"...butter for fat..."

[antoine]

 http://www.sundayherald.com/29463
Begin Item
A path of terror and martyrdom

Sharon's hard-line policy of reoccupation is holding firm even though, finds Jessica McCallin in Jerusalem, it doesn't work and fuels revenge

The attack barely registered on Israel's emotional pulse. The agony of distraught relatives of the victims of Thursday's Jerusalem bus suicide bombing caused a temporary elevated blip, but within hours of the attack it was as if nothing had happened.
The bodies and body parts were cleared away, the bus was removed and a dull, resigned calm returned to the streets. Israelis going about their daily business had little to say on the matter.

'What do you want me to say? This is how we live here. It's become normal,' said a local cafŽ owner. 'It's not the first and it won't be the last. All you can do is hope it won't be you next. I just try not to think about them anymore. You can't live here and think about these attacks. You will go crazy.'

The attack, which killed 11 people, the youngest an eight-year-old boy, was the first suicide attack in Jerusalem in three months, but it ended two very bloody weeks for Israel. Two Sundays ago five people, including a mother and her two little boys, were gunned down in a kibbutz. Last Friday, Islamic Jihad gunmen ambushed soldiers and para military settler security guards in the West Bank town of Hebron, killing 12. On Wednesday, a settler women was killed while travelling on an Israeli-only bypass road just outside Hebron .

One thing is crystal clear: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's policy of hitting the Palestinians, and hitting them hard, is not working. Since June, Israel has effectively reoccupied the West Bank. Its tanks control the centres of all major towns and cities, with Jericho the only exception. When they leave, it's only to the outskirts and usually only for a few days. Trenches, fences and barbed wire encircle many towns and villages. Month-long curfews have been imposed on the Palestinians. An estimated 4000 people have been arrested, the homes of militants destroyed. Half of all Palestinians are living below the poverty line and children are beginning to show signs of malnutrition.

But the policy is not working. An Israeli army spokesperson said that over the past six weeks it has received 151 specific terror warnings. Of these, it claims to have thwarted 85, while 33 have been successful. Clearly there is no shortage of Palestinians willing to carry out attacks on Israelis.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) says that as long as Israel continues down this road, the anger, hatred and desire for revenge will continue. It may be able to stop many of the attacks, but as Thursday showed, some bombers will always get through.

What Thursday also showed, however, was that the PA had failed in its attempts to get the Islamic militant groups to stop attacks inside Israel on Israeli civilians. The PA met with Hamas in Cairo last week to try and convince them to stop the attacks.

And just as the bombings now seem predictable -- the Hebron attack, which targeted soldiers, not civilians or settlers, being the only recent exception -- so too is Israel's response. By Friday morning, the tanks were back in the centre of Bethlehem, where the army says the bomber came from.

The bomber's father and brother were arrested along with 20 suspected militants. Villages in the Gaza Strip were attacked and houses blown up. Even the rhetoric was the same; numbingly predictable. As the tanks rolled into Bethlehem, army spokesperson Doron Spielman said they were going after the 'terror infrastructure' and, even though Hamas had claimed responsibility for the attack, blamed the Palestinian Authority, saying it had 'failed miserably' in its responsibility to prevent attacks.

There is a sense this weekend that Israel has run out of options. There was a glimmer of hope earlier in the week when the relatively unknown Haifa mayor, Amram Mitzna, won the Labour Party primaries. He will lead the party ahead of the January 28 general election. Mitzna has said he will immediately start negotiations, unconditionally, with any Palestinian leader -- a far cry from Sharon and his Likud Party which refuses to sit with Yasser Arafat. He has also pledged to immediately evacuate the 5000 settlers from the Gaza Strip. If negotiations lead nowhere after a year, he said he will unilaterally separate from the Palestinians, build a wall along the border with the West Bank and evacuate any settlers on the wrong side of it.

But the glimmer was just that. Opinion polls give Likud a big lead over Labour and with Thursday's bomb, any hope of Israel going to the Labour party is all but gone. All Israelis say they will vote for the party which brings them security and though most will admit Sharon has bought them nothing of the sort over the past year and a half, they still say they trust him more to do so.

The only real question now is whether Sharon or his foreign minister, Binjamin Netanyahu, will lead the Likud to victory. A Sharon victory would be good for Arafat and not too bad for Gaza. Sharon has promised George Bush, who is trying to keep simmering Arab anger from boiling over ahead of an attack on Iraq, that he will not expel the ailing Palestinian leader or launch a full-scale invasion of the Gaza Strip.

Netanyahu has pledged to expel Arafat. Neither has what it takes to bring an end to the conflict and give the Palestinians what most say they will be satisfied with: an end to the occupation and a truly independent state on the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and Gaza. The Likud party membership recently voted never to allow such a state. Netanyahu is right behind them. And while Sharon, the instigator of settlements in the occupied territories, will pay lip-service to the idea, what he actually means is limited autonomy on, at most, half of the West Bank.

That will never be acceptable to moderate Palestinians. 'You can't compromise on a compromise,' said Palestinian civil society leader Mustapha Barghouti. 'We have already agreed to recognise Israel on 78% of historic Palestine.'

The Likud stance will, however, please Palestinian extremists. Hamas and Islamic Jihad have no intention of ever recognising Israel. Their goal is to liberate all of historic Palestine and Sharon's hard-line tactics play straight into their hands. At the beginning of the intifada, opinion polls gave the Islamic parties around 10% of the vote. Now an estimated 30% of Palestinians support them.

'We confirm the path of jihad and martyrdom is continuing in every part of our occupied land as long as there is occupation and there are crimes. What is coming is bigger and, God willing, greater,' said Hamas's armed wing in a statement.

Moderate Palestinians say that only someone willing to recognise Pales tinians' rights and grant them a state will be able to halt the rise of the extremists. 'If Mitzna follows through on his promise to end the occupation and to recognise the parity of rights for the Palestinians, he will have gone a long way towards dealing with the causes of escalation and suffering,' said former Palestinian legislative council member Hanan Ashwari.

But with Mitzna and his Labour party slated to loose the elections, it seems that scenes like last week's, coupled with increasing hardship and desperation for the Palestinians, scenes that have now become normal for Israelis and Palestinians, are all that the future holds.
http://www.sundayherald.com/29463
End Item

[antoine]

CLARION!!!!!!

If you cannot find the cause for terrorism, then terrorism will be a constant....
http://news.scotsman.com/columnists.cfm?id=1312482002[/URL]  

Blair is potentially a greater danger to our country than Saddam

Jimmy Reid

GEORGE Bush talks as if terrorists were terrorists for no fathomable reason. As if terrorism exists independent of time and place and without social causation. This would mean that terrorism cannot be understood and therefore no remedial action is feasible except the obliteration of the terrorists. But we have historical proof that if you kill a generation of terrorists a new generation will emerge with the same aspirations and often the same mode of struggle. There is such a thing as cause and effect. Terrorism is an effect. Something causes it. If you can’t find the cause, or can’t be bothered trying to find it, then terrorism will be a constant.

There is another problem. The English branded William Wallace a terrorist. To us, he was a freedom fighter. Those who fought for American independence were demonised as terrorists by the British Crown. All citizens of British colonies who fought for independence were branded terrorists. Mahatma Gandhi was vilified for advocating passive resistance to the British Raj and jailed as a terrorist, though he was a pacifist.

People denied the right to change society through the ballot box have a moral right to use force as a means of bringing about change. People who have the right to change things through the ballot box have no moral right to seek change through violence. When the gerrymandered electoral system in Northern Ireland denied Catholics and Nationalists a vote of equal value with Protestants and Unionists, then the IRA’s armed struggle for a United Ireland had some moral justification. When gerrymandering was ended and the principle of one person one vote was established, the IRA had no moral right to continue the armed struggle.

This is not some abstract principle but a proven means of resolving problems that otherwise drive peoples to violent forms of struggle. The cause of modern-day Islamic terrorism is not to be found in the teachings of Islam or the madness of individuals but in the vicious discrimination against the Arab peoples by the West, led by the United States. It built up Israel as a destabilising dagger in the heart of Arabia because instability allowed it to conspire and seek to control Arabia’s oil through corrupt and feudal dynasties.

Israel is bristling with arms. The United States is Israel’s main arms supplier. In 1967, Israel’s military superiority enabled it to occupy and colonise Palestinian land. In 1967, the United Nations Security Council voted unanimously for resolution 242 that demanded the withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from this land. That was 35 years ago. Any proposal to implement this resolution was vetoed by the Americans.

Recently, the UN Security Council passed, again unanimously, a resolution demanding that Iraq comply with the humiliating terms of a UN resolution, or face almost immediate destruction.

The contrast is blatant. Muslims and Arabs are aware of this. They know, we know, the world knows, that there are no proven links between Saddam and Osama bin Laden. Iraq presents no military threat to the United States or the United Kingdom or the western world. It’s almost impossible, given the sanctions that have devastated the Iraqi economy and the daily surveillance of Iraqi territory by US and British aircraft, that Saddam has acquired a vast arsenal of nuclear weapons along with the means of delivery. Israel definitely has such a nuclear capacity.

Bush and Blair are desperate to go to war. That they will defeat Iraq is not in doubt. Iraq will then be politically administered by the US military and economically by Standard Oil. For every Islamic rebel today there will be 1,000 in six months’ time. Don’t expect them to "play the game" and engage American and British weaponry on the battlefield, as Palestinian youngsters do on the West Bank, confronting Israeli tanks with stones. They will use what we call terrorism.

I abhor the targeting of civilians in any armed conflict, though why those who rain bombs on defenceless people should be allowed to lecture anyone on terrorism beats me. If there is a war, then Britain, given the complicity of Blair, could become a prime terrorist target. He is thereby potentially a bigger danger to our country than Saddam ever was.

Just as his government, in sabotaging a negotiated settlement between firefighters and their employers, will be responsible for the continuation of the strike and any consequential dangers to the people of Britain. This government of former members of the CND and former Scargillites has been transmogrified into a coterie of mindless, right-wing militants, forever lusting for a fight. Any time - anywhere.

If you cannot find the cause for terrorism, then terrorism will be a constant....
http://news.scotsman.com/columnists.cfm?id=1312482002

Blair is potentially a greater danger to our country than Saddam

Jimmy Reid

Peace

[Protagonist]

I must say that the first paragraph of Jimmy Reids spiel is probably the best thing the Scotsman has ever printed, although the third paragraph is a pile of ****, the rest is clearly and articulately presented so even an American can understand it.

The problem I have come across in my dealings with ‘average’ Americans is precisely what Reid is saying at the beginning – they will not acknowledge that there are valid and fundamental reasons behind terrorist attacks.

You can kill the rebel, but you’ll never kill the cause.

[antoine]

Some persons would think that the third paragraph argues a sound principle, capable of being held by a rational man on any side of a fence.

The successful presentation, and articulation of such principles, among your 'men of reason', who are inclined to live peacefully in a co-operative society could without doubt create and enhance   positions of compromises and  co-existence, and also an establishment of general seminal foundation, to build processes upon, and from which other principles can flow.

As it is it is a level above where men normally operate. It certainly is very very high ground, unattainable by the current US/Brit positions, as well as many pundits around this neighbourhood.

But then ours are just two positions, along the continuum.

Happy to see someone on the board seeing the real reason for the response to US, and soon British action, against, person/groups who have been pushed to the wall.

Problem is in this case, it is Jihad which will never stop...we cannot win that war, no matter what weapons are used.

Peace

[Mick MagMan]

"'men of reason'... enhance positions of compromises... an establishment of general seminal foundation, to build processes upon, and from which other principles can flow."

protagonist is trying to make a reasonable point, about how his obviously well-considered opinions are vastly superior to those of all americans, and antoine goes and turns it into gay porn. shameful.

[antoine]

Begin Item

REFLECTIONS: The War Against Reason
Nov 26, 2002
By Harold Pinter

There’s an old story about Oliver Cromwell. After he had taken the Irish town of Drogheda the citizens were brought to the main square. Cromwell announced to his lieutenants: “Right! Kill all the women and rape all the men.” One of his aides said: “Excuse me, general. Isn’t it the other way around?” A voice from the crowd called out: “Mr Cromwell knows what he’s doing.”

That voice is the voice of Tony Blair — “Mr Bush knows what he’s doing.”

The fact is that Mr Bush and his gang do know what they’re doing and Blair, unless he really is the deluded idiot he often appears to be, also knows what they’re doing. Bush and company are determined, quite simply, to control the world and the world’s resources. And they don’t give a damn how many people they murder on the way. And Blair goes along with it.

He hasn’t the support of the Labour Party, he hasn’t the support of the country or of the celebrated “international community”. How can he justify taking this country into a war nobody wants? He can’t. He can only resort to rhetoric, cliche and propaganda. Little did we think when we voted Blair into power that we would come to despise him. The idea that he has influence over Bush is laughable. His supine acceptance of US bullying is pathetic.

Bullying is, of course, a time-honoured US tradition. Addressing the Greek ambassador to the US in 1965, Lyndon Johnson said: “**** your parliament and your constitution. The US is an elephant. Cyprus is a flea. Greece is a flea. If these two fellows continue itching the elephant they may just get whacked by the elephant’s trunk, whacked good.”

He meant what he said. Shortly afterwards the colonels, supported by the US, took over in Greece and the Greek people spent seven years in hell.

As for the US elephant, it has grown to be a monster of grotesque and obscene proportions. The terrible atrocity in Bali does not alter the facts of the case.

The “special relationship” between the US and the UK has, in the last 12 years, brought about the deaths of thousands upon thousands of people in Iraq, Afghanistan and Serbia. All this in pursuit of the US and UK “moral crusade” to bring “peace and stability” to the world.

The use of depleted uranium in the Gulf War has been particularly effective. Radiation levels in Iraq are appallingly high. Babies are born with no brain, no eyes, no genitals. Where they do have ears, mouths or rectums, all that issues from these orifices is blood.

Blair and Bush are of course totally indifferent to such facts, not forgetting the charming, grinning, beguiling Bill Clinton, who was apparently given a standing ovation at the Labour Party conference. For what? Killing Iraqi children? Or Serbian children?

Bush has said: “We will not allow the world’s worst weapons to remain in the hands of the world’s worst leaders.” Quite right. Look in the mirror chum. That’s you.

The US is at this moment developing advanced systems of “weapons of mass destruction”, and is prepared to use them where it sees fit. It has walked away from international agreements on biological and chemical weapons, refusing to allow any inspection of its own factories.

It is holding hundreds of Afghans prisoner in Guantanamo Bay, allowing them no legal redress despite their being charged with nothing, holding them captive virtually for ever.

It is insisting on immunity from the international criminal court, a stance that belegers belief but which is now supported by the UK. The hypocrisy is breathtaking. Tony Blair’s contemptible subservience to this criminal US regime demeans and dishonours this country.

Harold Pinter is a playwright, director, actor, poet and political activist. This text was first delivered as a speech to an anti-war meeting at the House of Commons.

End Item

[Protagonist]

Weapons of mass destruction. The death penalty. A lack of regard for the law both in it's own state and of international agreement.

All things which the US is guilty of but continues to attack poorer countries because of.

The world has 3 'superpowers' in the USA, China and Russia. Then there's Europe. The rest are lumped into the'rogue states' and Australia.

But it wouldn't matter so much if these 'rogue states' didn't have so much oil with such little infrastructure.

Well said Pinter..........Antoine, less of your gay porn  

[Protagonist]

‘People denied the right to change society through the ballot box have a moral right to use force as a means of bringing about change. People who have the right to change things through the ballot box have no moral right to seek change through violence. When the gerrymandered electoral system in Northern Ireland denied Catholics and Nationalists a vote of equal value with Protestants and Unionists, then the IRA’s armed struggle for a United Ireland had some moral justification. When gerrymandering was ended and the principle of one person one vote was established, the IRA had no moral right to continue the armed struggle.’

Since when was the ballot box the panacea of the oppressed? Even with so-called popular democracy, the ballot box represents little more than bureaucratic mob-rule. The USA can elect a president who gets fewer votes than his nearest rival – what does that say about the democracy?

I didn’t vote for Blair, but he won the vote, should I be happy with that? Sharon is, more than likely, going to be re-elected when Israel hold its elections, shall we have a tea party to celebrate?

The policies of the different parties are little more than bribery of the people – you give me power, I’ll give you this – I might, not give you this, but if I don’t, I can blame the other party. If I started a political party and offered the same policies as the ruling party, plus everyone gets 1 litre of free durian ice-cream each week, I dare say I’d storm the ballot box. The fact that most people don’t bother to vote in ‘western’ countries, shows their both their ignorance and the fact that they can see no point in voting.

The right to vote should be earned, not given to someone because they are born and exist in a state. Compulsory voting is pointless, as would be the threat of removal of privileges from non-voters as it would result in random voting. Democracy is an ass in its present form.

Non-democratically elected leaders are easy targets for the US for that reason alone. It is used as an excuse if the US doesn’t get its way. America vilify Castro and Gadhaffi because they don’t like their policies, impose sanctions etc which result in devastation for the economies of these countries and why? Because they overthrew US backed dictators who paid off the states while they oppressed their people. When the proles rebel and install their own figurehead to represent the people, the US aren’t happy with the fact that their drug and gambling empires are abolished or turned to state ownership.

[antoine]

There are no other panaceas...than wanting for another what you want for yourself, and acting on it.
We would not recognize it now, if it stuck us in the eye.

Nevertheless, you   light a candle...why curse the dark!!!!   , methinks even a taper will do.

The principles you so rail against are just one method among men, capable of pursuit in the provision of services and opportunities for all/most, among  thinking men, of reasoned intent...

Really, even the smallest taper, offer the "flickeringest" of hope...

Begin Item
What the US President wants us to forget Thursday, November 21, 2002

Robert Fisk

Each day now, someone says something even more incredible - even more unimaginable - about President Bush's obsession with war. Yesterday, George Bush was himself telling an audience in Cincinnati about "nuclear holy warriors". Forget for a moment that we still can't prove Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons. Forget that the latest Bush speech was just a re-hash of all the "ifs" and "mays" and "coulds" in Tony Blair's flimsy 16 pages of allegations in his historically dishonest "dossier". Forget that if Osama bin Laden ever acquired a nuclear weapon, he'd probably use it first on Saddam. No. We've got to fight "nuclear holy warriors". That's what we have to do to justify the whole charade through which we are being taken now by the White House, by Downing Street, by all the decaying "experts" on terrorism and, alas, far too many journalists.

Forget the 14 Palestinians, including the 12-year-old child, killed by Israel a few hours before Mr Bush spoke, forget that when his aircraft killed nine Palestinian children in July, along with one militant, the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon - a "man of peace" in Mr Bush's words - described the slaughter as "a great success". Israel is on our side.

Remember to use the word "terror". Use it about Saddam Hussein, use it about Osama bin Laden, use it about Yasser Arafat, use it about anyone who opposes Israel or America. Bush used it in his speech yesterday, 30 times in half an hour - that's one "terrorism" a minute.

But now let's list exactly what we really must forget if we are to support this madness. Most important of all, we absolutely must forget that President Ronald Reagan dispatched a special envoy to meet Saddam Hussein in December 1983. It's essential to forget this for three reasons. Firstly, because the awful Saddam was already using gas against the Iranians - which is one of the reasons we are now supposed to go to war with him.

Secondly, because the envoy was sent to Iraq to arrange the re-opening of the US embassy - in order to secure better trade and economic relations with the Butcher of Baghdad. Thirdly, because the envoy was - wait for it - Donald Rumsfeld. Now you might think it strange that Mr Rumsfeld, in the course of one of his folksy press conferences, hasn't chatted to us about this interesting tit-bit. You might think he would have wished to enlighten us about the evil nature of the criminal with whom he so warmly shook hands. But no.

Strangely, Mr Rumsfeld is silent about this. As he is about his subsequent and equally friendly meeting with Tariq Aziz - which just happened to take place on the day in March, 1984, that the UN released its damning report on Saddam's use of poison gas against Iran. The American media are silent about this too, of course. Because we must forget.

We must forget, too, that in 1988, as Saddam destroyed the people of Halabja with gas, along with tens of thousands of other Kurds - when he "used gas against his own people" in the words of Messrs Bush/Cheney/Blair/Cook/Straw et al - President Bush senior provided him with $500m in US government subsidies to buy American farm products. We must forget that in the following year, after Saddam's genocide was complete, President Bush senior doubled this subsidy to $1bn, along with germ seed for anthrax, helicopters, and the notorious "dual-use" material that could be used for chemical and biological weapons.

And when President Bush junior promises the Iraqi people "an era of new hope" and democracy after the destruction of Saddam - as he did last night - we must forget how the Americans promised Pakistan and Afghanistan a new era of hope after the defeat of the Soviet army in 1980 - and did nothing.

We must forget how President Bush senior urged the Iraqis to rise up against Saddam in 1991 and - when they obeyed - did nothing. We must forget how America promised a new era of hope to Somalia in 1993 and then, after "Black Hawk Down", abandoned the country.

We must forget how President Bush junior promised to "stand by" Afghanistan before he began his bombings last year - and has left it now an economic shambles of drug barons, warlords, anarchy and fear. He boasted yesterday that the people of Afghanistan have been "liberated" - this after he has failed to catch bin Laden, failed to catch Mullah Omar, and while his troops are coming under daily attack. We must forget, as we listen to the need to reinsert arms inspectors, that the CIA covertly used UN weapons inspectors to spy on Iraq.

And of course, we must forget about oil. Indeed, oil is the one commodity - and one of the few things which George Bush junior knows something about, along with his ex-oil cronies Cheney and Rice and countless others in the administration - which is never mentioned.

In all of Bush's 30 minutes of anti-Iraq war talk yesterday - pleasantly leavened with just two minutes of how "I hope this will not require military action" - there wasn't a single reference to the fact that Iraq may hold oil reserves larger than those of Saudi Arabia, that American oil companies stand to gain billions of dollars in the event of a US invasion, that, once out of power, Bush and his friends could become multi-billionaires on the spoils of this war. We must ignore all this before we go to war. We must forget.

Robert Fisk/Independent
End Item

[This message has been edited by antoine (edited 27-11-2002).]