AAARGH

Numéro 23 -- 1er mai 2003 >[email protected]< Nouvelles en français et en anglais Créée en 1991 par Serge Thion News in French and English Established 1991 by Serge Thion

Depuis le 11 septembre 2001, les autorités judiciaires américaines ont lancé 18.000 enquêtes et mandats d'arrêt pour la recherche des fameux terroristes. Et ils n'en pas attrapé la queue d'un ! (Voir Village Voice, 16 avril 2003. Chisun Lee)

Karbalachnikov

There was anti-American sentiment among the pilgrims Tuesday [22 Apr., at Karbala]. Some held signs that said "Bush equals Saddam" and "Down USA."

 

Pressetitution. Au Moyen Âge, les armées étaient accompagnées par de nombreuses prostituées. Dans la guerre d'Irak, les armées américaine et britannique sont accompagnées par un grand nombre de journalistes. J'ai inventé l'équivalent hébreu de "pressetitution", quand j'étais directeur d'un périodique israélien, pour parler des journalistes qui transformaient les médias en putains. Uri Avnery, 2 avril 2003.

 

Auschwitz ne justifie pas tout

Alfred Grosser, Le Monde, 18 avril 2003.

 

Baghdad has become the new Detroit: a post-modern monument to the idiocy of violence. [...] Two thousand roving reporters travel the city searching for "their" story.

Ramzi Kysia 22 Apr 2003 <http://www.vitw.org>

Edito

La fonction d'un mensonge.

Jusqu'à plus soif, les médias ont, à quelques exceptions près, dit et redit que le pèlerinage du 40e jour suivant le martyre de Hussein, fils de Ali et petit-fils du Prophète, avait été interdit sous le régime de Saddam et que, délivrés du dragon par les vaillants chevaliers de Saint George, les infortunés shi'ites avaient enfin pu faire leurs dévotions, que la presse d'ailleurs s'est abstenue de décrire. Seules quelques photos de types en transe, se tailladant la peau du crâne avec de vieux sabres, couverts de sang et dansant dans l'extase, nous ont été montrées. De telles scènes sont courantes en Inde et on a même vu les médiums chinois faire de même en Asie du Sud-Est.

Nous avons dit dans notre dernier numéro, que c'était un mensonge, que nous avions vu de nos yeux le pèlerinage de l'an dernier. C'est la fonction de ce mensonge qui nous intéresse maintenant.

La source est évidente: c'est le jeune imbécile galonné, le Noir de service, le porte-parole, général de brigade Vincent Brooks, qui a donné la "ligne de base" (bottomline): Saddam interdisait le pèlerinage. Ceux qui ont dicté à Brooks son texte savaient de quoi ils parlaient. Les journalistes, encore plus imbéciles et encore plus dociles que les militaires ont répercuté à tous les vents ce mensonge, vérifiable en cinq minutes à Baghdad. Mais peu importe ici. La direction politique de la guerre savait qu'elle pouvait compter sur l'aspect moutonnier de ceux qu'on appelle, comme dans le commerce de l'espionnage, les "correspondants".

L'invention de ce mensonge dénote un stéréotype: nos ennemis officiels oppriment la bonne religion que nous défendons. Evidemment, il ne faut pas entrer dans le détail. La religion qui a cours à Kerbala est la même qu'à Qom et à Téhéran, qui a produit cet ennemi politique qui est le khomeynisme. Donc, le mensonge n'est pas particulièrement destiné aux gens du Proche-Orient. Les chefs de Washington seraient attristés à l'idée qu'ils encourageraient les shi'ites à se lever. En gommant la réalité politico-religieuse de la chose, on s'adresse, en réalité, aux opinions occidentales. C'est à elles qu'on va répéter le mensonge, massivement. Elle n'a pas les moyens de l'identifier comme tel et de le rejeter. Les connaisseurs de l'Iraq n'ont pas accès à la presse, comme toujours dans ces cas-là.

L'image de la libération par les tanks d'une oppression religieuse est forte. C'est celle de la Croisade, si justement dénoncée par Ben Laden et ses camarades. Mais ici le Croisé libère le Musulman, ce qui montre qu'il est au comble de sa mission libératrice, complètement altruiste. Car cette armée est évidemment chrétienne. Les quelques rares juifs qu'elle inclut se font discrets. Les musulmans ne sont employés que comme auxiliaires, traducteurs, interprètes et trotte-menu.

Avant la guerre, il fallait partir à la conquête des "armes" terrifiantes de Saddam, qui sont toujours manquantes à l'appel. Ensuite, il a fallu attraper le cruel dictateur pour changer de régime. Saddam s'est évanoui comme le génie qui rentre dans la lampe, et qui en ressortira au moment venu. Il y a donc un sérieux déficit de justification de l'aventure coloniale. Le pétrole, il vaut mieux ne pas trop en parler. On reste discret. La guerre faite pour Israel n'est pas non plus un thème porteur. La religion n'était pas prévue mais les opportunistes de la pub ont saisi l'occasion. Le public américain vit en grande partie immergé dans une sorte de religion primitive, fixiste, simpliste, celle des esclaves noirs reprise par les maîtres blancs incultes. Il aime l'image d'un pouvoir imbu de ce sous-christianisme fondamentaliste qui règne politiquement sur les Etats-Unis et soutient à fond le sionisme comme eschatologie prochaine. L'appel à la libération religieuse pouvait servir de relais aux justifications absentes de la guerre. C'est ce qui s'appelle faire feu de tout bois. La semaine prochaine, on trouvera autre chose. On aura oublié cette "libération" bidon quand il s'agira d'affronter les démons issus de l'effondrement du régime; on verra à ce moment-là qu'ils sont proches de l'Axe du Mal, fabriqué par les manichéens de Washington.

On sent bien que les malheureux Amerloques pataugent dans la semoule. Ils ont arrêté le jeune cheikh qui monte à Saddam-City, l'énorme banlieue shi'ite de Baghdad, peut-être deux millions d'habitants, dont une bonne partie réfugiée du Sud. Ils l'ont interrogé poliment. Sur des sujets généraux. Les politico-militaires se débattent dans leur ignorance crasse et leur naïveté coutumière. Comment administrer l'Iraq alors que les habitants réclament déjà le départ des Américains ? L'Etat sous Saddam fonctionnait remarquablement. Les pauvres Yankis ne pourront jamais faire aussi bien car ils ne savent pas faire et ils n'auront pas d'adhésion massive. Les quelques marionnettes qu'ils ont amenées dans leur musette ne feront même pas trois petits tours. On a vu le premier épisode de la guerre d'Iraq. On attend maintenant les suivants.

28 avril 2003

Primo pellegrinaggio sciita ?

 

La "notizia" di questi giorni è che dopo 25 anni, nell'"Iraq liberato", gli sciiti possono svolgere i loro riti del pellegrinaggio. Per la cronaca, posso smentire categoricamente che sia in atto il "primo pellegrinaggio sciita da 25 anni" (o 35, per chi pone maggior enfasi). Di questi tempi, l'anno scorso, si dà il caso che mi trovassi proprio a Kerbela... alcune ore per giungervi e, sulla strada del ritorno a Baghdad, risucchiato in un autentico 'controesodo biblico' di bus, auto e gente a piedi durato ore ed ore, con gli abitanti dei villaggi che via via attraversavo (un passo e fermi!) che si prodigavano nell'offrire a tutti acqua fresca. Per non parlare dei pellegrini dall'Iran, ospiti presso lo stesso albergo in cui alloggiavo nella capitale irachena. E' vero che a Kerbela, ad esempio all'ingresso della moschea di al-Husayn, vi era una presenza 'energica' dei "fedayn di Saddam", ma da qui a dire che è il "primo pellegrinaggio sciita da 25 anni"...

E. Galoppini, 23 avril 2003.

Une suggestion à la chaîne ARTE

Bonsoir, je rentre de la nuit dernière de Palestine. J'ai passé du dimanche 6 avril au jeudi 10 avril 2003, cinq jours dans le village de Yanoun, situé à 5 kilomètres d'Aqraba au sud est de Naplouse West Bank. Je prend connaissance donc aujourd'hui de votre réponse à mon message de protestation quant à la déprogrammation de "Jenine Jenine". Je prend acte de votre décision en me permettant de la contester. Par contre je vous propose d'effectuer un reportage sur la situation de ce village, en quelques mots: Année 2001: 151 habitants, année 2002 moins de 10 habitants. Epidémie ? Cataclysme ? Non. Pressions physiques extrêmement violentes des colons surplombant ce village. Aujourd'hui (à la date du 10 avril 2003) Yanoun a retrouvé 93 habitants, son tracteur et sa vache ! Il a fallu que des internationaux français reconduisent le tracteur de la ville au village, afin que celui-ci ne soit pas à nouveau la cible de tir des colons (cinq impacts de balles dans la carrosserie de cet engin utilitaire), il faut la présence d'internationaux pour permettre aux agriculteurs de labourer les champs sans être des cibles pour M16 ! Je suis à votre disposition pour tout renseignement complémentaire et vous faciliter la mise en relation avec les bénévoles français qui tentent modestement d'empêcher le transfert des habitants du village de Yanoun vers la ville voisine, afin de permettre l'extension de la colonie d'Itamar, ainsi qu'entremettre votre équipe avec les autorités du village, ceci en vue de faciliter le travail de vos reporters pour raconter la vie des villageois de Yanoun, leur souffrance, leur espoir. Recevez l'expression de mon respect. Marc Prunier.

<[email protected]> à

<[email protected]> 13 avril 2003

ILS N'ONT PLUS DE FRIC

A minuit, on frappe à la porte

par Uri Avnery

 

Ce fut une nouvelle presque incroyable: pour réduire le budget national, le ministre de l'Education a décidé de licencier des centaines d'enseignants. La tâche de transmettre les mauvaises nouvelles aux enseignants concernés a été confiée à une société privée. Deux jours avant la Pâque -- une des dates clés du calendrier juif, aussi bien pour les juifs religieux que pour les laïcs, quand les familles s'assoient autour d'une table pour la joyeuse cérémonie de Seder -- les employés de la société se sont dispersés pour faire leur travail. Ils ont frappé aux portes à minuit et délivré les notifications. Même les Israéliens, qui ne se sentent plus concernés par grand-chose, ont été choqués pendant un temps. Comment un tel fait a-t-il pu se produire ? Ne pouvait-on attendre après les fêtes ? Quelle brutalité ! Pour moi, c'était beaucoup plus qu'une faute d'un organisme gouvernemental. C'est un acte symbolique qui reflète tout ce qui va mal en Israël aujourd'hui. Tout d'abord, la cruauté. Ce n'était pas délibéré, bien sûr. Le ministre de l'Education n'a pas dit à l'entreprise privée: "Faites-leur parvenir leur notification de la manière la plus pénible possible." Les employés privés ne se sont pas non plus assis autour d'une table pour décider: faisons-le juste avant Pâque et frappons à leur porte au milieu de la nuit, comme l'auraient fait la police secrète de Staline ou nos soldats camouflés à Naplouse.

Non, personne n'a décidé. Personne n'y a pensé. Et c'est justement ce qui est choquant: l'insensibilité totale. Il y a seulement trois ou quatre ans, cela n'aurait pas été possible. Quelqu'un serait intervenu à temps et aurait crié: "Que faites-vous ? Etes-vous fous ?" Les juifs se sont toujours définis comme "les fils compatissants parmi les compatissants". Ils croyaient que la compassion était une invention juive et citaient les textes anciens (comme l'injonction du Sabbah dans les dix commandements, ordonnant aux juifs de donner congé à leurs esclaves et laisser sortir leurs animaux domestiques tous les sept jours). Nietzche, qui avait la pitié en horreur, accusait le judaïsme de créer une morale de la pitié. La nouvelle société hébraïque, qui a été créée dans ce pays, a toujours été fière de sa "responsabilité mutuelle", du fait que personne ne souffre de la faim dans notre société, que les handicapés, les malades, les vieux et les chômeurs soient protégés par l'ensemble de la société. Un jour, quand on m'a demandé ce qu'être juif signifiait pour moi dans mon enfance, j'ai cité la compassion, avec la recherche de la justice, la haine de la violence, le désir de paix et l'amour de l'étude. [C'est évidemment de l'idéologie à l'état pur, un truc de vendeur à la sauvette. La compassion, chez les juifs organisés, existe envers les autres juifs mais est égale à zéro pour ce qui touche aux non-juifs. Ne pas confondre avec le christianisme, ou le bouddhisme.]

Ce n'est plus le cas. Après deux années d'Intifada Al-Aksa, les sentiments de la société israélienne se sont presque complètement émoussés. Les horribles choses qui se passent quotidiennement dans les territoires occupés ne sont même pas mentionnées. Les "bouclages" et les couvre-feu qui durent des mois, la faim et la soif, les gens malades mourant par manque de soins, la démolition de maisons et le déracinement de vergers, ne sont que des détails, de la routine. Hommes, femmes et enfants tués par des snipers dans leurs maisons et dans les rues ? Qui s'en soucie ? Une jeune Américaine écrasée par un bulldozer géant en essayant d'empêcher la démolition d'une maison palestinienne ? Et alors ? Elle le méritait après tout ! Un garçon palestinien lançant des pierres tué par le tir d'un tank ? Trois lignes dans le journal. Et peut-être même pas. L'insensibilité s'est répandue des territoires occupés jusqu'en Israël même. Des photos dans le journal montrent des gens fouillant dans les poubelles. Bien, c'est ainsi. Le gouvernement envoie des gens affamés chercher des repas gratuits dans des organisations charitables ? Qui y fait attention ?

Le nouveau ministre des Finances, Benyamin Netanyahou, un homme qui reçoit 50.000 $ pour une simple conférence aux Etats-Unis, a proposé un plan économique qui lèse les plus pauvres. Celui-ci réduit les allocations mensuelles des personnes âgées (à moins de 300 $), les allocations familiales, les allocations de chômage, les subventions aux établissements d'enfants handicapés et de personnes âgées, ainsi que les budgets pour l'éducation et la santé. Les gens se révoltent-ils ? Les étudiants descendent-ils en masse dans la rue ? Les médias explosent-ils de colère ? A la Knesset, l'opposition (à supposer qu'il y en ait une) remue-t-elle ciel et terre ? Pas du tout. La Fédération des syndicats (Histadrout), représentant les syndicats de travailleurs les plus riches et les plus forts, menace d'une grève générale. Quoi de plus ? De temps en temps, un homme politique publie une déclaration en espérant avoir droit aux gros titres. De temps en temps une poignée de personnes protestent. De temps en temps un chroniqueur écrit un article indigné. Voilà tout. Ainsi les pauvres seront un peu plus pauvres et les riches un peu plus riches. La belle affaire ! Quand on interroge Netanyahou lui-même sur son plan, il s'en tient à la ligne israélienne bien établie: on n'a pas le choix. L'économie israélienne s'effondre. Tout ceci est la faute d'Arafat. L'Intifada a détruit notre économie. Et cela est quelque chose d'entièrement nouveau avec des implications à long terme.

Une explication est nécessaire: pendant plus de cinq décennies, la société israélienne a vécu dans la douce illusion qu'il n'y a aucun lien entre notre politique envers les Arabes et notre situation économique. C'est la pierre angulaire de notre conscience nationale. Au cours de mes dix années de Knesset, j'ai prononcé au moins une centaine de discours sur ce sujet. Dans les débats économiques, je mettais l'accent sur la politique sécuritaire et l'occupation. Dans les débats sur la politique sécuritaire, je soulevais des questions sur son coût. Chacun de ces discours suscitait une réaction furieuse et exaspérée de tous les rangs du Parlement. Dans les débats sur la sécurité, ils me criaient: "Qu'est-ce que cela a à voir avec l'économie ? Nous sommes en train de parler de terrorisme !" Dans les débats économiques, ils criaient: "Nous discutons de l'économie. Pourquoi ramenez-vous vos Palestiniens ?" Une seule fois au cours de toutes ces années, un ministre adjoint des Finances m'a pris à part dans les couloirs et m'a dit: "Vous êtes le seul qui soit logique." (N'étant pas économiste, j'ai été flatté.) Cette ignorance du prix de la guerre et de l'occupation a eu des résultats curieux: les gens les plus pauvres, les chômeurs et les habitants des agglomérations dites "villes de développement" ont toujours voté Likoud. Dans les dernières élections ils ont voté largement pour Sharon. Ils n'avaient que deux exigences: donner un tour de vis aux Arabes et mettre fin à la crise économique. Ils ne voyaient pas la contradiction entre les deux.

Mais depuis quelques mois maintenant, il s'est produit un changement dans la conscience publique. Pour contrer l'accusation que la politique économique du gouvernement avait causé la dépression économique, les gens de Sharon ont dû admettre que l'Intifada en était la cause principale, même si la crise mondiale y ajoutait quelque chose. L'Intifada a porté un coup terrible au tourisme, un des secteurs les plus importants de notre économie. Les investissements étrangers, qui sont essentiels à la croissance économique, ont pratiquement cessé. L'énorme armée nécessaire pour combattre l'Intifada, ajoutée aux dépenses pour les colons, dévore une énorme proportion de notre PNB (beaucoup plus importante, per capita, qu'aux Etats-Unis). Certains croient que si la dépression s'aggrave, les "couches faibles" (comme on appelle les pauvres en Israël) vont un jour s'insurger contre le gouvernement Sharon, les masses vont descendre dans les rues et le renverser. Cela peut paraître trop optimiste. Mais au moins on peut rêver à la nuit où, à minuit, les gens frapperont à la porte du gouvernement et lui tendront un ordre de démissionner.

19 avril 2003, traduit de l'anglais par Sylviane de Wangen <[email protected]>

LES ARMES DE DESTRUCTION DE MASSE

DE L'ENTITÉ SIONISTE

Check out what the author calls "the most astounding web page of the week":

<http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm>

MSNBC Reveals Facts on Israel's Weapons of Mass Destruction

by Ira Chernus

 

Here is MSNBC, giving us more information on Israel's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) than I've seen in any left-wing or peace-activist news source. Here is the mainstream U.S. media, that beast we love to hate, giving us a story that gives away the store. It's a story we expect the elite media to hide, because it is so embarrassing to U.S. policymakers. How could anyone cheer for the carnage in Iraq, where no WMD have yet been found, if they knew that Israel is the only Middle Eastern nation with a proven WMD arsenal? How could anyone approve of a U.S. policy that kills where WMD don't seem to exist and turns a blind eye where they obviously do?

Far from hiding the story, though, MSNBC uses its graphic skills to put all the details just a mouse-click away. What's going on? Supporters of Israeli policy will give you an answer in a single word: anti-semitism. These folks are always amazing us with their charges of anti-Israel bias in the U.S. media, which they insist proves anti-semitism. It's silly, of course. If the media were biased against Israel, the facts about Israeli WMD would have been headline news every day during the debate about the Iraq war. Those facts were headline news in the Arab world. They were absolutely crucial, because they undermined the Bush administration's principal justification for war. But mainstream news sources here paid very little attention.

Even now, MSNBC is not making the information easy to get. It is tucked away in an obscure corner of the website. Try finding it from the home page, and if you figure out how, let me know. (I found it only through a direct link in an email I received.) When I searched the site for "Dimona" (Israel's best-known nuclear weapons site), it came up blank. When I tried to access the root directory, I was told that I was "not authorized to view this page." Still, the information is there on the site, if you know how to get it (and now you do). You have to wonder why. Maybe some MSNBC staffers were really interested in digging up facts, as good journalists should. Perhaps it never occurred to them that there was anything embarrassing here. After all, mainstream U.S. journalists are not embarrassed to say that the U.S. has the world's largest and most advanced stocks of WMD. No reason to hide it, they assume, because our WMD are the good kind. We are a democracy. We would never use our weapons for aggressive or immoral purposes. We would use them only when absolutely necessary for self-defense. Most Americans assume that our WMD are morally pure because the journalists who give them their daily truth assume it.

Most of those journalists assume the same about Israel's WMD. Our mainstream media depict Israel as a lone bastion of democracy surrounded by totalitarian enemies. So its WMD must be as good as our own. If there is any bias here, it is for, not against, Israel and its policies. This still leaves me wondering, though. For decades, Israel has been coyly half-hiding its WMD program. That program was treated as a big secret. Journalists who wrote about it risked attack by Israel's supporters; they were hailed as brave heroes by Israel's critics.

Israel's watchdogs in the U.S. are relentless and well-connected. If they thought this information on the MSNBC website was harmful to Israel, I suspect the information would disappear fast. In fact, the cynic inside me says the information might be on that site because the Israeli government wants it there.

Look at the graphic from the viewpoint of a military strategist in Damascus, or in Hamas headquarters in Gaza. You would see strength so overwhelming, it would be stupid even to dream of fighting against Israel, much less to think about it in realistic terms. Look at it from the viewpoint of a strategist in Istanbul or New Delhi. You would see a very appealing potential ally, one with far more firepower than you could even hope to produce in the near future. Look at it from the viewpoint of a strategist in Teheran or Islamabad. Would you want Israel as your enemy or your friend?

On the other hand, putting out the facts on Israel's WMD may not be Israel's idea at all. It may come from the nest of neo-conservative hawks in the highest reaches of the Pentagon. They want all those capitals throughout the Middle East and South Asia to get the idea. The neo-cons are planning a new order in that part of the world. They have announced quite openly that their conquest of Iraq was only a first step toward this new order. They plan to make Israel the military cornerstone of the new order. Why should Middle East and South Asian leaders roll over and accept the new neo-con order? Just take a look at the MSNBC graphic. Incontrovertible military facts on the ground speak louder than words. Need we say more?

Perhaps the information is tucked away in such a hard-to-find corner of cyberspace because the general public is "not authorized to view this page." Perhaps it is meant to send a specific message to specific people. Or perhaps I'm far too cynical. In any event, now you too know just how huge Israel's WMD program really is. Anyone for international inspectors? Or would you trust the U.S. and its "coalition of the willing" to do the job?

Ira Chernus is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder. <[email protected]>

Cette page est effectivement étonnante et les questions posées par Ira Chernus vont de soi. Cette page n'est apparemment pas copiable. Il est possible qu'elle disparaisse soudainement. Pour certains lieux, les informations données se recoupent avec d'autres sources. Pour d'autres lieux moins connus, on ne peut pas vérifier. Dans l'ensemble, tout est parfaitement crédible et nous paraît plutôt sous-estimer l'arsenal israélien, bien qu'il n'y ait guère d'estimations sur les quantités. On remarquera que ces notices sont rédigées dans un fort mauvais anglais. L'auteur anonyme n'est pas anglophone et utilise parfois des tournures françaises.

Afin de conserver ces données et de leur permettre de circuler, nous avons donc recopié les indications qui sont fournies quand on clique sur des emplacements sur une carte d'Israël. Nous avons pris les localités du nord au sud et d'ouest en est.

Rafael, Yodefat

Missile Development: Rafael is the Israeli Ministry of Defense's high-tech weapons research and development organization. The Haifa area is home to several Rafael facilities. Rafael has been responsible for the actual assembly of Israel nuclear weapons since the first two weapons were built in late 1966 but now concentrates on ballistic missiles. A more modern and remote facility at Yodefat east of Haifa is where the weapons are assembled today.

Missiles: Satellite photos of the area show a highly secure inderground facility with two large elevators. Mordechai Vanunu, a dissident Israeli nuclear scientist now jailed for speaking on the country's weapons program, told the Sunday Times of London [of] convoys carry[ing] plutonium from Dimona to Yodefat.

Warheads: In addition, a 1987 Pentagon report describes warhead and Mach-7 reentry vehicles for Israel's ballistic missile research and development effort. Advanced rocket motors and anti-ballistic missiles are under development here.

Scientists of Rafael regularly travel to both the U.S. weapons labs and international symposiums and, despite both countries refusal to acknowledge Israel's nuclear status, have actually co-written papers on nuclear detonation processes with U.S. scientists.

Eilabun

Nuclear storage: Eilabun is Israel's second weapons storage facility and is located in the north near the Sea of Gallilee. Tactical nuclear shells and landmines are among its contents.

Location: Eilabun is located near the town of the same name just west of the Sea of Gallilee off route 65.

Contents: There, reportedly, are stored the nuclear artillery shells, nuclear landmines and other tactical weapons -- possibly including neutron bombs -- that would be needed to deter or fight a superior conventional force approaching from the northeast, i. e. Syria. The landmines stored here would be taken to holes previously dug along the base of the Golan Heights during a crisis with Syria. The U.S. and Russia both had such landmines, but have abandoned them. The artillery shells could be used to halt a Syrian tank column or devastate targets as far away as Damascus.

Palmikhim Air Base

Test Range: Palmikhim is the Vandenberg Air Force Base of Israel, where missiles and rockets are assembled and tested. It is the main Israeli Defense Force research and development facility. The US believes that Israel has a capability to develop and launch ICBMs, although it has never tested one.

Layout: Satellites photos of the area show an airfiled with one runway and seven large hangars -- suitable for cargo-liners -- inside the security zone. In addition, there are other manufacturing facilities inside the zone. The missile assembly building is at the south end of the security zone, as is the launch site. Some sources indicate that Palmikhim may also be home to Israel's version of the U.S.Doomsday plane, airborne command post to be used in wartime. Other sources suggest it is located in a hangar at Lod Airport.

The Jericho-class ballistic missiles are known to the CIA as Yavne, named for the nearby town.

The Bor

Command and Control: The "Bor" is Israel's underground command post. Located beneath the Defense Ministry complex in Tel Aviv, it is where Israeli officials gather in times of crisis. Israeli officials can command a war from the facility and there are other facilities of a similar but less strategic nature around the country.

Nes Zyonyaa

Chemicla/Biological Weapons: Beyong nuclear weapons, Israel is long believed to have biological and chemical weapons as well as the means to deliver them, primarily the Jericho missile.

Research and weaponization: A 1989 Defense Intelligence Agency report, obtained by the Natural Resources Defense Council, reported that Israel's Jericho missiles could carry high explosives or chemical warheads as well as nuclear. The country's leading chemical and biological warfare facility is at Nes Zionyaa, outside Tel Aviv. the Israeli Institute for Bio-Technology is believed to be home of both offensice and defensive research.

Be'er Yaakov

Missile production: Just outside the town of Be'er Yaakov lies Israel's main missile assembly facility. There, in a long building, the Jericho and Arrow missiles as well as the Shavit launch vehicle are assembled. The Jerichos ans Shavit are assembled in one area, the Arrow in another.

Proximity trouble: The U.S. has expressed concern about the proximity of the two assembly halls since the U.S. provides technology for the development of the Arrow -- a missile meant to improve on the Patriot anti-missile system. The U.S. also view the Jericho as a missile proliferation problem. The missiles are presumably shipped to the Hirbat Zekharayah missile field via a rail line that runs out of the factory and connects to the main Tel Aviv-Jerusalem line that runes past the missile field.

Soreq

Weapons research: Soreq is the equivalent of the U.S. national weapons laboratories and is considered by the Pentagon to be among the most sophisticated such operation in the world. It handles weapons design and construction as well as research.

Location: Soreq is near the town of Yavne and shares a security zone with the highly secret Palmikhim Air Base. According to a 1987 Pentagon study obtained by NBC News, "The Soreq Center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities... required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication."

Capabilities: Soreq parallels much of the technology which has been developped at the U.S. Sandia, Livermore and Los Alamos national labs. "The capability of Soreq to support Star Wars and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our national laboratories," according to the report. It is involved in research into nuclear explosive detonation as well as the diagnosis of radiation effects on biological systems, including human beings, and the processing of various nuclear fuels. The Pentagon study -- now ten years old -- concluded that "as far as nuclear technology is concerned, the Israelis are roughly where the U.S. [were] as the fission weapon field from 1955 to 1960," a time when the U.S. was moving from nuclear to thermonuclear weapons.

Reactor: The facility is built around a five megawatt reactor supplied by the United States under the "Atoms for Peace" program in 1960. The U.S. supplied it with nuclear fuel through 1977, when its contract expired.

Tirosh

Nuclear storage: Tirosh is one of two nuclear weapons storage facilities, according to various sources.

Location: Clearly visible from space, the facility appears as a network of roads lining bunkers spaces about 25 yards apart. The are about 70 bunkers. The facility, also off Israel's Route 38, is heavily guarded and surrounded by a perimeter road and security fences. At the junction of Route 38 and the entrance road of the facility, there is sign warning the drivers they are approaching a security zone where access is not permitted. There appears to be one security checkpoint on the entrance road. It is very close to the Tel Nof Air Base and the Hirbat Zekhrayah missile field [see below]. it is possible that Tirosh is the strategic weapons storage site, while Eilabun is the tactical weapons storage site.

Tel Nof Air Base

Strategic Air Power: Tel Nof is home to Israel's "Black Squadrons", the F-4 and F-16 units assigned to nuclear strike mission. A large airbase off Route 4, it is located only a few miles from north Tirosh, where nuclear weapons for its mission are reportedly stored and Hirbat Zekharyah, a missile base.

Location: Like the two other nuclear facilities, Tel Nof is located in Israel' heartland, just south of Tel Aviv. Several aircraft are belived to be on24-hour alert at the base. In 1973, eight F-4s were on alert and could habe been ordered to drop nuclear bombs on Egyptian and Syrian targets. It is possible that today some of the 24F-15E "Strike Eagles" bought from the US are stationed there. The "Strike Eagles" were originally developped by the U.S. as a tactival nuclear bomber and it is the only Israeli aircraft capable of flying a roundtrip to Iran without refuelling.

Hirbat Zekharyah

Missile range: The mobile Jericho-I and Jericho-II missiles, Israel's strategic rockets, are deployed at this base. They constitute the so-called "second wing" of the Israeli Air Force.

Location: Hirbat Zekharyah is near the town of Zekharyah between Jerusalem and the sea.

Weaponry: in satellite photos, about 100 missile emplacements can be seen, evenly divided between the short range Jericho-I and the medium-range Jericho-II. Jericho-I range is about 500 miles while Jericho-II has a range of about 750 miles. They are kept inside tunnels dug into limestone formations that are prevalent in the area, and rolled out for firing. In Decembert 1990, just before the Gulf War, Israel test-fired a Jericho from Zekharyah. Another Pentagon document states that the missiles can carry high-explosives, chemical or nuclear warheads.

Dimona

Nuclear Fuel depot: Once described as a "textile factory", the Dimona Center actually produces about 40 kilograms of weapons grade plutonium every year and has been doing so for 10 and possibly 20 years. The entire facility is protected by U.S. anti-aircraft defenses.

Dimona is situated 8,5 miles from the town of the same name and only 25 miles from the Jordanian border, between Beersheba and Sodom. Given that about four kilograms of weapons grade plutonium are used in each nuclear weapon, Israel has produced enough plutonium at Dimona to construct netween 100 and 200 nuclear weapons. It has also produced 170 kilograms of Lithium-6, which would produce about 220 kilograms of lithium-6 deuteride. Roughly 6 kilograms are needed to construct a thermo-nuclear weapon. Israel could, therefore, have as many as 35 thermo-nuclear weapons.

Structure: Dimona is made up of separate blocks. Currently, there are nine of these blocks, called machons. Machons 1,2, 8 and 9 are directly involved in producing materials for nuclear or thermonuclear weapons; the others provide services for these four.

The reactor: Machon 1, the domed structure is the reactor build by France. Machon 2 is the reprocessing plant which removes the plutonium produced in the reactor. It also contains an operation that separates the isotope lithium-6 from natural lithium for ultimate use in thermonuclear weapons. This is the key facility and the primary target in any raid on the center. Without it, there is no nuclear weapons development. Of the 2,700 employees at Dimona, only 150 are permitted access to Machon 2, which extands six floors underground.

The centrifuge: Machon 8 contains a gas centrifuge for the production of enriched uranium, an alternative fissile material, by an advanced laser enrichement process. And Machon 9 contains a laser isotope separation facility which can be used to increase the proportion of isotope plutonium-239 in plutonium, helping Israeli nuclear weapons scientists get more bang for their buck. The facility's reactor is now 35 years old and thus reaching the end of its practical lifetime.

<http://www.msnbc.com/news/wld/graphics/strategic_israel_dw.htm>

A noter que les estimations de 100 à 200 têtes nucléaires étaient déjà acceptées par les observateurs il y a plus de vingt ans. Les chiffres devraient donc être considérablement plus élevés aujourd'hui.

SIMPLIFIONS

The issue of Palestine is simply an ethical no brainer

by Joachim Martillo

 

1) Zionism is racist because it presupposes that the ethnic, national or historical rights of Jews to Palestine are superior to the human rights of the native population. That is racism plain and simple.

2) Racist Eastern European colonists stole the country from the native population.

It is a crime that spans 3 centuries.

Zionists have not changed their song and dance since the 1890s when Herzl was arguing that the Jewish settlement could serve as a colonial surrogate population for the British Empire. Israeli spokesman, American Zionists and Neocons argue that the State of Israel should serve the same role in an American Imperium today.

I am not going to banter with trivialities. Palestinians are the native population of Palestine. Racist Eastern Europeans colonized Palestine and stole it. All the textual, historical, archeological, and linguistic data indicates that Ashkenazim are an indigenous Eastern European population with practically no ancestral connection to Palestine (just like other Eastern Europeans) while Palestinians are the descendants of the Greco-Roman Judean population of Palestine. Zionists merely justify their crimes in the way that German Racists and Nazis justified their crimes by mythological primordialist nonsense. But suppose Ashkenazim were descended from Greco-Roman Judeans of some sort (at least 3/4s of Greco-Roman Judeans lived outside Palestine). So what? Vienna was founded 2000 years ago by Celts. Do the modern Irish have a legitimate claim to the modern city?

Zionism in the 21st century is the ethical equivalent of Slavery in the 19th century.

Racist Eastern Europeans stole Palestine by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence. Slavers stole Africans out of the homes by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence.

Racist Israeli pieds noirs hold onto the country that they stole by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence. Slavery was maintained by means of force, terrorism, aggression, murder and violence.

Categorical opposition to Zionism is the defining issue of peace and justice in the 21st century. 300 million Arabs, 1.2 billion Muslims, most of Europe, the Far East and Latin American cannot take any American seriously when he asserts a commitment to peace and justice unless he demands the eradication of Zionism in the ME just as Abolitionists demanded the categorical and unequivocal eradication of slavery.

Anyone that supports or is willing to tolerate Zionism is a racist. Racist American Zionists, Neocons, and Apocalyptic Evangelical Fundamentalists have formed an alliance against peace and justice on the basis of commitment to the maintenance of a racist Zionist colony in Palestine. When I watch how this alliance is driving the USA to betray fundamental American principles, I consider this alliance and Zionism a menace to me as an American.

The house is divided between two irreconcilable ideologies. One ideology is committed to American ideals, peace, justice, democracy and human rights; the other supports racist, genocidal, undemocratic, colonialism in ME and will destroy the fundamental principles of the USA to maintain the Zionist colony. A house so divided cannot stand. Within 30 years we Americans will fight a civil war on this issue.

By American standards terrorism against Israelis is completely justified, for Israelis are the ethical equivalent of antebellum Southerners and Slavers. Just think Nat Turner or John Brown. Any Israeli pied noir that does not actively fight against Zionism is complicit and shares guilt by American standards.

Joachim Martillo

<[email protected]>

2 - Guantanamo ou le déni du droit

LE POINT SUR LE PROCÈS MOUSSAOUI

Court seeks compromise in Moussaoui case

Larry Margasak

 

Washington -- A federal appeals court is inviting prosecutors to find substitutes for classified material so that the case of accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui can proceed.

The case is on hold while the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of appeals and a trial judge decide whether Moussaoui is getting enough information to craft a defense.

The 4th Circuit, in Richmond, Va., on Tuesday ordered a temporary halt to a pretrial dispute on Moussaoui's access to classified material. Instead, it told U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema to determine whether a compromise is possible.

Brinkema has questioned whether the government can prosecute the case after imposing a "shroud of secrecy" on documents and witnesses that might aid Moussaoui's defense.

"The government is to be given an opportunity to propose substitutions for the classified information authorized to be disclosed by the district court ... and the defendant and standby counsel are to be given an opportunity to respond to any proposed substitutions," the appeals court said in its two-page order.

Moussaoui, who is a French citizen, is representing himself and has no access to the large amounts of classified information prosecutors compiled. Lawyers appointed by the court to represent his interests have seen the material, but Moussaoui has refused to cooperate with them.

Moussaoui is the lone defendant in the United States charged as a conspirator with the Sept. 11 hijackers. The government said it would seek the death penalty if he is convicted of conspiracy to commit terrorism and hijack airliners.

The defendant has admitted he belongs to al-Qaida but denies he was part of the Sept. 11 conspiracy.

Brinkema issued a secret order on Jan. 31 that authorized disclosure of classified information and reportedly granted Moussaoui access to captured al-Qaida prisoner Ramzi Binalshibh -- an alleged coordinator of the attacks. The government's appeal of that order brought the case to the appellate court.

Moussaoui contends that Binalshibh, a suspected coordinator of the Sept. 11 attacks, and other al-Qaida captives can disprove the charge that he conspired with the attackers to commit terrorism.

On Monday the Justice Department, addressing Brinkema's concerns, told her in a written pleading that it was able to try Moussaoui in a civilian court while protecting his rights and government secrets.

That written pleading reaffirmed Attorney General John Ashcroft's objection to moving the case to military jurisdiction, even though some Pentagon and intelligence officials reportedly would prefer that option.

The 4th Circuit postponed oral argument on the government's appeal from early May to June 3. The appellate judges have closed proceedings to the public, although news organizations have asked that arguments on unclassified matters be conducted openly.

Brinkema scheduled a hearing May 7 to discuss proposed compromises. The proceeding will be held in private.

Associated Press, 16 avril 2003.

LE CAMP DE LA HONTE

Children held at Guantanamo Bay

Children younger than 16 are being held as "enemy combatants" in the American detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, the US military admitted yesterday, a practice human rights groups condemned as repugnant and illegal. Three boys aged between 13 and 15 are among about 660 inmates at the controversial camp, a US military official told the Guardian, on condition of anonymity. The official would not disclose their nationalities but said they had been brought from Afghanistan this year on suspicion of terrorism.

As soon as their ages were confirmed in medical tests, the children were moved to a "dedicated juvenile facility" at the camp, where they could socialise with each other, according to Lieutenant Corporal Barry Johnson, a spokesman at the base. "They are in a secure environment free from the influences of older detainees," Lt Cpl Johnson said. "They are receiving specialist mental health care, in recognition of the difficult circumstances that child combatants go through, and some basic education in terms of reading and writing." Efforts were under way to contact their home nations, he added.

But the children would still be held indefinitely and would not be granted access to lawyers, he said, because the US continues to view them as "enemy combatants" -- a term it has used to argue that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to the inmates, who have not been charged with any crimes.

That would be the case "until we ensure that they're no longer a threat to the United States, that there's no pending law enforcement against them, that they're no longer of intelligence value," Lt Cpl Johnson said.

Holding the children was "wholly repugnant and contrary to basic principles of human rights," said Angela Wright of Amnesty International, and contravened UN rules with "near-universal acceptance" regarding the treatment of juveniles. The United States and Somalia are the only member states of the United Nations no to have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child, but the US is a signatory, and thus has "an obligation not to defeat the object and purpose of the treaty," Ms Wright said. "This is clearly totally at odds with the purpose of the treaty."

The precise legal ramifications are unclear, since many experts argue that the US is already in breach of international law by holding any of the detainees indefinitely without trial or charge, regardless of their ages. Guantanamo Bay has attracted the condemnation of human rights campaigners since the first detainees arrived at what was Camp X-Ray, in January 2002. Soon after, they were pictured cowed, blindfolded and bound in the intense Cuban heat.

Since then, the US has built Camp Delta, a permanent and better-equipped facility, and has been at pains to describe how the inmates' religious and cultural preferences are being catered for. Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross are in regular contact with the inmates. But reports of hunger strikes and attempted suicides have continued to emerge from the base. Military officials have confirmed 25 suicide attempts by 17 people since the inception of the camp, with 15 this year, often by inmates attempting to strangle themselves. One detainee who reportedly fell into a coma after trying to hang himself was back off life support this week, Lt Cpl Johnson said, but there was no word on what the authorities would do with him next. The Pentagon has published regulations for how the inmates, who come from 42 countries, might be tried by military tribunals, but has not yet nominated any of them for trial.

The US court of appeals ruled last month that the government was entitled to deny due legal process to the detainees because they are not Americans and are not being held on US territory. The three boys are not the only inmates under 16 to have been brought to Guantanamo Bay. Canadian officials have been seeking for months to gain access to Omar al-Khadr, a Canadian national who they say is being held at Camp Delta after being captured on July 27 during fighting in eastern Afghanistan. He was 15 at the time, they said.

The Guardian, Thursday April 24, 2003

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/>

3 - L'Iraq des marais

Relisons l'interview donnée par Pierre-Jean Luizard, chercheur au CNRS, à Mouna Naïm, du journal Le Monde, le 3 avril, p. 6. Il parlait donc une semaine avant la chute de Baghdad. Cet article ne figure d'ailleurs pas dans les archives du journal. Pourquoi ? Le chercheur craint-il maintenant pour sa carrière d'irakologue ?

"Tout le monde a constaté, dit-il, que les Etats-Unis ont ménagé la Garde républicaine. il y a eu des bombardements ciblés sur la direction irakienne, mais la Garde républicaine n'a pas été visée. Les Américains n'ont commencé que très récemment à s'attaquer à elle. Tout le monde a interprété ctte façon d'entrer en guerre comme une réédition de 1991. [Ces propos sont difficiles à comprendre. La campagne de 2003 ne ressemble guère à celle de 1991. D'autre part, il semblait que la Garde républicaine avait été repliée vers le nord, pour défendre Baghdad. ] Tous les gens que j'ai joints en Irak m'ont dit être certains que les Américains veulent ménager les forces de répression parce qu'ils entendent compter sur elles une fois le régime renversé.

La crainte qui habite bon nombre d'Irakiens jusqu'à présent, c'est que la guerre soit doublée de négociations avec le régime. Et je sais, de source sûre, que ces négociations ont bien existé. Elles n'ont pas abouti parce que Saddam Hussein voulait sauver l'essentiel de son clan. Il réclamait un laissez-passer pour une cinquantaine de personnes et les Américains ne lui ont laissé de porte de sortie que pour neuf, dont lui-même, avec les garanties nécessaires qu'elles éhapperaient à la justice internationale et qu'elles bénéficieraient d'une partie du magot que le régime a réussi à mettre à l'étranger. [...]

Question: Les négociations dont vous parlez ont-elles continué après le déclenchement des hostilités ?

Oui. Certains enfants de dirigeants irakiens -- et pas des moindres -- sont à l'abri, dans certains pays arabes ou européens, notamment là où le régime a mis à l'abri une partie de son magot. Certains comptes dont les Américains avaient interdit l'usage ont été débloqués. C'est notamment le cas pour la fille de Taha Yassine Ramadan, qui est en Suisse maintenant. Tout cela se sait. Les Irakiens ont vu que beaucoup de dirigeants ont vendu leurs maisons et ont envoyé leurs enfants à l'étranger.

Qui, hormis la fille dre M. Ramadan, est parti à l'étranger ?

Ce sont surtout des filles. C'est important du point de vue irakien. C'est par le biais de ces enfants autorisés à partir en Syrie, en Jordanie et dans certtains pays européens que les négociations ont continué, et grâce à certains intermédiaires qui ont traditionnellement joué le rôle de go-between entre les Américains et le régime. [...]

Rappelons que ces propos datent, au plus tard, du 1er avril, puisqu'ils sont parus le 2.

L'HYPOTHÈSE SAOUDIENNE

Baghdad did not fall -- it was handed over

The Arabic media is rife with speculation that the Saudi regime brokered a secret deal between the White House and Iraq's ruling party.

By Jalal Ghazi

 

April 14, 2003 -- Arabic media are speculating that a "safqua" -- Arabic for a secret deal -- was arranged between the United States and Iraq's Baath regime to hand over Baghdad. Although nobody can pinpoint the exact terms, there are three clear outcomes. First, the lives of many American and British forces as well as most senior Baath officials were spared. Second, Baghdad itself did not turn into the blood bath widely anticipated by military experts. Third, the war was shortened dramatically, saving the region -- especially Saudi Arabia -- from catastrophic consequences.

The following clues, gleaned from Arabic and U.S. media, suggest why the fall of Baghdad was premeditated.

1. None of the seven rescued POWs was hurt. On the contrary, all seven were found in good condition. All were found dressed in pajamas rather than the standard uniforms for prisoners of war, indicating that they were being treated as guests rather than as POWs. Usually, Arabs give pajamas to guests who sleep over in their houses. Arab reports point out that POW Jessica Lynch was similarly treated; she was kept in the cleanest room in an Iraqi hospital until she was rescued on April 2. In both cases, American forces were tipped off about the location of the POWs by unknown Iraqi citizens. Kuwaiti prisoners, by contrast, who were captured during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait more than 12 years ago, are only now being discovered.

To date, none of the seven war prisoners has spoken directly to American TV reporters, unlike U.S. soldiers injured in the fighting, who became instant media sources. We are told the seven POWs were taken to Kuwait for medical treatment and intelligence debriefing.

2. American tanks rolled into Baghdad with very little resistance while Basra, nowhere near as heavily fortified as Baghdad, sustained almost three weeks of fierce resistance. The fall of Baghdad was so sudden that it left many of the Arab and Muslim volunteers who went to Iraq to fight the coalition forces in total disarray. Initially given weapons and uniforms, thousands of these volunteers -- who came from Yemen, Egypt, Syria, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere -- wound up having no one to tell them what to do. Al-Jazeera reports that some are now still fighting U.S. forces while others are actually attacking Iraqi civilians.

3. Baath forces refrained from destroying a single bridge in Baghdad, which could have blocked U.S. tanks access to the city, at least temporarily. Moreover, only a handful of Iraq's oil fields were set on fire, leaving the vast majority intact almost in accordance with Bush's demands.

4. None of the senior Baath officials has surrendered to date, with the exception of two high-level scientists. Instead, tens of thousands of Baath operatives managed to disappear without a sign of internal divisions. This strongly suggests that the departure of the Baath regime was ordered from the most senior levels and was highly organized. It also explains why most of the Iraqi forces, including the Republican Guards, were nowhere to be found when U.S. forces entered Baghdad.

5. Iraqi ambassador to the United Nations Mohammad Al-Douri, a high-level Baath functionary, was quoted in both American and Arabic media as saying, "The game is over," and that he had not been in contact with Saddam Husssein for weeks. When asked why he used the word "game," the ambassador replied, "The war is over." Meanwhile, al-Jazeera reported that Al-Douri has been allowed to travel to Syria and that he may be asked to represent the new Iraqi government at the United Nations.

While Arabs all over the Middle East now routinely talk of the deal that saved Baghdad, they also speculate that the same deal may have saved Saddam. Unlike the hunt for Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, which preoccupied U.S. forces for months, the hunt for the dictator no longer appears to be the top priority for U.S. forces in the wake of Baghdad's fall.

Where could Saddam be if he is still alive? Some Arab media experts speculate he may have sought refuge in Mecca, the most sacred Islamic place in the world. No non-Muslims ever lived in and very few have even set foot in this holiest of Muslim cities.

If it turns out that Saddam is indeed in Mecca, it would be one further clue that the architect of the "safqua" or deal between the Baath and the United States was Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah -- a trusted intermediary of the Bush family and the only Arab leader invited to President Bush's Crawford ranch.

For the Saudis, as well as for many other Arab leaders, the deal offers the one hope of sparing the Middle East the consequences of a bloody and prolonged war of resistance in Iraq. For the Americans, the deal offers a chance of stabilizing postwar Iraq and its neighbors, leaving the door open for what Bush calls the road map to peace between Israelis and Palestinians.

* Pacific News Service associate Jalal Ghazi monitors and translates Arab media for New California Media, a project of PNS and WorldLink TV.

AUTRE ANALYSE (PALESTINIENNE)

Baghdad - real Looting Yet to Start

by Issa Sarras

 

[Extrait] For a moment let me refer to the situation in Baghdad. Towards the afternoon of Tuesday (April 8) things became quiet there. The 24-hour US and British bombing stopped. The residents of the capital lived the calmest night since the start of the war. (Why ? ) The next morning there was no trace of Iraqi political or military presence in a significant part of the capital, especially the eastern and southern parts.

Surely there is a reason why the bombing suddenly stopped -- long before the US marines entered the said parts of Baghdad. We may know soon, or we may not know until decades from now (after all, we are still learning some of the details about events that happened decades ago in this region only now). One reason given is that Nizar Khazraji, former Iraqi chief of staff who was living in Denmark (a man accused of committing massacres against Kurds and wanted for justice) was moved to Southern Iraq by the CIA where he played a role in convincing some Iraqi commanders in Baghdad to put down their weapons in exchange for amnesty. This could be part of what happened, but we are not certain of what exactly happened. All we can say is that certain facts are denied to us, also by the "coalition". Then, on Wednesday, came the pictures of people looting, small crowds celebrating, or taking down the statue of Saddam, and celebrations in some northern cities. An Iraqi lawyer explained to Aljazeera that some of the looters were acting upon directions from "coalition" forces. After all, the apparent tolerance of all the looting, while the US marines standing and doing nothing, wasn't quite convincing. Besides, we haven't seen those large crowds really. Some scenes of people hitting or tearing pictures of Saddan - by few individuals - were repeated time and again, either for want of more pictures, or to try to drive to us a certain message. In any case, the message was received, and very few people anywhere really supported Saddam's regime.

10 avril 2003. Independant Palestinian Information Network:

UNE VERSION IRANIENNE

Iran Media Leaks Secret Deal Behind Demise Of Baghdad

 

An Iranian news agency close to top conservative military figures attributed the fall of Baghdad to a secret tripartite agreement between Saddam Hussein, Russia and the US.

According to the Baztab agency, 13 days after the start of the war, Saddam and Russian intelligence allegedly pledged to hand over Baghdad with minimal resistance to allied forces provided they spared the lives of Saddam and a hundred of his close relatives. The US, for its part, promised to safely send Saddam and his entourage to a third country.

Baztab added that Mohammed Saeed Al Sahaf, Iraqi Information Minister, was instructed to stay in Baghdad until the very last moments to lend the impression that everything in Saddam's camp was under control. The agency also claimed that Russia gained $5 billion to orchestrate this agreement.

Iran's state TV, which is under the supervision of the supreme leader, also attributed the fall of Baghdad to a secret deal between coalition forces and the deposed Iraqi president. It aired the fall of Baghdad without showing scenes of Iraqis dancing in the streets. Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, said there are serious questions surrounding Saddam's demise.

Apr 15, 2003, Source: Gulf News.

RUSSIE BLANCHE

OU L'IMAGINATION DE ROBERT FISK

Where is Saddam Hussein ?

Goodman : Well. I'm not there yet. But you mentioned your Colleague

Fisk : You're going to ask me where he is, aren't you ? (they laugh)

Goodman : OK, where is he ?

Fisk : You know what, I have this absolute fixation that he's in Belarus, the most horrible ex-Soviet state that exists: Minsk. I tell you why I think this. This is long before the Iran -- sorry, Freudian slip -- long before the Iraq war, I had this absolute obsession that Minsk -- I've been to Minsk ; it's a horrible city ! It's full of whiskey, corruption, prostitutes and damp apartments. Very, very favorable to the Ba'ath party of Iraq. And I noticed in the local newspaper here in Beirut, I fear about six or seven weeks ago an article that said that the Olympic committee of Belarus in Minsk had invited Uday Hussein, beloved son of the 'great ruler of Iraq', to a chess tournament in Minsk and I thought, My God, this is where they're going to go. And if you think of all the stories which may be complete hogwash of how they got out by train with the Russian ambassador through Syria, where else to go but Minsk ? I actually mentioned it to my foreign desk and my foreign editor said "Off you go to Belarus ! " and I said "No please, please, not Belarus ! I've been there before. It's awful ! " But I do have this kind of suspicion maybe he's there. But there you go. He may be in Baghdad. He may be captured tonight. I really have not the slightest idea.

Voyez cette interview faite au retour de Baghdad par l'un des meilleurs journalistes du moment, Robert Fisk, de The Independent.

MÊME LES ISRAÉLIENS

ne pensaient pas qu'on pouvait prendre Baghdad comme on cueille un fruit mûr. Le 5 avril, ils recommandaient aux forces US surtout d'attendre et d'essayer de faire des coups de main. Ils aiment bien donner des conseils aux militaires américains, qui ne les suivent d'ailleurs jamais.

Jerusalem (IOL & News Agencies) -- Driven by a hands-on experience in gritty Arab resistance, Israeli military experts advised the U.S.-led troops to steer clear at all costs of a ground battle in the Iraqi capital and rely on intelligence from Iraqi defectors to eliminate the leaders of the Iraqi regime.

"Capturing Baghdad by force would be like if somebody decided to commit suicide," Arnon Soffer, professor at the University of Haifa and at the National Defence College, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) Saturday, April 5. Soffer said that as the U.S. weigh their different options for gaining control of the capital Baghdad, American forces will not lose sight of one of their main objectives : finding Saddam Hussein. Soffer argued one way U.S. forces can get Saddam is by conducting nightly incursions into the center of Baghdad "with a mighty power for a short period of time."

Israel's top military intelligence officials believe the United Sates should put storming Baghdad on the back burner, at least for the time being and mull other options. "There is the option of imposing a closure... blockade, assassinations... special operations," Director of Israeli Military Intelligence General Aharon Zeevi Farkash told the daily Yediot Ahronot Friday, April 4. He believed U.S. troops were "testing the ground," and that they were a lot more experienced now than they were two weeks ago at the start of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

Another way of hunting Saddam is to win over collaborators close to the regime soon either with money or promises, according to Mordechai Kedar, senior research associate at Bar Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Intelligence Is The Answer

For his part, Shlomo Gazit, a retired major general and former head of military intelligence, said that without good intelligence on Baghdad, the U.S.-led forces would be faced with two scenarios: laying siege to the city of about 5 million and waiting for it to surrender or going in for what could be a "bloody war" literally "from house to house." "If there is one lesson, I would call it in one word: intelligence," said Gazit. He claimed that without exceptional intelligence the Israeli army's invasion in 2001 of Jenin, in the northern West Bank, would have been a lot more deadly for both sides.

However, top U.S. military brass seem to be playing it cool regarding their plans for Baghdad and, as would be expected, are keeping their cards close to their vest. They are not convinced of the Israeli notion of siege and other things. "You're just going to have to be ready for lots of things. So this notion of a siege and so forth, I think, is not the right mental picture," said General Richard Myers, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a press conference on Thursday, April 3. Myers said that once Baghdad is isolated, what is happening inside the city becomes "irrelevant" to the rest of the country. The U.S. troops seized control of Saddam's International Airport, 20 kilometers (12 miles) from the center of Baghdad, early Friday and were preparing for a decisive assault on the city.

Une chose est sûre: les stratèges militaires et les spécialistes du renseignement israéliens étaient complètement à côté de la plaque. De vraies nullités. Il faut dire que l'armée israélienne est surtout réduite à des tâches de police où elle ne sait faire qu'une chose: massacrer les leaders palestiniens. Ces prétoriens désespérés ont perdu tout flair politique depuis longtemps parce que l'armée des "pionniers" a fait place à des "professionnels", des partisans du massacre facile: on dézingue un type qui a pignon sur rue avec un Apache de 22 millions de dollars et des roquettes. Ils ont perdu tout sens des réalités.

COUPS DE MAIN OU COUPS DE FIL ?

Le 4 avril, un dépêche UPI dit ceci:

CIA paramilitary teams, working with Delta Forces are still inside Iraq, attempting to kill 30 top Iraqi leaders, including Saddam's other son, Uday,39, who commands the Iraqi fedayeen, several U.S. sources said. One administration official confirmed that U.S. intelligence has the names, addresses and cell phone numbers of the 30 targets.

 

Et cinq jours plus tard, le 9 avril, tout le monde disparaît, sans laisser de trace. Qui peut croire ça ?

LES BEAUTÉS DE LA MASSACROLOGIE

On Killing

 

How Military Trainers Overcome Inhibition on Killing

These are excerpts from a much longer article in the current print issue of Der Spiegel, 16/2003. 14th April 2003.

Excerpt

"...David Grossman, 46 a Psychology Professor at West Point, is expert in killing. "Killology" is the name given to the subject that he has invented. "On Killing" is his standard work. (On Killing. The Psychological Cost of Learning to kill in War and Society, Back Bay Publishing, Boston). In almost all soldiers lurks a pacifist. In the second world war only 15 to 20% of soldiers used their weapons in order to try to kill. In the Korean Ware 55% shot their weapons, in Vietnam it was 90-95% who aimed at the enemy. It is military trainers who have learned how to achieve this. Never before has there been so many who have killed intentionally as in the Vietnam war. And never before so many who, after the war, break down and become psychological wrecks.

It is important for the military that the recruits are young, pliant, malleable and inexperienced. There are those who are just seeking a job, any job or perhaps a bit of a career, where they otherwise see no chance for themselves, other than that offered by a military recruiter. Or indeed, they are the people like Dave Grossman or Anthony Swofford, "army brats", army children, for whom it has always been the case that, in their families that one goes into the military

...(soldiers) always swear about the depth of comradeship between soldiers that others do not understand. It is a bond, according to Swofford, that is actually "stronger than that between men and women. A total trust. It works. It's part of the indoctrination." The worst fear in combat, the war researchers know very well, is not "will I be killed ?" but will I be able to do my job ? Or will I leave the others in the lurch ? Members of military groups commit themselves to each other, and exonerate each other, at one and the same time. They commit themselves to killing. And they exonerate each other because the responsibility for killing is shared : one makes the munition ready, the other has to shoot, another gives the order. Each carries a part of the guilt. For this reason soldiers are better killers if the group is supporting them. If one then dies the killing gets even more heavy. Only if a half of the group are themselves dead, does combat morale crumble.

A group of marines is capable, for example, in the street in Nassirija, to shoot at a woman with a child, because they suspected that she was co-operating with Saddam's warriors. A father in a family could probably not do that. Drill helps when it comes to killing, conditioning for every minute, up the thepoint where the heart is beating at 300 times a minute, in which the frontal brain is switched off and the back brain commands, automatically unfolding what is to be done. And what is to be done is what the soldier has learned in shooting practice, at human like objects

...Distance, naturally, makes it easier for the warrior. Obviously it is easier for those who are dropping bombs from thousands of feet upand if the enemy position then shimmers green, on the night sight equipment, then the distinction between video game and war blurs. Click. It's fun. The inhibition increases in the closer the soldier is to his victim, as does the likelihood that the perpetrator will suffer psychological consequences. The worse thing imaginable, according to Grossman, is the "intimate brutality", the pushing of a weapon in the body of the enemy killing by bayonet. Many bayonets in many wars remained unused. Sometimes, in the first world war the soldiers preferred to use spades to strike down the enemy. It is difficult for the soldier when he recognises himself in the enemy. The more foreign looking the face, the easier it is to kill. In the second world war 44% of American soldiers declared themselves wild enough to kill a Japanese. But only 6% said that of killing Germans. For that reason it counts to create distance - cultural, moral and social distance : the enemy is unworthy. The enemy is a "gook", a "slit eye"...

The problem is in the eyes, the look of the opponent. The blindfold of the delinquent before the firing squad is not only mercy for him, but a means of helping the others, who perhaps would otherwise not find it so easy to kill..."

Extrait d'une traduction par B.D. de l'article: "Militär: Zwei Ex-GIs über den Reiz des Tötens im Krieg und den Horror danach", de Barbara Supp, Der Spiegel, 14 avril 2003.

HACHÉS MENUS

Les bombes à fragmentation démembrent les femmes et les enfants

Bienfaits de la civilisation américaine !

 

CTV - Friday 4 April 2003 - Ottawa: Red Cross doctors who visited southern Iraq this week saw "incredible" levels of civilian casualties including a truckload of dismembered women and children, a spokesman said Thursday from Baghdad.

Roland Huguenin, one of six International Red Cross workers in the Iraqi capital, said doctors were horrified by the casualties they found in the hospital in Hilla, about 160 kilometres south of Baghdad.

"There has been an incredible number of casualties with very, very serious wounds in the region of Hilla," Huguenin said in a interview by satellite telephone.

"We saw that a truck was delivering dozens of totally dismembered dead bodies of women and children. It was an awful sight. It was really very difficult to believe this was happening."

Huguenin said the dead and injured in Hilla came from the village of Nasiriyah, where there has been heavy fighting between American troops and Iraqi soldiers, and appeared to be the result of "bombs, projectiles."

"At this stage we cannot comment on the nature of what happened exactly at that place ... but it was definitely a different pattern from what we had seen in Basra or Baghdad.

"There will be investigations I am sure."

Baghdad and Basra are coping relatively well with the flow of wounded, said Huguenin, estimating that Baghdad hospitals have been getting about 100 wounded a day.

Most of the wounded in the two large cities have suffered superficial shrapnel wounds, with only about 15 per cent requiring internal surgery, he said.

But the pattern in Hilla was completely different.

"In the case of Hilla, everybody had very serious wounds and many, many of them small kids and women. We had small toddlers of two or three years of age who had lost their legs, their arms. We have called this a horror."

At least 400 people were taken to the Hilla hospital over a period of two days, he said -- far beyond its capacity. [...]

Canadian TV, 4 avril 2003.

<http://truthout.org/docs_03/040603A.shtml>

LE PILLAGE DE L'IRAQ

NOS VUES SONT CONFIRMÉES PAR DES SPÉCIALISTES

US government implicated in planned theft of Iraqi artistic treasures

 

By Ann Talbot of wsws.org April 19, 2003

 

As the full extent of the looting of Iraq's National Museum in Baghdad emerges, it becomes clear that there was nothing accidental about it. Rather it was the result of a long planned project to plunder the artistic and historical treasures that are held in the museums of Iraq. Had the National Museum of Iraq been looted by poor slum dwellers it would have been crime enough, and the responsibility would have rested with the American administration that refused, despite repeated warnings, to provide for the security of Baghdad's cultural buildings. Once the museum staff were able to communicate with the outside world, however, it became apparent that the looting was not random. It was the work of people who knew what they were looking for and came specially equipped for the job. Dr. Dony George, head of the Baghdad Museum, said, "I believe they were people who knew what they wanted. They had passed by the gypsum copy of the Black Obelisk. This means that they must have been specialists. They did not touch those copies."

Speaking on Britain's Channel 4 News, he told Dr. John Curtis of the British Museum that among the artifacts that have been stolen are the sacred vase of Warka, a 5,000-year-old golden vessel found at Ur, an Akkadian statue base, and an Assyrian statue. It was, said Dr. Curtis, "Like stealing the Mona Lisa." It was only almost a week after the museum was originally looted that Dr. George was able to alert archaeologists worldwide to what had been stolen. The American military authorities had made no effort to prevent the objects leaving Baghdad or to put in process an international search for the stolen artifacts. The US reluctance to act cannot be explained by any lack of warning. Professional archaeologists and art historians had told the Pentagon of the danger of looting beforehand. Dr. Irving Finkel of the British Museum told Channel 4 that the looting was "entirely predictable and could easily have been stopped." The museum was the victim of a carefully planned assault. The thieves who took the most valuable material came prepared with equipment to lift the heaviest objects, which the staff could not move from the galleries, and had keys to the vaults where the most valuable items were stored. Not since the Nazis systematically stripped the museums of Europe has such a crime been committed.

The US online publication of Business Week magazine reiterated the theme of premeditation and conspiracy in the looting of Iraq's museums in an April 17 article headlined "Were Baghdad's Antiquity Thieves Ready ? " The article carries the subtitle : "They may have known just what they were looking for because dealers ordered the most important pieces well in advance." BusinessWeek writes : "It was almost as if the perpetrators were waiting for Baghdad to fall to make their move. Gil J. Stein, a professor of archaeology at the University of Chicago, which has been conducting digs in Iraq for 80 years, believes that dealers ordered the most important pieces well in advance. 'They were looking for very specific artifacts,' he says. 'They knew where to look.'" Since the last Gulf War in 1991 Iraqi antiquities have flooded onto the market from the museums that were looted then and from archaeological sites that have been attacked with bulldozers. At such locations ancient statues have been sawed apart so they could be exported.

This plundering of Iraq's cultural heritage has only whetted the appetite of collectors who are already responsible for looting Far Eastern, Latin American and Italian archaeological sites. With the collapse of global stock markets, works of art and antiquities have come to be regarded even more highly as a secure investment, fuelling an already huge underground market. The illegal trade in antiquities is thought to be as lucrative as drugs trafficking, to which it is often linked. According to a report by the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, "The Trade in illicit Antiquities: the Destruction of the World's Archaeological Heritage," produced in 2001, London and New York are the main markets for this trade. Switzerland, which allows an art work that has been in the country for five years to be granted a legal title, is a key trans-shipment point. Professor Lord Renfrew of Kaimsthorn, director of the McDonald Institute at Cambridge, told a press conference at the report's launch that the trade continued because "The government is in the pocket of the art market, which wants to keep the flow of antiquities." He added, "It's a scandal."

As news of the latest looting broke, the Labour government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair organised a hasty press conference in the British Museum, at which Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell promised official support to protect Iraqi antiquities. Even as she spoke, the National Library of Iraq was being looted. Home to rare, centuries-old illuminated copies of the Koran and other examples of Islamic calligraphy, as well as irreplaceable historical documents from the Ottoman Empire, the building was set on fire, destroying an untold number of texts. Reporter Robert Fisk, who saw the flames, ran to get US marines in an attempt to save some of the collection, but they refused to help. Fisk wrote in the Independent, "I gave the map location, the precise name in Arabic and English. I said the smoke could be seen from three miles away and it would take only five minutes to drive there. Half an hour later, there wasn't an American at the scene and the flames were shooting 200 feet into the air." After the fate of Baghdad museum, it can only be concluded that the generalised looting and arson at the library served to cover up a more systematic crime, in which select manuscripts were stolen for wealthy collectors. In the process they connived in the burning of books-another Nazi practice.

The role of the ACCP

In the aftermath of these two devastating attacks on culture, attention has focused on the activities of the American Council for Cultural Policy. Even the British press that works under some of the toughest libel laws in the world has been willing to suggest that the ACCP may have influenced US government policy on Iraqi cultural artifacts. The ACCP was formed in 2001 by a group of wealthy art collectors to lobby against the Cultural Property Implementation Act, which attempts to regulate the art market and stop the flow of stolen goods into the US. It has defended New York art dealer Frederick Schultz, who was convicted under the National Stolen Property Act, and opposes the use of the 1977 US v. McClain decision as a legal precedent in cases concerning the handling of stolen art objects. In the McClain case a US judge accepted that all pre-Columbian art or jewellery brought into the US without the express consent of the Mexican government was stolen property. Mexican law regards all archaeological artifacts as state property and bans their export. Mexico is one of a number of countries that has such legislation.

Ashton Hawkins, a leading art lawyer and founder of the ACCP, regards such legislation as "retentionist". He has condemned the archaeologically rich "source" countries for attempting to protect their archaeological sites and museums by such measures, and has argued that under the Clinton administration such "retentionist" policies came to dominate US government policy. Hawkins has his sights set on the great Middle Eastern museums. He has called for the Egyptian antiquities that are held in the Cairo Museum to be dispersed. "I would like to propose," he said, "that the Cairo Museum offer museums around the world the opportunity to acquire up to 50 objects for their collections. In return, the museums would make a very substantial contribution for the construction of the new museum under the Giza plateau-$1 million each, for example." The ACCP's inaugural meeting took place at the Fifth Avenue apartment of Guido Goldman, a collector of Uzbek textiles. Among those present were Arthur Houghton, the former curator of the Getty Museum at Malibu in California, which is notorious for displaying works of suspicious provenance. Hawkins himself retired in 2000 as vice president of the trustees of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, an institution that, according to its own former director, Thomas Hoving, holds many artifacts looted from Etruscan tombs.

Before the war began, the ACCP met with Pentagon officials, declaring their great concern for Iraqi antiquities. What that concern means is evident from the remarks of William Pearlstein, the group's treasurer, who also describes Iraqi laws on antiquities as "retentionist". The ACCP den· that they want Iraqi laws changed, but the looting of the museum and library will effectively circumvent that problem if US law on stolen art objects and archaeological material can be changed. Professor John Merryman of Stanford Law School and a member of the ACCP has called for a "selective international enforcement of export controls" in US courts. In other words, it should be perfectly legitimate to import the objects looted from Baghdad if a US court chooses not to recognise Iraqi legislation. Merryman set out the organisation's principles in a 1998 paper in which he argued that the fact that an art object had been stolen did not in itself bar it from lawful importation into the US. He went on to claim, "The existence of a market preserves cultural objects that might otherwise be destroyed or neglected by providing them with a market value. In an open, legitimate trade cultural objects can move to the people and institutions that value them most and are therefore most likely to care for them" ( International Law and Politics, vol. 31 : 1).

This is a self-justifying argument that reeks of hypocrisy. Wealthy collectors can now point to the chaos on the streets of Baghdad, the looting of the museum and the burning of the library as evidence that the Iraqis are unable or unwilling-too poor or too ignorant-to look after their treasures, which would be better housed in American museums or private collections. The ACCP's ideas represent the interests of particularly rapacious sections of the US ruling class, who operate on the principle that everything-even an object of priceless artistic or scientific value-is defined by its "market value". What they mean is price, since the real value of the objects stolen from the Museum of Baghdad and the Iraqi National Library is incalculable. These are quite literally people who understand the price of everything and the value of nothing. The prescription for the market to determine possession of and access to works of art and archaeological material would place these artifacts in the hands of a rich minority and make public access to them depend on the good will of their wealthy owners. Despite the fact that many of the ACCP members have been associated with major public institutions, their agenda is profoundly opposed to the public dissemination of art and archaeology. They are not only trying to change the law in other countries, but are working against the most progressive traditions of American society, which has always prized its public museums.

A scientific tradition

The development of public museums went hand in hand with the development of a scientific understanding of archaeological artifacts and the societies that produced them. Publicly funded museums represented a break with the tradition of private treasure hunting. Their exhibits aimed to display the material artifacts of the past in a rational and scientific manner. The accumulation of archaeological artifacts in private hands tends to disrupt scientific work, since material becomes scattered, is difficult to catalogue and much of it remains unknown to scholars working in the field. Public museums are public not only in their funding and because they open their galleries to visitors, but in the sense that they make knowledge available to all-something that has been recognised as a primary requisite of the scientific process since the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century. One of the effects of the looting of the Baghdad museum has been to destroy the card catalogue and computer records of the museum's holdings. This has not only made tracking down its treasures more difficult, but has also undermined generations of patient archaeological work. To destroy such a catalogue is, both in a symbolic and practical sense, to make a collection private, because its contents become unknown to the outside world.

While the major objects are well known internationally, a museum's records goes far beyond these spectacular works of art. It includes all the minor finds of archaeological excavations that, in themselves, are not eye-catching, but when studied together produce a picture of a society that cannot be gained from its art alone. Archaeologists spend their time sifting the detritus of past civilisations, often literally. They may sieve tons of earth looking for beetle wing cases or seeds. Cess pits and rubbish heaps produce a wealth of knowledge. What is thrown away and discarded provides a context for the relics of great temples and palaces, or royal tombs. Petr Charvat's recent book Mesopotamia before History [Routledge, London, 2002] contains lovingly photographed images of pieces of mud impressed with rush matting. This is not the stuff to grace a collector's cabinet, but reveals vital information about the craft skills and way of life of ancient Mesopotamians.

A blow to world scholarship

The Baghdad museum was more than a place to display artifacts. All excavations carried out in Iraq by international teams of archaeologists were reported to it. The museum therefore possessed a database of knowledge that was accessible to researchers internationally, and was the hub of a vast cooperative endeavour. Its looting and the destruction of its records are a blow to world scholarship. It threatens to turn the clock back more than 150 years to the period before scientific archaeology in Mesopotamia. Early excavations were by modern standards unscientific, as excavators were still learning their discipline by a process of trial and error. One of the most elementary lessons of that learning process was that context is everything in archaeology. An artifact can only tell its full story if its context is known. By context, an archaeologist means the physical position of an artifact in the ground, its relationship to other artifacts and to the layers of earth around it. From this information it is possible to determine an artifact's relative date and considerable information about its practical use and social significance. Ripped out of this context, it loses much of its meaning. Even the finest work of art can be better appreciated when its context and the social conditions of its creators are understood.

In its widest sense, understanding an artifact's context means understanding its relationship to the entire archaeological site at which it was found, to other sites round about it, and to the historic landscape in which it belongs. While national feelings are often evoked to justify keeping archaeological artifacts in their country of origin, the more important scientific reason for doing so is that the context of the artifact is preserved by keeping it close to where it was found. It is still possible to see in modern Iraq houses built by similar methods to those employed by ancient builders and to see boats built to similar designs. The full significance of Mesopotamian artifacts can only be appreciated by seeing them in the context of the extraordinary landscape of modern Iraq-a country where every hill that rises above the plain has been built up from layers of mud brick representing generations of occupation. The American colonial administrator, retired general Jay Garner, tried to co-opt the emotional impact of that landscape for his own political purposes by holding his big tent meeting within view of the 4,000-year-old ziggurat of Ur, which was the temple platform for the moon god Nanna. But by allowing the museum of Baghdad to be looted, the US authorities have shown they have no regard for the real importance of Iraq to human history. [...]

This succession of empires and the Persian empire that followed were sustained by the immense productivity of the irrigation system and the complex system of administration that maintained it. The sophisticated concepts that had been developed in the process fed into the intellectual systems of later societies. Even the Greeks, from whom we derive the name for the land between the rivers, stood in awe of Mesopotamia's achievements. One of the ministries that has been systematically destroyed in the recent days of looting is the Ministry of Irrigation. We might say that by this act the US administration seeks to drive Iraq back to the dark ages, except that Iraq has never known a dark age in the sense that Europe has. Empires might rise and fall, but as long as the irrigation system continued to function the land between the rivers could produce more food than it needed. By attacking the irrigation system, the US administration is causing more damage in a few weeks than any other previous invader.

Iraq's cultural significance did not end with the close of the Persian empire. Throughout the European dark ages it remained a haven of learning, preserving under the Caliphs of Baghdad classical texts lost in the West. Islamic scholarship was to prove vital to the re-emergence of Aristotelian philosophy in thirteenth century Europe and to the Renaissance. The full extent of the losses in this respect will only become apparent when the looting at the National Library is itemised. That account is yet to come. What is already clear is that a great crime has been committed against not only the Iraqi people, but against the whole of humanity, since it is the history of humanity that has been attacked. For this reason the sack of Baghdad marks a significant point on the trajectory of the Bush administration as it attempts to plunge the world into a new barbarism that would outstrip anything that history can show from the past.

<www.gooff.com/NM/templates/Breaking_News.asp ?

articleid=842&zoneid=2>

L'IRAQ MIS À SAC

Looting was organized outside Iraq

 

Associated Press, 18 avril 2003, Paris -- Some of the looters who ravaged Iraqi antiquities appeared highly organized and even had keys to museum vaults and were able to take pieces from safes, experts said Thursday at an international meeting. One expert said he suspected the looting was organized outside the country.

The U.N. cultural agency [UNESCO] gathered some 30 art experts and cultural historians in Paris on Thursday to assess the damage to Iraqi museums and libraries looted in the aftermath of the U.S.-led invasion. Although much of the looting was haphazard, experts said some of the thieves clearly knew what they were looking for and where to find it, suggesting they were prepared professionals.

"It looks as if part of the looting was a deliberate planned action," said McGuire Gibson, a University of Chicago professor and president of the American Association for Research in Baghdad. "They were able to take keys for vaults and were able to take out important Mesopotamian materials put in safes." "I have a suspicion it was organized outside the country, in fact I'm pretty sure it was," Gibson said. He added that if a good police team was put together, "I think it could be cracked in no time." Cultural experts, curators and law enforcement officials are scrambling to both track down the missing antiquities and prevent further looting of the valuables.

The pillaging has ravaged the irreplaceable Babylonian, Sumerian and Assyrian collections that chronicled ancient civilization in Mesopotamia, and the losses have triggered an impassioned outcry in cultural circles. Many fear the stolen artifacts have been absorbed into highly organized trafficking rings that ferry the goods through a series of middlemen to collectors in Europe, the United States and Japan. [...]

At U.S. Central Command in Doha, Qatar, officials said they weren't aware of the reports of organized looting and couldn't comment. [...]

On s'en doutait. Pourtant, les militaires, question pillage, ils en connaissent un rayon !

LE VOL, C'EST LA PROPRIÉTÉ

Chroniques de la pègre en uniforme

C'est l'U.S. Army qui a organisé le pillage des musées irakiens

 

Emmanuel Ratier l'a annoncé au micro du Libre Journal sur Radio Courtoisie: il publiera dans son prochain Faits & Documents les détails d'une réunion au cours de laquelle des acheteurs des grands musées américains (qui sont aux Etats-Unis non pas des administrations d'Etat mais des sociétés privées ou des fondations appartenant à de riches collectionneurs) ont rencontré, quelques semaines avant le déclenchement de l'offensive en Irak, des responsables politiques et militaires.

Au cours de ces entretiens, a expliqué Ratier, un catalogue des objets exposés dans les musées des grandes villes irakiennes (Bagdad, Mossoul, Babylone, Bassorah, etc.) a été remis aux chefs militaires par les acheteurs des grands musées US avec mission de «mettre ces trésors à l'abri».

On comprend, dès lors, la raison pour laquelle aucune force d'invasion ne s'est interposée pour empêcher les pillards d'entrer dans les musées et de les saccager, et pourquoi les radios, dont France-Info, ont affirmé que certains pillards auraient disposé des clefs des gigantesques portes d'acier qui interdisaient l'accès aux réserves abritées au bas d'interminables escaliers creusés dans le roc à plusieurs dizaines de mètres de profondeur.

La vérité est qu'avant le pillage «médiatique», des spécialistes américains arrivés avec les premières forces d'invasion avaient investi et vidé les musées (les USA et la Grande-Bretagne sont les seuls pays à avoir refusé de signer la convention internationale sur le pillage des oeuvres d'art par les vainqueurs en cas de guerre).

Les collections ont alors été transportées en lieu sûr sous escorte militaire et, seulement après, on a laissé le champ libre à des pillards amenés sur place pour dissimuler cette opération en volant des pièces de peu de valeur qui seront revendues sur le marché parallèle.

Un journaliste du Financial Times a d'ailleurs confirmé avoir vu de ses propres yeux les soldats américains organiser eux-mêmes les pillages à Najaf puis, le lendemain, à Bassorah, deuxième ville d'Irak où le doyen de l'université, Abdel Jabar al-Khalifa, accuse l'armée d'avoir «laissé les gens entrer pour commettre leurs actes de vandalisme et tout voler avant de verser du pétrole et de mettre le feu».

De son côté Mohsen Hassan, sous-directeur du musée de Bagdad, affirme que les pillards savaient exactement ce qu'ils cherchaient et qu'ils ne ressemblaient ni de près ni de loin aux miséreux des bas quartiers qu'il avait vus piller les boutiques du bazar.

Le scandale est tel que le secrétaire d'Etat à la culture du cabinet Bush n'a pas voulu voir son nom mêlé à ces rapines. Il a démissionné.

Détail méconnu: c'est une Anglaise qui fonda le musée de Bagdad. Gertrude Bell, grande amie du fameux Lawrence d'Arabie et, comme lui, agent des redoutables Crown Resources, cette société qui exécuta, sous couvert de commerce, les basses oeuvres de l'Empire britannique et qui est encore aujourd'hui en activité (elle contrôlait, par diverses sociétés écrans interposées, le pétrolier Prestige, ferraille flottante dont le naufrage vint opportunément punir la France de son action contre l'agression en Irak). Polyglotte, sportive, véritable amazone, Gertrude Bell sut gagner la confiance des chefs des tribus les plus puissantes de Mésopotamie et conduisit ainsi, sous couvert d'archéologie, des missions secrètes parallèles à celles de Lawrence.

Elle acheva sa vie comme directrice du musée de Bagdad.

[Sautons ici un passage où l'infortuné Beketch avale un méchant canular sur une prétendue "pile électrique" baylonienne, figment de l'imagination enfiévrée d'un Herr Doktor des années 50, bobard grotesque repris tout cru par Pauwels et Bergier dans ce grand livre d'arnaque, Le Matin des magiciens. Ne parlons pas des tablettes portant "consignation des secrets du monde" pour les gogos. Il y avait dans ce musée assez de splendeurs pour ne pas y rajouter de telles âneries. On regrettait, en le visitant, que les portes d'Ishtar à Babylone aient été emmenées par les Allemands qui mirent dix ans à les reconstituer au Pergamon de Berlin. Il faut croire que les Russes étaient plus civilisés que les Amères Loques, car en prenant Berlin il n'ont ni détruit ni pillé le Pergamon, que l'on a pu visiter à Berlin-Est pendant 45 ans. Finalement, on le regrette moins. Autant aller les voir à Berlin. C'est entre les portes d'Ishtar que passaient les juifs exilés à Babylone, qui ont concocté une série de textes, Thorah et Talmud, qui leur ont permis de continuer à sévir. Ce n'était pas le Texas...]

Libre Journal de Serge de Beketch du 24 avril 2003.

RENDEZ-VOUS À LA SAINT GLIN-GLIN

Iraq arms hunt erodes U.S. assurance

By Barton Gellman

 

Camp Doha, Kuwait, April 22 -- With little to show after 30 days, the Bush administration is losing confidence in its prewar belief that it had strong clues pointing to the whereabouts of weapons of mass destruction concealed in Iraq, according to planners and participants in the hunt.

After testing some -- though by no means all -- of their best leads, analysts here and in Washington are increasingly doubtful that that they will find what they are looking for in the places described on a five-tiered target list drawn up before fighting began. Their strategy is shifting from the rapid "exploitation" of known suspect sites to a vast survey that will rely on unexpected discoveries and leads.

Late last week, the U.S. Central Command began moving urgently to expand security around a wider range of facilities in an effort to preserve evidence that defense officials fear is melting away. That imperative grew from intelligence suggesting that Iraqi insiders have stolen files, electronic data and equipment from nonconventional arms programs under the cover of recent looting. Analysts said they believe that former Iraqi officials hope to conceal their culpability, barter for status with the U.S. military government or sell the technology for private gain.

If such weapons or the means of making them have indeed been removed from the centralized control of former Iraqi officials, high-ranking U.S. officials acknowledged, then the war may prove to aggravate the proliferation threat that President Bush said he fought to forestall.

"It's a danger," Douglas J. Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, said in a telephone interview. There are signs, he said, "that some of the looting is actually strategic." Former Baath Party and Iraqi government officials appear to be "doing at least some of the looting" of government facilities, he said, "including those that might have records or materials" relating to weapons of mass destruction." [Cet énorme mensonge a, lui assui, une vertu stratégique: permettre la marche arrière à toute vitesse. ]

Bush launched and justified the war with a flat declaration of knowledge "that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction." Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, who took the lead public role in defending that proposition, said, among other particulars, that "our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent."

Political appointees and career analysts alike, including some who were privately skeptical of the need for war, continue to express confidence that U.S. forces eventually will find stocks of chemical and biological arms, ballistic missile components and equipment and plans for uranium enrichment. A top planner said they have many leads left to pursue, including "tens" of the roughly 100 targets on the U.S. government's top tier of a five-tiered list. But arms hunters now pin their best hopes on what they call "ad hoc sites," to be discovered by happenstance or with help of Iraqis who volunteer information or divulge it under interrogation.

One such example came over the weekend, officials here said, when investigators interviewed an Iraqi scientist south of Baghdad. They said the scientist told them he took part in chemical weapons development and that Iraq had destroyed some weapons only days before the war began. He led them to samples of chemicals that the U.S. search team described as ingredients for lethal agents. But military officials would not identify the scientist, the lethal agents or the ingredients that were found. They did not permit a New York Times reporter, who was accompanying the search team and was the first to report the discovery, to interview the scientist. [Ce que les militaires veulent cacher, c'est leur ignorance obsolue et leur confusion mentale ]

Without further details of the find, experts said, its significance cannot be assessed. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was careful yesterday to draw no conclusion about it, saying he had "nothing to add" to the field report and that investigators have an "obligation of analyzing things and doing it in an orderly, disciplined way." Experts said nearly any ingredient for a chemical weapon can also be used for civilian purposes.

Scrambling to secure

Because ad hoc discoveries might occur anywhere, the U.S. military is racing belatedly to lock down files and equipment at scores of potentially sensitive facilities in Baghdad that went unguarded in the chaotic days immediately after the fall of President Saddam Hussein. Beginning late last week, U.S. combat forces in the Iraqi capital moved to take custody of all 23 government ministries and more than two dozen other locations they said may yield valuable intelligence.

Senior U.S. officials with responsibility over postwar Iraq were highly critical of the delay in securing those facilities. One official interviewed in Kuwait described it as "the barn-door phenomenon." He said retired Lt. Gen. Jay M. Garner, the occupation governor of Iraq, sought special protection for 10 Iraqi ministries, identifying them as potential repositories of weapons data, but that only the Oil Ministry remained intact after U.S. ground forces took possession of Baghdad. Combat commanders, the official said, gave "insufficient priority to getting into these places," and "there wasn't enough force to accomplish that initial sequestering of buildings and records."

Defense Department planners, meanwhile, are diverting some of their best investigative resources away from the target sites they came to Iraq to explore. Two of the four mobile exploitation teams, or METs, have been removed from the hunt for weapons of mass destruction and been assigned instead to the laborious task of screening what officials call "non-WMD sites." These are facilities with voluminous records that might prove enlightening on such issues as terrorism and prisoners of war. Because there are so many such sites, the teams are engaged in what one knowledgeable officer described as triage, trying to decide which ones are worth more thorough inspection. "The focus of main effort has changed," said a military officer who works directly in the arms hunt. "Because of all the looting, coupled with [the fact that] they're not coming up with anything on weapons, we've got to get these other sites secured. They can't afford to have stuff walking off because the clues we have right now are not leading us anywhere."

Changing focus

Now that U.S. forces control Baghdad, the nucleus of Iraq's arms industry, some leading team members have expressed frustration about the shift of focus. As recently as last Wednesday, Defense Department officials were predicting that the war's end would permit the teams to intensify their work and to reach high-priority weapons sites in significant numbers.

Wing Cmdr. Sebastian Kendall, a British Royal Air Force officer who leads the site exploitation planning center at Camp Doha, said "there has been no conscious decision to reduce the number of teams devoted to weapons of mass destruction." But, he added, "it's true to say that the environment is changing based on reality."

"We are now in and around Baghdad and there is an imperative to contain the situation as much as possible," he said. Ground forces have been ordered "to secure more sites, but also to exploit them quicker so we can release those forces.

"We will be methodically working our way through the list from top to bottom," he said. And though many of the additional sites have no known relationship to concealed arms programs, he said, some of them "could be WMD-related because the intellectual knowledge may be there or the documents may be there."

The mobile exploitation teams were staffed and equipped to provide more sophisticated analysis after others had identified and surveyed a weapons facility. They carry complex field equipment -- including gas chromatographs, mass spectrometers and portable isotopic neutron spectroscopes -- and are the only investigators in Iraq trained to safely transport samples of lethal material.

Army Lt. Col. Michael Slifka, an experienced arms inspector who directs night operations at the planning center, said "there's not much just now for the METs to do" with those capabilities. Most of the weapons work at present, he said, is sifting unevaluated clues.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines in Iraq have a copy of the pocket-sized WMD Facility, Equipment and Munitions Identification Handbook. The troops have made hundreds of excited reports. It falls to one of four "site survey teams," two each assigned to the Army and Marines, to assess those tips. None, as yet, has led to a confirmed finding.

 

Needle and haystacks

U.S. forces represent a tiny fraction of the many thousands of government and Baath Party offices, state enterprises, prisons, barracks, camps and private homes of senior Iraqi officials -- all of them types of places where Iraq has a history of concealing evidence of nonconventional arms. The ministry of industry and minerals, for example, oversaw more than 600 Iraqi state enterprises and 100,000 employees. U.N. arms inspectors once found more than a million pages of weapons documents on a chicken farm. [In fact a former chemical plant, half destroyed, where jobless workers tried to raise chicken as an alternative to their industrial job destroyed by the US Air Force. ]

"There's a common assumption that if you know they have chemical or biological weapons, then your intelligence should be good enough to know where they are," said Feith. "But you may hear people talking, referring to specific substances or items, so you know from that that they have those substances or items" but may not know where the items are.

With site-specific intelligence less productive than hoped, Defense Department officials have concluded that the weapons hunt needs substantial reinforcement. That will come from the eventual deployment of more than 1,000 military and civilian analysts under the auspices of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

The Iraq Survey Group, to be commanded by the DIA's deputy director for intelligence operations, plans an immense catalog of Iraqi government records -- an intelligence task rivaled in recent times only by the joint U.S.-German effort in the former East German archives in Berlin. Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, a career Russian specialist, will supervise the screening of Iraqi records.

Weapons of mass destruction will be a part, though not predominant share of Dayton's responsibilities. Even so, officials said, the number of arms investigators in Iraq should triple or quadruple by the time the DIA group is fully in place in about three months.

Kendall, the British officer who now directs planning for the arms hunt, said a search even on the present scale is without precedent.

"It's very young," he said. "It's in its infancy."

"Tomorrow will be one month into the campaign," he added, "and we've got some way to go, is what I'd say."

 

Staff researcher Robert Thomason contributed to this report.

The Washington Post, 22 avril 2003.

Ils seront bientôt assez nombreux pour les fabriquer eux-mêmes...

CET HOMME NE VIVRA PAS LONGTEMPS

Chalabi: Peace With Israel Top of "New Iraq's" Agenda

 

The Jerusalem Post is reporting on a story in the Observer which reports that a "peace treaty with Israel will be 'top of the agenda' for the new Iraqi government". The Observer quoted State Department sources as saying that Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress, "is known to have discussed Iraq's recognition of the State of Israel".

Chalabi is the Department of Defense's prime candidate for president of Iraq. A profile from the BBC has the goods on him, as does this Warblogging article entitled "America selects colonial governor for Iraq".

Last I heard Chalabi's compound in Baghdad was being guarded by US special forces and at least a dozen armored personnel carriers and tanks. He's DoD's favorite despite the fact that he's been convicted in abstentia by Jordan of bank fraud and despite the fact that he hadn't set foot in Iraq for decades before Gulf War Redux.

A contact of mine (and this is single-source information) tells me that Chalabi is very close with Laurie Mylroi, who wrote a book entitled Study of Revenge about Saddam's purported links to the Oklahoma City bombing and both World Trade Center attacks. Paul Wolfowitz said Mylroi's book "...argues powerfully that the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was actually an agent of Iraqi intelligence."

He's a neoconservative's Iraqi neoconservative, and if Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bolton and the rest of the Project for a New American Century crowd have their way he'll be the next president of Iraq.

The Observer also notes that Chalabi is talking seriously about opening up an oil pipeline between Iraq and Israel. The Observer says that "plans to build a pipeline to siphon oil from newly conquered Iraq to Israel are being discussed between Washington, Tel Aviv and potential future government figures in Baghdad."

I've tried for a long time to keep Israel out of this blog, but it's apparent that this is no longer possible. Israel stands to benefit an incredible amount from Gulf War Redux and from a new government in Iraq. To pretend otherwise is ridiculous.

Posted by George Paine

From the "Gulf War Redux" Department as of 01:46 PM, 23 April 2003.

<http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000624.php#000624>

LES CHALABISTES VENDUS À ISRAEL

Mutual wariness: AIPAC and the Iraqi opposition

By Nathan Guttman

 

Washington -- An unusual visitor was invited to address the annual conference held last week in Washington by AIPAC, the pro-Israeli lobby in the United States: the head of the Washington office of the Iraqi National Congress, Intifad Qanbar. The INC is one of the main opposition groups outside Iraq, and its leaders consider themselves natural candidates for leadership positions in the post-Saddam Hussein era. Qanbar's invitation to the conference reflects a first attempt to disclose the links between the American Jewish community and the Iraqi opposition, after years in which the two sides have taken pains to conceal them.

The considerations against openly disclosing the extent of cooperation are obvious -- revelation of overly close links with Jews will not serve the interests of the organizations aspiring to lead the Iraqi people. Currently, at the height of rivalry over future leadership of the country among opposition groups abroad, the domestic opposition and Iraqi citizens, it is most certainly undesirable for the Jewish lobby to forge -- or flaunt -- especially close links with any one of the groups, in a way that would cause its alienation from the others.

"At the current stage, we don't want to be involved in this argument," says a major activist in one of the larger Jewish organizations.

In the end, Intifad Qanbar did not attend the AIPAC conference.

At the last moment, he was asked by the American administration to go to northern Iraq to help organize opposition to Saddam there. In his place, another well-known opposition activist spoke to the conference, Kana Makiya, who is less identified with the Iraqi exile organizations.

The Jewish groups maintain quiet contacts with nearly every Iraqi opposition group, and in the past have even met with the most prominent opposition leader, Ahmed Chalabi. The main objective was an exchange of information, but there was also an attempt to persuade the Iraqis of the need for good relations with Israel and with world Jewry.

"You have to be realistic about your aims," says one Jewish activist. "You have to understand that Iraq will be an Arab state, and that it won't want to adopt a controversial foreign policy."

Nevertheless, the Jewish activists make it clear they do expect the future Iraqi regime to obligate itself not to be aggressive toward Israel and adopt the mainstream view of the Arab world, "perhaps something like the position taken by Saudi Arabia or the Gulf states," says the activist. [...]

Ha'aretz, 25 avril 2003.

<http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=281261&sw=AIPAC>

Voir aussi les louanges du Jerusalem Post:

<http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/A/JPArticle/PrinterFull&cid=1049942360249>

Combien de temps avant qu'ils se balancent aux révèrbères de Baghdad ?

ON PREND LES MÊMES ET ON RECOMMENCE

Ba'athists slip quietly back into control

Suzanne Goldenberg in Baghdad

 

They have quietly removed the pictures of Saddam Hussein from their sitting rooms, and reconfigured their memories to transform lives of privilege into tales of suffering. Less than two weeks after the collapse of the regime, thousands of members of the Arab Ba'ath Socialist party, the all too willing instrument of Saddam, are resuming their roles as the men and women who run Iraq.

Two thousand policemen - all cardholding party members - have put on the olive green, or the grey-and-white uniforms of traffic wardens, and returned to the streets of Baghdad at America's invitation.

Dozens of minders from the information ministry, who spied on foreign journalists for the security agencies, have returned to the Palestine Hotel where most reporters stay, offering their services as translators to unwitting new arrivals.

Seasoned bureaucrats at the oil ministry - including the brother of General Amer Saadi, the chemical weapons expert now in American custody - have been offered their jobs back by the US military. Feelers have also gone out to Saddam's health minister, despite past American charges that Iraqi hospitals stole medicine from the sick.

It has become increasingly apparent that Washington cannot restore governance to Baghdad without resorting to the party which for decades controlled every aspect of life under the regime.

It has equally become apparent that the Ba'ath party -- whose neighbourhood spy cells were as feared as the state intelligence apparatus -- will survive in some form, either through the appeal of its founding ideals, or through the rank opportunism of its millions of members.

"The coming bureaucracy will be overwhelmed by Ba'athists. They had loyalty to Saddam Hussein, and now they have loyalty to foreign invaders," said Wamidh Nadhmi, a political science professor at Baghdad University who broke with the Ba'ath in 1961, and is trying to organise a new political grouping.

The Ba'athist project of reinvention gathered pace at the weekend when the Iraqi Writers' Union -- who received salaries for poems for Saddam -- held a meeting at which they claimed to have been secret opponents of the regime for years.

At the same time, remnants of the regime see no reason to abandon a party that has been around since 1947.

"The Arab Ba'ath Socialist party was not Saddam Hussein's idea. Like Marxism, it was not founded by Lenin and Stalin. It is an idea. That is why the Arab masses supported Iraq, not because of Saddam Hussein, but because of ideas," said a senior culture bureaucrat.

The resurrection of the Ba'ath is, in part, acknowledgment of the daunting reality of governing a country as complex and battered as Iraq. Under Saddam membership was mandatory for teachers, police, the army, and senior posts in hospitals, universities, banks and the civil service.

Local party bosses, or mukhtars, dispensed marriage licences, pressganged locals into militias, and organised parades in honour of Saddam. They also winnowed out potential neighbourhood traitors, destroying the lives of the millions who fell foul of the regime.

That elite -- dominated by the Sunni minority which has governed Iraq since the Ottoman empire -- remains the major source of local talent for the new US administration.

Now, though the party cadre has been orphaned by the flight of Saddam and the upper echelons, local party bosses and bureaucrats who joined up strictly for career advancement see no reason to step aside. "I haven't hurt anyone, and the people love me," said Haji Talat, the boss of Adhamiya, with direct charge for 4,000 households.

The northern neighbourhood was the most solidly Ba'athist of Baghdad -- so secure that Saddam did a walkabout there just three days before the US tanks rolled in. [Not three days, one hour ]

Mr Talat has taken down his photo of Saddam but he is not willing to relinquish his control. "I had to go along with the regime because otherwise they would turn me into cinnamon. But the people know me. The bad mukhtars might go now, but the good ones will stay," he said.

Such attitudes prevail even in poorer neighbourhoods, such as the Jamila suburb of Baghdad, where there was more resentment of the Ba'ath. "In our circumstances, it is necessary to work with the Americans to keep order, but later we might not agree," said Rahim Ahmoud, a mukhtar of eight years.

The prospects for the survival of the Ba'ath have been enhanced by the chaos of these early days of the US military occupation. There is also no serious challenge to its iron grip.

The party, with its secular principles -- though trampled on by Saddam's cynical use of religion -- also represents a bulwark against a nascent Islamist movement among Iraq's disenfranchised Shia majority.

For middle class Iraqis, the declarations for religious self-rule now emanating from mosques in Baghdad and southern cities are deeply troubling. The new assertiveness by the Shia clergy probably does not sit very well with the Americans either. So that leaves the Ba'ath.

"The Ba'ath party was the right hand to Saddam," said Hind Mahmoud, a computer programmer at one of the nationalist banks sacked by the looters. For people like Ms Mahmoud, faith in the party, and in its future role in Iraq, remains undimmed: "No one can take the place of the Ba'ath party. The Ba'ath party has experience -- doctors and managers and scientists. It works in everything."

The Guardian, Monday April 21, 2003.

<http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,940335,00.html>

LES COMBATTANTS ARABES ET ÉTRANGERS PARLENT

News From The Arab Mujahideen Inside Iraq

 

The Arab Mujahideen in Iraq have started to release reports and statements about their operations against the Anglo-American troops as the result of the lack of reliable news sources and the dominance of American biased media in Iraq since the fall of Baghdad.

The Mujahideen indicated that the evacuation of the Iraqi troops from Baghdad took place after intense consultations between the headquarter of Arab Mujahideen and the Iraqi government after they realized that the Americans would use illicit bombs on Baghdad, some that weigh 10,000 tons and have the destruction power of a small nuclear bomb without radiation, and after they had incurred significant losses and casualties all over Iraq even in Um-Al-Qasr which is a small city on the borders with Kuwait. The Iraqi government consulted the Arab Mujahideen before evacuating Baghdad in a tactical surprise that puzzled the Americans. The report asserted that the American troops could not find the Iraqi weapons including 150 Iraqi war planes and 150,000 Iraqi fighters beside Iraqi police and Republican guards is evidence of the success of the evacuation plan.

The report confirmed that the Iraqi fighters and Arab Mujahideen had moved to underground military shelters that gather in certain areas that cannot be reached by the enemy. The Iraqi resistance will launch their Guerrilla war operations against the aggressors from these underground areas that were not mentioned for the safety of the Mujahideen.

The report declared that a number of Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters had successfully entered the Iraqi territories and joined the other Mujahideen in a surprise that boosted the morale of all the fighters. They asserted that the headquarters of the Mujahideen were separate from the Iraqi troops and will struggle for a one goal; to pave the way for an Islamic state in Iraq.

The communiqué indicated that since the beginning of Anglo-American aggression, the Mujahideen leaders organized the groups of Guerrilla fighters for two reasons; first, to estimate the points of strength and weakness of the enemy and select the best places for potential operations; Second, to exhaust the enemy's troops with significant losses. The Mujahideen promised that they will adopt new techniques in the coming operations that will inflict the aggressors with great losses.

The report illustrates the current situation in Iraq including:

1. The Americans depended to a large extent on the psychological war so that it compelled the reporters and journalists to enter Iraq with their troops. The enemy tried also to hide any piece of news about its losses so that it killed some journalists who revealed the truth about the losses and the deteriorating morale of the American soldiers. The Americans have repeated in Iraq the exact scenario of their war in Afghanistan where they deceived the world with a victory in a limited period and not showing that their troops incurred losses in the battles and all their casualties come from friendly fire. Nevertheless, and despite the American dominance of the media, it cannot conceal that it failed to achieve any of the goals it declared before the war; the Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was not arrested nor any Iraqi military leader or ministers. Therefore, they resorted to hide this failure by arresting a number of former Iraqi ministers that had retired from the political life in Iraq long time ago.

2.The American troops control all the desert areas and the nearby cities that are easy targets for their warplanes, and they erected their camps in these areas. On the other hand, they control nothing in the towns; they cannot even protect their soldiers. In big towns like Basra, Moussel [Mossul] and Baghdad, the British troops empty their locations and moved to the outskirts of these areas as soon as they encounter any resistance in order to start intense bombing on the resistance locations. In small towns, the Mujahideen chose to refrain from performing any operations against the enemies for fear of their retaliation that will inflict losses among Iraqi civilians.

3.The oil refineries are always guarded by special units of the American troops which form easy targets for Mujahideen attacks. As soon as the oil companies enter the oil fields with their equipments, the Mujahideen surprise them with their attacks which compel the American troops to send more forces to these areas, and that is what the Mujahideen wish.

4.The ammunition lines of the Americans are intensely attacked by the Mujahideen. These Ammunition lines prove that the Americans are staying in the deserts because they cannot control or settle in the towns.

5. Although the Mujahideen have not yet started to launch organized military operations against their enemy, and all their previous attacks were aimed at testing and selecting the best plans, areas and techniques, the American soldiers are afraid to enter the towns such as Baghdad, and the majority of them showed their disobedience to their leaders. This disobedience pushed their headquarter to replace these troops with others under the pretext that the Marines will hand over the Iraqi capital to the American army which is illogical because any forces that occupy a place are more suitable to stay in it because they become acquainted with its resistance and its points of strength and weakness beside the safety of roads and the suitable techniques.

Apr 25, 2003. Source: Rightword, Translated by JUS

<www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=52863&list=/home.php&>

ILS SONT AU LIT ET ILS DORMENT

2000 journalistes à Baghdad et aucun pour aller voir ce qui se passe sur le terrain:

Terrorist Group Claims it Carried out Attacks in Iraq

 

The "Resistance and Liberation Command in the Republic of Iraq" sent a copy of its "Military Communique no. 2" to the Jordanian daily Al-Arab al-Yawm on 22 April, claiming responsibility for two attacks against U.S. forces, the paper reported on 23 April. The communique said a suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint manned by U.S. troops on a road between the Mosul Governorate and the city of Rabi'ah, destroying a U.S. military vehicle and killing or wounding more than 21 soldiers. It also claimed another bomber blew himself up at a U.S. military checkpoint on a road connecting the cities of Hayt and Al-Ramadi, killing or wounding about seven individuals. "We warn and warn again all those who collaborate with the criminal invading enemy that they will be punished in accordance with the teachings of our true religion," the communique stated.

The "Resistance and Liberation Command in the Republic of Iraq" communique on 22 April also claimed that some foreign journalists in Iraq are Israeli spies and alleged collusion between Israeli intelligence and the INC opposition group. "We wish to warn the sons of our great Iraqi people of the consequences of dealing with foreign journalists claiming to be of different nationalities when in fact they are Zionists working for the Israeli intelligence. A number of those accompanied by the traitors from the 'not National Congress' have terrorized our Palestinian brethren who have been residing [in Iraq] for more than 40 years," the communique claimed. The Israeli daily "Ha'aretz" reported on a link between the INC and the U.S.-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), a Washington-based lobby, on 6 April (see http://www.haaretzdaily.com).

Voir plus haut, "Les chalabistes vendus..."

On attend les vérifications.

PENSIERINI

Baghdad: saccheggi della gente.

Si dice che avvengono nei "luoghi simbolo del regime" in odio a Saddam e ai suoi. Ma siamo sicuri che se si saccheggia anche l'Ambasciata tedesca o il Centro culturale francese -- come è stato riferito -- non sia piuttosto la miseria decretata da un embargo protrattosi ingiustificatamente per 12 anni a condurre a simili reazioni? Mai nessuno che nelle tre settimane circa di attacco all'Iraq abbia ricordato l'embargo.

Bombe di nuovo tipo da lanciare.

Stanno portando nel Golfo la potentissima "MOAB". La parola non vi ricorda niente? E poi dicono che la Bibbia non conta. Eppure, ogni volta che ne parlano, sciorinano per intero le quattro parole che compongono la sigla e basta. Con Saddam Hussein che non si trova, e che potrebbe perciò "nascondersi" in una sorta di Agartha iracheno, una superbombanuclearetatticaperforante potrebbe far comodo.

Baghdad "liberata".

La "destra" scoppia di felicità e dice che il 25 aprile giunge quanto mai opportuno per ribadire il messaggio imperituto delle "liberazioni". La "sinistra", che a questo punto si sente defraudata di brutto della sua data simbolo, in vista del 25 aprile non sa più che dire. Svolgliatamente, ha detto che la guerra di Bush è "illegale", qualcuno ha osato parlare di "invasione". Eppure, se fosse coerente dovrebbe accodarsi al coro della "liberazione dell'Iraq". A chi somigliano sennò i peshmerga e il Congresso Nazionale Iracheno di Chalabi? Intanto, quelli che (e se) continueranno a combattere contro gli angloamericani saran detti "terroristi", mentre da noi si continuerà a celebrare come eroi anche gli autori degli atti meno limpidi della "Resistenza". Che coerenza l'Italia!

Enrico Galoppini, 10 Aprile 2003.

4 - Paris sur scène

Paris, le 6 avril 2003-04-06

Ginette Hess-Skandrani

Présidente de "La Pierre et L'Olivier

Réseau de Solidarité avec le peuple de Palestine

Membre co-fondatrice des Verts

à Monsieur Hadrien Gosset-Bernheim

Le Journal du Dimanche

Objet : demande de droit de réponse

Monsieur, Je viens de lire votre article intitulé "L'étrange alliance des pro-Saddam", paru dans Le Journal du Dimanche du 6 avril 2003. Ce que vous y dites à mon propos est exact, mis à part que je n'ai jamais soutenu Sadam Hussein mais le peuple irakien dans toute sa diversité ainsi que la souveraineté de l'Irak. C'est sur ces bases que j'ai signé l'Appel des 75 contre la guerre du Golfe en 1990, que j'ai toujours milité contre l'embargo imposé au peuple irakien et que je participe au collectif Irak pour la Paix. Concernant le manifeste (Judeo-nazi), je vous précise que c'est la reprise du texte d'une interview d'Amos Oz paru dans le journal israélien Davar du 17 décembre 1982 et reprise dans le livre "Les Voix d'Israël (Calmann Lévy 1983) et mise en pratique actuellement dans ses grandes lignes par Ariel Sharon. Ces différentes publications n'ont jamais fait l'objet d'aucune poursuite.

De plus, je ne peux que constater que l'amalgame que vous établissez dans votre article entre différentes personnes et organisations reprend le discours désignant une alliance antisémite entre les Verts, les Rouges et les Bruns qui, tout en soutenant le droit des peuples irakiens et palestiniens s'opposent à l'invasion du Moyen-Orient par les Etats-Unis.

Je vous demande de publier mon droit de réponse.

SIGNATURES À LA PELLE

édito de Serge de Beketch dans son "Libre Journal" (4, place

Franz-Liszt, 75010 Paris), n· 291, du 11 avril, p. 3:

Parlons franc

 

Au nom de la loi devenez sioniste!

Drôlement efficace le shofar! Au premier appel de la Licra, tout le beau monde rapplique, langue pendante, queue frétillante et tortillant du croupion, pour faire le beau devant le sussucre cachère. Le mardi 8 avril, le président de la susdite, flanqué des têtes de mort du Grand Orient, rameutait le bétail politique, médiatique, culturique et chobizique pour signer un "Appel pour une paix républicaine" en réaction aux injures et horions que des Arabes ont infligés à des Juifs lors des manifs contre la guerre en Irak. Le premier, Raffarin a obtempéré dare-dare, envoyant sa signature par fax.

Le ministère au complet a suivi: Aillagon, ministre de la Culture antiphysique, s'est fendu d'une jolie lettre (sic), Jean-Louis Borloo, ministre de la Ville occupée, a expédié son conseiller en personne, flanqué de son prédécesseur socialiste Bartolone, ex de SOS-Racisme. François Hollande a signé, Madame Royale aussi, Badinter et Madame itou, comme Bertrand Delanoë (mais sans sa dame), Lang aussi sans doute... Même Alain Juppé s'est échappé tout exprès du Palais Bourbon pour obéir à cette convocation. Manquait en somme que le raton laveur (paraît qu'il serait plutôt contre). C'est au Café Français-sic, adresse chébrane de la Bastille, que le raoût s'est déroulé sous le haut patronage des stakhanovistes de la bascule à Charlot. Sur la façade du mastroquet des sans-culottes, une affiche pendouillait, tel un hénaurme rouleau de papier hygiénique pour fondement gargantuesque, révélant au peuple le texte de l'Appel: "bla-bla-bla... combattre le racisme et l'antisémitisme et toutes les idéologies qui leur servent de masque, y compris l'antisionisme".

Arrêtons-nous un instant à cet engagement qui, avec l'aval du Premier ministre, signataire, prétend faire de l'antisionisme un racisme, c'est-à-dire un délit. Que dis-je, un délit? Un Crime contre l'Humanité. Qu'est-ce que le sionisme? Une idéologie identitaire comme le castrisme, le kemalisme ou le maoïsme. Rien de plus.

Aujourd'hui, certains Juifs (les Israéliens entre autres, et encore, pas tous) sont sionistes comme hier certains Russes étaient communistes, et comme avant-hier, certains Allemands furent nationaux-socialistes. Obliger les Français, qui s'en foutent, à adhérer par force de loi à cette éphémère idéologie étrangère relève du délire. Qu'un benêt de la trempe de Raffarin ait signé une telle ânerie n'étonne pas. L'ahurissant est que pas un de ses conseillers n'ait remarqué à quel point c'est inepte. Quel tribunal osera condamner, d'un même mouvement, l'antisioniste pour qui les Juifs n'ont rien à faire en Palestine, et l'antisémite pour qui ceux qui sont là-bas, au moins, ne sont pas en France? Quel éditorialiste pourra, sans dévoiler les sources de sa fortune, pourfendre le nationalisme et, d'une même plume, défendre le sionisme? Quel politicien aura le front de reprocher au nationalisme français de reprendre à son compte les méthodes irréprochables (sous peine de poursuites) du sionisme israélien en interdisant le territoire national aux Arabes, en les enfermant dans des enceintes de barbelés et de béton, en rasant leurs maisons au bulldozer, en fermant les écoles à leurs enfants, les hôpitaux à leurs malades, les cimetières à leurs morts?

Le président de la Licra se dit déterminé à "réunir l'ensemble de la classe politique, l'élite de la République". Mais quelle puissance cachée l'a investi du droit de faire manoeuvrer les élus du peuple au service du peuple élu? D'où parle-t-il celui là? De quel droit? A quel titre? Qu'est-il de plus qu'un électeur de base? De son côté Marek Halter a dit, lui aussi, sa détermination "d'empêcher que la France ne devienne un champ de bataille interethnique". Mais que nous importe la détermination de ces gens-là, quand c'est justement la politique criminelle d'immigration-invasion soutenue par les leurs et protégée par la Justice à leur botte qui a imposé à la France ce grouillement multi-ethnique générateur de haines raciales et de batailles de rue? Est-ce que vraiment la France a besoin des sionistes pour restaurer sa paix publique? Est-ce que vraiment les brillants succès que ces experts ont remportés là-bas les qualifient pour donner des leçons ici?

Serge de Beketch

LES CHOCHOTTES ONT LES CHOCOTTES

Pas de "rassemblement républicain" à l'appel de l'UEJF

dimanche à Paris

 

Paris (AP) 15 avril -- L'Union des étudiants juifs de France (UEJF) a annulé le "grand rassemblement républicain" qu'elle avait prévu d'organiser dimanche à Paris avec la Ligue contre le racisme et l'antisémitisme (LICRA) a-t-on appris vendredi auprès de l'organisation étudiante.

L'UEJF a précisé à l'Associated Press que cette décision avait été prise il y a déjà plusieurs jours "pour des raisons de sécurité et de logistique" mais qu'un "grand meeting" était en préparation pour le 29 avril.

Le 3 avril, suite à l'agression le 22 mars de quatre militants du mouvement de jeunesse juif Hachomer Hatzaïr en marge d'une manifestation contre la guerre en Irak, et face à la présence de slogans et de banderoles antisémites dans certains cortèges, l'UEJF, la LICRA et le mouvement "Génération république" [Kézako ? ] avaient lancé un "appel pour une paix républicaine", refusant "que des guerres étrangères soient importées sur le sol français".

"A la suite des dérives antisémites auxquelles les manifestations contre la guerre en Irak ont donné lieu", elles appelaient aussi à "un grand rassemblement républicain à Paris le dimanche 13 avril", rassemblement qui n'aura donc pas lieu.Les trois organisations ont invité les personnalités du monde politique, intellectuel et artistique à parapher leur appel.

Le texte stipule que les signataires s'engagent à éviter "tous les amalgames entre des conflits différents par leur nature et par leurs enjeux". "Nous refuserons que des guerres étrangères soient importées sur le sol français. Nous exigeons, dans toutes les circonstances, même s'il s'agit de manifestations légitimes, l'application de la loi contre le racisme, l'antisémitisme et le négationnisme" peut-on y lire. "Si les manifestations contre la guerre donnent lieu à des actes racistes, et si leurs auteurs ne sont pas exclus des cortèges, ceux d'entre nous qui participent à ces manifestations les quitteront aussitôt", promettaient les premiers signataires: le président de la LICRA Patrick Gaubert, le président de l'UEJF Patrick Klugman et le président de Génération République Cyrille Minso.

Depuis, le texte a été signé notamment par le Premier ministre Jean-Pierre Raffarin, le ministre de la Culture Jean-Jacques Aillagon, celui de l'Education nationale Luc Ferry, le maire de Paris Bertrand Delanoë, le Premier secrétaire du Parti socialiste François Hollande, le Président du Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (CRIF) Roger Cukierman, ou encore Jack Lang.

Voir plus haut ce qu'en dit Beketch.

ÇA LEUR APPRENDRA

Les parents de la jeune fille juive agressée dans un collège de Brunoy sont condamnés à payer 4 000 euros d'amende à la principale du collège !

par Ilana Moryoussef

 

Dans les attendus du jugement, il est notamment reproché aux parents d'avoir «médiatisé» l'affaire. Argumentation qui remet en cause le droit à l'information du public sur les débats judiciaires.

Les parents de Guittel n'ont plus qu'à méditer amèrement les promesses de Nicolas Sarkozy. «Face aux actes antisémites, a déclaré le ministre de l'Intérieur le 31 mars, lors de la soirée du 22ème anniversaire de Radio J, la seule réponse que je pourrai vous apporter, ce sont des faits: des gens arrêtés et des gens condamnés».

Le 27 juin 2002, une adolescente juive, Guittel, a été battue par plusieurs élèves du collège Albert Camus de Brunoy (Essonne) où elle était venue passer les épreuves du brevet des collèges. (Lire à ce sujet

<http://www.proche-orient.info/xjournal_racism_rep.php3?id_article=10732>). En fait de «réponse», ses parents viennent d'être condamnés par le tribunal correctionnel d'Evry à payer 4000 euros à la principale du collège Albert Camus et à son adjointe pour «constitution abusive de partie civile». En clair, le tribunal estime que les parents de Guittel ont eu tort de poursuivre les responsables du collège pour non-assistance à personne en danger. «Elles ont su à chaque fois et sans délai réagir comme elles le devaient», précise le jugement qui relève que la plainte des parents «comprend de nombreuses erreurs ou inexactitudes et qu'elle est rédigée dans un style quelque peu excessif dénué de toute prudence». [...]

Reçu le 4 avril

<http://www.proche-orient.info/xjournal_pol_der_heure.php3?id_article=11688>

NN

On annonce la parution de Zacarias Moussaoui: The Making of a Terrorist, par son frère Abd Samad Moussaoui et Florence Bouquillat, pour le 15 mai, chez Serpent's Tail.

Les nouvelles du procès:

<http://moussaoui.newstrove.com/>

Tentative de mettre sur le Net les images déjà répertoriées de incroyables richesses du Musée de Baghdad, pillé à la demande des antiquaires new-yorkais, que leur dieu les étouffe !

<http://www-oi.uchicago.edu/OI/IRAQ/iraq.html>

Au courrier

À: [email protected]

Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 23:02:26 +0200

lecteur assidu !!! gazette du 15 avril: attention aux erreurs de date!!! Propos recueillis par Sylvain Cypel, Le Monde, 30 avril 2003.

Eh oui, notre faute, notre très grande faute !

Autre mail:

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 19:15:46 +0200

Vous faites de l'exellent travail et avec de l'humour en plus surtout contunuez a nous informer. Vive la resistance

Justin Remondo ne croit pas beaucoup à la "victoire". Voir son édito du 18 avril: FICKLE 'VICTORY'. It vanishes when you claim it

<http://www.antiwar.com/justin/j041803.html>

Kurt Nimmo, on connaît pas, mais c'est un Américain pas content de cette sale guerre. Il le dit et le montre avec des images qui tapent fort. C'est un "blog", avec des commentaires de lecteurs, ineptes, comme souvent:

<http://www.nimmo.blogspot.com/>

Voici des gens qui veulent optimiser l'utilisation d'Internet pour donner une représentation plus précise et plus utilisable des événements récents ou en cours. Leur réflexion méthodologique intéressera tous ceux qui ont décidé d'agir par et sur Internet:

De-fragmentize the current historical record

 

To this end, the Center for Cooperative Research developed this website as a demonstration of how a research cooperative can provide an up-to-date representation of the historical record as it pertains to key themes relevant to our struggle to end America's war on the world and expose the truth behind the drive for so-called 'globalization'. The historical record, as such, is presented in the form of a vast network of regularly updated outlines, timelines, and profiles that are devoted to several different but interrelated topics. Each day, as history progresses, this data network too `grows' as new information is extracted from the alternative and mainstream media, synthesized, and assimilated into a more coherent whole.

Voyez toute la page "qui nous sommes" pour mieux voir l'amplitude du projet:

<http://www.cooperativeresearch.org/About%20us.htm>

La place Al Firdus, à 100 m de l'hôtel Palestine, où la statue de Saddam (coulée en Italie) a été arrachée le 9 avril: les photos. A crever de rire. Il n'y a personne, à part deux pelés et trois tondus. Quelques troufions yankis. Zoom arrière sur la mise en scène. Les occupants ont toujours et partout recours aux mêmes trucs de propagande.

<http://blog.kynn.com/shock/archive/000311.php>

Pure provoque. Jerusalem (AFP) -- Iraqi chemical and biological weapons may be hidden in Syria, a senior Israeli intelligence officer told a parliamentary committee. "It is possible Iraq transferred missiles and weapons of mass destruction into Syria," General Yossi Kupperwasser told the committee. He said the transfer could be one explanation as to why US-led forces scouring suspect sites in western Iraq had found nothing so far, the radio said Monday.

Et pourquoi pas sur la lune ? Dans un coin peinard, sur la face cachée ?

Les projets pour former une "armée nationale afghane" nous mènent jusque vers 2010... Beaucoup d'eau va passer sous les ponts. Voir le général organisateur:

<http://www.jihadunspun.com/intheatre_internal.php?article=52858&list=/home.php&>

Israel is at the center of international trade in the drug ecstasy, according to a document published last week by the U.S. State Department. In recent years, organized crime in Israel, some with links to criminal organizations in Russia, have come to control the distribution of the drug in Europe, according to a Bureau for International Narcotics and Law Enforcement

Article de Nathan Guttman dans Ha'aretz

<http://www.haaretzdaily.com/hasen/spages/280857.html>

Regardez comment se passent les démolitions des maisons par les sauvages israéliens néo-mongols: un site tenu par une jeune homme de Rafah, dans la bande de Gaza; Regardez "home destruction". Remarquez que les nazis ne faisaient pas ça. Tirez-en les conclusions qui s'imposent:

<http://www.rafah.vze.com/>

Grand changement depuis la guerre du Viêt-Nam: à ce moment-là, 50% des Marines, les troupes de choc qui ont les plus grosses pertes (ce sont souvent les seuls qui combattent réellement) étaient des Noirs, chômeurs des banlieues des grandes villes américaines. C'était la conscription, mais dans les Marines les hommes étaient volontaires. Aujourd'hui, dans une armée entière faite de mercenaires, 40% des Marines sont des Mexicains ou des fils de Mexicains. Voir ce qu'en dit le site contestataire de nos amis de La Voix d'Aztlan (Aztlan était le mythique pays des origines, situé au nord, des Aztèques qui ont pris Mexico vers le XIIe siècles et ont créé l'empire que découvrit Hernan Cortès avec stupeur: le pays était plus riche et mieux urbanisé que son Espagne natale...):

<http://www.aztlan.net/index.html> Aujourd'hui les Latinos sont les esclaves modernes, corvéables à merci.

Dear Friend, If you are interested in Palestinian affairs and the Arab-Israeli conflict, the Institute for Palestine Studies (IPS) invites you to visit our new web site at:

<http://www.palestine-studies.org> where you will find valuable research material and documentation. The web site is available in three languages -- English, French, and Arabic. Visitors can gain on-line access to the

<http://library.palestine-studies.org>largest library in the Arab world specializing in Palestinian affairs, Judaica, and the Arab-Israeli conflict.

"Nous sommes américains" disait le nain Colombani, directeur du Monde en parlant pour lui. Non seulement, il traduit et publie des extraits sous-vitaminés d'un torchon new-yorkais, mais il écrit maintenant directement en anglosax: «Raffarin délivre sa feuille de route aux ministres». Que ceux qui ont compris cette phrase nous écrivent. Rafarinogrobis, nouveau Saint Georges, délivre qui ?

Tout sur les offres de services pour la "reconstruction" de l'Iraq du point de vue des autorités canadiennes qui s'occupent d'exportation:

<http://www.dfait-maeci.gc.ca/sell2usgov/iraq-fr.asp>

Les appels d'offres fédéraux américains de plus de 25.000 $ sont publiés sur: <http://www.fedbizopps.gov>

Le site Web de l'USAID sur la reconstruction de l'Irak: <www.usaid.gov/iraq/activities.html>

"L' U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) est responsable des projets de reconstruction de l'Irak liés à l'aide humanitaire, aux services sociaux, au développement économique et à l'appui de l'infrastructure de base. Parmi les marchés qui seront accordés, citons les suivants: réparation d'une centaine d'hôpitaux, de 6 000 écoles et de 45 systèmes d'eau en milieu urbain; réparation de 10 centrales électriques et de 110 sous-stations (ou postes secondaires), reconstruction de 100 ponts et de canaux d'irrigation et de drainage s'étendant sur 600 milles. L'USAID a attribué cinq marchés.

Aide humanitaire: l'aide humanitaire comprend les services de soutien visant à répondre aux besoins humanitaires immédiats, notamment la distribution alimentaire, les services de santé, l'eau et les services d'hygiène. La plupart de ces marchés ont été attribués à des ONG internationales et à des organismes de l'ONU. Reportez-vous à la section de synthèse du financement du site Web de l'USAID sur la reconstruction de l'Irak pour obtenir une liste exhaustive des marchés liés à l'aide d'urgence:

<www.usaid.gov/iraq/about_reconstruction.html>

Activités liées à la reconstruction: les activités liées à la reconstruction ont pour but de répondre aux besoins de reconstruction à plus long terme de l'Irak. En avril 2003, l'USAID avait présenté neuf demandes de propositions pour des projets de reconstruction en Irak. On tient à jour, sur le site Web de l'USAID, une liste des avis d'adjudication de marchés:

<www.usaid.gov/iraq/activities.html>

L'USAID a établi cinq priorités en matière de reconstruction :

* Restauration de l'infrastructure essentielle du point de vue économique

* Soutien des services essentiels en santé et en éducation

* Éducation

* Expansion des possibilités économiques

* Amélioration de l'efficacité et de la responsabilisation du gouvernement

Si vous êtes flic ou ancien flic amerlock, vous pouvez vous faire recruter pour faire le flic en Iraq. La société DynCorp, entourée déjà de nombreux scandales, a été chargée de recruter des privés pour "réorganiser" la police irakienne. Ça ne va pas manquer de sel:

<http://www.policemission.com/iraq.asp>

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

WARNING ! US GOVERNMENT TOTALITARIANISM. We're Sorry! Due to National Security concerns, we are unable to tell you if your Internet surfing habits, passwords and e-mail content are being monitored by federal agents; please act appropriately.

In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without profit or payment to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.

Chi NON DESIDERA ricevere nostre segnalazioni ci invii una mail a >[email protected]<

Si vous désirez recevoir OU NE PAS RECEVOIR la Gazette du Golfe et des banlieues, faites-le savoir à >[email protected]<

If you wish to receive OR NOT RECEIVE the Gazette, please drop a note to >[email protected]<

Les anciens numéros sont en ligne à

>http://ggb.0catch.com<

Former issues are on line at the above URL.

Afficher un texte sur le Web équivaut à mettre un document sur le rayonnage d'une bibliothèque publique. Cela nous coûte un peu d'argent et de travail. Nous pensons que c'est le lecteur volontaire qui en profite et nous le supposons capable de penser par lui-même. Un lecteur qui va chercher un document sur le Web le fait toujours à ses risques et périls. Quant à l'auteur, il n'y a pas lieu de supposer qu'il partage la responsabilité des autres textes consultables sur ce site. En raison des lois qui instituent une censure spécifique dans certains pays (Allemagne, France, Israël, Suisse, Canada, et d'autres), nous ne demandons pas l'agrément des auteurs qui y vivent car ils ne sont pas libres de consentir.

Nous nous plaçons sous la protection de l'article 19 de la Déclaration des Droits de l'homme, qui stipule:
ARTICLE 19 <Tout individu a droit à la liberté d'opinion et d'expression, ce qui implique le droit de ne pas être inquiété pour ses opinions et celui de chercher, de recevoir et de répandre, sans considération de frontière, les informations et les idées par quelque moyen d'expression que ce soit>
Déclaration internationale des droits de l'homme, adoptée par l'Assemblée générale de l'ONU à Paris, le 10 décembre 1948.

[email protected]