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 Saturday, November 08, 2003

  Jewish Commentators Are Asking: " Was It a Mistake Establishing Israel as a Jewish State ?"

Read HERE Essay by Eliahu Salpeter in The Haaretz (Israel) November 7, 2003 "Israel is bad for the Jews"

Excerpts from Eliahu Salpeter's article:

Recently, several articles appearing in the West (most of them written by Jewish commentators) questioned whether it was a mistake to establish the State of Israel along ethnic lines - as a Jewish state.

The settlements have ended any possibility of geographic separation between Jews and Palestinians, and therefore the remaining solution, in practice, is to establish a binational state.

In the October issue of the influential New York Review of Books in an article, (Jewish) commentator Tony Judt wrote:

"The behavior of a self-described Jewish state affects the way everyone else looks at Jews.

..... but the depressing truth is that Israel today is bad for the Jews ...to convert Israel from a Jewish state to a binational one would cause far less disruption to most Jews and Arabs than its religious and nationalist foes will claim.

.... A binational state in the Middle East would require a brave and relentlessly engaged American leadership.

The security of Jews and Arabs alike would need to be guaranteed by international force ... but the alternatives are far, far worse."
Similar ideas are appearing in other journals, also reflecting the disappointment over Israel's policy in the territories.

The veteran Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen recently wrote:
"In the perpetual war against Israel - its enemies are winning, but history admonishes Israel..."
And in The Nation, Daniel Lazar concluded in the article "The One-State Solution":
"Hounded by rabbis, terrorized by suicide bombers, hemmed in by nationalism, Israelis see no alternative but to throw in their lot with a strongman like Sharon.

The logic is irresistible, but suicidal - unless somebody can figure a way out of the ideological cage."
The Jewish Week, printed in New York, featured a column by its editor and publisher, Gary Rosenblatt, in which he wrote:
"Israel's military approach to the Palestinian conflict - respond to attacks and defeat the enemy - does NOT work when applied to U.S. campus ideological clashes over the Middle East.

And the more strident the pro-Israel position, the less likely tens of thousands of American Jewish college students are to be sympathetic to the Jewish state.

A Hillel director on the West Coast, who asks not to be named, stressed that `strident pro-Israel advocates who are unwilling to concede that Israel has a problem with settlements, occupation, and other controversial stands, only end up making more Jewish students skeptical. If you insist you are always right, you lose credibility'."
Large Jewish organizations in the United States continue to stand behind Israel, but many rank and file members feel increasingly displeased with the aggressive policy of the government of Israel and the growing strength of religious-nationalist influences in Israel.

Anti-Semitic entities in Europe and the U.S. are using Israel's policy in the territories. It backs up their propaganda, but it is highly doubtful that this is indeed evidence of a corresponding rise in the scale of anti-Semitism. .

Anti-Semitism is NOT the main reason behind the increased criticism of Israel among liberal circles in Europe.

Indeed, there are today more incidents of anti-Semitism in Europe, and clearly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict contributes to that.

Support for Jews (and Israel) in the 1950s and 1960s has dropped considerably in a generation that no longer remembers the Holocaust.

Constant emphasis on the "perpetual presence" of anti-Semitism achieves the opposite results. It is both despairing and may also weaken the hand of those combating anti-Semitism.

The fact that Islam (even non-fundamentalist Islam, as evidenced by outgoing Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohammad's remarks) disseminates images borrowed from Christian-European anti-Semitism does NOT contradict the vast differences that still exist between the two forms of anti-Semitism.

Christian anti-Semitism grew out of religious grounds and later adopted political and racist attributes and objectives.

The other anti-Semitism, contemporary Muslim, was born out of political reasons and is now taking on racist attributes.

Associating contemporary Muslim anti-Semitism with classic Western anti-Semitism is very convenient for extremists, both European and Israeli.

It is true that there is a lot of hypocrisy in the demands of anti-Semites that Israel and the Jews act with more tolerance and morality than other nations.

But they are not the ones who determined that Israel should be a light unto the nations; that is a demand made throughout the generations by Jewish ethics and that is the bond we asked the nations of the world to redeem in 1948.

We should therefore not complain if the world now demands that we redeem that bond. It is recognition, for or better or worse, of the status of the "chosen people."

In this context it is fitting to quote Tomas Masaryk, who established independent Czechoslovakia (and a friend of Zionism) who cautioned his people:

"Nations fall with the fall of ideas with which they were established."

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  Jessica Lynch: "The US Army Exaggerated My Ordeal in Iraq "

Excerpts from article by DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
November 7, 2003

Jessica Lynch criticized the US military for exaggerating accounts of her rescue.

ABC News anchor Diane Sawyer asked Lynch if the military's portrayal of the rescue bothered her, Ms. Lynch said:

"Yeah, it does. It does that they used me as a way to symbolize all this stuff. Yeah, it's wrong. "
Asked how she felt about the reports of her heroism, Ms. Lynch told Ms. Sawyer,
"It hurt in a way that people would make up stories that they had no truth about. Only I would have been able to know that, because the other four people on my vehicle aren't here to tell the story.

So I would have been the only one able to say, yeah, I went down shooting. But I didn't
."
And asked about reports that the military exaggerated the danger of the rescue mission, Ms. Lynch said,
"Yeah, I don't think it happened quite like that. I don't know why they filmed it, or why they say the things they, you know, all I know was that I was in that hospital hurting. I needed help."
Ms. Lynch also disputed statements by Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, the Iraqi lawyer, that he saw her captors slap her. She said:
"From the time I woke up in that hospital, no one beat me, no one slapped me, no one, nothing. I'm so thankful for those people, because that's why I'm alive today."
In the book and in the interviews, Ms. Lynch says others' accounts of her heroism often left her feeling hurt and ashamed because of what she says was overstatement.

A military spokesman in Iraq had told journalists that American soldiers had exchanged fire with Iraqis during the rescue, without adding that resistance was minimal. Then the military released a dramatic, green-tinted, night-vision video of the mission.

Soon news organizations were repeating reports, attributed to anonymous American officials, that Ms. Lynch had heroically resisted her capture, emptying her weapon at her attackers.

But subsequent investigations determined that Ms. Lynch was injured by the crash of her vehicle, her weapon jammed before she could fire, the Iraqi doctors treated her kindly, and the hospital was already in friendly hands when her rescuers arrived.

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 Friday, November 07, 2003

  International Silence While Israel Practises Apartheid

" A state among nations is placing thousands of people in ghettoes, forcing them to live in subhuman conditions, and not even a murmur of protest can be heard from the world leaders" - Neve Gordon .
Silence in the Face of Israeli Apartheid - Captives Behind Sharon's Wall

By NEVE GORDON
November 6, 2003

Neve Gordon teaches politics and human rights at Ben-Gurion University, Israel and can be reached at ngordon@bgumail.bgu.ac.il

As the government of the Jewish state forces the Palestinians in ghettos, history must be turning in its grave.

Qalqiliya, a city of 45,000, has been surrounded by a concrete wall and only those who are granted permits by the Civil Administration can enter and exit the city's single gate.

Along the West Bank's north western border, an additional 12,000 people are now living in enclaves between the wall and the pre-1967 border.

They too have become captives; yet the so-called security wall does not separate these Palestinian residents from Jewish Israelis, but rather from their brethren in the West Bank.

After placing them on small "islands," Israel is now "encouraging" them to leave their ancestral homes by undermining their infrastructure of existence. The goal, so it seems, is to annex the land uninhabited.

More recently, another 15-km of the wall were approved to be built in the midst of East Jerusalem. Ten minutes drive from my Jerusalem apartment, parts of this concrete wall wind between houses in the Abu Dis neighborhood. A new Berlin wall in the making, only this time in the holy city.

This wall will ultimately place approximately 35,000 Palestinians in a ghetto. Not only will they be isolated from their source of livelihood, but the sick will not be able to reach hospitals and the children will not be able to reach schools. Even the cemeteries will be out of bounds.

Think about it, once this Apartheid wall is completed, many Palestinian parents will be living on one side while their adult children will be living on the other. Families will be torn apart.

The wall dividing East Jerusalem clearly exposes Israel's lie, revealing that security is not the government's real objective.

To put it simply, how will a wall that separates between Palestinian communities ensure the security of Jewish Israelis?

The facts on the ground lay bare that the Apartheid wall, which was ostensibly built to satisfy security needs, is in fact being used as an extremely efficient weapon of dispossession and abuse.

Rhetoric aside, the Palestinians' land is being stolen, basic rights to freedom of movement and livelihood are systematically violated, and the rights to education, health and even burial are contravened. The instruments of violation are not only guns, tanks and airplanes, but Caterpillar bulldozers and Fiat tractors.

If the wall is completed, then 50 percent of the West Bank will be annexed to Israel, and there will be no possibility of creating a viable Palestinian state. Moreover, it will not solve Israel's security problems, but rather exacerbate them.

By engendering extreme pressure on the Palestinian people, who are already living under dire circumstances, it fosters their sense that there are no prospects for the future, thus motivating people to join extremist groups like the Hamas and Islamic Jihad; indeed, the wall only increases the hatred towards the occupiers and promotes bloody attacks.

What baffles the Israeli peace camp is the international silence. A state among nations is placing thousands of people in ghettoes, forcing them to live in subhuman conditions, and not even a murmur of protest can be heard from the world leaders.

On November 9th, these international leaders have a unique opportunity to raise their voice against the Apartheid wall and 36 years of Israeli occupation. On this day, the world will be commemorating the 14th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall and the 65th anniversary of "Kristallnacht," the state orchestrated pogrom against Jews in Nazi Germany.

The international leaders should tell Prime Minister Sharon that at this historical moment he has an option between walls and ethnic cleansing, on the one hand, and open borders and freedom, on the other.

They should also let him know, in unequivocal terms, that they will use all necessary means to ensure that Israel will choose the latter.

- Neve Gordon



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  Hanan Ashrawi Accepts the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize

From Sydney Morning Herald November 7, 2003

After weeks of slurs, accusations of terrorist sympathies and racial hatred, Hanan Ashrawi finally accepted the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize to polite applause and a civilised standing ovation.

Around 200 guests attended a dinner at Parliament House to witness the Palestinian scholar and MP receive the award that generated so much controversy.

Notably absent was of course Sydney Lord Mayor Lucy Turnbull, who started the brouhaha by boycotting the event because she believed Dr Ashrawi supported the destruction of Israel.

Her fellow councillor and political rival Nick Farr-Jones , former Wallaby rugby captain, pledged to buck her authority and fly from Brisbane to Sydney to attend the function but he too was nowhere to be seen.

His factional colleague and former chair of the Sydney Peace Foundation Kathryn Greiner was there, however, accepting a token of thanks for her support for Dr Ashrawi's reception.

Outside Zionist and pro-Palestinian activists staged a tandem protest/show of support for the poet and peacemaker, creating an unlikely but peaceful scene.

And all this culminated in Dr Ashrawi holding a glass outline of a dove on a small block of wood.

NSW Premier Bob Carr made clear his own affection and support for Dr Ashrawi in a speech which traced the history of conflict in the Middle East from its biblical roots.

He described her as "a defender of the fundamental rights of every human being".

Mr Carr touched also on Dr Ashrawi's veiled criticism of Cr Turnbull and expatriate Zionists who she cautioned against propagating dangerous views from safe distances. Mr, Carr said:
"Dr Ashrawi, we are all of us uncomfortably aware that for you, these things are not an academic argument.

They are the life you have lived every day."
Dr Ashrawi was effusive in her praise for the premier, who resisted calls from some Jewish lobbyists for him to snub her.

"I've rarely heard such passion and compassion and such insight into the psyche of two warring people," she said.

And putting paid to any ambiguity about her position on Israel, she reaffirmed her commitment to maintaining the Jewish state.

  • Read HERE Philip Adam's article on Australian Jewish lobby's attack on Hanan Ashrawi
  • Read HERE Rober Fisk's article on "Smearing Edward Said and Hanan Ashrawi"

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      Poor Jessica Lynch ! Was She Raped by Iraqis ?

    A biography of Jessica Lynch will mention the former U-S soldier's apparent rape at the hands of her Iraqi captors.

    BUT, officials have said she has NO MEMORY of her ordeal.

    The upcoming book is called "I am a Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story" . The book is being published next Tuesday, which is Veterans Day.

    The New York Daily News had said earlier that the book would cite medical records indicating that Lynch had been raped while in captivity.

    But the book says the records do not indicate whether the assault occurred before or after the other injuries.

    The book doesn't say which hospital the medical records are from.

    A television movie, "Saving Jessica Lynch," will air on NBC on Nov. 9.

    Lynch will be interviewed Nov. 11 by ABC's Diane Sawyer on "Primetime Special Edition."



    Read HERE past articles/stories on Jessica Lynch,
    and HERE...
    and HERE...
    and HERE...
    and HERE...

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      LATEST: North Korea Says "We Have Nuclear Deterrent !"

    From Reuters (UK) November, 6, 2003, article by Katherine Baldwin

    LONDON (Reuters) - North Korea's envoy in Britain says Pyongyang has a nuclear deterrent that is ready to use and powerful enough to deter any U.S. attack.

    Ambassador Ri Yong Ho told Reuters in an interview on Thursday that North Korea would only use its capability in self-defence. Asked if North Korea had a nuclear bomb, he said: "What we are saying is, a nuclear deterrent capability."

    North Korea has long hinted that it had a nuclear bomb. It said last month it was prepared to demonstrate the existence of its nuclear deterrent "when an appropriate time comes".

    But Thursday's comments appear to be the first time it has explicitly stated that it has a nuclear weapon ready to use.

    The ambassador said the deterrent was made with plutonium, most of which was recently reprocessed, and was now ready to use should the United States attack.

    The latest crisis in North Korea-U.S. relations erupted in October 2002 when U.S. officials said Pyongyang was pursuing a clandestine nuclear weapons programme that violated its international commitments.

    The crisis showed signs of deepening on Thursday when the United States proposed suspending a project to build nuclear power stations in the communist country.

    Ri said the suspension, if it went ahead, would have a "very negative impact on the dialogue process" aimed at defusing the standoff.

    The reactor project is based on a 1994 agreement under which the North Koreans froze their nuclear arms programme in return for two light-water reactors.

    The United States has insisted on a multilateral approach in the nuclear crisis, offering Pyongyang security guarantees short of a formal non-aggression treaty in exchange for a complete, verifiable and irreversible end to the suspected weapons programme.

    Ri said North Korea was now ready to make concessions on its initial demands for a formal treaty so as to break the logjam.

    "We are prepared to consider written assurances on non-aggression," he said, stressing that Pyongyang would only accept such a deal if Washington itself made genuine assurances.

    He said Washington must commit itself to a peaceful coexistence and show a willingness for "simultaneous action", shorthand for both sides taking steps at the same time to answer conflicting concerns and resolve the crisis.

    If North Korea deemed Washington's offer to be genuine, it would continue taking part in six-way talks to end the impasse, he said. He would not be drawn on a possible date for new talks.

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     Thursday, November 06, 2003

      North Korea Nuclear Crisis-
    (continuing...) PART II: Unravelling the 1994 Agreed Framework


    Read HERE Essay by Desaix Anderson " Crisis in North Korea: the U.S. Strategic Future in East Asia " (March 27, 2003) ... Desaix Anderson was the Executive Director of KEDO from 1997 until April 2001.

    Excerpts:

    "Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization ( KEDO) was established to build two proliferation-resistant nuclear reactors and provide 500,000 metric tons annually of heavy fuel oil in exchange for termination of North Korea's nuclear programs at a place called Yongbyon.

    When I took over KEDO in late 1997-98, the Agreed Framework verged on collapse.

    DPRK officials told me, this was because the United States remained hostile to the DPRK and had NOT lifted economic sanctions or moved forward to normalize relations, as promised in the Agreed Framework.

    For its part, the United States was demanding inspections of a suspected nuclear facility under a North Korean mountain at Kumchang-ri. Some in US Congress clamored for abrogation of the Agreed Framework; others advocated military action against North Korea.

    The underlying cause of the 1994 crisis, the near collapse of the Agreed Framework in 1998, and the current crisis with Pyongyang all stem from the same root cause that the administration seems to ignore.

    For ten years, North Korea, cut from support from the Soviet Union and China, has become profoundly insecure about its survival. The DPRK economy is dysfunctional. South Korea has surpassed the North in virtually every facet of national power.

    U.S. military prowess in Afghanistan, the "pre-emptive attack" on Iraq, hostile rhetoric from the Bush administration exacerbate fears in Pyongyang of an American attack.

    In each of the three recent crises in US relations with North Korea the scenarios have been virtually identical:

  • Out of growing weakness, Pyongyang cried out for attention, making increasingly dangerous threats, to try to ensure its security and survival in the post-Cold War world.

  • The sub-text each time has been North Korea's desire to break from its isolation and establish a non-hostile relationship with the United States, and through the United States to gain access to economic assistance, funds from Japan, the IMF, World Bank, Europe, South Korea, to resuscitate its economy;

  • Only negotiations explicitly ending hostility and the threat behind it will likely move Pyongyang to relinquish its newly dangerous challenge.

  • Economic pressure from neighbors may further devastate the North Korean economy, deepen famine, and even lead to collapse of North Korea's economy, but would not resolve the basic problem in Pyongyang.

    During the 1998 crisis, North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations, Li Hyong Chol, emphasized to me that Pyongyang did not react well to ultimatums or to tit for tat proposals. Pyongyang, he told me, would be much more responsive to proposals for moving forward in tandem to deal with the issues at hand.

    North Koreans repeatedly told me in 1998 that the U.S. had "nullified" the Agreed Framework, but the accusation led to nothing.

    Despite North Korea's violation of the Agreed Framework, we should not have lightly discarded a mechanism that imposed crucial restraints on Pyongyang.

    Under pressure, President Clinton named former defense Secretary William Perry to review North Korea policy. Over the next year (1999) , Secretary Perry convinced DPRK leadership that Washington was genuinely prepared to end American hostility and to normalize relations with the DPRK.

    Read HERE Comparison between Clinton and GW Bush's policies on North Korea

    Pyongyang accepted the "Perry approach." Subsequently, the United States and DPRK also made major progress on ending the other North Korean threat B long range ballistic missiles. The DPRK was required to honor its commitments, as it took advantage of the opportunities that were available for improved relations

    The engagement through the Agreed Framework, KEDO, the Perry process, the North & South Korea Summit in June 2000, US- DPRK dialogue and missile talks, raised the hope of ending the fifty-year threat to peace in Northeast Asia, where two of our closest allies, Japan and South Korea, are located.

    This was the first time where all efforts appeared to turn the DPRK from a dangerous wildcard into a less menacing and perhaps more constructive member of the community of Northeast Asia.

    But by 2000, President Bush abruptly jettisoned the Clinton administration's and Secretary Perry's achievement. In a stunning press conference, President Bush publicly called North Korea untrustworthy and Kim Jong Il a dictator, seriously embarrassing and undermining President Kim Dae Jung.

    The President, in effect, abrogated Perry's achievement by including North Korea in the "Axis of Evil."

    Pyongyang also concluded that the threat of "pre-emptive nuclear attack," outlined in the U.S. 2002 National Security Strategy of September 2002, was aimed at North Korea.

    As a result, Pyongyang feared and fears that North Korea is the next target after Iraq.

    As a result, the crisis immediately began to deepen: At U.S. urging, the heavy fuel oil commitments were suspended by KEDO . Inevitably, Pyongyang reacted negatively and in a succession of dangerous moves has now renounced all the elements of the Agreed Framework.

    Pyongyang announced that it would restart the five megawatt reactor that can produce enough plutonium each month to build a nuclear weapon. They threw out the IAEA inspectors and removed the seals on nuclear facilities.

    North Korea regained control of 8000 spent fuel rods, stored under the Agreed Framework, enough to fuel five/six more nuclear weapons by this summer(2003). Although they have apparently not yet crossed the red line President Clinton drew, warning against any reprocessing. North Korea ended its missile moratorium, test firing two short range missiles into the Sea of Japan. Four MIG jets recklessly tracked a U.S. reconnaissance plane for twenty minutes two weeks ago.

    Against this backdrop, over the past year(2002), Pyongyang initiated more serious economic reforms and improved relations with all its neighbors -- Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan -- to hedge against possible U.S. attack and to encourage the United States to resume dialogue.

    Despite claiming for over a year to be "prepared to talk anytime, anywhere, without conditions" , the U.S. had spurned talks for 22 months until U.S. State Department Assistant Secretary James Kelly's visit last October 2002, to Pyongyang.

    In fact, Kelly refused to talk, and only demanded that North Korea end its new nuclear activities.


    My best guess is that the development of the uranium enrichment facility began in 1997-98 when the Agreed Framework almost collapsed. I assume that North Korea, in the context of the tenuous commitments of the United States; with its own growing weakness, Pakistan's proposal to pay for missile technology from North Korea with nuclear technology, decided to develop a new nuclear option.

    This nuclear project apparently accelerated after President Bush included Pyongyang in the "Axis of Evil."

    Kim Jong Il decided to manage U.S. allegations by instructing his Vice Foreign Minister to acknowledge the suspected uranium enrichment facilities. He raised the stakes in an already high stakes negotiation, but he hoped to induce the United States to undertake negotiations of a comprehensive settlement, as the United States itself had raised rhetorically. This was a risky strategy.

    He probably surmised that the United States was too preoccupied with Al Qaeda and Iraq to attack North Korea at the moment, and that South Korea, Japan, Europe, China, and Russia would, in any case, all urge negotiations, not war.

    The Bush Administration downplayed the North Korean threat, but the administration, in reality, fell into a dangerous self-imposed trap.

    President Bush declared that the U.S. would pursue diplomatic channels to resolve this problem, but, instead, the administration began pushing Japan, South Korea, China, and Russia to exert economic pressures on North Korea.

    Based on my experience, Pyongyang will not respond constructively to efforts by the Bush administration to impose sanctions or economic hardships on North Korea.

    Moreover, refusal to talk infuriates a Korean since it implies profound disrespect and denial of the existence of the other person.

    Despite these ominous moves, Pyongyang has repeatedly announced that North Korea was prepared to negotiate resolution of all the issues of concern to the U.S., including explicitly nuclear issues.

    Pyongyang has also shifted from insistence on a US-DPRK Peace Treaty, which the U.S. has rejected, and is now calling for a non-aggression pact between Washington and Pyongyang.

    Kim Jong Il has demonstrated repeatedly that his nuclear and missile activities are cards to exchange for elimination of threat he perceives from the U.S.

    But I deeply fear that we are rapidly moving beyond the point at which North Korea might be willing to negotiate away its nuclear facilities and may well have decided, in light of the Bush administration's continuing hostility and unwillingness to even talk, that its best protection from the Bush administration is to become a nuclear-armed state.

    The administration should overcome its puerile distaste for dealing with Kim Jong Il, and urgently engage the North in serious discussions to end North Korea's nuclear programs and deal with the root cause of North Korea's insecurity B the hostility and threat it perceives from the United States.

    North Korea has emphatically rejected any multilateral approach to deal with its nuclear facilities, and insists on dealing only with the United States to manage the threat from the U.S. It is counter-productive to pursue an approach that has repeatedly been rejected and goads North Korea to ratchet up the pressure recklessly.

    Others are advocating sanctions or military strikes against the facilities at Yongbyon. Others mention darkly "regime change." Pyongyang has declared that sanctions or any military strike would result in all-out war.

    Almost the only hope would be to send Colin Powell, perhaps accompanied by the first President Bush, urgently to Pyongyang with full powers to negotiate a comprehensive resolution of the key issues, ending North Korea's nuclear and missile threats under intrusive inspections, ending U.S. hostility, security assurances to North Korea, and commitment to move rapidly to normal economic and political relations.
    - Desaix Anderson
  • Read Here Paul Eckert's article "North Korea Says US Oil Cutoff Ends Nuclear Pact (November 21, 2002)"

    Excerpts:
    On November 14, Washington and its allies decided to stop vital fuel oil aid to penalize North Korea for breaking a series of nuclear non-proliferation pledges, including the 1994 Agreed Framework, with a covert uranium enrichment program which Pyongyang confessed last month to operating.

    The isolated communist state's first response to the decision said the oil cutoff meant " it is high time to decide upon who is to blame for the collapse of the Framework. It is well known to the world that the U.S. has violated the Framework and boycotted the implementation of its commitments," a North Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement carried on the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

    Under the 1994 Agreed Framework, the North promised to freeze its nuclear weapons program in return for fuel oil, paid for by Washington, and two light water reactors that cannot easily be converted to produce atomic weapons material.

    The statement called the oil cutoff -- which takes effect as North Korea's sub-zero winter sets in next month -- a "wanton violation" of the pledges of allied energy aid for North Korea. The cuts will hit North Korea just ahead of winter, adding to the woes of a population of 22 million suffering from severe economic hardship and food shortages that relief groups said have killed as many as several million people.

    The North Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) complained bitterly on 15 November:
    "We cannot keep the nuclear programme frozen any longer only to get heavy oil - the shipments of which may be suspended any time, with no importance given to when light-water reactors will be provided. ...

    The Framework Agreement, which was concluded by sincere efforts of the DPRK [Democratic Peoples' Republic of Korea] and the United States two years ago, marking an epoch-making occasion in ensuring peace in the Peninsular...is...now at stake... If the US is interested in the implementation of the bilateral agreement even a little bit, it must take a reasonable view of the present situation and have a responsible position. ...

    Now we do not feel it necessary to continue wasting time since the US has unilaterally delayed the implementation of the agreement, breaking its promise..."
    It asserted that the United States had broken the pact because the light-water reactor construction is behind schedule and because Washington had threatened Pyongyang by branding North Korea part of an "axis of evil" with Iran and Iraq.

    North Korea took the United States perilously close to war a decade ago over its previous attempt to build nuclear arms with the plutonium-based program frozen by the Agreed Framework.

    North Korean representatives in Asia have issued warnings that if oil shipments were halted, Pyongyang would reactivate an its plutonium program or end a self-imposed moratorium on test flights of ballistic missiles.

    The spokesman reiterated a demand Pyongyang first made on October 25 that the United States sign a non-aggression treaty.

    Bush issued a statement demanding that the North dismantle its nuclear program while restating that the United States had no intention of invading the impoverished country. But the North demanded "legal assurances of non-aggression."

    "The (North Korean) proposal for concluding a non-aggression treaty is, in essence, the only realistic solution to the nuclear issue on the Korean peninsula," the statement said.
    -- Paul Eckert
    Read HERE essay by Leon V. Sigal "N. Korea: Fibs versus Facts" August,5, 2003

    Excerpts:
    The Bush administration has been misleading about North Korea.

    North Korea has grudgingly accepted multiparty talks. It had been balking - not, as administration officials suggest, because it was insisting on bilateral talks with the United States, but because Washington has shown NO interest in negotiating.

    In three-way talks in Beijing in April 2003, North Korea made a proposal to freeze and eventually dismantle its nuclear programs. Allies South Korea and Japan want the Bush administration to make a counterproposal, but it has not. Yet administration officials say they seek a "diplomatic solution."

    Winston Churchill would have called that a "terminological inexactitude." That phrase was Mr. Churchill's way around a rule in parliament against accusing fellow MPs of lying.

    The Bush administration is propagating other inexactitudes on North Korea, all of them designed to keep talks from turning into negotiations and all of them at odds with the facts.

    (I) One inexactitude is that North Korea is determined to nuclear arm, so negotiating is an exercise in futility. Yet Pyongyang has said repeatedly it will accept a verifiable end to both its plutonium and uranium programs and yield any weapons it has. It will not give them away for nothing, however.

     It wants a written pledge from the United States not to attack it, impede its economic development or attempt to overthrow its government. It insists on dealing directly with the United States, whether or not China, South Korea, Japan and Russia are at the negotiating table, because none of them can give security assurances on behalf of the United States. North Korea will let U.S. inspectors monitor its nuclear sites, but it won't submit to international inspections until Washington ends what Pyongyang calls its "hostile policy."

    North Korea will keep reprocessing plutonium and generating more spent nuclear fuel in its Yongbyon reactor. It will also continue to build gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. It wants an agreement in principle committing America to satisfy its security and economic concerns before it will stop.

    This is intended to underscore North Korea's basic stance that if the United States remains its foe, it feels threatened and will seek nuclear arms and missiles to counter that threat, but if the United States ends enmity, it says it will not.

    Does North Korea mean what it says?

    History does suggest the North is willing to deal. Under the Agreed Framework of October 1994, it froze work at facilities that by now could have been generating at least 30 bombs' worth of plutonium a year. That is a real nuclear weapons program. Its enrichment effort, by contrast, won't be ready to produce much weapons-grade uranium until mid-decade at the earliest, according to U.S. intelligence.

    (II) The second inexactitude advanced by the administration is that the United States kept its word but North Korea cheated As President Bush said March 6, "My predecessor, in a good-faith effort, entered into a framework agreement. The United States honored its side of the agreement; North Korea didn't. While we felt the agreement was in force, North Korea was enriching uranium."

    His advisers misinformed him (Bush) .

    The fact is, Washington got what it most wanted up front, but it did NOT live up to its end of the bargain. When Republicans captured control of Congress in elections just days after the Agreed Framework was signed, they denounced the deal as appeasement.

    Afraid of taking them on, the Clinton administration backpedaled on implementation.It did little easing of sanctions until 2000.

    Reactor construction was slow to get under way. Although we pledged to provide the two reactors "by a target date of 2003," we did NOT pour the concrete for the first foundation until August 2002.

    We did NOT always deliver heavy fuel oil on schedule.

    Above all, we did NOT live up to our promise, in Article II of the Agreed Framework, to "move toward full normalization of political and economic relations" - to end enmity and economic sanctions.

    When Washington was slow to fulfill the terms of the accord, Pyongyang in 1997 threatened to break it.

    Its acquisition of technology to enrich uranium from Pakistan began soon thereafter. That was a pilot program, not the operational capability that the North moved to acquire in 2001 - after the Bush administration refused to negotiate and instead put it on a target list for nuclear attack.

    (II) A third inexactitude is that North Korea is on the verge of collapse and that an economic embargo and naval blockade will bring it down. But trying to compel North Korea will provoke it to nuclear arm a lot sooner than to collapse.

    A strategy of strangulation cannot be effective unless all of the North's neighbors are willing to join in. None is willing to. They know exactly what the Bush administration has yet to learn, that pressure WITHOUT negotiations won't work with Pyongyang.
    -Leon V. Sigal
    NEXT..... PART III: North Korea Nuclear Crisis - Why US Won't Fight Conventional War with North Korea... watch this space...

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      Israel Grants Russian Tycoon Citizenship

    Excerpts from The Guardian (UK) Wednesday November 5, 2003 , article by RAMIT PLUSHNICK-MASTI (Associate Press writer)

    JERUSALEM (AP) - Israel has granted citizenship to a Russian tycoon, Leonid Nevzlin, who could be targeted in Russia's tax evasion and fraud investigation of oil giant Yukos, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

    Leonid Nevzlin, who is Jewish, was questioned by Russian police in July. He arrived in Israel on a tourist visa two months ago and was granted citizenship on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said.

    Nevzlin is the top aide of Mikhail Khodorkovsky, (who is also Jewish) , and who resigned earlier this week as head of Yukos, the world's fifth-largest oil company.

    Khodorkovsky, Russia's richest man, has been in a Russian prison since Oct. 25 on charges of tax evasion and fraud.

    Russian media have reported that Khodorkovsky assigned to Nevzlin "beneficiary rights'' to 50 percent of shares in Yukos holding company, Group Menatep.

    That would make Nevzlin a key figure in protecting the company's multibillion-dollar assets from the authorities who might try to seize them.

    Leonid Nevzlin ... has an estimated wealth at $1.1 billion. Forbes ranks him as the 11th richest Russian.

    Nevzlin was formerly head of the Russian Jewish Congress - the group once headed by Vladimir Gusinsky, another oligarch who is currently hiding in Israel.

    According to the Israeli newspaper Maariv, another Yukos shareholder, Vladmir Dubov, was in Israel until recently and stayed in the same Tel Aviv hotel as Nevzlin

    ..... Read HERE on arrest of Vladmir Dubov and Boris Berezovsky by British authorities in March 2003. Both are Jewish Russian oligarchs on the run after Russian authorities accused them of defrauding a regional government of the equivalent of $13 million.

    Prime Minister Ariel Sharon brought up his concern about recent arrests of Jewish businessmen in Russia during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Monday. "He said that as a Jew and as prime minister he is worried that there is persecution'' of Jews, said Sharon adviser Raanan Gissin.

    Putin assured Sharon that the cases were purely criminal.
    ,

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     Wednesday, November 05, 2003

      North Korea Nuclear Crisis -
    PART I: Chronology of Events Leading to the 1994 Agreed Framework


    12 April 1991: South Korean Defense Minister Lee Jong-ku announces that South Korea will attack North Korea’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon if it does not sign the IAEA safeguards agreement. North Korean President Kim Il-sung says that the announcement is a "virtual declaration of war."

    1992

    30 January 1992: North Korea signs the IAEA safeguards agreement. North Korea’s Deputy Minister for the atomic energy industry Hong Gun-pyo says that North Korea will abide by the agreement fully.

    24 March 1992: North Korean Ambassador to the United Nations Ri Tcheul says that North Korea has no plans to develop nuclear weapons. Furthermore, he says that North Korea will soon accept IAEA inspections.

    12 April 1992: North Korean President Kim Il-sung says that North Korea is willing to receive international inspectors at its nuclear facilities and all that needs to be arranged is the procedural formality of informing the IAEA.

    4 May 1992: Twenty-five days before schedule, North Korea supplies the IAEA with a 150-page "initial report" declaring its nuclear facilities and materials. The report, however, does not list the actual amount of plutonium North Korea has reprocessed at Yongbyon. IAEA produced a report stating the facilities and materials North Korea admits to having. This list closely matches Western estimates of the scope of North Korea’s nuclear program.

    25 May – 7 June 1992: The first IAEA inspection team led by Willi Theis came to North Korea

    19 June 1992: The IAEA announces that it plans to undertake special inspections of North Korea’s nuclear facilities. IAEA Director General Hans Blix says that North Korea has agreed to such inspections.

    6 July 1992: IAEA inspectors begin a second round of international inspections of North Korea’s nuclear facilities

    31 August 1992: The third IAEA inspection team arrives in North Korea. During the inspection, the team is given limited access to two suspected nuclear-related sites at Yongbyon. North Korea had not declared the sites in the report submitted to the IAEA in May 1992. One of the sites is a two-story building. They are permitted limited access to the building, which is found to house heavy weapons, including tanks and missiles on mobile carriages. The North Koreans refuse to allow a formal and thorough inspection of the building based on grounds that it is a military site and thus exempt from inspection. The IAEA, however, does not accept such exemptions.

    18 September 1992: According to IAEA Director General Hans Blix, North Korea has agreed to allow IAEA inspections of all nuclear facilities.

    4 November 1992: US and South Korea announced plans for "Team Spirit"military exercises. The North Korean foreign ministry issues a statement saying that North Korea may stop IAEA inspections of its nuclear facilities if South Korea and the United States do not terminate their joint Team Spirit military exercises.

    December 1992: The IAEA team conducts its fifth inspection of North Korea’s nuclear facilities.

    1993

    13 January 1993: According to the Information Director of the IAEA, North Korea will shut down its 5MW reactor around the middle of 1993 to change the core. IAEA inspectors are expected to be there when the reactor is shut down.

    26 January-6 February 1993: The IAEA team conducts its sixth inspection of North Korea’s nuclear facilities.

    29 January 1993: North Korea’s ambassador to Russia, Son Song-pil, warns that the US and South Korean Team Spirit military exercise scheduled for March 1993 may force North Korea to close its nuclear facilities to IAEA inspection. He says that North Korea views the exercises as preparation for a potential nuclear war and that they are incompatible with the basic clauses of the NPT. Additionally, the situation does not allow North Korea "to normally fulfill its commitments" to IAEA inspections

    8 February 1993: North Korea publicly states that it might take "countermeasures of self-defense" if the United States and other countries press for inspections of certain facilities in North Korea

    11 February 1993: IAEA Director General Hans Blix formally requests North Korea to open two undeclared sites for special inspections. South Korean Prime Minister Hyun Soong-jong announces that South Korea will cancel the scheduled Team Spirit military exercises with the United States if North Korea agrees to the special inspections demanded by the IAEA.

    21 February 1993: North Korean Minister of Atomic Energy Choe Hak-kun informs IAEA Director General Hans Blix that North Korea will not allow special inspections of the two sites suspected of storing nuclear waste.

    22 February 1993: North Korea’s permanent representative to the United Nations, Ri Tcheul, states that North Korea has the right to "tear up" the IAEA safeguards agreement if inspectors continue to demand access to the two disputed sites in North Korea.

    22-29 February 1993: During the IAEA Board of Governors meeting, the North Korean representatives are shown US surveillance photographs and chemical evidence proving that North Korea had been producing plutonium from nuclear waste for a minimum of three years beginning in 1989. Diplomatic officials believe that North Korea now has enough plutonium to build at least one nuclear weapon.

    8 March 1993: In a message to IAEA headquarters in Vienna, North Korea refuses once again to accept special inspections of its suspected sites. Its reason for doing so is the Team Spirit military exercises and the "state of semi-war" in the country. IAEA Director General Hans Blix rejects North Korea’s "excuses" and repeats the inspection demand.

    12 March 1993: North Korea announces it is withdrawing from the NPT. It cites the treaty’s escape clause on defending supreme national interests. North Korea’s two reasons for withdrawing are: (1) the Team Spirit "nuclear war rehearsal" military exercises, and (2) the IAEA demand for special inspection of two suspect sites.

    17 March 1993: The IAEA Board of Governors meets to discuss North Korea’s withdrawal from the NPT, as well as the line of action it should now take.

    22 March 1993: North Korea claims that the two suspected sites are "non-nuclear military installations" and charges the IAEA of spying on it for the United States. The IAEA sets 31 March as the deadline for North Korea to comply with inspections.

    25 March 1993: North Korea ignores the deadline for IAEA inspections of two of its undeclared sites. According to North Korea, the sites are military facilities, which are unrelated to its nuclear program. The IAEA says that it will refer the matter to the UN Security Council.

    31 March 1993: North Korea refuses to allow inspections of two suspected sites at Yongbyon

    1 October 1993: The IAEA General Assembly passes a resolution that calls on North Korea to "cooperate immediately with the Agency in the full implementation of the safeguards agreement."

    27 October 1993: North Korea tells the United States that it will submit to regular IAEA inspections only if the United States cancels Team Spirit military exercises with South Korea.

    2 November 1993: A high-ranking US official says that the Team Spirit military maneuvers will continue in 1994 if North Korea does not submit to regular IAEA inspections.

    November 1993: The United States offers to assist North Korea with monitoring personnel and technical support for the upcoming refueling of the North Korean 5MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon. It also offers to replace North Korea's gas-cooled reactors with US light-water reactors if the latter provides the IAEA with blanket access to its nuclear facilities

    30 November 1993: North Korea's foreign ministry suggests that North Korea will withdraw from the NPT if the United States does not agree to third round of negotiations on the nuclear issue.

    3 December 1993: North Korea offers the IAEA unlimited access to five of its seven declared nuclear facilities and limited access to the other two - a 5MW gas-graphite reactor and a reprocessing facility. North Korea says that the IAEA can replace the film and batteries in the cameras but not check the seals at these facilities. North Korea's ambassador to the IAEA Yun Ho-jin says that the nuclear issue can be resolved if the United States agrees with North Korea on a package involving an improvement in bilateral relations.

    6 December 1993: US President Bill Clinton and the IAEA announce that North Korea's offer to allow the IAEA access to some of its nuclear sites is inadequate and unacceptable. IAEA spokesman David Kyd says that "there must be unrestricted access to all declared sites" and that "restrictions on the two facilities are not negotiable."

    8 December 1993: The United States and South Korea accept North Korea's offer to allow the expansion of inspections beyond the replacement of maintenance and surveillance equipment in return for a third round of nuclear talks.

    1994

    4 January 1994: US officials say that they are likely to make the important concession of accepting North Korea's proposal of a complete one-time inspection of its seven declared nuclear facilities, in the hope that additional inspections can be agreed upon in the future.

    1 April 1994: North Korea's foreign ministry states that the nuclear inspection dispute can be settled in direct talks with the United States, and declines a Russian proposal to resolve the matter at a world conference.

    27 April 1994: North Korea announces that it will not accept full IAEA inspections. Although IAEA inspectors will be permitted to witness the removal of the nuclear spent fuel rods from its 5MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon, they will not be allowed to take samples of the rods or to measure their radioactivity.

    14 May 1994: North Korea starts unloading spent fuel rods from its 5MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon before the arrival of the IAEA inspectors.

    16 May 1994: US state department officials announce that if North Korea has removed or "emptied" the spent fuel from the rods, the United States will seek sanctions in the UN Security Council. US defense secretary William Perry characterizes the situation as a "very substantial near-term crisis."

    31 May 1994: The IAEA Director General Hans Blix announces North Korea is "no longer [officially] in compliance with IAEA safeguards." IAEA inspectors announce that key fuel rods have already been removed from the original 300 rods that are considered "vital to future measurement." North Korea's ambassador to the IAEA, Yun Ho-jin says that 40 rods have been withdrawn under IAEA camera surveillance and placed in a storage site "pending an inspection agreement

    7 June 1994: North Korea's ambassador to the IAEA, Yun Ho-jin declares that the North Korean government "will never allow inspections" of two suspected nuclear waste sites at Yongbyon. One of the reasons for not allowing inspections is because the United States discovered the two nuclear sites using spy satellite imagery.

    9 June 1994: According to IAEA spokesman David Kyd, North Korea has removed 6,500 of the original 8,000 fuel rods from the core of its 5MW gas-graphite reactor. Two IAEA inspectors are monitoring the fuel rods in the cooling pond. North Korea is not allowing the IAEA inspectors to take samples from the rods. According to a Western diplomat, the ability to reconstruct North Korea's nuclear history "is now lost."

    10 June 1994: The IAEA Board of Governors passes a resolution suspending technical aid to North Korea.

    13 June 1994: North Korea submits a letter officially relinquishing its IAEA membership.

    15 June 1994: The IAEA inspectors leave North Korea because they can no longer account for the 8,000 fuel rods.

    16 June 1994: North Korean President Kim Il-sung, in his talks with former US President Jimmy Carter, reportedly agrees to allow IAEA inspectors to remain at the 5MW gas-graphite reactor and promises that the IAEA's monitoring equipment will stay in good condition.

    23 June 1994: North Korea confirms that it will fully comply with the NPT and its safeguards agreement with the IAEA, allow IAEA inspectors to remain in North Korea, maintain IAEA monitoring equipment in compliance with the NPT, and halt its nuclear activities.

    12 July 1994: North Korea's Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Kim Su-man announces that IAEA inspectors can remain at the 5MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon, and that the recently removed fuel rods will not be processed; neither will the 5MW gas-graphite reactor be refueled.

    31 August 1994: North Korea's ambassador to Austria, Kim Gwang-sop says that full inspections of North Korea's nuclear facilities shall be forthcoming following the accord reached between North Korea and the United States in Geneva. Kim admits that North Korea has produced plutonium in the past but that its use has been restricted to civilian purposes.

    13 September 1994: The IAEA states in a confidential report that inspections of the reprocessing facility at Yongbyon have yielded no evidence that plutonium has been extracted there since 1993. There is suspicion, however, that fuel rods were processed at a second facility where inspections were not allowed.

    16 September 1994: As a result of the nuclear accord reached with North Korea, the IAEA will broaden its inspection activities to include all seven of North Korea's declared nuclear sites. IAEA inspectors will verify that the 8,000 spent fuel rods removed from the 5MW gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon are not reprocessed until definite steps are taken to freeze the nuclear program. The IAEA announces that its inspectors have begun replacing the batteries and videotapes in surveillance equipment in all seven declared nuclear facilities.

    21 October 1994: The United States and North Korea sign an accord (Agreed Framework), which specifies the actions that both countries will take to resolve the North Korean nuclear issue.

  • Under the terms of the agreement, a US-led international consortium will help North Korea replace its graphite-moderated reactors with two 1,000MW light-water reactors.

  • The international consortium will compensate North Korea for the freeze on its graphite-moderated reactors by supplying 500,000 tons of heavy-fuel oil annually until the new reactors come online.

  • Second, the United States and North Korea will make efforts to normalize their economic and political relations by reducing investment and trade barriers.

  • Third, both countries will strive towards establishing a nuclear-weapons-free-zone on the Korean Peninsula.

  • Finally, North Korea will help strengthen the nonproliferation regime by remaining a member of the NPT.

  • It will also allow the IAEA to implement the safeguards agreement and monitor the freeze on its nuclear facilities.
  • 1 November 1994: A spokesman for North Korea's foreign ministry says that North Korea is taking "practical steps" to implement the Agreed Framework with the United States.
  • North Korea's Administration Council has ordered the cessation of construction on the 50MW and 200MW gas-graphite reactors.

  • The Council has also decided to halt operation of the 5MW gas-graphite reactor and to take measures to withdraw fuel rods that were intended for refueling it.

  • In addition, North Korea will continue to cease operations at its radiochemical lab [reprocessing facility] and other nuclear facilities.
  • 4 November 1994: The UN Security Council endorses the nuclear accord reached between North Korea and the United States in October 1994. It approves North Korea's voluntary decision to freeze its current nuclear program and comply with its safeguards agreement with the IAEA. North Korea rejects the statement on the ground that it only emphasizes North Korea's responsibilities under the framework agreement.

    NEXT - PART II : Unravelling of the Agreed Framework .... watch this space....



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      The Campaign to make "Arab" or "Palestinian" Become a DIRTY Word


    When Did "Arab" or "Palestinian" Become a Dirty Word?
    - Smearing Dr.Edward Said and Dr. Hanan Ashrawi


    By ROBERT FISK
    November 4, 2003


    Robert Fisk is the most decorated British foreign correspondent, based in the Middle East for the last twenty-five years, "and his knowledge of the area is unparalleled." -Mathew Rothschild


    Is "Palestinian" now just a dirty word? Or is "Arab" the dirty word?

    Smearing Dr. Edward Said

    Let's start with the late Edward Said, the brilliant and passionate Palestinian-American academic who wrote--among many other books--Orientalism, the ground-breaking work which first explored our imperial Western fantasies about the Middle East.

    After he died of leukaemia last month, Zev Chafets, (who is Jewish), sneered at him in the New York Daily News in the following words:

    "As an Episcopalian, he's ineligible for the customary 72 virgins, but I wouldn't be surprised if he's honoured with a couple of female doctoral graduates."
    According to Chafets, who spent 33 years "in politics, government and journalism" in Jerusalem,
    " Orientalism "rests on a simple thesis: Westerners are inherently unable to fairly judge, or even grasp, the Arab world." (Edward) Said "didn't blow up the Marines in Lebanon in 1983 ... he certainly didn't fly a plane into the World Trade Centre.

    What he (Edward Said) did was to jam America's intellectual radar."
    When I read this vicious obituary, I recalled hearing Chafets' name before. So I turned to my files and up he popped in 1982, as former director of the Israeli government press office in Jerusalem.

    He had just published a book falsely claiming that Western journalists in Beirut--myself among them--had been "terrorised" by bands of Palestinians. He even claimed my old friend Sean Toolan, who was murdered by a jealous husband with whose wife he was having an affair, was killed by Palestinians because they disapproved of a US television programme about the PLO.

    So I got the point.

    You can kick a scholar when he's dead if he's a Palestinian, and kick a journalist when he's dead if you want to claim he was murdered by Palestinians.

    Smearing Dr. Hanan Ashrawi

    But now the same sick fantasies are taking hold in Australia, where a determined effort is being made by Israel's supposed friends there to prevent the Palestinian scholar Hanan Ashrawi --of all people--from receiving the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize this week.

    A Jewish writer in Sydney has bravely defended her--not least because the local Israeli lobby appears to have deliberately misquoted an interview she gave me two years ago, distorting her words to imply that she is in favour of suicide bombings. Ashrawi is not in favour of these wicked attacks. She has fearlessly spoken out against them.

    But Sydney University has already withdrawn the use of its Great Hall for the presentation of the peace prize and the Lord Mayor of Sydney, Lucy Turnbull, has dissociated the City of Sydney, sponsor of the prize, from the presentation.

    And just to show you what lies behind this--apart from the fact that Turnbull's husband Malcolm is trying to get a nomination for a parliamentary seat--take a look through the following exchange between Kathryn Greiner, former chairwoman of the Sydney peace foundation, and Professor Stuart Rees, the foundation's director:

    Kathryn Greiner: "I have to speak logically. It is either Hanan Ashrawi or the Peace Foundation. That's our choice, Stuart. My distinct impression is that if you persist in having her here, they'll (sic) destroy you. Rob Thomas of City Group is in trouble for supporting us. And you know Danny Gilbert [an Australian lawyer] has already been warned off."

    Stuart Rees: "You must be joking. We've been over this a hundred times. We consulted widely. We agreed the jury's decision, made over a year ago, was not only unanimous but that we would support it, together."

    Kathryn Greiner: : "But you're not listening to the logic. The Commonwealth Bank ... is highly critical. We could not approach them for financial help for the Schools Peace Prize. We'll get no support from them. The business world will close ranks. They are saying we are one-sided, that we've only supported Palestine."
    There is more of the same, but Professor Rees is standing firm --for now. So is Australian (Jewish) journalist Antony Loewenstein in Zmag magazine. He says:
    Ashrawi "has endured campaigns of hate based on slander and lies for most of her life, from those who are intent on silencing the Palestinian narrative ..."
    But how much longer must this go on?

    Ashrawi, I notice, is now being called an "aging (sic) bespoke terror apologist" by Mark Steyn (who is Jewish) in, of all places, The Irish Times.

    And it's getting worse.

    Edward Said's work is now being denounced in testimony to the US Congress by Dr Stanley Kurz, (Jewish American), who claims that the presence of "post-colonial theory" in academic circles has produced professors who refuse to support or instruct students interested in joining the State Department or American intelligence agencies.

    So now Congress is proposing to set up an "oversight board"--with appointed members from Homeland Security, the Department of Defence and the US National Security Agency--that will link university department funding on Middle East studies to "students training for careers in national security, defence and intelligence agencies ..."

    As Professor Michael Bednar of the History Department at the University of Texas at Austin says,
    "the possibility that someone in Homeland Security will instruct college professors ... on the proper, patriotic, 'American-friendly' textbooks that may be used in class scares and outrages me."
    So it's to be goodbye to the life-work of Edward Said?

    And goodbye to peace prizes for Hanan Ashrawi?

    Goodbye to Palestinians, in fact?

    Then the radar really will be jammed.

    -Robert Fisk

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     Tuesday, November 04, 2003

      Zbigniew Brzezinski: Speech at "New American Strategies for Security and Peace" Conference - October, 28, 2003

    ***** A MUST- READ Speech

    Click HERE to READ the transcript of the speech delivered by former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski on Oct. 28 at New American Strategies for Security and Peace, a conference co-sponsored by the Prospect in Washington, D.C

    By Zbigniew Brzezinski
    Former National Security Adviser in the Carter Administration

    Excerpts from Zbigniew Brzezinski's speech

    " Ladies and gentlemen, forty years ago almost to the day an important Presidential emissary was sent abroad by a beleaguered President of the United States.

    The United States was facing the prospect of nuclear war. These were the days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Several emissaries went to our principal allies.

    One of them was a tough-minded former Secretary of State, Dean Acheson whose mission was to brief President De Gaulle and to solicit French support. The former Secretary of State then said to him (De Gaulle) at the end of the briefing:
    "I would now like to show you the evidence, the photographs that we have of Soviet missiles armed with nuclear weapons. "
    The French President responded by saying:
    " I do not wish to see the photographs. The word of the President of the United States is good enough for me. Please tell him that France stands with America. "
    Would any foreign leader today react the same way to an American emissary who would go abroad and say that country X is armed with weapons of mass destruction which threaten the United States?

    There's food for thought in that question.

    Fifty-three years ago, following the assault by North Korea on South Korea, the Soviet Union boycotted a proposed resolution in the U.N. Security Council for a collective response to that act. That left the Soviet Union alone in opposition, stamping it as a global pariah.

    Global Leadership and Credibility

    In the last three weeks, there were two votes on the subject of the Middle East in the General Assembly of the United Nations.

    In one of them the vote was 133 to four. In the other one the vote was 141 to 4, and the four included the United States, Israel, Marshall Islands and Micronesia.

    All of our NATO allies voted with the majority including Great Britain, including the so-called new allies in Europe -- in fact almost all of the EU -- and Japan.

    I cite these events because I think they underline two very disturbing phenomena -- the loss of U.S. international credibility, the growing U.S. international isolation.

    American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir.

    Why? What is the cause of this?

    These are facts. They're measurable facts. They're also felt facts when one talks to one's friends abroad who like America, who value what we treasure but do not understand our policies, are troubled by our actions and are perplexed by what they perceive to be either demagogy or mendacity.

    Maybe the explanation is that we are rich, and we are, and that we are powerful, and we certainly are.

    But if anyone thinks that this is the full explanation I think he or she is taking the easy way out and engaging in a self-serving justification.

    I think we have to take into account two troubling conditions.

    "He who is not with us is against us"

    Since the tragedy of 9-11, we have increasingly embraced at the highest official level a paranoiac view of the world.

    Summarized in a phrase repeatedly used at the highest level, "he who is not with us is against us."

    I say repeatedly because actually some months ago I did a computer check to see how often it's been used at the very highest level in public statements. The count then quite literally was ninety-nine.

    I strongly suspect the person who uses that phrase doesn't know its historical or intellectual origins.

    It is a phrase popularized by Lenin (Applause) when he attacked the social democrats on the grounds that they were anti-Bolshevik and therefore he who is not with us is against us and can be handled accordingly.

    War on Terrorism

    This phrase in a way is part of... the central defining focus that our policy-makers embrace in determining the American position in the world and is summed up by the words "war on terrorism."

    War on terrorism defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and it does reflect in my view a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.

    The second condition, troubling condition, which contributes to the crisis of credibility and to the state of isolation in which the United States finds itself today is due in part because that skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind.

    By this I mean the absence of a clearly, sharply defined perception of what is transpiring abroad regarding particularly such critically important security issues as the existence or the spread or the availability or the readiness in alien hands of weapons of mass destruction.

    We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States.

    That failure was contributed to and was compensated for by extremist demagogy which emphasizes the worst case scenarios which stimulates fear, which induces a very simple dichotomic view of world reality.

    I think it is important to ask ourselves as citizens, whether a world power can really provide global leadership on the basis of fear and anxiety?

    Can it really mobilize support and particularly the support of friends when we tell them that if you are not with us you are against us?

    I think that calls for serious debate in America about the role of America in the world, and I do not believe that that serious debate is satisfied simply by a very abstract, vague and quasi-theological definition of the war on terrorism as the central preoccupation of the United States in today's world.

    It doesn't point directly at the problem. It's as if we said that World War II was not against the Nazis but against blitzkrieg.

    Foreign policy of a pluralistic democracy like the United States should be based on bipartisanship because bipartisanship is the means and the framework for formulating policies based on moderation and on the recognition of the complexity of the human condition. Bipartisanship helps to avoid extremes and imbalances.

    European Allies

    The first and most important is to emphasize the enduring nature of the alliance relationship particularly with Europe which does share our values and interests even if it disagrees with us on specific policies. We should seek to cooperate with Europe, not to divide Europe to a fictitious new and a fictitious old.

    And we should recognize that in some parts of the world Europeans have more experience and more knowledge than we and certain interests as important as ours. I think particularly of the Middle East.

    Part of the process of building a larger zone of peace involves also engaging Russia and drawing it into a closer relationship simultaneously with Europe and with the Euro-Atlantic community. But we can only do that if we are clear as to what we are seeking in pursuing that strategy.

    While America is paramount it isn't omnipotent.

    We need the Europeans. We need the European Union. (Applause) We have to consistently strive to draw in Russia.

    Secondly, we have to deal with that part of the world which is a zone of conflict and try to transform it into a zone of peace, and that means above all else the Middle East.

    Iraq

    In Iraq we must succeed. Failure is not an option. But...what is the definition of success? More killing, more repression, more effective counter-insurgency, the introduction of newer devices of technological type to crush the resistance or whatever one wishes to call it -- the terrorism?

    Or is it a deliberate effort to promote by using force a political solution?

    And if there's going to be a political solution in Iraq, clearly I think it is obvious that two prerequisites... namely the internationalization of the foreign presence in Iraq. In addition, we have to transfer power as soon as is possible to a sovereign Iraqi authority.

    Therefore there's nothing to be lost in prematurely declaring the Iraqi authority as sovereign if it helps it to gain political legitimacy in a country which is searching to define itself, which has been humiliated, in which there is a great deal of ambivalence.

    The sooner we do that the more likely is an Iraqi authority under an international umbrella that becomes itself more effective in dealing with the residual terrorism and opposition that we continue to confront.

    If you want to understand what is happening right not in Iraq I suggest a movie that was quite well known to a number of people some years ago. It's called "The Battle For Algiers".

    It is a movie that deals with what happened in Algeria after the Algerian Liberation Army was defeated in the field by the French army and the resistance which used urban violence, bombs, assassinations, and turned Algiers into a continuing battle that eventually wore down the French.

    Israeli-Palestinian Conflict

    We will not turn the Middle East into a zone of peace instead of a zone of violence unless we more clearly identify the United States with the pursuit of peace in the Israeli/Palestinian relationship.

    There will be no option of a two-state solution. Soon the reality of the settlements which are colonial fortifications on the hill with swimming pools next to favelas below where there's no drinking water and where the population is 50% unemployed, there will be no opportunity for a two-state solution with a wall that cuts up the West Bank even more and creates more human suffering.

    Increasingly the only prospect if this continues is Israel becoming increasingly like apartheid South Africa -- the minority dominating the majority, locked in a conflict from which there is no extraction.

    If we want to prevent this the United States above all else must identify itself with peace and help those who are the majority in Israel, who want peace and are prepared to accept peace.

    The United States as the government will soon have an opportunity to underline their commitments to a peaceful solution in the Middle East because in the next two weeks a group of Israelis and Palestinians are going to unveil a detailed peace plan. It's a fifty-page document with maps and detailed compromise solutions for all of the major contentious issues, solutions which public opinion shows 70% of the Israelis would accept.

    When that happens what will be the stance of the United States?

    Sharon has already condemned it, and not surprisingly. I hope we do not decide to condemn it. I hope we will show at least a positive interest, and many of us as citizens, should endorse it because if we count on the people who want peace eventually we will move towards peace. But they have to be mobilized and given support.

    One of the reasons that that support from the United States has not been forthcoming is in fact political cowardice which I think is unjustified because I have real confidence in the good judgment, both of the Israeli people and of the American Jewish community and more basically of the basic American preference for a moderate peaceful solution. (Applause)

    Nuclear Profileration

    The last third area pertains more broadly to strategic doctrine and to strategic commitment. It involves trying to deal with nuclear proliferation, and we are learning fortunately that we can only deal with that problem when it comes to North Korea or to Iran by cooperation with other major powers.

    That we have to support, and if the administration moves in that direction or is prodded to move in that direction that is all to the good because there is no alternative.

    If we try to resolve the North Korean problem by arms alone we will produce a violent reaction against the United States in South Korea--and don't underestimate the growing anti-American tendencies in South Korean nationalism -- and will precipitate a nuclear armed Japan and thereby create a whole duel strategic dynamic in the Far East.

    In the case of Iran it is also in our interest that the theocratic despotism fade. Notice the reception given to the Nobel Peace Prize winner when she returned to Tehran. That is a symptom of things to come. (Applause)

    And if we take preemptory action we will reinforce the worst tendencies in the theocratic fundamentalist regime, not to speak about the widening of the zone of conflict in the Middle East.

    National Security Intelligence

    For four years I was the principal channel of intelligence to the President of the United States. We had a pretty good idea of the nature of the security challenge that we faced because the challenge itself was based on a highly advanced scientific technological system of arms.

    Today the problem is much more difficult. It's more elusive. These can only be addressed if we have... really effective intelligence service.

    I find it appalling that when we went into Iraq we did NOT know if they had weapons of mass destruction.

    We thought they had weapons of mass destruction based largely on extrapolation.

    But that also means that our commanders in the field went into battle without any knowledge of the Iraqi WMD order of battle. They did not know what units, brigades or divisions in the Iraqi armed forces were equipped with what kind, allegedly, of weapons of mass destruction. Were there chemical weapons on the battalion level or on the brigade level or were there special units in the different divisions that were supposed to use chemical weapons?

    What about the alleged existence of bacteriological weapons? Who had them? Who had the right to dispose of them? What about the allegedly reconstituted nuclear program? At what level of development was it? Where were these weapons to be deployed?

    If we want to lead, we have to have other countries trust us. When we speak they have to think it is the truth.

    This is why De Gaulle said what he did. This is what others believed us. This is why they believed us prior to the war in Iraq.

    It isn't that the Norwegians or the Germans or whoever else had their own independent intelligence services. They believed us, and they no longer do.

    Ultimately at issue, and I end on this, is the relationship between the new requirements of security and the traditions of American idealism.

    We have for decades and decades played a unique role in the world because we were viewed as a society that was generally committed to certain ideals and that we were prepared to practice them at home and to defend them abroad.

    Today for the first time, our commitment to idealism worldwide is challenged by a sense of security vulnerability.

    We have to be very careful in that setting not to become self-centered, preoccupied only with ourselves and subordinate everything else in the world to an exaggerated sense of insecurity.

    We are going to live in an insecure world. It cannot be avoided. We have to learn to live in it with dignity, with idealism, with steadfastness. Thank you. (Applause)
    - Zbigniew Brzezinski

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      Why Israel's Construction of "Apartheid Wall" Must be Condemned and Dismantled

    Read HERE Ran HaCohen's article "YOUR Home Is MY Castle"

    Ran HaCohen grew up in Israel. He teaches in the Tel-Aviv University's Department of Comparative Literature. He also works as a literary critic for the Israeli daily Yedioth Achronoth. Mr. HaCohen's work has been published widely in Israel.

    The following is Ran HaCohen's full article:

    The Apartheid Wall – the so-called "security fence" – presently being erected deep in occupied Palestinian land has already left about 12.000 Palestinian villagers outside it, trapped BETWEN the Wall and the Green Line.

    All this territory, between the Apartheid Wall and Israel proper, has been termed "the seam zone."

    The Israeli Army recently issued clear and detailed orders concerning this zone, as reported by Amira Hass of Ha'aretz (14.10.2003):

    "An individual will NOT enter the seam zone and will NOT stay there.

    An individual found in the seam zone will have to leave it immediately."
    What about a Palestinian who lives in the seam zone?

    Well, he "will be permitted to enter the seam zone and stay there, so long as he bears a permit in writing" issued by the Israeli Army.

    So if you happened to have your house in the seam zone, and you are aged 12 or older:

  • You have to persuade the Israeli Army to give you a permit to stay at home, or to go home.

  • If you expect a visit, first make sure your guest fills one of the 12 relevant application forms – for an owner of a business in the seam zone; a merchant; an employee; a farmer; a teacher; a student; an employee of the Palestinian Authority; a visitor; an employee of an international organization; an employee of a local authority or infrastructure company; a member of a medical team; or for 'all other objectives' – the Israeli Army thinks of everything.

  • Once your guest has filled out the form, and has been lucky enough to obtain the permit, he is most welcome to visit you.

    Obviously, the Israeli Army may or may not issue the permit.

    The Army may limit its validity, withdraw it, or suspend it at will.

    It may take you several days to get a permit, it may take months.

    But it may also depend on the applicant: He may be politely asked – in a discrete conversation with an anonymous agent in dark sun-glasses – to keep an open eye on his neighbours or family if he wants to get a permit, or to grant the Israeli intelligence some other service.

    No free lunch.

    Obviously, these draconic measures are not really applied to everybody. Some people do NOT need a permit.

    These are:

    "1. A citizen of Israel;
    2. A resident of Israel;
    3. Anyone entitled to immigrate to Israel according to the Law of Return."


    So if your mother happened to be Jewish, and you live in Montreal, in Mexico City or in Johannesburg, you need no permit at all to go to the small West Bank village of Salim.

    But if you are a Palestinian, even if you and your family have been living in Salim for centuries, you cannot stay there without a written permit from Major General Moshe Kaplinski "or someone acting on his behalf", as the order goes.

    Major General Moshe Kaplinski has not been summoned to the International Criminal Court in the Hague yet for this racist order. I doubt whether he ever will be.

    But if you ever wondered what the world would have looked like, if Hitler had won the War, I think this could give you a pretty good idea.

    – Ran HaCohen

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     Monday, November 03, 2003

      American Soldiers Are Dying In Iraq: For What ?

    Update : CNN (2nd Nov. 2240 GMT) The 17 military deaths Sunday brought to 139 the number of U.S. combat fatalities since President Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1, according to the U.S. military.

    There is no reliable source for Iraqi civilian or combatant casualty figures, either during the period of major combat or after May 1.

    The Associated Press reported an estimated 3,240 civilian Iraqi deaths between March 20 and April 20, but the AP reported that the figure was based on records of only HALF of Iraq's hospitals and the actual number was thought to be significantly higher.


    From BBC (2nd November 2003):

    F ALLUJA, Iraq, Nov. 2 — An American Chinook helicopter crashed here today, killing and wounding more than two dozen American soldiers. It was the deadliest single incident for Americans since the United States invaded Iraq in March.

    The helicopter was hit by a missile and exploded in midair, several witnesses in this farming community 40 miles west of Baghdad said, in an area where anti-American sentiment is high. A second explosion followed when the helicopter hit the ground, they said. Another missile narrowly missed a second Chinook, the witnesses said. Their accounts matched descriptions of a shoulder fired missile.

    It is the highest number of casualties suffered by the US-led coalition in a single incident since Saddam Hussein was toppled in April 2003.

    Attacks on coalition troops have intensified in the past week, reaching an average of more than 30 a day.
    The basis for America to go to war in Iraq was that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he was amassing nuclear capability.

    And these must be destroyed. Otherwise, Iraq was threatening the national security of the United States and world peace.

    So the US, with a band of other coalition forces, invaded Iraq. The Saddam regime was toppled.

    BUT NO weapons of mass destruction is found. The nuclear capability claim is now proven fraudulent.

    The invasion of Iraq by US-led Coalition is generally viewed as based on a LIE.
    READ Here... and Here....

    A dangerous LIE championed by the "Neocons". These "Neocons", prominent among them is the Deputy Secretary of Defense, Paul Wolfowitz, and others who wield power and influence in the Bush Administration.

    None of them (Bush, Cheney, DeLay, Wolfowitz, Perle, Fleischer, Rice, Barnes, Hannity, Kristol, Lieberman, and Rove), who pushed for the war in Iraq, had themselves been to war.
    Read Here for more.....
    and HERE...

    And now, American soldiers are dying in Iraq. In truth, all for a LIE concocted in Washington and London.

  • Read Here: “Bring Us Home Now! We’re dying for oil and corporate greed!”

  • Read HERE Peter Mansbridge's article " Tuning Out The Dead: American Soldiers Keep Dying In Iraq -But No One Seems To Want To Hear That"

  • Read Here: Ivan Eland's article " Cut Losses - Leave Iraq"

  • Read Here Nathaniel Amos' article " With American soldiers dying every day in Iraq, it's time to get our troops home"

  • Read Here: Pat Buchanan' s article " Why are we still here?"

  • Read HERE Alex Massie's article " US must stay for long haul, says Bush "


    THE REAL WINNERS OF THE IRAQ and AFGHANISTAN WAR ?

    ... Read HERE for More.....

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