MARCH 2003

The secret of life is honesty and fair dealing. If you can fake that, you got it made. - Groucho Marx

The handstand diary
It is enough lying for a man to speak of everything that he hears.Koran.
March28th

LETTER FROM AMERICA

            Under the Patriot Act the Bush administration has seized Iraqi government funds in the Bahamas, the Cayman Islands, Saudi Arabia, the Netherlands and other countries, which are believed to have been earned through illegal oil sales.  The Patriot Act allows the US to impose sanctions on financial institutions that do not comply. The US and UK have seized $2 billion and another $600 million has been frozen elsewhere. Mr. Bush says assets will be preserved for suits against Iraq for war crimes committed against US citizens during Desert Storm. It is of interest that one media release from the Bush administration justifies seizure under the Patriot Act, yet assets have been seized since 1990 and it’s hard to explain why Mr. Bush had to sign an executive order to confiscate Iraqi assets. The Patriot Act is a new piece of legislation. It should be noted that Russia has refused to freeze Iraqi assets, because there was no evidence that the money had been used illegally. French President Chirac said he would refuse to go along with any UN proposals that would allow the Americans and British to administer Iraq after the war. This would legitimize the military intervention after the event.

US GENERAL WITH IRAQ ROLE LINKED TO HARDLINE ISRAELIS
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=390842

Date: March 26, 2003
Contact: (917) 517-3627

NY PROTESTERS "DIE IN" UNDER BULLDOZER AT BANK LEUMI, SHUT DOWN 5TH AVE Non-violent protest highlights Israel's use of Iraq war as cover for new assaults on Palestinians

PHOTOS online at http://ww3report.com/protest.html (call for hi-res photos) VIDEO available request by phone

New York At a New York branch of Israel's Bank Leumi, eighteen protesters locked together as a human barricade across Fifth Avenue at 9am this morning. Covered in fake blood, the protesters lay piled in the street at the foot of a mock Caterpillar bulldozer. The act of civil disobedience referenced the murder of US peace activist Rachel Corrie by an Israel army Caterpillar bulldozer in Gaza earlier this month.

Chanting "Occupation is a crime, from Iraq to Palestine," the protesters shut down Fifth Avenue for over an hour, refusing to let New York go about its business while the US war on Iraq places the lives of Palestinians at greater risk than ever.

Police became stained with red liquid as they arrested the die-in participants. Sixteen protesters were roughly taken into custody, adding to the ranks of the nearly 1000 peaceful anti-war demonstrators violently removed from New York streets over the last several weeks. Video witnesses recorded police officers dragging protesters painfully across the street. Protesters were also subjected to violence from onlookers, who kicked, spat at and threw things at the peaceful protesters as they lay motionless in the street.

"This war is realizing the worst fears of Palestinians," said protester Mark Field, a New York activist against the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestine. "While the world's attention is focused on Iraq and Arabs are cast as the enemy, Israel has stepped up its assaults on Palestinian towns. Under cover of war, Israel is freer than ever to label every Palestinian a terrorist, to detain civilians indefinitely, to demolish civilian homes and seize additional Palestinian lands."

"Bank Leumi is a pillar of Israeli finance, with $51 billion in assets. The illegal occupation of Palestinian towns and the killing of civilians are supported by Bank Leumiâs investments in the Israeli military economy," said protester Rachel Fineberg, a Jewish human rights activist. "Enough is enough we're shutting this war machine down."

"We are human rights activists many of us have seen the incredible violations of Palestinian human rights first-hand," said protester Lila Greene, an activist who visited the West Bank to support non-violent Palestinian organizing in 2002. "We refuse to allow Israel to remove us as witnesses to war crimes. The Israeli army killed Rachel Corrie, they killed Iain Hook and they regularly kill Palestinian non-violent organizers but they can't bury the truth. Neither Israel nor the United States can commit war crimes in secret anymore. The whole world is watching."

LETTER FROM ISRAEL:Menahem Finkelstein, the military attorney general, is responsible for not opening inquiries into innumerable war crimes committed by Israeli soldiers. Recently he has decided to avoid an investigation of the killing of Rachel Corrie. The bulldozer driver will hence not be brought to trial. The very same Finkelstein, however, has been relenlessly persecuting conscientious objectors - draft resisters and reservists who refuse to take part in such war crimes.
 
None of these COs intends to give up on his moral principles. On the contrary, there is a growing number of refuseniks!
 
We wish to remind you of our weekly vigil:
 
Every Friday we hold a vigil in front of the military attorney general's home, in support of the occupation resisters. We protest against the repeated imprisonment of draft resisters, as well as against the legal legitimacy given to the real criminals.From parent of Conscientious Objector.


Speaking about George W. Bush,George Galloway, British Member of Parliament,said that he was unimpressive. However, “the US has stirred up a vast amount of hatred against itself by this swaggering arrogance of the intellectually limited President, roaring like a bull in a bomber jacket in aircraft hangars to young men and women of the American armed forces who, although they know very little of the world, are ready to get out there and kill.”

Landstuhl, America's largest military hospital outside the United States, is currently treating 72 patients from "Operation Iraqi Freedom," 24 of them wounded in combat. Five are in intensive care. The hospital is expanding to 320 beds, doubling its normal capacity.www.rense.com

There have been further clashes around the town of Nasiriya, with unconfirmed reports that dozens of US Marines have been injured in an exchange of fire with other American troops.

The French news agency AFP reported that 37 Marines were injured, some critically, in the "friendly fire" incident. BBC March 27th

Either take up your axe and strike
like Ali at the gates of Khaybar.
Or join these thorns with a rose:
bring your fire to God's light in order that
your fire will disappear in His light,
and all your thorns become roses.


(Rumi - Mathnawi II, 1244-1246 - 'Rumi Daylight' - Camille & Kabir Helminski)

VIENNA, Austria March 26 —

Hans Blix, the U.N. chief weapons inspector, has voiced criticism and disappointment that his inspectors had to pull out from Iraq before completing their task.

In an interview with the Austrian magazine News at U.N. headquarters in New York, Blix said, "I am disappointed that we could not stay longer to finish our work." Excerpts of the interview, to be published Thursday, were released to Austrian media on Wednesday.

"We had the door slammed in our faces," said Blix, the head of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC. "Three and a half months were not enough, nor do I believe that U.N. resolution 1441 meant it that way."

Blix described as problematic his cooperation with the U.S. government, saying "I even had a sense, shortly before the (U.S.) decision to go to war, that they were irritated by our work."

According to the excerpts, Blix said Washington tried to obtain results to its liking, adding "whenever we could not do that, there was criticism."

He reportedly said it was unlikely that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would use weapons of mass destruction.

Arab TV Crew Says Found
40 Dead US Soldiers
The following appeared in the letters section of WhatReallyHappened.com
3-26-3

Sanwa ata Mosahra reporting. A film crew from al-Minar TV, a television network of Lebanon, stumbled across the bodies of about 40 US soldiers scattered in the desert outside Maseriah. Ali Fawsua a camera man for al-Minar said "It was obvious the soldiers had been in a major battle as there was empty ammunition casing everywhere".

 

"We searched around but could not find any dead Iraqi soldiers and must be thinking they took their dead and injured away from the battle" he added.

 

"We called on our satellite phone to our base camp and told them what we had found and they told the Americans where we were located".

 

"Soon some American helicopters came to us and the Americans took all our camera and recording equipment and smashed it. They told us to leave the area and say nothing of this finding".

 

"When we arrived back at our base to the south there were American military police everywhere and they destroyed all of our equipment and told us to leave Iraq immediately".

 

al-Minar has lodged a complaint with the IJCO and US with a claim for compensation for the many thousands dollars of destroyed equipment

A US delegation arrived in Amman in its way to Baghdad for ceasefire negotiations

Abu Dhabi, Alittihad Daily, 3/26/2003 -- The UAE leading semi-official daily newspaper, Alittihad, reported today that a US government delegation has arrived in Amman, Jordan, yesterday in its way to Baghdad for negotiations with the Iraqi government about an immediate ceasefire.

A diplomatic source told Alittihad that the US government delegation included four leading members of Congress as well as the daughter of the US Vice President, Dick Cheney, representing the US Department of State, where she works as an Assistant to the Deputy of the Secretary of State for Middle Eastern Affairs.

excerpt from Ha'aretz:After the fall of the Taliban in Afghanistan,   Israel submitted a request to the U.S. Administration to participate   in an international conference for rebuilding the country, which took   place in Tokyo. The Arab participants in the conference were not   pleased about this, nor were the Afghans themselves happy about   receiving assistance from Israel. Finally the U.S. Administration   decided Israel would stay out of the conference.Marc Grossman, under secretary of state for political affairs, whose name has already been mentioned as one of the candidates to take charge of the rebuilding of Iraq, was asked . "Will recognizing Israel be the first thing the Iraqis do? I have no idea,
   but I certainly hope this will be among the first things they do."
March 24th2003
This woman,wounded, has lost two sons last night.




Letter from america
In the US, we had over 1000 people arrested in San Francisco in one day... so many that the jails weren't big enough to hold them all and they had to take them to temporary holding facilities. We had police checkpoints across the country and random searches and seizures last week. We learned that the entity that monopolizes the US radio airwaves is for some reason staunchly pro war, paying for pro war rallies and banishing the likes of the Dixie Chicks from the airwaves with a "no play" order because of an anti war comment. The message is clear to all high profile individuals. Oppose the war and your career is over. The US has entered a state of decline, let there be no doubt about that. Freedom of speech and the right to dissent is on the wane as the power brokers attempt to hold things together.

The problem is that as I've been saying, this war on IRAQ is just the opening salvo, and I expect things to continue to get worse. By "worse," I mean a continued trend towards less ability to dissent and more control over your "reality." One important point I have to make is that all of this control costs money... and lots of it. Worse than that, as control is transferred from the citizens to the government, productivity goes down. In my mind it is very much like the reverse of what happened in the Soviet Union. The free markets and capitalism are now being constrained by increased government control in all areas. This is a blow to free markets and capitalism in general. This seizure and subsequent occupation of IRAQ is going to be incredibly expensive. This will probably cause more civil unrest at some point going forward because many Americans already know what's up and don't like what they see. That combined with more and more people being unable to pay their bills is a toxic mix. We saw a preview of that with the arrests this week. You can tell from the interviews with protesters if you're lucky enough to see one.

The San Francisco protest and mass arrest of over 1000 people barely made the news on CNN. It was covered more by foreign news services. What does that tell you? It's an indicator of the extent of the control over your reality.

        Smart bombs, obtuse commentators

By Gideon Levy

It's been a long time since we've seen such enthusiasm. The television studios are filled to overflowing with major generals and brigadier generals who are terribly impressed with the war in Iraq and attempt to infect the viewers with their delight. Veteran warmongers, some of whom are responsible for past wars of choice and for appalling fiascos, hallucinatory operations and unnecessary bloodshed, are now the voice of national reason. Avigdor Ben Gal, for instance, a senior commander in the Lebanon War, without batting an eye called on the IDF to find an immediate "pretext" under cover of the Iraq war for returning to Lebanon. Others who dragged us into unnecessary adventurism, and their colleagues who turned the IDF into a brutal occupation army in the territories, are now our only national commentators.

It was apparent already during the waiting period that the lengthy anticipation was hard on them: They considered every postponement a terrible mistake and every debate about the justification for the war was heresy. Now that the forces are finally on their way, their enthusiasm bursts forth, not merely about the very outbreak of the war, but about the sophisticated equipment being used. The smart bombs and the guided missiles, the satellite navigation and the turbofan engines, the Stealth bombers and the mega-bombs are firing their imagination.

A smile akin to that of a child describing his new toys spreads on their face as they describe the magical allure of the American power of destruction. Former air force commanders, who apparently find it difficult to give up their posts, describe horrific bombing runs or flying extermination machines as if they were works of art.

Brigadier General (res.) Aryeh Mizrahi outdid himself in one of these countless discussions when he pulled from his pocket a small model cluster bomb - apparently manufactured by Israel Military Industries (of which he is the chairman) - and with glittering eyes told viewers that the Americans were using that very weapon. He explained how it breaks up into a vast number of "bomblets" and how it "wreaked havoc" in the Lebanon War, "pulverizing" whole armored battalions, and that "everyone who saw the results in Lebanon was appalled" - it was positively "raining steel," he said.

The small, smart bomb that Mizrahi brought was passed from hand to hand in the studio and the elderly generals fondled it reverently. It was an unforgettable spectacle. Of course, none of them bothered to point out the killing and destruction that a bomb like this can cause among innocent civilians, nor did anyone wonder what happens to a society
whose spokesmen get so pathologically excited by weapons and killing


nuclear weapons?

Hi,

My brother is an ex-Marine (I know - no such thing). He told me months ago (rather casually, I'm afraid) - when we were arguing over the phone about Bush possibly using nukes on Iraq - that these were just low-grade depleted uranium nukes they were talking about using - NOT the mushroom-cloud generating nukes that we traditionally think of when we talk about nukes - e.g., the ones that were used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki... Besides, he told me - the US had ALREADY used many of these low-grade depleted uranium nukes in Iraq, during the FIRST Persian Gulf war, back in the early 90's. He seemed to believe that this was common knowledge amongst the military, and most ex-military personnel. He said the only difference between Bush I and Bush II was that Bush II was being straight up front about the use of these weapons (as if that was something to commend him for...!!!).

So - I'm very inclined to believe this piece of scoop."

To which I replied:

"Thank you for sharing with us this insight of a man on the spot.Please thank your brother too.I am quite certain that your brother has had solid information that nuclear weapons were used, especially in the landings on the Kuwaiti shore, see below."However, I believe your brother was referring to a LOW-YIELD Nuclear Weapon, rather than a LOW-GRADE weapon?

"It is almost impossible to get a fission reaction going with U-238 except under immense neutron flux, it being, under normal conditions, a FISSIONABLE material, but NOT a FISSILE material, the latter class being capable of spontaneous fission under certain quantitative and kinetic material density increases and other considerations, as is possible with the traditional U-235 and Plutonium-239.

"However, U-238 or so-called "Depleted Uranium", i.e., U-238 fairly leached of its fissile U-235 content, IS fissionable under heavy neutron flux, which jumps it up into Plutonium 239 when it is deliberately used for the casing on the FUSION aggregate of a thermonulear weapon (Hydrogen Bomb).

"What I believe your brother meant, are LOW-YIELD nuclear weapons, i.e., of (relatively) low energy output, (between a few tons' and a few hundred tons' TNT-equivalent) which, due to clever design, such as the use of Red Mercury or Mercuric-Stibic Heptoxide (Hg2Sb2O7) as carrier and tamper for Pu-239 incorporated into its crystalline structure, combined with electromagnetic implosion using heavy fields generated by FCGs (Flux-Compression (explosive) Generators), can make even relatively miniscule amounts of Pu-239 fission, and are also much more efficient in the percentage of fissile material they manage to fission when they are initiated, so fallout is low, and the "Neutron Bomb" which is something like a very small nuke, produces a high-density neutron flux which can penetrate armor and also underground facilities and killed, most likely, the Iraqi soldiers in their dugouts in Kuwait, before they were bulldozed over.

"THAT IS WHY THE USA HUNG A 24-HOUR NEWS BLACKOUT OF THE KUWAITI LANDINGS WHEN THEY WENT IN.

"IT IS ALSO WHY THEY ANNOUNCED, FAR IN ADVANCE, THAT THEY WOULD BE DROPPING "FUEL-AIR BOMBS".

"As a real fuel-air bomb, not the baloney of an NH4NO3/Al slurry mentioned in the article I quoted, makes a fireball dissimilar mainly in temperature from a nuclear weapon, giving this sort of cover-story makes it easy for, say, reporters, to believe they have witnessed a fuel-air explosion, when in fact it was a very small, LOW-YIELD, nuclear weapon and very likely a Neutron Bomb, whose original parameters, by the way, were to be applicable almost in selective urban environments (!), the air-blast being of very limited strength and relying on the neutron rain to kill living organisms while leaving the physical infrastructure of weapons and buildings intact.

"Thanks for your information, and I must hope that someone will take up this theme -- or are all the good sites and news-services either afraid of the governments, or even on their side?

George"

I laid out my case in a letter to an international socialist website, urging them to address this issue:

"Dear Editor,I recently received an unconfirmable report of weapons used by the USA in Afghanistan, which melted rifles in the hands of dead soldiers:

Perpetual Death From America(see this issue of The Handstand on navigator column)

By Mohammed Daud Miraki, MA, MA, PhD

Afghan-American Freelance Academic

Mdmiraki@ameritech.net

2-24-3

http://www.rense.com/general35/perp.htm

Many survivors died within a short time thereafter.

Having once been interested in these sorts of things, I know the duration and energy output of a fuel-air or "thermobaric" bomb produces far too low an energy density for this phenomenon to occur.

As America's intention to use thermbaric bombs was announced some days in advance of their actual application, I pondered at the time if this were not a cover-story, much as the cover-story to the first Alamogordo test, to explain away in advance actual testing of tactical nuclear bunker-busters in Afghanistan.

Since the reports of melted weapons have surfaced, I urge you please, to push this theme, as, if it were exposed as being a fact, the adverse publicity would discredit the United States and Britain, and also prevent further usage of these weapons, should the war against the hapless population of Iraq go ahead.

Thank you for your attention,

George Paxinos"

I did not even receive a reply.

Whereas, if we go to the above-mentioned article by Dr Miraki, we find [emphasis added]:

'Dr. Wazir continued:

"These are only three examples. There have been other cases where we suspect chemical weapons have been used. Most of the victims have had respiratory problems and internal bleeding for which there is no apparent cause." (Khalifa.com, October 30, 2001)

"At the fighting front north of Kabul, where Taliban forces were pounded night and day, many dead Taliban soldiers had no visible injuries except blood flowing out of their mouths, internal bleeding consistent with uranium based and chemical weapons. Furthermore, many dead Taliban soldiers had severe discoloration of the skin, orange, without being burned, while others had their rifles melted in their hands. This aroused suspicion among Taliban and others that weapons used by the US-UK military were not conventional weapons. Many Taliban soldiers that survived the bombing in the north have died after returning to their native villages in the south and southeast of the country. They had no physical injury upon their death, however, died from internal bleeding and other bizarre symptoms including uncontrolled vomiting, diarrhea, and blood loss in urine and stool. Their families were shocked with disbelieves.

"Another bizarre, yet tragic scene was reported near Rish-Khor military base in Kabul. Multiple witnesses reported seeing dead birds on tree branches with blood coming out of their mouths. As one witness put it:

"'We were amazed to see all these birds sitting quietly on [tree] branches; but when we shook the tree the birds fell down and we saw blood coming out of their mouths. Then we climbed the trees to see those that were still stuck on tree branches, all of them had bled from their mouths. Two of the birds appeared to be partly melted into the trees branches'."

Friends, since when has a fuel-air bomb suddenly developed the energy-densityof temperature AND duration, to cause effects like these?

Facit is, if we do not react, and that soon, to stop this madness of the pre-emptive use of tactical nuclear weapons in unilateral genocide-for-corporate-profit, disguised, well in advance, by corrupt media parroting disinformative blatherings about stuff most of us do not have the background to understand, we are deservedly all doomed to take what is coming down at us in a mad rush, our enslavement to corporate killers, to whom no life is sacrosanct, but only a cipher to corporate profit ends.

And moreso to our everlasting shame as a species, when that genocide is carried out against a population in which over 50% are children under the age of 15 years, and the rest mainly women and the aged, all sick from the first round of Uranium 238 pollution that has poisoned their countryside and corrupted their genes, all done by the only superpower left on this planet, with the most-devastating weapons of mass destruction ever conceived by Man, at the behest of power-insane politicians with extant corporate ties, already doling out lucrative contracts to their buddies in advance of their intended slaughter, and carried out by macho military men with deep-rooted psychic hangups in a ghastly overblown Thelma-and-Louise parody that is so sick, it could never even be shown to the public as satirical horror-movie in open cinemas.

GEORGE PAXINOS Copyright 2003:  InformationClearingHouse.info.

     On the forth day of the 1982 Israeli attack on Lebanon, I
crossed the border at a lone spot near Metulla and looked for the front, which had already reached the outskirts of Sidon. I was driving my private car, accompanied only by a woman photographer.

We passed a dozen Shiite villages and were received everywhere with great joy. We extracted ourselves only with great difficulty from hundreds of villagers, each one insisting that we have coffee at their home. On the previous days, they had showered the soldiers with rice.     A few months later I joined an army convoy going in the opposite direction, from Sidon to Metulla. The soldiers
were now wearing bulletproof vests and helmets, many were on the verge of panic.      What had happened?
The Shiites received the Israeli soldiers as liberators. When they realized that they had come to stay as occupiers, they started to kill them.     When the Israeli troops entered Lebanon, the Shiites were a down-trodden, powerless community, held in contempt by all the others.  After a year of fighting the occupiers, they became a political and military power. The Shiite Hizbullah is the only military force in the Arab world that has beaten the mighty Israeli army.      Sharon is the real father of the Shiite force in Lebanon. Bush may well become the father of Shiite power in Iraq. The Shiites, 60% of the Iraqi population, have been until now down-trodden and powerless. When they will realize that the Americans intend to stay, they will start a deadly guerilla. Bush does not intend to leave Iraq, as Sharon did not intend to leave Lebanon.     Then what? America will argue that Iran, the great Shiite neighbor, is behind the Shiite guerilla. In Iran there is a lot
of oil. That's the next target.
By Uri Avnery©

Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Said Al-Sahhaf said Friday night's bombing blitz on Baghdad had wounded 207 civilians, most of them women and children.

 

He said the casualties, being treated in five different hospitals around the capital, were "hit in their homes".

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) could only say Saturday it had reports of "many wounded" in Baghdad, as its teams fanned out to check on hospitals in the Iraqi capital following the latest round of air raids.

 

Sahhaf granted a late-night tour of the bombed sites to a small group of reporters and vented his anger at US leaders, including Defense Secretary Rumsfeld whom he called a "criminal dog".

protest in cairo

The top National Security Council official R. Beers,in thewar on terror, resigned
this week Are the bosses jumping ship lest they be held accountable for such Deception,
Deprivations of Rights, Treason  and Violations of thePublic Trust when the TRUTH is fully out?

TOP ANTI TERROR BOSS RESIGNS - SAYS WAR ON IRAQ IS NO LONGER "WAR ON TERROR"
WHOSE WAR IS THIS  ???  STOP THE LIES !!!
Randy said that he was 'just tired' and did not have an interest in adding the stress that would come with a war with Iraq," thesource said.

The source said that the concern by the administration about low morale in the intelligence community led national security adviser Condoleezza Rice to ask Beers twice during an exit
interview whether the resignation was a protest against the war with Iraq. The source said that
although Beers insisted it was not, the tone of the interview concerned Rice enough that she felt she had to ask the question twice.

"This is a very intriguing decision (by Beers)," said author and intelligence expert James Bamford. "There is a predominant belief in the intelligence community that an invasion of Iraq will cause more terrorism than it will prevent. There is also a tremendous amount of embarrassment by intelligence professionals that there have been so many lies out of the administration -- by the president, (Vice President Dick) Cheney and (Secretary of State Colin) Powell -- over Iraq."

Bamford cited a recent address by President Bush that cited documents, whichallegedly proved Iraq was continuing to pursue a nuclear program, that were later shown to be forgeries.

"It is absurd that the president of the United States mentioned in a speech before the world information from phony documents and no one got fired," Bamford said. "That alone has offended intelligence professionals throughout the services."

protesters in san francisco
(subsequently over 1,000 were arrested)

THIS IS AN URL FOR ANTI-WAR SITES:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/antiwar/subsection/0,12809,884056,00.html

After the war erupted on Thursday morning, the Vatican lashed out at the US, saying it "deplored"the interruption of diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict peacefully



SPANISH PROTESTERS

Dear Raed(Letter from Baghdad)

Dear Raed...To end this rant, a word about Islamic fundis/wahabisim/qaeda and all that.
Do you know when the sight of women veiled from top to bottom became common in cities in Iraq? Do you know when the question of segregation between boys and girls became red hot? When tribal law replaced THE LAW? When Wahabi became part of our vocabulary?
It only happened after the Gulf War. I think it was Cheney or Albright who said they will bomb Iraq back to the stone age, well you did. Iraqis have never accepted religious extremism in their lives. They still don’t. Wahabis in their short dishdasha are still looked upon as sheep who have strayed from the herd. But they are spreading. The combination of poverty/no work/low self esteem and the bitterness of seeing people who rose to riches and power without any real merit but having the right family name or connection shook the whole social fabric. Situations which would have been unacceptable in the past are being tolerated today.
They call it “al hamla al imania – the religious campaign” of course it was supported by the government, pumping them with words like “poor in this life, rich in heaven” kept the people quiet. Or the other side of the coin is getting paid by Wahabi organizations. Come pray and get paid, no joke, dead serious. If the government can’t give you a job run to the nearest mosque and they will pay and support you. This never happened before, it is outrageous. But what are people supposed to do? thir government is denied funds to pay proper wages and what they get is funneled into their pockets. So please stop telling me about the fundis, never knew what they are never would have seen them in my streets.....

boycott the dollar
"The [US] Federal Reserve's greatest nightmare is that OPEC will switch its
international transactions from a dollar standard to a
euro standard. Iraq actually made this switch in Nov. 2000 (when the euro was
worth around 80 cents), and has actually made off like
a bandit considering the dollar's steady depreciation against the euro.

"Saddam sealed his fate when he decided to switch to the euro in late 2000 (and
later converted his $10 billion reserve fund at the
UN to euros) - at that point, another manufactured Gulf War become inevitable
under Bush II.
"One of the dirty little secrets of today's international order is that the rest
of the globe could topple the United States from
its hegemonic status whenever they so choose with a concerted abandonment of the
dollar standard.

"This is America's preeminent, inescapable Achilles Heel for now and the
foreseeable future. That such a course hasn't been pursued
to date bears more relation to the fact that other Westernised, highly developed
nations haven't any interest to undergo the great
disruptions which would follow, but it could assuredly take place in the event
that the consensus view coalesces of the United
States as any sort of 'rogue' nation."

The Guardian February 26, 2003
Battle of the currencies - The real reasons for the war on Iraq
by W Clark


A LEGAL OPINION Andy Grossman

> Having been professionally present during the negotiation of many
> declarations and agreements, I can say that the ambiguity built into
> them is intentional; and that future State Department and FCO legal
> analyses arguing (rightly or wrongly, that's not the point of this
> message) that 1441 is a valid basis for action would have been in the
> minds of their diplomats when 1441 was agreed.
>
> I would say that the argument is scarcely propaganda, but rather
> advocacy and diplomacy. This is their job; politicians may be (indeed
> may be supposed to be) hypocrites, but diplomats are not: they are
> career reporters and advocates.
>
> "What international [law] is, is not the norms in the charter and their
> interpration but what those with power says it is."
>
> Not so. International law is based on consensus. (It's enforcement is
> based on "what those with power say[ ] it is") When I was studying
> international law, under the sainted (almost literally: he was murdered)
> Wolfgang Friedmann, there were those in my class who ridiculed the whole
> concept of "international law" as irrelevant. Well, maybe in the context
> of Vietnam, and its development as victor's justice following WW II, it
> was something less than "law".
>
> International law has largely been honored with a nod to universal
> public opinion. The elitism inherent in modern politics, and the
> re-creation of a super-wealthy aristocracy (consisting, now, of the CEOs
> of major enterprises, paid tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in
> salary and benefits, as described by Prof. Paul Krugman, see 
> http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/20/magazine/20INEQUALITY.html  ) that had
> not been known since the early 20th Century, implies unilateralism.
>
> Andy Grossman
> LLB, Docteur en droit
> Member, NY & DC Bars
> FSO (retired)
>

FROM A LETTER rACHEL cORRIE SENT TO HER mom

Anyway, I'm rambling. Just want to write to my Mom and tell her that
I'm witnessing this chronic, insidious genocide and I'm really
scared, and questioning my fundamental belief in the goodness of
human nature. This has to stop. I think it is a good idea for us all
to drop everything and devote our lives to making this stop. I don't
think it's an extremist thing to do anymore. I still really want to
dance around to Pat Benatar and have boyfriends and make comics for
my coworkers. But I also want this to stop. Disbelief and horror is
what I feel. Disappointment. I am disappointed that this is the base
reality of our world and that we, in fact, participate in it. This is
not at all what I asked for when I came into this world. This is not
at all what the people here asked for when they came into this world.
This is not the world you and Dad wanted me to come into when you
decided to have me. This is not what I meant when I looked at Capital
Lake and said: "This is the wide world and I'm coming to it." I did
not mean that I was coming into a world where I could live a
comfortable life and possibly, with no effort at all, exist in
complete unawareness of my participation in genocide. More big
explosions somewhere in the distance outside.

JOE SMITH EYEWITNESS ACCOUNT

United States citizen from Kansas City, MO, USA, born 25 April 1981.


20March 2003
My name is Joseph Smith, I am 21 years old and from Kansas City,
Missouri, USA. I have been
working with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) in Rafah
for over two months and plan to
stay for at least one more. I then plan to do peace work for one
month in Israel before returning
to the United States. Once home, I will attempt to spread the word
about what is happening in
Palestine and in Rafah, through speaking tours and media work. I
will also be active in organizing
demonstrations and other events in attempts to apply pressure and
raise awareness about this
conflict and other race and war issues. I plan to continue my
college education in the fall, as a
junior at Grinnell College in Grinnell, IA. I will study history and
theatre.

ISM is a Palestinian-lead grassroots organization designed to work
with international volunteers
to partake in non-violent direct action resistance to the Israeli
occupation. We work and live in
Palestinian communities, and get a first-hand account of the
violence to which they are subjected
every day by the Israeli military. We are in solidarity with them,
as we share in their suffering and
take some of the risks that they are unfortunately forced to live
with. It is important for us to show
that the world has not forgotten these people, and that individuals
from all over the world are willing
to interrupt their comfortable lives to come and risk themselves for
the sake of Palestinians. Through
this work we attempt to make links between Palestine and the outside
world. We use our personal
contacts, the international media, and our embassies to draw
international attention to the
Palestinian plight. And we work as observers of the immense human
rights violations being
committed by Israel, and document these atrocities with established
human rights organizations.
Indeed, sometimes we are the only internationals present in this
area, in fact this is true for Rafah,
as international media and UN officials are afraid to live and work
here.

I chose to come to Palestine and work with ISM because I felt it was
one of the best ways for
me to use my privilege as a white middle class American male to
directly serve impoverished
people of color who are under-privileged due to the Israeli and
other Western governments,
especially mine. I have dedicated my life to serving such people, as
I believe my over-privilege
is a direct result of their under-privilege. I have benefited from
their suffering, and this must stop.

16 March, 2003

11:00-13:00

We were split into two groups, one working as human shields for
water workers at the Canada
water well in Tele Sultan and the other doing the same for
electricity workers in Hay Salaam.
It is dangerous for these workers to work near the boarder, as
Israeli tanks patrol it and will often
shoot at any Palestinian in sight, including civilian workers and
playing children.

13:00-13:30

Hay Salaam activists noticed that two Israeli Army bulldozers and
one tank have entered onto
Palestinian civilian property near the border and are demolishing
farmland and other already damaged
structures. The military machinery was severely threatening near-by
homes, so the 3 activists went
up onto the roof of one home, and then called for others to come.

13:30-14:00

I arrived, and one of the three activists in the house joined me on
the ground. The bulldozers
moved away from the house activists were occupying, so the other two
joined us, and we began
to disrupt the work of the bulldozers. We moved slowly at first,
just standing near to their work,
and then sat and stood on a partially built house that looked
threatened. One bulldozer began to
damage part of the structure on which we were standing, so a
Scottish activist began standing
and sitting on the edge of the structure, and made it impossible for
the bulldozer to work without
injuring him. At this point, Rachel and the two other activists
joined us from the well, with a
banner and a megaphone. Rachel and a British activist were wearing
jackets that were fluorescent
orange and had reflective stripping.

14:00-15:00

Our press office informed the British and American embassies that
Israeli Army bulldozers were
behaving aggressively, and were endangering the lives of British and
American citizens, but they
took no action.

The bulldozer continued to try and further damage the structure and
we continued to get in its
way. At one point, a concrete pillar almost fell on the Scottish
activist, but he moved just in time.
We were worried that the two houses behind this structure would be
targeted, so we placed one
activist on the roof of each house. I went onto the roof of the
house closest to the structure.
Rachel and two other activists began interfering with the other
bulldozer, which was attempting
to destroy grass and other plants on what used to be farmland. They
stood and sat in its path,
and though it would drive very close to them, and even move the
earth on which they were sitting,
it always stopped in time to avoid injuring them. After about 10
minutes, both bulldozers gave up
on their work and withdrew to the boarder, and parked to face the
houses, one on each side of
the tank. I stayed on the roof, as the rest of the activists
gathered to face the military machinery,
and held an "International Solidarity Movement" banner, while Rachel
shouted at them with a
megaphone. Soldiers in the tank yelled obscenities at us, and told
us to leave. They fired a few
warning shots at the ground, and then fired a teargas canister. The
wind blew the gas east of us,
and never came close to a single activist. After a few more minutes
of this face off, the bulldozers
began driving east together on the boarder strip, and we thought
they might have given up. Just in
case, five of the activists walked on the Palestinian land, and
followed the bulldozers. The other
activist and I came down out of our houses. He joined the others,
and I joined Rachel who had
stayed with the tank in order to speak to the soldiers over the
megaphone. They requested that
she approach the tank, but she refused due their rude and aggressive
behavior.

15:00-16:00

We noticed that the bulldozers had incurred back onto Palestinian
land, and the six activists were
opposing them, so we left the tank to join them. During this round
of opposition, one bulldozer pushed
Will, an American activist, up against a pile of barbed wire.
Fortunately, the bulldozer stopped and
withdrew just in time to avoid injuring him seriously, but we had to
dig him out of the rubble, and unhook
his clothing from the wire. The tank approached to see if he was ok.
One soldier stuck his head out of
the tank to see, and he looked quite shocked and dumbfounded, but
said nothing.

16:00-16:45

We climbed onto some already damaged structures that were
threatened, and kept the bulldozers
from incurring any further onto Palestinian land. The bulldozer
drivers began waving at us, making
faces, laughing, and shouting what sounded like lewd comments. One
even removed his helmet and
posed for a picture, which unfortunately didn't turn out.

16:45-17:00

One bulldozer, serial number 949623, began to work near the house of
a physician who is a friend
of ours, and in whose house Rachel and other activists often stayed.
While we occupied the other
structures directly west (the closest was less than 5 meters away
and the furthest was less than
25 meters away), Rachel sat down in the pathway of the bulldozer. I
was elevated about 2 meters
above the ground, and had a clear view of the action happening about
20 meters away. Still wearing
her fluorescent jacket, she sat down at least 15 meters in front of
the bulldozer, and began waving
her arms and shouting, just as activists had successfully done
dozens of times that day. The
bulldozer continued driving forward headed straight for Rachel. When
it got so close that it was
moving the earth beneath her, she climbed onto the pile of rubble
being pushed by the bulldozer.
She got so high onto it that she was at eye-level with the cab of
the bulldozer. Her head and upper
torso were above the bulldozer's blade, and the bulldozer driver and
co-operator could clearly see her.
Despite this, he continued forward, which pulled her legs into the
pile of rubble, and pulled her down
out of view of the diver. If he'd stopped at this point, he may have
only broken her legs, but he
continued forward, which pulled her underneath the bulldozer. We ran
towards him, and waved our
arms and shouted, one activist with the megaphone. But the bulldozer
driver continued forward, until
Rachel was underneath the central section of the bulldozer. At this
point, it was more than clear that
she was nowhere but underneath the bulldozer, there was simply
nowhere else she could have been,
as she had not appeared on either side of the bulldozer, and could
not have stayed in front of it that
long without being crushed. Despite the obviousness of her position,
the bulldozer began to reverse,
without lifting its blade, and drug the blade over her body again.
He continued to reverse until he was
on the boarder strip, about 100 meters away, and left her crushed
body in the sand. Three activists
ran to her and began administering first-responder medical
treatment. Her body was in a mangled
position, her face was very bloody, and her skin was turning blue.
She said, "My back is broken!",
but nothing else. The three activists took care to keep her neck
straight, and turned her to her side
in case of vomit or blood from the mouth. She was showing signs of
brain hemridging (I found out
later from the British medical activist) so they elevated her head
in order to allow it to drain blood,
as this injury was more serious than her spinal injury. They
continued to talk to her in attempts to
keep her conscience.

The other bulldozer, which had been working about 30 meters to the
west, abandoned work and
withdrew to the boarder strip, and parked about 10 meters to the
west of the murderous bulldozer.
The tank came over to see what had happened, and I shouted that they
had run over our friend,
and that she may die. The soldiers in the tank never spoke to us,
asked us any questions or offered
us any help. They simply talked on their radio and then withdrew to
the border strip and parked between
the two bulldozers.

One activist ran to the doctor's house less than 5 meters away to
ask for his help and to call an
ambulance. I also called a Palestinian friend and asked him to call
an ambulance, as our Orange
network phones cannot dial the emergency number. An activist used
the megaphone to inform the
soldiers that a Palestinian ambulance was on the way, and demanded
that they not shoot at the
paramedics. He also told them that a Palestinian doctor is present
and is going to come out into
the area.

The doctor came out and suggested that we move her, but it was clear
that we could not. He used
cotton swabs to dab some of the blood coming from her face.

17:00-17:15

The ambulance arrived. The Palestinian paramedics risked their lives
to come out onto the boarder
strip and put her onto a stretcher. We worked as human shields for
them, and tried to make it difficult
for the tank to fire at the ambulance workers as they have at many
others in the past. While the
paramedics loaded her onto a stretcher, one activist suggested that
I get a good picture that clearly
showed the serial number of the bulldozer responsible. I walked all
the way out to the boarder strip,
passed the tank, and began photographing the bulldozer. The tank
soldier hollered something at me,
and the bulldozer began driving in such a way as to prevent me from
seeing the side of the bulldozer
that displayed the serial number, or the side windows from which one
might see the drivers. Despite
their clever maneuvering, I managed to get several pictures of the
serial number, but the tinted
windows on the machine did not allow me to get a decent photo of the
driver. By the time I'd finished,
the paramedics were carrying Rachel on a stretcher to the ambulance.
She was still breathing at
this point, and her eyes were open, but she was clearly in a great
deal of pain. Four activists piled
into the ambulance with Rachel and the paramedics and were rushed to
Al Negar Hospital. She was
brought directly to the emergency room, and was in there when I
arrived in a taxi.

17:20

She was pronounced dead and was wheeled out of the emergency room
with a white sheet covering
her head.

"It's over." Said Mohamed with tears in his eyes. He was a close
Palestinian friend of hers and mine,
and a trusted member of our group. I couldn't believe it. It was so
unreal. There was a part of me that
couldn't accept that she was gone. It had all happened so fast, I
was in complete shock. I became less
emotional than I'd been since the incident. I was just dumbfounded.
As others began to cry, I joined in,
and was on international television being comforted by the before-
mentioned Mohamed. But I have yet
to even come close to expressing the emotion that is built up inside
me.

I'm still having trouble accepting that it's real. I keep
remembering small things about her, like that she
liked juice, and used to wear this ridiculous pink jump suit that
was given to her by a Palestinian woman.
I've started smoking cigarettes since her death, and I'm constantly
telling the story of how Rachel had
quit smoking for a year before coming to Rafah, but started again
the night she arrived, while she stayed
in a tent along the boarder that came under heavy tank fire. One of
the bullets being fired around the tent
in attempts to frighten them actually hit the top of the tent. She's
smoked ever since, and how I wish that
she'd lived long enough to die of lung cancer. Perhaps now I will.

Few activists actually come to Palestine planning to come to Rafah.
In fact, many have to be talked into
it, as the West Bank has gotten so much more publicity. But Rachel
had heard about Rafah from a good
friend of hers who'd spent time here a few months ago, and he told
her about how neglected Rafah is by
the world, and by the activist community. She was also aware of how
dangerous Rafah is. In fact, more
people have been killed per-capita in Rafah than any other place in
Palestine. So not only is it the most
dangerous place, but it is also considered the poorest city in all
of Palestine, a country considered one
of the poorest in the world. Rafah is one of the poorest and most
dangerous places in the world, and
Rachel made a B-line straight for it.

19 March 2003 Dorothy - . . . here is an e-mail received today from a
16-year-old boy, Tamer, in Dheisha camp (Bethlehem).
He's struggling to get his message into English and
out. tamer's email address: "red full stop alhj"
<bbf_im@hotmail.com>. He would like to hear from you -
greg

hi dear all
how are you from palestine i am sending this massage and i
hope from it to get for the palestinian children the usfuly thing's :

'i am writing this massege and i am so sad and angry
becouse i am know what is the war with iraq will be do
in all the world and i like tell you we are in
palestine we had war in the last time so we are used
to this war becouse the tanks and the helekopter and
all the arms it is in our life we are see it in the
games and in the fact we are see it in our dreams and
in our days and in every where so i hope from all to
understand me becouse i was tried the war and i know
the bad effect of it so i dont like from another
peoplation to try it and i think thats enough one
peoplation was tried it and it was the palestinian
peoplation so i am so sad to say thats i am trying to
mke the love and the peace but thats hat i can to do
but i ws hoped to live in ready safe life thats ht i
hope and what alll the people hope thats they are hope
to live in plaece area so thats what i want to say and
i like tell you i am nat fried from our war in
palestine but i am so fried from iraq war becouse it
will be get it effect on all the world o please keep
the world from the war that what we hope so i hope to
see from every one the answer as soon as becouse i
think this case nat just for me it is for every one
who have pronoun in the big world so i hope from you
to help the jastice to live and to kill the injustice
together thats wht i need to tell you so good luck and
this massege for alll my friend and who i know ok bye
and here from you sooooooooon
bye'

Please Can you do any of the following

1. Sign the new petition with your brief comment - at
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/StopWorldWar3/

We the undersigned

- call on the European powers, especially the governments of France,
Germany and the Russian Federation, with the government of Iraq, to provide
for their contingent of peacekeeping troops to arrive in Iraq within hours,
take steps to secure its borders and airspace against attack, and provide
protection for the U.N. inspectors there to continue to carry out their duty.

- call on the aforementioned powers and all members of the U.N., to take
the earliest opportunity to ratify this peacekeeping action in the U.N.
General Assembly, under the auspices of UN Resolution 377, Uniting for
Peace, designed conceived to prevent aggression by any permanent member of
the Security Council: precisely the crisis now facing the world community,

- call on the United Nations membership to implement the provisions of UN
Resolution 1325, Women, Peace, and Security; to engage womankind in the
process to pacify warring mankind, and to protect women and children, the
victims who are hit hardest by the scourge of war,

- call once more on the US-UK governments to observe the principles of UN
Resolution 290:

"To settle international disputes by peaceful means and to co- operate in
supporting United Nations efforts to resolve outstanding problems."

- call the US-UK leaders to mind of the consequences, for themselves and
for their countrymen, both civilian and military, of defying the decisions
of the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which found for the death penalty
against the Nazi leaders with this verdict:

"To initiate a war of aggression is the supreme international crime,
differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the
accumulated evil of the whole."

2. Please reply if you have citizen mailing lists to offer, or further
useful addresses of heads of state lists. See kit for list.
We are bombarding world leaders with individual emails via an e-mail
blaster kit,
www.unitingforpeace.com  (www.waronfreedom.org/uniting4peacekit.htm  ).
from John Leonard, togethernet.

comments to petition, address lists gladly accepted - please forward url
http://www.ipetitions.com/campaigns/StopWorldWar3/
to all your networks!
SETTLERS GET SUBSIDISED ON THE GOLAN HEIGHTS
On the Golan Heights, Syrian land, 30 or so Jewish settlers receive large subsidies.These are from the Ministry of Agriculture which supports Jewish farmers, but in this case exorbitant in contrast to farmers elsewhere. A settler on Golan receives a HOUSING subsidy thus of 850$, whereas such farming subsidies to other Israeli inhabitants are in the region of 250$. These Golan Heights settlers are reputed to have received 60.000.000$ over the past year; presumably this represents a tranch of subsidies of various supplements

Settlers offer West Bank 'terror tours'

The BBC has interviewed an American Israeli entrepreneur who has planned "TERROR TOURS" in the West Bank and Gaza that aim to attract tourist thrill-seekers to Israel.This outrageous and criminal enterprise offers such excitements as flights in helicopters and the firing of machine guns, described as "training people in how to deal with a terrorist situation"The American "Jake Greenwald" was inspired by the mass panic he witnessed during the WTC Towers tragedy and has a desire to find among these thrill seekers a method for them to dominate fear. " Israel, has great expertise in dealing with terror," he maintained

HIS ITINERARY :
Weapons training ;
Tracking 'terrorists' in desert; Aerial tour of 'terrorist enclaves';
Experience of F-16 bombers and tanks;
Paintball attack on 'Arab village'.
The price is 5,500$

He maintains that this effort to rescue the ailing tourist business in Israel is attracting people from the legal,medical and academic professions.
These tourists will be given simulated practices that are part and parcel of the military regime at present in West Bank and Gaza..........
Daily activities begin with what Mr Greenwald called "light exercises" in hand-to-hand combat.

Tourists will also be taught how to fire a range of weapons, including M16s, Uzis, pistols and Kalashnikov machine guns, and learn how to operate a tank.

There will be talks by Israelis who took part in Israel's military offensive in Jenin last April, and lessons in how to track "terrorists" across the desert.

Participants will be taken on a helicopter tour of Palestinian "terrorist enclaves" and be shown arms and suicide bomber belts seized by the Israeli army.

The highlight of the trip involves a paintball fight in a simulated Arab village, where participants will be able to go from room-to-room "cleaning out Arab terrorists", said Mr Greenwald.

IF WE GO TO WAR......
An idea of how much we will hear about Iraqi casualties was given by the BBC and ITN last week. Both highlighted the suicide bombing that killed 15 Israelis on a bus in Haifa. When Israeli armed forces then killed 11 Palestinians in Gaza it was described as "retaliation" for Haifa. There was no mention that the day before Haifa, 8 Palestinians, including a pregnant woman, had been killed, with muted coverage in the media. More importantly, there was no mention that Haifa had been the first suicide attack since January 5, and that not one Israeli civilian had been killed within Israel since January 12. In the same period, Israel had killed over 154 Palestinians. There was also no mention that some 75% of Palestinians now live below the poverty line and over 30% of children under five suffer fromchronic malnutrition.

Visit the Media Lens website: http://www.medialens.org

From the International solidarity movement

1) Love and Resistance from Yanoun
March 9, 2003
Emily Winkelstein
Yanoun, Nablus

hello everyone,

hope this message finds you all well...i'm sorry it has been such a long time since my last report.  i am spending just about all of my time in the village now and get to email very infrequently.  i would like to urge anyone who is considering traveling to Palestine, first, to do it - the presence of internationals here is really important and the support and validation that it provides to the Palestinians - a people who the world consistently ignores - certainly seems to be valued and valuable.  Also, i would urge people to consider spending a significant amount of time in one place.  Getting to know people on a more intimate and personal level has been an incredible experience for me.  i am gaining all sorts of insights about the depth and reach of the israeli occupation and while i want to avoid making this a report about me and my journey (that is for another email), i will say that this is an intensely personal, emotional and challenging venture as well.

Of course, to see trees and homes bulldozed and land cleared for the building of an immense wall that will cripple an already devastated Palestinian economy is jarring and awful and upsetting and deserves the attention of all of the world.  to see settlements that are lavish and soo comfortable built with the resources of others on the land of others and consistently infringing on the lives of the Palestinians, just next to the remains of homes that have been demolished - remains littered with toys and chairs and clothes and photos and the belongings of its former inhabitants -  next to shops that are closed or streets that can hardly be called that because they are made more of potholes and rubble than anything or schools that have no heat and little protection from the elements and villages that have light and electricity for only 4 hours a day because they either can not afford a stronger infrastructure (because they are no longer able to travel to work because of checkpoints or social control by the israeli occupation forces or they are forced to work for the settlers that took their land for the equivalent of maybe $10 dollars a day for manual labor) - of course - to witness this it is shocking and unfathomable and how could this be allowed by the world community?  and of course, how could this be funded by governments - by the United States, by the Israeli government (by way of, again the US government), by governments that take such pride in their 'compassion' for 'freedom' and so-called 'democracy'.  These are important questions that come to mind every day here - and to witness these scenes is dramatic and again, deserve the attention of the world community and must be exposed.

Another experience, however, is to sit by a fire at the end of a long day and talk to a father about how he feels like a failure to his children because he has to struggle to provide food and clothes and still can't keep his children safe when armed settlers come into his home when he is out minding his sheep and ransack his home and frighten and harass his wife and his children - of course with no recourse - except to maybe leave his village - with no where to go - to see more of his land confiscated.  to hear about how the joys of everyday life have been stripped from him, how living to him has become only about waking, working, eating and sleeping - to just get by and provide for his family, unable to enjoy things like the snow or the changing of the seasons, which once used to provide enjoyment and now just offer added stress.  because the settlers have confiscated his land or they have threatened his safety if he goes a certain distance on HIS property, he must know pay almost three times what he used to feed his sheep that provide milk and other resources for him and his family.  at the same time, his profits have been cut by nearly three quarters, again because of the confiscation of olive trees and land that he was once able to harvest.  to hear this from a friend who has opened his home to you and offered every kindness in the world, after having shared laughter, fear and quiet is an experience that i can not explain in any words - and of course my experience is nothing in comparison to his in actually living it.  and this is one conversation.

The other morning, after her son had left for nablus to attend university, i sat with a woman who has become like a mother to me, she cried quietly, listening to the news about 5 killed in gaza and the impending war and the fear that her son could be stopped by soldiers as he traveled through the mountains to try to reach his university - or that he would get caught there under curfew with no access to food or a way to get back to his home in Yanun. or maybe, she feared an event like last year when a tank fired on his home in nablus as he and his brother were studying, leaving him with shards of metal still in his hand from the blast.  later that day, when we heard that the presence of soldiers in Nablus had decreased, again there was fear, that this was not a good thing, but rather a sign that the IOF was clearing their people out to hit by the air or because of the war on Iraq and the potential demolition of communities in mass.  this is the same woman who was able to see her daughter for the first time in two years last week after i traveled with her to come to yanun from deheishe refugee camp near bethlehem.  this trip usually takes me about an hour, maybe an hour and a half because of the checkpoints or we have to wait for the services to fill up or we are stopped a few times by the army for id checks ( of course, this could make the journey much longer at any time) - but on the day that i traveled with my new friend and her 5 month old son who her family had yet to meet because she is not allowed to make this journey by the IOF - it took us about 5 hours.  all of this in the pouring rain - again, with a 5 month old carried in this woman's arms.  the five hours was spent going from one car to another, avoiding checkpoints and army and roads that had been flooded and could not be traveled in the rain...in one instance, when we walked about 10 meters too far near a checkpoint, we had to then take another car through hills of mud to get back to the same point just 10 meters from where we started.  all of this, again, so that she could see her family and so that they could meet her son.  it would be much too dangerous for her husband to make the journey with her and he also could not stop working during this time.

When I visit the school, or ask children to make drawings for me - it is almost always some version of the same picture - Palestinians pleading for their land as settlers and army fire weapons at or beat them - pictures of their fathers and mothers and brothers and sisters getting assaulted - bleeding - screaming for their land and for peace and their lives - and the sun still has a smile on it's face.  this is real.  this is what these children experience daily.  in america, we dance around issues all of the time - especially with children.  we paint the picture we want to see out of fear that we might shatter some mythic vision of a happy day to day where everything is flowers and sunshine.  well, here, a 9 year old child can more succinctly sum up the situation facing Iraq than probably many people in the US and could certainly give a more realistic image of what the Palestinian people face than most of the world is willing to open their eyes too.  this is tragic and so unjust and so unfair - these children deserve to live in the peace they so want to know -  

There are many many more stories like this.  I will continue to write them so that they can be heard.  I will continue to talk and to learn.  I appreciate so much this experience and these people - and of course I say that with a deep anger and confusion that I have come to meet them under these circumstances...that I am able to 'appreciate' this experience - I don't know - it is hard to communicate...as much as I love the people of yanun - I wish, with all that I am, that these experiences did not exist to be shared. 

Sending love to everyone - take good care of yourselves and lets hope that next week the world is able to stop Bush from pursuing the war he wants so badly. 

In solidarity and resistance from Yanun -

xoxo emily

Speech given by President Fidel Castro at the 13th Conference of heads of State and government of the Non-Aligned Movement in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on February 25, 2003,


"Year of the Glorious Anniversary of Martí and Moncada." Most excellent and esteemed friend Mahathir bin Mohamad, Prime Minister of Malaysia; Esteemed Leaders and other delegation members;Distinguished guests:

We live in difficult times. In recent months we have heard chilling words and opinions more than once.

In a speech given to the West Point cadets on June 1, 2002, the president of the United States declared: "Our security will require transforming the military. You will lead a military that must be ready to strike at a moment¹s notice in any dark corner of the world."That same day he proclaimed the doctrine of a pre-emptive and surprise war, something that nobody had ever done in the political history of the world.

Months later, when referring to an unnecessary and almost certain military action against Iraq, he affirmed that if they were forced to fight then they would fight with the full might of their armed forces. That was not stated by the government of a small and weak state; it was the head of the richest and most powerful military potency that has ever existed, in possession of thousands of nuclear weapons, enough to eliminate the people of the world various times over and of other terrible military methods of conventional and mass destruction.

That is what we are: "Dark corners of the world." That is how some see Third World countries. Nobody has defined us better, nor done so with more disdain. As former colonies of powers that divided and plundered the world for centuries, today we constitute the group of developing countries. Not one has full independence, fair and equal treatment, or any national security; not one is a member of the Security Council, or has the right of veto or can make a decision in the international financial organizations; or retain its best talents, protect itself from the flight of its capital, the destruction of nature and environment caused by economically developed countries¹ spendthrift, selfish and insatiable consumerism.

After the last world butchery of the 1940's, we were promised a peaceful world, a reduced gap between rich and poor and that the most developed would help the least developed. It was all an enormous lie. They imposed an unsustainable and unbearable world order on us. The world is being led up a one-way street.

In just 150 years we have exhausted the gasoline and oil that it took the planet 300 million years to accumulate. In only 100 years, humanity has grown by approximately 1.5 billion people, and now stands at more than 6 billion inhabitants. It has to depend entirely on energy sources that are still being researched and developed. Poverty is increasing; old and new diseases are threatening to wipe out entire nations; soil is eroding and losing its fertility; the climate is changing, the air, drinking water and the seas are increasingly more contaminated. If we wrest authority from them, then the United Nations is hindered and destroyed; aid for developing countries is diminished; a $2.5 trillion USD debt is demanded from the Third World, an amount absolutely impossible to pay under current conditions; instead, every year a trillion dollars is spent on increasingly more sophisticated and lethal weapons. And for what?

A similar sum is used for advertising, sowing consumerist desires impossible to satisfy in millions and millions of people. Why and for what?

For the first time, our species is running the real risk of exterminating itself due to the madness of human being themselves, victims of the same "civilization." However, nobody will fight for us who make up the vast majority. Only we ourselves, with the support of millions of manual workers and intellectuals from developed countries who see the same catastrophe also affecting their own peoples, sowing ideas, creating awareness, mobilizing the public opinion of the world and the U.S. people, will be able to save the species. Nobody needs anyone to tell them this. You know it only too well. Our most sacred task is to fight and fight we will! Thank you very much. 

international Women's day

Addameer , The Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association
8 March 2003 - Press Release/ International Women's Day

Addameer Prisoners Support and Human Rights Association welcomes the release of Mrs. 'Abla Sa'adat, arrested on her way to the World Social Forum on 21 January 2003 and subsequently given a 4 month administrative detention order.  She was released on the morning of 7th March 2003 and, just as her arrest, was not given a reason for her early release.  However, as we also commemorate International Women's Day today, we also remember the remaining 65 Palestinian female detainees currently being held by Israel in the Neveh Terzah section of Ramleh Prison.

Of the 65 Palestinian women being detained, 10 are Palestinian minors under the age of 18, held in conditions that contravene international standards of detention and contrary to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which stipulates that all individuals under the age of 18 are considered children, must not be submitted to forms of torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, nor should they be deprived of their liberty except as a last resort.  The youngest of the detainees, Zainab Al Shouly and 'Aisha Abeyat, both turned 15 whilst in prison.   

6 Palestinian women are currently being held under administrative detention orders, imprisoned without charge or trial.  One woman, Tahani Al Titi, has been serving continuously renewed administrative detention orders since 13 June 2002.  The use of administrative detention for Palestinian women has dramatically increased in the past two months, paralleling similar use during the first Palestinian Intifada.  An apparent pattern has developed in which Palestinian women are now being detained in order to place pressure on relations who may be wanted' by Israel, or under interrogation.  This was evident in the case of 'Abla Sa'adaat, wife of PFLP General Secretary Ahmad Sa'aadat

Detainees also include mothers of young children, including Mervat Taha, who was arrested on 13 June 2002 while she was pregnant.  She recently gave birth to her child whilst in prison and serving a 20 month sentence.

The conditions of detention in which Palestinian women are held are inhumane..   Female detainees are subjected to individual and collective punishment, including the prevention of family visits, being placed in solitary confinement for varying periods of time, and banning canteen privileges, meaning that women are not able to obtain supplementary food or hygiene supplies.  Surprise searches are conducted regularly of the women's cells, and personal belongings are often confiscated or destroyed.   Hot water and electricity to the cells are often cut off as a form of punishment.

Food provided to the detainees is not adequate in terms of quantity and quality and does not meet basic nutritional requirements.  This has caused and will cause vitamin deficient diseases and other health problems amongst detainees in the long term.The current health situation of female detainees is of grave concern. There is clear neglect towards Palestinian detainees in the provision of health services, and a clear discrimination in the form of services offered between Palestinian detainees and Israeli Jewish detainees held in the same facility.  There are often delays in medical treatment when needed, and those in need of hospital care are often not taken to hospital or are offered pain killers for any illness. As a result of the fact that family visits have been prevented for over a year, female detainees do not have enough clothing or supplies that are normally provided by families.  For over a year, permits for families of  female detainees to travel from the West Bank to Ramleh Prison in Israel, where Palestinian female detainees are held in contravention of the Fourth Geneva Convention, have not been issued. Residents of Jerusalem who carry different ID cards than West Bank residents and are normally able to travel and allowed visits, are often denied family visits as a form of punishment.

Any attempt from female detainees to protest their conditions of detention is met by collective punishment.  For example, in July 2002 female detainees began a hunger strike in protest of these conditions.  In response, the Prisons Authorities threw tear gas anisters into the women's small cells, causing numerous injuries amongst the detainees. 

Lawyers attempting to visit the detainees are often met with harassment from the Prisons Authorities.  They are forced to wait for long periods of time before the detainee is brought to them, sometimes up to four hours.  The delay means that lawyers are often not able to see all the detainees requested, as lawyer visits are set for a limited period of time.  On 4 February 2003, Addameer's lawyer Adv. Mahmoud Hassan was locked in the prison's family visit center at Neveh Terzah for 3 hours before his client was brought to see him, with no reason given for the delay or
for his being detained.

These are but some examples of the situation of Palestinian female detainees currently being held in Israeli prisons.  'Abla Sa'aadat's early release is a welcome development, and offers hope in the face of Israel's policy of arbitrary arrest and detention.  Pressure, in the form of letter writing, awareness activities, lobbying local representatives and other activities, does work.  At a time when the world is on the brink of war, allegedly for the sake of human rights and democracy, Addameer thanks all those who have worked diligently towards ensuring basic human rights in the only way these rights can be secured:  through grassroots pressure and public awareness. Change can only come from people and not through war.  On International Women's Day, Addameer stands in solidarity with alestinian female detainees who remain firm in the face of oppression, and asks the international community for its continued support  of these women.

My Draft Resistance

Danya Vaknin
Danya Vaknin, 19, is from Mevaseret Zion. She is currently doing national service at a school in Tel-Aviv. She is active with New Profile and with the Seniors’ Letter group (Shministim). This is her fourth year as a volunteer at the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

I can’t remember exactly when I decided I wasn’t prepared to take an active role in the army. I remember I started talking about it, I decided to open up questions that I was afraid to ask, hard questions that the society I lived in always