BUSLOADS OF ACTIVISTS IN IMMIGRANT-RIGHTS DRIVE
Chris McGann, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 7/8/03
http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/129926_freedom08.html

Technically speaking, buses are not the only form of transportation
suitable for a social-justice pilgrimage -- but for down-to-earth
practicality, historical resonance and symbolism they're hard to
beat.

That's why an unprecedented coalition of immigrant rights advocates,
community groups and labor unionists plans to get on the bus in
Seattle and nine other cities this fall and take their cause to the
nation's heartland and on to Washington, D.C.

The "Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride," is intended to highlight U.S.
immigration policies that organizers say undermine workplace rights,
family reunification and workers' progress toward legal residency and
citizenship.

Along the way they plan to rally groups made up in large part by
immigrants ranging from meatpackers and farmworkers to high-tech
employees and university teaching assistants...

Unions are among the most recent to speak out for immigrant rights in
the coalition that includes the King County Labor Council, the
Washington State Labor Council, the Hate Free Zone Campaign of
Washington, the Urban League of Washington, the United Farm Workers,
the Church Council of Greater Seattle, the Northwest Immigrant Rights
Project, the Council on American Islamic Relations, the People's
Coalition for Justice and dozens of other groups.

The bus from Seattle is scheduled to leave for Washington D.C. Sept.
23...There's more information about Freedom Ride on the
http://www.seattle-iwfr.org.


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Not only immigrants are suffering from the Patriot Act and related
legislation but also homeschooling survivalist "white pride" types.


They're Coming to Take Me Away

by Edgar J. Steele

July 26, 2003

"They're coming to take me away, ha-haaa!!
They're coming to take me away, ho-ho, hee-hee, ha-haaa...
You thought it was a joke and so you laughed..."
      ---"They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa," 1975, Written and
sung by Napolean XIV

I recall getting strange looks, several years ago, from people whom I
told it was time to buy their guns and ammunition at gun shows - for
cash - off paper - no records.  Now, of course, it is all but
impossible to buy a gun of any sort without getting into the Federal
and state databases, thanks to the background checks.  Unless you're
a criminal on the street, of course - business as usual there.  It's
just America's law-abiding gun buyers of whom they're keeping track.
It will make it real easy to collect them when the time comes.

I still get strange looks.  Today, however, it is because my advice
in regard to guns has shifted to:  "It's time to bury your guns and
ammunition."

Yes, they actually are confiscating certain types of weapons in
certain parts of the country - especially California, of course - and
Washington, DC, too - anyplace where there is skyrocketing crime is
where they are taking the guns away from honest civilians.  Leaving
guns only in the hands of street gangs and other assorted thugs -
such as the local police forces.

But, it isn't the escalating confiscation that causes me to say bury
them now.  Time enough for that when we see them going door to door
in the big cities, after all.  Rather, it is because the authorities
are starting to use innocent gun ownership as a basis for labeling
those of us who speak out as "domestic terrorists," to be thrown in
jail.

Yes, I know exactly how that sounds. No, I am not being excessively
paranoid.  Yes, they now are investigating perfectly ordinary
people.  People just like you.  Yes, they now are arresting law-
abiding people who merely speak out against the current American
regime.  People just like me.  Guess what class of people is due to
be arrested next?  Consider me your canary-in-the-coal-shaft.  When
you stop hearing from me, you know that you will be the next one to
be picked up.  Of course, by then there will be nobody left to speak
out on your behalf.

Here's a link to a story written by a fellow, who just happens to be
a journalist, who recently was investigated and interrogated by two
FBI agents in Atlanta because somebody reported that he was reading a
story entitled "Weapons of Mass Stupidity," while standing in a
coffee shop line:  http://atlanta.creativeloafing.com/2003-07-
17/rant.html .  Here's a link to the article that got this guy in
trouble, merely because he was reading it in a public place:
http://charlotte.creativeloafing.com/newsstand/2003-06-
04/news_cover.html .

Interrogated.  By the FBI.  For reading.  In Public.  Think about
that for a moment.  Okay, now you're ready to move on to the next
outrage.

Meet Artie Wheeler.  Artie is in jail today.  Arrested by the
Baltimore Police and labeled a domestic terrorist.  Because he owned
guns and gunpowder.  All his guns and all his reloading supplies and
equipment, including the gunpowder, are perfectly legal under
existing city, state and federal laws.  He's being held on a charge
of "reckless endangerment."

Speculation is that the charge against Artie arises from the
gunpowder, both black and smokeless, being kept in plastic jugs.
Problem is, gunpowder routinely is resold to the public in plastic
jugs.  It's the best and safest way to handle it.  Black powder is
used for old-time guns, like flintlocks, and smokeless powder is used
for modern bullets, which Artie reloaded himself in order to save
money.

I can hardly wait for them to come out here to Idaho and start
arresting people for this sort of thing.  Almost everybody has guns
and many reload their own ammunition in order to save money.  And
there are lots of black powder aficionados who shoot privately and in
competition.  America's South is full of them, busily reenacting the
War of Northern Aggression (you may think of it as the Civil War) on
weekends.

Artie wasn't home when the Baltimore SWAT team broke down the door
and then handcuffed his 72-year-old wife to the bedstead for seven
hours, while they ransacked the couple's home.  Elizabeth is a proud
grandmother, in fact, great-grandmother to three youngsters.  They
took the couple's computer equipment, private papers and $8,000 in
cash which the couple kept in their home for safety...for safety.
Now, with her husband in jail and out of work, Elizabeth has no money
with which to buy groceries, let alone hire an attorney.  But the
police have the couple's $8,000 savings, don't forget.  (Before I
forget:  Elizabeth Wheeler, 512 South East Avenue, Baltimore,
Maryland 21224-3913.  Be generous, if you've a mind to.)

Remember, in this day of the Patriot Act and Homeland Defense, the
police no longer require probable cause.  They need merely use the
magic phrase, "domestic terrorist," and all remaining constitutional
protections disappear.

Artie is being held on a misdemeanor charge, under $2,000,000 bail.
Yes, $2 million.  You heard me right.  For contrast, another name in
today's news, star basketball player Kobe Bryant, is out of jail on
his rape, assault and battery charge (of a 19-year-old white girl),
having posted just $15,000 bail.  And he's rich.

Artie Wheeler is broke since they took the couple's $8,000 savings,
yet he is in jail under $2 million bail.  Of course, Artie is white.
No, you are the one being naive if you don't think that skin color
and fame make a difference.

So, you say, why Artie?  What makes him such a target?  Well, he and
his 72-year-old wife have been passing out National Alliance
literature.  The National Alliance has been targeted by the ADL, one
of the truly evil terrorist organizations in the world today, as
being "hateful" because it objects to the favoritism given to other
races at the expense of whites.  Here is the National Alliance's web
site:  http://www.natvan.com/ .  You can read an in-depth interview
of great-grandmother Elizabeth there.

Why didn't they arrest Elizabeth, too?  Because the trumped-up charge
is based on the perfectly legal guns and gunpowder owned by her
husband.  Also, the spectacle of locking up this great grandmother
was probably too much for even these modern-day Gestapo jackbooted
thugs in Baltimore.

Another National Alliance member, Chester Doles, was arrested a
couple of months ago.  His collection of twelve pistols and rifles,
all legal, figured prominently in his being labeled a domestic
terrorist.  In Idaho, that would be a merely average collection,
believe me.

I used to ski pretty earnestly and still own about twenty pair of
skis.  At any one time, if you are serious, you really need at least
8 pair of skis, each with a completely different set of
characteristics:  slalom, giant slalom, ice, bumps, rocks, powder and
slush.  Guns are kind of like that.

Of course, if you really are a domestic terrorist, bent upon killing
people from a distance, then you really need only a single weapon.
Ironically, it's those with a great many guns who prove that they are
the true sportsmen.  It's kind of like not needing to worry about the
country with lots of nuclear missiles; rather, the real concern is
the fellow with a single nuke.

So, boys and girls, that is why I say it is time to bury those guns.
Before they use them as a pretext for arresting you because you were
seen reading something critical of the President.  But, hold back one
or two.  You'll need to give them something when they come to your
door, collecting the guns, as they inevitably will, or they will be
suspicious.  Bury the ones you bought off paper (no registration or
background checks).  Or, someday you may need a couple of holdouts in
order to fight your way to your main arsenal.  Either way, it is time.

New America.  An idea whose time has come.


-ed

"I didn't say it would be easy.  I just said it would be the truth."
             - Morpheus

Copyright ©2003, Edgar J. Steele


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'US deployed subs near Pakistan to hit Osama'
------------------------------------------------------------------
By Anwar Iqbal
WASHINGTON, July 26: The United States stationed warships and
submarines off the Pakistani coast for two years to kill Osama bin
Laden but failed to target him, says a congressional report
released earlier this week.

The American vessels, equipped with cruise missiles, were deployed
in the Arabian Sea near Pakistan soon after the bombing of two US
embassies in East Africa in August 1988 that killed 224 people.
The US government blamed Al Qaeda for the attack.....

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top14.htm&date=20030727



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CON-ARTIST WHO DEFRAUDED MUSLIMS RELEASED

CAIR has been notified by Canadian law enforcement authorities that a
convicted con-artist who preyed on Muslim communities worldwide for
more than a decade has been released and will be deported to Israel.

The alleged con-artist's primary method of operation was to place
phone calls claiming to be a well-known Muslim leader, official or
scholar stranded at an airport after his money, passport and tickets
had been stolen or lost. He would ask the intended victim, typically
a leader or activist in a local Muslim community, to wire cash
through MoneyGram or Western Union to help him out of the crisis.
After receiving the funds, he would disappear.

The impostor, an Israeli national named Mohammed Mustafa Agbareia,
used this technique to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars from
Muslim individuals and institutions in the United States, Canada,
Europe, Australia, and the Islamic world. He was convicted in March
on multiple felony counts in Canada and sentenced to nine months in
prison, with a reduction for time already served while awaiting
sentencing.

If anyone receives a call that they believe may be from this con-
artist, please contact local police and CAIR.

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Israel carried out 80 assassination last year, failed to
investigate killings

Occupied Jerusalem: 23 July, 2003 (IAP News)

An Israeli human rights group has castigated the Israeli government
for ordering the assassination of scores of Palestinians on the mere
suspicion of resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestine.

The group, the League of Citizen Rights,  pointed out in a report
published Wednesday that the Israeli army caused "unprecedented harm"
to innocent civilians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the past
two years.

According to the report, the Israeli army carried out 80
assassinations of suspected Palestinian activists last year in which
more than 90 innocent Palestinian bystanders were killed and as many
as 300 others were injured.

The group said the Israeli army failed to carry out independent
inquiry into most of  the killings, reflecting widespread army
indifference toward Palestinian lives.

Moreover, the report spoke of "gross human rights violations' against
Palestinian civilians by Israeli soldiers manning roadblocks
throughout the occupied territories.

Finally, the report the Israeli army of deliberately holding up
Palestinian ambulances for up to one hour, ostensibly to make sure
that as many wounded Palestinians as possible bleed to death before
they are transferred to hospital.

The report gave example of five Palestinians who bled to death because
ambulances were held up by Israeli soldiers and consequently
couldn't reach them soon enough.

The Israeli refused to comment on the report.
_______________________________________
Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP)
http://www.iap.org E-mails: iapinfo@...

Proudly serving Palestine and al Quds



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Rule by the Blind
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping of Arabs
By EDWARD SAID
July 21, 2003

The great modern empires have never been held together only by
military power. Britain ruled the vast territories of India with only
a few thousand colonial officers and a few more thousand troops, many
of them Indian. France did the same in North Africa and Indochina,
the Dutch in Indonesia, the Portuguese and Belgians in Africa. The
key element was imperial perspective, that way of looking at a
distant foreign reality by subordinating it in one's gaze,
constructing its history from one's own point of view, seeing its
people as subjects whose fate can be decided by what distant
administrators think is best for them. From such willful perspectives
ideas develop, including the theory that imperialism is a benign and
necessary thing.

For a while this worked, as many local leaders believed--mistakenly--
that cooperating with the imperial authority was the only way. But
because the dialectic between the imperial perspective and the local
one is adversarial and impermanent, at some point the conflict
between ruler and ruled becomes uncontainable and breaks out into
colonial war, as happened in Algeria and India. We are still a long
way from that moment in American rule over the Arab and Muslim world
because, over the last century, pacification through unpopular local
rulers has so far worked.

At least since World War II, American strategic interests in the
Middle East have been, first, to ensure supplies of oil and, second,
to guarantee at enormous cost the strength and domination of Israel
over its neighbors.

Every empire, however, tells itself and the world that it is unlike
all other empires, that its mission is not to plunder and control but
to educate and liberate. These ideas are by no means shared by the
people who inhabit that empire, but that hasn't prevented the U.S.
propaganda and policy apparatus from imposing its imperial
perspective on Americans, whose sources of information about Arabs
and Islam are woefully inadequate.

Several generations of Americans have come to see the Arab world
mainly as a dangerous place, where terrorism and religious fanaticism
are spawned and where a gratuitous anti-Americanism is inculcated in
the young by evil clerics who are anti-democratic and virulently anti-
Semitic.

In the U.S., "Arabists" are under attack. Simply to speak Arabic or
to have some sympathetic acquaintance with the vast Arab cultural
tradition has been made to seem a threat to Israel. The media runs
the vilest racist stereotypes about Arabs--see, for example, a piece
by Cynthia Ozick in the Wall Street Journal in which she speaks of
Palestinians as having "reared children unlike any other children,
removed from ordinary norms and behaviors" and of Palestinian culture
as "the life force traduced, cultism raised to a sinister
spiritualism."

Americans are sufficiently blind that when a Middle Eastern leader
emerges whom our leaders like--the shah of Iran or Anwar Sadat--it is
assumed that he is a visionary who does things our way not because he
understands the game of imperial power (which is to survive by
humoring the regnant authority) but because he is moved by principles
that we share.

Almost a quarter of a century after his assassination, Sadat is a
forgotten and unpopular man in his own country because most Egyptians
regard him as having served the U.S. first, not Egypt. The same is
true of the shah in Iran. That Sadat and the shah were followed in
power by rulers who are less palatable to the U.S. indicates not that
Arabs are fanatics, but that the distortions of imperialism produce
further distortions, inducing extreme forms of resistance and
political self-assertion.

The Palestinians are considered to have reformed themselves by
allowing Mahmoud Abbas, rather than the terrible Yasser Arafat, to be
their leader. But "reform" is a matter of imperial interpretation.
Israel and the U.S. regard Arafat as an obstacle to the settlement
they wish to impose on the Palestinians, a settlement that would
obliterate Palestinian demands and allow Israel to claim, falsely,
that it has atoned for its "original sin."

Never mind that Arafat--whom I have criticized for years in the
Arabic and Western media--is still universally regarded as the
legitimate Palestinian leader. He was legally elected and has a level
of popular support that no other Palestinian approaches, least of all
Abbas, a bureaucrat and longtime Arafat subordinate. And never mind
that there is now a coherent Palestinian opposition, the Independent
National Initiative; it gets no attention because the U.S. and the
Israeli establishment wish for a compliant interlocutor who is in no
position to make trouble. As to whether the Abbas arrangement can
work, that is put off to another day. This is shortsightedness indeed-
-the blind arrogance of the imperial gaze. The same pattern is
repeated in the official U.S. view of Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and
the other Arab states.

Underlying this perspective is a long-standing view--the Orientalist
view--that denies Arabs their right to national self-determination
because they are considered incapable of logic, unable to tell the
truth and fundamentally murderous.

Since Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798, there has been an
uninterrupted imperial presence based on these premises throughout
the Arab world, producing untold misery--and some benefits, it is
true. But so accustomed have Americans become to their own ignorance
and the blandishments of U.S. advisors like Bernard Lewis and Fouad
Ajami, who have directed their venom against the Arabs in every
possible way, that we somehow think that what we do is correct
because "that's the way the Arabs are." That this happens also to be
an Israeli dogma shared uncritically by the neo-conservatives who are
at the heart of the Bush administration simply adds fuel to the fire.

We are in for many more years of turmoil and misery in the Middle
East, where one of the main problems is, to put it as plainly as
possible, U.S. power. What the U.S. refuses to see clearly it can
hardly hope to remedy.

Edward Said is a professor at Columbia University. He is a
contributor to Cockburn and St. Clair's forthcoming book, The
Politics of Anti-Semitism (AK Press).




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23 die in surge of Kashmir violence

SRINAGAR, July 25: Twenty-three people were killed, including 13 shot
dead by Indian troops along the Line of Control, in a surge of
violence on Friday and overnight in occupied Kashmir, officials said.

A police spokesman said five suspected Mujahideen were shot dead as
they attempted to enter the Indian side of the LoC in the Karna
sector of Kupwara.

Three more Kashmiri fighters died on the LoC at Trehgam in Kupwara,
said the spokesman, adding the troops ambushed both groups of
Mujahideen. He said the police were trying to ascertain the group the
slain Mujahideen belonged to.

In the far south, five people were shot dead as they tried to
infiltrate the territory at Kanachak in the Akhnoor sector, claimed
an army spokesman.

In separate violence overnight, three freedom fighters and two Indian
army soldiers were killed in a six-hour encounter in Kupwara's Vilgam
area, police said. They said the violence broke out after troops
launched a search for militants.

In Poonch, militants ambushed a patrol at Morah Bachai, killing two
of security personnel and injuring three others. -AFP

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top11.htm&date=20030726

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LIEBERMAN BLASTED FOR SUGGESTING DROWNING PALESTINIAN PRISONERS
Gideon Alon, Haaretz, 7/8/03
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=315541

A storm erupted in the Knesset plenum yesterday, following Transport
Minister Avigdor Lieberman's reported proposal to provide buses to
take the Palestinian prisoners that Israel releases to a
place "whence they will not return."

According to another report, Lieberman said the prisoners should be
drowned in the Dead Sea and he would provide the buses to take them
there.

MKs Jamal Zahalka (Balad) and Talab A-Sana and Abdelmalek Dahamsha
(United Arab List) blasted Lieberman.

The Arab Knesst members were furious. MK Talab A-Sana said "that's
the ultimate fascist statement, shame on you."

Lieberman told MK Zahalka "Let me tell you openly. As far as I'm
concerned you're much worse than Arafat and Abu Mazen. If it was up
to me you'd be sitting in jail, at best..."



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MUSLIM DOCTOR'S CHALLENGES DENIED, INCLUDING THIRD BID FOR BAIL
William Kates, Associated Press, 7/7/03
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/ny-bc-ny--
charityarrests0707jul07,0,6238828.story

SYRACUSE, N.Y. --A judge has upheld the constitutionality of the
federal government's Iraqi sanctions and for a third time refused
bail for a prominent Muslim doctor accused of illegally sending money
to Iraq.

U.S. District Judge Norman Mordue also called the case against Dr.
Rafil Dhafir "complex" and set aside the "speedy trial" provision
requiring the government to bring the case to trial within 70 days of
the indictment.

Dhafir, 55, an oncologist from Fayetteville, and three other men were
charged in February with conspiring to violate U.S. economic
sanctions against Iraq through a charity Dhafir started called Help
the Needy. He also faces nearly three dozen counts of tax and health
care fraud.

Dhafir, a U.S. citizen born in Iraq, has been held without bail since
his arrest. He has not been charged with any terrorism crimes,
although prosecutors continue to investigate him for possible links
to terrorist groups or causes...




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GRANADA'S MUSLIMS FINALLY GET A MOSQUE
Isambard Wilkinson, Daily Telegraph, 7/8/03
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/

GRANADA, Spain - After a wait of more than 500 years, Spanish Muslims
have finally succeeded in building a mosque of their own in the
shadow of the Alhambra, once the symbol of Islamic power in Europe.

The opening, by Muslim and Spanish officials on Thursday, will be
rich in symbolism. As Al-Jazeera television broadcasts the event
live, a muezzin will climb the minaret of Granada's Great Mosque and
call the faithful to prayer for the first time in half a millennium.

It is, say its builders, the symbol of the revival of Islam in Europe
and Spain's "glorious Islamic heritage'."

For that reason, though, many Spaniards are quietly
unhappy. "Everybody is opposed to it, but they know it's politically
impossible to voice their objections," said one journalist...


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Political death of a usurper
George Galloway

Monday July 14, 2003
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,997621,00.html



An unwinnable war in Iraq and the deceit that led to it have
destroyed the credibility of the prime minister

"Now does he feel/ his secret murders sticking on his hands;/ now
minutely revolts upbraid his faith-breach;/ those he commands move
only in command,/ nothing in love: now does he feel his title/ hang
loose about him, like a giant's robe/ upon a dwarfish thief."

Thus Angus spoke of the Scottish usurper Macbeth, whose ambition led
him deep into a river of blood. Less poetically, Clare Short, Mo
Mowlem and Robin Cook are saying much the same of their former
cabinet colleague. I predicted before the war that Iraq would be the
political death of Tony Blair, and it is now almost Shakespearean how
the pain from his self-inflicted wounds is written across his face.
It is as if he is physically diminishing before our eyes as his
authority bleeds into the sands of Iraq.

Each new day brings another stab at Blair's credibility: former
cabinet members in public, current ministers in private, using the
round of summer parties to distance themselves from the fading king.
From Hans Blix, the BBC and the press, from two former heads of the
joint intelligence committee and now, perhaps fatally, from across
the Atlantic, fall blow after hammer blow. Suddenly, comparing the
two main war leaders to wolves - which has got me into such
difficulty with the Labour hierarchy - seems very tame indeed.

Always travelling light on ideological baggage, never having won or
wanted the affection of the Labour clan, Blair's main asset was
his "Trust me, I'm a regular guy" reputation. Now it is gone and will
never be recovered.

That Iraq was lynched by Bush and Blair has become plain as a
pikestaff. Take the saving of Private Jessica. Said at first to have
been shot and held hostage by Iraqi doctors, and now revealed to have
been in their care after a road traffic accident, her story serves as
a metaphor for the mendacity so deep and treacly-black it might be an
oil sump: from the 45-minute warning to the banks of the Niger and
the sweepings of the internet floor.

In their occupation of Iraq, the US and British armies have entered
the gates of hell. Soon it will be 100 degrees at midnight in
Baghdad, but there will be no respite from the need for full body
armour. In two weeks, armed attacks on coalition forces have nearly
doubled to 25 per day. More than 200 have been wounded and over 40
killed in combat since "victory" was declared by President Bush.
Morale among US forces is dropping towards Vietnam-type levels, with
heavy drug consumption, and commanders turning a blind eye to the
prostituting of Iraqi women. No doubt the spectre of
troops "fragging" overly strict officers is on their minds.

So hot is the welcome to these "liberators" that the US has now
evacuated its forces from both the vast campus of Baghdad University
and from the hub of the sharpest armed action, in Fallujah. The
latter gives the lie to the repeated calumny that those fighting the
occupation are merely "Saddamist remnants". In truth, Fallujah is the
heartland of the Jubbur tribe, arch-enemies of Saddam whose leaders
were purged by the Takriti Ba'ath party bosses more than a decade
ago.

No fighting in this area could take place without the Jubbur, so it
must be more than nostalgia for the old regime that is fuelling it.
Throughout the Calvary of Vietnam, resistance was routinely described
as coming from unrepresentative "hardline elements" or outside the
country's borders. The deeper Johnson and Nixon sank into the
quagmire, the more they spread the war, to neighbouring Cambodia and
new killing fields. Look out for "hot pursuit" operations in the
months to come into Syria, Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

In Vietnam, the Americans installed a succession of puppet
governments in whose name they could claim to be fighting. Though as
bereft of electoral legitimacy as a Jeb Bush Floridian plebiscite,
the Vietnamese juntas had a social base. Yesterday's jokers,
the "Iraqi Governing Council" - handpicked by Iraq's US governor,
Paul Bremer - make South Vietnam's General Thieu look like an
authentic national leader. Without hundreds of thousands of foreign
troops, they would be swept away in a gale of derision.

Iraqis want Britain and America out of their country, that much is
abundantly clear. Only independently supervised elections to a
constituent assembly can produce Iraqi leaders fit to face the
outside world and rebuild their country.

Tony Blair can run around the world on grand diplomatic tours. He can
bask in the adulation of the Republican right in the US Congress. But
he cannot hide from the fact that he has lost the plot at home. He
has entered that twilight which saw the departure in tears of Mrs
Thatcher in a taxi from the Downing Street she once bestrode like a
colossus.

The foreign affairs select committee was wrong when it said the jury
was out on the Blair war. Both the public and the Labour movement
jury has already returned its verdict of guilty. Mr Blair will soon
exit the political stage; it would be better t'were done quickly.



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F.B.I. IS ACCUSED OF BIAS BY ARAB-AMERICAN AGENT
David Johnston, New York Times, 7/19/03
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/20/national/20AGEN.html

WASHINGTON - The F.B.I.'s highest-ranking Arab-American agent has
filed a racial discrimination lawsuit against the bureau, charging
that he was kept out of the investigation of the Sept. 11, 2001,
hijackings because of his ancestry.

The agent, Bassem Youssef, filed the lawsuit on Friday in Federal
District Court for the District of Columbia. Mr. Youssef, a
naturalized American citizen born in Egypt, said in his complaint
that "no other non-Arab F.B.I. employee with similar background and
experience was willfully blocked from working 9/11-related matters."

Some of the actions against him had broader implications, Mr. Youssef
said in his complaint, undermining important counterterrorism
investigations prior to the attacks. "The F.B.I. permitted racism to
interfere with national security," Mr. Youssef said in an earlier
filing with the Federal Bureau of Investigation's equal opportunity
office.

In one incident two months before the hijackings, F.B.I. agents in
Miami lost a prospective informant on the Qaeda terrorist network
because of what Mr. Youssef said was an internal argument about his
involvement in interviews with the source. Whatever information might
have been learned was lost, he said…

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NATO INVESTIGATES ALLEGED BEATING OF BOSNIAN MUSLIM BY US
PEACEKEEPERS
Agence France Presse, 7/24/03
http://www.spacewar.com/2003/030724135415.luwsp5ru.html

SARAJEVO - NATO-led peacekeepers in Bosnia said Thursday they and
local police were investigating an incident in which troops allegedly
severely beat a Muslim invalid whom they suspected of video-taping
them.

The NATO-led Stabilisation Force (SFOR) is investigating the incident
in which a group of peacekeepers "briefly detained" a resident of the
northeastern town of Kalesija "suspected of video-taping an SFOR
patrol," an SFOR statement said.

But Hatidza Sahbazovic accused US troops serving with the
peacekeepers of severely beating her invalid husband Bajro -- who
lost his leg and arm during Bosnia's 1992-1995 war -- in front of
their house on Wednesday...

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TROOPS BEAR 'MOOR KILLER' BADGES
Giles Tremlett, Guardian, 7/25/03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/spain/article/0,2763,1005509,00.html

A row broke out in Spain yesterday after the country sent its first
troops to patrol Iraq wearing on their shoulders the Cross of St
James of Compostela - popularly known in Spain as "the Moor Killer".

Patches bearing the cross, the symbol of a saint who allegedly guided
the medieval Christian re conquista of Spain from the Muslims, are to
be worn by a 2,000-strong Spanish brigade in central Iraq, who will
patrol the sacred Shia city of Najaf.

While newspapers and radio stations reacted with astonishment at the
choice of symbol, politicians avoided the argument.

"If we start debating this subject the risks surrounding the mission
will only be increased," said a spokesman from the opposition
Socialist party, Jesus Caldera.

Spaniards, unaccustomed to seeing their soldiers take part in what
many see as an army of occupation, already view the Iraq mission with
concern.

The deaths of more than 40 US and British soldiers since the Iraq war
was officially declared over has increased worries about the prime
minister Jose Maria Aznar's willingness to help the countries whose
troops ousted Saddam Hussein.

"To put the Cross of St James of Compostela on the uniforms of
Spanish soldiers supposes an absolute ignorance of the society in
which they will have to carry out their mission," fumed El Mundo
newspaper in an editorial.

"It would be difficult to come up with any symbol more offensive to
the Shia population than this cross."

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Demonstration to take place at the White House,
Lafayette Park, Washington DC, Tuesday July 29th at 10:30AM

While the Honorable President George Bush will be meeting with Mr.
Sharon in the Oval Office the true voice of Judaism will be heard in
Lafayette Park.

Sharon and the State of "Israel" do not and can not represent the
Jewish people and they most certainly can not represent the Jewish
religion.

As we have explained at numerous times, all the great rabbis of the
20th century were opposed to the Zionist movement, and understood the
danger it presented for the Jewish People, its relations with other
peoples and the harm it will do to other nations, especially the
Arabs and Palestinians, with whom Jews have lived in peace and
harmony for over 1,000 years. Our rabbis warned that Zionism would
be the cause of great conflict and bloodshed. Therefore we proclaim
that no peace can ever be realized until the Zionist state is
peacefully dismantled.

Zionism rejects the teachings of Judaism, including the Divinely-
ordained Decree of Exile from the Holy Land some 2,000 years ago and
the prohibition of creating a Jewish State, according to which Jews
are instructed to live among other peoples in peace, friendship and
harmony. Any violation of this decree, such as the establishment of a
Zionist state, is a grave sin, and as history has proven, provides no
lasting benefit for any Jews whatsoever, and in fact has been a
relentless assault on everything Judaism holds dear and on their very
existence physically and spiritually.

We proclaim that true peace and justice according to the Jewish
religion necessitates that the Zionist State of Israel be peacefully
dismantled, the rule of the land be transferred to the indigenous
Palestinian people, at which time the civil and human rights of the
native Palestinians once again be restored and the dispersed
Palestinian refugees will finally be able the return to their
homes throughout historic Palestine.

The Torah states "why are you violating the words of G-d, it will not
be successful" (Numbers, 14: 41).

May G-d answer our prayers and enable us to witness the restoration
of peace and brotherhood in the Holy Land.

We proclaim Judaism and Zionism are extreme opposites.


Neturei Karta International
www.nkusa.org


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The real fist in the face of the Palestinians

By Gideon Levy

Haaretz
28 July 2003

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=322416&
contrassID=2&subContrassID=4&sbSubContrassID=0&listSrc=Y

By all appearances, it's possible to drive from the village of
Burkin to Jenin on the main road. It's a five-minute trip. But at
the end of the road is an earth barrier that no car can get by. So
you have to take the roundabout route, between the olive groves. The
trip is prolonged to a half hour of dust, jolts and anxiety.

Almost always a tank or some other armored vehicle of the Israel
Defense Forces emerges from between the trees. In some cases, the
soldiers tell the driver to turn around go back the way he came.
Sometimes they let him continue. It's perfectly arbitrary. Sometimes
the soldiers slash the four

tires to render the car immobile, or they may impound the car keys
for a few hours. There are cases in which the soldiers open fire in
the direction of the passengers to frighten them, and, in rare
instances, they kill them, as occurred a few weeks ago in the nearby
village of Silat a-Hartiya.

This is the routine of life (and death) between the villages of the
West Bank and its cities. This is also how the IDF has defeated the
laws of geometry: in the territories, there are no longer two points
between which you can draw a straight line.

This state of affairs has absolutely nothing to do with the security
of Israelis. The fact is that traffic carries on somehow. You can
get from Burkin to Jenin, and you can even transport terrorists and
bombs, but to do it you have to use back roads that are more like
trails. The purpose here is different. It's to make the lives of the
local residents as miserable as possible and to remind them, day in
and day out, who is sovereign here and thus also to make the
settlers happy.

This is the sole reason for much of the army activity in the
territories, though it's carried out under the lying guise of
maintaining security. The head of the Central Command, Major General
Moshe Kaplinski, told the Knesset's Constitution, Law and Justice
Committee not long ago that about 1,000 soldiers man 25 key
checkpoints every day. In some cases another 4,000 troops are added
at surprise checkpoints.

Most of these roadblocks are not between Israel and the territories,
but between Palestinian towns and villages. The implication of this
is that up to 5,000 soldiers are engaged in collective punishment
whose only purpose is to brutalize the entire civilian population.
In the future, this will have serious ramifications for the moral
outlook of these soldier-warders. In the meantime, though, the
victims are the Palestinians, who are unable to maintain any sort of
routine. People who thought that the cessation of the terrorist
attacks brought about an easing of this situation are wrong; far
from easing the situation, in the past few days, the IDF has been
working to raise the height of the barriers in the villages around
Tul Karm and Qalqilyah.

Few Israelis are aware of this reality. Few Israelis know the
difference between keter (encirclement) and seger (closure). All
they want is for the terrorism to stop. The question of how many
terrorist attacks these inhuman conditions have spawned never comes
up. Not even the High Court of Justice gets exercised about the
ongoing collective injustice.

Earlier this month, three High Court justices rejected a petition
that was filed by three besieged villages near Nablus - Salem, Deir
al-Hatab and Azamout - in conjunction with Physicians for Human
Rights and the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The
petitioners described the inhuman conditions in the villages. They
also told the court about two recent cases of death, one of a
newborn and the other of a heart patient, which occurred because of
the siege.

However, Justice Mishael Cheshin's conscience did not torment him,
and he rejected the petition on the usual grounds of security. "It
is true that the respondent [the defense establishment] could have
adopted other measures to protect lives, but we did not find the way
that was chosen to be flawed or defective," Cheshin wrote with
characteristic serpentine logic. The residents of the three villages
have been prisoners day and night for years even though they have
done nothing wrong, but the High Court of Justice finds nothing
"flawed or defective" about this, only because the IDF has decided
that this is the way it has to be. This is the justice of the High
Court of Justice.

Another attempt to cope with the situation in the territories failed
as well. In the past few weeks, the chairman of the Constitution,
Law and Justice Committee, Michael Eitan (Likud), initiated a series
of committee discussions on preserving human rights in the
territories. The panel focused on the behavior of the soldiers who
man the checkpoints and the way the IDF deals with "irregularities."

To the credit of Eitan, who is an unusual, relatively courageous MK,
let it be said that he put tough questions to the army officers who
appeared before the committee. But Eitan, too, blurred the main
point: the problem is not the "exceptions" but the policy. As long
as no one talks about the siege as a whole, who cares how many cases
the IDF investigated? Is it only the soldier who strikes a
Palestinian who is acting irregularly, while soldiers who besiege a
village and expel an old man who wants to see his grandchildren are
acting properly?

The behavior of the female soldier who is charged with forcing a
Palestinian woman to drink a toxic liquid at a checkpoint is
revolting, but people should be far more revolted by the fact that
for the past two-and-a-half years, we have been imprisoning an
entire nation so cruelly. The fact that the IDF is putting the
soldier on trial does not exempt it from its overall responsibility
for its harsh measures.

"How old are you?" a soldier at a checkpoint rudely asks a young
Palestinian driver in the 2002 documentary "Ford Transit" (2002), a
film by Hany Abu-Assad that last week received the Spirit of Freedom
award at the Jerusalem Film Festival. "A hundred," the Palestinian
jokes, and gets a fist in his face from the soldier. Another
"irregular" soldier. But the real fist is the one that 5,000 regular
Israeli soldiers smash routinely, every day in the West Bank, into
the faces of a million-and-a-half Palestinians.



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Eight die as Saudi forces clash with militants


By Syed Rashid Husain

RIYADH, July 28: Six extremists and two Saudi security officials were
killed on Monday morning in a shootout in the Al-Qassim region in
central Saudi Arabia. An interior ministry spokesperson quoted by the
official Saudi Press Agency said: "Saudi security men encircled today
a farm located in Gadhi town, in Oyoon Al-Jawaa governorate in Al-
Qassim region, after receiving information that some wanted persons
are residing in this farm house."

Children and women were evacuated from the place and moved to a
secured place, before the shootout started between the extremists
holed up in the farm and the Saudi security forces.

"The security forces asked the culprits to surrender but they refused
and fired on the security men intensively, using hand grenades. In
the shoot out six of the culprits and two security personnel, eight
others also sustained minor injuries. Four persons who had harboured
the culprits at their house inside the farm were also arrested.

This incident happened almost a week after the Saudi authorities had
announced arresting 16 people and confiscating a large amount of
explosives in raids.


http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top17.htm&date=20030729

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ANTI-MUSLIM RAGE IN U.S. HURTS OTHERS TOO
Greg Frost, Reuters, 7/21/03
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=3124846

NEW BEDFORD, Mass., (Reuters) - "Go back to Iraq!" the young men
shouted as they beat and kicked the pizza delivery man in the face,
breaking his jaw in three places.

They bound his thin body with rope, stuffed a sock in his mouth to
muffle his screams for help and used the back of his neck as an
ashtray. They stuffed him into the trunk of a car, where he managed
to set himself free -- only to be stabbed.

But the victim of this Massachusetts attack was neither a Muslim nor
an Iraqi but a Hindu from the central Indian city of Indore. He tried
to make this clear to his assailants but his entreaties fell on
ignorant ears…

The attack against Bhalerao marked the second time in seven months
that non-Muslim Indians have been victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes
in Massachusetts alone.

Similar attacks or acts of discrimination have hit Indians elsewhere
in the country. In May, a Sikh in Arizona was shot twice by
assailants who reportedly yelled "Go back to where you belong." Last
year in New York, three young men warned another Sikh "not to bomb
another building."

The incidents have the Indian-American community worried.

"A segment of our community is at high risk," said Ravi Sakhuja, a
leader of an Indian-American political group in New England. "Some
people are looking at all of us and saying 'Oh, they're all
Muslims."'

DANGEROUS TIMES

Mohamed Nimer, director of research at the Council on  American-
Islamic Relations, said ignorance is "rampant" in America and is
among the reasons for a 15 percent increase in anti-Muslim violence,
discrimination and harassment in 2002.

In a report issued this month, Nimer said anger about the Sept. 11,
2001, attacks and "discriminatory" government policies like the USA
Patriot Act have combined to make America a risky place for Muslims
and those perceived to be Muslim...

Stoking the flames of hate, he says, is anti-Islamic rhetoric from
Christian preachers like Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and Franklin
Graham, son of the Rev. Billy Graham.

Falwell prompted deadly Hindu-Muslim clashes in India last year when
he called the prophet Mohammed a "terrorist" and Robertson made
headlines in December when he called Muslims "worse than Nazis."

Graham, who gave the sermon at President George W. Bush's 2001
inauguration, angered Muslims after the Sept. 11 attacks when he
called Islam a "very evil and wicked religion."

"When you have leaders who talk this way ... it's no wonder you get
some people who are willing to go and attack," Nimer said. "Some
people really believe the Islamic mosque next door is the place where
bombing attacks are being hatched and they say: 'Let's get them
before they get us."

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SCARED AFGHAN VILLAGERS HIDE KORANS FROM US TROOPS
Agence France Presse, 7/25/03
http://iafrica.com/news/worldnews/257240.htm

KABUL - Scared Afghans in the southern province of Kandahar hid their
Korans and other religious items before US troops searched their
village, afraid the Americans would kill them for being Muslims, a US
military spokesman said on Friday.

"The village of Atel Mohammad removed all of their religious items,
including the Korans from the village before Special Operations
Forces and AMF (Afghan militia forces) arrived," Colonel Rodney Davis
said in a statement from Bagram Air Base 50 kilometres (30 miles)
north of Kabul.

During the search, a date for which was not given, Special Operations
Forces found the items hidden in a flour sack in a nearby dry creek
bed and returned them to the elder of the village, near Spin Boldak
town on the Pakistan border...

It was not known who had told the villagers that American troops
would kill them for being Muslim...


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BEST CD presented by Verity Sharp
Winner

'Exile' by Gilad Atzmon (Tiptoe/Enja Records)

In this album Gilad and The Orient House Ensemble move further
towards a cultural hybrid, attempting to remove the unnecessary
barriers betwen Jewish and Arabic cultures. Gilad emphasises the
similarity between the two peoples that lived in perfect harmony for
hundreds of years. The new album features the great Palestinian
singer Reem Kelani and the world famous vocalist and aud player
Dhafer Youssef. Exile represents a significant milestone in Gilad's
musical career. For the album Gilad has selected musicians who live
in exile, including musicians from Palestine, Italy, Romania, Britain
and Israel.

Other 'Best CD' Nominees
'Soundtrack' by Guy Barker (Provocateur)
'Slightly Askew' by Chris Bowden (Ninja Tunes)

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/events/jazzawards/results.shtml

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What is 'Holocaust Denial'?

www.whatreallyhappened.com

In recent years, more and more attention has been devoted to the
supposed danger of "Holocaust denial." Politicians, newspapers and
television warn about the growing influence of those who reject the
Holocaust story that some six million European Jews were
systematically exterminated during the Second World War, most of them
in gas chambers.

In several countries, including Israel, France, Germany and
Austria, "Holocaust denial" is against the law, and "deniers" have
been punished with stiff fines and prison sentences. Some frantic
Jewish community leaders are calling for similar government measures
in North America against so-called "deniers." In Canada, David Matas,
Senior Counsel for the "League for Human Rights" of the Zionist B'nai
B'rith organization, says: (note 1)

The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews, including two
million children. Holocaust denial is a second murder of those same
six million. First their lives were extinguished; then their deaths.
A person who denies the Holocaust becomes part of the crime of the
Holocaust itself.

Often overlooked in this controversy is the crucial question: Just
what constitutes "Holocaust denial"?

Six Million?
Should someone be considered a "Holocaust denier" because he does not
believe -- as Matas and others insist -- that six million Jews were
killed during World War II? This figure was cited by the
International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg in 1945-1946. It found
that "the policy pursued [by the German government] resulted in the
killing of six million Jews, of which four million were killed in the
extermination institutions." (note 2)

Yet if that is so, then several of the most prominent Holocaust
historians could be regarded as "deniers." Professor Raul Hilberg,
author of the standard reference work, The Destruction of the
European Jews, does not accept that six million Jews died. He puts
the total of deaths (from all causes) at 5.1 million. Gerald
Reitlinger, author of The Final Solution, likewise did not accept the
six million figure. He estimated the figure of Jewish wartime dead
might be as high as 4.6 million, but admitted that this was
conjectural due to a lack of reliable information.

Human Soap?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that the Nazis didn't use
Jewish fat to make soap? After examining all the evidence (including
an actual bar of soap supplied by the Soviets), the Nuremberg
Tribunal declared in its Judgment that "in some instances attempts
were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the
commercial manufacture of soap." (note 3)

In 1990, though, Israel's official "Yad Vashem" Holocaust memorial
agency "rewrote history" by admitting that the soap story was not
true. "Historians have concluded that soap was not made from human
fat. When so many people deny the Holocaust ever happened, why give
them something to use against the truth?," said Yad Vashem official
Shmuel Krakowski. (note 4)

Wannsee Conference?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he does not accept that the
January 1942 "Wannsee conference" of German bureaucrats was held to
set or coordinate a program of systematic mass murder of Europe's
Jews? If so, Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer must be wrong --
  and a "Holocaust denier" -- because he recently declared: "The
public still repeats, time after time, the silly story that at
Wannsee the extermination of the Jews was arrived at." In Bauer's
opinion, Wannsee was a meeting but "hardly a conference" and "little
of what was said there was executed in detail." (note 5)

Extermination Policy?
Is someone a "Holocaust denier" if he says that there was no order by
Hitler to exterminate Europe's Jews? There was a time when the answer
would have been yes. Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg, for example,
wrote in the 1961 edition of his study, The Destruction of the
European Jews, that there were two Hitler orders for the destruction
of Europe's Jews: the first given in the spring of 1941, and the
second shortly thereafter. But Hilberg removed mention of any such
order from the revised, three-volume edition of his book published in
1985. (note 6) As Holocaust historian Christopher Browning has noted:
(note 7)

In the new edition, all references in the text to a Hitler decision
or Hitler order for the "Final Solution" have been systematically
excised. Buried at the bottom of a single footnote stands the
solitary reference: "Chronology and circumstances point to a Hitler
decision before the summer ended." In the new edition, decisions were
not made and orders were not given.

A lack of hard evidence for an extermination order by Hitler has
contributed to a controversy that divides Holocaust historians
into "intentionalists" and "functionalists." The former contend that
there was a premeditated extermination policy ordered by Hitler,
while the latter hold that Germany's wartime "final solution" Jewish
policy evolved at lower levels in response to circumstances. But the
crucial point here is this: notwithstanding the capture of literally
tons of German documents after the war, no one can point to
documentary evidence of a wartime extermination order, plan or
program. This was admitted by Professor Hilberg during his testimony
in the 1985 trial in Toronto of German-Canadian publisher Ernst
Zündel. (note 8)

Auschwitz
So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Surely a claim that most
Auschwitz inmates died from disease and not systematic extermination
in gas chambers would be "denial." But perhaps not. Jewish historian
Arno J. Mayer, a Princeton University professor, wrote in his 1988
study Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution" in
History': ... From 1942 to 1945, certainly at Auschwitz, but probably
overall, more Jews were killed by so-called 'natural' causes than
by 'unnatural' ones." (note 9)

Even estimates of the number of people who died at Auschwitz --
allegedly the main extermination center -- are no longer clear cut.
At the postwar Nuremberg Tribunal, the Allies charged that the
Germans exterminated four million people at Auschwitz. (note 10)
Until 1990, a memorial plaque at Auschwitz read: "Four Million People
Suffered and Died Here at the Hands of the Nazi Murderers Between the
Years 1940 and 1945." (note 11) During a 1979 visit to the camp, Pope
John Paul II stood before this memorial and blessed the four million
victims.

Is it "Holocaust denial" to dispute these four million deaths? Not
today. In July 1990, the Polish government's Auschwitz State Museum,
along with Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust center, conceded that the
four million figure was a gross exaggeration, and references to it
were accordingly removed from the Auschwitz monument. Israeli and
Polish officials announced a tentative revised toll of 1.1 million
Auschwitz dead. (note 12) In 1993, French Holocaust researcher Jean-
Claude Pressac, in a much-discussed book about Auschwitz, estimated
that altogether about 775,000 died there during the war years. (note
13)

Professor Mayer acknowledges that the question of how many really
died in Auschwitz remains open. In Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? he
wrote (p. 366):

... Many questions remain open ... All in all, how many bodies were
cremated in Auschwitz? How many died there all told? What was the
national, religious, and ethnic breakdown in this commonwealth of
victims? How many of them were condemned to die a 'natural' death and
how many were deliberately slaughtered? And what was the proportion
of Jews among those murdered in cold blood among these gassed? We
have simply no answers to these questions at this time.

Gas Chambers
What about denying the existence of extermination "gas chambers"?
Here too, Mayer makes a startling statement (on page 362 of his
book): "Sources for the study of the gas chambers are at once rare
and unreliable." While Mayer believes that such chambers did exist at
Auschwitz, he points out that

most of what is known is based on the depositions of Nazi officials
and executioners at postwar trials and on the memory of survivors and
bystanders. This testimony must be screened carefully, since it can
be influenced by subjective factors of great complexity.

Höss Testimony
One example of this might be the testimony of Rudolf Höss, an SS
officer who served as commandant of Auschwitz. In its Judgment, the
Nuremberg International Military Tribunal quoted at length from his
testimony to support its findings of extermination. (note 14)

It is now well established that H°ss' crucial testimony, as well as
his so-called "confession" (which was also cited by the Nuremberg
Tribunal), are not only false, but were obtained by beating the
former commandant nearly to death. (note 15) H°ss' wife and children
were also threatened with death and deportation to Siberia. In his
statement -- which would not be admissible today in any United States
court of law -- H°ss claimed the existence of an extermination camp
called "Wolzek." In fact, no such camp ever existed. He further
claimed that during the time that he was commandant of Auschwitz, two
and a half million people were exterminated there, and that a further
half million died of disease. (note 16) Today no reputable historian
upholds these figures. H°ss was obviously willing to say anything,
sign anything and do anything to stop the torture, and to try to save
himself and his family.

Forensic Investigations
In his 1988 book, Professor Mayer calls for "excavations at the
killing sites and in their immediate environs" to determine more
about the gas chambers. In fact, such forensic studies have been
made. The first was conducted in 1988 by American execution equipment
consultant, Fred A. Leuchter, Jr. He carried out an on-site forensic
examination of the alleged gas chambers at Auschwitz, Birkenau and
Majdanek to determine if they could have been used to kill people as
claimed. After a careful study of the alleged killing facilities,
Leuchter concluded that the sites were not used, and could not have
been used, as homicidal gas chambers. Furthermore, an analysis of
samples taken by Leuchter from the walls and floors of the alleged
gas chambers showed either no or minuscule traces of cyanide
compound, from the active ingredient of Zyklon B, the pesticide
allegedly used to murder Jews at Auschwitz. (note 17)

A confidential forensic examination (and subsequent report)
commissioned by the Auschwitz State Museum and conducted by Institute
of Forensic Research in Krakow has confirmed Leuchter's finding that
minimal or no traces of cyanide compound can be found in the sites
alleged to have been gas chambers. (note 18)

The significance of this is evident when the results of the forensic
examination of the alleged homicidal gas chambers are compared with
the results of the examination of the Auschwitz disinfestation
facilities, where Zyklon B was used to delouse mattresses and
clothing. Whereas no or only trace amounts of cyanide were found in
the alleged homicidal gas chambers, massive traces of cyanide were
found in the walls and floor in the camp's disinfestation delousing
chambers.

Another forensic study has been carried out by German chemist Germar
Rudolf. On the basis of his on-site examination and analysis of
samples, the certified chemist and doctoral candidate concluded: "For
chemical-technical reasons, the claimed mass gassings with
hydrocyanic acid in the alleged 'gas chambers' in Auschwitz did not
take place ... The supposed facilities for mass killing in Auschwitz
and Birkenau were not suitable for this purpose ..." (note 19)

Finally, there is the study of Austrian engineer Walter Lüftl, a
respected expert witness in numerous court cases, and former
president of Austria's professional association of engineers. In a
1992 report he called the alleged mass extermination of Jews in gas
chambers "technically impossible." (note 20)

Discredited Perspective
So just what constitutes "Holocaust denial"? Those who advocate
criminal persecution of "Holocaust deniers" seem to be still living
in the world of 1946 where the Allied officials of the Nuremberg
Tribunal have just pronounced their verdict. But the Tribunal's
findings can no longer be assumed to be valid. Because it relied so
heavily on such untrustworthy evidence as the H°ss testimony, some of
its most critical findings are now discredited.

For purposes of their own, powerful special interest groups
desperately seek to keep substantive discussion of the Holocaust
story taboo. One of the ways they do this is by purposely
mischaracterizing revisionist scholars as "deniers." But the truth
can't be suppressed forever: There is a very real and growing
controversy about what actually happened to Europe's Jews during
World War II.

Let this issue be settled as all great historical controversies are
resolved: through free inquiry and open debate in our journals,
newspapers and classrooms.

Notes

Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 22, 1992.
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military
Tribunal (IMT "blue series"), Vol. 22, p. 496.
IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 496.
Globe and Mail (Toronto), April 25, 1990; See also: M. Weber, "Jewish
Soap," The Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
Canadian Jewish News (Toronto), Jan. 30, 1992.
See: Barbara Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die: Report of the
Evidence in the Canadian 'False News' Trial of Ernst Zndel (Toronto:
Samisdat, 1992), pp. 192, 300, 349.
"The Revised Hilberg," Simon Wiesenthal Annual, Vol. 3, 1986, p. 294.
B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), pp. 24-
25.
A. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken?: The 'Final Solution' in
History (Pantheon, 1988), p. 365.
Nuremberg document 008-USSR.; IMT "blue series," Vol. 39, pp. 241,
261.
B. Kulaszka, ed., Did Six Million Really Die (Toronto: 1992), p. 441.
Y. Bauer, "Fighting the Distortions," Jerusalem Post (Israel), Sept.
22, 1989; Auschwitz Deaths Reduced to a Million," Daily Telegraph
(London), July 17, 1990; "Poland Reduces Auschwitz Death Toll
Estimate to 1 Million," The Washington Times, July 17, 1990.
J.-C. Pressac, Les Cr¦metoires d'Auschwitz: La machinerie du meurtre
de masse (Paris: CNRS, 1993). See also: R. Faurisson, "Jean-Claude
Pressac's New Auschwitz Book," The Journal of Historical Review, Jan.-
Feb. 1994, p. 24.
IMT "blue series," Vol. 22, p. 485; Nuremberg document 3868-PS (USA-
819), in IMT "blue series," Vol. 33, pp. 275-279.
Rupert Butler, Legions of Death (England: 1983), pp. 235-237; C.
Hitchens, "Whose History is it?," Vanity Fair (New York), Dec. 1993,
p. 117.
See: R. Faurisson, "How the British Obtained the Confession of Rudolf
Höss," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1986-87, pp. 389-403.
A deluxe edition of The Leuchter Report is available from the IHR for
$20.00, plus $2.00 shipping.
The complete text of this report was published in English in The
Journal of Historical Review, Summer 1991.
G. Rudolf, Gutachten ueber die Bildung und Nachweisbarkeit von
Cyanidverbindungen in den 'Gaskammern' von Auschwitz (London: 1993).
See: The Journal of Historical Review, Nov.-Dec. 1993, pp. 25-26.
"The 'Lüftl Report'," The Journal of Historical Review, Winter 1992-
93. http://ihr.org/leaflets/denial.html

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THE UGLY TRUTH OF AMERICA'S CAMP CROPPER, A STORY TO SHAME US ALL
Robert Fisk, Independent, 6/22/03
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/story.jsp?story=426520

Now here's a story to shame us all. It's about America's shameful
Prison camps in Iraq. It's about the beating of prisoners during
interrogation.

"Sources" may be a dubious word in journalism right now, but the
sources for the beatings in Iraq are impeccable. This story is also
about the gunning down of three prisoners in Baghdad, two of
them "while trying to escape". But most of all, it's about Qais
Mohamed al-Salman.

Qais al-Salman is just the sort of guy the US ambassador Paul Bremer
And his dead-end assistants need now. He hated Saddam, fled Iraq in
1976, then returned after the "liberation" with a briefcase literally
full of plans to help in the restoration of his country's
infrastructure and water purification system.

He's an engineer who has worked in Africa, Asia and Europe. He is a
Danish citizen. He speaks good English. He even likes America. Or did
until 6 June this year.

That day he was travelling in Abu Nawas Street when his car came
under American fire. He says he never saw a checkpoint. Bullets hit
the tyres and his driver and another passenger ran for their lives.
Qais al-Salman stood meekly beside the vehicle. He was carrying his
Danish passport, Danish driving licence and medical records.

But let him tell his own story...


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MUSLIMS STRUGGLE AMID SECURITY CONCERNS IN U.S.
Shirley Wentworth, Tri-City Herald, 7/21/03
http://www.tri-cityherald.com/tch/local/story/3498809p-3530077c.html

Dr. Mohammad Sad is ready to change his name to Mike.

It would make his life a whole lot easier.

Ever since Sept. 11, 2001, the Ephrata physician said he's been a
target on every flight he's taken. He's been searched and has even
had his personal correspondence read.

Last week, attending a meeting in Ellensburg for a group that meets
annually to discuss human rights and cultural diversity, he spoke
about his most recent experiences.

Sad, also a Middle Eastern scholar who frequently travels to that
region, discussed trying to send money July 7 to a man in Baghdad to
help Iraqi war victims. He said Western Union refused to deliver the
money because of the recipient's name, Husein Mohammad Amin Abdullah,
and insisted Husein would have to prove who he is.

Citing the Patriot Act, which increases the surveillance and
investigative powers of law enforcement, Western Union said it would
not deliver the money unless Husein had a birth record. Western Union
has still not returned Sad's money.

On a recent trip to the Middle East, Sad said, he tried to send money
from a bank in Jordan to Algerian friends. He said he was told it
would take three weeks to get the money to his friend, also named
Mohammad.

He asked why and was told the name "Mohammad" is in a computer list
of names to check, on orders "from the top in the U.S."

"Then I asked, 'Can I send it to someone named Sabrina?' " he said.

No problem.

Sabrina is the wife of his friend Mohammad.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations released a report July 15
that says anti-Muslim incidents increased by 15 percent over the last
year, rising from 525 confirmed incidents in 2002 to 602 in the 2003
report…

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PALESTINIANS 'REDUCED TO BEGGING'
Guardian, 7/19/03
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,2763,1001422,00.html

Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank have been "reduced to begging"
by Israeli military action, and Israel is breaching international law
by failing to provide much-needed aid, a UN expert said yesterday.

"There is a permanent, grave violation of the right to food by the
occupying forces. There is a catastrophic humanitarian situation,"
said Jean Ziegler, UN special expert on the right to food.

Palestinian villages are encircled by troops, preventing food being
delivered and farmers from reaching their fields, he said. Many
villages had to buy their water because sources had been cut off.

Mr Ziegler also cited the destruction or confiscation of fertile
Palestinian land for military zones or Jewish colonies. "We saw
thousands of olive trees destroyed by bulldozers," he said…

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FLORIDA CUTS FUNDING FOR ISLAMIC SCHOOL
Mitch Stacy, Associated Press, 7/19/03
http://www.newsday.com/news/nationworld/wire/sns-ap-attacks-
professors-school,0,131639.story


TAMPA, Fla. - A state program that pays tuition for some low-income
private school students will cut payments to an Islamic school co-
founded by a professor accused of terrorist ties, officials said
Friday.

Parental Rights in Deciding Education will eliminate funding for the
Islamic Academy of Florida for the fall semester pending an
investigation into how the money was spent, PRIDE chairman John
Kirtley said.

About 100 of the school's 300 students were assisted by more than
$300,000 in PRIDE money last year. The students will be able to use
their scholarships at other schools, and another Islamic school in
Tampa has offered to accept them, Kirtley said.

The program's action came after Democrats in the state Senate urged
Gov. Jeb Bush to exclude the school from the program because one of
its founders, Sami Al-Arian, is accused of leading the U.S.
operations of the terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Kirtley said the decision to freeze funding for the school was taken
to minimize political damage to PRIDE, and added that he hoped the
move would be temporary…

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MR. SHARON, TEAR DOWN THAT WALL!
That's what Bush should have said.
by Justin Raimondo


The "fence," as the Israelis and their amen corner in the U.S. call
it, is actually a wall, about 25 feet high: higher than the Berlin
Wall. Like every atrocity carried out by the Israeli government, it
is being sold as a "defensive" measure, but is in reality an act of
aggression, cutting off large swathes of Palestinian property from
the main body of the Palestinian community and preemptively
establishing a border on annexed land. As the Los Angeles Times
reported:

"The red signs appeared one morning on the barbed wire. 'Mortal
danger; military zone,' they read. 'Any person who passes or damages
the fence endangers his life.'

"And just like that, Mohammed Habbas was forbidden to reach the acres
of fields and olive groves that have been in the family for as long
as anyone here can remember. The people of this tiny hillside village
were left behind when Israeli military walls chopped away more than
half of their property, snaking all the way to the edges of houses to
swallow the land – but exclude the people."

Only a few days ago, meeting with Palestinian Prime Minister Abu
Mazen, the President declared the wall to be "a problem." But now
that Sharon's in town, the problem – but not the Wall – seems to have
gone away. Although Bush did not explicitly refer to the Wall in his
public comments, Sharon didn't deign to be tactful. He brushed aside
Bush's concerns, declaring his intention to continue building his
monument to Israeli arrogance, but not without first patting the
President on the back for achieving Israel's strategic objectives in
the region. The Americans, he enthused, had not only invaded Iraq,
and taken out a longstanding thorn in Israel's side, but also have
recently resumed their threats against Iran and Syria. The Israeli
Prime Minister then expressed his gratitude by telling Bush, in front
of the whole world, that the "fence" (as the Israelis insist on
calling it) is the President's problem:

"We had a useful talk today, where we examined ways to advance the
peace process between us and our Palestinian neighbors. In this
context, a number of issues came up: the security fence which we are
forced to construct in order to defend our citizens against terror
activities …

"The security fence will continue to be built with every effort to
minimize their infringement on the daily life of the Palestinian
population. Unauthorized outposts will be removed as required in a
law-abiding country. We'll continue to discuss all these issues, both
directly and to our bureaus, which maintain close contact."

In other words: You carried out your part of the bargain, Mr.
President – and now I'm reneging.

It is typical of the Israelis to characterize the Wall of Separation
as a defensive measure, when it is really a land grab of huge
proportions, one that will ensure the failure of the American
diplomatic initiative. These are, after all, the original authors of
the doctrine of preemption, now adopted by the U.S.

The injustice of this electrified, electronicized construction of
brick, mortar, reinforced steel and barbed wire, its forbidding guard-
towers festooned with weaponry, is clearly visible. It is meant to
memorialize the conquest of the land, a visible insult to a conquered
people, an architectural provocation.

Perhaps the President made a moral appeal to Sharon, but it was bound
to fall on deaf ears: we are talking about the Prime Minister of a
country where extra-judicial executions, routinely carried out by the
Israeli "Defense" Force (IDF), are officially deemed "focused
prevention" or "pinpoint preventive operations." Sharon's helicopter
gun-ships – paid for by you, dear American taxpayers – shoot down
children barely into their teens as a matter of course. Palestinian
homes are regularly demolished, often with the inhabitants still
inside. "Settlements" spring up close to Palestinian communities,
outposts of an organized terror campaign designed to "persuade" non-
Israelis to leave. Israeli aggression is relentless, and Sharon,
unlike the President of the United States, puts his own country and
its interests (as he perceives them) first.

Sharon knows that Bush is not about to abandon the Israeli cause: the
Prime Minister of Israel can be very useful to the Republicans in
what promises to be a close election, just as he has been in the past.

Sharon, for his part, has his own political considerations on the
home front. In return for conceding the existence of a Palestinian
state – albeit one with no army, no foreign policy, and no guarantee
that it will not be re-annexed tomorrow – Sharon must appease the
most radical elements among his supporters, who openly call for
a "wall of separation" to be created via the expulsion of all Arabs
(including those who hold Israeli citizenship). They will now be
handed a conveniently snappy slogan: Put them on the other side of
the Wall!

The details of the Wall's construction, and its progress so far,
reflect the lunge-and-grab policy of the Israelis, which is focused
on building the vision of a "Greater Israel" at the core of the
ruling Likud party's ideology. The Times reports:

"… [T]he wall's path has shifted east to consume swaths of the West
Bank as one Jewish settlement after another demanded to be included
on the side of the fence that is closer to Israel. Palestinians,
Israelis and international peace mediators all fear the fence will
harden into a border. The wall's final route is a mystery, even to
the Israeli lawmakers who were pressured last week by Sharon to set
aside an extra $170.5 million for it."

The final route of the Wall is open-ended, just like the military
ambitions of its builders. They will push, and push, and push until
they get what they want, without giving an inch except under extreme
duress – the sort of pressure that our President seems incapable of
applying. He's Bush the Conqueror, the Hegemon, the Great Preemptor
to the rest of the world, but in the presence of Ariel Sharon, the
leader of a tiny Middle Eastern nation that is entirely dependent on
American largesse, suddenly he's George the Meek, George the Mild,
deferential to a fault.

What's up with that?

Faced with a similar architectural monstrosity, Ronald Reagan – for
all his faults – did not hesitate to say what needed to be said:

"Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall!"

I can hear the amen corner now: the Wall of Separation is meant to
keep terrorists out, not to keep people in. There is no similarity.
But isn't there? The Wall is meant to cut off all contact between
ordinary people on both sides, which is precisely what the East
German commissars sought to accomplish. The Commies knew that the
most powerful weapons in the Western arsenal were the economic and
social links which invariably bind communities in close proximity. So
they quite logically – and murderously – sought to isolate their
subjects from such subversive influences, thus ensuring their Marxist
purity.

It didn't work, and neither will the Israeli version. Markets conquer
all: they leap over walls, over oceans, to create the most complex,
interconnected, international division of labor possible, given the
limitations of present technology. In a larger sense, the issue of
the Wall illustrates the central conundrum of Israel's predicament.
The Jewish state cannot continue to exist as an isolated Sparta,
bristling with weaponry and little else. Israel is so completely
dependent on the United States that it must continually conduct a
major overseas effort to sway international opinion – and especially
American public opinion – to ensure its survival from year to year.
Hobbled by socialism – crippled by it – the Israeli economy is in a
shambles, and there are other, more intractable problems.

No wall, no matter how many American tax dollars are lavished on it,
is going to keep out determined terrorists, who have a developing
base of support among Israeli Arabs. The argument could be made, from
a security standpoint, that the Wall will function as a lightning rod
for terrorists, a provocation in stone and steel. That, I fear, is
the intent of its architects.

If the Arab birth rate continues to outpace that of the Israelis, the
Jewish state will be no more. That is the real reason for the Wall.
The Likud government is replicating the Jewish ghettos of Eastern
Europe, only this time they will be given the best land, not the
worst, and they will conduct the pogroms, thank you, if that is what
is deemed necessary to ensure Israel's survival.

In empowering the Israeli state to carry out this program, by
subsidizing and supporting what amounts to a policy of state
terrorism, the President of the United States is pursuing the
interests of a foreign nation over and above his own. The U.S.,
engaged in a deadly war with the terrorists of Al Qaeda, has nothing
to gain from such an arrangement, and everything to lose. Why, then,
does our unconditional support to Israel continue? Why does the
President of the most powerful nation on earth allow himself to be
insulted, in public, by this horrendous toad of a man?

As long as we continue to kowtow before the builders of this
viciously vindictive Wall, and become complicit in Sharon's crimes,
we won't need a "terrorism futures market" to tell us what's in
store. In that case, the prospects for peace – in the U.S., as well
as in the Middle East – are near to nil.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/justincol.html

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Pres. Chrétien wants to know who gave up Ottawa man to CIA, Syria
Rogue elements in RCMP not out of the question, solicitor general
admits

Robert Fife
Citizen Special
Canada

Wednesday, July 30, 2003


Solicitor General Wayne Easter did not discount the possibility
yesterday that rogue elements within the RCMP passed intelligence to
American authorities that led to the arrest and deportation of an
Arab-Canadian to Syria for suspected links to al-Qaeda.

Mr. Easter said Prime Minister Jean Chrétien is taking seriously
American assertions the RCMP tipped off U.S. authorities to arrest
Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, last September when he
arrived at New York's Kennedy Airport en route to Canada.

Mr. Arar was carrying a Canadian passport when he was arrested and
sent to a CIA debriefing station in Jordan before ending up in a
Damascus prison.

The 32-year-old Ottawa engineer is being held in a secret location
and denied access to his family and legal counsel.

"It is a serious matter and that is why the prime minister is taking
on this case with his profile," Mr. Easter told CanWest News
Service. "He certainly speaks for the government and what we want to
do is ensure that there is due process of the law for a Canadian
citizen."

Mr. Easter said he's aware the Americans claim the RCMP quietly asked
the U.S. government to pick up Mr. Arar, whom U.S. Ambassador Paul
Cellucci says was a target of a joint Canada-U.S. security
investigation long before he was arrested in New York.

But Mr. Easter said senior Mounties insist there was no "official"
decision to provide the U.S. with information that led to Mr. Arar
being placed on a watch list used to screen passengers arriving at
U.S. ports of entry.

"The Americans had indicated that it was RCMP and it was the RCMP who
indicated to me that there was no official discussions," he said.

However, Mr. Easter did not rule out the possibility RCMP officers
working the Arar case alerted U.S. law enforcement without approval
of their superiors at RCMP headquarters.

"I would hope that when an American authority is dealing with Canada
that they only do it on the basis of official clearance," he
said. "You could have a number of individuals claiming to speak on
behalf of an agency and that is certainly not what we want, so the
information that I have been provided with is that there was no
official clearance or discussion on that issue with American
authorities."

Asked if the Canadian Security Intelligence Service also provided
information on Mr. Arar to the U.S., Mr. Easter replied: "I can't get
into talking what CSIS did or didn't on that particular matter."

However, U.S. authorities indicated yesterday an RCMP team in charge
of the Arar investigation co-operated with the Americans to make
certain the man did not return to Canada.

"There is a real disconnect between the Mounties on the street doing
the investigations and sometimes the people at the top in terms of
acknowledging the problem in Canada with sleeper cells," an official
said. "From the American perspective, the RCMP is much better to work
with than CSIS because CSIS is a political creature. The RCMP are
cops doing their jobs. They are the guys who do the surveillance.
They know the score."

In April, Mr. Cellucci told a private audience that Mr. Arar was well
known to Canadian law enforcement agencies and "they wouldn't be
happy to see him come back to Canada."

Mr. Easter did not discount Mr. Cellucci's statement, but said the
situation has changed now that the prime minister has taken on the
case to win the release of Mr. Arar.

"The fact of the matter is that whether we did or whether we didn't
(want him back), we have a responsibility to a Canadian citizen and
the prime minister is exercising that responsibility to a Canadian
citizen and to a Canadian citizen's family by doing what he is
doing," he said. "He is pushing the case to ensure that Arar has the
due process of law by Canadian standards."

Mr. Chrétien sent a personal envoy with a letter to Syrian President
Bashar Assad yesterday asking that Mr. Arar either be charged and
given legal counsel or freed and allowed to return to Canada.

Mr. Chrétien also wrote to Mr. Arar's wife, Monia Mazigh, promising
to fight for his repatriation to Canada.

The Syrians have not responded to Mr. Chrétien's letter and they have
yet to lay terrorism-related charges against Mr. Arar, despite
promising to do so in April when Canadian officials last saw Mr. Arar
in prison.

Ms. Mazigh denies her husband has ties to al-Qaeda or any other
terrorist group. She has expressed concern Canadian law enforcement
agencies abused her husband's civil rights, although she has not
filed a protest with the agencies that act as the public watchdog for
the RCMP and CSIS.

Stockwell Day, the Canadian Alliance foreign affairs critic, has
called for a parliamentary inquiry into Canada's handling of Mr.
Arar's case, saying the government has sent conflicting signals about
Mr. Arar's mysterious deportation.

Robert Fife is parliamentary bureau chief

© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen

----------------------------------------------------------------------
-------
CAIR-CAN CALLS FOR INQUIRY INTO ARAR DISCLOSURE
Group says admissions by Solicitor General are "deeply disturbing"

(OTTAWA, CANADA ­ 30/7/2003) ­ The Canadian office of the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-CAN) today called for a
parliamentary inquiry into the deportation of Canadian citizen Maher
Arar. That call came after Solicitor General Wayne Easter did not
discount the possibility that certain elements in the RCMP may have
passed information to American authorities that led to the arrest of
Arar in the United States last September.

SEE Robert Fife's report in the Ottawa Citizen, "Chrétien wants to
know who gave up Ottawa man to CIA, Syria rogue elements in RCMP not
out of the question, solicitor general admits:"
http://www.canada.com/search/story.aspx?id=1bfd2543-1cfa-4530-9725-
d212398dcfa0

After Arar was arrested in the US, he was denied legal counsel and
deported to a CIA debriefing station in Jordan and then to Syria,
where he has since been held without charge.

In a statement released today, CAIR-CAN wrote:

"Maher Arar's case is quickly becoming a national scandal.

"Given the deeply disturbing comments today by the Solicitor General,
we demand a national inquiry into Maher Arar's deportation. Such an
inquiry is long overdue given past claims by the U.S. Ambassador to
Canada and others that it was the RCMP that passed along information
that led to Arar's detention and deportation.

"If elements within the RCMP are in any way responsible for Arar's
plight, the RCMP would be complicit in depriving a Canadian citizen
of safety, security and fundamental legal rights.  Canadians have the
right to know if a citizen was the casualty of an improper procedure
or violation of law in a security agency that is supposed to be
accountable to the government and people of Canada."


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WIFE OF MUSLIM ACTIVIST MUST LEAVE U.S. HUSBAND WAS DEPORTED EARLIER
Niraj Warikoo and Nancy A. Youssef, Detroit Free Press, 7/28/03
http://www.freep.com/news/mich/fam28_20030728.htm

She came to the United States more than 20 years ago as a student
with big dreams.

But today, Salma Al-Rushaid -- the wife of an Ann Arbor man accused
of supporting terrorism -- will be deported to her native Kuwait,
possibly closing the final chapter of her American life.

Agents with the Department of Homeland Security are expected to
accompany her today to Metro Airport, where she and her four children
will board a plane for the Middle East. Al-Rushaid won't be able to
re-enter the United States for at least 10 years, unless she's
granted special permission from the U.S. government.

Her husband, Rabih Haddad, was deported two weeks ago to his native
Lebanon. Al-Rushaid will get her passport and travel documents
renewed in Kuwait, where her family lives, and then join her husband
later this week.



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Five Iraqis killed
------------------------------------------------------------------
BAGHDAD, July 27: US troops hunting for Saddam Hussein raided a
house in the wealthy Baghdad neighbourhood of Mansour late on
Sunday, leaving five Iraqis dead, the home owner said.....(AFP)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top11.htm&date=20030728

------------------------------------------------------------------
Iraqis demand bodies of Uday, Qusay:
People vow revenge on 'traitor' tribal chief
------------------------------------------------------------------
BAGHDAD, July 27: The fate of the bodies of Saddam Hussein's slain
sons will be decided in the next 24 hours, a senior coalition
official said on Sunday. The official said they had consulted the
country's US-sponsored 25-member Governing Council as well as
religious figures.....(Agencies)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top12.htm&date=20030728

------------------------------------------------------------------
Foreigners helping in raids against US troops: Sanchez
------------------------------------------------------------------
WASHINGTON, July 27: Iraq has become a "terrorist magnet" that is
attracting fighters from a variety of countries to take the
opportunity of attacking American troops, a top US Army commander
said on Sunday.....(Reuters/AFP)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top13.htm&date=20030728

------------------------------------------------------------------
Hoon met Kelly before Iraq row
------------------------------------------------------------------
LONDON, July 27: British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon had spoken
with arms expert David Kelly sometime before his apparent suicide,
the defence ministry confirmed on Sunday.....(APP/AFP)

http://www.dawn.com/cgi-bin/dina.pl?file=top14.htm&date=20030728




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U.S. DEPORTING PALESTINIANS
Reuters, 7/29/03

In its post-September 11 push to close potential immigration
loopholes, the United States has charted new routes to expel
Palestinians, even though they consider themselves stateless.

Fifteen Palestinians were put in handcuffs on planes by U.S.
officials in December and May and deported to the West Bank and Gaza
Strip with the help of Jordan, Egypt and Israel.

Deporting people of Palestinian origin is more complicated than it is
for other nationalities because they do not have a state to call
their own. Other Palestinians who are in detention and facing
deportation hearings fear they will be next to be sent into the
Israeli-Palestinian war zone…

While efforts to create a Palestinian state alongside Israel under
the roadmap peace plan are inching along, some Palestinians are
caught in a clamp between the conflict and U.S. policy following
terror strikes.


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