Celebrating Life in Rafah

By Ramzy Baroud - June 1, 2004

Rafah, Jenin, Khan Yunis, Zeitun: Foreign sounding names of so
distanced and disturbing a reality. All that we know of them is what
media has selectively determined to impart, if we are interested to
hear the story.

The Rafah refugee camp, a small strip of land at the southern edge of
Gaza was the target of Israel's most ruthless attack in years.
Between May 17-20, forty three Palestinians were killed, mostly
civilians. Among them, nine children, most of them struck by missiles
while protesting peacefully with flags and banners. "End the Siege on
Rafah", declared a white banner, torn and saturated with blood.

Media reports said Israel was responding to the killing of 13 of its
troops by Palestinian militants.

Homemade land mines killed the Israeli soldiers. However, the blasts
were exasperated by the large amounts of explosives hauled by Israeli
armored vehicles, apparently on their way to blow up Palestinian
homes somewhere in Gaza.

Even before the Rafah atrocities subsided, US President George W.
Bush told AIPAC lobbyists that Israel had the right to defend itself.

Can logic be any more fallacious?

Israel's murder of civilians is sanctioned as self-defense;
Palestinians, once again, are labeled "terrorists".

Israel can assassinate any Palestinian at the time of its choosing
with a ready-to-serve verdict. It killed and wounded hundreds of
civilians in those "targeted killing" sprees. Yet, Palestinians are
condemned if they show the mere desire to respond. Even the targeting
of occupation soldiers is taboo.

So what is it that Palestinians are permitted to do in self-defense,
in accordance with the so twisted pro-Israeli Bush doctrine?

How about marching in a peaceful demonstration?

In Rafah, that too was an anathema and could not be tolerated. It was
handled with resoluteness and vigor, the same way any "terrorist"
threat deserves to be handled. A missile fired from a US-supplied
Apache helicopter was all that took to eliminate that option of
resistance.

"Photos below are too graphic", read a warning posted on a
Palestinian website of images of dead civilians in the tragedy-
stricken refugee camp. They were of the dozen bodies piled up in a
local farmer's cooler since the hospital's morgue was overfilled with
victims.

One picture refuses to escape my mind. An olive-skinned child with
slightly opened eyes. Dead. An unknown hand, holds the child's wholly
disjoined arm closer to the dead body, as if he is telling the
camera: "This arm belonged here." The boy was nameless. I quivered.
The feeling of being that boy's father is horrifying.

In the case of Israeli victims of suicide bombings, reality can be
equally gruesome. But Bush dares not use the same logic when
Palestinians fall victim: "Palestinians too entail the right to
defend themselves." Never once has he uttered these words. So what
else should Palestinians attempt, now that even peaceful protests are
crossing the line?

Peter Hansen, the chief of the United Nations agency for refugees in
the region confirmed that in Rafah refugee camp, homes were toppled
on their dwellers.

Even as Hansen himself walked through the camp assessing the damages,
Israeli soldiers were still shooting. "We have now confirmation from
the hospital that a girl was shot and killed in one of the two gun
bursts we heard," he said.

She was Rawan Abu Zeid, a 3-year-old girl from Rafah. Her peers said
that she was skipping in her way to the candy store. Two bullets
struck her, one in the head and the other in the neck. Was she taken
to the same makeshift morgue, or did her tiny body find room for
itself in the local hospital?

This time I implore an answer: What must Palestinians do to stand up
to the Israeli occupation without being blamed for their own misery,
now that suicide bombings, fighting occupation soldiers, protesting
peacefully, huddling in fear with one's family in one's own home, or
coveting a piece of candy from a nearby shop warrant so violent an
Israeli response? Of course we are expected to pay little attention
to the Palestinian victims, to ask who are they and who will pay for
their death. In fact, few of us bother to find out what can be done to
help those fortunate enough to evade the bullets and the bulldozers.

But enthusiastically we indulge in analyzing Ariel Sharon's motives,
as if such senseless murder might possibly adhere to some kind of
logic.

Is it blatant revenge that compelled the killings? Is it another
campaign of ethnic cleansing of areas adjacent to the border with
Egypt to establish yet another Israeli "security zone"? Is it a round
of muscle flexing, such as South Lebanon's defeat complex, prior to a
partial pullout from Gaza?

Whatever the reasons, the fact is, Sharon will not cease his
murdering of Palestinians with impunity. His logic, however twisted,
will prevail as long as the United States government continues to
supply him with all the weapons, money and political clout needed to
defy international law. His victims will maintain their status among
the "unimportant people", and shall be reprimanded if they even dare
to vent violently, because by doing so they veer off from the
teachings of Gandhi and Martin Luther King.

In a few days, the name Rafah shall concede to make room for more
important headlines. It might be a few more days before another
foreign sounding Palestinian name, associated with tragedy and death
was introduced, and with it a long list of Israeli pretences, coupled
by a quote or two made by president Bush somewhere on his fundraising
trail: "Israel has the right to defend itself." The chances are, the
Rafah morgues shall be emptied and dusty yellow bulldozers shall
remove the debris of over 230 destroyed homes. Whose morgue shall be
filled next is hard to predict.

As for the refugees of the devastated camp, left alone atop the
debris of their homes, scores of death certificates and hundreds of
wounded to care for, they, astonishingly have a way to cope. For one,
they insist that there are millions of people around the world who
care about them. Someone chanting for their rights and freedom
anywhere in the world feeds them with urgently needed hope for one
more day.

Speaking to Gaza's Voice of Freedom Radio, Moawiya Hassanein, a
physician in Gaza City told the station that by the time 40
Palestinians were killed in Rafah, 39 others were born. I am "so
happy because the births were some compensation for the human loss,"
he said.

A Palestinian friend of mine, who is living far away from home, told
me that as she witnessed the images of the victims of Rafah, she felt
a strange and overpowering sense of pride. She said, "If I had not
been born Palestinian, I would've wished to be." I understood, and I
too felt the same.

-Ramzy Baroud is a Palestinian-American journalist.

=================
Short-term gains detrimental to long-term interests

By Hasan Abu Nimah

The Jordan Times
26 May 2004

http://jordantimes.com/wed/opinion/opinion4.htm

"Israel is a democracy and a friend, and it has every right to
defend itself." That was President George W. Bush's response to the
Israeli onslaught on the Palestinian civilians in Rafah. Thousands
of people were made homeless and scores were killed.

It is against the refugees who have been straining under the
occupation for over 37 years that the Israeli right to self-defence
is recognised. And why are they refugees? Simply because they were,
in 1947-48, driven from their homes in Palestine by the Israelis
intent on cleansing the land of its original owners and creating
Jewish Israel.

A couple of years ago, and when Israeli tanks were destroying a
refugee camp near Jenin in the West Bank, causing unspeakable
devastation, Bush stunned the world then when he referred to Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as a "man of peace".

But there is nothing unusual here. The United States is totally and
openly committed to Israel. Recently, the president, in blatant
violation of international law, committed himself in writing to full
endorsement of Sharon's plan to consolidate Israeli expansionist
plans in the West Bank, in return for Sharon's promise to leave
Gaza; a promise which was later voted down by Sharon's Likud Party.
In addition, the president decided that the internationally
recognised right of return of the Palestinian refugees since 1948
would be virtually abolished.

With the situation of the occupation forces in Iraq steadily
worsening, and with it the approval ratings of the president and his
Republican Party, the significance of the Jewish vote becomes all
the more obvious. It seems that any one single vote in the current
critical race takes precedence over any other consideration for the
region.

The president and the team advising him seem to be focusing on
securing the short-term policy needs -- winning the elections at any
cost -- while leaving everything else for later. The danger is that
this may not lead to balancing the stumbling nature of the US policy
in this region, and indeed worldwide, an obvious result of only
focusing on the short-term. That is why the war on terror has
failed, the Afghanistan campaign has failed, the Iraqi adventure is
falling apart, the US attempts to improve its image and make more
friends have been totally counterproductive, and the risk of the
president loosing his second term is growing more real.

The problem with the US is that its continued reliance on its power
has been blinding it from seeing what is just, what is right, what
is legal, what is compatible with international law, and what is
also good for the others, especially in a world growing increasingly
interdependent.

No doubt, the president was pleased with the astounding cheers of
the AIPAC crowd when spelling out his unreserved support for Israel
and the Jewish state's "right to defend itself from terror" a week
ago. What might have been overlooked, though, is that claps aside,
millions of Arabs and Muslims around the world were deeply hurt by
the president's injustice. These people know that the president is
distorting history and turning facts upside down. They know that
Israel is not defending itself but that it is engaged in ethnic
cleansing and war crimes against helpless innocent civilian
Palestinian refugees. They know that the Israeli occupation of Gaza
and the West Bank is illegal and unjust, and that it is an Israeli
aggression that has been going on since 1967. If anyone has the
right to defend himself, it is the Palestinian victim and not the
Israeli occupier and attacker. These people ask why the Palestinian
should not dig tunnels and smuggle weapons from anywhere to defend
themselves against one of the strongest and most equipped occupation
forces in the world.

There is no way that this injustice can last. Neither will the
American distortion of the striking realities in the region lead to
anything but more violence and more disasters.

If the Sharon plan to leave Gaza, described by Bush as "historic and
courageous" is true, why the daily incursions in Gaza and the
routine demolition of houses? Why were fourteen innocent
demonstrators, mostly children gunned down by helicopter missiles
last Wednesday, and twenty more killed the day before?

A recent Amnesty International report accused Israel of committing
war crimes by demolishing over 3,000 Palestinian houses since the
Intifada began three and a half years ago.

It is time that the US government and president realise that while
they can say whatever they like about Israel and Iraq without
fearing any adverse consequences, because they are the strongest,
America's image and credibility are sinking deeper and fast.

If that might rescue short-term gains, it will certainly destroy
America's long-term interests in the world.

The writer is former ambassador and permanent representative of
Jordan at the UN. He contributed this article to The Jordan Times.

===================
The bulldozer state

By Roger H. Lieberman

The Jordan Times
21 May 2004

http://jordantimes.com/fri/opinion/opinion5.htm

The most recent days of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have
been among the most horrific in years -- perhaps the ugliest since
Ariel Sharon's phalanx stormed into West Beirut in September
1982.

In the impoverished city of Rafah, in southern Gaza, thousands of
Palestinian houses have been destroyed in the past week and dozens of
innocent Palestinian civilians have been murdered. According to UN
estimates, at least 1,600 people lost their homes. The Gaza Strip,
whose population — minus the 7,500 Jewish settlers who monopolise one-
third of the territory — has teetered on the precipice of
humanitarian disaster for months, is being raped once more by the
most powerful military force in the Near East.

But where is the outcry from the Western democracies? When Serb
soldiers and paramilitaries massacred Bosnians and Kosovars in the
1990s, the United States and its NATO allies responded with air
strikes. When Saddam Hussein's regime slaughtered Iraq's Kurdish and
Shiite citizens, he quite justly became reviled by Western liberals.
Yet, when Ariel Sharon's thugs brutalise the Arab population of
Palestine, what does he get from Washington? A big, juicy check
for $3 billion or more to help him keep on killing and maiming
innocents! And on those rare instances when he does get a slap on the
wrist from the White House, the sting is promptly soothed with a
sanctimonious Bush sermon about Israel's "right to defend itself"
(occasionally feminised to "defend herself"!)

The Bush administration's deliberate, pathological denial of Israel's
atrocities has permitted the Zionist state to descend to new levels
of depravity in the occupied territories. In a nauseating action
reminiscent of George Orwell's 1984, the Israeli army christened its
new state terror offensive in Gaza "Operation Rainbow"! I do not
believe so grotesquely incongruous a name has been bestowed upon an
act of organised barbarism since Maoist China's "Great Leap
Forward" — the campaign of forced collectivisation that resulted in
the deaths of millions in the 1950s.

It is vital that the American people reject the sick propaganda
churned out by the Bush administration and the pro-Israel lobby for
the horse manure that it is. What is happening in Gaza is nothing but
a "scorched earth policy" designed to appease the most violent
members of Sharon's constituency, who rejected his two-
faced "disengagement plan" in the recent referendum.

Throughout history, vicious occupying powers have always sought to
make any territory they relinquish unliveable for its inhabitants
after their armies withdraw. The world witnessed this ugly phenomenon
quite recently, in 1999, when East Timor was set aflame by
Indonesia's fascist militias, following a UN referendum on Timorese
independence. Israel itself carried out a scorched earth policy in
the Syrian Golan Heights in 1974, when it systematically levelled the
city of Quneitra after agreeing to withdraw under the auspices of the
UN-mediated ceasefire.

What has made all such actions possible throughout history has been
the refusal on the part of the aggressors to recognise the humanity
of their victims. That is the essence of the "bulldozer mentality" —
a moral blindness that permits those possessed by it to plough
tempestuously through a country, without one iota of consideration
and respect for those who already call that country home. It was the
bulldozer mentality that allowed the Zionists of the early 20th
century to proclaim Palestine "a land without people, for a people
without land", and allowed Golda Meir, in 1969, to proclaim
that "there are no Palestinians". It is a kindred form of denial that
allows so many Americans, from Senator John Kerry to pop diva Whitney
Houston, to go gaga over Israeli "democracy" — a term that grows more
Kafkaesque with each passing week. Their woeful ignorance of post-
Biblical Palestinian history permits them to treat the land as a
blank canvas on which they may paint their misguided fantasies.

At this juncture, it is admittedly very difficult for an honest
person to know where the best path to lasting peace in Israel-
Palestine lies. On the one hand, Sharon's campaigns of destruction
and George W. Bush's unforgivable endorsements of "Greater Israel"
have negated any remaining husk of a possibility for a viable two-
state settlement. On the other hand, however, it is undeniably very
hard to envision two peoples as estranged and alienated from each
other as Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs are now forming a
successful single, secular state in the near future. But, perhaps, we
should sidestep this political briar patch for now, and instead focus
on what is essential for a peaceful future, irrespective of lines on
the map: creating a climate of mutual understanding and recognition
of the humanity of one's neighbours.

One of the most inspiring initiatives undertaken to achieve this end
was conceived several years ago through the creative partnership of
Israeli musician Daniel Barrenboim, and the Palestinian-American
scholar, Dr Edward Said. Their foundation has brought together dozens
of talented young Israeli, Palestinian, and Arab musicians and
created a shining example of how shared love of learning can conquer
prejudice and ignorance of the "other". Recently, Barrenboim
conducted a concert in Ramallah on the West Bank, as a moving tribute
to his friend, Professor Said. He announced plans to create a
Palestinian National Orchestra within five years, and has pledged to
donate the monies of the prize recently awarded him by the Wolf
Foundation to support this cause.

What an inspiration to all of us, especially to the peoples of the
Middle East! The spirit of neighbourliness embodied in the work of
Daniel Barrenboim and Edward Said could do much more to further the
cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace than a thousand Camp David summits
and photogenic handshakes between diplomats. If it could be emulated
throughout the region, it would bring about a transformation of
hearts and minds more wondrous and beautiful than any vision
of the prophets.

The writer is graduate of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New
Jersey, with a bachelor's degree in geology. He contributed this
article to The Jordan Times.

=============
They must pay the price

By Gideon Levy

Haaretz
23 May 2004

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/430575.html

On a day when bodies of children were being stuffed into a big
refrigerator used to store potatoes, and when thousands of
homeless people were fleeing for their lives (some of them
refugees rendered homeless for the second or third time), life in
Israel went on as usual, as though what was happening in Rafah
was not being done in the name of the country's citizens. Such
apathy renders all of us responsible - and yet there are some who
bear a heavier burden of responsibility. In a climate less lax
than the one which has gripped Israel in recent years, they would
be ostracized.

When Ariel Sharon was found guilty of indirect responsibility for
the massacre in Sabra and Chatila, he was denounced by wide
sectors of Israel's public. Demonstrators denounced him as a
"murderer," and some of his personal friends turned their backs
on him and cut off relations with him. Like his predecessor Moshe
Dayan after the Yom Kippur War, during the Lebanon War, Sharon
was ostracized. Nobody thought to fete and honor him. For his
part in the killing of Israelis and Palestinians in Lebanon, he
paid a heavy personal price, beyond his removal from the post of
defense minister.

Some 22 years later, Sharon again bears direct responsibility for
bloodshed, but this time nobody considers ostracizing him. He
continues to be perceived as a sympathetic figure, one who enjoys
an image as a friendly farmer and grandfather. Whatever he does,
he does not encounter a hostile public. Benjamin Netanyahu, who
caused far less serious damage to Israel and the cause of peace,
is the scourge who is loathed by the left.

Nor have the two other architects of the bloody IDF operation in
Rafah and of the brutal policies in the territories in general -
Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz and IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Ya'alon
- paid a personal price for their acts. On the contrary: last
week, Mofaz received an honorary doctorate from Bar-Ilan
University; a few days before that, he was the guest of honor at
the annual Israel Bar Association conference in Eilat. Why,
exactly, was an honorary doctorate conferred on Mofaz? Why did
lawyers pay tribute to a figure whose actions are deeply
problematic in moral and legal terms?

As the heads of Bar-Ilan University and of the bar association
(two bodies whose acts exert a normative influence in Israel's
society) see it, the fact that Mofaz serves as defense minister
is enough to warrant the conferral of honors on him, no matter
what he actually does. Sharon has also received two honorary
doctorates - from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (a few
lecturers raised their voices in protest) and from Bar-Ilan.

In past years, these three generals - Sharon, Mofaz and Ya'alon -
have been responsible for a long list of despicable acts. At the
end of last week, Haidar Hasuna told an investigator from
B'Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the
Occupied Territories, about bulldozers that began to demolish his
home in the besieged Tel Sultan neighborhood in Rafah, when he
was sitting with his wife and children in their living room. When
he tried to leave the house, he was floored by tank fire.
Miraculously, the family survived.

Members of the Mantsur family from the Brazil neighborhood told
Haaretz's Amira Hass how they fled barefoot from their home as
the IDF began to demolish it. A few months before this incident,
a pregnant woman was killed during similar house demolition
circumstances in the El Bureij refugee camp, in plain view of her
children. Somebody is responsible.

The mass demolition of innocent civilians' houses in Rafah is
considered a war crime under criteria accepted around the world -
despite the fact that the High Court has given the demolitions
its typical stamp of approval. And this crime is no orphan; it
has parents. And these parents must no longer be indulged. It's
wrong to continue to blame the errant tank shell, and the tunnels
and the terrorists themselves, for every lethal blunder committed
by the IDF.

The virtual imprisonment of the Palestinian people, the
prevention of medical care, the mass arrests, the assassinations,
the needless killing, the bombing of residential neighborhoods -
the prime minister, the defense minister, the IDF chief of staff
and other top officers all bear responsibility for such acts.

They should pay a price for their acts, at least in the
public-social spheres. The time has come, at last, for Mofaz to
feel the heat of public pressure, for Ya'alon to experience what
it's like to be denounced and for him to display some sense of
shame, and for senior IDF officers to worry about their public
futures. Anyone who thinks Israel is committing crimes against
the Palestinian people must demand that those responsible for the
crimes pay a price.

===============
Who really smuggled weapons to Rafah?

Arjan El Fassed, The Electronic Intifada, 20 May 2004

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2721.shtml

Israel's ongoing assault on human lives and property, killing
civilians and demolishing homes is, according to Israeli
spokespersons, "aimed at preventing a huge shipment of arms from
being smuggled". According to Israeli spokespersons, Israel
launched "Operation Rainbow", its largest military raid on Palestinian
civilians since "Operation Defensive Shield", in a bid "to rid the
border zone of its tunnels and capture the militants using them."

The past four days, Israeli forces have killed 39 Palestinians. Its
military assault on Palestinians in Rafah includes extensive house
demolitions along the so-called "Philadelphi route" that runs along
the border.

What no one asks, however, is the question who supplies Israel's
military occupation of Gaza, a strip of land, slightly more than
twice the size of Washington DC, housing at least 1.2 million
Palestinians and 6,000 Israeli settlers. It is not hard to guess that
the U.S. administration is the largest supplier of arms and aid to
Israel. The common figure given for U.S. aid to Israel is $3 billion
per year—$1.2 billion in economic aid and $1.8 billion in military
aid, representing about one-sixth of total U.S. foreign aid. Israel is
one of the U.S.' largest arms importers.

In the last decade, the U.S. has sold Israel $ 7.2 billion in
weaponry and military equipment, $762 million through Direct
Commercial Sales (DCS), more than $6.5 billion through the Foreign
Military Financing (FMF) program. In fact, Israel is so devoted to
U.S. military hardware that it has the world's largest fleet of F-16s
outside the U.S., currently possessing more than 200 jets. The
U.S. also gives Israel weapons and ammunition as part of the Excess
Defense Articles (EDA) program, providing these articles completely
free of charge. Examples of U.S. weaponry being used by the Israeli
army against Palestinian civilians and their property are AH-64
Apache and Cobra attack helicopters, missiles and other heavy arms.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the Israel's assault on
Rafah "troubling" and said: "The Israelis have told us they will make
every effort to minimize the impact on Palestinians not involved in
acts of terrorism or arms smuggling." While he had learned that U.S.
delivered Apache helicopters fired missiles in a peaceful
demonstration, he said: "We understand their explanation but we still
find the violence troubling."

Israel not only uses arms transferred from the U.S., despite
restrictive policies on arms exports to states that violate human
rights, Israel also uses arms being transferred and exported from the
EU.

A week ago, on May 14, Amnesty International reported that EU arms,
security equipment and services are contributing to grave human
rights abuses and that the scale of potential abuse is now enormous.
The major EU arms exporting countries - France, Germany, Italy,
Sweden and the United Kingdom - account for one third of the world's
arms deals. In its report, Undermining Global Security: the European
Union's arms exports, Amnesty International highlights serious flaws
in the European Union's key arms control agreements, especially the
1998 EU Code of Conduct on Arms Exports.

France

Today France is one of Israel's main suppliers after the US and
Germany. According to SIPRI, France exported major conventional
weapons worth $50m to Israel between 1996 and 2000. This included a
delivery of seven AS-565SA Panther helicopters between 1996 and 1998
which were ordered through and partly funded by the US.

Germany

According to figures from SIPRI, Germany supplied Israel with major
conventional weaponry worth $765m between 1996 and 2000. In 2000
alone, the last year for which figures are available, Germany sold
about $170m in military equipment, including parts for tanks and
armoured cars. This included key parts for the Israeli Merkava tank,
which are currently being used in Rafah. Israel is Germany's seventh
largest military client.

Ireland

The US Data Device Corporation (DDC), which has production facilities
in Cork, Ireland (DDC Ireland Ltd) states on its website that its MIL-
STD-1553 Data Bus products are used in the AH-64 Apache Attack
Helicopters. Its MIL-STD-1553 data bus, the life line of the
aircraft, include a lethal array of armaments, including a mix of up
to 16 Hellfire missiles or 76 70mm aerial rockets and 1,200 rounds of
30mm ammunition for its M230 Chain Gun automatic canon.

The Netherlands

A large part of Dutch exports are components for incorporation into
larger weapon systems, mainly to be assembled in the U.S. which, in
turn, is the major supplier of arms to Israel. In compensation orders
Dutch companies are involved producing components for Apache attack
helicopters and F-16 fighter planes to the U.S.. In general is not
announced who the end-user of these aircrafts will be. In 2001
transfers of components were worth EURO 87 million. The Dutch
company Stork Special Products produces components for Hellfire
rockets, which are frequently used by the Israeli airforce in extra-
judicial executions and to shell Palestinian residential areas. The
missile is produced by Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman
and a number of subcontractors and exported to thirteen countries,
including Israel.

At least one Dutch company is open about the end-user of its
products, on its ethical policy page: "In principle, Philips
companies do not produce products or render services specially
designed or developed for the military, except for the following
products: F16 parts and Apache parts supplied to NATO countries and
Israel (under compensation agreements US/Netherlands)." Eventhough
information on end-users remains largely secret, Philips announced
that its components are incorporated into Apaches that are in action
in Israel. Additionally, in 2002 the Netherlands granted Israel
export licences worth 1.46 million euros, approximately half of the
licensed Dutch transit trade. The licences were granted for goods
under the category A2, which are those connected with armoured
vehicles. This is despite the consistent reporting by human rights
organisations of the misuse of such equipment by the Israeli security
forces. Since 22 August 2002, the Dutch Central Service Import and
Export received 24 "notifications" to transit small arms and light
weapons from Israeli Airways for shipments originating in the United
States with destination Israel.

The United Kingdom

The UK has sold Israel equipment and components for tanks, combat
aircraft, combat helicopters, missiles, ammunition, mines, machine
guns, tear gas, and electronic equipment for military use. UK
companies with known connections with Israel include: the
Airtechnology Group, which supplies parts to IMI for the Merkava
tank, BAE Systems, which has provided head-up displays for US-built
F16s214 and whose subsidiary Rokar International is the current sole-
source supplier of counter-measure dispensing systems for the Israeli
airforce, and Smiths Group which has supplied missile triggering
systems for Apache helicopters.

Israeli Merkava tanks had been equipped with a cooling system made by
the Surrey-based Airtechnology Group, and UK components, including
missile trigger systems made by Smiths Group, are used in US-made
Apache helicopters supplied to Israel, both in action killing and
injuring Palestinian civilians in Rafah.

In March 2002, Junior UK Foreign Office Minister, Ben Bradshaw,
disclosed that the Israeli armed forces had modified UK Centurion
tanks, exported between 1958 and 1970, and were using them as
armoured personnel carriers. He stated that this contradicted a
written assurance from the Israeli government on 29 November 2000
that "no UK-originated equipment nor any UK-originated systems/ sub
systems /components are used as part of the defence force's
activities in the territories". The UK government has continued to
supply arms and equipment to the Israeli security forces. Such
transfers continue despite reports that generic types of such
equipment have been used by the Israeli security forces in Rafah to
commit human rights violations and breaches of international
humanitarian law.

The European Union: What Code of Conduct?

The situation in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories
should be foremost on the minds of European officials when they carry
out their reviews of the EU Code of Conduct for Arms Exports. The
code was adopted in 1998 with the aim of "setting high common
standards" over arms exports. Criteria include respect of human
rights in the country of final destination; in particular, member
states will "not issue an export license if there is a clear risk that
the proposed export might be used for internal repression",
including, inter alia, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading
treatment or punishment, summary or arbitrary executions, arbitrary
detentions and other major violations of human rights and fundamental
freedoms as set out in relevant international human rights
instruments.

Human rights organisations and various bodies of the United Nations
have documented such major violations of human rights and fundamental
freedoms in the case of Israel. Other criteria include the existence
of tensions or armed conflicts, and whether there is a clear risk
that the intended recipient would use the proposed export
aggressively against another country or to assert by force a
territorial claim. Political and military experts can provide the
necessary assessment that, indeed, Israel would fail the test on this
item. Moreover, an assessment includes "the behavior of the buyer
country with regard to the international community", in particular
with regard to respect for international law, "its compliance with
its international commitments, in particular the non-use of force,
including under international humanitarian law applicable to
international and non-international conflicts".

The world has seen and condemned Israel's human rights record. The
transfer of arms to Israel is inconsistent with the criteria provided
in the EU Code of Conduct. Export licenses should therefore be
refused. Taking into account the volume and gravity of human rights
violations and breaches of the Fourth Geneva Convention, including
acts of war crimes, that have been documented by various human rights
organisations and United Nations bodies, and the volume of Israeli
forces and military equipment stationed in the occupied Palestinian
territories, and since there is no common system of monitoring the
end-use of European arms by the Israeli forces in the Palestinian
territories, only a full arms embargo will prevent European arms from
being used to commit war crimes and other human rights abuses. The
European Union, therefore, should renew its arms embargo against
Israel, which it lifted in 1994.

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Saudi security forces 'allowed kidnappers to flee':

One employee of the Oasis compound said today that a hostage heard
the gunmen shouting that they would release their captives if the
security forces let them go.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-1129544,,00.html

Saudi security forces allowed some kidnappers in the bloody weekend
attack on a residential compound to flee because they threatened to
blow up the building, according to reports.

At least 22 people died in the attack, including a Briton whose body
was dragged through the streets of the port city of al-Khobar.

One employee of the Oasis compound said today that a hostage heard
the gunmen shouting that they would release their captives if the
security forces let them go.

"The security forces refused at the beginning but then apparently
relented," he said.

"There was a kind of a deal reached to let the hostages go free,
though some hostages had already been killed." Nine hostages died
after their throats were cut.

This employee's account could not be independently confirmed as Saudi
authorities have not provided many details on how the stand-off ended
when security forces stormed the building yesterday, freeing 41
captives.

A Saudi security official, speaking to the Associated Press, would
not directly address whether the militants were allowed to escape.
But he said: "Our main priority was the hostages, and those guys who
ran away, we know how to find them."

Only one of the four attackers was captured and a series of
nationwide checkpoints has been set up in the kingdom to try and
capture the remaining three.

The Interior Ministry said the arrested militant, who was wounded,
was the ringleader of the assault and "an important target".

Authorities were searching a hotel in the Oasis compound today for
evidence and any explosives left behind by suspected al-Qaeda
militants.

Blood stains, glass shards, bullet holes and evidence of grenade
blasts scarred the compound, according to one  employee who had been
inside to assess the damage.

The official death toll from the 25-hour ordeal was eight Indians,
three Filipinos, three Saudis, two Sri Lankans, an American, a
Briton, an Italian, a Swede, a South African and a 10-year-old
Egyptian.

The worst terror attack on Saudi soil in a year and the second this
month to target its oil industry began on Saturday morning, when
militants in military-style dress opened fire inside two oil industry
office compounds in the Gulf city of Khobar.

They then moved up the street to the Oasis, an upscale resort and
residence with apartments, villas and hotels, where they took at
least 50 hostages.

Diane Reed, an American woman living at the Oasis, was receiving
treatment today at a Khobar hospital for a gunshot wound to her leg.
She said she was inside her villa when the trouble began.

"It happened very quickly. ... I heard some shots," said Ms Reed,
lying in her hospital bed. The hospital administrator and hospital
security guards arrived and ordered journalists to leave before she
could finish.

A statement released yesterday and attributed to al-Qaeda's chief in
the Saudi region, Abdulaziz Issa Abdul-Mohsin al-Moqrin, said that
the attack aimed to punish the kingdom for its oil dealings with the
United States and to drive "crusaders" from "the land of Islam".

Saudi Arabia relies on 6 million expatriate workers to run its oil
industry and related sectors.

The attack was expected to have some affect on world oil markets,
where prices have been at new highs, but analysts have said that
jitters shouldn't be too strong since no hard oil facilities, such as
refineries, were targeted.

Most oil markets were closed today, but one open in Tokyo indicated
traders are concerned, with crude oil futures up.

A Tokyo based oil broker told Dow Jones Newswires that the al-Khobar
attack fueled fears of more such violence in oil producing nations at
a time when global crude supply remains tight.

Dead Briton planned return

British neighbours and friends of Michael Hamilton, an expatriate oil
worker who was killed in the attack, today spoke of their "shock" at
the weekend's events.

Many said that Mr Hamilton and his wife Penelope were planning to
move back permanently to their house in the picturesque town of Rye,
East Sussex, in the near future after many years in the Middle East.

Derek Bayntun - a restauranteur and near neighbour who described Mr
Hamilton as a "quiet, gentle man" - said that work was being carried
at the couple's seaview house on Point Hill ahead of their
anticipated return.

He said: "It is a nice house and they have been doing a lot of work
on it and I think Penelope was looking forward to having more time
there.

"He was obviously committed to his job in Saudi Arabia but presumably
had been getting ready for his retirement." Another neighbour, who
did not want to be named, said: "Point Hill is in deep mourning for
great friends."

Frances Catt, a friend of Mrs Hamilton's family, said: "It is a very
shocking thing.

"It is a terrible tragedy for Penny because they were looking forward
to sharing their retirement together after such a long period working
in Saudi."

She added that Mrs Hamilton - who grew up in the area - would visit
the Rye house more often, but would still spend most of the time in
Saudi Arabia with her husband.

It is thought that Mrs Hamilton's sister and other friends have
travelled out to the Middle East to comfort her.

====================
British oil executive was among the first to die:

Victim Body was dragged behind car, reports say
http://www.guardian.co.uk/saudi/story/0,11599,1228336,00.html

Victim Body was dragged behind car, reports say

David Pallister
Monday May 31, 2004
The Guardian

One of the first victims of the terrorist rampage was British oil
executive Michael Hamilton who was shot in his car as he arrived at
the gates of the Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation (Apicorp)
compound where he had worked for 15 years.
Two Saudi security guards at the main entrance were also killed by
the four militants, according to company spokesman Mahdi al-Mahdi.
The attackers were dressed in military-style uniforms.

Some witness reports said Mr Hamilton's body was dragged for more
than a mile behind a car along the Dammam-Khobar highway before being
dumped by a bridge.

Mr Mahdi said: "We do know his body was not in the car but we are not
sure whether it was taken away by the terrorists or in an ambulance."

Pictures on Saudi television showed what is believed to be Mr
Hamilton's car with one of the front side windows shattered by
bullets and a bloodied mobile phone on the passenger seat.

Mr Hamilton, 62, had left his home in the residential compound next
to the Apicorp head office complex at about 7am.

He drove his wife, Penelope, to a nearby housing com pound where she
was to visit friends.

Last night she was being cared for by the head of the British Trade
Office in Khobar where she was joined by the British ambassador,
Sherard Cowper-Coles.

"Michael Hamilton was a very senior guy in the project finance
business," Mr Cowper-Coles said in an interview with Sky
News. "Michael was liked and respected here. It is a real tragedy for
all of us."

Mr Hamilton was head of projects and trade finance at Apicorp, one of
30,000 Britons working mainly in the oil, banking and defence
industries.

Apicorp was established in 1975 to support and finance petroleum and
energy projects in the Arab states. It is an affiliate of the
Organisation of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Britain yesterday repeated a warning to avoid all but essential
travel to the kingdom.

"The headline advice is come to Saudi Arabia only if your visit is
essential," Mr Cowper-Coles said. "Stay here only if your presence is
essential."

Mr Mahdi said the couple had a daughter studying medicine in
Australia and a son who was a lawyer in London.

Born in Kilmarnock, south-west Scotland, he had a house in Sussex in
which he lived on his visits to the UK.

Mr Mahdi said: "He was a very nice man, a gentleman, and very hard
working. He would travel a great deal but he always seemed to have
lots of energy. There used to be golf magazines in his office but I
think he didn't have time for much relaxation.

"His death is a tragic loss. Everybody is very, very sad about it."

Saudi Arabia is heavily dependent on the tens of thousands of
westerners living and working in the kingdom for technology and
expertise to develop its oil deposits, the largest in the world. A
spate of incidents targeting foreigners, including an attack earlier
this month at the Red Sea port of Yanbu, has prompted some to pull
out, though a full-scale exodus has yet to emerge.

================
Crisis hits Saudi oil industry :

Traders warned that oil prices were likely to rise this week in
response to the latest attack in the kingdom, the second in a month.
Prices have slipped in the past fortnight from a 13-year high of
$41.85 a barrel, but a renewed surge is expected when markets reopen
tomorrow

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=526647

===

Saudi attacks weaken dollar's footing :

In Europe, safe-haven flows out of the dollar were much in evidence
although thin trading conditions given the public holiday in Britain
and the US were also having an impact, analysts said.
http://www.busrep.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=&fArticleId=2096271

====================
Al Qaeda targets US oil supplies
Analysts say the Saudi attack could be a new tactic aimed at slowing
the US economy. By Faiza Saleh Ambah
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0601/p01s03-wome.html

By Faiza Saleh Ambah | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

JEDDAH, SAUDI ARABIA – In two deadly attacks here in the past month,
analysts see Al Qaeda-linked groups adopting new tactics and targets -
  encouraging self-organizing cells to hit soft targets in an effort
to drive away Western oil workers, damage the Saudi petroleum
industry, and slow the US economy.

Despite the weekend attack in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich eastern
province in which 22 people were killed, oil operations continued
uninterrupted Monday amid heightened security.


Oil prices hit 20-year highs of $41.85 per barrel in May but eased
last week after Saudi Arabia pledged to increase production and urged
OPEC to do the same. Oil markets, closed Monday, are expected to
experience a slight spike because of the Khobar attacks. Saudi Arabia
is the world's No. 1 oil producer and provides for more than 10
percent of worldwide consumption.

"Hurting the US economy is a longtime Al Qaeda goal and is one of the
reasons the World Trade Center in New York was targeted. They're now
striking these oil- related sites in Saudi Arabia in an attempt to
keep oil prices high and hurt the US economy," says Saud al-Sarhan, a
Saudi writer and researcher who follows Al Qaeda closely.

A statement posted on the Internet and signed by the Saudi Al Qaeda
leader, Abdul-Aziz al-Miqrin, claimed responsibility for the Khobar
attack.

"Our heroic fighters were able, by the grace of God, to raid the
locations of the occupying American oil companies ... which are
plundering the Muslims' resources," it said. Mr. Miqrin also
criticized the Saudi government for "supplying the United States with
oil for the cheapest prices, according to their master's wish, so
that their economy does not collapse." A Westerner killed during the
operation was dragged though the streets, the statement said.

In a 25-hour standoff with police Saturday in Khobar, a group of
armed men attacked an office building housing major oil companies, an
Arab Petroleum Investment Corporation compound, and a compound
housing oil company executives and employees. The militants killed
four Saudis, an American, and workers from Asia, Africa, and Europe
before three of them escaped and one was captured.

The attack in Khobar was an attempt to create another exodus of
foreign workers, like the one following the Yanbu attack May 1. A
group of armed young men entered the offices of ABB Lummus killing
six Westerners and a Saudi. All 90 employees working on a refinery
project jointly-owned by Saudi petrochemical firm Sabic and Exxon-
Mobil chose to leave the country with their families.

But oil industry analysts say the Khobar attack would not have the
same effect. National Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco has been through
70 years of wars and demonstrations and unrest, says Hassan al-
Husseini, an oil analyst and former senior planning consultant at
Aramco. "Very few people, if any will quit. A few wild-eyed
fundamentalists are not going to push this war-hardened workforce
away." The company has not shut down its operations for even one day
since the 1950s, Mr. Husseini says.

Saudi Aramco employs some 54,000 people including 2,300 US and
Canadian citizens and about 1,100 Europeans, the Saudi Aramco's chief
executive, Abdullah Jumah, told Arab News. The expatriates are in top
management and in the medical and highly specialized engineering and
technical fields, says Husseini. But if they all left, oil production
would not be affected he says.

"It's a highly automated industry, there's a highly skilled Saudi
labor force, Western expatriates are a small minority, and they would
be replaced within a short period," he says.

The crackdown by Saudi security forces since an attack on Western
housing compounds in Riyadh last year has also resulted in the
terrorist group prompting go-it-alone operations and providing how-to
tips on the Internet, Al Qaeda expert Mr. Sarhan says.

Since last May, hundreds of militants have been arrested and dozens
killed in suicide attacks and in shootouts with police. Increased
security and checkpoints in all major cities and the relentless
pursuit by police of some 30 trained Al Qaeda- linked fighters has
netted huge weapons caches and hampered their movements. Police have
found more than 10 booby-trapped cars set to explode, tens of
thousands of dollars, and dozens of fake identification papers.

Some analysts say that going after "soft" targets, such as housing
compounds rather than oil production facilities, is evidence of a
terror group on the ropes. They also note that the militants are now
relying on the Internet to gain and train new recruits.

In a statement on a militant website several weeks ago, the head of
Al Qaeda in Saudi Arabia encouraged young men to join Al Qaeda's
jihad, or holy war, against "the enemies of Islam" and said they did
not need to get in direct touch with group members or get permission
to carry out jihad. Those interested in jihad need only "create a
cell that prepares itself and chooses targets approved by God and
then carry out the operation," the statement by al-Miqrin says.
Training tips on attacks could be found in some of the group's
literature on the Web, he adds.

Al-Miqrin also praised the Yanbu attack. "The Yanbu cell which this
month carried out the daring and successful operation is one of the
best examples. They hit the enemy in an important economic facility
which had a big effect on world oil prices which continues to this
day."

"Oil is the blood of the world economy and Al Qaeda want to strike at
it through the Saudi facilities," says Abdullah Bjad al-Otaibi, a
writer at al-Riyadh newspaper.

The attacks will likely lead to a terror and security premium on oil
prices of between $5 to $10, says Ali Dakkak, a professor of
petroleum economics at King Abdul-Aziz University.

"Though OPEC's goal is currently about $25 per barrel, oil prices of
$30 to $35 dollars are more realistic given the extra costs of
security and fighting terrorism," Dr. Dakkak says.

The Qatari oil minister, Abdullah bin Hamad al-Attiya, told reporters
upon arrival in Beirut for Thursday's OPEC meeting that the oil price
already reflects anxiety about production security in Iraq and Saudi
Arabia. "I can say that the equivalent of $8 of a barrel price is the
result of the factor of fear," Mr. al-Attiya said. "We at OPEC have
done our best to remove this factor through our assurance that there
won't be any supply crisis."

=============
Saudi forces hunt for extremists


By Our Correspondent

AL-KHOBAR: The Saudi security forces continued their hunt on Monday
for three terrorists who escaped when Special Forces raided the Oasis
compound where they were holding hostages. At least 41 of the
hostages were later rescued.

The three extremists had managed to escape using some of the hostages
as shield. They later took up a car of a Saudi citizen by force and
used that to flee from the scene.

There were hold-ups at some places in the Kingdom. In the afternoon
at around 4pm Saudi time, there was also a hold up on the main
Dhahran Street in Al-Khobar. The security level has definitely been
raised very significantly. New checkpoints have reportedly sprung up
across the country, specially in the Dammam-Al-Khobar areas.

The city of Jubail, some 120 kilometres from Al-Khobar, regarded as
the hub of the Saudi petrochemical industry, was under very tight
security. Outsiders were not allowed even to enter the area, unless
they have invitations from the plants to visit.

Security at Saudi Aramco is also at the top level and Saudi
authorities are taking every measure to soothe the jittery nerves of
the oil and energy markets by saying that all measures have been
taken to protect the oil and energy infrastructure and that there is
no danger to those.

The highways in and out of Al-Khobar and Dammam are also under very
strict surveillance. A number of checkpoints have been established at
highways to keep an eye on people entering or leaving the cities.

Throughout the day different rumours kept circulating in the broader
city, keeping people jittery. Some of the multinational companies
reportedly had closed all their entrance gates so as to ensure that
no one barges in. Due to uncertain reasons, some energy
multinationals had reportedly asked their employees not to move
around and stay "wherever they are" for the time being.

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top16.htm&date=20040601

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Council defies US over top job choice:

At a stormy governing council meeting yesterday, Mr Bremer bluntly
warned members not to hold another vote on who should be the new
president. If they did he would ignore it.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1228210,00.html


Luke Harding and Michael Howard in Baghdad
Monday May 31, 2004
The Guardian

The US was last night locked in a dispute with Iraqi leaders over who
should be the country's president when power is handed over on June
30.
The US governor of Iraq, Paul Bremer, and the UN special envoy
Lakhdar Brahimi, insisted the job should go to Adnan Pachachi, an 81-
year-old former foreign minister. But the Iraqi governing council
demanded that the largely ceremonial post should go to Sheikh Ghazi
Mashal Ajil al-Yawar, an Arab businessman in his 40s who has
criticised the US-led occupation and who is the council's president.

The row threatens to delay the appointment of a new interim
government. A ceremony scheduled for today appeared last night to
have been postponed.

On Friday the governing council voted unanimously to endorse Ayad
Allawi, a British-educated neurosurgeon with close links to the CIA,
as the new prime minister - a move that seems to have caught Mr
Brahimi by surprise.

At a stormy governing council meeting yesterday, Mr Bremer bluntly
warned members not to hold another vote on who should be the new
president. If they did he would ignore it.

"The behaviour of Mr Bremer and Mr Brahimi has been shameful," Dr
Mahmoud Othman, a leading council member told the Guardian. "It's
like being in a dictatorship again. Adnan follows the Americans
around like a puppy. If the Americans told Adnan that yoghurt was
black, he would go along with it."

Yesterday the coalition's spokesman, Dan Senor, denied that the US
favoured Mr Pachachi. "We are not urging any one candidate," he said.

Mr Bremer's tough stance in support of Mr Pachachi, a former exile
who served as Iraq's foreign minister before the Ba'ath party seized
power in 1968, was unexpected. The Americans had previously indicated
that they were primarily interested in approving the choice for prime
minister.

The governing council is due to meet again today, amid rumours that a
mystery third candidate could emerge.

Council members admitted that the row was the main stumbling block to
an agreement on the entire cabinet, due to be unveiled this week,
which will hold power until Iraqi elections next January.

The bickering has done little to help the new government's
credibility. "The people were never involved in the political process
for 35 years. So what's new," Kareem Mahmoud, a Baghdad street vendor
said.

Sheikh Ghazi took over as head of the governing council earlier this
month after the assassination of his predecessor, Izzedin Salim.

Both he and Mr Pachachi are Sunni Arabs. But while Mr Pachachi wears
western suits, Sheikh Ghazi dresses in traditional Arab robes and
headgear.

Yesterday a source close to Sheikh Ghazi said Mr Bremer and Mr
Brahimi asked him to step down in favour of Mr Pachachi. He was
apparently offered the post of cabinet spokesman or ambassador in
Washington. The sheikh told them to seek the governing council's
opinion.

In a recent television interview, he blamed America for Iraq's
problems. "They occupied the country, disbanded the security agencies
and for 10 months left Iraq's borders open for anyone to come in
without a visa or passport."

Mr Pachachi fled to the United Arab Emirates after the Ba'ath party
seized power. He is well connected with the US, and pro-US states in
the Gulf.

Last night senior Iraqi politicians admitted that despite Mr
Brahimi's promise to bring in "non-political" faces and technocrats,
the new Iraqi government looked suspiciously like the old one. "The
difference this time is that it does have powers and will have
international recognition," Dr Othman admitted.

"Until there are elections, no government can really lay claim to
credibility."

· Masked gunmen ambushed a convoy of armoured vehicles carrying
western civilians in north-west Baghdad last night, killing at least
four Iraqis and abducting three westerners, police said.

A Guardian translator who arrived on the scene soon after the
incident said locals were dancing around two burning four-wheel-drive
vehicles, chanting "victory to the Arabs". Police said up to eight
men in Arab dress had fired on the convoy from a bridge.

==================
'Almost 100% of Shias are disillusioned' with Bush's occupation of
Iraq, says one attendee.

AT U.S. CONFERENCE, SHIITES SHARE CONCERNS
Teresa Watanabe, Los Angeles Times, 5/31/04
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-
muslim31may31,1,160128.story


WASHINGTON — New Jersey cardiologist Syed M. Rizvi has long been a
loyal Republican, drawn by the party's socially conservative
platform, which reflects his Islamic faith and traditional Indian
culture. But this year, he suspended his party membership and is now
rethinking his support of President Bush for one reason — Iraq.

Although Rizvi applauded the ouster of Saddam Hussein, he fears his
fellow Shiite Muslims in Iraq are unduly suffering from the postwar
chaos, carnage and what he sees as too much American say over the
country's policies.

"They are not letting Shias take control," said Rizvi, who Sunday was
among 3,000 Shiites gathered here for their second annual
convention. "I am really disappointed."

Rizvi's views seemed to reflect a larger turnabout in a constituency
that once counted itself as staunch supporters of U.S. policies in
Iraq. Most American Shiites were jubilant over the overthrow of
Hussein, who brutally persecuted Iraq's Shiite majority, and
anticipated that the ensuing Democratic government would lead to the
world's first Arab Shiite state. But much of that optimism has
evaporated.

"Almost 100% of Shias are disillusioned. They say we traded one
occupation for another," said Robert Crane, a Shiite Muslim convert
who heads the Center for Policy Research, an Islamic think tank in
Washington. Crane is a lifelong Republican who contributed to Bush's
campaign and voted for him in the last presidential election but now
is reconsidering his support.

Iraq topped the list of foreign policy concerns at the weekend
convention of the Universal Muslim Assn. of America, a group formed
last year to organize the Shiite community here and project a
distinct voice on religious and public policy issues. Organizers said
they hoped to issue a conference statement today that would condemn
terrorism, call for a "just peace" in Iraq based on Iraqi wishes and
a urge deeper understanding of Shiite Muslims by Americans.

But convention-goers also discussed issues ranging from the lingering
impact of the attacks of Sept. 11 to interfaith relations and social
pressures on young Muslims to date and drink.

"We are trying to build a new voice for the Muslim world," said media
coordinator Ali Alahmed.

The conference's theme, "Unity in Diversity," illustrated some of the
challenges facing the fledgling organization as it tries to pull
together Shiites, who compose an estimated 10% to 20% of the nation's
Muslims. In defining their association as American, conference
organizers did not, for instance, require women to wear a hijab, a
head scarf, or sit separately from men. They even held a youth mixer,
encouraging members of the opposite sex to exchange information.

But that did not sit well with traditionalists from Mideast and South
Asian countries, according to Parvez Shah, conference chairman. He
also said organizers, who are mostly of Pakistani and Indian origin,
have so far failed to coax other sizeable Shiite communities to
participate, notably Iranians and Arabs.

Unity with other faith communities and other Muslims — especially the
Sunni majority in the U.S. — was also urged by several conference
speakers, including Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi.

Relations with American Sunnis have at times been tense, with Shiites
complaining that they are not embraced by many Sunni-led
organizations and at times even accused of being infidels for
following a different line of Muslim leaders after the prophet
Muhammad. Such frustrations in part led Shiites to form their own
organization last year after two decades of discussion about it,
according to Rizvi.

But Ebadi, an Iranian jurist and activist, emphatically urged unity,
exhorting the Shiite audience to "not reinforce differences with our
Sunni co-religionists, particularly during these times of crisis, as
others try to defame our faith."

Azizah al-Hibri, a University of Richmond law professor and activist
with a Muslim women lawyers' association, echoed that theme, calling
for a national broad-based Muslim leadership that would include
women, Shiites and other minorities. She said the absence of such
leadership had resulted in the Muslim community's marginalization.

"We have been voiceless in this country … not because we have been
pushed aside but because we did not fight for our rights at the
table," she said. "So long as we are divided we are not going to be
able to look at the situation we're in."

For some, the conference was largely a social event offering a rare
opportunity to meet Shiite Muslims from around the country. Norane
Mir, 23, a UC Santa Barbara student, came to network with other young
Muslims and pass her resume around in hopes of finding a research job
in her field of neuropsychology. Irma Khoja, a Columbia University
student, said she came in part to spread the word about an upcoming
retreat to develop Shiite youth leadership.

At least some families came to look for potential spouses for their
children. The conference offered a one-day "matrimonial service"
staffed by several women who collected data on marriage seekers. More
of the social action, however, seemed to take place in the Marriott
Hotel lobby, where young Muslims hung out and quietly eyed each other.

Still, the issue of Iraq never seemed far from the surface. Maina
Agha, a New Jersey travel agent, called Bush a "blessing" for giving
Shiites a voice in Iraq for the first time in centuries; she blamed
the postwar chaos not on Americans but on outside Islamic extremists.
In panel discussions, interviews and casual lobby conversations,
however, several convention-goers questioned the motives of the Bush
administration for invading Iraq and fretted over what they see as
anti-Muslim bias among top U.S. government officials.

Crane, a fluent Arabic speaker and former ambassador to the United
Arab Emirates, said the U.S. must begin to emphasize justice, a key
Islamic value, in its policies in Iraq and elsewhere. He also
predicted further problems unless American policymakers allowed
Iraqis to base their constitution on Islamic law.

"Unless you do that, we'll continue to be opposed by the majority of
Iraqis," he said.

=======================
Enraging Sunni Muslims :

"They say they are searching for a killer in the mosque," said Hassam
Aziz Abdul, while glaring at soldiers who walked dogs into the
mosque. "But they want to destroy every holy place in my country."

http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=347


U.S. Military Raids Baghdad Mosque, Enraging Sunni Muslims
by Dahr Jamail (bio)



Baghdad , May 15 - At roughly 5 PM today, US soldiers used tanks,
Bradley fighting vehicles, Humvees and dogs to seal off Abu Hanifa
Mosque in the Al-Adhamiya district of Baghdad. They held an estimated
200 Muslims at gunpoint for the duration of the raid and kicked in
the door to Imam Muad Al-Adhamy's office, as well as two more doors
in the mosque's inner Haram. Witnesses said the soldiers emptied a
bookshelf of Qur'ans, spilling the holy books across the floor.

"They say they are searching for a killer in the mosque," said Hassam
Aziz Abdul, while glaring at soldiers who walked dogs into the
mosque. "But they want to destroy every holy place in my country."

Barely a month ago, on April 13, the US Army raided this important
Sunni mosque during a weapons search, smashing several doors inside
the adjacent college and shooting holes in walls and ceilings. They
found no contraband. Today's incident constitutes the fourth time Abu
Hanifa Mosque has been raided by the occupation forces since the
April 2003 invasion.

The repeated harassment of Abu Hanifa by occupation forces has left
Iraqis to speculate as to the motives behind the raids. The people of
Al-Adhamiya are well aware that Abu Hanifa has been a focal point of
unification efforts between the two largest Muslim sects in Iraq.
Combined Sunni and Shi'ite prayer services have been held at the Abu
Hanifa and other mosques in recent days. Many Iraqis believe the US
wishes to keep Sunnis and Shi'ites divided, just as Saddam Hussein
did for decades of dictatorial rule.

Ra'ad Hussam Thamil, a 58 year-old man, who was praying inside the
mosque when the soldiers arrived, said the crowd of 200 people was
held at gunpoint for nearly an hour.
Ra'ad Hussam Thamil, 58, was praying inside the mosque when the
soldiers arrived. He said the crowd of 200 people was held at
gunpoint for nearly an hour.

"Two of the older men who have diabetes needed to use the toilet," he
said, "but when they asked if they could go, they were not allowed."

Thamil and others expressed outrage that soldiers had entered the
mosque with their boots on. For Muslims, wearing shoes or bringing
dogs inside a holy place is strictly forbidden.

Another Al-Adhamiya resident and member of the mosque, Ali Rhassam
Hammad, insisted the mosque is not involved in harboring resistance
members. "The resistance here does not use the mosque. We are not
Sadr," he stated, referring to the use of holy places by Muqtada Al-
Sadr and his militia.

"Why are the Americans doing this to us?" Hammad asked while watching
tank turrets swivel back and forth across the crowd of onlookers.

When a Western reporter tried to speak to a soldier about the raid in
progress, the soldier aimed his gun at the journalist and waved him
away.

The US troops withdrew from the mosque after about an hour, having
found neither weapons nor the individual for whom they had informed
mosque staff they were searching.

Abu Talat, another member of the mosque, said he felt despair over
the behavior of the occupation forces toward the holy places in Iraq.
He angrily watched the soldiers in front of the mosque. "How do you
think this makes us feel?" he asked bitterly. "They are going into
our holy place and walking with their boots over where we pray!"

Dr. Adnan Mohammed Salman Al-Dulainy, the director of all the Sunni
Imams of Iraq, promptly came to the mosque to discuss the situation
with Imam Muad and then delivered a powerful speech after the evening
prayer.

"I call on all of the Arab and Muslim leaders throughout the world to
condemn these actions and to show their frustration about these
despicable acts," he stated firmly to a crowd of several hundred
people. "This is a humiliation to Muslims across the world. I
challenge the Americans to show that we use this sacred mosque for
fighting!"

Reached by telephone, the Public Affairs Officer at the Coalition
Press Information Center said there was no statement available about
the mosque raid.

In the Imam's office at Abu Hanifa, the elderly Dr. Al-Dulainy
said, "Each time a problem is settled, another one comes along which
is worse. Nothing in all my life has been as bad as this."

Dr. Al-Dulainy expressed his frustration from having attempted on
numerous occasions to work with senior US officers. "I have been
completely open and clear with the Americans about how they should
behave in our holy places," he said, "yet they don't change how they
treat our mosque."

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Religious scholar Shamzai shot dead
------------------------------------------------------------------
By Arman Sabir
KARACHI, May 30: Renowned religious scholar Mufti Nizamuddin Shamzai
was assassinated on Sunday, and his son, nephew and chauffeur were
wounded when their car was sprayed with bullets in front of their
home, a few yards from the Jamia Binnoria in Jamshed Town.

The killing triggered violence across the city with the Guru Mandir
area adjoining the Jamia Binnoria bearing the brunt of attacks by
groups of angry people who ransacked the Jamshed Quarters police
station andset ablaze about 20 vehicles, two bank branches and a
petrol station. The office of the Quaid-i-Azam Academy also came
under attack.

Six people, including a policeman and a Rangers, were shot and
wounded. Besides, dozens of people suffered minor injuries. Mufti
Shamzai was sitting in the front seat of his double-cabin car along
with his driver Tayyab. His son Saleemuddin and nephew Rafiuddin were
sitting in the rear when their car came under heavy gunfire.

DIG Karachi (Operations) Tariq Jamil said: "No-one has claimed
responsibility for the killing so far." He said that police had
provided Mufti Shamzai with a squad and four guards but he kept only
one guard with him.

The official guard, Khair Mohammad, who was also in the vehicle, told
police that four assailants in a white Suzuki Cultus intercepted the
car and opened fire. Khair Mohammad returned fire and, according to
him, an assailant was wounded. Khair Mohammad remained unhurt, the
DIG said.

However, eyewitnesses said that as the driver of Mufti Shamzai
accelerated, two men on a motorcycle intercepted the car at around
8:45am. Two otherassailants on another motorbike, armed with
automatic weapons, sprayed the car with bullets. A white car was also
there, apparently to provide back-up to the assailants. After the
shooting, the assailants escaped.

The witnesses said that an accomplice of the assailants also suffered
a bullet wound and blood was oozing from his wound. But he was
whisked away by his partners in a white car. The witnesses said that
the assailants had left one motorbike behind.

DIG Jamil did not deny the presence of the motorcycle and said: "The
violence broke out soon afterwards and it was possible that the
motorcycle would have been left there."

Soon after the incident, pupils of the Jamia gathered at the place of
the incident and moved the four injured to the Liaquat National
Hospital where Mufti Shamzai was pronounced dead.

A large number of people who had gathered at the private tertiary
care unit were enraged when they heard that. Heavy contingents of
police were called in to maintain law and order. The body was taken
to the Jamia Binnoria in Al Mustafa ambulance where his followers
started assembling.

The funeral prayer, held in the evening at the Jamia Binnoria mosque,
was led by Maulana Abdul Razzak Iskandar and attended by people from
different walks of life, including the leader of the opposition in
the National Assembly, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Chief Minister of the
NWFP, Akram Durrani, City Nazim Naimatullah Khan and Prof Ghafoor
Ahmed.

The funeral procession moved to a graveyard in the Scout Colony off
Abul Hasan Isphani Road, where Mufti Shamzai was laid to rest beside
the grave of Maulana Mohammad Yousuf Ludhianvi.

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top3.htm&date=20040531

-----------------------------------------------------------------
Mosque Explosion in Karachi Leaves 15 Dead:
Posted @ 22:30 PST
------------------------------------------------------------------
KARACHI, May 31: A bomb explosion ripped through a Shiite Muslim
mosque in Karachi today, killing at least 15 people and wounding
more than 35, police said.

Witnesses said a blast rocked the Imam Bargah Ali Raza mosque
during evening prayers - the latest in a series of terrorist
attacks to hit Karachi.

A senior official said the attack was possible retaliation for
the assassination of a senior Sunni Muslim cleric in the city on
Sunday.

Tariq Jamil, chief of operations of Karachi police, said it was
a ``high-intensity bomb'' and at least 15 people were killed and
more than 35 injured.

Most of the casualties were taken to three hospitals in private
vehicles. Other bodies were retrieved from the debris and ferried
off in ambulances..........(Guardian)

================
18 die in blast at Karachi Imambargah:
Two killed in shooting at blood bank
------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Reporter
KARACHI, May 31: At least 18 worshippers were killed and over 35
injured on Monday in what police said was an apparent suicide
bombing at an Imambargah off M.A. Jinnah Road near Numaish
intersection.

A couple of hours later, some unidentified people fired
indiscriminately on blood donors, standing at the Hussaini Blood
Bank in Soldier Bazaar killing two people. Witnesses, however,
claimed that Rangers had opened fire at the group of people who
had gathered there to donate blood. There was no official word
from Rangers on the incident.....

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top1.htm&date=20040601

------------------------------------------------------------------
Musharraf to take steps to control violence: Rashid
------------------------------------------------------------------
By Amir Wasim
ISLAMABAD, May 31: President Pervez Musharraf is about to take an
"important step for the restoration of law and order and
protection of life and property of the people" in Karachi,
Information and Broadcasting Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said on
Tuesday.

He told Dawn that the president had taken a serious notice of the
recent terrorism incidents in Karachi. But he declined to
elaborate what step the president had in mind, saying he could not
say more than what he had been authorized.....

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top2.htm&date=20040601

------------------------------------------------------------------
President, PM vow to curb extremism
------------------------------------------------------------------
By Ahmed Hassan
ISLAMABAD, May 31: President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime
Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali reiterated on Monday their resolve
to rid the country of sectarianism and extremism and vowed to
continue the fight against terrorism......

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top3.htm&date=20040601

------------------------------------------------------------------
Muttahida chief sees plot to topple govt
------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON, May 31: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) chief Altaf Hussain
has strongly condemned the bomb blast at the Ali Raza mosque and
Imambargah in Karachi.

The Muttahida chief said that for the past one month, the
persistent act of bomb blasts, terrorism and killing of innocent
civilians and law-enforcement personnel was a well-designed and
well-engineered conspiracy not only to disturb the peace of
Karachi, but also to portray the city as a battlefield with a view
to creating a reason to either deploy Army in the city, impose
governor rule, suspend the Sindh government or impose emergency in
the province.....(PPI)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top4.htm&date=20040601

================
Police clash with protesters after the bombing of a Shiite mosque in
Karachi.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0601/dailyUpdate.html


Sectarian violence flares in Pakistan
by Matthew Clark | csmonitor.com


Tensions between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Pakistan's southern port
city of Karachi have boiled over once again into violent attacks.
Police battled rioting mourners Tuesday as thousands gathered for the
funerals of those killed in a Monday night bombing at a crowded
Shiite mosque, reports CNN.

The bomb exploded during evening services at the Ali Raza mosque
Monday killing 16 and injuring scores in what appears to be revenge
for the killing of prominent Sunni cleric Nizamuddin Shamzai. "We
have many reasons to believe that today's bombing was a response to
yesterday's murder of Mufti Shamzai," Manzur Mughal, senior
superintendent of police for investigations in Karachi said Monday
night.

Shamzai was gunned down in Karachi on Sunday morning, setting off
angry demonstrations by thousands of his supporters. Shamzai was a
hardline Al Qaeda and Taliban supporter who had met with Osama bin
Laden, reports The Washington Post.

The attack on the mosque – the fourth terrorist incident in Karachi
in a month – triggered "a wave of violent protest," reports The New
York Times. "The sectarian violence in Karachi has followed a
distinct pattern, with Sunni leaders singled out individually for
attack while Shiite mosques have been hit by bombings," according to
the Times.

The Daily Times of Pakistan reports that Deputy Inspector General
Fayyaz Leghari said the similarity of Monday's mosque attack and a
May 7 suicide bombing at another Shiite mosque gave rise to the
suspicion that "it might be a suicide attack."

The BBC reports that Karachi has a "long history of religious and
ethnic violence, but the month of May was the worst in recent years."
Another BBC report traces the roots of the growing violence in
Karachi.

The city's population is highly diverse - but it is hardly a melting
pot. Individuals survive by being a part of a group or mafia that can
protect their interests.
Sunni-Shiite clashes have killed as many as 4,000 people in Pakistan
the past 15 years, reports the BBC.
According to various reports, however, factors other than Shiite-
Sunni animosity are involved in the recent violence. As The
Washington Post reports, "Much of the violence in Karachi has been
blamed on Islamic militants who oppose support by the president, Gen.
Pervez Musharraf, for the US antiterrorism campaign in Afghanistan."
CNN quotes Yousaf Hussain, a Shiite leader, as saying: "Everybody who
is a Muslim should understand that some elements want (to) create
unrest. They are the enemy of Pakistan and Islam, and I ask you to
understand this conspiracy and show patience."

"While the latest bombing smacked of domestic sectarianism, ingrained
hatred for the US surfaced among Shiites, many of whom chanted: 'Down
with America'," reports the Sydney Morning Herald.

President Musharraf said he would take tough action to restore order
in Karachi, reports The Dawn, a Pakistani daily. In an opinion piece
published in the PakTribune, Col. Riaz Jafri (Ret.) seems a bit
skeptical of Musharraf's ability to do so.

What can [Musharraf] do, except change a few functionaries here and
there or at the most impose Governor's Rule in Sindh? Will that solve
the problem? No. He cannot shut down the Madrassas, breeding ground
of the hate mongering terrorists or the hidden foreign hand behind
such explosions. The killing ground is immensely vast and the
initiative with the terrorist to strike when and where he likes. He
can always choose his next target, time, and place.

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Report: Colombian militia leader smuggled into Israel

By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent  - June 1, 2004

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/434028.html

Carlos Castano, a right-wing militia leader in Colombia, was recently
smuggled into Israel, AFP reported. The militia leader disappeared
from Colombia on February 16 after the country's militias agreed to a
government demand to disband. Castano, 39, was first moved to Panama
under American guard and then sent to Israel, the according to the
French news agency's report. The Colombian government refused to
confirm or deny this report.

The right-wing militias in Colombia waged a long battle against the
left-wing underground organizations in the country, including ELN -
the group that kidnapped four Israeli backpackers last year.

Castano apparently left Colombia because he had become associated
with the United States' efforts to combat the country's illicit drug
business and his life was threatened. Another militia leader was
murdered several days ago after being suspected of similar
cooperation with the Americans.

==============
Venezuelan president says `invasion' planned in Miami and Colombia
By Humberto Márquez
The Final Call
May 23, 2004

Venezuelan president says U.S. played key role in '02 coup attempt
(FCN, 03-5-2004)


CARACAS (IPS/GIN) - Venezuela "has been invaded. We are facing a
serious threat to the peace, integrity and security of this
republic," President Hugo Chavez said in a May 12 nationally
broadcast radio and TV address.

He was referring to an incident involving the recent capture of 86
alleged Colombian paramilitaries near Caracas.

The government says the men are paramilitary fighters, brought in
from northeastern Colombia by extremists in the anti-Chavez
opposition movement to form part of a force that was to attack
military installations, officials, and governing party and opposition
political leaders.

The aborted plan entailed an invasion that was "thought up, planned
and led by an international network—two of whose hubs are Miami,
Florida and Colombia—with the complicity of unpatriotic Venezuelans,"
said Pres. Chavez.

"Traitorous officers in Venezuela's armed forces, both active and
retired, helped bring the terrorists from the border to Caracas," he
added.

On May 9, authorities in Venezuela arrested 86 unarmed Colombians
wearing Venezuelan army uniforms in a country house on the outskirts
of the capital. Since then, 16 other Colombians have been detained;
properties of members of the business community and politicians with
links to the opposition have been searched; and the arrest of around
10 National Guard and Air Force officers, including four on active
duty, has been ordered.

Several opposition leaders, former defense ministers and media
personalities have stated that the case of the paramilitaries is "a
show mounted by Chavez" to draw attention away from the opposition's
attempt to hold a recall referendum for the president before August.

President Chavez called an extraordinary meeting of the Defense
Council, made up of the heads of the branches of government and the
top military commanders, and declared it in permanent session
recently.

Meanwhile, the verbal battles continued between Bogota, Caracas and
Washington, but with some room left for cooperation and diplomacy.
Colombian Ambassador to Venezuela Mariangel Holguin urged that the
case be dealt with through diplomatic channels, far from
the "microphones." "We must return somewhat to the route of
diplomatic and judicial dialogue, rather than so many statements in
the press," she said.

Ms. Holguín said the information received on the first 54 detainees
in Caracas confirms that they are Colombian citizens, that 28
completed military service in their country, and that only one has a
criminal record.

President Chavez insisted that the men are "dangerous" paramilitaries
involved in Colombia's civil war and said that he personally spoke
with one of the leaders of the group, who was arrested in
southwestern Venezuela as he attempted to flee.

"He is a cold man, a former professional soldier, and was apparently
responsible for the execution of several who tried to escape from the
camp."

With regards to Colombian President Alvaro Uribe, Pres. Chavez
said, "We have been pleased to hear that he criticizes this incident,
and we believe we can expect full collaboration from him."

But, he also said he had "elements" that led him "to doubt the good
faith" of Colombia's military intelligence apparatus, and accused
Colombian army chief Gen. Martin Carreno of being opposed to his
government and of "brazenly lying."

General Carreno denied allegations by Venezuelan Vice-President Jose
Vicente Rangel, who said the Colombian army chief had met in March
with members of the opposition who were plotting actions to
destabilize the Chavez administration.

Mr. Rangel, who handles relations with the United States and Colombia
in the Venezuelan government's division of labor, said
Washington "rejects the attempts to link the arrested Colombians with
our government. The paramilitaries, like the FARC [Revolutionary
Armed Forces of Colombia] guerrillas, are international terrorists
that are financed by kidnapping and drug trafficking, and their
leaders are wanted in U.S. courts."

But, President Chavez said that before the Colombians were captured,
there was a build-up of statements hostile to his government from the
U.S. Defense and State departments.

"It is what we call, in military jargon, `preparation fire' to heat
up the climate ahead of an attack like the actions the paramilitaries
were going to attempt," said Pres. Chavez, a former paratroop
commander.

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1435.shtml

=================
Venezuela evicts US military:

Gen Garcia asked the US military personnel to leave Fuerte Tiuna days
before Venezuela's security forces announced they captured

a large force of Colombian paramilitaries.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s1107158.htm

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Women In Uniform
By Gilad Atzmon
May 30th 2004
http://www.gilad.co.uk


Now the Iraqis are truly liberated..... Some of them have been lucky
enough to practice the most advanced forms of western bondage
practice. Those Iraqis could never even dream of the possibility
before the blessed American came and opened their minds. This is what
liberation is all about. Toppling Sadam was just an excuse. From its
very beginning, it was all about introducing the Arab people to the
advance and beauty of American  female domination and general S&M.
As matter of fact I am pretty confused and not just because of these
images.

I have seen worse. I do find it pathetic that no one has yet come up
publicly, to confront us all with the obvious fact that, at the
centre of images of torture of Iraqi detainees, we find young females
in uniform. The image of a giggling female soldier pointing at the
pines of naked hooded prisoners is, no doubt, a novelty.  In our
western wars, women in uniform always had kept the most precious
position. They were providing the fighting men with care, love, mercy
and calmness. In their white nursing uniforms they were often
described as an instance of sanity and humanity in the midst of a
masculine flesh-mincing machine. Not anymore, under the command of Mr
Donald Rumsfeld, Private Lindy England and her comrade, Specialist
Sabrina Harman are serving as angels of death. Women in the American
army have a new role, they are providing the enemies of America with
sexual humiliation. They are providing all of us with the ultimate
pornographic image of war.

Let's face it, Private England didn't invent the notion of sexual
abuse. Abuse has been here since time began. More than one victorious
army celebrated its triumphant moment raping the defeated nation.
Usually it was women who were the first to pay the price. We all know
about Nazi platoons who brutally raped Soviet women all the way to
Stalingrad.  Soviet soldiers were not different when arriving on
German soil. American GIs did it in Nam, Serbs did it in Kosovo.
Apparently war is a horny event. The confrontation with death and
blood leads the active participants towards a vivid and extreme
realisation of the notion of life. More than a few London grannies
would enthusiastically share their hot juicy blitz tales. Apparently,
the engagement with young fireman in action, as well as young off
duty American pilots, turned WW2 Britain into an explosive libidinal
setting. War, as it appears, has some positive erotic connotations.

But yet, `strategic sexual humiliation' is very new to us all.
Moreover, it seems  to  be a `well orchestrated' new American
doctrine. The Americans have always proved to be innovative in
introducing evil strategies and destructive weapons. If they do
something they do it big. But yet, it is hard to realise how they got
so far this time. Thinking about the subject in military terms leaves
me pretty puzzled. The story of 20th century wars does not provide us
with any sort of historical background relating to tactical sexual
humiliation. I cannot recollect images of naked Soviet soldiers
sexually abused, neither by sporadic female SS officers nor by male
Panzer platoons. We can neither remember any form of such abuse
conducted by any Allied soldiers. True, Jews where stripped of their
clothes before they where pushed into gas chambers but again those
scenes had nothing sexual, erotic or pornographic in them, just a
devastating practice.

No doubt, these new American images are a complete revelation; and
yet no one points out that we might be confronting an unprecedented,
new image.  No one points out that it is a female soldier at its very
centre. No one dare say that the notion of femininity might have gone
through a serious metamorphosis. We might confront here a newly
devastating feminine role and yet hardly anyone stops to reflect
about it loudly.  This is probably the beauty of political
correctness. Willingly,  we are becoming slightly blind; imposing on
ourselves a form of foolishness. It is a cheerfulness that is
coupled with stupidity.   This very idiocy is the ultimate condition
of the post colonial western democracy. We would politely blame Blair
and Bush for dragging us into wars; we will democratically protest in
the centres of our big cities;  we would raise questions about WMD;
but we will turn a blind eye to the evident fact that the women
around us, the core of our innermost libidinal desires, might change
their spots. Somehow, they appear to be far more cruel than we have
ever pretended to acknowledge.

***

It took more than a while for Women's Groups to generate enough
pressure to persuade orthodox Generals to allow their young sisters
to become combatant soldiers. Those resistant orthodox Generals were
always repeating the same laconic silly argument. A female soldier,
they used to say,  would confront some severe risks of sexual abuse
when falling into enemy hands.  In fact, they where completely wrong,
it is very much the other way around. It is the male POWs who find
themselves bare, naked, confronting relentless humiliation in the
hands of those young enthusiastic armed ladies who entertain the joy
of power beyond any recognised measure.

Using those orthodox General's arguments, it would make sense to
argue that men should be left out of the battlefield just to save
them from the chance that they would fall in the hands of devoted
female combatants. As it appears, both Private England and Specialist
Harman enjoy the colour of war to the very limit. It might be that
those Women's Groups were right all the way through. Women are far
more qualified for the battlefield. Men tend to complain all the
time, some of them prove to be cowards when asked to kill. It is more
than likely that we should leave wars for women, for sure the food in
the front lines will improve a lot.

***

But the issue is slightly more complicated. Since, one should agree,
that the sudden appearance of sexual humiliation in military life is
a real novelty, we should ask ourselves what really went wrong?

I can think of two possible answers:

1.      That American society is going through a severe process of
moral and intellectual regression. Sexual humiliation of Iraqi
detainees is just a single symptom.

2.      The introduction and presence of the female combatant in the
firing zone  turned the battlefield  into a theatre of erotic
domination.


The former is pretty obvious; America is going through a rapid
process of moral and intellectual deterioration. The fact that
America is the last country on earth to back Israel is enough to
prove  that something has gone dramatically wrong on the other side
of the Atlantic. But again, leaving the Zionists aside, it is clear
that the war in Iraq is involved with more than one immoral aspect.
Actually, it is pretty impossible to find anything moral about it.
For more than a while we are facing an endless stream of
pornographic images. To start with real-time images of mass
destruction and murder of innocent civilians - and to end with
explicit images of brutal sexual abuse. The Internet is flowing with
images of Iraqi women being raped by American GIs. Many of those
images have now been found to be forged. They were commercially made
just to satisfy the thirsty American market demands. The brutal rape
of a defeated nation is transformed in Bush's America into
hard-on-cash. This is no doubt a new form of a collective
masturbation.

But we do not have to go that far. The genuine photos of abused Iraqi
POWs that where shown repeatedly all over the American media say it
all. While most American commentators appear to express deep disgust,
we have a good reason to suspect their honesty. Dr. Susan Block,  the
American sex therapist says in an article about the subject that many
of her clients "will say something to disgust them at first, only to
confess a few sessions later that it really turns them on" (Bush's
POW Porn, Dr. Susan Block , Counterpunch 14.5.04).  While Block was
referring in her article solely to Bush, I would suggest we attribute
her diagnosis to the entire, allegedly devastated American media, and
the political world. America is full of contrasts: on the one hand,
an extremely conservative society and deeply sexually oppressed, but
on the other hand, it has the biggest porn industry and by far the
wildest one. In that very sense America, a place conceived on
opposites, these images serves as a snap shot of some very
devastating reality.  I would say, a glimpse into the
Lacanian `Real'. A gaze at the reality of brutally deteriorating
society. An explosive image  of volatile sexual domination. This
reality is so terrifying and hard to acknowledge, that most of us,
both men and women, cannot even articulate it verbally.

The later option is leading towards even further complications. The
fact that females, when protected with power, expose a completely new
form of sexual domination and abusive practice is rather alerting.
First, we have to ask ourselves whether we were mislead all those
years, assuming that our beloved women are caring and loving. If this
is the case, if women are in fact wild, brutal creatures, we must
believe that the female peaceful image we were so used to was just a
camouflage, or might even be a conspiracy. If women are brutal and
monstrous we must assume that the very attractive image of them, soft
and caring, is a direct outcome of the male patriarchal society. Now
that women are liberated we can see what they really are. While a
confrontation with the odd militant separatist feminist might
support such a  wild assumption,  being  surrounded with men-loving
women makes it  hard to take such an option seriously.  As a matter
of fact, here I want to declare:  women are generally great, we love
them all, in every shape and colour. Also, it appears, I am failing
to produce an argument. True, but then, after seeing Private England
in action I prefer to be on the safe side. The last thing I need is
to have the feminist women coming up against me and cutting off my
testicles in the middle of the night.

Another way around the loophole raised by Private England et al. is
to assume that there is something pretty particular about those
strange women who join the armed forces in the first place. I think
that many would agree that there is something unique about those
women who want to be 'man'. I myself find it bizarre, mainly
because `man' is a pretty vague concept. Most men do not have a clue
what being man means, they simply can't be bothered. All we know
about ourselves is that we like cars and computers. By the time
we know how to entertain women our biology turns against us.  From
that stage, more or less, we are just running down the slope. We
usually enjoy the down-hill journey, mainly because our female
counterparts become sexually frustrated. Women are very amusing when
defeated by their desires. By the time our women buy their first pair
of stockings we are too tired to keep our eyes open after ten o'clock
news. It is great fun being in the centre of the desire of the other
without being able to do anything about it.  Giving our pathetic
condition, thinking of all those young women who want to be us, is
really ridiculous. I assume that those poor militants, tom boys
probably, hold a rigorous, deloused, picture of what man is all
about. Mistakenly they endorse an awkward vision of man as a brutal
and violent creature while in fact, we are deeply romantic.

As we know, in most cases the impersonated version is far more
extreme than the real McCoy. Those kind of tragic amplified
misinterpretations can easily lead towards an radical strengthening
of evilness. It is typical for marginal political movements to fall
into this very trap. Zionism exceeded, far beyond most political
movements of its time, in its interpretation of the notion of
Nationalism. The result is devastating. A notorious bloodthirsty
nationalistic society entirely occupied with daily murder of
Palestinian civilians. Militant separatist feminists are no different
at all. Like the Zionist they went too far in their demand for rights
and equality. Unlike Zionist they are yet to assassinate their
opponents.  When one is stressing the importance of equality, the
image of equality is often replaced with a claim for supremacy and
even an appetite for hegemony.

In general most marginal political movements fail on this very
particular issue. In the long run those opposing tendencies leads
towards a clear intensification of unbearably vulgar behaviour. I
assume that Private England fail right there. She tried to be a man,
but found herself exercising a brutal  amplified version of her
original prototype. We must admit that we have never seen a
photographic image of a male soldier standing staring at a naked
hooded woman, ridiculing the shape of her clitoris. It might be the
right time for women to ask whether being man-like is a very clever
choice. But yet, we should give some justice to Private England and
Specialist Harman. We should mention that they were not acting
alone; as a matter of fact they were surrounded by perplexed  men,
who very much like these two women tried to pretend to be men. Not
that hard to understand, since it is almost impossible for one to
impersonate oneself. In a social environment, where women are
supposed to be "as man", men tend to forget what "man" ought to be.



***

So now the Iraqis are truly liberated. They all know what America
stands for. But then who is going to liberate the American people?
Who is going to sustain those women who want to be men? Who is going
to save the man who wants to be a man? Private England is probably
sorted, we shouldn't worry about her, for the type of services she
gave in Iraq for free she can make a fortune in down town Manhattan.
In the end of the day America is all about money.


God save America. Because if it is down to the Americans they don't
have much time left.


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


http://www.gilad.co.uk

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Former Iraqi intelligence officer chosen as new leader:

Mr Allawi, is a relative of Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon
favourite who has fallen out with Washington, but the two are not
regarded as particularly close.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1-1126468,00.html

===

In case you missed it:

Iraq Council Member Spends To Win Influence In Washington :

Mr Allawi, a member of Iraq's interim council with long ties to the
CIA is undertaking an expensive, carefully crafted strategy to spread
his views to influential Americans, an example of how those seeking
power in Iraq continue to curry favor in the U.S.
http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?
StoryID=2004012400040000&Take=1

http://tinyurl.com/287r7

More on Iyad Allawi
http://tinyurl.com/2qfkk

===

Chalabi-gate: None Dare Call It Treason :

Neocons behind bars? Sounds good to me….
http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2683


Chalabi-gate: None Dare Call It Treason
Neocons behind bars? Sounds good to me….
by Justin Raimondo

The fallout from Chalabi-gate continues to rain down on the heads of
the War Party, opening up the exciting prospect that some neocons
might well wind up behind bars.

The charge? Espionage, as Sidney Blumenthal informs us:

"At a well-appointed conservative think tank in downtown Washington
and across the Potomac River at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun
paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives, who are being
interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage, according to
intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information
about the plans of the U.S. government and military?"

This information, says Vince Cannistraro, formerly at the CIA and the
Pentagon, was so "very, very sensitive" that only a few U.S.
government officials had access to it:

"The evidence has pointed quite clearly, not only the fact that
Chalabi might be an agent of influence of the Iranian government and
that [Chalabi's intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib] may be a paid
agent of the Iranian intelligence service, but it is shown that there
is a leak of classified information from the United States to Iran
through Chalabi and Karim and that is the particular point that the
FBI is investigating. In other words, some U.S. officials are under
investigation on suspicion of providing classified information to
these people that ended up in Iran."

Blumenthal has more:

"A former staff member of the Office of Special Plans and a currently
serving defense official, two of those said to be questioned by the
FBI, are considered witnesses, at least for now. Higher figures are
under suspicion. Were they witting or unwitting? If those who are
being questioned turn out to be misleading, they can be charged
ultimately with perjury and obstruction of justice. For them, the
Watergate principle applies: It's not the crime, it's the coverup."

The lies Chalabi fed to Washington policymakers, who eagerly scarfed
them up and regurgitated them to the American public, originated with
Iranian intelligence, as we are beginning to learn. But the neocon-
Tehran information superhighway ran in both directions. As Julian
Borger reports in the Guardian:

"An intelligence source in Washington said the CIA confirmed its long-
held suspicions when it discovered that a piece of information from
an electronic communications intercept by the National Security
Agency had ended up in Iranian hands. The information was so
sensitive that its circulation had been restricted to a handful of
officials. 'This was 'sensitive compartmented information' – SCI –
and it was tracked right back to the Iranians through Aras Habib,'
the intelligence source said."


UPI's Richard Sale reports that "the Federal Bureau of Investigation
has launched a full field investigation into the matter," and gives
more information on what was compromised and how the Iranians pulled
off this intelligence coup:

"Chalabi allegedly passed National Security Agency/CIA intercepts to
intelligence agents of the Iranian government using intermediaries
or 'cut-outs' or 'gophers' within the INC, another former CIA agent
said. Some of the intercepts, dated from December, were the basis for
a recent Newsweek story, but there are others of a later date in
possession of the FBI, this source said."

How did Chalabi get his hot little hands on highly secret
information? That's why the FBI – instead of going after, say,
Brandon Mayfield, or some other completely innocent person, as per
usual – is now calling on "prominent" neocons at Washington's poshest
thinktanks. I hope they're bringing an ample supply of handcuffs. But
whom might they be handcuffing and frog-marching out the door, into a
waiting paddywagon? UPI gives us the scoop, citing "a former very
senior CIA official" as saying:

"'Chalabi passed specially compartmented intelligence,
extraordinarily sensitive stuff, to the Iranians.' This source said
that some of the intercepts are believed to have been given Chalabi
by two U.S. officials of the Coalition Provision Authority, both of
whom are not named here because UPI could not reach them for comment."

Well, they aren't named, but they might as well have been:

"One former CPA official has returned to the United States and is
employed at the American Enterprise Institute, the former very senior
official said, a fact which FBI sources confirmed without additional
comment. The other is still a working Pentagon official, federal law
enforcement officials and former CIA officials said."

Independent journalist Bob Dreyfuss, whose excellent articles on the
neocons in The American Prospect and Mother Jones puts him up there
with Jim Lobe, Michael Lind, and Joshua Marshall as a veritable maven
of neocon-ology, names names:

"The two officials in the UPI story are, according to my sources,
Harold Rhode, an official in the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment,
and Michael Rubin, now at the American Enterprise Institute."

Rubin, formerly of the Office of Special Plans and the CPA, who
served as liaison with Chalabi's group, the Iraqi National Congress,
certainly fits the bill. No wonder he's been so … cranky lately, what
with FBI agents barging into his office and giving him the third
degree.

Rhode, a longtime Pentagon official assigned to the Office of Net
Assessment and a specialist on Islam, is reportedly Douglas Feith's
chief enforcer of the anti-Arab party line among the civilian
Pentagon hierarchy. In refusing to be interviewed by Dreyfuss for a
piece on the neocons in Mother Jones, Rhode's laconic reply was:

"Those who speak, pay."

Prescient words, and truer than perhaps even Rhode realized at the
time. Hauled up before a grand jury, however, Rhode, Rubin, and the
rest of Chalabi's Pentagon fan club may have no choice about
speaking – especially with the prospect of a long "vacation" at a
federal facility staring them in the face.

Much is being made of how the Iranians "duped" us into invading Iraq,
and "used" the U.S. in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and "paving the
way," as Julian Borger puts it, for a Shi'ite-ruled Iraq. But a
simple map of the region and rudimentary knowledge of the history of
the past decade or so would have revealed as much. As I wrote in this
space over a year ago:

"In view of Iran's growing sphere of influence in Iraq, it seems
rather disingenuous to destroy the Sunni minority government run by
the Ba'ath Party and then deny any responsibility for the Shi'ite-y
outcome. The U.S. has made a gift of Iraq to Teheran, reigniting the
religious passions that overthrew the U.S.-backed Shah Reza Pahlavi
of Iran and propelled Khomeini to power."

In charting the outlines of "phase two" of the invasion of Iraq, that
same week last year, I pointed out:

"The main political consequence of the war, internally, is to
increase Iranian influence: if free elections were held in the
southern Shi'a provinces of Iraq, they would undoubtedly usher in
some sort of 'Islamic Republic.' The effort by the neocons in the
administration to install Ahmed Chalabi as the Pentagon's puppet, far
from forestalling this possibility, only makes it a more credible
threat to the postwar order."

But why would the militantly pro-Israel neocons, American partisans
of the ultra-nationalist Likud party, act as patrons and promoters of
an outfit, Chalabi's INC, that was really a cover for Iranian
intelligence – their alleged mortal enemies? That's what I couldn't
quite figure out, at least not until I read Robert Parry's excellent
piece on the subject, and here's the money quote:

"As Chalabi's operation fed anti-Saddam propaganda into the U.S.
decision-making machinery, Bush also should have been alert to the
Israeli role in opening doors for Chalabi in Washington. One
intelligence source told me that Israel's Likud government had
quietly promoted Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress with
Washington's influential neoconservatives. That would help explain
why the neoconservatives, who share an ideological alliance with the
conservative Likud, would embrace and defend Chalabi even as the CIA
and the State Department denounced him as a con man.

"The idea of Israel promoting an Iranian agent also is not far-
fetched if one understands the history. The elder Bush could tell his
son about the long-standing strategic ties that have existed between
Israel and Iran, both before and after the Islamic revolution of
1979. It was Menachem Begin's Likud Party that rebuilt the covert
intelligence relationship in 1980. Since then, it has been maintained
through thick and thin, despite Iran's public anti-Israeli rhetoric."

The enemy of my enemy is my friend: it's a principle often invoked to
justify a course of action seemingly in contradiction to the
professed ideology of the actors. Lined up against a common enemy,
American Likudniks and Ahmed Chalabi, an Iranian intelligence asset,
teamed up to drag us into the Iraqi quagmire, with both members of
this oddly coupled tag-team benefiting from the deal. While the
neocons fed Chalabi – and his intelligence chief, Arras Karim Habib,
a paid Iraqi agent – a steady diet of U.S. secrets, Chalabi fed the
neocons (in government and much of the American media) a fresh
serving of tall tales cooked up in the INC's kitchen, and delivered
piping hot to Judith Miller's doorstep.

The Iranians, for their part, feasted on U.S. secrets so deep and
dark that only a few top officials were privy to them – and had a
good chunk of Iraq handed to them, while a de facto Kurdish state
emerged as a buffer between Israel and the Shi'ite power rising in
the East. The whole thing was supposed to have been presided over by
the ostensibly pro-Western Chalabi, the neocons' Alger Hiss. That was
the plan, at any rate, but something seems to have gone awry….

As in the Abu Ghraib photo-gallery of horrors, the nature of the
crime suggests that a few lowly spear carriers – Rubin is just barely
out of knee pants, and Rhode was certainly not in the loop on super-
sensitive intelligence – didn't pull this off all on their own.
Before it's all over, Chalabi-gate will reach into the favored
nesting place of the neocons, the very top echelons of the Pentagon.

As UPI editor Martin Walker reports:

"The real target goes beyond Chalabi. The hunt is on, in the
Republican Party, in Congress, in the CIA and State Department and in
a media which is being deluged with leaks, for Chalabi's friends and
sponsors in Washington – the group known as the neo-cons. In
particular, the targets seem to be Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, the former assistant secretary (in Reagan's day) Richard
Perle, Vice President Dick Cheney's national security aide Scooter
Libby, and the National Security Council's Middle East aide Elliott
Abrams. The leaking against them – from sources who insist on
anonymity, but some CIA and FBI veterans – is intense. Some of the
sources are now private citizens, making a good living through
business connections in the Arab world."

Speaking of business connections, how does Richard Perle make his
living except by using his government connections to profit
handsomely from the war-driven neocon agenda? Oh well, never mind
that: let's get to the juicy part. Walker also reports that these
poor persecuted neocons "are now beginning to fight back," and in a
familiar fashion:

"Richard Perle told this reporter Tuesday that the gloves were off. …
Perle has no doubts that some of the attacks on him are coming
directly from the CIA, in order to cover their own exposed rears,
attacking Chalabi's intelligence to distract attention from their own
mistakes. 'I believe that much of the CIA operation in Iraq was owned
by Saddam Hussein,' Perle said. 'There were 45 decapitation attempts
against Saddam – and he survived them all. How could that be, if he
was not manipulating the intelligence?'"

Gee, I guess this means that, on account of all those
failed "decapitation attempts" on Fidel Castro over the years, the
Cuban Communists exercised joint ownership of the CIA along with
Saddam's Ba'athists. Oh, what a Perle of wisdom, but the Prince of
Darkness was just getting started:


"Perle went on to suggest an even darker motive behind the attacks on
the neo-cons; that the real target was Israel's Likud government and
the staunch support for Israel's prime minister Ariel Sharon in the
Bush administration. When this was put to one CIA source, the reply
was mocking: 'That's what they always do. As soon as these guys get
any criticism, they scream Israel and anti-Semitism, and I think
people are finally beginning to see through that smokescreen.'"

How and why an investigation into Iranian penetration of our most
closely guarded secrets constitutes evidence of "anti-Semitism" is a
question I'll leave for weightier intellects to ponder. But such an
unseemly outburst ought to put to rest any doubts about a neocon-
Iranian convergence of interests: we know something's afoot when both
Richard Perle and the Iranian mullahs sound absolutely identical in
tone as well as content.

We knew what the neocons were capable of: smearing their enemies,
lying about practically anything, even outing a CIA agent doing high-
priority undercover work. Is anyone surprised that they're capable of
espionage?

Perle is right about one thing: it's time to take the gloves off.

– Justin Raimondo

===========
Bush orthodoxy is in shreds:

At a conservative thinktank in downtown Washington, and across the
Potomac at the Pentagon, FBI agents have begun paying quiet calls on
prominent neoconservatives, who are being interviewed in an
investigation of potential espionage, according to intelligence
sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified information about the
plans of the US government and military?

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6255.htm


A series of investigations has shattered neocon self-belief

Sidney Blumenthal

Thursday May 27, 2004 "The Guardian" -- At a conservative thinktank
in downtown Washington, and across the Potomac at the Pentagon, FBI
agents have begun paying quiet calls on prominent neoconservatives,
who are being interviewed in an investigation of potential espionage,
according to intelligence sources. Who gave Ahmed Chalabi classified
information about the plans of the US government and military?

The Iraqi neocon favourite, tipped to lead his liberated country post-
invasion, has been identified by the CIA and Defence Intelligence
Agency as an Iranian double-agent, passing secrets to that citadel of
the "axis of evil" for decades. All the while the neocons cosseted,
promoted and arranged for more than $30m in Pentagon payments to the
George Washington manque of Iraq. In return, he fed them a steady
diet of disinformation and in the run-up to the war sent various
exiles to nine nations' intelligence agencies to spread falsehoods
about weapons of mass destruction. If the administration had wanted
other material to provide a rationale for invasion, no doubt that
would have been fabricated. Either Chalabi perpetrated the greatest
con since the Trojan horse, or he was the agent of influence for the
most successful intelligence operation conducted by Iran, or both.

The CIA and other US agencies had long ago decided that Chalabi was a
charlatan, so their dismissive and correct analysis of his lies
prompted their suppression by the Bush White House.

In place of the normal channels of intelligence vetting, a jerry-
rigged system was hastily constructed, running from the office of the
vice president to the newly created Office of Special Plans inside
the Pentagon, staffed by fervent neocons. CIA director George Tenet,
possessed with the survival instinct of the inveterate staffer,
ceased protecting the sanctity of his agency and cast in his lot.
Secretary of state Colin Powell, resistant internally but overcome,
decided to become the most ardent champion, unveiling a series of
neatly manufactured lies before the UN.

Last week, Powell declared "it turned out that the sourcing was
inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And
for that I'm disappointed, and I regret it". But who
had "deliberately" misled him? He did not say. Now the FBI is
investigating espionage, fraud and, by implication, treason.

A former staff member of the Office of Special Plans and a currently
serving defence official, two of those said to be questioned by the
FBI, are considered witnesses, at least for now. Higher figures are
under suspicion. Were they witting or unwitting? If those who are
being questioned turn out to be misleading, they can be charged
ultimately with perjury and obstruction of justice. For them, the
Watergate principle applies: it's not the crime, it's the cover-up.

The espionage investigation into the neocons' relationship with
Chalabi is only one of the proliferating inquiries engulfing the Bush
administration. In his speech to the Army War College on May 24, Bush
blamed the Abu Ghraib torture scandal on "a few American troops". In
other words, there was no chain of command. But the orders to use the
abusive techniques came from the secretary of defence, Donald
Rumsfeld.

The trials and investigations surrounding Abu Ghraib beg the question
of whether it was an extension of the far-flung gulag operating
outside the Geneva conventions that has been built after September
11. The fallout from the Chalabi affair has also implicated the
nation's newspaper of record, the New York Times, which published
yesterday an apology for running numerous stories containing
disinformation that emanated from Chalabi and those in the Bush
administration funnelling his fabrications. The Washington Post,
which published editorials and several columnists trumpeting
Chalabi's talking points, has yet to acknowledge the extent to which
it was deceived.

Washington, just weeks ago in the grip of neoconservative orthodoxy,
absolute belief in Bush's inevitability and righteousness, is in the
throes of being ripped apart by investigations. Things fall apart:
the military, loyal and lumbering, betrayed and embittered; the
general in the field, General Sanchez, disgraced and cashiered; the
intelligence agencies abused and angry, their retired operatives
plying their craft with the press corps, seeping dangerous truths;
the press, hesitating and wobbly, investigating its own falsehoods;
the neocons, publicly redoubling defence of their hero and deceiver
Chalabi, privately squabbling, anxiously awaiting the footsteps of
FBI agents; Colin Powell, once the most acclaimed man in America,
embarked on an endless quest to restore his reputation, damaged above
all by his failure of nerve; everyone in the line of fire motioning
toward the chain of command, spiralling upwards and sideways, until
the finger pointing in a phalanx is directed at the hollow crown.

· Sidney Blumenthal, a former senior adviser to President Clinton, is
Washington bureau chief of Salon.com

Sidney_Blumenthal@...

© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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AHEAD OF IRAQ DEPLOYMENT, 37 KOREAN TROOPS CONVERT TO ISLAM
Chosun Ilbo, 5/28/04
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200405/200405280041.html

"I became a Muslim because I felt Islam was more humanistic and
peaceful than other religions. And if you can religiously connect
with the locals, I think it could be a big help in carrying out our
peace reconstruction mission." So said on Friday those Korean
soldiers who converted to Islam ahead of their late July deployment
to the Kurdish city of Irbil in northern Iraq.

At noon Friday, 37 members of the Iraq-bound "Zaitun Unit," including
Lieutenant Son Hyeon-ju of the Special Forces 11th Brigade, made
their way to a mosque in Hannam-dong, Seoul and held a conversion
ceremony.

Captain Son Jin-gu from Zaitoon Unit recites an oath at ceremony to
mark his conversion to Islam at a mosque in Hannam-dong, Seoul on
Friday. /Yonhap

The soldiers, who cleansed their entire bodies in accordance with
Islamic tradition, made their conversion during the Friday group
prayers at the mosque, with the assistance of the "imam," or prayer
leader.

With the exception of the imam, all the Muslims and the Korean
soldiers stood in a straight line to symbolize how all are equal
before God and took a profession on faith.

They had memorized the Arabic confession, "Ashadu an La ilaha il
Allah, Muhammad-ur-Rasool-Allah," which means, "I testify that there
is no god but God (Arabic: Allah), and Muhammad is the Messenger of
God..."

ALSO SEE:

S. KOREAN SOLDIERS CONVERT TO ISLAM BEFORE IRAQ TOUR
Kim Kyoung-hoon and Choi Yoon-sang, Reuters, 5/28/04

SEOUL - South Korea's 35,000-strong Muslim community gained 37 new
converts on Friday when officers and enlisted soldiers destined for a
tour of duty in Iraq were admitted to the faith in a ceremony at
Seoul's main mosque.

South Korea, where Buddhism is the most common religion and
Christianity has grown rapidly, has pledged to send 3,000 troops to
help reconstruction in Iraq. About 650 South Korean army medics and
engineers have served in the country for a year.

"You are reborn as believers and believers are true human beings,"
Sulaiman Lee Haeng-lae Imam told the new converts at the Seoul
mosque, one of five in a country of 48 million people.

Sulaiman, a South Korean leading the congregation in Seoul, said the
men's decision to convert to Islam will go a long way towards helping
their 3,000-strong contingent become accepted by Iraqis once it is
deployed.

"The Iraqis could become your friends for eternity," Sulaiman told
the new converts after he received oaths from the soldiers.

A public affairs officer attached to the unit, Captain Lee Yun-se,
said many of the 37 new converts had some background in Arab culture,
including Arabic language study in college and travel to the Middle
East.

All 3,000 soldiers in the contingent took courses on Arabic culture
and customs to help them fit in in Iraq...

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EXPERTS START UNEARTHING BODIES FROM NEW MASS GRAVE FOUND IN BOSNIA
Associated Press, 5/10/04

ZAKLOPACA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Forensic experts on Monday unearthed
the first remains and clothing of victims from a newly found mass
grave expected to contain the bodies of 72 Muslims killed in eastern
Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.

"We expect to find the remains of 72 victims, at least of them 16 of
children," Murat Hurtic, a regional head of the Commission for
Missing Persons, told The Associated Press.

The excavation site, about the size of a tennis court, was opened on
Friday in the village of Zaklopaca, near the border with Serbia about
80 kilometers (50 miles) northeast of Sarajevo.

It is believed to contain the remains of Muslims killed by Bosnian
Serb forces at the beginning of the country's war. Forensic experts
will be digging as deep as 3.5 meters (12 feet) in some sections to
find the remains, some of them dismembered.

Work at the site is expected to last at least a month because the
exhumation of the grave site is difficult because several tons of
stones were dumped on top of it from a nearby stone pit in an attempt
to hide the location, Hurtic said.

The remains will be taken to a lab in the northern town of Tuzla for
DNA analysis in an attempt to identify them.

Most of the remains are believed to be those of Muslims from
Zaklopaca killed in May 1992 at the beginning of the war. The site is
a so-called secondary grave, where bodies initially buried elsewhere
were dumped, Hurtic said...

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Native Americans to demand compensation
By Marty Logan
The Final Call
May 24, 2004


UNITED NATIONS (IPS/GIN) - The policy was to "kill the Indian and
keep the man."

The aim of a boarding school system established by U.S. officials in
the 19th century was to assimilate Native American children into the
dominant White society, speakers told a panel discussion at the UN
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues on May 12.

That meant forbidding their languages, clothing, hair styles—their
culture, in fact—using as much violence as was needed, they said.

And now they are demanding restitution on their own terms.

"Under international human rights law, the U.S. is still accountable
for any continuing effects," which include the loss of indigenous
languages and the violence that today permeates many Indian
communities, said Andrea Smith from the University of Michigan at Ann
Arbor.

She and other women have started the Boarding School Healing Project
(BSHP), which has four main goals: heal the schools' victims; educate
people about the attempted genocide of the Native American; document
how that process worked, and build a movement that will demand
compensation from the U.S. government.

The residential school system began with president Ulysses Grant's
1869 "Peace Policy" and continued well into the 20th century, taking
100,000 Native American children from their homes to live and study
in Christian boarding schools.

Students, as young as two years of age, were placed in the schools
until the age of 18, many returning home speaking a different
language (English) than when they left. Many were also physically and
sexually abused.

"Some of my peers committed suicide, some drank themselves to death,
some died violent deaths. They don't know how many were abused, but
one thing we know: the oppressed became the oppressors when they
returned home," said one former student quoted in a short film about
a similar school system established in Canada on the U.S. model.

Among its impacts, the boarding school system in both countries
implanted forms of violence in native communities that still exact a
high cost today, said speakers at the UN.

"Sometimes I have to say I'm sorry to my children, because I have
behaved in the way the missionaries, the education of the residential
schools, made us," said Eulynda Benalli of the Crownpoint Institute
of Technology on the Navajo Nation in the U.S. state of New Mexico.

Among their impacts, the boarding schools replaced traditional
practices performed by women with patriarchal systems, which led to
the "devaluing of native women in our communities," said Ms. Smith.

The chairman of the Permanent Forum told the opening session of the
annual meeting that Indigenous men worldwide must do more to stem
domestic violence and ensure gender equality in their communities.

"Indigenous cultures rely on gender complementarity, a symbiosis that
values both women's and men's business, that affirms both with
respect and balance," added Ole Henrik Magga.

The Permanent Forum, the only full-time UN body devoted to indigenous
issues, meets until May 21, and focuses this year on Indigenous women.

During the two-week session, its 16 members will hear dozens of
submissions on human rights, environment, education, culture,
economic and social development and health, from some 1,500 delegates.

An advisory body only, the forum's recommendations will go to the UN
Economic and Social Council, which will decide which will be
forwarded to September's General Assembly of all UN member states.

While the Boarding School Healing Project is just starting, a group
of indigenous people on Canada's west coast have nearly finished an
eight-year process to help heal their communities.

The native people of Haida Gwaii, officially known as the Queen
Charlotte Islands, have repatriated the remains of more than 400 of
their ancestors who were stolen from their graves for study in the
19th and 20th centuries and then stored in museums throughout North
America and beyond.

The Haida, who number about 4,000 people on their islands off the
coast of British Columbia, taught students to make blankets
and "bentwood" boxes from the cedar trees of their temperate
rainforests for each set of remains, which were then buried in a
special ceremony, the most recent on May 8.

After contact with White settlers, many Haida were sent to
residential schools, while their land, sometimes called the "Canadian
Galapagos" for its unique flora and fauna, was logged and mined
without their permission.

"Germ warfare" nearly wiped out a population that may have reached
30,000 at one point in the past, says Andy Wilson of the Haida
Repatriation Committee. The 1915 census counted just 588 Haida.

Repatriation "was a way to say, `were not taking this any more and
anything that you took from us, we're here to take back.'" Someone
said at the May 8 burial ceremony, talking about the repatriation
committee, that all the respect and honor they showed the ancestors
helped start the healing.

Ms. Smith said the BSHP would discuss how to take the United States
to account for the continuing damage to Indigenous communities caused
by the boarding schools. The options include approaching the school
system as a violation of international human rights or as a legal
wrong, to be put right in a U.S. court.

Unlike in Canada, though, the group will not recommend that
individuals receive compensation from the government. "We want to
approach this from a sovereignty framework, because what has happened
has happened to us as a whole people," Ms. Smith said.


http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1431.shtml

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The Mideastization of the US, or: Rumsfeld Must Resign
by Juan Cole

The Bush administration keeps talking about bringing democracy to the
Middle East, but a key element in democracy is always the
accountability of public officials to the public. That is why we have
elections, that is why we have a division of powers, that is why
Congress can impeach the executive and the Supreme Court could order
Nixon to hand over his tape recordings. When high officials commit
improprieties, they must resign. When they run a loose ship and it
founders on the shoals of scandal, they must resign. Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz must resign. It is the only way the United States can
recover even a shred of credibility in the wider world, at a time
when this country desperately needs the esteem and the cooperation of
allies and friends.

The Bush administration has from its inception stood against
accountability.  When Ambassador Joe Wilson blew the whistle on the
phony Niger yellowcake story that Bush put in his state of the union
address to stampede us all into war, someone high in the Bush
administration took petty revenge by revealing that Wilson's wife,
Valerie Plame, was a covert CIA operative.  Plame's specialty was
attempting to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction. When
the Bush administration revealed her name to the public, it
compromised all her contacts in all the countries she had ever
worked, and set back the fight against proliferation. This action was
high treason. Bush could demand that the individual responsible come
forward. He has not done so.

When no weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq, no Bush
administration official was asked to resign. The main purveyor of
false intelligence on Iraqi WMD was Vice President Dick Cheney. He
has not been asked to step down, even though he was largely
responsible for taking the country to war based on a falsehood.
Scooter Libby, David Wurmser and John Hannah were up to their necks
in hyping bad intelligence on Iraqi WMD. None of them was asked to
step down. They were supplied the bad intelligence by Undersecretary
of Defense for Planning Douglas Feith and his rogue Office of Special
Plans. No one associated with this scam has been asked to resign.

It is clear where the buck stops with regard to torture by the US
military.  It stops with the Secretary of Defense (and with the
President, but he in any case is facing accountability in November).
Moreover, Rumsfeld is not an innocent bystander in all this. His
policies have consistently aimed at creating spaces for prisoners to
be outside any judicial jurisdiction, so that anything can be done to
them with impunity. I remember seeing a news conference where a
British journalist complained about the US practice of hooding
prisoners as a form of torture. Rumsfeld absolutely ridiculed
her.  "Hooding?" He asked sarcastically. The torture of POWs at Abu
Ghuraib was not carried out by a handful of rogue MPs. It was the
result of ordinary practices of US military intelligence, practices
that just haven't usually been photographed. Rumsfeld set the tone in
which military intelligence felt justified in behaving this way.

Democracy is about more than elections. Most Middle Eastern countries
already have elections. Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Yemen, all of them
hold regular elections. They have parliaments, parties, campaigns.
Two things make them nevertheless not democracies. The first is that
their presidents manipulate the elections so that there is never any
doubt that they will win the election and that their party will
dominate parliament (even if space is made for minority parties to
win a few seats). Second, their regimes have no accountability to the
public. No one in Hosni Mubarak's government has ever had to resign
because he performed his duties poorly. He might have to resign
because he fell out with the president. But if he is buddy buddy with
the head of state, then he can do no wrong.

You really wonder whether the Bush plan to Americanize the Middle
East isn't being turned on its head. We now have an unaccountable
government not elected in accordance with the will of the majority of
Americans, which victimizes critics like Joe Wilson and engages in
torture. Bush and Co. are emulating the worst aspects of the military
governments of Egypt and Yemen.  They have no credibility to push the
latter toward democracy.

Bush says he is annoyed with Rumsfeld for not informing him about
those photographs of tortured Iraqi prisoners. I personally find it
difficult to believe that Rumsfeld did not brief him on them at a
time when Gen. Richard Myers was discussing the timing of their
release with Dan Rathers! But if this is true, it demonstrates that
Bush is not really president. He has allowed Cheney, Rumsfeld and
others to usurp his presidency, hide key information from him,
manipulate him, and tell him what to do. Bush says he
won't fire Rumsfeld. That gives the Democrats one more thing to run
on.

By the way, the US press is reporting that Bush apologized for the
torture of Iraqi prisoners at his news conference Thursday with King
Abdullah II of Jordan. The moderate Saudi daily published in London,
al-Hayat, however, points out that all Bush said was that he was
sorry the incidents had happened. That isn't really apologizing for
them, the newspaper insisted. Asharq al-Awsat did a story in which it
argued that while some Iraqis appear to be somewhat mollified by
Bush's statements, most in the Arab world are not. Not all Iraqis
are, either. It quotes one man who complains that of 50 Iraqi
parties, not one has mounted a demonstration against the US over the
photos, because they are all in America's back pocket. (This
allegation is not entirely true. The Board of Muslim Clerics, a
fundamentalist Sunni group, did hold a demonstration at Abu Ghuraib
on Tuesday).

http://www.juancole.com/

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Seeds of nonviolent resistance sown in Iraq
A dozen friends have formed a political group to protest the US
occupation. By Orly Halpern

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p07s01-woiq.html
The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – In one of Baghdad's fiercest hotbeds of anti-American
violence, something different is happening: Two weeks ago, young men
and old walked down the street holding up banners protesting US
military incursions. They used their mouths, not their guns.
Adhamiyeh, historically a Sunni Muslim quarter loyal to Saddam
Hussein's Baath Party, is routinely visited by US soldiers who clash
with the muqawma - local fighters resisting the occupation.

Normally it is the sound of semiautomatic machine-gun fire that fills
the air of this district. Indeed, for the residents of Adhamiyeh,
protest is completely novel, something that never happened while Mr.
Hussein was in power. But in January a dozen residents - a group of
childhood friends - decided that people needed a voice for their
political views and formed a nonviolent political group. While some
residents remain skeptical - some are unsure of the direction it will
take, others say that Americans will only listen to force - many hope
this is the seed of a new movement.

"We want to be assured the resistance will respect democracy, rights
of women, different religions. We don't want types like Al Qaeda ...
and Saddam," says Wahdi Nadhmi, a political analyst and professor at
Baghdad University. "If the patriotic elements start a civil
struggle, it will be welcomed by most Iraqi people."

After Friday prayers, some 150 people walked down the steps of the
Abu Hanifa Mosque and joined in a demonstration. They decried the
entry of US soldiers and search dogs into the mosque a few days
earlier.

Two tanks loomed in the distance. Curious onlookers surrounded the
mostly male group, who yelled, "God is great and America is our
enemy." They neared the tanks, which did an about-face and drove away.

"They ran away, they were scared of us," said a young man excitedly,
holding a banner's edge.

The group made its way back to the mosque and promptly burned an
American flag before Arab satellite TV cameras.

It's a scene that has only been repeated once before, residents say,
after the announcement that their beloved leader Saddam Hussein was
captured. Then neighbors spontaneously took to the streets; when US
forces showed up a clash ensued and four demonstrators were killed.

This time, the dozen friends hope nonviolent protest becomes the
norm. They formed the Asshoura Council of Adhamiyeh to act "as a
political front for Adhamiyeh," says Sheikh Mahmoud al-Adhamy, the
council's founder.

Sheikh Mahmoud, as he is called, lives in the tough neighborhood of
Safinneh, where foreigners are advised to stay away and where many of
the clashes between muqawma and American forces take place.

"When the Americans are not coming in and starting a fight with the
muqawma, then the muqawma goes and hits their base," says Seif Husham
Sabar, a local resident.

Although Mahmoud does not condemn the violent route of the muqawma,
he says that a parallel political route must be taken. "The
resistance has a direct way," explains the sheikh. "It shows its
disagreement by killing. We are a political front, and we publicize
our ideas by fliers, banners, and demonstrations."

But some of Adhamiyeh's residents are cynical about the council and
its efforts. "None of those people has the right to say they
represent the people of Adhamiyeh," says Abu Tareq, a former high-
ranking Army officer.

Mr. Tareq was walking home as the march proceeded toward the
tanks. "This demonstration has no value, and it has no supporters,"
he says, noting the relatively small number of participants. "The
Americans will not listen to this. It is just an outlet for the
people's feelings."

Tareq says he does not oppose negotiations with the coalition, but he
says that it must be based on equal levels of power. "The Americans
forced their way in and must be forced out," he says. "America needs
to be challenged because she respects those who challenge her. We
don't have the planes, the tanks, or the heavy weapons, but we have
the will to fight."

Some say the council is made up of the "elite" who "haven't done a
thing while everyone else is fighting," says Mr. Sabar.

Husham Sabar Wahid, Sabar's father, suspects that the council is
working with the Americans. But Sheikh Mahmoud insists that his group
has no connection to American forces.

The demonstration was a trial run, he says. "We wanted to see if the
media would actually cover the event and send out our message."

And in his desire to get the message across, Mahmoud is opening doors
normally closed to foreigners: his own. Talking to an American
reporter in his living room, he says: "We want to tell the Americans
that [American soldiers] entering mosques and homes will increase the
acts of the resistance against them."

Another visitor listens quietly but at last speaks up. "I oppose the
Ashura because the Americans won't listen," says Abu Muayed. "The
Americans told many lies about hidden weapons of mass destruction and
plans for reconstruction. None of it came true. So, some of the
Iraqis started resisting, and God help them."

But according to Dr. Nadhmi, not everyone is able to resist using
violence. "People have jobs, families, health problems." he says.
Consequently, he says, this is the beginning of a peaceful movement
in the normally violent district. "Even [those who] wholeheartedly
support the resistance will tell you that no one wants a
confrontation with the mightiest force in the world," he says.

====================
New leaders face a skeptical Iraq
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0602/p01s03-woiq.html

By Nicholas Blanford | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – After a bitter last-minute tussle over the choice of
president, Iraq's transitional government was unveiled Tuesday,
setting in motion the final countdown toward the transfer of
sovereignty from the US-led coalition at the end of the month.
But the new government faces daunting tasks. With an undiminished
presence of foreign troops, it has to convince a skeptical Iraqi
public that it is a genuinely autonomous institution and not a fig
leaf for a continued US occupation. And a series of bomb attacks that
left at least 14 people in Baghdad and northern Iraq dead served as a
grim reminder that restoring security is the principal challenge over
the course of its seven-month mandate before full elections are held
at the end of January.

"They must concentrate on the issues of security, electricity, the
economy, and the life of the people," says Saad Jawad, professor of
political science at Baghdad University. "They should work hard on
these issues, and if they do, they stand a chance of being supported."

The formation of the government was announced after a deadlock over
the choice of the president was resolved. Sheikh Ghazi al-Yawar, a US
and Saudi-educated businessman and tribal leader, was selected as
president after his rival, Adnan Pachachi, an 81-year-old Sunni
politician, declined the post.

Although the presidency is largely a ceremonial position, Sheikh
Yawar is widely respected among Iraq's Shiite and Kurdish communities
as well as his own Sunni constituency. He has been critical of US
military policy, and in his first public remarks as president-
designate, Sheikh Yawar called on the UN to approve full sovereignty
for his country.

"We the Iraqis look forward to being granted full sovereignty through
a Security Council resolution to enable us to rebuild a free,
independent, democratic, and federal unified homeland," he said.

His appointment ended a bitter last-minute wrangle between the US-
appointed interim Governing Council on the one hand and Paul Bremer,
the US administrator in Iraq, and UN envoy Lakhdar Brahimi,who was
charged with helping establish Iraq's transitional government.

Shortly after his position was confirmed, the council voted to
dissolve, a decision described by one member as its "final victory."

Of the 24 members of the council, three have made it to the
transitional government. The powerful premiership has gone to Ayad
Allawi, a Shiite ex-Baathist who heads the Iraqi National Accord and
has close ties to the CIA. The third council member is Ibrahim
Jafari, the head of the Shiite Dawa Party, who was appointed a deputy
president.

The remaining 31 seats in the new government are apportioned to a mix
of technocrats, politicians, and civil servants. "I think it's a step
forward," says Mahmoud Othman, an independent Kurdish member of the
dissolved council.

The chief problem remains security. A roadside bomb attack outside a
US military base at Bayji, 125 north of Baghdad, left 11 people dead,
while a car bomb outside the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of
Kurdistan in central Baghdad killed another three. Several blasts of
suspected mortar rounds were heard near the headquarters of the
Coalition Provisional Authority while the Governing Council was
meeting with Mr. Bremer and Mr. Brahimi. "We were reminded ... that
security in the No. 1 problem," Mr. Othman says.

One reason Mr. Allawi was selected as prime minister was his
experience in security affairs and his willingness to employ former
Baathist military personnel to help quell the violence, reversing
Bremer's much-criticized de-Baathification policy. "The American
forces have failed [to achieve security] and now it is the duty of
the Iraqis to do it," says Professor Jawad. "They can do it, but they
have to go back on stupid decisions like dissolving the police and
the Army, and stop speaking about de-Baathification."

Still, few Iraqis expect an imminent and tangible improvement in
security. "The first thing people will be looking for is whether they
can stop the Americans driving around the country," says Sheikh Ayad
Awad, a Sunni cleric who preaches at the Al Nour Mosque in the
Baghdad suburb of Saydiyeh. "If the government does not succeed [in
curbing the US military presence], it will be seen as a protector of
the Americans."

Coalition troop numbers are not expected to decline any time soon,
and Allawi admitted that the new government would still need
coalition help. "We will need the participation of the multinational
forces to help in defeating the enemies of Iraq. We will enter into
alliances to accomplish that," he said.

But US troops will remain targets of the insurgents as long as they
remain on Iraqi soil, says Sheikh Awad. "The jihadis will defend
their country against all occupiers as well as politicians who seek
to attack the jihadis," he says, using a sympathetic term.

Is Allawi such a politician? "Of course. Allawi is an American
soldier, supporting the line of the CIA," he says.

It is sentiments such as that and the skepticism aired on Baghdad's
streets Tuesday that suggest the new government faces an uphill
struggle in convincing ordinary Iraqis that it is a genuinely
sovereign body. "It's not an end to the occupation because America is
not the kind of country that will pay all these efforts to come to
Iraq, stay for one year, and then leave," says Anwar Jassem, a
Kurdish shopkeeper. "They are controlling everything, and they will
always be there controlling everything from behind the curtain and
the Iraqi government will just be the face."

=======================
Tribal Sunni Chief Will Lead Iraq Gov't
Tue Jun 1, 7:30 PM
http://www.optonline.net/News/Article/Feeds?CID=type%3Dxml%26channel%
3D32%26article%3D11394721

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials prevailed in their choice for
president over the candidate favored by the United States, allowing a
U.N. envoy Tuesday to appoint an interim government reflecting Iraq's
religious and cultural diversity to rule after the return of
sovereignty June 30.

Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer, a Sunni Muslim critic of the occupation,
was named to the largely ceremonial post. Al-Yawer was the choice of
the U.S.-picked Iraqi Governing Council, which dissolved itself
immediately so that the new government can start work even before it
takes power from the American-led coalition at the end of the month.

Among its first tasks will be to negotiate a crucial agreement on the
status of U.S.-led international forces that will remain here after
sovereignty is restored and to tackle the country's tenuous security
situation.

At the U.N. Security Council on Tuesday, the United States and
Britain circulated a revised resolution that would give the interim
government control over the Iraqi army and police and end the mandate
for the multinational force by January 2006 at the latest.

Critics - namely France, Russia and Germany - had said the previous
U.S. resolution did not go far enough in granting Iraqis genuine
power over their own national affairs. Iraq's new foreign minister,
Hoshyar Zebari, was traveling to New York on Tuesday to join the
debate.

Strong explosions rolled through the heart of the capital even as
word emerged of al-Yawer's selection. A car bomb at the headquarters
of a pro-American Kurdish party killed three people, wounded about 20
and sent a mushroom cloud of smoke rising over the capital.

A car bomb also exploded outside a U.S. base in the northern town of
Beiji, killing 11 Iraqis and wounding more than 22 people, including
two U.S. soldiers. Fighting broke out between American soldiers and
radical Shiite militiamen in the southern town of Kufa and a Shiite
neighborhood in Baghdad.

The new Cabinet - a prime minister, a deputy premier for security and
31 ministers who include six women - will take over day-to-day
operations of government ministries immediately, although the U.S.-
run Coalition Provisional Authority remains the sole sovereign power
in Iraq until June 30.

British-educated Shiite politician Iyad Allawi, a longtime opposition
figure known for his close ties to the State Department and the CIA,
was named prime minister on Friday.

The Cabinet draws its membership from Iraq's ethnic, religious and
cultural mosaic, bringing together lawyers, politicians, academics,
human rights activists, engineers and businessmen from a broad
spectrum in contrast to Saddam Hussein's regime, which revolved
around a Sunni Muslim clique from his hometown of Tikrit.

President Bush said Tuesday's announcement brought Iraq "one step
closer" to democracy, but warned against a spike in violence as the
date for the restoration of sovereignty draws near.

Security remains the primary threat facing the new government, which
will rule until national elections by Jan. 31. The ceremony
introducing the new government took place under tight security in the
heavily guarded Green Zone headquarters of the U.S. occupation
administration.

Heavily armed U.S. troops and Iraqi security forces ringed the two-
story building where the ceremony was held. U.S. Army helicopters
hovered above and snipers were stationed on the roof. Sniffer dogs
searched for bombs. Those present included L. Paul Bremer, Iraq's
American governor; U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi; and Lt. Gen. Ricardo
Sanchez, the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

During the ceremony, Allawi focused on security, saying he would ask
Iraq's allies for help "in defeating the enemies of Iraq." He also
pledged to strengthen the army and raise soldiers' pay. Iraq's
security forces, he said, will be a "pivotal partner" with U.S. and
other coalition troops in the fight to restore security.

Switching from Arabic to English for the benefit of coalition leaders
in the audience, Allawi said: "We're grateful to the national
alliance led by the Americans who have sacrificed so much to liberate
us."

More than 800 U.S. service members have been killed since the
invasion of Iraq in March 2003.

Coalition troops are fighting a Sunni insurgency in the capital and
areas to the west and north as well as a Shiite revolt in Baghdad and
in the south. Suicide bombings have claimed hundreds of lives across
the nation.

The lack of security is blamed for everything from insufficient power
supplies to a slow economic recovery.

"The world and your neighbors expect you to bring about security,
stability for the people of Iraq who have suffered enough," Brahimi,
the U.N. envoy, told the new government.

Tuesday's announcement capped four weeks of deliberations by Brahimi,
the coalition, the Governing Council and thousands of Iraqis whose
advice and views he sought.

The deadlock over the presidency delayed the Cabinet announcement by
one day and threatened a rift with the Americans at a time when
Washington is under pressure internationally to grant Iraqis full
sovereignty.

According to Iraqi politicians, the Americans insisted that Adnan
Pachachi, a former foreign minister, become president. Most of the
Governing Council wanted al-Yawer, a 45-year-old engineer and tribal
leader. Pachachi, an 81-year-old Sunni Muslim, told reporters he
turned down the presidency for "personal reasons."

The two vice presidencies went to Ibrahim al-Jaafari, of the Shiite
Muslim Dawa party, and Rowsch Shaways, speaker of parliament in the
Kurdish autonomous region in northern Iraq.

At the welcoming ceremony, al-Yawer pledged to rise "above
sectarianism and divisions" and restore Iraq's "civilized face."

Al-Yawer has repeatedly spoken against the U.S.-led occupation, but
never advocated violence. He hails from the northern city of Mosul
and has engineering degrees from Saudi Arabia's Petroleum and
Minerals University and Georgetown University.

The presidency is a symbolic position, but al-Yawer - as the highest-
ranking Sunni in the government - will likely hold considerable
influence through his elaborate network of contacts among the tribes
and clans of Iraq.

In contrast, Pachachi came from a family that produced several top
politicians over the past 50 years but has no power base in Iraq
after more than 30 years in exile in the United Arab Emirates. His
ties to the Americans did not help his standing among Iraqis
frustrated by and distrustful of the occupation.

The Bush administration official in Baghdad said the United States
had no preference and was pleased with al-Yawer's selection.

One of the first tasks facing new government will be to negotiate an
agreement governing the status and conduct of international troops
after June 30. The Iraqis are seeking a greater say over operations
of the 135,000 American troops and other coalition forces on Iraqi
soil. The administration official in Baghdad said negotiations would
begin "fairly soon."

Several key Iraqi figures, including Pachachi, were sharply critical
of April's three-week Marine siege of Fallujah, a Sunni city west of
Baghdad, in which hundreds of Iraqis died.

================
The Bush administration asks Congress for  $25 billion fix that will
just carry the war occupation efforts in Afganistan and Iraq until
after the election, when a much larger bite than this stopgap will be
required to really fund the operations intended in the continuing
Bush-promised Kerry-promised War on Terror.

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=f0613c1608f4324d

====================
Was It Really Worth It, Mrs. Albright?
THE PRICE

By Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair

What moved those kamikaze Muslims to embark, some many months ago on
the training that they knew would culminate in their deaths as well
of those (they must have hoped) of thousands upon thousands of
innocent people? Was it the Koran plus a tape from Osama bin Laden?
The dream of a world in which all men wear untrimmed beards and women
have to stay at home or go outside only when enveloped in blue tents?
I doubt it. If I had to cite what steeled their resolve the list
would surely include the exchange on CBS in 1996 between [Bill
Clinton?s (Zionist) Secretary of State] Madeleine Albright and then
US ambassador to the United Nations and Lesley Stahl. Albright was
maintaining that sanctions had yielded important concessions from
Saddam Hussein.


Stahl: "We have heard that half a million children have died. I mean,
that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And you know, is the
price worth it?"

Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price ­ we
think

the price is worth it."


They read that exchange in the Middle East. It was infamous all over
the Arab world. I'll bet the September 11 kamikazes knew it well
enough, just as they could tell you the crimes wrought against the
Palestinians. So would it be unfair today to take Madeleine Albright
down to the ruins of the Trade Towers, remind her of that exchange,
and point out that the price turned out also to include that awful
mortuary. Was that price worth it too, Mrs. Albright?

Well, the typists and messenger boys and back-office staffs
throughout the Trade Center didn't know that history. There's a lot
of other relevant history they probably didn't know but which those
men on the attack planes did. How could those people in the Towers
have known, when US political and journalistic culture is a
conspiracy to perpetuate their ignorance? Those people on the Towers
were innocent portions of the price that Albright insisted, in just
one of its applications, as being worth it. It would honor their
memory to insist that in future our press offers a better accounting
of how America's wars for Freedom are fought and what the actual
price might include. CP

SOURCE : www.counterpunch.com

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Israel lays claim to Palestine's water

Exclusive from New Scientist Print Edition. - May 27, 2004

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99995037

Israel has drawn up a secret plan for a giant desalination plant to
supply drinking water to the Palestinian territory on the West Bank.
It hopes the project will diminish pressure for it to grant any
future Palestinian state greater access to the region's scarce
supplies of fresh water.

Under an agreement signed a decade ago as part of the Oslo accord,
four-fifths of the West Bank's water is allocated to Israel, though
the aquifers that supply it are largely replenished by water falling
onto Palestinian territory.

The new plans call for seawater to be desalinated at Caesaria on the
Mediterranean coast, and then pumped into the West Bank, where a
network of pipes will deliver it to large towns and many of the 250
villages that currently rely on local springs and small wells for
their water.


Israel, which wants the US to fund the project, would guarantee safe
passage of the water across its territory in return for an agreement
that Israel can continue to take the lion's share of the waters of
the West Bank. These mainly comprise underground reserves such as the
western aquifer, the region's largest, cleanest and most reliable
water source.

For Israelis, agreement on the future joint management of this
aquifer is a prerequisite for granting Palestine statehood.


Global funding


The first public hint of the plan emerged earlier in May in
Washington DC. Uri Shamir, director of water research at the
Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, told the House
of Representatives Committee on International Relations that the
desalination project was "the only viable long-term solution" for
supplying drinking water to the West Bank.

Shamir told New Scientist this week that the project could be
complete in five to seven years. "The plant will be funded by the
world for the Palestinians. Israel will not be willing to carry this
burden, and the Palestinians are not able to."

But other leading hydrologists contacted by New Scientist point out
that desalinating seawater and pumping it to the West Bank, parts of
which lie 1000 metres above sea level, would cost around $1 per cubic
metre.

"The question is whether an average Palestinian family can afford
it," says Arie Issar, a water expert at Ben-Gurion University of the
Negev in Sede Boker, Israel, who helped green the Israeli desert a
generation ago by finding new water sources in the region. "It would
be foolish to desalinate water on the coast and push it up the
mountains when there are underground water resources up there, which
cost only a third as much."

Tony Allan of King's College London, a leading authority on Middle
East water, agrees: "Pumping desalinated water to the West Bank is
not the best technical or economic option."

But the project is being supported by Alvin Newman, head of water
resources at the Tel Aviv office of USAID, the US international
development agency, which would fund the desalination
project. "Ultimately it's the only solution," he said in an interview
with New Scientist.


Unusual cooperation


Water supply is one of the few areas where cooperation between Israel
and Palestine has survived the current intifada. Every day on the
West Bank, Palestinian engineers help repair and maintain Israeli
water pipes, and vice versa.

But Palestinian water negotiators are deeply uneasy about the plans
being drawn up on their behalf, especially if they involve abandoning
claims to the water beneath their feet. "We cannot do that. We don't
have the money or the expertise for desalination," Ihab Barghothi,
head of water projects for the Palestinian Water Authority, told New
Scientist.

Palestinians badly need more water. Under the Oslo agreement they
have access to 57 cubic metres of water per person per year from all
sources. Israel gets 246 cubic metres per head per year. And in the
nearly 40 years that Israel has controlled the West Bank,
Palestinians have been largely forbidden from drilling new wells or
rehabilitating old ones.

The region's sources of water are the West Bank aquifers; the river
Jordan, which rises in the Golan Heights and flows into the Sea of
Galilee, where it is largely tapped by Israel; and the coastal
aquifer, an increasingly polluted reserve of underground water that
extends south to the Palestinian territory of the Gaza Strip.

Sewage effluent

Over the years, Israel has developed a good reputation for using water
efficiently, and in the 1980s it began recycling sewage effluent for
irrigation. In 2004, Israel signed a deal to buy water shipped by
tanker from Turkey.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the Gaza Strip depend almost exclusively
on small wells tapping the coastal aquifer. As the water table falls,
the aquifer is becoming increasingly polluted by salt water from the
sea. UN scientists say Gaza will have no drinkable water within 15
years.

Despite earlier efforts to develop desalination, the Israel
government only decided to invest heavily in the technology in the
past four years. Some, including Israeli liberals and Palestinian
optimists such as Barghothi, believed that once Israel began
desalinating seawater for its own use it would be prepared to relax
its grip on the West Bank aquifers.

But now it appears that Israeli water planners see desalination as a
means of retaining control of those aquifers.

The desalination plant to supply the West Bank would parallel a
similar US-funded reverse osmosis plant to fill taps on the hard-
pressed Gaza Strip. The scheme has already been approved and funded,
but is currently on hold because of continuing conflict in Gaza.
Taken together, the two schemes would leave an independent Palestine
more dependent on desalination [and on Israel's 'guarantees'] than
almost any other nation in the world.


Fred Pearce, Jerusalem

=======================
Note "Israeli Arabs" are in fact Palestinians who live in 1948
Palestine but are now citizens of Israel - IAP

=======================
Mossawa report: Racism against Israeli Arabs increasing

By Haaretz Service  - June 1, 2004

http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/434087.html

Racist violence against Israeli Arab citizens has increased in the
last year, according to an annual report released on Tuesday by the
Mossawa Advocacy Center for Arab Citizens in Israel. The report also
said authorities are not doing enough to prevent the phenomenon.

The report outlines violence by police and security forces, racism in
legislation and racism in public places against Arab citizens.

The report surveys 29 incidents in which Arab citizens were shot and
killed by security forces since the October 2000 riots, when 13 Arabs
were killed by police. Indictments were filed against two security
personnel in only two incidents in which Arab citizens were shot and
killed.

The report reviews 17 acts of violence and incidents of physical
attack of Arab citizens by Jewish citizens.

The report also covers hundreds of incidents of inflammatory hate
speech such as "kill Arabs," and deals with 15 racist acts of
incitement and verbal violence against Arabs by prominent public
personalities.

The government has not yet acted on the recommendations of the Or
Commission following the events of October 2000, according to
Mossawa. The Or Commission found systematic discrimination on the
part of security forces and governmental institutions.

===================
Lieberman presents to Russia plan to expel 'disloyal' Arabs:

By Lily Galili, Haaretz Correspondent
May 30, 2004
  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/433141.html

Transportation Minister Avigdor Lieberman has presented Russian
officials with his plan to separate Jews from Arabs, which involves
exiling Israeli Arabs deemed disloyal to the state.


Lieberman described the Plan for the Separation of Nations as an
alternative to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's disengagement plan,
which calls for Israel to evacuate from the Gaza Strip and parts of
the West Bank.

"It would be right if the Quartet, including Russia, were to support
my plan out of a deep understanding that only this way - and not via
baseless plans - can it actually be possible to reach an end to the
conflict and the cancellation of the reasons leading up to it,"
Lieberman said after the weekend meeting.

Lieberman, chairman of the rightist National Union party and an
immigrant from the former Soviet Union, met with Russian President
Vladimir Putin's personal representative in the Quartet for Mideast
peace, Alexander Galkin, and Russian ambassador to Israel Gennady
Tarasov in Israel at Russia's request.

The plan is based on the idea of separating the populations and
territories of Jews and Arabs, including Israeli Arabs. According to
the plan, only those Israeli Arabs who feel a connection with the
State of Israel and are completely loyal to it will be allowed to
stay.

Sharon condemned Sunday statements Lieberman made on transferring
Israelis Arabs to the territories.

"We regard [the Israeli Arabs] as part of the State of Israel,"
Sharon said.

Several ministers considered Sharon's statement as preparing the
ground for the dismissal of Lieberman and Benny Elon, a fellow
National Union minister, after the prime minister warned the cabinet
Sunday that he was willing to change the makeup of the coalition so
as to pass the revised disengagement plan.

=================
PNA courts sue Palestinian collaborators with Israel

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-05/30/content_1498451.htm

     GAZA, May 30, 2004 (Xinhuanet) -- The Palestinian criminal court
in the Gaza city started a few days ago trials of a number of
Palestinians suspected of collaborating with Israeli Intelligence
services, Palestinian sources reported Sunday.

     They said the court had held the first session of the trials on
May 24 against four Palestinians and the indictment included the
charges of collaborating with foreign sides and undermining
Palestinian spirits and morals.

     They added that the trial will be resumed on June 14 when the
attorneys will have to present evidences and cross-examine witnesses
before issuing the verdict.

     The trial of another five Palestinians accused of the same
charges will be held on June 21, the sources said.

======================
25 Homes Demolished in Rafah: 350 Palestinians Homeless

PCHR - May 30, 2004

Last night, Israeli occupying forces (IOF) demolished 25 houses in
Rafah refugee camp, leaving more than 350 homeless and injuring two
Palestinians.

According to PCHR's preliminary investigations, at approximately
23:00 on Saturday, 29 May 2004, IOF heavy military vehicles,
reinforced by helicopters, moved approximately 300 meters into Block
J in Rafah refugee camp, adjacent to the Egyptian border.  Under
cover of intense shelling, IOF began to demolish a number of
Palestinian houses, without allowing residents to retrieve their
possessions.  By 05:00 on Sunday, 30 May 2004, Israeli troops had
demolished 23 houses completely and 2 others partially.  As a result,
352 people (60 families) have been rendered homeless.  During the IOF
action, a 60-year-old woman and a doctor were injured.  The doctor
was injured when he tried to offer medical help to residents in the
area.

In the past two weeks, Israeli troops destroyed 360 houses in Rafah
town and refugee camp, killed 57 Palestinians and injured at least
200 others, during a series of military incursions.  As a result of
increased IOF actions in Rafah, at least 5000 Palestinians have
become homeless in the short or long term.  Temporary shelters set up
in the area have become overcrowded.

The extensive destruction of civilian property, carried out wantonly
and unlawfully, and without military necessity constitutes a grave
breach of the Fourth Geneva Convention (article 147) and a war crime
as defined in article 85.5 of the First Additional Protocol to the
Geneva Conventions.

PCHR is extremely concerned at the recent escalation in violations of
international human rights and humanitarian law, including grave
breaches, perpetrated by IOF in the OPTs.  Rafah has been
particularly targeted by the IOF in the last month. PCHR reiterates
its calls to the High Contracting Parties to the Fourth Geneva
Convention to fulfill their legal obligations to ensure respect for
the Convention in the OPTs, and the protection of the civilian
population.


pchr@..., Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

=======================
Three Palestinians Killed in Extra-Judicial Execution by IOF

PCHR - May 30, 2004

In a continuation of the Israeli government policy of extra-judicial
execution, last night Israeli occupying forces (IOF) launched an
aerial attack on a moving vehicle in Gaza city, leaving 3
Palestinians dead.  Two of the victims were allegedly members of the
Hamas resistance movement.  The third victim was a civilian bystander
killed whilst trying to offer help to the other two victims.  In
addition, 9 civilians, including 2 children and a woman, were
injured.

According to preliminary investigations conducted by PCHR, at
approximately 00:20 on Sunday, 30 May 2004, an IOF helicopter gunship
launched a missile at a motorcycle that was traveling along Salah al-
Din Street in the densely populated al-Zaytoun neighborhood in the
southeast of Gaza City.  Two persons were traveling on the
motorcycle.  The missile struck the motorcycle, immediately
killing the two persons.  Less than 2 minutes later, the Israeli
helicopter gunship launched a second missile at a small group of
Palestinian civilians who had gathered to retrieve the bodies of the
those killed by the first missile.  One of these civilians, Madi
Ahmed Madi, 18, from al-Zaytoun neighborhood, was killed, and 9 other
civilians, including 2 children and a woman, were injured.  The two
targeted victims were later identified as:

1.        Wa'el Talab Nassar, 38, from al-Zaytoun neighborhood, who
had been subject to a number of previous assassination attempts by
Israeli troops; and

2.        Mohammed Mustafa Munib Sarsour, 33, from al-Sabra
neighborhood.


pchr@..., Webpage http://www.pchrgaza.org

================
Amman university wants Israel branch

By Yulie Khromchenco - Ha'aretz (June 1, 2004)

  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/433712.html

Representatives of Jordan's Al-Ahliyya Amman University met with
Education Minister Limor Livnat yesterday for talks on opening an
extension of the institute of higher learning in Israel. The
university's director and owner, Maher Hurani, told Livnat he was
determined to establish ties with Israel despite threats and
opposition voiced against the move by elements in the Arab world and
Jordan.

"I am happy about the request and see it as a boost to the spirit of
peace and a national interest," Livnat said after the meeting, which
was also attended by Shosh Berlinsky, the director-general of the
Council for Higher Education.

Berlinsky said the council would review the issue of the university's
registration and licensing in keeping with the accepted standards.

Hurani told Livnat that in the wake of his proposal to establish the
branch in Israel, he received a letter from 500 Syrian students at Al-
Ahliyya Amman University who informed him they would leave the
institute should the move go ahead.

The connection between Livnat, who also chairs the Council for Higher
Education, and Hurani was forged by former director-general of the
Education Ministry Eitan Ben-Tsur, who is slated for the post of the
president of the Al-Ahliyya extension in Israel.

A number of possible initial sites for the extension have already
been examined, including a hotel in Nahariya and a building in Emek
Hefer. Under the plans in the works, the buildings will be leased for
three years, during which time the new university's campus will be
built.

The university is expected to primarily serve the Arab sector; but at
yesterday's meeting, Hurani said he would also like to see Jewish
students and Arab students from other countries in the region at the
institute.

Al-Ahliyya Amman University is Jordan's first private university and
was established in 1990. The institute is owned by the Hurani family,
which has business interests in Jordan, Lebanon and Dubai in the
fields of industry and tourism.

The university caters to some 7,000 students, including from Syria,
Iraq, the United States, Japan and Israel, and offers bachelors
degrees in six faculties - engineering, medicine and pharmacology,
computer sciences, the humanities and the arts, law, and economics
and business administration.

During yesterday's meeting, Hurani invited Livnat to visit Jordan to
address students on education in Israel. Livnat said she was
considering the invitation.

==================
How Palestine is dying in Iraq

By Sadi Baig  - Asian Times May 27, 2004

http://atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FE27Ak01.html

"The more aggressive the [Iraq] attack is, the more it will help
Israel against the Palestinians. The understanding would be that what
is good to do in Iraq, is also good for here."
- Gideon Ezra, Israeli cabinet minister (Christian Science Monitor,
August 2002)

With the Iraq war, a fusion of US and Israeli interests, intended or
not, has come about. The most important from an Israeli viewpoint is
the issue of a Palestinian state comprising some or all of the
occupied Palestinian territories. With US policy reversal on the
occupied territories, its open and sometimes tacit support for moves
such as building of the "Wall", assassinations of Hamas' political
leadership, and destruction of Palestinian homes and economic life,
Washington has now tied itself too closely to dissociate itself
from Israeli actions. The ambiguity cultivated so painstakingly over
the years in the Arab mind toward the US role in the region has all
but vaporized.

The US public perception has never been more unfavorable toward the
Arab and Muslim world as it is now. There is no dearth of incendiary
speeches in the media, which are manifesting themselves in
predictable ways. Domestically, the Council on American Islamic
Relations reports the number of hate crimes against Muslims in the
United States to have doubled since last year. The Iraq war widens
this chasm with commentators such as Michael Savage, who runs the
third-most-popular radio show in the US, Savage Nation, openly
calling for killing the "non-human" Arabs and "nuking" Arab capitals,
without fear of the authorities bearing down on him. In the din of
incessant reporting of the incident, Bill O'Reilly of Fox News called
for the US military to "rip the place apart" when four of its
contractors were killed by a mob in Fallujah. Unsurprisingly, there
was hardly any sympathetic sentiment in the media or political
leadership over the siege and bombardment of Fallujah in clear
violation of the Geneva Conventions, which resulted in 600-700
fatalities, according to the Associated Press.

There is no political leader in the US who can even dare to rap the
Israeli leadership on its knuckles - not that such superficial
measures are going to improve the United States' image in the Middle
East anyway. Recent US abstention from the United Nations Security
Council resolution condemning the Israeli demolition of Palestinian
homes in Gaza looks more a good cop-bad cop routine than a genuine
policy change. In fact there is a precedent, with the US abstaining
many times in the past on council resolutions critical of Israel. The
last such abstention was regarding Resolution 1435 adopted in
September 2002 condemning Israeli attacks on Ramallah. This was
around the same time that war preparations against Iraq were in full
swing, as has been reported widely in the press. Anti-Israeli
resolutions in the Security Council have never had any moderating
influence on Israeli actions, as they are viewed by Tel Aviv as
publicity moves designed to relieve pressure in the Arab and wider
Muslim world, rather than enduring policy shifts. Moreover, such
condemnations are crucial for permanent Security Council members
France and Britain, the twin architects of the present-day Middle
East, to protect their political and economic interests by appearing
to support the Arab cause against Israel.

The way and the speed with which events have unfolded in the occupied
Palestinian territories signal a realization on the part of the
Israeli leadership that it may be time to begin an incremental purge
of the Palestinians from their homeland. The demographics in the
occupied territories clearly threaten the future of the Jewish state,
and therefore must be changed in Israel's favor. Israel is therefore
not a status quo power, and must continually strive to alter the
status quo to ensure the protection of its interests. Taking a
twisted view of the prophetic theology of "dispensationalism",
Christian Zionists hold such extreme measures in line with
preparation for the second coming of Christ. Resolutions in the US
House of Representatives and public statements by Republican leaders
such as the now-retired Dick Armey, the current majority leader Tom
Delay, and Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, openly quoting the Bible
to support his views, speak volumes on the extent of their support for
such actions.

With the might of the US military encircling them and daily threats of
sanctions, it is unlikely that governments in the Middle East can and
will do anything to stop the escalating dislocation of Palestinians.
US military presence in the region has a restraining effect on the
regional governments, as the actors would find it difficult to keep
the US out in a possible conflict with Israel. The US presence is
more effective in its restraining power than its active involvement.
It is in the backdrop of such support that Israel can undertake
drastic actions without inviting armed conflict with its neighbors. In
fact, any subsequent US departure from the region may even be timed
to ensure achievement of Israeli objectives vis-a-vis the occupied
territories. There is little danger of Israel's neighbors aggregating
into anything formidable, as militarily they are too weak and are
politically divided.

But even if hostilities were to be feared, Israeli strategists can be
counted on to deliver a pretext that portrays the conflict as a
legitimate defensive action by the US, with acceleration in driving
out the Palestinians as the desired side-effect. One easy rationale
would be covert Syrian assistance to the Iraqi insurgency, as is
being alleged in the recent bombing of a wedding party in
Mukaradeeb, near the town of al-Qaim in western Iraq close to the
Syrian border. The same can be used against Iran, along with nuclear
allegations, though the likelihood of Iran getting involved seems low
as there are signs that it is closer to a strategic detente with the
US than ever.

Sure, there is going to be a lot of fallout in the worsening of
public mood toward the US and Israel in the region over the
displacement of Palestinians. Moreover, governments in the area will
come under great strain to respond to the outcry of their populace.
But in the end the turmoil that will ensue will have little negative
impact, and such instability may even be beneficial from a strategic
standpoint. Barring drastic reversals in current policies, this may
indeed be the beginning of the end not just for the hopes of a
Palestinian state, but for the Palestinians as a people in their own
land.

As for winning the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims, image-
marketing measures offer little help if the intention is to take what
you hold most dear. Such talk seems to be directed more toward the
international community than Arab and Muslims societies themselves.
Anarchy is not freedom, and democracy sans sovereignty is a conflict
in terms. Positive perception of the US was central to the grand plan
of democratizing the Middle East. Yet it is utterly confounding
that with Israeli-style search and seizure operations, lack of
transparency regarding oil revenues, bombing of civilian populations,
and widespread prison torture, the US seems to be undermining the
central plank of its own strategy. Would it be unreasonable to
conclude that the stated policy blocks from view motives too
unacceptable to be publicly revealed?

Israel has never tried to win any publicity contests in the Arab
world, and has always gotten what it wanted while ignoring
international opprobrium reflected in countless UN General Assembly
and Security Council resolutions. Why can the US not do the same by
doing away with policy decisions of the Cold War era laden with
multilateral niceties, in a clearly unipolar world?

Sadi Baig is a freelance political analyst.

(Copyright 2004 Sadi Baig)

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UC Lecturer's `Intifada' Comment Brings Death Threats

By JAKOB SCHILLER (05-25-04)

http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=05-25-
04&storyID=18929

A recent speech delivered by a UC Berkeley lecturer during an
impromptu anti-war protest in San Francisco has set off a firestorm
of criticism around the country, including death threats and calls
for his removal from the university. The speech, given by Hatem
Bazian of UC's Near Eastern Studies Department, at one point noted
the intifada in Palestine and uprising in Iraq and then asked
the crowd why the U.S. has not had its own political intifada to
protest the lies U.S. government has used to lead this country to war.

Critics took offense with his use of the word "intifada" and are
claiming Bazian could be calling for an armed uprising like the ones
in Iraq and Palestine. In Arabic, Intifada comes from a root word
which means "shaking off," but the word has come to be associated
with the armed Palestinian struggle against Israel.

But Bazian, who claims he has always advocated for non-violence, said
the statement is being taken out of context. He also said the
campaign appears to be a smear tactic to shut him down because he has
been an outspoken opponent of the Israeli and American occupations in
the Middle East.

"I was calling for political change considering the lies and half
truths that have been thrown at us to take the nation to war," said
Bazian. And in turn, he said, critics spun that to mean he was
calling for "global jihad," charging that his comment was "sedition"
and "treachery."

Although no official group has come out and criticized the comment,
Bazian returned to his office the Monday after the April 10 speech to
find he had thousands of critical e-mails waiting for him, many of
them openly threatening. Several of the e-mails were sent directly to
UC Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl, calling on the chancellor to force
Bazian to resign. In one day alone, Bazian received 18,000 e-mails—in
another 12,000—in another 7,000. In total Bazian estimates he has
received 100,000 e-mails.

"Hey, you ready to start the an intifada in the U.S.?' one e-mail
reads. "Bring it on bitch, because I am certain I know who the first
casualty will be. My brothers in arms in the USMC are kicking the
shit out of the `insurgents' in fallujah. It would be wise of you to
think of that before starting anything over here. By the way, better
look both ways twice next time you cross the street."

Another e-mailer writes: "hatem baziam, you are no better than a
terrorist! How dare you advocate war against America. You are trash.
You are slime. You have violated our Constitution and free speech.
You should be immediately deported to swim on the blood of pigs. A
proud American Citizen who supports Israel and our troops. The lower
case of the first letters of your name is to shows my utter contempt
and disgust for you."

Over the course of the week, Baziam said people also left nine death
threats on his office voice mail. One said the caller was going to
get thousands of rounds of magnums to go after Bazian, another told
him to be on the lookout because "we" were watching, and another told
him directly that he should be shot in the head.

According to the university public relations department, Chancellor
Berdahl has dismissed the calls for Bazians resignation, citing
Bazian's both right to free speech and the fact that he made the
comments as an individual, not while representing the university.

Still, Bazian said the campaign against him is a dangerous "smear
tactic" used to silence anyone who challenges the campaigns in Iraq,
or in his case, Israel as well. He said he has been criticized for
speaking out against Israel in the past.

"It's been going on for a long time, anyone who speaks on the
Palestinian issue and doesn't tow the line will have to suffer a
systematic smear tactic," he said. "This is from Edward Said, to
Chomsky…to Jesse Jackson to Pat Buchanan."

Bazian defends his latest statements on the one hand because they are
based on fact. He said since the war broke out, his predictions have
come true, in that the war was not based on the same facts the
government lead the people to believe. As a result, he said he has
the right to call for a challenge to the leadership who lied.

"When I said we need a political intifada in this country, it was a
point of reference for the audience. If you look at the lies cast out
to the American public, it's incredible that we still have the
current leadership still lying out of its teeth about how we got to
war," he said.

Nonetheless, the criticism against his remarks is still flying. He
said after the news was initially published on the web, almost every
right wing talk show in the country wanted him on their show. He
denied most, but eventually agreed to appear on the well-known
conservative news show, the "O'Reilly Factor," hosted by Bill
O'Reilly on Fox news.

Bazian said he went on the show so he could get something on the
record about the statement. According to Bazian, O'Reilly, who is
known as an aggressive and outspoken conservative, received criticism
from other right-wing groups for "going too soft," even though Bazian
said O'Reilly grilled him throughout the interview.

Bazian said he always has to defend his public statements, but also
said he feels he has to make them to because he is part of
an "intellectual arena at a time when conformity is being asked for
and alternative viewpoints are not being heard. The complete closing
of airwaves by the mainstream media puts us in a position where we
have to continue what we are doing, it must resonate. It does hurt,
but nevertheless, it has to be said, even if it hurts."

While critical of those who are trying to get him fired, Bazian said
he welcomes debate in general, calling it the "true essence of free
speech."

"Let them share their point of view, and we will bring our people,"
he said. "If we only heard from the white power structure, and
dismissed what the African American were saying, we would have never
had the Civil Rights Movement."

Students who have had class with Bazian have also rallied to his
defense, calling him an "asset to the students." They said Bazian has
always presented both sides of the issue in his classes, letting
students draw their own conclusions. They also said he has always
been open to discussion and has been an active participant in the
university community.

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French court says Jew-Nazi television skit is not anti-Semitic
Fri, May 28, 2004
Haaretz, "Israel"


PARIS - A controversial comedian's sketch portraying an Orthodox Jew
giving a Hitler salute was not anti-Semitic and cannot be punished
under French law, a Paris court ruled yesterday.

The court threw out charges of racial discrimination brought by four
Jewish and anti-racist organizations against Dieudonne M'Bala M'Bala
for a television sketch that criticized Israel's policy of settling
Jews in the territories.

In the short sketch, Dieudonne dressed as an Orthodox Jewish settler
in combat dress and skullcap, shouted "IsraHeil" and urged young
viewers to join an "American-Zionist axis."

"The court has recognized a comedian's right to criticize the
policies of a state and not be branded an anti-Semite, even if this
state is Israel," Dieudonne's lawyer, Francois Roux, said after the
judgment.

Representing the plaintiffs, Alain Jakubowicz said the ruling
followed the letter of the law but ignored the hurt that the sketch
had caused French Jews.

"The words and acts in question are not criminal, since they do not
address the Jewish community in general or target an individual or
group of individuals because of their Jewish faith," the court ruling
said.

Dieudonne, a French-African humorist, immediately demanded an apology
from Justice Minister Dominique Perben.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/432448.html

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Zionists Discuss MSA

(Insinuations based on suspicions, & malicious Propaganda)

From: MEF News <mefnews@...>
Sent: Tuesday, June 1, 2004 12:02 PM

Islamism's Campus Club: The Muslim Students' Association
by Jonathan Dowd-Gailey
Middle East Quarterly
Spring 2004
http://www.meforum.org/article/603

The northern Virginia-based Muslim Students' Association (MSA) might
easily be taken for a benign student religious group. It promotes
itself as a benevolent, non-political entity devoted to the simple
virtue of celebrating Islam and providing college students a healthy
venue to develop their faith and engage in philanthropy. Along these
lines, its constitution declares the MSA's mission as serving "the
best interest of Islam and Muslims in the United States and Canada so
as to enable them to practice Islam as a complete way of life."[1]

Today, over 150 MSA chapters exist on American college campuses
(divided into five regional chapters), easily establishing this
organization as the most extensive Muslim student organization in
North America. A Washington, D.C.-based national office assists in
the establishment of constituent chapters and oversees fundraising
and conferences while steering a plethora of special committees
and "Political Action Task Forces."

Yet consider some of these recent activities of the MSA:

At a meeting in Queensborough Community College in New York in March
2003, a guest speaker named Faheed declared, "We reject the U.N.,
reject America, reject all law and order. Don't lobby Congress or
protest because we don't recognize Congress. The only relationship
you should have with America is to topple it … Eventually there will
be a Muslim in the White House dictating the laws of Shariah."[2]

During an October 2000 anti-Israeli protest, former MSA president
Ahmed Shama at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) stood
before the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, shouting "Victory to
Islam! Death to the Jews!" MSA West president Sohail Shakr declared
at the same rally, "the biggest impediment to peace [in the Middle
East] has been the existence of the Zionist entity in the middle of
the Muslim world."[3]

Prior to September 11, 2001, the MSA formally assisted three Islamic
charities in fundraising: the Holy Land Foundation, Global Relief,
and Benevolence Foundation. After that date, all three were accused
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of having serious links
to terrorism and were ordered closed. The MSA issued a formal
statement of protest: "How three of the nation's largest Muslim
charities could be made inoperable at the peak of the giving season
of Ramadan seemed unbelievable."[4]

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is overwhelming evidence
that the MSA, far from being a benign student society, is an overtly
political organization seeking to create a single Muslim voice on
U.S. campuses—a voice espousing Wahhabism, anti-Americanism, and anti-
Semitism, agitating aggressively against U.S. Middle East policy, and
expressing solidarity with militant Islamist ideologies, sometimes
with criminal results.

A Saudi Creation
On its website, the MSA describes its emergence as spontaneous and
disavows any link to foreign governments.[5] In fact, the creation of
the MSA resulted from Saudi-backed efforts to found Islamic bodies
internationally in the 1960s. Alex Alexiev of the Center for Security
Policy states,

The Saudis over the years set up a number of large front
organizations, such as the World Muslim League, the World Assembly of
Muslim Youth, the Al Haramain Foundation, and a great number of
Islamic "charities." While invariably claiming that they were
private, all of these groups were tightly controlled and financed by
the Saudi government and the Wahhabi clergy.[6]

In the United States, two leading Saudi-backed organizations were the
MSA and the Islamic Society of North America (the MSA's adult
counterpart), both of which received major funding, direction, and
influence from Riyadh.

Personnel, money, and institutional linkages bound these
organizations together from their inception, and all roads led
eventually to Riyadh. Ahmad Totonji, an MSA co-founder, later served
as vice-president for the notorious Saudi SAAR Foundation (a network
of charities named after Saudi benefactor Sulayman `Abd al-`Aziz ar-
Rajhi), which closed down in 2001 after federal agents discovered
links to terrorist groups.[7] Another MSA co-founder, Ahmad Sakr,
served on a number of Saudi-affiliated organizations, such as the
World Council of Mosques. The MSA is very much a result of
Saudi "petro-Islam" diplomacy.

Current estimates suggest that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia spends $4
billion annually on international aid, with two-thirds of that sum
devoted to strictly Islamic development. Much of this largesse has
ended up at Islamist organizations like MSA. Funded through private
donations or through foundations and charities (only some of which
the MSA officially reports),[8] MSA offers its Saudi benefactors a
powerful tool. However, until the MSA's tax records are made public
(on January 14, 2004, the Senate Finance Committee publicized a list
of Islamic organizations whose financial records are sought,
including the MSA),[9] the exact extent of foreign funding for the
organization cannot be known.

But even without the tax records, there is plenty of evidence for the
MSA's strident advocacy of the Saudi-style Wahhabi interpretation of
Islam. In "Wahhabism: A Critical Essay," Hamid Algar of the
University of California-Berkeley writes,

Some Muslim student organizations have functioned at times as Saudi-
supported channels for the propagation of Wahhabism abroad,
especially in the United States … Particularly in the 1960s and
1970s, no criticism of Saudi Arabia would be tolerated at the annual
conventions of the MSA. The organization has, in fact, consistently
advocated theological and political positions derived from radical
Islamist organizations, including the Muslim Brotherhood and Jamaati
Islam.[10]

The MSA has played a major role in spreading Wahhabism. "Its numerous
local chapters," Algar explains, "would make available at every
Friday prayer large stacks of the [Mecca-based] World Muslim League's
publications, in both English and Arabic. Although the MSA
progressively diversified its connections with Arab states, official
approval of Wahhabism remained strong."[11]

Stephen Schwartz goes further, stating in his June 2003 testimony to
the U.S. Senate's Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security,

Shia and other non-Wahhabi Muslim community leaders estimate that 80
percent of American mosques out of a total ranging between an
official estimate of 1,200 and an unofficial figure of 4-6,000 are
under Wahhabi control … Wahhabi control over mosques means control of
property, buildings, appointment of imams, training of imams, content
of preaching including faxing of Friday sermons from Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia, and of literature distributed in mosques and mosque
bookstores, notices on bulletin boards, and organizational and
charitable solicitation … The main organizations that have carried
out this campaign are the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA),
which originated in the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and
Canada (MSA), and the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
[12]

The MSA reflects a prime characteristic of militant Islamic groups: a
refusal to acknowledge the legitimacy of secular society and personal
spirituality. The MSA's Starters Guide contains an open call to
Islamicize campus politics:

It should be the long-term goal of every MSA to Islamicize the
politics of their respective university … the politicization of the
MSA means to make the MSA more of a force on internal campus
politics. The MSA needs to be a more "In-your-face" association.[13]

All of this, the guide explains, results from the MSA's duty "to
bring morality back into the campus" and to convince students to
practice Islam "as a complete way of life."

In the process, the MSA preaches a creed of "special treatment"
and "self-segregation" that sounds reminiscent of, and may actually
borrow from, Afro-centric campus politics of the 1990s. Demanding
that universities be more "Muslim-friendly," the MSA's newly
established National Religious Accommodations Task Force (RATF)
directs local MSA chapters to insist that universities provide
separate housing and meals for Muslims only.[14]

The politics of segregation practiced by the MSA have included
blanket marginalization of its own female members. Shabana Mir,
writing for the American Muslim, summarizes the plight of Muslim
women on campus:

It is particularly important to know what is happening with Muslim
women pursuing higher education. Many Muslim women in MSAs are
working toward the justice and the equality that Islam ordains for
humankind. A survey of sisters' participation in MSAs conducted in
1994 shows that women's activism in MSAs is at an abysmally low level
due in large part to "brother domination." A related problem
is "there is a common attitude that strict segregation should exist
between the genders and that sisters should not appear in public!" On
an MSA mailing list, a popular article gives a long list of
conditions that women must fulfill to gain access to the mosque.
These include obtaining permission from her male guardian, wearing
hijab [veil], not wearing "fancy clothes" or perfume, not mixing with
men, leaving immediately after the prayer, and so on![15]

Political Monopoly
Just as the MSA promotes a single theology, it similarly projects a
monolithic political voice, one openly antagonistic to Muslim
American diversity and in complete opposition to existing U.S.
foreign policy. Although Muslim students in the United States exhibit
the full range of political views found in America today, the MSA
invariably adopts lopsided adversarial positions, as in these three
cases:

Patriot Act: The MSA categorically opposes this legislation,
describing it as "infamous." Chapters across the country have
agitated against it, as well as against virtually every other
security initiative since 9/11. At an MSA rally at the University of
Pennsylvania, the co-chair of Muslims for Justice declared, "the
Patriot Act is sending us in a backwards spiral, where the
destination is chaos."[16]

Afghanistan: The MSA opposed the military intervention against the
Taliban regime, instead calling for a "police investigation." MSA
National further advised that the entire matter would be best
addressed at the International Criminal Tribunal. MSA chapters
organized rallies demanding a ceasefire and held "Solidarity Fasts"
to honor Afghans who, the MSA charged, would face massive starvation
as a result of the war.

Iraq: Even before the crisis of 2003, the MSA opposed every U.S.
policy towards Iraq over the last twelve years. It strongly opposed
the United Nations (U.N.)-authorized sanctions, claiming that the
sanctions were "nothing short of a systematic genocide being carried
out against civilian people."[17] The MSA condemned former president
Clinton's 1998 strike against Iraq following Saddam Hussein's ouster
of U.N. weapons inspectors, declaring that its "brothers and sisters
in Iraq are once again being terrorized by the self-appointed
champions of democracy."[18]

MSA National consistently pledges support for the war on terror and
claims to merely "represent" student views. But it maintains control
of the political agenda, leaving the chapters simply to mobilize
support. Its chapters pointedly ignored the New York Shi`ites who
held vigils for their Iraqi brethren and the Michigan Kurds who
rallied for Hussein's ouster. The MSA's decision to mobilize against
the Bush administration took place without public debate and with no
attempt at representing diverse views within the MSA. This approach
is in keeping with the MSA's goal, as its official literature states,
that the student body "be convinced that there is such a thing as a
Muslim-bloc."[19]

Muslim students who refuse to submit to the MSA's position often find
themselves harassed by their MSA peers. Oubai Shahbandar, an Arizona
State University (ASU) student, expressed support for the Iraqi
invasion and suffered condemnation from MSA members. Shahbandar
states,

When I, a proud American of Arab descent and Muslim faith, took a
stand on behalf of the liberation of my oppressed Iraqi brethren, the
ASU Muslim Students' Association personally attacked me for not being
a real Muslim and announced to the ASU student body in editorials in
the student paper that I, Oubai Mohammad Shahbandar, was a hater of
Arabs and Muslims.

Shahbandar also explains what the MSA preaches on his campus:

We are told America's foreign policy is based on racist neo-
imperialism; we are taught that national security is a foul epithet
to be reviled; we are told the Jews and Israel are to blame for the
hatred against us.[20]

Playing the Victim
The MSA's adoption of the politics of victimization is reminiscent of
wider campus trends of the 1990s. In the days immediately after the
9/11 attacks, the MSA stated,

In light of the Bush administration's casting blame for the attack on
Osama Bin Laden, MSA National recognizes that Muslim students on
college campuses will be subject to backlash.

Ominously, an "awareness" document describes post 9/11 Homeland
Security policies in the same terms as do extremist Muslims abroad—
that is, as an assault explicitly against Islam. America: Post 9/11,
an MSA document, states,

Soon after [9/11], the attacks against our religion began at the
hands of the media and the political establishment.[21]

Not surprisingly, the MSA has expressed resistance, outrage, and
cynicism with virtually every high-profile arrest of Muslim Americans
charged with conspiring with terrorists. When former University of
South Florida (USF) professor Sami al-Arian was arrested for
directing U.S. operations for the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, the Florida campus MSA chapter held a press conference and
stated:

We come before you today on behalf of the Muslim Student Association
at USF as well as the National Muslim Student Association of the U.S.
and Canada to express our shock, deep concern, and plea for justice
regarding the recent arrests of two USF professors, Dr. Sami al-Arian
and Sameeh Hammoudeh … we are concerned that the USF professors were
arrested for their political views.

The problem is that the MSA has been unable or unwilling to recognize
that some Muslims, including its members, have crossed the line
between political advocacy and material support for jihadist
activities. In fact, MSA members and activities have repeatedly
surfaced in police investigations. Some of these arrests received
national media coverage, including the following:

In February 2003, former head of the MSA chapter at the University of
Idaho, Sami Omar al-Hussayen, was arrested with an indictment that he
raised over $300,000 for the Islamic Assembly of North America, a
group under federal investigation for funding terrorist groups. FBI
agents believed Hussayen was communicating with two radical clerics,
nicknamed the "awakening sheikhs," known for inspiring young Muslims
to pursue the path of jihad and credited as major ideological mentors
to Osama bin Laden.[22]

In April 2003, the home of Arizona State University MSA president
Hassan Alrafea was raided by the FBI, whose agents confiscated his
computer and unspecified documents.[23]

Extreme Friends
In 2002, when the number of anti-Semitic attacks in Europe hit a
twelve-year high, French Jewish leader Roger Cukierman observed a
peculiar phenomenon on the European street —a loose fusing of extreme
Left, Right, and Muslim political forces—what Cukierman terms
the "brown-green-red alliance."[24] The three disparate
constituencies have incompatible ideologies, but all three have a
shared hatred for the pluralized world order, globalized market
economies, U.S. preponderance, and the state of Israel. Cukierman has
observed these forces forming an alliance of convenience in the post-
9/11 world with potentially dangerous results.

The same pattern is also emerging in the United States with groups of
the extreme Left forging bonds with specific Muslim organizations,
and here again we find the MSA figures prominently. Given the MSA's
propensity for radical politics in a campus environment, it is no
surprise that it has become arguably the Muslim organization most
enmeshed with American leftists. Consider the following:

Perhaps as a reward for its total opposition to every U.S. policy
since the September 2001 attacks, the MSA has been given a seat on
the steering committee for International ANSWER (Act Now to Stop War
and End Racism). ANSWER is an organization dedicated to defending
rogue states and fighting "U.S. imperialism," and has been
distinguished by its ability to organize the largest peace
demonstrations in North America. ANSWER was formed by International
Action Center, a communist organization that supports Stalinist
regimes worldwide, including North Korea and Hussein's Iraq. [25]

In its aggressive protest activities against recent Middle East wars,
the MSA has developed strong working ties with numerous activist
groups of the extreme Left. Among them: Free Palestine Alliance,
Nicaragua Network, Kensington Welfare Rights Union, Mexico Solidarity
Network, Korea Truth Commission, Young Communist League, Young
Peoples' Socialist League, and Black Radical Congress.

As these examples suggest, the MSA boasts institutional ties with a
host of radical issue-specific activist groups, all of them
vehemently opposed to U.S. policy, and many of them openly anti-
American.

The Center for Security Policy's Alex Alexiev argues,

The majority of Muslim Student Associations at U.S. colleges are
dominated by Islamist and anti-American agendas, as are most of the
numerous Islamic centers and schools financed by the Saudis.
Intolerance and outright rejection of American values and democratic
ideals are often taught also in the growing number of Deobandi
schools that are frequently subsidized by the Saudis.[26]

The following examples illustrate both the degree and pervasiveness
of hate-America vitriol that characterize the MSA:

Taliban propaganda is featured on the website of the University of
Southern California MSA chapter.[27]

One featured article in Al-Talib (a magazine developed by the UCLA
chapter of the MSA and not affiliated with the Taliban of
Afghanistan) entitled, "The Spirit of Jihad," praised Osama bin Laden
as a "prominent Muslim activist." The article goes on to say,

When we hear someone refer to the great mujahideen Osama bin Laden as
a `terrorist,' we should defend our brother and refer to him as a
freedom fighter; someone who has forsaken wealth and power to fight
in Allah's cause and speak out against oppressors. [28]
Another Al-Talib article entitled "Americanization" states,

A dangerous weapon has once again been unfurled by the U.S. military
in this War on Terrorism … This weapon comes in the form of cultural
warfare … In this new War on Terrorism, the colossal brunt of this
production machine is now squarely targeted at the Muslim population.
[29]
At an Al-Talib event to offer support for Imam Jamil al-Amin,
convicted of killing a policeman, guest speaker Imam Abdul-Alim Musa
said,

When you fight [the U.S.] you are fighting someone that is superior
in criminality and Nazism … the American criminalizer is the most
skillful oppressor the world has ever known …They beat the British at
everything, isn't that right? They are a better colonizer, a better
murderer, a better killer, a better liar, a better thief, a better
infiltrator than old British.[30]
This anti-Americanism blends together almost seamlessly with a
virulent discourse against the Jews and Israel. Consider the
following:

At the 2001 MSA West conference, hosted by UCLA, cleric Imam Muhammad
al-Asi stated,

Israel is as racist as apartheid could ever be … you can take a Jew
out of the ghetto, but you can't take the ghetto out of the Jew.[31]
The MSA continues to celebrate violence against Israel on its
websites. At the MSA Northwest site, for example, images of Hamas
suicide squads and child soldiers are proudly displayed above
jihadist poetry, whose verse (erratically capitalized) celebrates
violence:

two soldiers spotted me in their sight … i had to blast 4 shots
hitting each one in the face and waist. a trace of blood drips from
my arm as i make my away thru streets with an injured zionist as a
hostage … seen a group of israeli soldiers run out and began pulling
the trigger when sounds of rounds began playing a deadly melody. Each
gun dropped two …[32]
In 2002, the MSA at the University of Michigan helped host the Second
National Student Conference for Palestine Solidarity Movement. At
that conference, one of the guest speakers was ex-University of
Florida professor Sami al-Arian, who is now awaiting trial on
terrorism-related charges.

Self-Defeating
Ironically, although one of the founding missions of the MSA is to
increase favorable awareness of Muslim life among non-Muslims, the
effect of the MSA's activities is the opposite: they confirm the
worst suspicions of American society at large. The MSA's refusal to
identify jihadists and jihadist sympathizers within its ranks, its
indiscriminate opposition to U.S. policies following the September 11
attacks, its vitriolic anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric, and
its solidarity with "Leftover Left" radical activist organizations,
together reinforce an image that the MSA, and by extension, Muslim
college students, are a divisive, angry, and potentially violent
group on our campuses. By monopolizing the Muslim student voice in
America with "radical chic" to create a "single Muslim bloc," an
opportunity to forge a healthy discourse on the diverse attitudes of
Muslim students is lost to the confrontational language of radical
dissent and resistance.

Universities that host student organizations have an obligation to
enforce basic standards of conduct, standards that the MSA has
clearly breached. At the very least, MSA's most egregious behavior
must face censure from those responsible for monitoring student
conduct. University administrators must unchain themselves from
cultural relativism and the ideology of "validation" and deal
squarely with such misdeeds.

More importantly, however, the problem of the Muslim Students'
Association illustrates the great question that confronts the West
today: how does it cultivate liberalism in Muslim communities living
at home and abroad? Just as the U.S. policy of détente with the Arab
world collapsed after September 11, to be replaced by a "forward
strategy of democracy," it may be time to adopt a "forward strategy"
within U.S. borders, focused on promoting moderate voices in mosques
and campuses. To improve campus life for Muslims and non-Muslims
alike, universities should work with moderate students to inaugurate
a new Muslim students' organization, one that eschews the radical
politics of the "old world" in favor of authenticity, diversity, and
integration. A new Muslim student organization would return to the
primary mission of religiously-based campus groups—to celebrate and
share in the fellowship of faith.

Jonathan Dowd-Gailey is a writer in Washington State.

[1] "The Constitution of the Muslim Students' Association of the U.S.
and Canada," Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada,
Washington, D.C., at http://www.msa-
national.org/about/constitution.html.
[2] WorldNetDaily, Mar. 18, 2003, at
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=31571.
[3] Frontpage Magazine, Apr. 4, 2003, at
http://www.frontpagemagazine.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7098.
[4] Sakeena Mirza and Ameena Qazi, "Robbing the Poor," al-Talib, vol.
12, no. 3, at http://www.al-talib.com/articles/v12_i3_a04.htm.
[5] "A Little Taste of History," Muslim Students' Association of U.S.
and Washington, D.C., at http://www.msa-
national.org/about/history.html.
[6] Alex Alexiev, "The Missing Link in the War on Terror: Confronting
Saudi Subversion," Center for Security Policy, at
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?
section=static&page=alexiev.
[7] FrontPage Magazine, Apr. 23, 2003, at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7395.
[8] "List of Organizations that Donate Islamic Books and Da'wah
Materials," Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada,
Washington, D.C., at http://www.msa-
natl.org/resources/Donation_Books.html.
[9] "Senators Request Tax Information on Muslim Charities for Probe,"
Bureau of International Information Programs, U.S. Department of
State, Jan. 14, 2003, at
http://usinfo.state.gov/xarchives/display.html?p=washfile-
english&y=2004&m=January&x=20040114155543zemogb0.8868524&t=usinfo/wf-
latest.html. For details, see http://www.danielpipes.org/blog/164.
[10] Hamid Algar, "Wahhabism: A Critical Essay," in Yvonne Yazbeck
Haddad and Adair T. Lummis, eds., Islamic Values in the United States
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 124.
[11] Ibid..
[12] Stephen Schwartz, "Terrorism: Growing Wahhabi Influence in the
United States," testimony before the U.S. Senate Committee on the
Judiciary, June 26, 2003, at
http://www.globalsecurity.org/security/library/congress/2003_h/030626-
schwartz.htm.
[13] MSA Starter's Guide: A Guide on How to Run a Successful MSA, 1st
ed. (Washington, D.C.: Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and
Canada, Mar. 1996), at http://www.msa-
natl.org/publications/startersguide.html.
[14] "Religious Accommodations Task Force," Muslim Students'
Association of the U.S. and Canada, Washington, D.C., at
http://www.msa-national.org/taskforces/religious.html.
[15] Shabana Mir, "Gender-based Exclusionism at a Muslim Student
Association, Part I," The American Muslim, July/Aug. 2003, at
http://www.theamericanmuslim.org/2003jul_comments.php?
id=347_0_21_0_C.
[16] "Rally against the Patriot Act," University of Pennsylvania
Muslim Students' Association, at http://www.upenn-
msa.org/subcommittees/pmj/patriotact.html.
[17] "MSA National Demands an Immediate End to the Inhumane U.N.
Sanctions," Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada,
Washington, D.C., Apr. 6, 2001, at http://www.msa-
national.org/media/pressreleases/040601.html.
[18] "Muslim Students Condemn U.S. Attack on Iraq," Muslim Students'
Association of the U.S. and Canada, Washington, D.C., Dec. 17, 1998
at http://www.msa-national.org/media/pressreleases/121798.html.
[19] MSA Starter's Guide, at http://www.msa-
natl.org/publications/startersguide.html.
[20] Oubai Mohammad Shahbandar, "Open Letter from an Arab-American
Student," FrontPage Magazine, June 2, 2003, at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=8143.
[21] "MSA National Political Action Task Force, America: Post 9/11,"
Muslim Students' Association of the U.S. and Canada, Washington,
D.C., at http://www.msa-
national.org/media/actionalerts/political.pdf.
[22] The Wall Street Journal, May 29, 2003.
[23] Oubai Shahbandar, "U.S. Muslims as Patriots," The Arizona
Republic, Oct. 11, 2003.
[24] Quoted by Mark Strauss, "Anti-Globalism's Jewish Problem,"
Foreign Policy, Nov./Dec. 2003.
[25] "National Conference against War, Colonial Occupation and
Imperialism, May 17-18, New York City," ANSWER, at
http://www.internationalanswer.org/news/update/041203m17conf.html.
[26] Alexiev, "This Missing Link on the War on Terror," at
http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/index.jsp?
section=static&page=alexiev.
[27] Syed Rahmatullah Hashimi, "Taliban in Afghanistan," University
of Southern California, Los Angeles, Mar. 10, 2001, at
http://www.usc.edu/dept/MSA/Taliban/talebanlec.html.
[28] Al-Talib, July 1999, quoted in FrontPageMagazine.com, Apr. 23,
2003, at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Printable.asp?ID=7113.
Al-Talib is listed as an official MSA Project by the UCLA chapter of
MSA, at http://www.msa-ucla.com/projects.htm.
[29] Ghaith Mahmood, "Americanization: Solutions for a Small Planet?"
al-Talib, vol. 12, no. 3, at http://www.al-
talib.com/articles/v12_i3_a05.htm.
[30] Erick Stakelbeck, "Islamic Radicals on Campus," FrontPage
Magazine, Apr. 23, 2003, at
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7395.
[31]"UCLA Sponsors of Terrorism," FrontPage Magazine, Apr. 4, 2003,
at http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=7098.
[32] Atlantiz Miztery, "Palestine in War," South Seattle Community
College Muslim Students' Association, at
http://sscc.msanw.org/forum.htm.

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Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides

by
Doug Thompson
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
June 4, 2004

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic
behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the
West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express
growing concern over their leader's state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration
officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible
in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media,
Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies
of the state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man
on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree
with him and paranoid of a public that no longer
trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime
GOP political consultant with contacts in the White
House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to
get him. That's the mood over there."

In interviews with a number of White House staffers
who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of
an administration under siege has emerged, led by a
man who declares his decisions to be "God's will" and
then tells aides to "fuck over" anyone they consider
to be an opponent of the administration.

"We're at war, there's no doubt about it. What I
don't know anymore is just who the enemy might be,"
says one troubled White House aide. "We seem to spend
more time trying to destroy John Kerry than al Qaeda
and our enemies list just keeps growing and growing."

Aides say the President gets "hung up on minor
details," micromanaging to the extreme while ignoring
the bigger picture. He will spend hours personally
reviewing and approving every attack ad against his
Democratic opponent and then kiss off a meeting on
economic issues.

"This is what is killing us on Iraq," one aide says.
"We lost focus. The President got hung up on the
weapons of mass destruction and an unproven link to
al Qaeda. We could have found other justifiable
reasons for the war but the President insisted the
focus stay on those two, tenuous items."

Aides who raise questions quickly find themselves
shut out of access to the President or other top
advisors. Among top officials, Bush's inner circle is
shrinking. Secretary of State Colin Powell has fallen
out of favor because of his growing doubts about the
administration's war against Iraq.

The President's abrupt dismissal of CIA Directory
George Tenet Wednesday night is, aides say, an
example of how he works.

"Tenet wanted to quit last year but the President got
his back up and wouldn't hear of it," says an aide.
"That would have been the opportune time to make a
change, not in the middle of an election campaign but
when the director challenged the President during the
meeting Wednesday, the President cut him off by
saying 'that's it George. I cannot abide disloyalty.
I want your resignation and I want it now."

Tenet was allowed to resign "voluntarily" and Bush
informed his shocked staff of the decision Thursday
morning. One aide says the President actually
described the decision as "God's will."

God may also be the reason Attorney General John
Ashcroft, the administration's lightning rod because
of his questionable actions that critics argue
threatens freedoms granted by the Constitution,
remains part of the power elite. West Wing staffers
call Bush and Ashcroft "the Blues Brothers" because
"they're on a mission from God."

"The Attorney General is tight with the President
because of religion," says one aide. "They both
believe any action is justifiable in the name of
God."

But the President who says he rules at the behest of
God can also tongue-lash those he perceives as
disloyal, calling them "fucking assholes" in front of
other staff, berating one cabinet official in front
of others and labeling anyone who disagrees with him
"unpatriotic" or "anti-American."

"The mood here is that we're under siege, there's no
doubt about it," says one troubled aide who admits he
is looking for work elsewhere. "In this
administration, you don't have to wear a turban or
speak Farsi to be an enemy of the United States. All
you have to do is disagree with the President."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Forwarded by
La Voz de Aztlan
http://www.aztlan.net

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ISRAEL: NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T
Robert L. Jamieson, Jr., Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/29/04
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/jamieson/175412_robert28.html

King County Democrats just pulled off a nifty magic trick.

They made Israel disappear.

Not the country, mind you, but the word -- as it had appeared in
proposed language for the party's 2004 county platform.

The plank called for the United States to stop sending aid to Israel
unless it treats the Palestinian people with dignity and respect. But
when county Democrats, preparing for the big state convention, ironed
out the final wrinkles of the platform Tuesday, "Israel" vanished.

Poof.

The whole thing makes me wonder if the "party of the people" is open
to all so long as influential toes are not stepped on. Do that, and
the Democrats suddenly become "the party of select folks who must be
tip-toed around."

I'm talking, of course, about supporters of Israel.

This tale of abracadabra began May 8, when the King County Democratic
Party gathered for a convention in Seattle. It was a time when
thinking people could put forth thoughtful planks for the platform.

Naseem Tuffaha, a Seattle businessman and a voice of consciousness in
the Arab American community, offered this: "We believe our tax
dollars should not be sent to Israel while it is in violation of
international law."



At least one hand rose up in opposition to his words. A debate, which
is a normal part of the process, ensued. Then, more than 200 people
voted. The plank passed by a slim margin.

On the same weekend, the Seattle chapter of the Council on American-
Islamic Relations met for its annual banquet. The group's vice
chairwoman, Samia El-Moslimany, told a crowd of hundreds about the
vote. "This," she said, "is a memorable day."

Those words had barely left her mouth when a draft of the county
Democrat's 2004 platform started to make the rounds.

Surprise.

The specific mention of Israel and tax dollars was nowhere in sight,
though a platform plank did mention the "United States should commit
to vigorous, serious and persistent engagement in a peaceful
resolution of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict."

Did someone prefer much blander language? Did someone purposely nix
the sharper call to action? What happened?

"Good question," Tuffaha said.

After Tuffaha's plank was voted on -- and affirmed -- the party was
besieged. Greg Rodriguez, chairman of the county Democrats, received
calls and e-mails in opposition. Conservative radio wordsmith Michael
Medved fired away, too, suggesting that the resolution was an
embarrassment for the Democrats. In a radio interview with Medved,
Rodriguez sounded a tad defensive. "Personally, I do not believe in
this platform plank," he said, adding, "I was actually not even aware
that this had been put in."

Hmmm ...

What troubles me more than the bungling, left-footed backtracking is
the way the plank's language ended up on the cutting room floor.

Democrats can be so sanctimonious and smug about "the process"
and "inclusiveness." It boggles the mind that an issue democratically
supported by the diverse grass roots -- and not just Arab Americans
or Muslims -- somehow failed to show up in drafts of the platform.

"It was inadvertently left out," Rodriguez explained -- or tried to.

He mentioned mumbo jumbo about procedural this-and-that. "It was a
mistake by my platform committee chair. There was no covert operation
to make sure that (plank) didn't get in."

Rodriguez told me the mention about Israel and U.S. tax dollars would
reappear in platform language in time for the meeting held a few
nights ago.

It did, as if by magic.

But the plank lasted shorter than a rabbit in a black top hat.

At the Tuesday night meeting to finalize the county platform, someone
proposed adding two other countries -- Colombia and Egypt. They also
receive hefty amounts of U.S. foreign aid despite human rights woes.
Just don't pick on Israel alone.

Someone pointed out, lest anyone forget, Israel is a valuable buddy
of the United States.

One person proposed that the entire plank that mentions Israel be
watered -- or was that hosed? -- down.

As the proposals and counterproposals flitted and fluttered, one
couldn't help appreciating the Democrats' dilemma.

Liberal-leaning King County is home to many people -- including
impassioned Jews -- who are sympathetic to the plight of Palestinians.

The county also has a vibrant Jewish and pro-Israel community that
has backed Democrats for generations.

When county party honchos emerged from behind closed doors the other
night, a verdict was in. This is how the final plank on the hot-
button issue reads: "No U.S. tax dollars should be given to any
nation while said nation is in violation of international law as
determined by the United Nations."

And Israel?

It was gone, voila, just like that -- thanks to political Merlins who
decided 'tis better to dis the democratic process and the grass roots
than ruffle friends in high places.

P-I columnist Robert L. Jamieson Jr. can be reached at 206-448-8125
or robertjamieson@...

=================
ZINNI CHARGES NEOCONS PUSHED IRAQ WAR TO BENEFIT ISRAEL
Ori Nir And Ami Eden, Forward, 5/28/04
http://forward.com/main/article.php?ref=eden200405271245

The simmering debate over the role of Jewish neoconservatives in
drawing America into war in Iraq erupted with new fury this week. One
of America's most respected ex-generals took to the airwaves to
charge on CBS News' "60 Minutes" that the war had been fought for
Israel's benefit, just days after a similar charge was leveled on the
floor of the U.S. Senate.

The retired general, Anthony Zinni, a past chief of the U.S. Central
Command and President Bush's former Middle East special envoy,
told "60 Minutes" on Sunday that the neoconservatives' role in
pushing the war for Israel's benefit was "the worst-kept secret in
Washington." Three days earlier, Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, a
South Carolina Democrat, rose on the Senate floor to defend a
newspaper essay he had written earlier in the month making the same
charge. Both men complained that they had been unfairly labeled
antisemitic for speaking out.

Their comments come just weeks after the United Nations' special
envoy to Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, called Israel a "poison in the
region" and said that American support for Israeli policies was
making his job more difficult.

In the face of these mounting criticisms, a leading Jewish Democrat on
Capitol Hill, Rep. Nita Lowey of New York, told the Forward that the
president's policies were increasing the danger to Jews across the
world...

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'They have no humanity. They didn't even give us two minutes to get
out'

By Chris McGreal

The Guardian
4 June 2004

http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,1231056,00.html

Last month, Israeli troops swept into the Rafah refugee camp in
Gaza, bulldozing hundreds of homes and leaving around 60 dead.
Israel says it was looking for terrorists, but by the time the army
withdrew, 1,600 people were homeless. What happens to the people
whose houses are destroyed? Chris McGreal asked six families to
show him what they salvaged from the rubble


The Al-Akhras family

There is nothing left of the Akhras' family's home. Even the cloths
blowing in the breeze above their heads, providing a pathetic,
makeshift tent to the once nomadic Bedouin family, are borrowed
from luckier neighbours. A large round metal bowl is all that they
recovered from the rubble of their house after it was bulldozed by
the Israeli army.

"There were 10 rooms here," says the 50-year-old patriarch, Ghazi.
"Thirty-three people lived in the house. There was me, my wife, my
seven brothers and their wives, and all our sons and daughters."

It was 10pm when the bulldozers came. "All the people were fleeing
their houses, but one of my brothers is handicapped and was trapped
in the house. We had to carry him out as the bulldozer was hitting
the building."

All that remains of the house is a mound of concrete and dirt. The
destruction by the bulldozer was so complete that some of the walls
have been ground to a rubble reminiscent of the rocky desert beyond
the fence.

Like many other families in Rafah, the Akhras family has been made
homeless before. Ghazi came from Yibna after the Israeli army,
under the command of Ariel Sharon, then military governor of Gaza,
bulldozed his home in 1971. "We bought the house here from the
Israelis. We had the documents to show it. We saved nothing, not
even the documents," he says. "This is more than the catastrophe of
1948 for us. In 1948 there were no Apaches shooting at us."

Akhras, who worked as a builder in Israel before the intifada,
cannot afford to rebuild. "I have no money to do it. Now we are all
homeless, living in houses of relations. During the day we come and
sit on the rubble, under the tent, because the relations do not
want us in their house all day. At night we go there just to
sleep."

The Abu Ghali family

Aziza Abu Ghali is exhausted by her fury and can barely stand. "My
husband is 90 years old and has nowhere to sleep. The Jews are just
demolishing our houses. I was shouting at the bulldozer driver:
'Don't you have children?' They kill our sons and put us in the
morgue. We are praying to Allah to show them the suffering that
they show us."

Aziza is one of the few in her street who remember how they all
ended up in Rafah in 1948, just as the Israeli state was being
created. She was born in the now extinct village of Yubna, which
was erased and replaced with the Israeli town of Yavne. Four of her
children - three sons and a daughter - were born there also. "The
Jews used their guns to make us go away. They tell lies about this
now, saying we ran away on our own. Who would leave their home
unless they had to? We only left to save the lives of our children.
I was a young woman then. I never imagined that the Jews would
still be doing this to me."

When the bulldozers came this time, Aziza was asleep. Her husband,
Yousef, was in a bed in a neighbouring room. Their son and his
family lived across a small yard in two other rooms.

All that was recovered from the wreckage was Yousef's wheelchair.
The corner of his bed sticks out from the rubble. Their fridge is
tossed on top, wrecked. A metal ceiling fan, its blades buckled
like a withering flower, hangs from a surviving wall.

Yousef's son, Sobhi, a nurse in a UN clinic, says his father was
lucky to escape. "All day there was shooting. There was a tank near
our house and I was afraid to even put my head out of the door.
There were Israeli snipers on the top of the buildings. It was
dangerous just to show your face.

"I was awake the whole night. I could hear sounds of houses being
demolished. At first light I could hear my father knocking at my
mother's room saying he wanted to go to dawn prayers. He is almost
totally deaf. I wanted to call to him and tell him to stay indoors
because they might shoot, but he came out and I had to rush to
rescue him."

The family sheltered for a few more hours until the bulldozer's
attention turned to their own house, home to 13 people. "I saw the
house was about to be demolished. I just picked up my son and my
father and dragged them away. We ran out into where the shooting
was. The bulldozer driver was indifferent to us. They saw us and
knew we were inside. We had just a few minutes to get away. We were
crying and shouting at them. I was carrying my father on my
shoulders. I don't think he even understood what was happening."

The Al-Wawi family


Mousa Joma al-Wawi has a long history with Ariel Sharon. "We call
him 'the bulldozer'. This is not the first time he's done this to
us. The first time was in 1971," says the 54-year-old grandfather,
standing amid the rubble of his home in the al-Brazil neighbourhood
in Rafah.

Like many in Rafah, the latest round of mass demolitions was not
the first time that Wawi had been bulldozed out of his home. He
counts off the times he has had to flee his house.

"I was a refugee before I was even born. My mother was pregnant
when she fled our village, Zarnuga, when the Jews came in 1948. The
house is still standing. There's a Jew living in it. My mother
moved to a tent in Khan Younis (a little north of Rafah) and then
to Rafah, where I was born."

Wawi's introduction to the bulldozers came in the 70s, when General
Sharon, as he then was, bulldozed about 20,000 people from their
homes in the Gaza Strip to widen roads as part of his strategy
against the Palestine Liberation Organisation.

"Sharon destroyed our house. The UN and Israelis built us new ones
in Yibna [a Rafah neighbourhood]. They sold the house to us. I have
all my documents. The house had a tiled roof and two rooms. It was
1.5m high and 3m long by 2.5m wide. When we became a bigger family,
we expanded it."

But the bulldozers were back in 1997, as the Israeli army destroyed
the very homes it had built for Palestinian refugees about 25 years
earlier. The Wawi family fled to the al-Brazil neighbourhood of
Rafah and, over the years, built up a new home.

There were about 20 men, women and children crammed into the back
room of Wawi's home on the corner of an al-Brazil street when the
demolition squads arrived. They had not dared to venture out
because of the bullets flying round the street, but now they had to
escape.

"My brother lives next door," says Wawi. "We were all in this room
and my brother came with a hammer and smashed a hole in the wall.
The bulldozer was hitting the house. We carried nothing at all. We
were just trying to escape by ourselves ... Some of the pigeons
survived."

Among the rubble lies the water tank, pierced by bullets, a broken
bedside table and the remnants of a wardrobe. A hanging basket of
red flowers magically survived unscathed, and the family pulled
some blankets, pillows and a child's toy plastic bike from the
rubble.

Where will they go now? "This is still my home," says Wawi. "We
will clean it and we will bring tents in. If they want to shoot me
in my home - shoot me, my sons, my grandchildren - we cannot stop
them. We are staying, no matter what."

The Mikkawi family


Rula Abu Abid grips her doll as if it is all she has left in the
world. It is called Larla and its head is buried in the rubble of
her home. Rula asked her grandfather, Hassan Mikkawi, if they would
ever find it. The 61-year-old motor mechanic - "the most famous
mechanic in Rafah" - reassured the five-year-old that one day they
would have the strength to sift through the rubble to look.

One building in the family compound, which provided homes for two
of his sons and their families, has been completely demolished. The
armoured bulldozer ripped the front out of his own home, crushing
furniture, destroying much of the living room and wrecking the
bedroom. The surviving furniture is battered and splintered. Not
much else was saved: a toolbox, a crate of onions, a large metal
bowl, a bedside table, some blankets. Mikkawi's car was flattened
by the massive bulldozer.

"I lived in America illegally for more than a year. It was 1996,"
he says, pulling out an Alabama driving licence to prove it. "I had
good work as a motor mechanic, but I came back here. I often wonder
why, but I could not take my family to America. When I came back,
we thought things would be peaceful. We thought there would be no
more demolitions."

Hassan Mikkawi was six years old when he fled his own village,
Zarnuga, as it was seized by the fledgling Israeli army in 1948.
There were about 2,500 Arabs living there, many of whom ended up in
Rafah.

"I remember the garden and the mosque. At that time there were no
tanks, but I remember the shooting. I remember my mother and my
father and my brother weeping. And I remember us running away and
my father carrying some food and some clothes. It was the same then
as it is now.

"We arrived in Gaza in 1948 and came to Rafah a year later. In 1967
the Israelis crushed our home and they wanted to send us to Sinai
or the West Bank but we refused. My father built a house here. Two
rooms with a bathroom. You can see we made it much bigger, much
grander."

There were 16 people living in the house when the bulldozers
arrived for the most recent demolition. The family ran, waving
white headscarves. When they returned, the parts of the house that
were not destroyed teetered precariously. A forest of scaffolding
is all that keeps it standing.

The Abu Hasaneen family


Raesa Khalel Abu Hasaneen has 10 children. Their small home was
always a little cramped; the boys sleeping in one room, the girls
in another. But all that is left now is the kitchen, where some of
the children bed down next to a piece of netting where once there
was a wall, and the bathroom.

"We didn't expect this to happen here. The Israelis say they are
looking for [weapons-smuggling] tunnels but we are too far away
from the border to have tunnels.

"We heard the bulldozer and we saw the walls shaking. I put my
children in one room and I went to the bulldozer and said there
were children in the house. The children were all crying. The
driver kept bulldozing. I was crying and shouting and begging and
waving a white flag.

"The men smashed a hole in the wall to the neighbour's house. They
had pieces of wood and they were hitting and hitting. They all came
to help us."

The family escaped, but not much was recovered from the rubble. A
couple of kerosene lanterns and many of the children's schoolbooks
survived, as did the kitchen furniture and fridge. But all the beds
and clothes are gone.

"The children don't want to go to school in these clothes. They
have been wearing them for days. They are ashamed," she says.

"This was my home for 22 years. I moved here when I married my
husband. There's nothing better than this home. I am sleeping on
the stone floor now, but I'm staying here for my dignity. I have no
idea how we will rebuild it. My husband used to be a builder in
Israel but he is not allowed to work there anymore. We have no
money to rebuild.

"They only have malice against all Palestinians because the Jews
don't want to see Palestinians as people. They just want to destroy
us."

The Abu Masod family

Mohammed Abu Masod says the graffiti on the shell of his home and
factory was nothing to do with him, but he sympathises with its
sentiment. Sprayed on to what had been one of the building's
floors, now sloping precariously after an army bulldozer ripped the
supporting wall away, is a Star of David next to a Nazi swastika.
The equation deeply offends almost all Israelis, and Palestinians
know it. But Abu Masod, sitting in the rubble of the business that
fed his extended family, sees what he describes as a common lack of
humanity between the two.

"They do not see us as human beings. They have no humanity. Look at
the Jewish settlers: they live so well and we live so badly because
of it. And then what little we have the Jews destroy. They didn't
give us two minutes to get out. They were slapping us in the face.
They called us terrorists. Who are the terrorists now?"

One in three buildings in Masod's street were demolished by the
armoured bulldozers. All that emerged from what had been his
factory, which made car carpets and seat covers, is a couple of
ruined sewing machines, a few blankets and a battered car seat.

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Jail or war? Soldier chooses jail
By FinalCall.com News
May 31, 2004
http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1445.shtml


Pending Draft Legislation Targeted for Spring 2005 (Congress.org)
Draft dilemma (UK Guardian, 05-31-2004)

(FinalCall.com) - For Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia, a nine-year military
veteran, the choice between going back to Iraq to fight or facing a
court martial and jail seemed easy. He chose the court martial. He
was found guilty of desertion in a May 21 military trial held at Fort
Stewart, Ga.

He told the jurors, before they considered his sentence, "I have no
regrets. Not one," reported Associated Press. "It would be sad to go
to jail… But I will take it, because I will go there with my honor,
knowing I have done the right thing."

Sergeant Mejia joins the other 1,076 soldiers who deserted their
units in Iraq between October 2003 and March 2004, according to the
Army.

This started last October when Sgt. Mejia returned to the U.S. from
Iraq on a two-week furlough. Instead of returning to his Florida
National Guard Unit, he went into hiding.

In March, he held a press conference, where he criticized his
commanding officers and accused them of putting soldiers at
unnecessary risk, according to The Washington Post. Sgt. Mejia then
turned himself in to authorities at Hanscom Air Force Base in
Massachusetts.

His experience in Iraq—which included a bloody ambush where civilians
were caught in the crossfire and confusion led to the death of an
Iraqi child—changed his mind about all wars. He was reported as
saying that the war in Iraq was "oil driven."

Sergeant Mejia joins the other 1,076 soldiers who deserted their
units in Iraq between October 2003 and March 2004, according to the
Army. This number, they also report, is fewer than those who deserted
their units during the same period last year.

The rigors of war became unsettling for Sgt. Mejia. His lawyer, Louis
Font, a specialist in military law, told The Washington Post that
Sgt. Mejia had been ordered to deprive Iraqi prisoners at a detention
facility of sleep.

Mr. Font plans to raise this issue when he appeals Sgt. Mejia's
conviction to the U.S. Army Court of Appeals. Another point of
contention for Mr. Font, a West Point graduate and Vietnam
conscientious objector, is that Sgt. Mejia should have been
discharged a year ago because he is a non-citizen.

There is a National Guard regulation that limits the amount of time
those without citizenship can serve to eight years. Sgt. Mejia was
born in Nicaragua and has permanent U.S. resident status, but not
citizenship.

He was a dad attending the University of Miami, ready to graduate
when his unit was called to duty in Iraq.

At the trial, the prosecution painted a picture, with Sgt. Mejia's
commanding officers, of an inferior soldier that put his unit, the
1st Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment, at risk because of his
absence.

In his closing statement, the lead prosecutor, Capt. Balbo said, "The
defense says (Mejia) accomplished all of his missions, except the
most important one—showing up," reported The Washington Post.

The article continues that Mr. Font told the juror that his client
believed that, "because he had become a conscientious objector, he
would not be required to serve in Iraq anymore."

That application is being processed separately from this trial.

Sgt. Mejia was sentenced to one year in prison, a bad conduct charge
and a reduction in rank.

Speaking for the Florida National Guard, Lt. Col. Ron E. Tittle told
reporters, "We have faith in the justice system and think the outcome
was fair."

http://www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/article_1445.shtml

===============
'GOOKS' TO 'HAJIS'
Bob Herbert, New York Times, 5/21/04
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/21/opinion/21HERB.html

The hapless Jeremy Sivits got the headlines yesterday. A mechanic
whose job was to service gasoline-powered generators, Specialist
Sivits was sentenced to a year in prison and thrown out of the Army
for accepting an invitation to take part in the sadistic treatment of
Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

But there's another soldier in serious trouble to whom we should be
paying even closer attention. His case doesn't just call into
question the treatment of prisoners by U.S. forces. It calls into
question this entire abominable war.

Staff Sgt. Camilo Mejia is a 28-year-old member of the Florida
National Guard who served six harrowing months in Iraq, went home to
Miami on a furlough last October, and then refused to return to his
unit when the furlough ended.

Sergeant Mejia has been charged with desertion. His court-martial at
Fort Stewart, Ga., began Wednesday, the same day that Specialist
Sivits pleaded guilty to the charges against him. If Sergeant Mejia
is convicted, he will face a similar punishment, a year in prison and
a bad-conduct discharge.

Sergeant Mejia told me in a long telephone interview this week that
he had qualms about the war from the beginning but he followed his
orders and went to Iraq in April 2003. He led an infantry squad and
saw plenty of action. But the more he thought about the war -
including the slaughter of Iraqi civilians, the mistreatment of
prisoners (which he personally witnessed), the killing of children,
the cruel deaths of American G.I.'s (some of whom are the targets of
bounty hunters in search of a reported $2,000 per head), the
ineptitude of inexperienced, glory-hunting military officers who at
times are needlessly putting U.S. troops in even greater danger, and
the growing rage among coalition troops against all Iraqis (known
derisively as "hajis," the way the Vietnamese were known as "gooks") -
the more he thought about these things, the more he felt that this
war could not be justified, and that he could no longer be part of
it...

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Time to put the US media on trial for complicity in genocide?

Nigel Parry, The Electronic Intifada, 4 June 2004

http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article2793.shtml

Following pressure from the Israeli public, international
condemnations and a UN resolution, and a flurry of rare coverage of
Rafah from American cable news networks, Israel's "Operation Rainbow"
was 'concluded' in Rafah on 24 May 2004. According to Israel at least.

Since then, during a one week period in Rafah (27 May-2 June 2004),
Israel destroyed another 39 Palestinian homes, leaving at least
another 485 Palestinian civilians homeless, and razed another 24
dunums[1] of Palestinian land.

Google News continuously crawls more than 4,500 news sources from
around the world, yet a search for the keyword "Rafah" shows that,
beyond the Israeli press, supplementary news websites such as the
Electronic Intifada, and a handful of US newspapers, coverage of the
latest demolitions following "Operation Rainbow" has been minimal,
particularly in the United States.

CNN's most recently published article on Rafah "Israelis: IDF forces
out of Rafah camp" is dated Monday 24 May 2004, and reads as if it
were an Israeli government press release:
JERUSALEM (CNN) — Israeli military officials said Monday evening that
all Israeli troops and tanks have withdrawn from Rafah refugee camp
in southern Gaza, marking the end of Operation Rainbow.

The officials said that during the operation three arms-smuggling
tunnels under the border into Egypt were found and destroyed, 40
armed militants were killed, and other wanted militants were arrested.

Twelve civilians were killed and 56 buildings were destroyed during
the mission, according to the officials.

The article, credited to CNN's Jerusalem Bureau, is a good example of
CNN's lack of credibility in covering the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

The fact that this "It's all over in Rafah" article is the most
recent article that CNN.com's search engine or archive returns for
the keyword "Rafah" — when the following week was characterised by
massive Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians and their
property — says much about CNN's priorities in covering stories in
which Palestinians are the victims, and not Israelis.

One is left imagining that CNN's editors took the Israelis at their
word, and ceased their Rafah coverage after being told it was 'all
over'.

Jarringly, at no point in the article does CNN even consult any
Palestinian sources for comment, only a variety of "Israeli military
officials" and senior adviser to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon,
Ra'anan Gissin.

And then there's the problem with statistics.


The statistics

In the 24 May 2004 article, CNN's total reliance on Israeli military
sources for the grim statistical tally of the human cost
of "Operation Rainbow" is unacceptable for any international media
organisation that claims balanced coverage.

Israel claims that during the 13–24 May 2004 "Operation Rainbow"
(which saw a brief pause between May 15-17), that 40 "armed
[Palestinian] militants" and 12 Palestinian civilians were killed,
and 56 buildings were demolished. No figure for the number of injured
Palestinians or land razed was given.

During the same period, fieldworkers from the Palestinian Center for
Human Rights, based in Gaza, recorded that "56 Palestinians, 45 of
whom are civilians, including 10 children, were killed and at least
200 others were injured"

PCHR continues to note that "220 houses were completely destroyed and
140 others were partially destroyed, leaving 4,847 people (821
families) homeless. 220 of these houses were destroyed in al-Brazil
and al-Salam neighborhoods, 9 in Um al-Nasser village, north of
Rafah, 15 in Qeshta and al-Sha'er neighborhoods and 128 in Tal al-
Sultan neighborhood. At least 700 donums[1] of agricultural land were
razed, and 46 shops, several civilian facilities, including a mosque
and cemeteries, and the civilian infrastructure were destroyed."[2]

CNN vs. Reality: "Operation Rainbow" statistics

Deaths (Civilians) Deaths ("armed militants") Buildings Demolished
Land Razed
Israel/CNN 12 40 56 No mention
PCHR        45 11 220 homes (complete), 140 homes (partial), 46 shops
700 dunums[1]
Israel/CNN Disparity -33 +29 -350 -700 dunums[1]


CNN's reliance on Israeli sources for what happened during "Operation
Rainbow" and its lack of attention to what happened after the
operation, convey a grossly misleading impression of recent events in
Rafah. Regardless of how this came to be, CNN's selective coverage of
the Israeli-Palestinian conflict undeniably acts to obscure the true
scale of Israel's genocidal policies in Rafah, just one Palestinian
area among many that suffers ongoing Israeli attacks.


CNN's record

For years, EI team members and correspondents have approached CNN
executives privately and in public action items with specific
examples such as the one above, with no real improvement in the
network's coverage. To date, CNN has been called on:


Describing periods in which many Palestinians but no Israelis were
killed as "relative calm" or "comparative calm". (See FAIR's advisory
about exactly the same issue during another period.)


Reporting on events in which Israelis were killed while ignoring
simultaneous events in which Palestinians were killed


Misrepresenting the facts of where Israel's West Bank barrier runs,
again and again


Using misleading terminology to describe Israel's West Bank barrier


Presenting attacks on Israeli military positions in occupied
territory as if the the target was located inside Israel's borders


Failing to report that the Israeli cabinet formed by Ariel Sharon in
February 2003 included parties with an ethnic cleansing platform


Falsely claiming that Al-Qaida was loose in Gaza


Falsely portraying an attack on Israeli soldiers in occupied Hebron
as a massacre of "worshippers"


Claiming that two Palestinian children killed in an Israeli attack
were "bodyguards"


Covering the 30th anniversary of the Munich Olympics massacre while
ignoring the 20th anniversary of the Sabra and Shatila massacre


Describing lethal rubber-coated metal bullets with the diminutive
term "rubber bullets"


Repeating Israeli claims that all Palestinians inside the Church of
the Nativity during the siege were "armed"


Portraying a period of intense violence perpetrated by Jewish
settlers as taking place by both sides


Under-reporting the number of Palestinians killed


Producing a lavish series and website on "Israeli victims of terror"
without mentioning in either the killing of more than 1,000
Palestinian civilians, one quarter of them children, and the 19,452
Palestinians injured


Promoting misleading Israeli documents as proving a link between
Arafat and suicide bombings


Correspondent Jerrold Kessel presenting the existence of the Israeli
military occupation as a Palestinian 'point of view' and again


Referring to the West Bank and Gaza Strip as part of Israel


Misrepresenting the Nakba as an anti-Israeli protest instead of a
Palestinian commemoration


Describing the occupied territories as "disputed territories", in
defiance of their international legal status


CNN: "jingoistic, amateurish, shallow, and speculation-crazy"

In a 13 January 2003 article entitled 'Lovely Outrage' on
TomPaine.com, award-winning journalist Russ Baker reported on a media
training visit he made to Belgrade. Baker wrote:
Vladimir Milic, a producer with Mreka, a news production company,
expressed the group's disillusionment succinctly:

"What a paradox: the United States is the global leader, yet you
can't find information about the world your country controls."

To Milic, local TV news programs — where statistics show most
Americans get their "news" — came across as bewilderingly provincial.
He swears he saw a segment labeled "international news" that featured
a story on... Nevada.

He's right, of course: Frontline aficionados to the contrary, most
Americans today are woefully uninformed about the world in general
compared to their Serbian counterparts — who know not only a lot
about the United States, but about scores of other countries.

Even CNN, America's premier showcase for international news, struck
the Serbian journalists as jingoistic, amateurish, shallow, and
speculation-crazy, especially when compared to the generally calm and
thoughtful BBC. As for the Fox News Channel, its daily fare sounded
suspiciously like the rabidly nationalistic, pro-Milosevic propaganda
the Serbs are still trying to flush out of the system here.


The unaccountability of the media

Unlike the UK, which has a Press Complaints Commission, there is no
ethics mechanism in the US through which inaccurate and distorted
coverage can be challenged, beyond direct appeals to the media
organisations to self-regulate or suing them in court (which is
almost impossible due to a requirement that the media organisation's
intent is proven to be "malicious").

Palestinians and Israelis continue to die because citizens of the US —
  the country that intervenes more than any other to perpetuate the
status quo on the ground — are offered a grossly distorted account of
events on the ground that gives them no real sense of the imbalance
of power between the two sides in the conflict, no idea of the extent
of the US role in the conflict, and little impetus to call for a more
even-handed US foreign policy in the Middle East.

It is hard to quantify in absolute terms, but most regular readers of
the extremely detailed Palestinian Center for Human Rights' Weekly
Reports on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories would be willing to make a safe guess that
somewhere in the region of 98% of the violence perpetrated against
all civilians in the conflict is violence perpetrated by Israel
against Palestinian civilians, their property, and their land.

Consumers of the US media can be forgiven for concluding that the
majority of violence is perpetuated by Palestinians against Israeli
civilians, as this violence receives grossly disproportionate
coverage.

In the same way that Serbian state television was considered
complicit in Serbian war crimes by communicating a distorted view to
its people of the decade-ago conflict in the former Yugoslavia, it is
time that people begin to consider the culpability of the US media.

In the case of CNN's coverage of Palestine, the lie is one of
omission. The effect of the majority of US news coverage is to
promote an unbalanced view of who is perpetrating the violence, which
has the potential to affect reality in disturbing ways.


The effect

Since the beginning of the Second Palestinian Intifada in 2000,
American politicians, entertainers, and religious groups have gone on
record calling for genocide of the Palestinian people[4]. On 18
October 2003, The Forward reported that:
Thousands of Evangelical Christians waving Israeli flags cheered last
week as Knesset member Benny Elon called for the "relocation" of
Palestinians from the West Bank into Jordan.

The enthusiastic crowd at the annual convention of the Christian
Coalition in Washington also cheered House Majority Whip Tom DeLay,
who urged activists to back pro-Israel candidates who "stand
unashamedly for Jesus Christ."

Elon, whose Moledet Party advocates the "transfer" of Palestinians to
Arab countries,said that a "resettlement" of the Palestinians is
prescribed by the Bible.[3]

Similarly, on 22 February 2002, EI reported that Emanuel A. Winston
wrote an article in USA TODAY that expressed extreme racist
sentiments towards Arabs and advocated the "resettlement" of
Palestinians in Jordan.

On 2 May 2002, EI reported how House Republican Majority Leader Dick
Armey (R-TX) recommended the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from
their land and endorsed Israel's illegal conquests of the occupied
territories on MSNBC's Hardball programme.

EI reported on 28 August 2002 that a US tax-deductible charity was
channeling funds to an Israeli political organisation that had
published detailed plans for the "complete elimination of the Arab
demographic threat to Israel."

On 6 February 2003, EI reported that comedian Jackie Mason published
an article in The Jewish Press stating "We will never win this war
unless we immediately threaten to drive every Arab out of Israel if
the killing doesn't stop".

All of these instances constitute public calls for genocide.[4]

Hatred of Palestinians is apparently deeply rooted in some sectors of
American society. After suicide attacks, EI's mailbox is typically
flooded by people writing from US-based e-mail addresses,
many "Christians", many calling for the genocide of Palestinians.
Needless to say, there is no comparable response from the same people
after events such as Israel's May 19th use
The image formerly on the front of EI 2.0. Taken in Dheisheh Refugee
Camp on 2 July 2002, this image is one of hundreds of images showing
Palestinian children throwing stones at Israeli tanks that have
appeared on the wire services. This image was featured in MSNBC.com's
well-known Week in Pictures feature for the week of June 27-July 4,
2002. (Musa Al-Shaer)
of combat helicopters and battle tanks against a peaceful
demonstration in Rafah, killing nine.

The level of reflexive support for Israel is so entrenched in some
minds that, during the period of a couple of months last year, EI
received more than 5 e-mails from American supporters of Israel
making the same claim — that the Agence Presse France/Musa Al-Shaer
photo on the front of EI which depicted a Palestinian child throwing
a stone at an Israeli tank was "faked", even though similar images of
children confronting tanks can be found on the wire services every
week.

The shocking image contradicted their fundamental view of the
conflict, a view in which Israel — while militarily occupying another
people's land — is widely perceived to be under attack.


Conclusions

When one is regularly treated to lavish on-the-spot coverage of
suicide and car bombings by unelected Palestinian militant groups,
while brutal Israeli military operations sanctioned by a 'democratic'
state go completely unreported — such as last week's events in Rafah —
  it is understandable that people draw the distorted conclusion that
Palestinians are the primary perpetrators of the current violence.
After all, that's what it looks like on TV.

Defendants and witnesses in US courts are asked to swear an oath to
tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." CNN's
inability to tell "the whole truth" is historically and empirically
demonstrable as in the case of last week in Rafah, the stunning
litany of examples above (by no means a total analysis of all of
CNN's Palestine coverage), and by the network's daily, studied
avoidance of acknowledging the most obvious root of the conflict —
Israel's military occupation.

And CNN is just one of several American networks against which the
same charges could be leveled — of grossly distorting the realities
of an ethnic conflict in favour of the aggressor and therefore
prolonging, thanks to our resulting ignorance, our societal apathy
about the ongoing genocide[4].

With no US ethical body to deal with the pervasive distortion, it is
time for international legal experts to begin exploring ways to hold
the US media legally accountable for its failure to report accurately
from both sides of the conflict — specifically for the real-life
implications of that failure. Freedom of information is fundamental
to informed democratic choice, and lives on both sides of the Israeli-
Palestinian conflict literally depend on it.


Nigel Parry is one of the founders of the Electronic Intifada.



Footnotes
1. 1 dunum = ½ acre= 1000m². An English transliteration from the
Arabic, the area measurement is often spelt in a variety of ways, eg.
dunum, dunom, donum, etc.
2. Weekly Report on Israeli Human Rights Violations in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories No. 20/2004, Palestinian Center for Human
Rights, 20-26 May 2004.
3. Christians Hail Rightist's Call To Oust Arabs, Forward Staff, 19
October 2002.
4. For a discussion of the legal definition of "genocide", please see
electronicintifada.net/v2/article1142.shtml

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'From Mistake to Mistake':

A leading Shiite cleric discusses Iraq, suicide bombers, U.S.
elections—and why he thinks George W. Bush should see a psychiatrist

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/4961854/

Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah believes that George W.
Bush and Donald Rumsfeld should resign over the abuses of Iraqi
prisoners
By Arlene Getz

May 12, 2004

May 12 - Grand Ayatollah Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah is one of the
most senior religious authorities among Shiite Muslims. Based in
Beirut, he won a wide public following for his role as the spiritual
leader of Hizbullah, the militant group best known for its resistance
to Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon. Fadlallah is no longer so
closely associated with Hizbullah, but, in the hierarchical Shia
world, his teachings still carry enormous weight.

That status could have a significant impact in Iraq, where young
Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr is spearheading some of the violent
resistance to the American occupation. Fadlallah, 69, was born and
educated in the Iraqi city of Najaf, and his opinions could influence
the direction of the country's majority-Shiite population—a group
viciously oppressed by Saddam Hussein. "Fadlallah, for his followers,
has a divine touch," says Nizar Hamzeh, a political science professor
at the American University of Beirut.

Fadlallah met with a delegation of American editors in Beirut this
week to discuss Iraq, suicide bombers and why he thinks President
George W. Bush should see a psychiatrist. NEWSWEEK's Arlene Getz was
part of the group. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What is the role of Islam in politics?
Muhammad Hussein Fadlallah: What is politics? Politics is based on
the idea of giving a human being the opportunity the opportunity to
live among others. Religion tells us that if you believe in God, you
should love human beings. Therefore we believe that politics is part
of religion. Religion wasn't made for heaven, it is part of the
earth. Religion [is] for us to serve people, not the other way round.

Do you feel that Moqtada al-Sadr is justified in his use of armed
resistance [against Americans in Iraq], or do you prefer the more
dialogue-oriented line of [Iraq's Shiite leader] Grand Ayatollah Ali
al-Sistani?
We believe in the freedom of human beings, and we reject the
occupation. I don't believe Moqtada al-Sadr's plan is to initiate
violence, but I believe the methods of [U.S. administrator Paul]
Bremer are what prompted [al-Sadr] to do it. Therefore we see
violence as the reaction, not the initial action. We see America as a
country that can occupy, but does not know how to administer. The
United States keeps going from mistake to mistake. The issue of
prison torture [at Abu Ghraib] is not the last mistake we are going
to see.

Is there anything the United States can do to recover from the
mistake at Abu Ghraib?
We consider occupation to be one of the highest forms of torture. The
torture that we are seeing the pictures of in the media is the
torture of individuals, but occupation is the torture of an entire
people … The majority of Arab and Islamic people do not believe the
United States is serious about the freedom of [their] peoples. They
believe it to be one of the slogans used for dominating the region.

When we listen to President Bush we don't find any convincing logic
in what he's saying. [But] we should be clear that we distinguish
between the U.S. administration and the American people. We would
like to be friends with the American people. Our problem is with the
American administration.

What is your reaction to Bush's argument that not all Americans
should be blamed for the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison?
I believe it was an inaccurate apology because the people who carried
out these acts were carrying out orders … Bremer knew about it, but
didn't do anything about it until the photos showed up. These acts
showed the American administration does not believe in human rights.
I believe these practices encourage terrorism and don't do away with
it. The American people have good values; however the administration
is not honoring it. The Americans should elect a person who
represents these values.

Would you like Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to resign?
I believe that Rumsfeld should have resigned. He offered an apology
and an apology means [he should take] responsibility.

Should Bush also resign?
As the commander in chief of the armed forces, yes.

What are your views on the U.S. presidential race? And will you feel
less well-disposed toward the American people if they re-elect George
W. Bush in November?
The general impression in the Arab world about the American
electorate is that it is the neoconservatives, the Christian
[evangelicals], the Jewish lobby, the cartels that are using this
administration to enrich themselves—these all are playing a role in
[supporting Bush]. Do you believe that if someone is re-elected it
gives him legitimacy? After all, the Palestinians elected [Yasir]
Arafat, and there are certain sections in the United States that
won't deal with him …[Bush] regards himself as the second coming of
Christ. I don't believe he deals with things in an objective and
rational fashion. I think we should send him to a psychiatrist before
the election. With all due respect, of course—we respect ill people.

Are suicide bombers considered religious martyrs [who are guaranteed
a place in heaven] when they attack civilians in Israel?
We don't believe in killing civilians for political reasons if it's
not a state of war. I was the first Islamic figure to issue a fatwa
[religious decree] after the September 11 attacks to say our minds
and religion cannot accept this, that it was suicide, not martyrdom.
Just an hour after the Madrid bombings, I issued a fatwa condemning
this act and said it was not religiously sanctioned….

However, the problem is that Bush considers, with [Israeli Prime
Minister Ariel] Sharon's agreement, that the Palestinian struggle for
independence constitutes terrorism. Even though the Palestinians told
Israel that if you withdraw from our land and live with us in peace,
there will not be any shots fired. [The Palestinians] are saying that
they are defending their homeland. As for the martyrdom operations
[in Israel], they require an interpretation. Israel possesses the
strongest weapons in the region. Israel uses F-16s against civilians
in Gaza. When it wants to assassinate someone, it will fire a rocket
into a crowded civilian place. It destroys the homes of Palestinians.
It employs collective punishment [against the families of attackers.]

The Israelis have carried out every type of act against the
Palestinians. The Palestinians only have light weapons. The
Palestinians therefore have reached a point of desperation. They
believe that they have to challenge the Israelis by using this method
of turning a person into a human bomb. This is in order to get the
Israelis to stop what they're doing. You can't look at this in an
abstract fashion. If the killing of Israeli civilians is a crime,
what about the killing of Palestinian civilians? The issue is that
Palestine and Israel are at war, and the Israelis are using every
method they can, and the Palestinians aren't getting weapons from the
United States.

What is your opinion of Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry?
I have observed that Kerry is trying to address Jewish feelings by
talking about his own Jewish heritage. I don't believe politics
should be conducted this way. [But] we have no problems with the
Jewish religion. If you look at Islamic history for the last 14
centuries, Muslims have embraced Jews, given them scientific and
economic freedom. Muslims didn't oppress Jews the way the West
did ... The problem with Israel is political, not religious. America
doesn't accept a religion-based state [in the United States], but it
insists that there be a Jewish state in Palestine. Why is there a
double standard on this matter?

Lebanon has its own experience of occupation. Do religious leaders
here have anything to teach Iraqis about resisting occupation?
There are no plans for Lebanese resistance fighters to move to Iraq.
Any who might have done such a thing went there on an individual
basis.

Do you see any alternative to armed resistance to the U.S. occupation
of Iraq?
We believe that the United Nations is by and large acceptable. If the
Americans would hand over its authority to the U.N., there is no need
for an armed struggle.

Why is Islam now the world's fastest-growing religion?
It is a religion that believes in intellect and all types of science.
Intellect and science are the source of civilization. It doesn't
impose itself by force on other people … it doesn't believe in
violence unless violence is imposed on it from outside.

What's the most important message you'd like to send Americans?
We do not believe in violence unless it becomes absolutely necessary.
What we'd like to see is dialogue bringing us together. We should
have peace through dialogue.

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FREED CHAPLAIN YEE SPEAKS ON ISLAM
Rob Tucker, News Tribune, 5/30/04
http://www.tribnet.com/news/local/story/5136819p-5065896c.html

Freed chaplain Yee speaks on Islam
ROB TUCKER; The News Tribune

Capt. James Yee, a Muslim U.S. Army chaplain who was jailed for 76
days by his government on suspicion of espionage before he was
cleared, stood with his prayer cap on Saturday evening and explained
some basics of Islam to an audience at the Washington State History
Museum.

"I'm here today as James Yee - your brother in humanity," he told the
audience at a program by the The Bill of Rights Defense Committee -
Tacoma. "Today's special for people who have a passion for justice
and diversity. Islam is relevant and all over the news. We must
understand each other. I'm wearing my prayer cap tonight."

More than 75 people heard his talk on the tenets of Islam and
expressed appreciation for his presence. They filled a hat full of
money to help with his legal bills after being told they were
substantial. Afterward, people came up to shake his hand, get his
autograph, give him more money, and ask forgiveness.


"I apologize as an American," one man said as he shook Yee's hand.
Yee smiled and thanked the man.


Yee told people he wasn't acting in an official capacity and didn't
talk about his ordeal or his present situation in the military.


Yee, 35, was arrested Sept. 10 and held in custody for 76 days after
being suspected of espionage when he was a chaplain to detainees at
the Guantanamo Bay detention center in Cuba.


Authorities said he had taken secret materials to a housing unit at
the prison. The case received heavy news coverage. Eventually the
military charged him with mishandling classified material, failing to
obey an order, making a false official statement, adultery and
conduct unbecoming an officer.


But the government failed to build a case, especially one of capital
espionage. Yee has been cleared of all charges and now is stationed
at Fort Lewis.


Tim Smith of the defense committee was dressed in American colonial
garb and called himself "Ben" - for Ben Franklin - to accentuate the
evening's historic Bill of Rights program theme.


He called Yee "a great American" and presented him with a plank from
Tacoma's old Japanese Language School building, which was torn down
this year. It symbolized a thriving Japanese American community in
the city before World War II. The school closed when its students
were interned with their parents in inland camps by the government.


Some audience members also appreciated the religious talk as a good
overview of Islam as a tolerant and diverse faith.


"It was excellent and very relevant," said Tom Donovan, a local
attorney. "One thing that came of 9/11 was a lot of anti-Muslim
prejudice. It's up to those who know to debunk it."


Many also looked to the speaker, Yee.


"I think it's very brave of him," said Anita Beninger.

Rob Tucker: 253-597-8374
rob.tucker@ mail.tribnet.com


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SF GALLERY OWNER BECOMES TARGET AFTER
SHOWCASING PAINTING OF IRAQI PRISONER ABUSE
Lisa Leef, Associated Press, 5/29/04
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?
file=/news/archive/2004/05/29/state1749EDT0067.DTL


SAN FRANCISCO - After displaying a painting of U.S. soldiers
torturing Iraqi prisoners, a San Francisco gallery owner bears a
painful reminder of the nation's unresolved anguish over the
incidents at Abu Ghraib -- a black eye and bloodied brow delivered by
an unknown assailant who apparently objected to the art work.

The assault outside the Capobianco gallery in the city's North Beach
district Thursday night was the worst, but only the latest in a
string of verbal and physical attacks that have been directed at
owner Lori Haigh since the painting, titled "Abuse," was installed
there on May 16.

Last Wednesday, concerned for the safety of her two children, ages 14
and 4, who often accompanied her to work, Haigh decided to close the
gallery indefinitely.

Painted by Berkeley artist Guy Colwell, "Abuse," the painting at the
center of the controversy, depicts three U.S. soldiers leering at a
group of naked men in hoods with wires connected to their bodies. The
one in the foreground has a blood-spattered American flag patch on
his uniform. In the background, a soldier in sunglasses guards a
blindfolded woman.

The painting was part of a larger show of Colwell's work that mostly
featured pastel-colored abstracts.

Two days after the painting went up in a front window, someone threw
eggs and dumped trash on the doorstep. Haigh said she didn't think to
connect it to the black-and-white interpretation of the events at
Baghdad's notorious prison until people started leaving nasty
messages and threats on her business answering machine.

"I think you need to get your gallery out of this neighborhood before
you get hurt," one caller said…

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Iran making new missile
------------------------------------------------------------------
TEHRAN, May 31: Iran has begun manufacturing its first locally
made anti-ship missile, a "kind of cruise missile" named the
Kosar, the state-run news agency IRNA reported on Monday.

Quoting the Islamic republic's defence ministry, the report said
the missile was being made by Iran's Aerospace Industries
Organization and had been "designed for defensive
purposes".....(AFP)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top15.htm&date=20040601

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Rumsfeld approved torture techniques: top brass:

Donald Rumsfeld personally approved four special interrogation
techniques used on two al-Qaeda operatives held at Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, who then talked about the terrorist network and its plans, the
commander of US forces in Latin America said today.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/06/04/1086203599711.html

======================
Hiding the gulag:

Things have gotten so bad, the Bush administration is lying even to
its own lawyers
http://www.bostonphoenix.com/boston/news_features/other_stories/multi-
page/documents/03866773.asp

=============
"The Grey Zone" reveals Rumy's torture policy
Posted by: Submit_News on May 23, 2004 - 08:28 AM

http://whitecivilrights.org/modules.php?
op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=756&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

  Seymour Hersh's article, "The Gray Zone," published on May 15 by the
New Yorker, divulges how Rumsfeld, assisted by his Undersecretary for
Intelligence Stephen Cambone, set up a secret program to assassinate
targeted individuals in the Bush administration's "war on terror."
This program was later extended to the interrogation of prisoners
captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and, according to Hersh, "encouraged
physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an
effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in
Iraq."

"The Grey Zone," reveals Rummy's torture policy
Seymour Hersh's article, "The Gray Zone," published on May 15 by the
New Yorker, divulges how Rumsfeld, assisted by his Undersecretary for
Intelligence Stephen Cambone, set up a secret program to assassinate
targeted individuals in the Bush administration's "war on terror."
This program was later extended to the interrogation of prisoners
captured in Afghanistan and Iraq and, according to Hersh, "encouraged
physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an
effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in
Iraq."

In the opening paragraph Hersh writes, "The roots of the Abu Ghraib
prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army
reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which
had been focused on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of
prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld's decision embittered the American
intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of elite combat
units, and hurt America's prospects in the war on terror."
To order to carry out rapid US assassinations of terrorism suspects,
a Special Access Program (SAP) was incipiently set up weeks after
September 11, 2001, On October 7, 2001, a military lawyer refused to
grant permission for a missile strike on an automobile convoy which
US officials thought might have been carrying Taliban leader Mullah
Omar. Rumsfeld was furious and by passed the refusal ordering the set-
up of the SAP to oversee such assassinations. In the said article
Hersh mentions, an interview with a former senior intelligence
official who said, the program had the full approval of top Bush
administration officials, including National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice. President Bush and General Richard Myers, chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were notified of the SAP's existence.
The Grey Zone is Hersh's exhaustive account of the program—his
article covers over 5,000 words long—repeatedly cites conversations
and decisions at the highest levels of the Bush administration and
the Pentagon.

The US military establishment was well aware that its intelligence-
gathering abilities in Iraq were far outmatched by those of the
resistance. Therefore, these programs were brought to Iraq as US
forces there confronted a pertinacious and growing insurgency in the
summer and fall of 2003. A Defense Department study quoted by Hersh
notes: "[Insurgents'] ability to attack convoys, other vulnerable
targets and particular individuals has been the result of painstaking
surveillance and reconnaissance." It ascribes insurgents'
intelligence gathering to widespread sympathy for the resistance in
the Iraqi police and security forces, Iraqi government offices, and
amongst Iraqi workers inside the US Coalition Provisional Authority
(CPA), which runs Iraq.

It further noted: "Politically, the US has failed to date. [...] The
disaster is that the reconstruction of Iraq has been the key cause of
the insurgency. There is no legitimate government, and it behooves
the Coalition Provisional Authority to absorb the sad but unvarnished
fact that most Iraqis do not see the [US-appointed Iraqi] Governing
Council as the legitimate authority. Indeed, they know that the true
power is the CPA."

In view of the obvious fact that US forces were facing massive
resistance in imposing an occupation regime on Iraq, the study
deplored the fact that US "intelligence is poor or lacking ... due to
the dearth of competence and expertise."

Hersh describes the solution as, "endorsed by Rumsfeld and carried
out by Stephen Cambone," was to turn US prisons in Iraq into torture
camps to extract enough information about the resistance to drown it
in blood. Cambone incorporated military intelligence officers and
mercenaries carrying out interrogations into the SAP, removing them
from the authority of the normal military chain of command. This
matches claims by Abu Ghraib commander General Janice Karpinski that
she did not exert effective control over the interrogations taking
place at Abu Ghraib, which were run by military intelligence officers
and civilian contractors not acting under her orders.

There was another objective for the methods employed at Abu Ghraib.
Hersh reveals evidence that faced with popular resistance; US forces
pursued a volitive policy of sexual torture in the hopes of
blackmailing ordinary Iraqis into becoming informants for US troops.
He quotes a government consultant who was told that the goal was
to "create an army of informants" by threatening released detainees
who refused to cooperate with US forces with sexual humiliation, by
releasing explicit pictures taken during their stays in prison.
Considering what Hersh mention above it would explain US forces'
willingness to torture thousands of detainees, most of whom (70-90%,
according to Red Cross estimates) are wrongly detained. US forces are
not trying to apprehend and interrogate resistance fighters, but
rather to set up a large-scale spy network within a hostile
population. It also explains comments by Israel's Shin Bet domestic
security service, which routinely uses torture against Arab
detainees, that it viewed sexual humiliation as an unreliable form of
interrogation, since it risks breaking a victim to the point where
he "will say anything. That information is worthless." If US forces
were using sexual humiliation to torture Iraqi detainees, it was
rigorous because they had no particular interest in what the Iraqis
were going to say thereafter.

The Pentagon denies the Hersh's story. Defense Department spokesman
Lawrence DiRita, in a formal statement to the press, declared, "The
abuse evidenced in the videos and photos, and any similar abuse that
may come to light in any of the ongoing half dozen investigations
into this matter, has no basis in any sanctioned program, training
manual, instruction, or order in the Department of Defense."
Hersh's article grapples, however, that the torture was the outcome
of a special "black operation," a program which would not have
been "sanctioned" but would rather have been kept "off-the-books" to
preserve deniability. In response to press questions, DiRita simply
refused to address whether such a program existed.

The mounting evidence of a deliberate Bush administration policy to
torture Guantanamo Bay—and subsequently Iraqi—detainees underscores
the case for war crimes charges against all of the American high
officials, civilian and military, responsible for the invasion and
conquest of Afghanistan and Iraq. "The Grey Zone"- article can be
read in the website:

http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?040524fa_fact

Billy I Ahmed
Columnist & Researcher
e-mail: thewritingtable@...

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'We're paying the mujahideen not to shoot at us'
03/06/2004

In Fallujah, the most restive city in the Sunni Triangle of Iraq,
anti-American feeling is white-hot. Jack Fairweather is smuggled
inside the city that is a no-go area for Westerners

Wearing an American-supplied uniform and armed with a battered AK47
rifle, Abdullah lounged at the checkpoint on the outskirts of
Fallujah.

A month ago he probably had his face masked by an Arab headscarf, and
was launching attacks against US marines. Now, as a member of the US-
sponsored Fallujah Brigade, he controls access to the city.

Such is the strange nature of the peace that has seen the Iraqi
resistance take command of Fallujah, the most restive city in the
Sunni Triangle of Iraq, where anti-American feeling is white-hot.

US marines pulled out last month and an Iraqi security force hastily
formed from Saddam Hussein's old army moved in. The fighting was over
as abruptly as it had begun, with US commanders lauding the peace
deal.

"It's an Iraqi solution to an Iraqi problem," said a marine general
optimistically. Fallujah has since become a model for dealing with
the Shia uprising in the south.

But few on the ground share such optimism. There may be peace, but
officers say Fallujah has simply been handed over to the insurgents.

A US officer said: "All we've succeeded in doing is paying off the
mujahideen to stop shooting at us. There's a cauldron of hate out
there and its going to boil over."

The town is currently a no-go area for US troops, and by extension,
any westerner. Despite lucrative rebuilding contracts, none has
entered the city since four contractors were killed and their bodies
mutilated in March, prompting the American incursion.

I was driven into Fallujah with black curtains drawn around the rear
seat of the car, the only way for a foreigner to enter. As soon as we
passed the final US-supervised checkpoint a few miles from town
centre I hid my face.

My escort, a member of the Iraqi Islamic Party, which negotiated the
peace deal with the marines, warned me that he would not be able to
guarantee my safety if I set foot outside the car.

The reason for such caution was obvious. Brown-shirted members of the
Fallujah Brigade, most of them former resistance fighters, manned
checkpoints across the city. The few residents who agreed to talk
were hastily smuggled into the back of the car.

"Welcome to the free republic of Fallujah," said one resident, who
would not give his name. "We run this city now and no American will
ever enter here again."

A look of horror passed over the face of another man when he saw a
westerner in the back of the car. "What are you doing here? I will be
killed if I am seen with you. You must leave. Get out!" he said.

Many American military officials now privately accept that going into
Fallujah was a mistake. Seventy marines and an estimated 800 Iraqis
were killed in six weeks of clashes. The fighting inspired the Shia
uprising in the south.

But officials also say that leaving the insurgents unbeaten may prove
a greater problem.

"It's difficult to understand what's been achieved in Fallujah. We've
got to start from scratch all over again," said a member of the civil
and military affairs team outside the city.

If the resistance has won a victory in Fallujah, it is one which few
of its citizens rejoice in. Shops may be open and markets stuffed
with fresh vegetables, but everywhere bears the scars of war.

Demolished houses pockmark the streets, and the minaret of the main
mosque, where snipers once hid, is riddled with bullets. Iraqi
officials estimate that more than 2,000 homes were damaged in the
fighting.

Abdul Razzak is a civil engineer who has spent the past month
assessing the war damage for compensation claims.

So far he has a bill running into the multi-millions with thousands
of claimants. The US military has agreed to hand out £650 million.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?
xml=/news/2004/06/03/wirq03.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/06/03/ixworld.html

http://tinyurl.com/yugaz

===
Radical Iraqi Cleric Rejects Interim Government


KUFA, Iraq (BGNES) - Rebel Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr rejected
Iraq's new interim government on Friday but agreed to shore up a
shaky truce with American forces after weeks of clashes.

Sadr's men have fought fierce battles with U.S. troops in and around
the holy city of Najaf, but the area was quiet for the first time in
days on Friday after Shiite leaders helped broker a fresh truce
attempt.

A new interim government was appointed by the United Nations on
Tuesday after consultation with the U.S.-led administration and Iraqi
leaders, and is due to take over from U.S. occupiers on June 30.

"I do not want to have anything to do with this government," said a
statement issued by Sadr and read out by Sheikh Jader al-Khafaji at
Friday prayers at a mosque in Kufa, near Najaf.

"I don't believe any Iraqi would accept this appointment of a
government by the occupier. There is no freedom or democracy without
independence," he said, speaking to several thousand worshippers
gathered at the mosque where Sadr normally preaches.

"Which country has accepted the U.N. appointing its rulers except for
Afghanistan and Iraq? Leave us to decide our fate as a unified
people, not under submission to the occupier."

Sadr also called for elections to determine the country's next
government. Under current plans, polls planned for January will elect
members of a transitional government that will draft a new
constitution. More polls will then choose a constitutionally elected
government, perhaps in early 2006.

Shiite politicians said earlier on Friday that Sadr had agreed to
withdraw his fighters from the city of Najaf within two days, as long
as U.S. forces also withdrew.

Sadr also proposed that neutral observers monitor the truce, the
Shiite politicians said after hours of talks with the firebrand
preacher in Najaf, 160 km (100 miles) south of Baghdad.

A truce attempt last week failed to take hold and there have been
frequent skirmishes around Najaf.

On Thursday afternoon, gunfire and explosions erupted in Najaf when
two U.S. tanks advanced toward the cemetery, where some militia
fighters are still dug in, witnesses said. There was an exchange of
fire for around half an hour, and the tanks later withdrew.

Iraq's top Shi'ite religious leaders have been highly critical of
Sadr for fighting in holy cities -- but have also said the U.S.
military response was heavy-handed. Washington is keen to secure a
truce before the June 30 handover of power.

Among those mediating has been Ahmad Chalabi, a wealthy former exile
who has fallen out of favor with Washington.

Once seen as the U.S. choice to lead Iraq, but lacking any clear
electoral base, he has become sharply critical of U.S. policy and
appears to be trying to establish himself as a leader of his fellow
Shi'ites inside the country. /Reuters

http://www.bgnewsnet.com/story.php?sid=5375

============
Four US soldiers die in attack:

Four United States soldiers were killed and five wounded on Friday
when a blast struck their convoy on the edge of the Shi'ite militia
stronghold of Sadr City, the US military said.

"Four soldiers were killed and five wounded in an explosion on their
convoy in Baghdad at around 1.10pm [9.10am GMT]," a spokesperson
said, adding that the nature of the device was under investigation.

Witnesses earlier told an AFP correspondent on the scene that the
convoy was hit by a rocket-propelled grenade before a roadside bomb
was detonated.

A 21-year-old Iraqi was seriously wounded by the blast, his father
said. Witnesses said a cameraman was also injured when US troops
opened fire to keep bystanders away.

The attack followed overnight clashes in Sadr City between US troops
and militiamen loyal to radical cleric Moqatada al-Sadr. -- Sapa-AFP

http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=67445

================
Delusion on a psychotic scale:

In the face of all the evidence, the Iraq Survey Group is still
searching for WMD.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1231152,00.html

===

The price of failure in Iraq:

The US Iraqi enterprise was meant to transform the entire Middle East
to the benefit of the Americans. Ironically, it is the US failure now
that threatens to spread elsewhere

=============
Fund For Peace Study Concludes that
Iraq Has Descended Into a Failed State Syndrome:

http://releases.usnewswire.com/GetRelease.asp?id=132-06032004
6/3/2004 11:26:00 AM

Contact: Pauline H. Baker of the Fund For Peace, 202-223-7946 or
pbaker@...

WASHINGTON, June 3 /U.S. Newswire/ -- A report released today by The
Fund for Peace (FfP) concludes that instead of addressing the
fundamental requirements of rebuilding the state, post-war policies
undertaken by the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA)
focused primarily on completing the process of regime change.
Consequently, Iraq has deteriorated further into a failed state
syndrome.

Dr. Pauline H. Baker, author of the report, describes a failed state
syndrome as a condition in which a number of trends reinforce each
other to produce spiraling conflict that the country has little or no
independent capacity to stop. The report concludes that, a year after
the invasion, Iraq is as shattered as it was the day that Saddam
Hussein was overthrown, the main difference being that organized
militias and terrorist groups have gained a foothold they did not
have before.

"We have to get the facts straight before we can get the policy
straight," said Dr. Baker. "Currently, there are three major fictions
that are being used to describe the transition in Iraq. The first is
analytical - that Iraq could become a failed state, when, in fact, it
already has failed. The second is legal - that the occupation will
end on June 30, when, in fact, the occupation will end when foreign
troops are withdrawn and capable Iraqi security forces take over. And
the third is political - that after June 30, the sovereign government
of Iraq and the people will be allied with the United States. In
fact, the interim government will not have full sovereignty and the
people are increasingly fearful and resentful of the U.S. presence."

The study, which was done with the Fund's conflict assessment
methodology, is updated every six months to evaluate progress toward
sustainable security. This is the second in the series.

The report maps out five future scenarios. It states that, if current
trends continue, Iraq is likely headed toward a Lebanon- like
outcome, with civil war and possible intervention by neighboring
states. To avoid this or other undesirable outcomes, the U.S. must
work more closely with the U.N. to build a wider international
coalition prepared to provide two years of peacekeeping forces and
five to ten years of economic support in a long-term plan aimed at
sustainable security. Currently, no planning is being done beyond the
next election and other nations are reluctant to provide troops for
U.N. peacekeeping, even over the next six months leading to
elections. That will be a critical make-or-break period, when the
tipping point will occur, determining whether Iraq will move toward
constitutionalism or chaos.

Dr. Baker urged policy-makers to separate truth from fiction. She
warned that, "fictional accounts have led to false assumptions,
misplaced expectations and misguided policies in the past. They will
do so in the future, if we are not careful."

------

The report was released at an "Afternoon Newsmaker" held Wednesday,
June 2, 2004, 3 to 4 p.m., at the National Press Club, 529 14th
Street NW, DC. Pauline H. Baker, author of the report, presented. The
report can be found at The Fund for Peace website:
http://www.fundforpeace.org/publications/reports/reports.php.

Dr. Baker's bio can be found at
http://www.fundforpeace.org/thefund/president.php. The Fund For Peace
is a Washington-based non-profit organization whose mission is to
prevent war and alleviate the conditions that cause war. It promotes
education and research for practical solutions and is a consistent
advocate of promoting social justice and respect for the principles
of constitutional democracy. For more information, please visit:
http://www.fundforpeace.org.


http://www.usnewswire.com/

===

New Plan Would Let Iraq Order Troops Out :

  The United States and Britain revised their Security Council
resolution on transferring sovereignty to Iraq (news - web sites) on
Friday, giving the country's new interim government authority to
order the U.S.-led multinational force to leave at any time
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&cid=540&e=2&u=/ap/20040604/ap_on_re_mi_ea/un_iraq

===

Transfer of power in Iraq is no more than a cynical exercise in
public relations

"The nature of the power structures being established in Iraq leaves
no doubt that what the US is building is the equivalent of the sort
of "indirect empire" that the British built in much of India and in
other parts of the world. Then, the British officially had "treaties"
with sovereign Indian rulers, and maintained the pretence that the
Indian rulers were the real rulers, with British officers there as
diplomatic representatives or advisors."
http://world.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/7216/

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Thousands protest in Washington against war
------------------------------------------------------------------
Staff Reporter
WASHINGTON, June 5: Thousands of people gathered at a park near the
White House on Sunday to demand the return of US troops from Iraq.

Shouting slogans against the war and demanding an "end to foreign
occupation" in Iraq, Haiti and Palestine, protesters marched towards
the residence of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in downtown
Washington.

Organizers said larger demonstrations were also held Sunday in Los
Angles and San Francisco.

"America does not endorse the policies of the Bush administration in
Iraq. We should bring the troops home and end the occupation in Iraq,
Haiti and Palestine," said one of the organizers, Caneisha Mills.

"Bush and Rumsfeld - Guilty of War Crimes," protestors shouted as
they started the march from the Lafayette Park outside the White
House.

The 'Speak Truth to Power' march "reflects the grassroots voices of
those who have suffered and are suffering because of the Bush
administration's war in Iraq, Palestine, Haiti and right here against
working people in the United States," said Ms Mills.

Organizers said their rally featured the voices of the mothers and
fathers of soldiers who oppose the war, those in the Muslim and Arab
communities, whose families have been ripped apart through raids,
detentions, and secret hearings.

"We also reflect the voice of "the embattled Palestinian people who
are having their children shot and homes razed as the US-backed
violence escalates," the organizers said.

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top16.htm&date=20040606


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13 killed in Afghanistan
------------------------------------------------------------------
ISLAMABAD, June 2: As many as eight Taliban fighters and at least
five soldiers died in heavy clashes in Afghanistan late Tuesday,
the Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) reported on Wednesday......(DPA)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top12.htm&date=20040603

============
U.S.-led forces kill 17 Taliban in Afghanistan:

U.S.-led forces backed by warplanes killed 17 militants in the
mountains of southern Afghanistan, the American military confirmed
today, the bloodiest battle with Taliban-led insurgents in almost a
year.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/headline/world/2609428

=============
Four Afghans killed in raid by Taliban guerrillas:

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/custom/attack/bal-
te.afghan31may31,0,7181630.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines

May 31, 2004

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan -- Taliban guerrillas riding in a fleet of
vehicles shot up a government office in southern Afghanistan, killing
four Afghan soldiers, an official said yesterday. One gunman also was
killed.

The suspected Taliban militiamen swept into Musa Qala, a market town
150 miles southwest of the capital, Kabul, late Saturday and opened
fire on the government office with assault rifles and heavy machine
guns, the mayor, Mullah Amir Aghunzada, said.

Four of the 30 soldiers defending the compound were killed, and eight
others were wounded, Aghunzada said. One Taliban fighter was also
killed and four were captured, three of whom were wounded.

In an update on four U.S. deaths Saturday, an Army spokeswoman said
the four American soldiers died about 20 miles east of Qalat, the
capital of southeastern Zabul province.

"An explosive device detonated under the [Humvee] the four were
traveling in," spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michele DeWerth said. She gave no
further details.

An Afghan government official, who spoke on condition of anonymity,
said the Humvee hit a mine in Zabul's mountainous Sorie district.

The toll was one of the worst for a single attack on the U.S.-led
coalition force since it entered Afghanistan to topple the Taliban
for harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

Copyright © 2004, The Baltimore Sun

====================
Police officer killed in Kabul :

A police officer was killed as unidentified gunmen attacked his car
in the capital citylast night, a spokesman of Interior Ministry said
Monday
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2004-05/31/content_1500258.htm

===================
Afghans wary of Karzai dealings
President Karzai is alleged to have given cabinet posts to warlords
in exchange for support in upcoming vote. By Scott Baldauf
http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0601/p06s02-wosc.html


VOTE: Observers worry that a back-room deal could spoil positive
election momentum, including the participation of women as shown in
this poster.
EMILIO MORENATTI/AP


KABUL, AFGHANISTAN – The elections in Afghanistan are still months
off, but recent dealings between top power brokers have fed a growing
perception among ordinary Afghans and Western diplomats alike that
the result is a foregone conclusion.
Over the past few weeks, President Hamid Karzai - lauded by the US
government as a defender of democracy - has held a series of meetings
with top military commanders famous for their defeat of Soviet forces
and for running a murderous four-year government after that.
Presidential spokesmen call the talks an effort at ensuring a stable
election process, free of intimidation. Critics - and even the
commanders themselves - say the talks were about something else, a
deal to promise key cabinet posts to warlords in exchange for their
support of President Karzai's candidacy.


The unwitting appearance of an inside deal with hated warlords is
bringing back old cynicism here about politics, and is sending
signals that Afghanistan may not be heading toward a peaceful,
progressive future after all.

"People will regard this as a hidden deal, and a hidden deal at this
juncture would not be good for the country," says Wali Masood,
brother of the former Northern Alliance supreme commander Ahmed Shah
Masood. "If you want to start a democracy, you go to the public with
a team and an agenda, and let's see if the people vote for you or
not."

Free elections had been touted as the turning point where ordinary
Afghans could start to map their own future. That was the idea at
least when Afghan leaders and UN mediators met in Bonn in December
2001 to decide on a political blueprint for the war-torn nation.

The latest round of talks between Karzai and the commanders was
Wednesday night. They could not be happening at a worse time, says
one Western diplomat. "People are motivated by this election. The
number of registered voters is increasing, the number of women voters
is increasing and higher than expected," he says. "But now, there is
a fear among people, and they need reassurance that they are not
being taken for a ride."

What makes all this more confusingis that all the participants of
these talks have a different view of what has been decided.
Mujahideen commanders, for instance, say they have been promised 50
percent of the cabinet posts, including the most important ministries
of interior, defense, justice, and finance. Karzai spokesmen insist
that there is no "deal," except that the commanders agree to support
the election process and Karzai's candidacy.

"It's not a negotiation, really," says Javed Luddin, presidential
spokesman. "The commanders said they thought they would rather
support the president, ... and stand alongside the president rather
than against him."

Mr. Luddin says that jihadi commanders - including Abdul Rab Rasool
Sayaaf, Defense Minister Mohammad Fahim, Vice President Rashid
Dostum, Herat Governor Ismail Khan - tried to unify behind a single
candidate of their own to confront Karzai, but could not set aside
personal rivalries to compromise on a single candidate.

"Elections should be a unifying step rather than a dividing step,"
adds Luddin. "If these forces felt left outside or feel threatened as
they face inevitable defeat, they could resort to a dangerous
agenda," including armed rebellion.

Commanders have different story

But sources close to the commanders say that it was Karzai who came
to them, and who agreed to give half of the cabinet posts to former
mujahideen.

"In my view, Karzai has lost the trust of the people," says Abdul
Hafiz Mansour, a member of a party allied with the commanders. "Mr.
Karzai [has] tried to have power in his hands. We don't want only one
person to have power. We want our country to have power."

And far from voicing support for Karzai, Mansour says the commanders
demanded that Karzai fire some Afghan expatriate "technocrats,"
including the ministers of finance and interior. The commanders also
demanded that the government stop calling them "warlords" and
stop "working against the rules of Islam." Mansour adds, "They
haven't mentioned they would support Karzai in the election at all."

Western community wary

For the time being, Western diplomats and UN representatives have
avoided commenting, but privately some diplomats voice concern that
the process of democracy could be derailed by the impression of a
backroom deal.

Vikram Parekh, senior analyst for the nonprofit International Crisis
Group, says the big problem is that any deal could have a
destabilizing effect because inevitably somebody will be left out.

"Somebody is going to feel shortchanged," says Mr. Parekh. "I don't
think that we ever had a chance of a free and fair election here,
certainly not in the absence of a trained national police force,
without adequate peacekeepers in the provinces, without international
monitors in the provinces."

"The best we could expect was the veneer of legitimacy," adds
Parekh. "But now the cynicism of the people is tremendous."

=================
US aircraft bomb southern Afghanistan
------------------------------------------------------------------
KABUL, May 29: American aircraft bombed southern Afghanistan for the
second time this week after two US soldiers were injured in a clash
near the border with Pakistan, the US military said on Saturday.

The American troops were wounded in a firefight on Thursday night
near Shkin in the border region, US military spokesman Lieutenant
Colonel Tucker Mansager told a press conference in Kabul.

"We had two coalition casualties in the engagement that led up to us
using ordnance down there," Col Mansager said.

The clash and bombardment took place in rough terrain about 230
kilometres south of Kabul in Paktika province.

It was the second time this week the 20,000-strong US-led coalition
has called in an air strike in southern Afghanistan.-AFP

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top14.htm&date=20040530

=================
Taliban fighters killed in US raid:

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/F713FCBB-062D-45B2-B997-
1A1CBCA4392A.htm
Tuesday 25 May 2004, 22:46 Makka Time, 19:46 GMT


Taliban continue to resist Western forces in the country

At least 20 suspected Taliban fighters have been killed in US air
strikes in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials have said.


The US military in Kabul could not confirm the attacks on Tuesday. If
confirmed, the losses would be among the largest suffered in a single
battle by the Taliban.

In June last year, 40 Taliban and seven Afghan soldiers were reported
killed in clashes in the south of Afghanistan, although no US
aircraft were involved.

Khan Muhammad, a corps commander in the southern city of Kandahar,
said Afghan forces had been engaged in fierce clashes with suspected
Taliban near the town of Spin Boldak, which lies on the Pakistani
border.

'Air support'

"There has been fighting going on between Afghan forces and the
Taliban," he told Reuters. "They called in US support."


Taliban had harboured al-Qaida
fighters blamed for 11 September

He said 20 Taliban had been killed and that fighting continued. A
second Kandahar official, who asked not to be named, said at least 28
Taliban had died.

A spokeswoman for the 20,000-strong US-led force in Afghanistan
hunting remnants of the Taliban militia ousted by a US invasion in
2001 said she had no comment on the report.

"For security reasons, we can't disclose any details," she said.

Taliban had harboured al-Qaida fighters believed to have been behind
the September 2001 attacks on the US. They continue to resist Western
forces in the country and the US-backed government.

More than 700 people have died in violence in Afghanistan since
August, most of it involving clashes with fighters.

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Twenty six percent (26%) of US population is
afflicted by some form of mental illness

WHO: The U.S. has the highest rate of mental
disorders among 14 countries

by
David Brooks and Jim Cason
La Jornada correspondents
  New York and Washington
June 2, 2004

The suspicion has now been confirmed: Americans are
crazier than the rest of the world.

Twenty-six percent of Americans have some form of
mental illness, the highest rate among 14 developed
and underdeveloped nations in the study and more than
twice the official rate in Mexico, according to the
World Health Organization (WHO).

The WHO reported that up to 50% of the population
with serious mental disorders in the U.S. and a few
European countries do not receive treatment and up to
85% with serious mental illnesses in less developed
countries go without treatment.

The lowest frequency of general mental disorders
(severe and others) was found at the Chinese port of
Shanghai (4.3%) followed by Nigeria (4.7%). The
highest incidence after the U.S. (26.4%) was recorded
in the Ukraine (20.5%), France (18.4%), Colombia
(17.8%) and Lebanon (16.9%).

The WHO survey, conducted between 2001 and 2003 in 14
countries (6 less developed and 8 more developed) by
means of 60,643 interviews in America, Asia, Europe
and Middle East/Africa, recorded the frequency,
severity and treatment of mental illnesses. The
conclusions include a high frequency and volume of
mental illnesses at a global level, which "despite
available treatments, remain largely untreated."

According to the report, the number of work days lost
due to mental illnesses are close to those caused by
physical problems with an average of 30 days lost due
to "serious" mental disorders.

The published report is preliminary and the first in
a series of surveys on the topic. Undoubtedly,
methodology problems that generate unexplainable
tendencies may exist, but the authors say this is
only a beginning. A report on the findings can be
found at the WHO web site:

http://www.who.int/en/

The report on the survey, including the statistics
and methodology was published today in the Journal of
the American Medical Association, JAMA and can be
read at its Internet web site:

http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/291/21/2581

===========
First in the World in the Deranged: Insanity in America:

A large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association, finds that there is more mental illness
and insanity, far more, in America than you find in other advanced
societies.
http://www.counterpunch.com/chuckman06032004.html

By JOHN CHUCKMAN

It's always satisfying to have a pet theory supported by new data. A
large and authoritative study, just published in the Journal of the
American Medical Association, confirms a favorite hypothesis of mine,
that there is more mental illness and insanity, far more, in America
than you find in other advanced societies.

The study, led by a Harvard Medical School researcher, found evidence
of mental problems in 26.4% of people in the United States, versus,
for example, 8.2% of people in Italy. The researchers were concerned
with matters such as lack of access to treatment and under-treatment,
but for those concerned about a safe and decent world, I think the
salient finding is simply America's high percentage. The world is
being led by a nation where more than one-quarter of the people have
genuine mental problems.

The finding is strangely both comforting and disturbing.

It is comforting because it helps explain why Americans continue
supporting a man proven wrong every time he opens his mouth, a man
who has de-stabilized parts of the world in the name of creating
stability, a man claiming sound business principles who has pitched
the United States into deficit free-fall, and a man who arouses
suspicion and fear throughout the world.

The study is comforting, too, because it helps explain an opposition
candidate like John Kerry. How can liberals generate excitement over
this stale, fly-buzzed doughnut of a candidate? I suppose the same
way they get excited every time Bush's polls dip by something little
more than statistical noise. Perhaps the same way a man like Michael
Moore - who makes gobs of money playing to the suspicions and
prejudices of the paranoid segment of America's great political
market - could so eagerly embrace a crypto-Nazi like General Wesley
Clark as "his candidate"?

The finding is comforting in explaining all those Americans shocked
and appalled over The New York Times' recent apology for its drum-
beating, pre-invasion coverage of Iraq's non-existent weapons. Here
is a newspaper that, more often than not, comes down on the wrong
side of human rights, always protects Establishment interests, always
ignores abuses until they can no longer be ignored, and yet it
somehow retains a reputation in America as guardian of treasured
values and as the nation's newspaper of record.

Well, the "record" part is easily explained, since The Times often
takes one position before an event and another after, adjusting its
emphasis according to shifts in public opinion or facts discovered by
someone else. With that kind of coverage, you surely do qualify as
some kind of paper of record.

But nothing could be a bigger nonsense than The Times' reputation as
guardian of values in a free society. Just ask Wen Ho Lee, or Richard
Jewell, or the woman who accused a Kennedy of rape, or all the people
who died unnecessarily at the Bay of Pigs. Go back and examine The
Times at key points in the communist witch hunts or at the outbreak
of the Korean War. Go back and examine its views and emphasis when
President Johnson offered his Hitler-like lies about the Gulf of
Tonkin. Go back and see how often The Times has done any real
investigative journalism - when it mattered, not in retrospect -
about subjects as vital as the FBI's huge abuse of power during the
1960s or the shameful backgrounds of many of the country's leading
politicians. Just examine the statements of the paper's signature
columnist, Thomas Friedman, who sounds like Henry Ford condemned to
bizarre re-incarnation as one the Jews he so hated.

But the finding also is quite disturbing. America, for many years to
come, will dominate world affairs. The world will continue to be
treated as though it were the backyard sandbox of the Bushes,
Cheneys, Rumsfelds, Liebermans, Kerrys, Albrights and other
privileged, selfish, and not particularly well-informed American
Establishment figures.

I explain American insanity by a gene pool fouled with the heavy
early migration of Puritans, mentally disturbed fanatics if we accept
the rather detailed historical record in Europe, plus the immense
stresses of a society run along strict principles of Social
Darwinism. An almost unqualified admiration for greed now dominates
American culture. Yes, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" involved self-
interest, but go back and read that thoughtful and compassionate
philosopher and compare what he says to the chimpanzee screams we
hear from America.

As to the stresses in American society, I refer not only to the
struggle of individuals to survive there, but to the fact that the
whole story of America has been one of unremitting aggression. It is
the story of "a pounding fist," as Tennessee Williams' Big Daddy
described himself.

Had America somehow come to be in Europe, its story would most
closely parallel that of Germany and its long, belligerent effort to
dominate the continent. It is only because so much of America's
aggression has been against what seemed lightly settled places - the
Ohio Valley, the Great Plains, Canada, Mexico, and Hawaii - that
people think any differently about it. Other places were not so
lightly settled, and opposition in places like the Philippines was
crushed with great bloodshed.

My criticism of the United States is not concerned with how it wishes
to order its own society, but about how its activities spill over
into the rest of the world. Its actions in the world too often
resemble those of an ugly drunk pushing his way into your living room
and puking all over the carpet.

Iraq provides a textbook example. The net effect of the invasion of
Iraq is a badly de-stabilized country, now full of people who resent
Americans for their brutality and arrogance, where once there were
undoubtedly many who dreamily admired America at a distance. Saudi
Arabia also has been de-stabilized, as many warned Bush that it would
be before he set his crusaders marching. Many old friends and allies,
like France or Canada, have been stupidly abused for offering sound
advice and declining to join the march to hell. Tony Blair's pathetic
rag of a government hangs by threads after working against the clear
wishes of the British people, and Blair has found the voice he
thought he had earned in the councils of war arrogantly dismissed by
Bush and his fanatics. Israel's state-terror in the West Bank and
Gaza, cheerily accepted by Bush (and Kerry), has risen to nightmarish
levels, and if you think that has no connection with all the hatred
for America in the world, you are either foolish or qualify as part
of the more than one-quarter of Americans who need professional help.

Oil prices are high and unstable, as are American deficits.
International security arrangements, those things so loved by police-
mentalities but which have never been known to stop real bad guys,
are becoming stupidly cumbersome and heavy-handed. Yet America still
supports Bush, no matter what its small tribe of liberals chooses to
believe. Knowing America's record on small tribes, I suppose it's
healthy self-interest to pretend enthusiasm for tiny dips in Bush's
polls and for an alternative as insipid and meaningless as John Kerry.

While I am glad for the confirmation of my hypothesis, I can't help
feeling, as with so many studies, this one does little more than
confirm the painfully obvious.

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