamos laboratory recently manufactured the first nuclear
weapons pit (plutonium trigger for hydrogen bombs) in 14 years that
meets specifications for the U.S. stockpile. Los Alamos is scheduled
to have the capacity by 2007 to produce at least 20 pits per year.
Beyond that, plans are underway for a Modern Pit Production Facility,
site to be selected, with a capacity of up to 450 pits/year and
perhaps up to twice that. At a rate of 450 pits/year, one year's
production would equal the third largest nuclear arsenal in the
world. The plans reveal an intent to rely on large nuclear forces for
many decades to come, in stark contrast to U.S. demands that other
countries forgo nuclear arms and in violation of the U.S. disarmament
obligation under the NPT.

Resources:

Action Alerts Regarding the Senate Vote

www.ananuclear.org/action.html#buster (Alliance for Nuclear
Accountability)

http://capwiz.com/fconl/issues/alert/?alertid=2958176&type=CO
(Friends' Committee on National Legislation)

U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy and Long-term Work for Nuclear Abolition

"Global Disarmament Starts at Home," UFPJ Nuclear
Disarmament/Redefining
Security talking points,
www.lcnp.org/disarmament/talkingpointsufpj.htm

"The Bush Administration's Nuclear Weapons Policy: A Double Standard
With Lethal Implications," Joseph Gerson and Adam Miles, American
Friends Service Committee, June 2003,
www.afsc.org/newengland/pesp/Disarm_Res_4.pdf.

"Mass Producing Weapons of Mass Destruction: U.S. Plans for a New
Nuclear Weapons Factory and the Global Resurgence of Nuclear Arms,"
Western States Legal Foundation and Los Alamos Study Group
Information Bulletin, Summer 2003, www.wslfweb.org/docs/mpfinfo.pdf

"Analysis of Fiscal Year 2004 Budget Request for Nuclear Weapons
Activities," Robert Civiak, Tri-Valley CARES,
www.trivalleycares.org/FY04_BudgetAnalysis.pdf

To join the listserv for the nuclear disarmament/redefining security
UFPJ working group, send a blank email to ufpj-disarm-
subscribe@yahoogroups.com



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Links & excerpts of two very relevant pieces from opendemocracy.net -
great website. beena

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-95-1451.jsp

"We send our best guy to Iraq and he comes home in a box"
  James Galbraith
22 - 8 - 2003

James Galbraith remembers a good man, and recalls a terrible warning
of the Iraqi war.

Sergio Vieira de Mello was the real thing. I met him in East Timor in
2001, at the United States mission on the evening of 4 July 2001. He
told my brother Peter Galbraith (his colleague in the transition
cabinet) that he would not attend a dinner for the Australian foreign
minister that night: "because I dislike him intensely." Two days
later I saw him again, as we joined the new East Timor self-defense
forces for the last leg of a march to a new training ground. On that
day, surrounded by guerrillas, their United Nations officers and the
civilian staff, he was clearly having a good time.

Sergio was blunt, charming, energetic, funny. He knew his business,
minced no words, commanded the loyalty of his mission and the respect
of the Timorese. They knew he was working for them – for the cause of
a free and independent and self-governing East Timor. And so it
should have been in Iraq.

But it wasn't. We face in Iraq what the UN did not face in Timor: an
organised, brutal opposition, able to strike when and where it
chooses. Why is this so? Partly because in Iraq large parts of the
population do not want us there, and are prepared to abet those who
would throw us out. The UN mission was simply an auxiliary target.
And the security at the Canal Hotel was not good.

None of this should be surprising. In November 2002, at his request,
I wrote a private memorandum to Gary Hart (a friend going back to the
start of the George McGovern presidential effort in 1971) on how the
situation might unfold. Here's part of what I said:

"... while the impending war on Iraq may prove to be fairly easy...
the post-war occupation is certainly going to be ugly. Iraq is a huge
country. The oil fields, the cities and the airports will need to be
protected. The protectors will need to be protected. Saddam has
150,000 secret police who will not physically disappear. There is a
large Shi'a population with whom our relations could deteriorate
quickly if their leaders don't like our rule. Worst of all there is
Al Qaida. They are not in Iraq right now, but they will be. And they
will find plenty of fresh targets in occupied Iraq. Algeria comes to
mind; does anyone remember?"

"... Saddam's government is ugly, but at present at least the Kurdish
population is protected from him at low cost. The case for putting
the U.S. Army at the service of the rest of the opposition remains
totally unpersuasive and cannot be coherently made. This point
becomes obvious when one reads the screeds suggesting that Iraq might
somehow become an oasis of democracy in the Middle East. They are
mostly written by people who fought to the last against a free vote
for the presidency in Florida."

  (more on the website...)

-----
http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-2-97-1469.jsp

The nail in the wood: an interview with Ismail Abu Shanab
  Ismail Abu Shanab
4 - 9 - 2003

Ismail Abu Shanab was a moderate by Hamas leadership standards. A
ceasefire negotiator, he was prepared to consider the two-state
solution. openDemocracy's Paul Hilder interviewed him at his home in
Gaza in July 2002, days after the assassination of Salah Shehadeh,
leader of Hamas's military wing. In this disturbing conversation,
they talk about peace, violence, democracy, the US, bin Laden, and
colonialism. One year on, Shanab shared Shehadeh's fate.

Introduction

I met Ismail Abu Shanab in the summer of 2002, in Gaza. Everyone knew
where he lived. My young friend Yusuf, who attended the Islamic
University with his son, proudly led me to their home on the
outskirts of Gaza City. We rang the bell. His daughter led us inside
to a book-lined living room where Abu Shanab, a strong-jawed man in
white robes, offered us lemonade. No bodyguards in sight.

Just three days before our meeting, Salah Shehadeh, leader of Hamas's
military wing and formerly Abu Shanab's cellmate, had been
assassinated with a one-ton bomb. It demolished a refugee-camp block
and killed fourteen civilians. But I felt no fear. Abu Shanab was the
most moderate leader of Hamas's political wing, not at that time a
target. This was Hamas's ceasefire negotiator, a man who advocated
engagement in parliamentary process, who was openly prepared to
entertain the two-state solution.

On 21 August 2003, Ismail Abu Shanab was assassinated by an Israeli
helicopter missile strike while travelling by car in Gaza. Government
press releases termed him "terrorist", "operative".

But veering off-message, an Israeli security source told the
Washington Post after his killing, "To what extent that person was
involved [in terrorism] or not is not important. What is important is
that this man... is one of the people who makes decisions about what
kind of policies Hamas should adopt."

We talked for an hour. He was no liberal, and no innocent. But
without him, Hamas will be very different.


Paul Hilder
Paul Hilder: How do you see life now in Gaza? How has it changed over
the last two years?

Ismail Abu Shanab: Everything is affected by Israeli attacks. We have
closure. We have destruction and killing. The destroying of farms.
Economically we are in a position nobody can describe. Things are
very complex. Unemployment is high, people can't earn their livings.
But Palestinian determination grows, because there is no hope left
now in the failed Oslo process.

Paul Hilder: I don't understand. How can one be determined without
hope?

Ismail Abu Shanab: Determined not to surrender. The Israeli attacks
are meant to achieve Palestinian surrender and the continuing of the
occupation. So Palestinian determination is growing for resistance.
The goal is to end the occupation. And we hope to build our
Palestinian state, free and sovereign and independent.

  (more on the website...)

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/090803A.shtml

I Believe
By William Rivers Pitt
t r u t h o u t | Perspective

Monday 08 September 2003

On most nights, you can find me belly to the bar at Charlie's in
Harvard Square, feasting on the meatloaf special and a glass of
Harpoon I.P.A. I like to take my dinner there because they have four
televisions in a row above the mirror, and because the other regulars
are as interesting a mob as you will find in the city. Two of the
televisions will usually be showing the Red Sox game, and the other
two will be tuned into CNN or MSNBC.

Jen, the bartending warrior-goddess who runs the ship at Charlie's,
is as news savvy as anyone can be from watching television. One of
these days, on a slow night, I am going to sit down with her and fill
in the gaps that linger still in her understanding of present matters
within and without the United States of America. Those gaps are not
her fault. She goes to the television for her information, and the
television is a liar. In this, she is like many Americans. I can't
sit down with all of my fellow citizens, but I can bend Jen's ear the
next time things are dull. I can tell her what I believe.

I believe, first of all, that none of George W. Bush's words on
Sunday night can explain away what I believe.

I believe we were lied to about the threat posed by Iraq. The
American people were bombarded on a daily basis for months with dire
reports about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction being handed off to
al Qaeda terrorists for deadly delivery to our shores. The threat, we
were told, was so pressing that war was the only option. The threat
was so pressing that George W. Bush piled hundreds of thousands of
troops on the borders of Iraq before any proof of the necessity of
war was presented. That proof, over six months later, still does not
exist. The war was based upon a barrage of lies, a domestic version
of 'Shock and Awe' that was monstrous and criminal and wrong.

I believe that the leaders in America and Britain who propagated
these lies have run out of room to maneuver. The British newspaper,
the Independent, ran a story on September 7 entitled, "Britain and US
Will Back Down Over WMDs." The first paragraph begins like
so: "Britain and the US have combined to come up with entirely new
explanations of why they went to war in Iraq as inspectors on the
ground prepare to report that there are no weapons of mass
destruction there." The third paragraph begins like so: "The 1,400-
strong Iraq Survey Group, sent out in May to begin an intensive hunt
for the elusive weapons, is expected to report this week that it has
found no WMD hardware, nor even any sign of active programmes."

I believe this is a far cry from the terrifying threats we were
bombarded with by this administration. Let us not forget that Bush
and his people claimed ad nauseam that Iraq was in possession of
26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons
of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agents (500 tons equals one million
pounds), 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents,
possession of mobile weapons labs, connections to al Qaeda, and had
their grubby little fingers digging for uranium in Niger to build a
bomb. All of these claims remain on a White House website page
called "Disarm Saddam Hussein." The mobile weapons labs were, in
fact, weather balloon platforms sold to Iraq by the British in the
1980s. The Niger lies, by now, are evident, and yet the data remains
on the White House page. None of the rest of this has been found.
According to the Independent story, the administration would have you
believe they were never the reason at all.

I believe the newest apologia for this war is a bunch of stinking
garbage. "I can't believe you want Saddam Hussein back," goes the
line. "The Iraqi people are free now, and a really bad guy is gone."
I believe that if what the Iraqi people are experiencing - terrorism,
deprivation, civil war, massive death - is our definition of freedom,
then I want no part of it. I believe that if our new foreign policy
is going to be a "Get The Bad Guys Everywhere" program that goes to
war against "Bad Guys" whether or not there is a threat against
America, we as a nation will very quickly fall apart. I believe that
I would be amenable to have Saddam back if I can also have back the
hundreds of American soldiers who have been killed, the thousands of
American soldiers who have been wounded, and the tens of thousands of
Iraqi civilians who have been slaughtered and maimed. I believe, as
bad as Hussein demonstrably was, that he was not worth the price we
have paid, and will continue to pay.

I believe the lies were exposed by an Air Force Lt. Colonel named
Karen Kwiatkowski, who worked in the Pentagon until her retirement
last April. Kwiatkowski is one of many whistleblowing intelligence
insiders who have come forward in the last months to expose the
shoddy manner in which the Bush administration took us to war in
Iraq. Kwiatkowski worked with the Office of Special Plans, the
special unit formed by Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld specifically to
second-guess and manufacture 'proof' that Iraq was a threat. "What I
saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and
discipline," Kwiatkowski wrote recently. "If one is seeking the
answers to why peculiar bits of 'intelligence' found sanctity in a
presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been
distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further
than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense." She
described the activities of Rumsfeld's Office of Special Plans as, "A
subversion of constitutional limits on executive power and a co-
optation through deceit of a large segment of the Congress."

I believe the lies of this administration regarding this war, and the
war itself, have made our country far less safe from further
terrorist attacks. We were told time and again that Iraq was a nest
of al Qaeda terrorist activity. We went to war, ostensibly, to put an
end to this threat. No evidence of al Qaeda activity, or al Qaeda
connections to Hussein's regime, or weapons of mass destruction of
any kind whatsoever, have been found. The chaos unleashed by this
war, however, has been nothing more or less than a gilded invitation
to Arabic terrorists like al Qaeda to flood into Iraq and make
trouble. The Bush administration created, with its lies, the very
situation they supposedly went to war to get rid of. This puts
Americans over there, and right here, in mortal peril.

I believe the incalculable horror of September 11th was used against
the American people to justify a war that did not need to be fought.
The newest poll states that some 70% of the American people believe
Saddam Hussein was among those responsible for the attacks; in short,
70% of the American people believe in something that is a flat lie.
Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are blood enemies, and have been
for years. Their hatred runs so deep that one would not urinate on
the other if the other was on fire, because that urine would help.
Never mind sharing weapons. Why do the American people believe in
this connection? They believe in this because George W. Bush and
virtually every member of his administration made this rhetorical
connection over and over and over again as they argued for war in
Iraq. It was the most emotive argument, over and above the other lies
about Iraq's nuclear program and Niger uranium, and it motivated the
American people to get in line behind war. Bush used our unchartable
woe and fear against us, and his party is planning to hold their 2004
national convention next to the hole in the ground where the Towers
stood. The dead are being used, and the living are being rhetorically
raped, by an administration that has all the moral fiber of a
hammerhead shark.

I believe the war in Iraq, and the War on Terror as a whole, is being
used by this pack of ideological extremists in the White House to
destroy any ability the federal government has to provide needed
services to the American people. Bush has recently gone to Congress
to ask for $70 billion more for his war, over and above the billions
of dollars that have already been pumped into this farce. Between the
war costs, the billions being taken out of the domestic budget and
fed into the Defense Department, and the tax cuts, there will be
nothing left for Social Security or Medicare or a hundred other
vitally necessary social services. This is by design; the boys
running the show have fantasized for years about reversing the
outcome of the 1932 Presidential election. That election gave rise to
FDR, to the New Deal, and to the preponderance of the simple truth
that the government can and must help our weakest citizens. Right
under our noses, they are changing that history. The fact that they
are also purposefully terrifying the American people simultaneously
means they will likely get away with this, because frightened people
tend not to think clearly, and tend to trust those who are
demonstrably untrustworthy.

I believe this war is costing so much because the Bush administration
gave the United Nations and the international community the back of
its hand in the run-up to the war, because the United Nations and the
international community had the gall to believe that weapons
inspections and clear reasons for war needed to be part of the
matrix. We were perfectly able to go it alone, said Bush, and so we
did. Now that the occupation has proven to be bloodier than the war,
now that we are losing soldiers practically every day, now that a
civil war is breaking out between Shia and Sunni because there is no
longer anything keeping them from going for each other's throats, now
that the oil lines are getting bombed and sabotaged, now that we are
hemorrhaging cash from every orifice, this administration is being
forced to crab-walk back to the UN and ask for help. The fact that
they have the gall to claim that they always intended to do this is
merely par for the course at this point.

I believe that I was wrong. I thought that, if I lived to be 150
years old, I would not see this administration backtrack on its
unilateralist course and ask for help in Iraq from the United
Nations. Recall that it was Richard Perle, former chairman of the
Defense Policy Board and chief architect of this war, who publicly
rejoiced at the beating absorbed by the UN. In an editorial published
on March 21, 2003 entitled, "Thank God For The Death Of The UN,"
Perle wrote the following: "Saddam Hussein's reign of terror is about
to end. He will go quickly, but not alone: in a parting irony, he
will take the UN down with him." Perle and his fellow "Bring 'em on"
hawks must now eat these words, and I was wrong. I never thought I
would live to see the day.

I believe the Bush administration has betrayed the honor and courage
and service of our soldiers. When you put on the uniform of the
United States military, and when you swear the oath, you are also
being made a promise. You are being promised that your blood and
heart and soul and courage will not be spent to no good cause. You
are being promised that your life will not be thrown away, cashiered
by a battery of lies. I believe the American soldiers serving in Iraq
do so for the best of reasons, and because they do as they are told.
Rumsfeld recently visited Iraq to buck up the troops, requiring them
to sweep the streets and pretty up the base. The boost in morale was
not forthcoming. "The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to
clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't
even look at it anyway," said Specialist Rue Gretton. "I don't give a
damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home." The
troops know the score. Pity that so many Americans do not.

I believe that, as fantastically masturbatory as the upcoming
Showtime 'docu-drama' about Bush on 9/11 may be, it cannot come close
to explaining the glaring deficiencies within the accepted mantra
surrounding what happened on that day. One, only one, example: The
professional golfer Payne Stewart died aboard his chartered jet when
the cabin suffered explosive decompression. The plane continued to
fly on auto-pilot. It took the ground controllers 21 minutes to
summon an F-16 fighter to come in behind the doomed jet to
investigate. On September 11, there was a squadron of F-16s and a
squadron of FA-18s laagered up at Andrew's Air Force Base, which sits
just 12 miles from the White House. The hijacked commercial planes
were in the air, and were crashing into buildings, for almost two
hours before one single fighter turned a wheel and took to the sky.
Payne Stewart rated a fighter in 21 minutes. Hundreds of kidnapped
civilians did not rate a fighter for almost 120 minutes, until the
horror was already over. The mantra for this says, "Incompetence,"
yet no one has been fired or even reprimanded. I want to know why.

If you are someone who finds questions like this to be dangerously
incendiary and conspiratorial, I would direct you to look long and
hard at this document [clickable link in original-b]. This is a set
of instructions issued from the Joint Chiefs of Staff on the 1st of
June 2001, describing in minute detail the protocols and procedures
to be undertaken if a plane is hijacked. Not one of these protocols,
issued three months and ten days before the terror attacks, were
followed. Why?

I believe we as a nation are in the gravest of trouble. I believe our
troubles have only just begun, and unless something is done, our
troubles will come to undo this democratic experiment before too much
longer. I also believe, however, in the words of Thomas Paine: "If
there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have
peace."

I believe that Jen, behind the bar at Charlie's, is as fine an
example of an American as one can find. She works hard, and follows
the news as she can. I believe that when she hears these hard truths
and bitter facts, she will act upon them with the basic courage and
searing outrage that is the hallmark of any American who has been
lied to and used. I believe that Jen has the power in her hands to
reverse this course, and I believe she will do it when armed with the
truth. I believe the Bush administration will come to know true fear
if people like Jen are unleashed.

I believe it is time for my dinner. I will speak with Jen. Who will
you speak with today?

---------------------------------------------------------------------

     William Rivers Pitt is the Managing Editor of truthout.org. He is
a New York Times and international best-selling author of three
books - "War On Iraq," available from Context Books, "The Greatest
Sedition is Silence," available from Pluto Press, and "Our Flag, Too:
The Paradox of Patriotism," available in August from Context Books.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1037339,00.html

Comment

------------------------------------------------------------
The wrong way round

Citizenship tests for immigrants aren't about social inclusion.
They're about imposing a mythical Britishness

Gary Younge
Monday September 8, 2003
The Guardian

My mother came to London from Barbados in the early 60s with a
British passport and two A-levels in European history and English
literature. She could quote from A Winter's Tale, but knew only heat
and hurricane.
Before she left the island she was given orientation classes to
prepare her for life in Britain. They told her to wear flannelette
pyjamas and a woollen hat. They said nothing about people shouting
abuse at you in the street.

She came of her own free will. She also came because she was asked by
the British government to help to build one of the nation's most
cherished institutions, the National Health Service.

Racism and the cold aside, two of the things to strike her when she
arrived were that most British people seemed to know very little
about their own country, and even less about the nations their
country had occupied.

Whenever I hear about David Blunkett's tests for new immigrants, I
think of my mother's initial impressions and don't know whether to
laugh or cry: laugh because of the patent folly of his attempts to
fix what is fluid and to codify what is contested in British
identity; or cry at the racism that has inspired it, the nationalism
that informs it, and the historical, political and cultural
illiteracy that infects every part of it.

This was a wasted opportunity. Had citizenship and language courses
been introduced as part of an agenda for social inclusion and
constitutional reform, it could have been an excellent move. Here was
one time when we would have been right to adapt American methods to
our circumstances. Here was a chance to uncouple immigration from
race and transform a threat into a promise.

And Blunkett blew it. We are moving not towards an induction into how
to take part fully in national life, but an imposition of a mythical
patriotism. It is shaping up not to be a test about citizenship but
Britishness. It is an attempt to establish authenticity for those at
the borders that is not shared by those already here.

"I want to see a greater pride from British people about their own
culture and identity - English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish," Blunkett
said last week at the launch of the report that will be a blueprint
for the tests, "so that people can actually celebrate their own sense
of identity much more clearly and have the confidence to celebrate
and welcome other people." In other words, immigrants will be tested
so that British peo ple can feel better about themselves.

This sloppy logic has blighted the project from the start. Rather
than divorcing the issues of immigration and race, Blunkett has
married them even more closely. The tests were not proposed as part
of a much-needed national debate about what it means to be a citizen
in a small, post-colonial monarchy coming to terms with devolution,
the Northern Ireland peace process, European integration and
globalisation.

Instead, they were raised as a response to race riots in the
north. "We have norms of acceptability," Blunkett said shortly before
the report into the disturbances was due to be released. "And those
who come into our home - for that is what it is - should accept those
norms just as we would have to do if we went elsewhere."

The fact that for most of those who took to the streets, both black
and white, Britain was the only home they knew was clearly irrelevant
to him. And one can only presume that "elsewhere" does not include
the Indian subcontinent, Ireland, the Caribbean, Africa or anywhere
else where Britain actually did set up in somebody else's home during
colonialism and forced people to speak English, convert to
Christianity and submit themselves to foreign rule.

And he is still at it. Last week he argued that properly primed
immigrants will "see off the racists" - as if once blacks and Asians
could conjugate their verbs properly and learn the date of the Battle
of Agincourt, then racists would refrain from attacking them. Once
again, Blunkett has got it the wrong way round. It is the abundance
of racism that prevents integration; not the lack of integration that
encourages racism.

This has been his problem all along. When racism rears its head,
Blunkett blames not the perpetrators but the victims. Following Jean-
Marie Le Pen's entry to the second round of the French presidential
elections, he said the way to confront fascism was to be tough on
asylum. The results speak for themselves. At the time, the rightwing
British National party had no councillors in Britain; with its
victory in Thurrock last week, it now has 18.

Left there, and this would be just one more blunder by a home
secretary who has not updated his racial politics since the curtains
went down on It Ain't Half Hot Mum. But the flaws go far deeper than
that. To see how far, one need only go to the place he got the idea
from in the first place - America. As most American Arabs and Muslims
will tell you, the US attitude to immigration is far from perfect.
But the nation's approach to the formal induction of new citizens is
impressive.

A citizenship ceremony in the US is like a piece of civic theatre.
The official pounds the lectern, evokes "the dream", invokes the
constitution, reminds those attending of his own immigrant roots and
implores them to take advantage of everything America has to offer.

There are two reasons why we could not stage such a ceremony in
Britain. First of all, we do not have a constitution that lays down
the principles of what our country is supposed to stand for. As a
result there are very few of the tropes of nationhood - be it flag,
anthem, monarchy or currency - that are not subject to partial
rejection and complete confusion. We are a multi-nation state in
which parties that advocate some form of independence from the United
Kingdom are backed by 29% of voters in Scotland, more than 40% in
Northern Ireland and 20% in Wales, and around a third of the
population has republican leanings. Blunkett may have decided what
our "norms" are, but many of the rest of us are still trying to work
them out.

Second, unlike in Britain, American officials will, in all
likelihood, be descendants of immigrants themselves. In the US,
immigration is connoted not with "swamping" and "invasion" but hope
and reinvention. It is seen not as a threat to a mythical land that
is monocultural and monoracial but as a boon to a nation that draws
strength from diversity.

One of the biggest cheers during last week's debate among the
Democratic party's presidential contenders came when Dick Gephardt
said: "Unless you're a Native American, we're all immigrants in this
country." The frontrunners in the California recall election, Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Cruz Bustamante, both tout their immigrant roots
as an asset, not a liability.

The day when a Bangladeshi or Kosovan-born candidate could do the
same in Britain is, thanks to Blunkett, still a long way away.

· g.younge@...

Apparently George Carlin, writer, actor, comedian (first guest host
of "Saturday Night Live") wrote this soon after his wife's death,
post 9-11 (or 11-9 as some people insist!). Too good not to share.
beena

---
Isn't it amazing that George Carlin - gross and mouthy comedian of
the 70's and 80's - could write something so very eloquent ... and so
very appropriate post 9-11. A wonderful Message by George Carlin:

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings
but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We
spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have
bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time.
We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less
judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less
wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too
little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too
tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom. We
have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too
much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We've learned how to make a living, but not a life. We've added years
to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and
back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We
conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things,
but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the
atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan
more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We
build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies
than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and
small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are
the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken
homes...... These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers,
throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills
that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when
there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A
time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when
you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember, spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not
going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who
looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up
and leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to
you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart
and it doesn't cost a cent.

Remember, to say, "I love you" to your partner and your loved ones,
but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it
comes from deep inside of you. Remember to hold hands and cherish the
moment for someday that person will not be there again. Give time to
love, give time to speak, and give time to share the precious
thoughts in your mind.

HOW TO STAY YOUNG
1. Throw out nonessential numbers. This includes age, weight and
height. Let the doctor worry about them. That is why you pay him/her.
2. Keep only cheerful friends...The grouches pull you down.
3. Keep learning. Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening,
whatever. Never let the brain idle. " An idle mind is the devil's
workshop." And the devil's name is Alzheimer's.
4. Enjoy the simple things.
5. Laugh often, long and loud. Laugh until you gasp for breath.
6. The tears happen. Endure, grieve, and move on. The only person who
is with us our entire life, is ourselves. Be ALIVE while you are
alive.
7. Surround yourself with what you love, whether it's family, pets,
keepsakes, music, plants, hobbies, whatever. Your home is your refuge.
8. Cherish your health: If it is good, preserve it. If it is unstable,
improve it. If it is beyond what you can improve, get help.
9. Don't take guilt trips. Take a trip to the mall, to the next
county, to a foreign country, but NOT to where the guilt is.
10. Tell the people you love that you love them, at every opportunity.

AND ALWAYS REMEMBER: Life is not measured by the number of breaths we
take, but by the moments that take our breath away. If you don't send
this to at least 8 people.... who cares?
-George Carlin

Interesting analysis of 'the anger that now rules the world'.
beena

--
  http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1033771,00.html

So George, how do you feel about your mom and dad?

Psychologist Oliver James analyses the behaviour of the American
president

Tuesday September 2, 2003
The Guardian

As the alcoholic George Bush approached his 40th birthday in 1986, he
had achieved nothing he could call his own. He was all too aware that
none of his educational and professional accomplishments would have
occured without his father. He felt so low that he did not care if he
lived or died. Taking a friend out for a flight in a Cessna
aeroplane, it only became apparent he had not flown one before when
they nearly crashed on take-off. Narrowly avoiding stalling a few
times, they crash-landed and the friend breathed a sigh of relief -
only for Bush to rev up the engine and take off again.
Not long afterwards, staring at his vomit-spattered face in the
mirror, this dangerously self-destructive man fell to his knees and
implored God to help him and became a teetotalling, fundamentalist
Christian. David Frum, his speechwriter, described the
change: "Sigmund Freud imported the Latin pronoun id to describe the
impulsive, carnal, unruly elements of the human personality. [In his
youth] Bush's id seems to have been every bit as powerful and
destructive as Clinton's id. But sometime in Bush's middle years, his
id was captured, shackled and manacled, and locked away."

One of the jailers was his father. His grandfather, uncles and many
cousins attended both his secondary school, Andover, and his
university, Yale, but the longest shadow was cast by his father's
exceptional careers there.

On the wall of his school house at Andover, there was a large black-
and-white photograph of his father in full sporting regalia. He had
been one of the most successful student athletes in the school's 100-
year history and was similarly remembered at Yale, where his
grandfather was a trustee. His younger brother, Jeb, summed the
problem up when he said, "A lot of people who have fathers like this
feel a sense that they have failed." Such a titanic figure created
mixed feelings. On the one hand, Bush worshipped and aspired to
emulate him. Peter Neumann, an Andover roommate, recalls that, "He
idolised his father, he was going to be just like his dad." At Yale,
a friend remembered a "deep respect" for his father and when he later
set up in the oil business, another friend said, "He was focused to
prove himself to his dad."

On the other hand, deep down, Bush had a profound loathing for this
perfect model of American citizenship whose very success made the son
feel a failure. Rebelliousness was an unconscious attack on him and a
desperate attempt to carve out something of his own. Far from
paternal emulation, Bush described his goal at school as "to instil a
sense of frivolity". Contemporaries at Yale say he was like the John
Belushi character in the film Animal House, a drink-fuelled
funseeker.

He was aggressively anti-intellectual and hostile to east-coast
preppy types like his father, sometimes cruelly so. On one occasion
he walked up to a matronly woman at a smart cocktail party and
asked, "So, what's sex like after 50, anyway?"

A direct and loutish challenge to his father's posh sensibility came
aged 25, after he had drunkenly crashed a car. "I hear you're looking
for me," he sneered at his father, "do you want to go mano a mano,
right here?"

As he grew older, the fury towards his father was increasingly
directed against himself in depressive drinking. But it was not all
his father's fault. There was also his insensitive and domineering
mother.

Barbara Bush is described by her closest intimates as prone
to "withering stares" and "sharply crystalline" retorts. She is also
extremely tough. When he was seven, Bush's younger sister, Robin,
died of leukaemia and several independent witnesses say he was very
upset by this loss. Barbara claims its effect was exaggerated but
nobody could accuse her of overreacting: the day after the funeral,
she and her husband were on the golf course.

She was the main authority-figure in the home. Jeb describes it as
having been, "A kind of matriarchy... when we were growing up, dad
wasn't at home. Mom was the one to hand out the goodies and the
discipline." A childhood friend recalls that,"She was the one who
instilled fear", while Bush put it like this: "Every mother has her
own style. Mine was a little like an army drill sergeant's... my
mother's always been a very outspoken person who vents very well -
she'll just let rip if she's got something on her mind." According to
his uncle, the "letting rip" often included slaps and hits. Countless
studies show that boys with such mothers are at much higher risk of
becoming wild, alcoholic or antisocial.

On top of that, Barbara added substantially to the pressure from his
father to be a high achiever by creating a highly competitive family
culture. All the children's games, be they tiddlywinks or baseball,
were intensely competitive - an actual "family league table" was kept
of performance in various pursuits. At least this prepared him for
life at Andover, where emotional literacy was definitely not part of
the curriculum. Soon after arriving, he was asked to write an essay
on a soul-stirring experience in his life to date and he chose the
death of his sister. His mother had drilled it into him that it was
wrong when writing to repeat words already used. Having
employed "tears" once in the essay, he sought a substitute from a
thesaurus she had given him and wrote "the lacerates ran down my
cheeks". The essay received a fail grade, accompanied by derogatory
comments such as "disgraceful".

This incident may be an insight into Bush's strange tendency to find
the wrong words in making public pronouncements. "Is our children
learning?" he once famously asked. On responding to critics of his
intellect he claimed that they had "misunderestimated" him. Perhaps
these verbal faux-pas are a barely unconscious way of winding up his
bullying mother and waving two fingers at his cultured father's
sensibility.

The outcome of this childhood was what psychologists call an
authoritarian personality. Authoritarianism was identified shortly
after the second world war as part of research to discover the causes
of fascism. As the name suggests, authoritarians impose the strictest
possible discipline on themselves and others - the sort of regime
found in today's White House, where prayers precede daily business,
appointments are scheduled in five-minute blocks, women's skirts must
be below the knee and Bush rises at 5.45am, invariably fitting in a
21-minute, three-mile jog before lunch.

Authoritarian personalities are organised around rabid hostility
to "legitimate" targets, often ones nominated by their parents'
prejudices. Intensely moralistic, they direct it towards despised
social groups. As people, they avoid introspection or loving
displays, preferring toughness and cynicism. They regard others with
suspicion, attributing ulterior motives to the most innocent
behaviour. They are liable to be superstitious. All these traits have
been described in Bush many times, by friends or colleagues.

His moralism is all-encompassing and as passionate as can be. He
plans to replace state welfare provision with faith-based charitable
organisations that would impose Christian family values.

The commonest targets of authoritarians have been Jews, blacks and
homosexuals. Bush is anti-abortion and his fundamentalist
interpretation of the Bible would mean that gay practices are evil.
But perhaps the group he reserves his strongest contempt for are
those who have adopted the values of the 60s. He says he
loathes "people who felt guilty about their lot in life because
others were suffering".

He has always rejected any kind of introspection. Everyone who knows
him well says how hard he is to get to know, that he lives behind
what one friend calls a "facile, personable" facade. Frum comments
that, "He is relentlessly disciplined and very slow to trust. Even
when his mouth seems to be smiling at you, you can feel his eyes
watching you."

His deepest beliefs amount to superstition. "Life takes its own
turns," he says, "writes its own story and along the way we start to
realise that we are not the author." God's will, not his own,
explains his life.

Most fundamentalist Christians have authoritarian personalities. Two
core beliefs separate fundamentalists from mere evangelists ("happy-
clappy" Christians) or the mainstream Presbyterians among whom Bush
first learned religion every Sunday with his parents: fundamentalists
take the Bible absolutely literally as the word of God and believe
that human history will come to an end in the near future, preceded
by a terrible, apocaplytic battle on Earth between the forces of good
and evil, which only the righteous shall survive. According to Frum
when Bush talks of an "axis of evil" he is identifying his enemies as
literally satanic, possessed by the devil. Whether he specifically
sees the battle with Iraq and other "evil" nations as being part of
the end-time, the apocalypse preceding the day of judgment, is not
known. Nor is it known whether Tony Blair shares these particular
religious ideas.

However, it is certain that however much Bush may sometimes seem like
a buffoon, he is also powered by massive, suppressed anger towards
anyone who challenges the extreme, fanatical beliefs shared by him
and a significant slice of his citizens - in surveys, half of them
also agree with the statement "the Bible is the actual word of God
and is to be taken literally, word for word".

Bush's deep hatred, as well as love, for both his parents explains
how he became a reckless rebel with a death wish. He hated his father
for putting his whole life in the shade and for emotionally
blackmailing him. He hated his mother for physically and mentally
badgering him to fulfil her wishes. But the hatred also explains his
radical transformation into an authoritarian fundamentalist. By
totally identifying with an extreme version of their strict, religion-
fuelled beliefs, he jailed his rebellious self. From now on, his
unconscious hatred for them was channelled into a fanatical moral
crusade to rid the world of evil.

As Frum put it: "Id-control is the basis of Bush's presidency but
Bush is a man of fierce anger." That anger now rules the world.

· Oliver James's book They F*** You Up - How to survive family life
is published by Bloomsbury, priced £7.99

----- Original Message -----
From: "bobby ramakant"
To: "Medha Patkar" ;
Sent: Thursday, September 11, 2003 12:25 AM
Subject: NAPM vs Coke
(National Alliance of People's Movement)

  Noted human rights' activist SANDEEP PANDEY
severely beaten up by Coca  Cola  security

  Shame on Government : Instead of protecting
public interest, they  are more of vanguards of
corporations!!!

  Today in Mehndiganj Varanasi, noted social
activist and recepient of Ramon Magsaysay Award
2002 Dr Sandeep Pandey was severely beaten up by
security personnels of COCA COLA and Varanasi
police when he was staging a peaceful protest
demonstration outside Coca Cola bottling plant.

  It is indeed a matter of shame and disgust that
our Government agencies protect and promote the
interest of multinational corporations and  turn
a blind eye to the interest and welfare of common
people.

  Right toe of Sandeep Pandey received heavy
impact injuries when security personnels banged
an iron rod on it. Sandeep has received many
lathi injuries on his back apart from a head
injury from a rifle butt.

  National convenor of NAPM (National Alliance of
People's Movement) Sandeep Pandey was staging a
peaceful demonstration against Coca Cola company
for misleading our people and trampling over
their welfare. Coca Cola has been taking out more
than 150,000 liters of water everyday in this
Mehndiganj Coca Cola plant and as a result of
which the water table has gone down quite low,
leaving the hand pumps and irrigation mechanisms
non functional. Farmers are left with not even a
drop to irrigate their fields and forced to go
for deep borings to survive and fight for water.

Coca Cola on the other hand has no role to play
at all in water conservation or harvesting and is
selling our own water at a price which competes
with that of milk. It is indeed shameful the
manner in which our elected representatives gave
them a clean chit even after a reputed agency
like CSE brought out a report against their soft
drinks.

  The choice has to be made clear, whether public
interest weigh more than corporate interest or is
it vice versa. Many other activists and village
based farmers have sustained injuries from Coca
Cola security & police brutalities, and the
injuerd include : state convenor of NAPM Nandlal,
Rekha (whose abdomen received countless blows of
lathi by Mahila Police), another villager lady
whose head ripped open due to police atrocity.

  Sandeep Pandey, who heads the largest coalition
of grassroot organizations in this Indian Sub
continent (NAPM), said before leaving that 'it is
high time to defy corporate domination. Giant
corporations govern our people and land. This
rule by corporations violates the fundamental
democratic principle of consent of the governed.
We need to usher in the change to bring in a just
and social order'.


  =================== ======  ========
Coca-Cola is in trouble in India. Ever
since the first allegations arose  in  Kerala,
India, of water  scarcity and polluted water
resulting from its  bottling
operations, Coca-Cola's public relations
department has churned  out  denials, insisting
that the charges are false and that it is the
"target  of  a handful of extremist protesters."

Coca-Cola's global website carries their position
on the issue and claims  that the "local
communities have welcomed our business as a
good corporate  neighbor."  Nothing could be
further from the truth.  It is time for Coca-Cola
to seriously examine and address the adverse
impacts of its operations in India. In fact,
Coca-Cola needs to stop  treating the issues in
India as a public relations problem and assign it
  to  the appropriate department
that will genuinely address the issues of
over-exploitation of water (leaving the community
with scarce water  resources) and pollution of
water sources as a result of its operations.
Hindustan Coca-Cola and Bharat Coca-Cola are the
Indian subsidiaries of  Coca-Cola.  To highlight
these issues, we are profiling
a series of community  struggles  against
Coca-Cola in India, all
of which point to a pattern in the  company's
operations. The
communities are left thirsting as Coca-Cola draws
water  from  the
common water resources. Its operations are
polluting the scarce water
  that remains. The emergence of local, grassroots
struggles against
the  cola  giant's operation in India should also
serve as a
reminder to Coca-Cola's  bosses in Atlanta that
this is not a
public relations problem that one can  just
"spin" and wish away.
Rather, the heart of the issue is a serious
concern about control
over natural resources and the right of
communities  to  determine
how business is done in their communities.  Close
to a year
after our report on Coca-Cola's operations in
Plachimada,  Kerala,
the communities in and around Coca-Cola's
facility continue to  hold
  the factory responsible for their water woes. In
fact, the local
panchayat  (elected body at the village level)
decided in April NOT
to renew the  license issued to the Coca-Cola
factory, on the
grounds of "protecting  public interest."
Protests, led primarily
by Dalits (formerly  untouchables)  and
Indigenous Peoples, have
continued for over a year against the  factory,
and new data
validates the charges that Coca-Cola's bottling
operations  have
depleted and contaminated the ground water.
Surendranath C visited the
  area  and filed a report on the latest stage of
the struggle in
Plachimada,  Kerala.  Local residents in
Mehdiganj, near the
holy city of Varanasi, are also  gearing up for a
struggle against
Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola has illegally  occupied a
portion of the
common property resources of the village and was
found guilty of
evading payment of land revenue by a local court.
  Protesters
were met at Coca-Cola's factory gates by about
200 police personnel,
sent  to  "protect" the plant along with 50
gun-toting private
security guards. This  was not all for show-- the
demonstrators
were beaten up. The Coca-Cola  plant  in
Mehdiganj enjoys heavily
subsidized electricity and is accused of  spewing
  toxics into
surrounding agricultural fields as well as
causing serious  water
shortage as a result of its operations. We have a
report from
Mehdiganj.  In yet another community, this time
in Kudus
village in Thane district,  villagers are forced
to travel long
distances in search of water which has  dried up
in their area as a
result of Coca-Cola's operations. Villagers  are
questioning the
subsidized water, land and tax breaks that
Coca-Cola  receives from
the state, only to leave them thirsting for
water. Coca-Cola  has
built a pipeline to transport water from a river
to its plant, and an
  activist opposing the pipeline was detained by
police authorities
for a  week. We carry a story from the Times News
Network.
And in a proactive move, more than 7,000 people,
mostly women, turned
out  to  protest a proposed Coca-Cola factory in
Sivaganga, Tamil
Nadu. Residents  are  justifiably worried that
Coca Cola's
operations in the area would lead to  scarcity of
water and
contamination of water. We carry an article from
Frontline.
  For Coca-Cola to claim, after being made aware
of the community
protests  all  over India, that "local
communities have welcomed
our business as a good  corporate neighbor," is
nothing short of
arrogance. But then, Coca-Cola's  arrogance
should come as no
surprise as it is accustomed to having its way
with governments.
  Under the rules of entry for Coca-Cola into
India, it was agreed
that  Coca-Cola would divest 49% of its equity
stake in India
within 5 years. In  an unprecedented move, the
government of India
seems to have given in to  Coca-Cola's pressure,
and is on the
verge of changing its policy in this  regard to
suit Coca-Cola's
interest. We are faced with a situation where
Indian investors
will own 49% of Coca-Cola's Indian operations,
but have  no  vote
whatsoever! Just like in the Enron case, the US
government played a
  significant role. Robert Blackwill, the US
ambassador to India, in a
  letter  to Brajesh Mishra, Principal Secretary
to the Prime
Minister of India,  stated that, "I would like to
bring to your
attention, and seek your help  in  resolving, a
potentially
serious investment problem of some significance
to  both our
countries. The case involves Coca-Cola, one of
the largest single
foreign investors in India."  For a company that
has had its
way and has access to top US officials,  things
are not so rosy
after all. Coca-Cola may very well be the most
recognizable brand
name in the world but it is also increasingly
becoming  the target
of ire of local communities around the world as a
result of its
disregard for communities and the environment.
Community struggles in
  India  against Coca-Cola are just a few of many
that exist and
are emerging.  Coca-Cola was also identified as a
target of boycott
to protest the US led  invasion of Iraq. Sales of
Coca-Cola
plummeted in certain areas in India,  such as
Kerala.  In an
extremely significant case, Coca-Cola's main
Latin American bottler
is  facing trial for allegedly hiring right wing
paramilitary
forces (aka  death  squads) to murder and
intimidate trade union
organizers, especially from  the  union,
Sinaltrainal. The suit
has been brought under the Alien Tort Claims
Act, which allows
corporations to be sued in the US for crimes
committed  overseas.
  Coca-Cola is also the target of an international
campaign
demanding that  Coca-Cola guarantee access to
care and treatment
for all their employees  and  their families
living with HIV/AIDS,
especially in the African continent  where
Coca-Cola is a major
employer.  Holding Coca-Cola accountable for its
pollution, as
various communities in  India are trying to do,
will not be the
first such instance. In May 2003,  Coca-Cola de
Panama was fined
US$300,000 for polluting Matasnillo River in
Panama.
Coca-Cola, it seems, is on its way to soon
earning the reputation that
  Enron  enjoyed in India. Both Enron and
Coca-Cola top the Foreign
Direct  Investment  list from the US in India.
Enron's Indian
operations (Dabhol Power  Corporation, a joint
venture with Bechtel
and General Electric, among  others) was the
single largest foreign
direct investment in India and  became  the
target of activists
across the country due to irregularities in its
manner of carrying
out its business, including the use of armed
thugs to  suppress
opposition. Indians had shut down Enron long
before the financial
scandal in the US brought the entire company
down.  Coca-Cola
could soon join that list.  The India Resource
Center will
focus on supporting community struggles  against
Coca-Cola in
India. Check back regularly for updates.   with
kind
regards from :  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~  Bobby Ramakant
postal
address : C-2211, C-Block Crossing, Indira Nagar,
Lucknow-226016.
India.  Phones : +91 98390 73355  Fax : +91 522
2353020
  email : bobbyramakant@...

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