AAARGH

Numéro 25-- juin 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

Le début de la "guerre sans fin" annoncée par l'administration Bush est une guerre sans victoire et sans paix, probablement sans reconstruction. Alain Joxe, Le Monde diplo, mai 2003.

"Imaginez-vous la possibilité pour des juifs de vivre sous souveraineté arabe? Vous imaginez cela?" Ariel Sharon, Jerusalem Post, 13 mai 2003.

"The Islamic umma is developing into a community of thugs and hypocrites. The way things are going we shall be the laughing stock of the world." Sheikh Tantawi, recteur de Al Azhar.

Pentagon officials say that depleted uranium is relatively harmless and a necessary part of modern warfare.

Jews in this country are a politically diverse constituency trending toward liberal and are only about 6 million strong;. Evangelical Christians are as many as 60 million strong and vote in a bloc on the far right of the political spectrum, making them, ironically, a far more potent ally of Israel than American Jews. Claire Tristram May 14, 2003 (Salon.com)

The bottom line is that Israelis are getting as concerned about losing their jobs as they are their lives. Israeli Radio.

1 --La Palestine martyrisée par les sauvages

LES HÉGÉMONIAQUES

Les priorités de communication d'Israël en 2003

La fondation Wexner se donne pour tâche: "Strenghening Jewish leadership in North America and Israel", qui pourrait se traduire par "Renforcer les élites juives en Amérique du Nord et en Israël", en particulier par un système de bourses. La fondation Wexner organise des programmes d'entraînement à la direction, tels que le projet "Birthright Israel" qui offre des voyages gratuits à des jeunes juifs en Israël, par l'entreprise de relations publiques "Compagnies de Recherche Luntz" et le "Projet Israël". Comme expliqué sur son site, son existence a déjà eu pour effet de renforcer un réseau de décideurs politiques et de VIP commun aux USA et à Israël. Le texte qui suit est la partie introductive d'une série détaillée et motivée de recommandations au gouvernement israélien sur la meilleure façon de soigner son image auprès du public américain. Ou pour parler crûment, comment lui raconter des salades. On croit rêver: entre deux checkpoints ou pendant les couvre-feux, le Palestinien moyen ne songe qu'à se débarrasser de ses dirigeants et voir ses enfants jouer avec ceux des colons qui s'emparent de ses terres ! Le texte écrit par un sioniste juif américain zélé aurait pu l'être aussi bien par un télévangéliste à la retraite ayant forcé sur la bouteille. Un tel mélange de cynisme et de tromperie ne s'explique malheureusement que par l'ignorance crasse de l'Américain moyen sur la réalité en Israël et en Palestine. Le texte intégral est disponible en anglais dans les pages suivantes:

Fondation Wexner, avril 2003:

<http://www.wexnerfoundation.org>

<http://www.adc.org/ATT00017.doc>

<http://www.adc.org/luntzwexneranalysis.pdf>

TOUT A CREDIT

La répression israélienne, comme les campagnes militaires américaines, se font entièrement à crédit. Les salopards n'ont pas un rond devant eux pour financer le génocide et les larges crimes contre l'humanité qu'ils pratiquent tous les jours. On ne s'en rend pas assez compte: pratiquer le génocide coûte cher. La preuve:

Lourd déficit national pour Israël

L'économie israélienne se trouve dans une situation particulièrement difficile. C'est ainsi que le déficit national s'élève, au mois d'avril [2003], à plus d'un milliard et demi de shekels (330 millions de dollars). Au cours du premier trimestre de l'année, le gouvernement a enregistré un déficit budgétaire global de plus de 6,2 milliards de shekels (1,4 milliard de dollars)

Arutz 7, 1er mai 2003.

IMPRESCRIPTIBLE

Le droit au retour

 

Renewed attempts by Israel and the US to liquidate the Palestinian refugees' Right of Return have entered a dangerous phase with the commencement of parallel Arab and European campaigns to undermine it. Emboldened by the occupation of Iraq and its effects on the region, the enemies of the Palestinian people believe that they are now in a position to administer a knock-out punch to Palestinian insistence that no peace would be possible without the refugees' repatriation and compensation.

Background : Highly informed sources in the right to return movement in Palestine recently circulated a confidential appeal to Palestinians and their supporters to rally in defense of the right to return. The appeal pointed to a series of organized initiatives aimed at diluting and undermining this inalienable right. These initiatives have the following points in common :

1. They promote "solutions" to the refugee question which violate international law.

2. They are undertaken by individuals well connected with international policy makers.

3. They are currently engaged in recruiting support among the Palestinian leadership, negotiators and key community activists in Palestine and elsewhere.

4. The initiatives are backed by funding, and are intended to inflict public relations damage to the cause.

These initiatives include the following :

1. A series of workshops organized by the British Royal Institute for International Affairs/RIIA and the Center of Lebanese Studies on the Palestinian Refugee Question. The EU and Canada, at least in part, fund these workshops. The workshops are intended to undermine the Palestinian position held at Camp David in 2001 i.e., that refugees' right of return is an essential component of a peace agreement with Israel.

2. The revival of the "Nusseibeh-Ayalon Initiative" which promotes two states on the basis of ethnicity and religion at the expense of the right to return.

3. The Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research/PRS will publish a series of "polls" to support the notion that the issue of the right of return can be ignored in negotiations, because "Palestinian refugees are not really serious about wanting to return." The polls are bluffs.

Message From Zahi Damuni <[email protected]>, Urgent Al-Awda Action Alert : Defend The Right to Return. For Immediate Release, 24 April 2003

LE GHETTO NOUVEAU EST ARRIVÉ !

Le Mur

 

par Israël Shamir

 

Nous étions allés voir, en famille, le film des Pink Floyds, Le Mur, dans un petit cinéma dépouillé et un peu lépreux, dénommé Le Sémadar (Fleur de vigne), situé dans le quartier hyérosolomitain au charme suranné de la Colonie Allemande. Vidé de ses habitants d'origine allemande par les juifs, en 1948, ce quartier a conservé ses vieilles maisons de pierres au toit de tuiles et aux pignons ornés de plaques scellées citant les Psaumes en lettres gothiques, son lierre escaladant les façades et le mystère de son Cimetière des Templiers, bien gardé derrière son portail massif.

Le Sémadar, qui tire son nom d'un passage du Cantique des Cantiques, était un des lieux de rendez-vous prisés de notre Paradis Perdu, cette Palestine dont la nostalgie ravive les teintes de souvenirs enchanteurs. Il était fréquenté, alors, par des officiers britanniques et la petite bande juvénile et cosmopolite des meilleurs habitants de la Ville Sainte: des Arméniens, des Grecs, des juifs, des Allemands et des Palestiniens. Dans son petit jardin romantique, bien des idylles s'étaient nouées, ignorant les frontières, les obédiences religieuses et les passions politiques. La fille d'un rabbin séfarade s'était dégotté un aviateur écossais, et un Nashashibi, scion de l'illustre famille arabe musulmane, y avait rencontré une jeune fille enjouée, sioniste de gauche. Le Sémadar n'a pas changé: il a survécu à notre Chute, le Partage de la Palestine, devenant le lieu obsessionnel des romans hyérosolomitains d'Amos Oz, un peu à la manière dont la glace fossile de la banquise survit au réchauffement planétaire.

Le Sémadar était resté un lieu décent, malgré sa décrépitude, pour des sorties familiales, dans les années 1980, aux jours bénis d'avant la captation de notre temps libre par la vidéo, la télé et les ordinateurs, et nous allions souvent au cinéma. Nous y emmenions aussi souvent les enfants. Le film, Le Mur, en revanche, allait s'avérer le navet du siècle. Au milieu, il y avait une scène d'horreur: une gueule gigantesque semblait prête à vous dévorer, vous, le spectateur.

Cette gueule sans mâchoires mais pleine de dents acérées, effrayante, recouvrait tout l'écran et semblait vouloir nous happer. C'en était trop pour notre fils, qui avait alors sept ans: il s'enfuit en poussant un cri perçant d'effroi. Hélas, dehors, le foyer du cinéma était recouvert de posters représentant la même gueule béante ! Il a fallu plusieurs heures pour que notre fiston retrouve son calme, et ce symbole du Mur, la gueule monstrueuse prête à tout dévorer, resta profondément enfoui dans ma mémoire.

Elle est revenue prendre sa vengeance, comme un ressort comprimé et soudain libéré, aujourd'hui, lorsque je me suis cassé les dents sur le Mur de Sharon, presque au terme d'une belle ballade. Nous avions roulé plusieurs heures, nous avions marché entre les collines bibliques émoussées des Hauts plateaux de Palestine, nous avions traversé de hauts herbages verdoyants, nous avions cueilli des lupins violets, nous avions traversé un ruisseau qui abondait encore en eau et en filles et garçons amicaux aux visages joufflus, vêtus de pied en cap, qui s'aspergeaient mutuellement et nous aspergeaient avec un abandon juvénile, nous avions rencontré en chemin leurs parents, dans le village tout proche d'Anata, qui préparaient un pique-nique et nous avions répondu à leurs salâms cordiaux. Nous avions salué un moine, descendu de son ermitage de Saint Chariton, accroché à une falaise, et nous avions reçu ses bénédictions; nous avions dérangé un petit troupeau de quatre ou cinq gazelles effarouchées, aux croupes tachées de blanc; nous avions allumé un cierge devant une icône byzantine de la Madone, dans l'église du village de Taybéh, où, d'après un récit villageois pieusement conservé, le Christ aurait passé ses derniers jours avant la Passion. Nous avions bu leur fameuse bière pression de Taybéh, au café Stones, un café très aéré, sur deux étages, dans l'urbaine Ramallah, en compagnie d'un professeur de philosophie de l'université de Bir Zeit, au costume de tweed impeccable, un architecte au sourire un peu forcé, un ex-juif d'Angleterre ressemblant incroyablement à Noam Chomsky en plus jeune, et une ravissante beauté ombrageuse et francophone: une jeune femme palestinienne, ayant grandi dans l'exil tunisien, et formée dans une université parisienne.

Nous roulions tranquillement, vers les Champs du Berger. Soudain, le Mur se dressa devant nous. Il coupait la tendre campagne de Bethléem comme une gueule colossale et dévorante, et la nature disparaissait, à la manière d'un marshmallow en brochette. Des dizaines de bulldozers Caterpillar déchiquetaient les collines, déracinaient figuiers et pieds de vigne, écrasant les rochers en vue d'on ne sait quelle monstrueuse granita. Ils démolissaient les vieilles maisons paysannes et les tours médiévales, dénudaient ces coteaux que la Vierge Marie avait parcourus. On construisait le Mur, donc, sur la largeur d'une autoroute à quatre voies, flanquée de doubles haies de grillage d'acier, de huit mètres de hauteur, surmontées de fils électrique à haute tension avec, à intervalles réguliers, des caméras, des miradors pour les tireurs d'élite et quelques rares portails. C'était le plus formidable périmètre d'un camp de prisonniers qu'il m'eût été donné de voir de toute ma vie: il serrait de près les maisons villageoises, à la manière d'un danseur de tango pompette enlaçant sa partenaire.

Les paysans regardaient leurs oliviers, à travers le grillage: ces arbres étaient toujours là, dans leur pleine floraison néanmoins modeste, mais d'ores et déjà de l'autre côté, inaccessibles, inutiles. Les paysans se retrouvaient enfermés, aussi sûrement que dans n'importe quelle prison, derrière ce Mur sinistre. Leurs champs, leurs pâturages, leurs puits étaient condamnés, car ils se trouvent de l'autre côté. Un portail, gardé par un soldat israélien: c'était tout ce qui les reliait encore à leur gagne-pain, à leur terre, à leur liberté -- et ce portail, il serait ouvert, ou fermé, au bon vouloir de l'armée. Toujours à l'affût de quelque profit à extorquer, l'armée a déjà institué un droit de péage au tarif de deux dollars par personne et par franchissement: ce n'est qu'après avoir perçu cette taxe moyenâgeuse que les soldats ouvrent le portail. Si ces Palestiniens veulent néanmoins aller s'amuser à bichonner leurs chers oliviers, ils n'ont qu'à prendre un ticket, comme à Disneyland.

Par places, le Mur prend la forme d'une gigantesque construction de béton, qui masque le paysage, enfermant les villageois dans la cour d'une prison géante. Mais les grilles d'acier, c'est encore pire, car cela leur offre la vue de la terre qu'hier encore ils disaient leur, et c'est un véritable supplice de Tantale. Le Mur parcourt des centaines de kilomètres, encerclant des villages, les séparant de leurs terres cultivées et dévorant les magnifiques paysages de la Palestine.

Ce Mur n'est pas une invention nouvelle. Je l'ai déjà vu. Pas très loin du Mont Carmel, il y avait un village arménien. Il avait été construit par des réfugiés arméniens qui avaient fui les tueries perpétrées par les Kurdes en 1915. Les Palestiniens, hospitaliers comme toujours, les avaient aidés à construire leurs maisons, et ils leur louaient des terres. En effet, ces Arméniens étaient des paysans qui vivaient autrefois, avant d'en être chassés, au bord du lac de Van (en Turquie). En 1948, leur village passa sous la souveraineté de l'Etat juif. Les juifs ne tuèrent pas les villageois arméniens. Ils ne les expulsèrent pas non plus. Non. Tout simplement, ils construisirent un mur tout autour du village, et finirent par totalement l'étouffer. Le village si vivant perdit ses terres et fut transformé en prison, avec un seul accès, gardé en permanence par l'armée juive. Les Arméniens tinrent dix ans. Pas plus. A la fin des années 1950, le dernier Arménien vendit sa maison aux juifs pour une bouchée de pain et, la mort dans l'âme, il partit.

Le Mur avait déjà un précurseur: le système d'autoroutes «pour-juifs-seulement». Alors que même les agglomérations de Haïfa et d'Afula n'ont pas de périphérique, le moindre village arabe a sa rocade: une large autoroute les encercle tous, limitant leur développement. Des centaines de maisons palestiniennes ont été démolies, des milliers d'hectares de terrain dévastés pour tracer le réseau des routes de contournement en suivant une recette apparemment empruntée au Guide du Routard pour la Galaxie. Cela a été fait sans raison apparente, car de minuscules implantations juives ne justifient pas cet investissement de millions de shekels pour des «raisons de sécurité». De plus, les routes nouvellement construites sont généralement condamnées par l'armée. Aujourd'hui, le Mur s'élevant de plus en plus haut, le réseau des routes de contournement commence à prendre sens: c'était tout simplement l'Etape Numéro Un du Plan de dévastation et d'emprisonnement.

Le Mur remettra les oliveraies entre les mains des colons, a écrit Uri Avneri, toujours tellement rationnel. Mais les colons n'ont pas besoin d'oliviers et ils n'ont aucune intention de cultiver la terre. Les arbres, ils préfèrent, de très loin, les brûler. Les colons ne sont pas la cause, mais ils sont une rationalisation de la cause première: cette cause première, c'est la volonté de dépeupler la Palestine et d'en tuer la nature.

Aurait-il pu en aller autrement ? Le programme du sionisme triomphant, actuellement mis en pratique, avait été ébauché, dès les années 1930, dans un essai de Vladimir Jabotinsky, intitulé Le Mur d'Acier. Mais les racines sont plus profondes, car le Mur est la manifestation ultime de la mentalité juive et il va comme un gant à l'Etat juif. Il y a des dizaines de mots différents pour dire «mur», dans les langues utilisées par les juifs; il y en a vraisemblablement autant que de façons différentes de désigner la neige, chez les Esquimaux. Le symbole sacré des juifs, c'est le Mur des Lamentations; la rue qu'ils préfèrent, c'est Wall Street. Les Egyptiens, les Babyloniens, les Chrétiens et les Musulmans ont édifié des monuments verticaux: des pyramides, des tours, des cathédrales, afin de relier le Ciel à la Terre. Mais les juifs, qui se méfient même de leur propre ombre, n'ont besoin ni du Ciel ni de la Terre. La première chose qu'ils construisent -- depuis Londres jusqu'au milieu du Minnesota -- c'est un 'eruv', un mur symbolique afin de bien marquer la séparation entre eux-mêmes et les non-juifs. La seule inscription rescapée du Temple juif (détruit quarante ans après que le Christ eût été jugé et condamné à mort entre ses quatre Murs) n'est pas un passage du Décalogue - les célèbres Dix Commandements -- ni de quelque enseignement moral. Non. C'est un morceau de Mur portant l'avertissement suivant: «Goy, si tu passes ce Mur, tu ne pourras que te blâmer toi-même pour la mort atroce qui t'attend.»

La partie la plus importante de l'enseignement juif, c'est la maxime: «Erige un mur autour de la Torah». Elle vient renforcer toutes les prohibitions existantes de la Loi, en ajoutant une douzaine supplémentaire. Il est interdit à un juif de cueillir des fruits un jour de shabbat, mais «le Mur» empêche lui aussi de monter à un arbre, de crainte que notre juif ne soit tenté d'aller en cueillir les fruits. Bien. Et maintenant, que se passe-t-il si l'arbre en question est un bouleau ou un sapin, arbres notoirement non fruitiers ? Y monter est interdit aux juifs pour le même motif: ce samedi-ci, vous allez escalader un bouleau, mais shabbat prochain, vous allez monter sur un pommier, et dans un mois, vous allez cueillir une pomme, et vous allez commettre une très grave transgression.

Le Mur de Sharon, c'est ce Mur autour de la Torah, car si vous laissiez un goy vadrouiller librement, tôt ou tard, il pourrait tuer un juif. Le Mur de Sharon est un Mur du Temple, car un goy qui oserait le franchir n'aurait qu'à se blâmer lui-même de la balle d'un tireur d'élite qui ne manquerait pas de l'abattre. Le Mur de Sharon, c'est le Mur des Lamentations des Palestiniens, et c'est le Wall Street des entrepreneurs juifs soumissionnés pour le construire. La voix qui l'ordonne est celle de Jacob, mais les mains qui le bâtissent sont celles d'Esaü: le Mur est construit avec la sueur des ouvriers palestiniens réduits à la misère, surveillés par des Russes et (mal) payés par des Américains à emprisonner leurs frères.

Les entrepreneurs vivent un Eldorado, un remake de leurs premières prouesses, la construction du Mur Bar Lev, de vingt mètres de haut, érigé sur les rives du canal de Suez dans les années 1970 et démoli par les canons à eau de fabrication soviétique de la Troisième armée égyptienne commandée par le Maréchal Sadate, le 6 octobre 1973. La seule chose de cette «Ligne» Bar-Lev (en réalité, le Mur Bar-Lev) qui ait survécu à la guerre de 1973, ce sont les grosses villas luxueuses des entrepreneurs israéliens du bâtiment.

Ce Mur est la vraie Feuille de Route des sionistes, car lorsque le Mur sera terminé, la Palestine sera ruinée et ses heureux habitants auront tous été transformés en réfugiés. Mais le sort des juifs ne sera pas plus enviable, car le Mur est partout. Il n'y a pas de boutique, de restaurant, de pub, dans l'autrefois joyeuse Tel-Aviv, qui n'ait son Mur vivant: un jeune homme, généralement importé de Russie ou d'Ukraine, embauché au gardiennage des lieux. Pour quatre dollars de l'heure, ils font barrage de leur corps devant les kamikazes éventuels, après quoi on les enterre, évidemment, dans ce cimetière, vous savez, derrière le Mur. Nous autres, Israéliens, nous sommes fouillés en moyenne dix fois par jour -- lorsqu'on va faire les courses, au bureau, au travail ou sur nos lieux de loisir. Il n'y a aucun bâtiment où vous puissiez entrer sans être fouillé. Si bien que la Terre Sainte est devenue une prison de haute sécurité pour tous ses habitants: juifs et non-juifs, dans ce domaine, sont logés à la même enseigne.

C'était à prévoir. Les juifs n'avaient pas été enfermés par des étrangers malfaisants à l'intérieur des murs de leurs ghettos, a écrit Vladimir Jabotinsky; c'est eux qui l'avaient voulu, tout comme les étrangers, en Chine, avaient choisi de vivre dans leurs colonies séparées. Cinquante ans plus tard, Israël Shahak a fait observer, avec beaucoup de perspicacité, que les murs du ghetto ont été ébréchés de l'extérieur, par l'Etat, alors que les juifs n'étaient pas très enclins à le quitter. Seuls les murs extérieurs l'ont été. Les murs intérieurs, eux, sont restés intacts. L'Etat juif est l'incarnation de la peur paranoïde des juifs et de leur dégoût de l'étranger, tandis que la politique de la Cabale du Pentagone est une autre manifestation de la même peur et du même dégoût, à l'échelle planétaire.

Il n'y a pas que les individus qui peuvent devenir fous. C'est aussi le cas de sociétés et de cultures entières. Cette importante découverte a été faite par la sociologue américaine Ruth Benedict, une amie de Margaret Mead et de Franz Boas. Son livre Patterns of Culture (1934) est encore l'un des ouvrages les plus lus dans le domaine des sciences sociales. Dans cet ouvrage, Ruth Benedict décrit différentes cultures indigènes américaines, et elle y présente les Indiens Pueblo comme des gens «placides et harmonieux».

L'anthropologue juif Franz Boas lui avait fourni des données montrant «le caractère mégalomaniaque et auto-gratifiant des Kwakiutl », tandis que Reo Fortune prouva que les habitants de l'île de Dobu étaient paranoïaques et mesquins. »

Cette dernière définition va comme un gant aux juifs, s'agissant de leur culture. Qu'était donc cette recherche obsessionnelle (inspirée par la Cabale de Wolfowicz) d'armes de destruction massive en Irak, sinon un accès de paranoïa, de peur de la vengeance d'un goy trompé muni d'une hache ? L'Israël actuel, le pays des fouilles corporelles éternelles, est la plus paranoïaque de toutes les sociétés, d'après Ruth Benedict. Si les Etats-Unis succombent à la même maladie sous le gouvernement de l'actuelle clique des disciples de Leo Strauss, construisant des murs partout et allant désarmer des terres lointaines, ainsi que leurs propres citoyens, c'est parce que la paranoïa juive est extrêmement contagieuse.

Il est inutile de lutter contre le Mur, tout comme il était inutile de le faire contre les colonies illégales, aussi longtemps que vous ignorerez le fond du problème. «Le Mur est dans nos cours» «Ubeliba Homa», chantaient les juifs en conquérant Jérusalem, en 1967. Le Mur est au coeur du problème, en effet, et ce problème, c'est l'Etat juif en Palestine. Les militants pacifistes, jeunes et plus tellement jeunes, sur les collines qui dominent le Mur, continuent à crier le slogan «Deux Etats» à des bulldozers que cela laisse de marbre, bien que lesdits bulldozers ne fassent pas autre chose que de mettre en application le rêve des Deux Etats, mon cauchemar: un Etat juif, et une chaîne de réserves d'Indiens pour les Goyim -- ce que d'aucuns osent appeler l'«Etat palestinien». Quiconque préconise «Un Etat palestinien indépendant, vivant à côté de l'Etat juif d'Israël» détourne les yeux du Mur pour, surtout, ne pas le voir. Le Mur, c'est l'opération de séparation des frères siamois, et seul le plus fort y survivra. Les discussions autour du Mur se perdent dans les sables, en Israël: l'immense majorité des Israéliens, du parti travailliste comme du Likoud, y sont favorables, tandis que les Israéliens «amoureux de la paix» sont les tenants les plus acharnés de la Gueule Dévoreuse d'oliviers.

Le Mur se moque des âmes innocentes rendues fiévreuses par la Feuille de route, autre plan maléfique destiné à séparer les Jumeaux. Sharon n'est pas autrement inquiet, puisqu'elle lui donne assez de temps pour terminer son Mur et qu'elle fait porter la responsabilité de la sauvegarde de la paix sur les seuls Palestiniens, tout en lui donnant carte blanche pour agir à sa guise en échange de quelques promesses creuses.

Les militants pacifistes espèrent modifier le tracé du Mur, ici ou là. Mais cela ne servira à rien, car le Mur n'en continuera pas moins à séparer des agriculteurs de leurs terres. Où que vous vouliez qu'il passe, il n'en séparera pas moins les réfugiés du camp de Deheishé de leurs maisons, à quinze kilomètres de là, à Deir al-Shaïkh. Il continuera à séparer les chrétiens de Taybéh du Saint Sépulcre et les Musulmans de Yassouf de la mosquée Al-Aqsa. Il continuera à séparer les juifs des Lieux saints. Il continuera à séparer les paysans des hauts plateaux palestiniens de leurs lieux de travail à Tel Aviv et à Haïfa.

Le Mur de Sharon, ce désastre sans mélange, offre une rare opportunité d'observer la nature véritable de l'Etat juif, et d'en appeler à son démantèlement. Non: ce qu'il faut démanteler. «C'est pas le Mur, andouille ! C'est l'Etat juif !»

From: "Israel Shamir" <[email protected]> 13 mai 2003.

<http://israelshamir.net> pour la version originale en anglais.

DERNIER DIALOGUE DE DEUX CONDAMNÉS À MORT

Ariel Sharon a félicité Abou Mazen pour son nouveau poste et a déclaré qu'il espérait pouvoir «collaborer de nouveau avec les Palestiniens, les rencontrer plus souvent pour un avenir meilleur». [...]

C'est le moment qu'a choisi Sharon pour évoquer la situation délicate dans laquelle se trouve son gouvernement: «J'ai une opposition interne qui m'empêche d'agir». Ce à quoi Abou Mazen a répondu: «Je suis beaucoup plus enchaîné que vous. Vous avez un seul Lieberman, moi j'en ai mille». Muhammad Dahlan a alors continué: «Vous rendez-vous compte que nous avons signé notre arrêt de mort en acceptant les postes que nous occupons ?»

Dans ce dialogue de sourds, où chacun attendait que l'autre fasse le premier pas, les deux parties sont parvenues à un seul compromis: elles poursuivront leurs rencontres.

Arutz 7, 19 mai 2003.

2 -- Guantanamo ou le déni du droit

LES DÉGONFLÉS

Les prisonniers français oubliés de Guantanamo

 

Depuis près d'un an et demi, des Français se trouvent dans une zone grise, emprisonnés sans droits à la base militaire de Guantanamo (Cuba). Ni prisonniers de guerre ni de droit commun, ils attendent que Washington mette un terme à ces conditions exceptionnelles de détention, à caractère militaire. Malgré les démarches informelles du ministère français de la justice auprès des autorités américaines et les initiatives de certaines familles de prisonniers, le sort de ces hommes demeure imprévisible, sans échéance ni recours.

Nouvel échec en date, pour les partisans de leur retour en France: la cour d'appel de Lyon a approuvé, mardi 20 mai, le refus d'informer du juge d'instruction Bertrand Nadau, après la plainte pour détention arbitraire déposée par les avocats de Nizar Sassi et Mourad Benchellali, deux prisonniers originaires de Vénissieux. La cour d'appel a donné raison au juge, en estimant que le droit français ne pouvait s'appliquer et que les Etats-Unis ont agi en Afghanistan dans le cadre des résolutions du Conseil de sécurité des Nations unies. [Les juges lyonnais sont réputés pour leur veulerie et leur incompétence.] "On sacrifie une nouvelle fois le droit sur l'autel de la lutte antiterroriste", assure Me Jacques Debray, qui va se pourvoir en cassation.

Le 31 octobre, le tribunal de Paris s'était déclaré incompétent pour reconnaître le statut de prisonniers de guerre aux Français détenus à Guantanamo et les conforter dans les droits prévus dans ce cas, comme celui d'être libérés dès la fin des hostilités. En compagnie de Me William Bourdon, Me Debray a adressé un courrier à Dominique Perben, le 13 mai, afin de demander des explications sur les démarches entreprises auprès de son homologue américain. Ils n'ont pas obtenu de réponse à ce jour.

"La moindre des choses"

Le dossier des prisonniers de Guantanamo n'est ni aisé ni prioritaire pour le gouvernement français, qui cherche à ne pas envenimer davantage ses relations avec les Etats-Unis. Pour cette raison, le ministère de la justice demeure prudent dans l'expression publique de ses critiques. Lors de ses deux entretiens avec John Ashcroft, à la mi-novembre à Washington et le 5 mai à Paris, le garde des sceaux, Dominique Perben, a fait part à M. Ashcroft de sa "préoccupation".

Malgré la décision de la cour d'appel de Lyon, le ministère de la justice craint que les recours des avocats des familles finissent un jour par aboutir, entraînant l'ouverture d'une information judiciaire en France pour séquestration et détention illégale, ce qui n'arrangerait pas les relations diplomatiques avec Washington. [Et alors ??? Les droits, ça existe ou ça n'existe pas ? ] A la veille de l'arrivé à Paris de M. Ashcroft, le 5 mai, Dominique Perben avait qualifié la situation des prisonniers français de "non-droit" et affirmé que la "moindre des choses " serait qu'ils puissent voir un avocat. Le ministère de la justice voudrait que John Ashcroft parvienne à faire entrer les prisonniers français dans un cadre judiciaire. "Le problème, c'est qu'Ashcroft dispose d'une marge de man_uvre proche de zéro au sein de l'administration Bush par rapport à Rumsfeld, et que le conflit irakien n'a pas arrangé les choses", explique-t-on à la chancellerie. "Pour les Américains, Guantanamo relève d'une stratégie de prévention des attentats, analyse un haut responsable de la direction de la surveillance du territoire (DST). Ils veulent geler la menace. Punir pénalement les prisonniers ne les intéresse pas. "

"Entre le droit et l'armée"

Deux logiques s'affrontent donc, sans parvenir à se marier: l'efficacité de la force, dont se prévalent les Américains contre la menace terroriste, et la légitimité du droit. "Les Etats-Unis s'assoient sur les règles et les conventions internationales, s'emporte le bâtonnier de Paris, Paul-Albert Iweins, qui s'est commis d'office pour la défense des prisonniers français. Nous sommes en présence d'une confrontation entre le droit et l'armée."

La seule demande officielle d'entraide judiciaire, adressée aux Etats-Unis par le parquet de Paris, est restée sans réponse. Le 5 novembre, le parquet a donc décidé d'ouvrir une information judiciaire pour association de malfaiteurs, offrant un cadre juridique pour discuter d'une éventuelle extradition. Mais depuis, l'enquête est au point mort. Selon plusieurs sources judiciaires, le dossier est "complètement vide". Aucun mandat d'arrêt n'a été lancé contre les prisonniers français. "On dispose de très peu d'informations sur le parcours de ces hommes, explique le juge Jean-Louis Bruguière, chargé de l'instruction. Avant toute appréciation sur une mesure à prendre ou un acte à faire, il faudrait avoir accès aux prisonniers." En janvier et en mars 2002, ceux-ci avaient reçu la visite de fonctionnaires des ministères des affaires étrangères et de l'intérieur et avaient été entendus par des agents de la DST, en présence d'enquêteurs américains. Une mission de renseignement sans caractère judiciaire.

Curieusement, un doute demeure à ce jour sur le nombre réel de prisonniers français. Huit noms, avec différents degrés de vraisemblance, étaient cités par le parquet au moment de l'ouverture de l'information judiciaire. Aujourd'hui, le ministère de la justice en avance six: Mourad Benchellali, Brahim Yadel, Redouane Khalid, Nizar Sassi, Khaled Ben Moustapha et Imad Achab Kanouni.

Aux yeux des spécialistes français de la lutte antiterroriste, ces détenus sont "de simples fantassins du Djihad" parmi des dizaines d'autres. Selon la DST et la direction centrale des renseignements généraux, ils présentent tous un profil similaire: celui d'islamistes arrivés en Afghanistan en juin-juillet 2001, en passant par Londres, pour suivre une formation militaire au nom du Djihad, fascinés par cette "terre promise" aux mains des talibans. Des militant'(s radicaux pris au piège de la guerre-éclair, dont rien n'indique qu'ils aient eu des visées terroristes, selon les services français.

Dans le quartier des Minguettes, à Vénissieux, les familles de Mourad Benchellali et de Nizar Sassi doivent toujours se contenter des rares courriers évasifs envoyés de Guantanamo par les deux hommes sur formulaire de la Croix-Rouge. "J'aimerais que mon fils Nizar soit jugé en France si on a quelque chose à lui reprocher", explique Sassi Sassi. Le comité de soutien aux familles, rassemblant des jeunes des Minguettes, continue d'interpeller les pouvoirs publics. Ses membres ont demandé à rencontrer Dominique de Villepin, ministre des affaires étrangères. "S'il arrive quoi que ce soit à Nizar et à Mourad, explique Ounsi, un des animateurs du comité, on se retournera sur le plan judiciaire contre le gouvernement français. Il faudra que quelqu'un paie pour l'inaction."

Piotr Smolar, Le Monde, 22 mai 2003

L'AMÉRIQUE DES BRUTES

Les Etats-unis confrontés aux demandes d'explications officielles d'une demi-douzaine de pays

 

Washington de notre correspondant. Le gouvernement américain cherche le moyen de résoudre le problème compliqué que lui posent les prisonniers de Guantanamo Bay. Il avait choisi cette base, dont il est locataire, [pas du tout locataire: occupant de force ] sur l'île de Cuba, pour y transférer, à partir du début de 2002, les militants d'Al-Qaida et les miliciens talibans capturés en Afghanistan. Logés d'abord dans des cellules provisoires qui ressemblaient à des cages, puis dans des bâtiments en dur, ces détenus, dont le nombre a dépassé 700, se partagent entre 42 nationalités étrangères, les deux Américains capturés en Afghanistan ayant été incarcérés aux Etats-Unis.

Les détenus de Guantanamo, interrogés par plusieurs services de police et de renseignement, n'ont jamais été présentés à des juges. Ils n'ont pas d'avocats. Les considérant comme des "combattants irréguliers", le gouvernement leur refuse la protection de la convention de Genève sur les prisonniers de guerre. [Comme les soldats allemands en 1945. Les Yankis sont spécialistes dans la transgression du droit. ] La Croix-Rouge internationale surveille leurs conditions de détention. Il y a un peu plus d'un mois, le secrétaire d'Etat, Colin Powell, a envoyé à son collègue de la défense, Donald Rumsfeld, une lettre dans laquelle il s'étonnait du temps mis par les services compétents à parvenir à des conclusions sur ces prisonniers et sur les procédures qu'il convenait de leur appliquer.

Depuis que cette démarche a été rendue publique, le 3 mai, des détenus ont été "transférés à leurs pays de nationalité", selon la formule officielle. Interrogé par téléphone à Guantanamo, Christopher Sherwood, porte-parole de l'unité de l'armée chargée des prisonniers, a indiqué au Monde le chiffre de 41 "transferts" depuis l'ouverture de la prison. Vingt-trois détenus, essentiellement afghans et pakistanais, ont quitté la base en 2002. Le 7 mai, 10 Afghans et 3 Pakistanais ont été renvoyés chez eux, suivis par 5 Saoudiens le 15 mai. En sens inverse, le 9 mai, une trentaine de prisonniers ont été amenés d'Afghanistan. Selon M. Sherwood, le nombre actuel des détenus est de 680.

Tribunaux militaires

Au département d'Etat, on indique qu'une demi-douzaine de pays ont fait des démarches diplomatiques formelles de demande d'explications au sujet de leurs ressortissants détenus. La France ne figure pas parmi ces pays. De source diplomatique, on confirme que le gouvernement français a évoqué le problème de ses six nationaux de façon informelle, mais systématique, lors des rencontres où ce sujet avait sa place. [Le gouvernement français a baissé son froc ] La dernière en date, au niveau ministériel, a été la venue à Paris du ministre américain de la justice, John Ashcroft, au début de ce mois, dans le cadre de la préparation du sommet annuel des pays industrialisés. M. Ashcroft, qui se soucie de la bonne coopération des services policiers et judiciaires dans la lutte contre les réseaux terroristes, a fait valoir que les détenus de Guantanamo ne dépendent pas de lui, mais du ministre de la défense.

Le ministère de la justice a justifié ce point de vue devant la Cour suprême, qui lui a donné raison, lundi, en déclarant irrecevable le recours d'un groupe d'avocats, de professeurs et de religieux déjà déboutés, en première instance et en appel, de leur plainte contre George Bush. Toutefois, si la justice ordinaire n'a pas compétence à Guantanamo, le Pentagone a fait savoir que les tribunaux militaires, dont M. Bush a décidé la formation en novembre 2001, sont prêts à siéger. Les premières audiences pourraient avoir lieu sur la base des Caraïbes pour les détenus considérés comme des cadres d'Al-Qaida. Les autres seraient remis à leurs pays de nationalité pour y être soit jugés, soit libérés.

Patrick Jarreau, Le Monde, 22 mai 2003.

3 -- L'Iraq des marais

SADDAM ET LA CIA

Exclusive: Saddam key in early CIA plot

By Richard Sale

 

U.S. forces in Baghdad might now be searching high and low for Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, but in the past Saddam was seen by U.S. intelligence services as a bulwark of anti-communism and they used him as their instrument for more than 40 years, according to former U.S. intelligence diplomats and intelligence officials.

United Press International has interviewed almost a dozen former U.S. diplomats, British scholars and former U.S. intelligence officials to piece together the following account. The CIA declined to comment on the report.

While many have thought that Saddam first became involved with U.S. intelligence agencies at the start of the September 1980 Iran-Iraq war, his first contacts with U.S. officials date back to 1959, when he was part of a CIA-authorized six-man squad tasked with assassinating then Iraqi Prime Minister Gen. Abd al-Karim Qasim.

In July 1958, Qasim had overthrown the Iraqi monarchy in what one former U.S. diplomat, who asked not to be identified, described as "a horrible orgy of bloodshed."

According to current and former U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, Iraq was then regarded as a key buffer and strategic asset in the Cold War with the Soviet Union. For example, in the mid-1950s, Iraq was quick to join the anti-Soviet Baghdad Pact which was to defend the region and whose members included Turkey, Britain, Iran and Pakistan.

Little attention was paid to Qasim's bloody and conspiratorial regime until his sudden decision to withdraw from the pact in 1959, an act that "freaked everybody out" according to a former senior U.S. State Department official.

Washington watched in marked dismay as Qasim began to buy arms from the Soviet Union and put his own domestic communists into ministry positions of "real power," according to this official. The domestic instability of the country prompted CIA Director Allan Dulles to say publicly that Iraq was "the most dangerous spot in the world."

In the mid-1980s, Miles Copeland, a veteran CIA operative, told UPI the CIA had enjoyed "close ties" with Qasim's ruling Baath Party, just as it had close connections with the intelligence service of Egyptian leader Gamel Abd Nassar. In a recent public statement, Roger Morris, a former National Security Council staffer in the 1970s, confirmed this claim, saying that the CIA had chosen the authoritarian and anti-communist Baath Party "as its instrument."

According to another former senior State Department official, Saddam, while only in his early 20s, became a part of a U.S. plot to get rid of Qasim. According to this source, Saddam was installed in an apartment in Baghdad on al-Rashid Street directly opposite Qasim's office in Iraq's Ministry of Defense, to observe Qasim's movements.

Adel Darwish, Middle East expert and author of "Unholy Babylon," said the move was done "with full knowledge of the CIA," and that Saddam's CIA handler was an Iraqi dentist working for CIA and Egyptian intelligence. U.S. officials separately confirmed Darwish's account.

Darwish said that Saddam's paymaster was Capt. Abdel Maquid Farid, the assistant military attaché at the Egyptian Embassy who paid for the apartment from his own personal account. Three former senior U.S. officials have confirmed that this is accurate.

The assassination was set for Oct. 7, 1959, but it was completely botched. Accounts differ. One former CIA official said that the 22-year-old Saddam lost his nerve and began firing too soon, killing Qasim's driver and only wounding Qasim in the shoulder and arm. Darwish told UPI that one of the assassins had bullets that did not fit his gun and that another had a hand grenade that got stuck in the lining of his coat.

"It bordered on farce," a former senior U.S. intelligence official said. But Qasim, hiding on the floor of his car, escaped death, and Saddam, whose calf had been grazed by a fellow would-be assassin, escaped to Tikrit, thanks to CIA and Egyptian intelligence agents, several U.S. government officials said.

Saddam then crossed into Syria and was transferred by Egyptian intelligence agents to Beirut, according to Darwish and former senior CIA officials. While Saddam was in Beirut, the CIA paid for Saddam's apartment and put him through a brief training course, former CIA officials said. The agency then helped him get to Cairo, they said.

One former U.S. government official, who knew Saddam at the time, said that even then Saddam "was known as having no class. He was a thug -- a cutthroat."

In Cairo, Saddam was installed in an apartment in the upper class neighborhood of Dukki and spent his time playing dominos in the Indiana Café, watched over by CIA and Egyptian intelligence operatives, according to Darwish and former U.S. intelligence officials.

One former senior U.S. government official said: "In Cairo, I often went to Groppie Café at Emad Eldine Pasha Street, which was very posh, very upper class. Saddam would not have fit in there. The Indiana was your basic dive."

But during this time Saddam was making frequent visits to the American Embassy where CIA specialists such as Miles Copeland and CIA station chief Jim Eichelberger were in residence and knew Saddam, former U.S. intelligence officials said.

Saddam's U.S. handlers even pushed Saddam to get his Egyptian handlers to raise his monthly allowance, a gesture not appreciated by Egyptian officials since they knew of Saddam's American connection, according to Darwish. His assertion was confirmed by former U.S. diplomat in Egypt at the time.

In February 1963 Qasim was killed in a Baath Party coup. Morris claimed recently that the CIA was behind the coup, which was sanctioned by President John F. Kennedy, but a former very senior CIA official strongly denied this.

"We were absolutely stunned. We had guys running around asking what the hell had happened," this official said.

But the agency quickly moved into action. Noting that the Baath Party was hunting down Iraq's communist, the CIA provided the submachine gun-toting Iraqi National Guardsmen with lists of suspected communists who were then jailed, interrogated, and summarily gunned down, according to former U.S. intelligence officials with intimate knowledge of the executions.

Many suspected communists were killed outright, these sources said. Darwish told UPI that the mass killings, presided over by Saddam, took place at Qasr al-Nehayat, literally, the Palace of the End.

A former senior U.S. State Department official told UPI: "We were frankly glad to be rid of them. You ask that they get a fair trial? You have to get kidding. This was serious business."

A former senior CIA official said: "It was a bit like the mysterious killings of Iran's communists just after Ayatollah Khomeini came to power in 1979. All 4,000 of his communists suddenly got killed."

British scholar Con Coughlin, author of "Saddam: King of Terror," quotes Jim Critchfield, then a senior Middle East agency official, as saying the killing of Qasim and the communists was regarded "as a great victory." A former long-time covert U.S. intelligence operative and friend of Critchfield said: "Jim was an old Middle East hand. He wasn't sorry to see the communists go at all. Hey, we were playing for keeps."

Saddam, in the meantime, became head of al-Jihaz a-Khas, the secret intelligence apparatus of the Baath Party.

The CIA/Defense Intelligence Agency relation with Saddam intensified after the start of the Iran-Iraq war in September of 1980. During the war, the CIA regularly sent a team to Saddam to deliver battlefield intelligence obtained from Saudi AWACS surveillance aircraft to aid the effectiveness of Iraq's armed forces, according to a former DIA official, part of a U.S. interagency intelligence group.

This former official said that he personally had signed off on a document that shared U.S. satellite intelligence with both Iraq and Iran in an attempt to produce a military stalemate. "When I signed it, I thought I was losing my mind," the former official told UPI.

A former CIA official said that Saddam had assigned a top team of three senior officers from the Estikhbarat, Iraq's military intelligence, to meet with the Americans.

According to Darwish, the CIA and DIA provided military assistance to Saddam's ferocious February 1988 assault on Iranian positions in the al-Fao peninsula by blinding Iranian radars for three days.

The Saddam-U.S. intelligence alliance of convenience came to an end at 2 a.m. Aug. 2, 1990, when 100,000 Iraqi troops, backed by 300 tanks, invaded its neighbor, Kuwait. America's one-time ally had become its bitterest enemy.

UPI Intelligence Correspondent. Published 4/10/2003

<http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030410-070214-6557r>

APPEL POUR LA LIBERATION DE TAREK AZIZ

Amitiés franco-irakiennes

Comité pour la libération des Irakiens séquestrés par les troupes d'occupation américaines en Irak

 

La guerre conduite par les Etats-Unis contre l'Irak étant illégale au regard du droit international, la séquestration de dirigeants, de civils et de militaires irakiens l'est tout autant.

Les forces doccupation américaines détiennent d'anciens dirigeants irakiens et de nombreux civils en des lieux tenus secrets. Ces personnes ne connaissent pas le motif de leur arrestation et les Américains leur refusent l'assistance d'un avocat. Ils ne peuvent recevoir ni leur famille, ni un représentant du Croissant Rouge International. L'association Amnesty International fait état de tortures infligées par les forces américaines et britanniques à des détenus irakiens, militaires et civils (AFP et AP du 16 mai 2003).

Nous lançons un appel pour que les dirigeants irakiens, les civils et les militaires arrêtés depuis le début de l'invasion du pays, soient traités comme le prévoient les conventions internationales et les règles les plus élémentaires des droits de l'homme, si ce n'est libérés. Nous demandons la stricte application des Conventions de Genève afin que le CICR puisse visiter les prisonniers de guerre, les détenus et les internés civils et veiller à ce qu'ils bénéficient d'un traitement humain.

Ayant appris que le vice-premier ministre Tarek Aziz a récemment été victime de deux alertes cardiaques, qu'il risque une hémiplégie et que son état de santé est alarmant, nous réclamons sa libération immédiate.

Le 19 mai 2003

Correspondance : AFI - 7, rue de Sarzeau, 35700 Rennes Fax : 02 99 63 11 09.

<[email protected]>

Ajoutons que la guerre étant finie, tous ces personnels civils et militaires doivent être libérés immédiatement. C'est ce que disent les Conventions de Genève, signées par les Etats-Unis.

La Gazette s'associe évidemment à cet appel et à cette exigence.

ON Y VIENT

Did The Iraqi Army Take A Dive For The U.S.?

 

by Randolph T. Holhut

 

05/04/03: Dummerston, Vt. -- After the opening week of battle in Iraq, many feared the worst. The supply lines were stretched too thin. There were few reserves available. Fighting was unexpectedly tough in southern cities such as Basra and the toughest fighting was still ahead in Baghdad. The "cakewalk" predicted by the hawks in the Bush administration wasn't happening.

Then, the situation totally changed within a few days. The Iraqi army seemingly disappeared and the U.S. forces swept into Baghdad with a minimum of resistance. With overwhelming superiority in firepower and total control of the air, a U.S. victory in Iraq was certain. But few believed it would take barely four weeks to achieve nearly all of the military objectives.

It all looked so easy. Maybe too easy.

In the days after the fall of Baghdad, reports started bubbling up that there was a reason why the U.S. won Gulf War II so easily: the fight was fixed. The French newspaper Le Monde reported on April 15 that the commanding general of Iraq's Republican Guard, Maher Sufyan, cut a deal with U.S. forces in exchange for his escape.

The Republican Guard had 20,000 well-equipped troops defending Baghdad. This was the force that was fully prepared to raise hell with U.S. forces, but suddenly melted away without a fight. Why?

Citing anonymous sources, Le Monde's correspondent in Baghdad wrote that Sufyan ordered his troops to lay down their arms and go home. A short time later, an Apache helicopter escorted Sufyan from the Al Rashid camp, east of Baghdad, to an undisclosed safe haven.

Sufyan was not included in the deck of cards created by the U.S. Defense Department that contained pictures of the 55 most wanted members of Saddam Hussein's regime. His whereabouts are still unknown.

The deal may have been sweeter than Le Monde knew. The Arabic-language weekly Arab Voice reported that there had been secret talks between U.S. forces and the Republican Guard. A deal was allegedly approved by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that offered large sums of money to the top echelon of the Republican Guard and offers of American citizenship for commanders and their families. If they chose to stay in Iraq, those commanders would be offered official roles in post-war Iraq, provided they hadn't committed war crimes.

The capper to the deal, according to Arab Voice editor Walid Rabah, was for the Republican Guard commanders to give information about the exact location of Saddam and the rest of the Iraqi leadership. U.S. forces then used it to launch a missile attack on April 7 on a building in a Baghdad suburb where the Iraqi leadership was meeting. Nobody knows for certain if Saddam or his sons were killed in that attack.

The Russian Ambassador to Iraq, Vladimir Titirenko, also said there may have been a deal. "I am confident that the Iraqi generals entered into a secret deal with the Americans to refrain from resistance in exchange for sparing their lives," Titirenko told Moscow's NTV.

According to the Iranian news agency Baztab, Saddam Hussein and Russian intelligence worked out a deal 13 days before the war began where Saddam allegedly pledged to hand over Baghdad with minimal resistance to U.S. forces in exchange for sparing the lives of Saddam and his family. The U.S. then promised to give Saddam's entourage safe passage to an unnamed third country, while Russia would get $5 billion to broker the deal.

How plausible are these stories? More than a few military analysts believe that one part of this tale is true - that the bulk of Iraq's army did take off their uniforms and took off for home.

A recent story from the Knight Ridder news service contained an interview with Major Sallah Abdullah Mahdi al Jabouri, a 17-year Iraqi army veteran and a Republican Guard battalion commander.

Even though U.S. airstrikes had killed one-third of his 4,000-man brigade, Jabouri said his men were prepared to defend Baghdad when he and his fellow field commanders received orders on April 8 to withdraw and return to their bases north of the city.

When they arrived at their base, they were told go home. The next day, U.S. forces swept into central Baghdad unopposed. "We went to war expecting everybody was going to die; we imagined the worst," said Jabouri. "But to lose your country is bigger." Some would say all this is foolish speculation. The U.S. won the war and Saddam is gone. Why worry about how it may have happened? It's worth talking about when you consider how the Bush administration's whole case for invading Iraq was built upon lies.

ABC News reported on April 25 that the administration emphasized the danger of Saddam's alleged stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction to gain the legal justification for war and scare Americans into supporting an attack. "We were not lying," said one official. "But it was a matter of emphasis." According to U.S. and British intelligence agencies, Iraq did not pose a threat to the U.S. [...]

Randolph T. Holhut has been a journalist in New England for more than 20 years. He edited "The George Seldes Reader" (Barricade Books).

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3235.htm>

LA VERSION CUBAINE

Thursday, Apr. 24, 2003 : Hussein in Cuba? Let it be true

by Jim DeFede

SADDAM Hussein is alive and living in Cuba. Don't just take my word for it. I got this information straight from the April 21 issue of the Egyptian newspaper Saut el Umma, which in Arabic means Voice of the Nation. [...]

2003 The Miami Herald

L'IRAQ ATOMISÉ

De l'uranium plein la gueule

 

Remains of Toxic Bullets Litter Iraq

by Scott Peterson

 

Baghdad -- At a roadside produce stand on the outskirts of Baghdad, business is brisk for Latifa Khalaf Hamid. Iraqi drivers pull up and snap up fresh bunches of parsley, mint leaves, dill, and onion stalks.

But Ms. Hamid's stand is just four paces away from a burnt-out Iraqi tank, destroyed by -- and contaminated with -- controversial American depleted-uranium (DU) bullets. Local children play "throughout the day" on the tank, Hamid says, and on another one across the road.

No one has warned the vendor in the faded, threadbare black gown to keep the toxic and radioactive dust off her produce. The children haven't been told not to play with the radioactive debris. They gather around as a Geiger counter carried by a visiting reporter starts singing when it nears a DU bullet fragment no bigger than a pencil eraser. It registers nearly 1,000 times normal background radiation levels on the digital readout.

The Monitor visited four sites in the city -- including two randomly chosen destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles, a clutch of burned American ammunition trucks, and the downtown planning ministry -- and found significant levels of radioactive contamination from the US battle for Baghdad.

In the first partial Pentagon disclosure of the amount of DU used in Iraq, a US Central Command spokesman told the Monitor that A-10 Warthog aircraft -- the same planes that shot at the Iraqi planning ministry -- fired 300,000 bullets. The normal combat mix for these 30-mm rounds is five DU bullets to 1 -- a mix that would have left about 75 tons of DU in Iraq.

The Monitor saw only one site where US troops had put up handwritten warnings in Arabic for Iraqis to stay away. There, a 3-foot-long DU dart from a 120 mm tank shell, was found producing radiation at more than 1,300 times background levels. It made the instrument's staccato bursts turn into a steady whine.

"If you have pieces or even whole [DU] penetrators around, this is not an acute health hazard, but it is for sure above radiation protection dose levels," says Werner Burkart, the German deputy director general for Nuclear Sciences and Applications at the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna. "The important thing in any battlefield -- especially in populated urban areas -- is somebody has to clean up these sites."

Minimizing the risk

Fresh-from-the-factory DU tank shells are normally handled with gloves, to minimize the health risk, and shielded with a thin coating. The alpha particle radiation emitted by DU travels less than an inch and can be stopped by cloth or even tissue paper. But when the DUmaterial burns (usually on impact; or as a dust, it can spontaneously ignite) protective shields disappear, and dangerous radioactive oxides are created that can be inhaled or ingested.

"[The risk] depends so very much on how you handle it," says Jan Olof Snihs, of Sweden's Radiation Protection Authority in Stockholm. In most cases dangers are low, he says, unless children eat toxic and radioactive soil, or get DU oxides on their hands.

Radioactive particles are a "special risk associated with a war," Mr. Snihs says. "The authorities should be aware of this, and try to decontaminate places like this, just to avoid unnecessary risk."

Pentagon officials say that DU is relatively harmless and a necessary part of modern warfare. They say that pre-Gulf War studies that indicated a risk of cancer and of causing harm to local populations through permanent contamination have been superseded by newer reports.

"There is not really any danger, at least that we know about, for the people of Iraq," said Lt. Col. Michael Sigmon, deputy surgeon for the US Army's V Corps, told journalists in Baghdad last week. He asserted that children playing with expended tank shells would have to eat and then practically suffocate on DU residue to cause harm.

But there is a growing chorus of concern among United Nations and relief officials, along with some Western scientific experts, who are calling for sites contaminated with DU be marked off and made safe.

"The soil around the impact sites of [DU] penetrators may be heavily contaminated, and could be harmful if swallowed by children," says Brian Spratt, chair of the working group on DU at The Royal Society, Britain's premier scientific institution.

Heavy metal toys?

Fragments and penetrators should be removed, since "children find them fascinating objects, and can pocket them," says Professor Spratt. "The science says there is some danger - not perhaps a huge danger - of these objects. ... We certainly do not say that these things are safe; we say that cleanup is important."

The British Ministry of Defense says it will offer screening to soldiers suspected of DU exposure, and will publish details about locations and quantities of DU that British troops used in Iraq - a tiny fraction of that fired by US forces.

The Pentagon has traditionally been tight-lipped about DU: Official figures on the amount used were not released for years after the 1991 Gulf War and Bosnia conflicts, and nearly a year after the 1999 Kosovo campaign. No US official contacted could provide DU use estimates from the latest war in Iraq.

"The first thing we should ask [the US military] is to remove that immediately," says Carel de Rooy, head of the UN Children's Fund in Baghdad, adding that senior UN officials need urgent advice on avoiding exposure.

The UN Environment Program last month called for field tests. DU "is still an issue of great concern for the general public," said UNEP chief Klaus Töpfer. "An early study in Iraq could either lay these fears to rest or confirm that there are indeed potential risks."

US troops avoid wreckage

During the latest Iraq conflict Abrams tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and A-10 Warthog aircraft, among other military platforms, all fired the DU bullets from desert war zones to the heart of Baghdad. No other armor-piercing round is as effective against enemy tanks. While the Pentagon says there's no risk to Baghdad residents, US soldiers are taking their own precautions in Iraq, and in some cases have handed out warning leaflets and put up signs.

"After we shoot something with DU, we're not supposed to go around it, due to the fact that it could cause cancer," says a sergeant in Baghdad from New York, assigned to a Bradley, who asked not to be further identified.

"We don't know the effects of what it could do," says the sergeant. "If one of our vehicles burnt with a DU round inside, or an ammo truck, we wouldn't go near it, even if it had important documents inside. We play it safe."

Six American vehicles struck with DU "friendly fire" in 1991 were deemed to be too contaminated to take home, and were buried in Saudi Arabia. Of 16 more brought back to a purpose-built facility in South Carolina, six had to be buried in a low-level radioactive waste dump.

Television footage of the war last month showed Iraqi armored vehicles burning as US columns drove by, a common sign of a strike by DU, which burns through armor on impact, and often ignites the ammunition carried by the targeted vehicle.

"We were buttoned up when we drove by that - all our hatches were closed," the US sergeant says. "If we saw anything on fire, we wouldn't stop anywhere near it. We would just keep on driving."

That's an option that produce seller Hamid doesn't have.

She says the US broke its promise not to bomb civilians. She has found US cluster bomblets in her garden; the DU is just another dangerous burden, in a war about which she remains skeptical.

"We were told it was going to be paradise [when Saddam Hussein was toppled], and now they are killing our children," she says voicing a common Iraqi perception about the risk of DU. "The Americans did not bother to warn us that this is a contaminated area."

There is a warning now at the Doura intersection on the southern outskirts of Baghdad. In the days before the capital fell, four US supply trucks clustered near an array of highway off-ramps caught fire, cooking off a number of DU tank rounds.

American troops wearing facemasks for protection arrived a few days later and bulldozed the topsoil around the site to limit the contamination.

The troops taped handwritten warning signs in Arabic to the burned vehicles, which read: "Danger - Get away from this area." These were the only warnings seen by this reporter among dozens of destroyed Iraqi armored vehicles littering the city.

"All of them were wearing masks," says Abbas Mohsin, a teenage cousin of a drink seller 50 yards away, said referring to the US military cleanup crew. "They told the people there were toxic materials ... and advised my cousin not to sell Pepsi and soft drinks in this area. They said they were concerned for our safety."

Despite the troops' bulldozing of contaminated earth away from the burnt vehicles, black piles of pure DU ash and particles are still present at the site. The toxic residue, if inhaled or ingested, is considered by scientists to be the most dangerous form of DU.

One pile of jet-black dust yielded a digital readout of 9,839 radioactive emissions in one minute, more than 300 times average background levels registered by the Geiger counter. Another pile of dust reached 11,585 emissions in a minute.

Western journalists who spent a night nearby on April 10, the day after Baghdad fell, were warned by US soldiers not to cross the road to this site, because bodies and unexploded ordnance remained, along with DU contamination. It was here that the Monitor found the "hot" DU tank round.

This burned dart pushed the radiation meter to the far edge of the "red zone" limit.

A similar DU tank round recovered in Saudi Arabia in 1991, that was found by a US Army radiological team to be emitting 260 to 270 millirads of radiation per hour. Their safety memo noted that the "current [US Nuclear Regulatory Commission] limit for non-radiation workers is 100 millirads per year."

The normal public dose limit in the US, and recognized around much of the world, is 100 millirems per year. Nuclear workers have guidelines 20 to 30 times as high as that.

The depleted-uranium bullets are made of low-level radioactive nuclear-waste material, left over from the making of nuclear fuel and weapons. It is 1.7 times as dense as lead, and burns its way easily through armor. But it is controversial because it leaves a trail of contamination that has half-life of 4.5 billion years - the age of our solar system.

Less DU in this war?

In the first Gulf War, US forces used 320 tons of DU, 80 percent of it fired by A-10 aircraft. Some estimates suggest 1,000 tons or more of DU was used in the current war. But the Pentagon disclosure Wednesday that about 75 tons of A-10 DU bullets were used points to a smaller overall DU tonnage in Iraq this time.

US military guidelines developed after the first Gulf War - which have since been considerably eased - required any soldier coming within 50 yards of a tank struck with DU to wear a gas mask and full protective suit. Today, soldiers say they have been told to steer clear of any DU.

"If a [tank] was taken out by depleted uranium, there may be oxide that you don't want to inhale. We want to minimize any exposure, at least to the lowest level possible," Dr. Michael Kilpatrick, a top Pentagon health official told journalists on March 14, just days before the war began. "If somebody needs to go into a tank that's been hit with depleted uranium, a dust mask, a handkerchief is adequate to protect them - washing their hands afterwards."

Not everyone on the battlefield may be as well versed in handling DU, Dr. Kilpatrick said, noting that his greater concern is DU's chemical toxicity, not its radioactivity: "What we worry about like lead in paint in housing areas - children picking it up and eating it or licking it - getting it on their hands and ingesting it."

In the US, stringent NRC rules govern any handling of DU, which can legally only be disposed of in low-level radioactive waste dumps. The US military holds more than a dozen NRC licenses to work with it.

In Iraq, DU was not just fired at armored targets.

Video footage from the last days of the war shows an A-10 aircraft - a plane purpose-built around a 30-mm Gatling gun - strafing the Iraqi Ministry of Planning in downtown Baghdad.

A visit to site yields dozens of spent radioactive DU rounds, and distinctive aluminum casings with two white bands, that drilled into the tile and concrete rear of the building. DU residue at impact clicked on the Geiger counter at a relatively low level, just 12 times background radiation levels.

Hot bullets

But the finger-sized bullets themselves - littering the ground where looters and former staff are often walking - were the "hottest" items the Monitor measured in Iraq, at nearly 1,900 times background levels.

The site is just 300 yards from where American troops guard the main entrance of the Republican Palace, home to the US and British officials tasked with rebuilding Iraq.

"Radioactive? Oh, really?" asks a former director general of the ministry, when he returned in a jacket and tie for a visit last week, and heard the contamination levels register in bursts on the Geiger counter.

"Yesterday more than 1,000 employees came here, and they didn't know anything about it," the former official says. "We have started to not believe what the American government says. What I know is that the occupiers should clean up and take care of the country they invaded."

US military officials often say that most people are exposed to natural or "background" radiation n daily life. For example, a round-trip flight across the US can yield a 5 millirem dose from increased cosmic radiation; a chest X-ray can yield a 10 millirem dose in a few seconds.

The Pentagon says that, since DU is "depleted" and 40 percent less radioactive than normal uranium, it presents even less of a hazard.

But DU experts say they are most concerned at how DU is transformed on the battlefield, after burning, into a toxic oxide dust that emits alpha particles. While those can be easily stopped by the skin, once inside the body, studies have shown that they can destroy cells in soft tissue. While one study on rats linked DU fragments in muscle tissue to increased cancer risk, health effects on humans remain inconclusive.

As late as five days before the Iraq war began, Pentagon officials said that 90 of those troops most heavily exposed to DU during the 1991 Gulf War have shown no health problems whatsoever, and remain under close medical scrutiny.

Released documents and past admissions from military officials, however, estimate that around 900 Americans were exposed to DU. Only a fraction have been watched, and among those has been one diagnosed case of lymphatic cancer, and one arm tumor. As reported in previous articles, the Monitor has spoken to American veterans who blame their DU exposure for serious health problems.

The politics of DU

But DU health concerns are very often wrapped up in politics. Saddam Hussein's regime blamed DU used in 1991 for causing a spike in the cancer rate and birth defects in southern Iraq.

And the Pentagon often overstates its case - in terms of DU effectiveness on the battlefield, or declaring the absence of health problems, according to Dan Fahey, an American veterans advocate who has monitored the shrill arguments from both sides since the mid-1990s.

"DU munitions are neither the benign wonder weapons promoted by Pentagon propagandists nor the instruments of genocide decried by hyperbolic anti-DU activists," Mr. Fahey writes in a March report, called "Science or Science Fiction: Facts, Myth and Propaganda in the Debate Over DU Weapons."

Nonetheless, Rep. Jim McDermott (D) of Washington, a doctor who visited Baghdad before the war, introduced legislation in Congress last month requiring studies on health and environment studies, and clean up of DU contamination in the US. He says DU may well be associated with increased birth defects.

"While the political effects of using DU munitions are perhaps more apparent than their health and environmental effects," Fahey writes, "science and common sense dictate it is unwise to use a weapon that distributes large quantities of a toxic waste in areas where people live, work, grow food, or draw water."

Because of the publicity the Iraqi government has given to the issue, Iraqis worry about DU.

"It is an important concern.... We know nothing about it. How can I protect my family?" asks Faiz Askar, an Iraqi doctor. "We say the war is finished, but what will the future bring?"

Christian Science Monitor, 15 May 2003.

<http://www.csmonitor.com/>

4 -- Le pays des faux-juifs

CES ISRAÉLIENS QUI BOUFFENT DU JUIF

L'antisémitisme se développe en Israël

mais les autorités ferment les yeux

 

24 mai. Un véritable antisémitisme, combinant la haine des Juifs à celle des Arabes, fleurit en Israël, rapporte le quotidien Haaretz, qui vient de conduire une enquête sur le sujet. Il émane principalement d'immigrants d'origine russe. La plupart sont arrivés en Israël dans le cadre de l'absurde Loi du Retour, qui accorde la citoyenneté israélienne à tous les «Juifs» qui le désirent. Mais qu'est-ce qu'un «Juif» ? Les critères israéliens sont à géométrie variable, et, en pratique, des centaines de milliers d'immigrants originaires de l'ex-Union soviétique ont été invités à s'installer en Israël, alors que rien ne les rattache au judaïsme, religieux ou culturel. En fait, la législation israélienne autorise aujourd'hui peu ou prou n'importe qui à immigrer, pourvu qu'il ne soit pas Arabe. Selon Ha'aretz, des centaines d'actes anti-juifs, allant des insultes à la profanation de synagogues et de cimetières, ont été enregistrés ces dernières années en Israël, mais uniquement par des personnes privées. Le gouvernement, dont le credo est qu'il n'y a qu'un endroit au monde libéré de l'antisémitisme, Israël, ne veut pas en entendre parler, et laisse donc faire !

Voici, en une traduction française due à Carole Sandrel, l'article publié par Lily Galili, "Anti-Semitism, right here at home", dans Ha'aretz, 23 mai 2003:

<http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=296114&sw=neo-Nazi>

Antisémitisme même chez nous

 

Il n'y a pas longtemps, a été lancé le premier site internet israélien néo-nazi. Plus précisément c'est en fait un site israélien en langue russe. Qui dira que nous ne produisons rien d'original chez nous ?

A la liste des étrangetés qui définissent désormais le monde, on peut ajouter quelques paradoxes locaux. Il apparaît que le nombre de juifs russes qui émigreront en Allemagne cette année sera plus important que le nombre de ceux qui viennent en Israël. La loi qui permet aux juifs de l'ancienne Union soviétique d'immigrer en Allemagne est proche de la définition limitée de «juifs selon la loi juive». La loi israélienne du retour, cependant, est basée en fait sur les lois de Nuremberg par lesquelles les Allemands élargirent la définition de qui est juif en fonction de leurs propres besoins. [Mais, en réalité, les lois allemandes de Nuremberg étaient fondées sur les lois juives qui régissaient la vie du ghetto. C'est pourquoi les sionistes de l'époque les approuvaient entièrement. ]

L'antisémitisme se développe depuis peu en Europe et aussi dans l'Etat juif. Il y a peu, le premier site israélien néo-nazi a été lancé. Plus précisément c'est un site en russe. [Nous n'avons pas, pour le moment, réussi à l'identifier ] Qui dira que nous ne produisons rien d'original chez nous ? Le site est bien organisé. Il contient du texte et des images montrant les militants de l'organisation «L'Union des Israéliens blancs», dont certains en uniforme l'armée israélienne sur fond de camps militaires, saluant le bras levé. Le texte développé est divisé en sous-rubriques. L'une s'intitule: «Qui sommes nous ?» où les gestionnaires du site se présentent comme «Ilia de Haïfa et Andreï d'Arad» et on précise que les membres de l'association sont des «gens qui sont fiers d'eux-mêmes et sont malades de vivre parmi des sales bâtards». Il y a une rubrique intitulée: «Qui sont nos ennemis ?» où tous les ennemis sont abondamment décrits: les juifs, les Arabes, les immigrés de toutes les républiques islamiques de l'ancienne Union soviétique, les Marocains (juifs originaires du Maroc, NdT), les travailleurs étrangers, en bref, les « culs-noirs ».

Dans le forum des invités du site, on trouve d'autres opinions: par exemple, la haine des juifs devrait conduire à une alliance avec les Arabes. Il y a aussi une rubrique «Code» de règles de conduite à l'intention des membres de l'association parmi lesquelles le respect à l'égard denvers les parents mais aussi «ne pas se montrer avare parce que l'avarice est «jid», mot russe désobligeant pour juif, approximativement équivalent à youpin.

[Voici une affirmation complètement fausse. "Yid" ou "jid" est un mot yid-dish qui traduit très exactement le mot "juif" du latin judaeus, c'est-à-dire habitant de la Judée, une région où se trouvait un Etat appelé Juda, aboli vers le IIIe siècle avant notre ère. C'est comme ça que les juifs d'Europe orientale et de Russie s'appellent eux-mêmes et ce terme est évidemment passé chez les non-juifs au sein desquels vivaient les juifs. Au cours du XXe siècle, pour des raisons purement politiques, les autorités ont essayé d'imposer une autre dénomination à ceux qui étaient appelés depuis des siècles des "juifs - yid - zhid". On a inventé "Israélite" en France, terme qui ne veut rien dire. On a fabriqué "ebreo" en Italie, evreï en russe et "ivrit" (=hébreu) en anglais . Mais ce ne sont que des termes "officiels", de surcroît mensongers, car les juifs d'Europe seraient bien en peine de retracer une généalogie quelconque avec des "Hébreux" dont l'existence historique , au Moyen-Orient, il y a deux ou trois mille ans, est loin d'être solidement établie... ]

Il y a notamment une riche rubrique de blagues, dont la plupart sont consacrés à toutes sortes d'épisodes dans les camps de concentration et qui finissent mal pour les Juifs.

Ceux qui suivent ce type de phénomène disent que par sa structure et son contenu, ce site ressemble aux sites néo-nazis de Russie, et que des liens très étroits existent entre les militants d'ici et ceux de là-bas. Dans le forum du site local l'attitude envers la présence de ces Blancs orgueilleux en Israël est ambiguë: certzins le leur reprochent, tandis que d'autres pensent qu'il est en fait important que certains «des nôtres» soient aussi présents dans «l'Etat juif». Les membres qui vivent en Israël expliquent qu'ils veulent défendre la vraie personnalité russe sur le sol israélien. Ils ont une mission.

Indifférence étudiée

Avigdor Yardeni est l'un des nombreux membres de la communauté immigrée de la Confédération des Etats Indépendants qu'inquiètent la montée de ce phénomène. Yardeni (dont le nom était à l'origine Mashogiyan), né d'une mère juive et d'un père arménien, a immigré en Israël il y a douze ans. Il y a eu deux filles «sabra» et a tâté plusieurs métiers: il a travaillé comme voyageur de commerce, comme représentant de l'Agence Juive en Russie auprès de la jeunesse [pour recruter dans les provinces russes de pauvres naïfs à qui l'Agence juive faisait miroiter toutes sortes de félicités] , et en tant qu'homme d'affaires il a effectué de nombreux allers et retours entre Israël et son ancienne patrie. Désormais, c' est surtout un citoyen soucieux de se tenir au fait de l'étendue des manifestations antisémites dans la communauté russophone, et plus spécialement sur ce nouveau site néo-nazi d'Internet. Selon lui, qui a étudié le contenu du site, il ne fait aucun doute que ce sont des jeunes en âge de faire l'armée et un peu plus vieux. Le bas niveau de russe, qui est plein de fautes, démontre que ce sont des gens peu éduqués et Yardeni relève dans leur langue très pauvre une nette influence de l'hébreu. Ce sont donc des jeunes gens venus en Israël avec leur famille grâce à la loi du retour et qui ont grandi ici.

Cette histoire l'obsède littéralement. Contrairement à beaucoup d'autres qui se contentent de faire la moue, Yardeni a décidé de faire quelque chose. Avec une dizaine d'amis immigré et avec le journal L'Israélien russe, imprimé ici en russe, il a élaboré une convention dont le but est d'appeller à changer la loi du retour pour empêcher que de tels éléments arrivent en Israël.

«Ma motivation ce sont mes filles, dit Yardeni «Elles vont vivre dans ce pays. A priori, nous aurions d'autres possibilités: ma mère et une de mes soeurs sont aux Etats-Unis et nous pourrions les rejoindre mais il y a quelque chose d'agréable à vivre ici et je ne veux pas l'abandonner. Mais si Israël devient une arène politique pour des graffitis de svastika, des cris de Yid et de sites néo nazis, alors pourquoi venir ici de tous les pays ? [Apparemment, il n'est pas gêné par l'apartheid et les massacres qui s'abattent sur les Palestiniens. Il ne pense qu'aux juifs, les autres peuvent crever. Toujours ce merveilleux humanisme. ] Ironiquement, ces phénomènes sont en déclin dans les grandes villes russes. A Moscou, sur douze millions d'habitants, il y a environ 5.000 néo-nazis organisés; mais pour Israël, il y en a une petite centaine ou quelques douzaines seulement, c'est énorme». Le site de l'Union des Israéliens blancs est une nouvelle étape des phénomènes antisémites au sein de la communauté russophone d'Israël. Depuis environ trois ans, le Centre d'information pour les victimes de l'antisémitisme en Israël est actif. Ses membres suivent les manifestations d'antisémitisme dans ce pays dans des sources «officielles» comme la presse et les plaintes individuelles qui lui sont confiées. Le centre est dirigé par Zalman Gilichinski, 39 ans, peintre, un nouvel observateur juif immigré de Kichinev (Moldavie, ex-Union soviétique).

Avec le temps il a accumulé des centaines d'incidents qui ailleurs dans le monde seraient définis comme «manifestations d'antisémitisme» mais en Israël le système politique et les autorités responsables du maintien de l'ordre les considèrent avec une indifférence voulue. La liste des incidents est longue: immigrés non juifs traitant les immigrés juifs de jid, une immigrée juive âgée de Jérusalem battue par un infirmier non juif qui la traite de «jidovka» des commentaires comme «Hitler n'a pas fini le travail», graffitis de svastika trouvés en permanence dans les quartiers où prédomine le russe, vandalisme dans les synagogues et les cimetières.

Un silence assourdissant

En novembre 2002 une travailleuse sociale a été appelée d'urgence dans une école de Kiryat Menachem à Jérusalem pour aider des enfants et des familles qui avaient été blessés dans une attaque terroriste à bord d'un bus du quartier. Désespérée et inquiète, elle s'est rendue en bus dans le quartier concerné. Avant qu'elle descende du bus, l'un des passagers, une femme russophone a dit: «Ça suffit. Nous devons en finir avec vous». Récemment, on a vu des skinheads à Hatsor et Kiryat Shmona. Dans des librairies russes israéliennes on vend ouvertement des livres qui font la promotion des thèses niant l'Holocauste aussi bien que des cassettes de chants néo-nazis comme «Les nazis arrivent». La tentative de Gilichinski pour obtenir l'aide de l'Anti Defamation League, du président d'Israël ou du site officiel administré par l'Etat d'Israël et l'Agence juive pour surveiller l'antisémitisme s'est heurté à l'indifférence et à l'incompréhension. «Ça ne fait pas partie de notre mandat. Notre mandat concerne l'antisémitisme dans le monde, pas en Israël». Pourtant des journaux européens y compris la Pravda russe, ont eu à coeur de publier des rapports détaillés sur ce nouveau phénomène d'antisémitisme en Israël.

«Je ne pensais pas qu'après avoir quitté la Russie je reviendrais jamais à la Pravda en raison de cette publication» dit Gilichinski sarcastique, mais la politique du non-dit en Israël me rappelle la politique qui prévalait en Union Soviétique -- une politique consistant à taire tout ce qui n'est pas en accord avec la doctrine officielle». Même si ici il n'existe pas vraiment une telle doctrine, ces phénomènes sont parfaitement ignorés et de façon surprenante. Peut-être cela provient-il du choc provoqué par la montée de l'antisémitisme dans le seul endroit au monde supposé être au moins exempt de ce phénomène. Mais plus en profondeur, et particulièrement à la lumière de ce silence assourdissant des membres de la Knesset supposés représenter le public immigrant, il se peut qu'il y ait d'autres puissantes raisons à ce silence. Au niveau politique immédiat il faut admettre qu'il y a un risque électoral certain Si l'on en juge par bien des forums et des chats sur internet, les comportements de vote de cette population hostile à Israël et au peuple juif qui vit et habite ici sont éparpillés à travers le spectre politique de la droite à la gauche. Parmi eux il y a des supporters du Shinui et du Meretz qui voient ces partis comme une ouverture libérale pour la réalisation de leurs aspirations. Il y a des supporters de l'Union nationale qui sont attirés par la nature des manoeuvres d'intimidation de ce mouvement et sa haine des Arabes. Mais plus encore, il apparaît que tout le spectre politique et les organisations associées ont choisi de ne pas s'intéresser à ce problème parce qu'il touche le nerf le plus sensible de l'éthos national : la loi du retour. Et la définition de l'Etat autour de l'axe «juif-démocratique».

Folie démographique

«Il y a une dimension métaphysique dans la loi du retour qui intervient pour compenser chaque goutte de sang juif pour lesquelles les Nazis ont voulu assassiner le peuple juif» dit l'écrivain et essayiste Maya Kaganskaya qui est aussi l'auteur d'une étude sur le fascisme en Russie. «Métaphysiquement je suis aussi d'accord avec ça. Mais en réalité les juifs sont en danger à cause de ça. Il y a ici un problème difficile à résoudre. C'est facile de s'occuper du mouvement néo nazi -- ils devraient simplement être jetés hors d'ici. J'ai l'habitude de ce phénomène en Russie, où il est vraiment populaire. Les nazis et Hitler sont maintenant auréolés par un halo de romantisme dans le combat contre le nouveau monde. Mais le vrai problème, c'est la loi du retour. Un Etat juif selon la loi religieuse juive est un Etat construit sur la loi du retour comme tel qu'il maintient les deux conduit à la fin de l'Etat. Il est nécessaire de réunir intellectuels, démographes, et experts de justice qui examineront dans quelles limites et selon quels critères on peut accepter des immigrants ici ».

Le député Yuri Stern de l'Union nationale dit que depuis longtemps son mouvement considère comme nécessaire de voir si la législation existante comporte assez de sanctions contre l'antisémitisme en Israël, mais ça reste à faire. «Le temps est arrivé, dit-il , il y a assez de gens ici avec une appartenance antisémite et quand la vie est difficile et pleine de tensions, ces choses explosent. Même si c'est un phénomène d'une importance sociale et politique limitée, c'est cruel et inacceptable».

Mais tout le problème exige d'être examiné avec précaution, en faisant une distinction claire et parfaitement précise entre les non-juifs, venus ici au bénéfice de la Loi du retour et qui ont lié leur destin à celui du pays, et les éléments qui sont clairement hostiles, entre phénomène de pur hooliganisme ou de vandalisme juvénile, pervers néanmoins, et un danger réel. Il est aussi important de distinguer entre une organisation dont le but est de saper les fondations de l'Etat et les légitimes demandes culturelles de non-juifs qui sont venus ici au bénéfice de la Loi du retour étendue.

On doit comprendre qu'il y a des cas où une réaction antisémite verbale est une réponse au racisme rencontré ici par des immigrants non-juifs, surtout les jeunes dont la vie s'est aigrie à cause de l'establishment israélien, les poussant à s'écarter de l'Etat. Dans cet enchevêtrement de nuances sur le sol d'Israël qui est raciste dans certains cas, toutes ces distinctions sont décisives pour isoler parmi elles les phénomènes vraiment dangereux.

Mais pardessus tout s'occuper de ce phénomène doit commencer par la folie démographique, par laquelle tout le monde est encouragé à venir ici tant qu'il n'est pas arabe. Même s'il déteste l'Etat, même s'il déteste les juifs il est considéré comme contribution positive aux besoins des effectifs démographiques. Il y a environ un an, Lutfi Mashour, le directeur du journal arabe Al-Sinara a dit à Ha'aretz que, tandis que les juifs sont obsédés par la menace démographique arabe, ils vont connaître un problème démographique, mais ailleurs.

Yardeni qui se définit lui-même comme un «libéral de droite» est d'accord avec Mashour: «Le remède est bien pire que la maladie» dit-il. «Je suis terriblement honteux d'avoir participé en son temps à ce système qui rend possible l'arrivée de n'importe qui. Je suis contre la folie démographique que vous décrivez, dans le cadre de laquelle nous faisons venir les éléments les plus malades». Et Gilichinsky dit amèrement qu'on lui avait promis une chose avec certitude, à l'Agence juive de Russie: qu'il n'y avait qu'en Israël qu'il ne rencontrerait pas d'antisémitisme. Mais cette promesse non plus n'a pas été tenue et à la place il n'a trouvé que la politique israélienne classique: ne pas s'occuper réellement d'un problème complexe. Tout le monde est charmant, lui avait-t-on dit.

<http://www.paixjusteauproche-orient.asso.fr>

Organization To Combat Antisemitism in Israel

by Betzalel Kahn

 

An Information and Help Center for Victims of Antisemitism has been set up in the wake of an increase in antisemitic acts in Israel. These acts are perpetrated by non-Jewish immigrants from the former Soviet Union who arrived in Israel either under the Law of Return or through use of counterfeit documents.

HaRav [= le rabbin ] Yosef Sholom Eliashiv signed a letter for assistance to the new organization, which has merited the blessings and support of HaRav Yitzchok Zilber and his son, HaRav Ben Tsion. In his letter of support, HaRav Eliashiv says: "Activists of the Information and Help Center For Victims of Antisemitism are performing a remarkable service. Although it is difficult to believe, there is both physical and verbal antisemitism here in Eretz Hakodesh, and it is a great mitzvah to battle it and, in general, to oppose bringing non-Jews here. It is a great mitzvah to help them, and may all those involved in assisting this effort be blessed." [...]

For a long time, many new Jewish immigrants from the C.I.S have been complaining about antisemitic acts. The Damayich NPO for the Promotion of the Absorption of Immigrants has established an Information and Help Center for Victims of Antisemitism. Its first meeting was held a few months ago in Tel Aviv, and a number of measures were undertaken to combat the swelling tide of antisemitism in Israel. [...]

Une fenêtre sur le monde hareidi (ultra-pieux) 9 mai 2001.

<http://www.shemayisrael.com/chareidi/EMRaantisemmi.htm>

L'HORREUR DES IMMIGRANTS

Israeli authorities and the Jewish Agency have been misinforming world Jewry by stating that in the State of Israel Jews can find refuge from anti-Semitism. Reports of anti-Semitic acts have turned into a regular feature in Israeli newspapers, mainly Russian-language ones. The movement "Dmir Assistance in Absorption" has carried out an investigation of the problem and found that the scourge of anti-Semitism had penetrated the society fabric much deeper than predicted in most grim estimates. Many new immigrants have found to their horror that they encounter here in Israel the same abuses and humiliation of anti-Semitic nature on the part of non-Jews who had come together with them from the former USSR, which they hoped to be protected from in Israel. The stories related by the victims and eye-witnesses, as well as in newspaper reports, have been presented in a report on the situation in that sphere. We have repeatedly appealed to various government leaders and MKs, but received no reply. The official Israel does not dare to react to the problem. Against that background, all statements of Israeli leaders condemning anti-Semitic acts in other countries appear as pitiful affectation.

<http://submitter.ru/f.php?url=http://pogrom.org.il>

Nous, nous savons pourquoi les autorités israéliennes sont dans l'incapacité absolue d'intervenir dans cette amusante affaire. Pour pouvoir sévir à l'égard des jeunes nazebroques qui manifestent un authentique antisémitisme en Israël même, dont beaucoup sans doute sont dans l'armée, il faudrait reconnaître qu'une fois de plus les sionistes se sont foutus de la gueule des juifs et qu'ils ont importé au moins un demi-million d'individus dont ils savaient pertinemment qu'ils n'étaient pas juifs. Ils ont donc détourné les ressources de l'Agence juive, et les contributions de nombreux juifs, pour monter cette opération frauduleuse. Tout le baratin de justification du judaïsme, "héritier" des "volontés divines" imparties à on ne sait quel "peuple élu" fait place, devant la réalité de cette immigration massive et calculée de citoyens de l'ex-Union soviétique (chrétiens, athées, musulmans compris), à une seule mesure, mais énorme, qui dit ceci: on prend tout, sauf les Arabes. Le racisme à l'état pur. Alors, devant ces évidences, les hypocrites soutiens à la feuille de route se révèlent pour ce qu'ils sont: des complices actifs avec un régime raciste qui impose des solutions territoriales racistes. Apartheid bis. Le premier apartheid a été officialisé, comme par hasard, lui aussi en 1948. Il est tombé, après des luttes sanglantes et interminables. L'apartheid bis tombera lui aussi, forcément un jour.

ILS NE FONT QUE PASSER

L'Allemagne, terre d'accueil des Juifs russes

 

Le comité "Finances" de la Knesset réuni en cette veille de Yom Hashoa a révélé la teneur d'un rapport inquiétant: 100.000 juifs en provenance de l'ex-URSS ont fait une croix sur l'alyah [la venue] en Israël pour aller vivre en Allemagne.

La raison de cet engouement surprenant pour ce pays est purement d'ordre économique. L'Allemagne octroie des subventions aux immigrants de cinq fois supérieures à celles accordées par l'Etat d'Israël.

Selon les informations divulguées, encore 90.000 juifs de l'ex-URSS se préparent à faire leurs valises pour l'Allemagne.

La députée Colette Avital a souligné que la décision du gouvernement de supprimer 42 millions de shekels du budget du ministère de l'Intégration, soit 30% de celui-ci, allait nuire considérablement à l'alyah.

Un représentant de l'Agence juive qui assistait à la réunion parlementaire a demandé que les aides au logement des nouveaux immigrants ne soient pas réduites, notamment les prêts immobiliers.

Cynique, un député a déclaré qu'il ne fallait surtout pas que la presse s'empare de l'information concernant le montant des aides allemandes "de peur que les Israéliens ne deviennent candidats à l'immigration outre-Rhin"...

Arutz 7, 29 avril 2003.

Quand même, l'Allemagne, finalement, quand on y pense, ce n'est pas si mal...

5 -- Les Mystères de New York

CES AVIONS QUI NE VOLENT PAS

Voyez le commentaire ironique de Michelle Landsberg à propos des avions militaires qui auraient du s'envoler et contrer les attaques sur Washington et ne l'ont pas fait.

<http://thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1052251602426&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154>

May. 18, 2003. 01:00 AM

Il ne faut pas exclure ce qu'on pourrait appeler le syndrome du désert des Tartares: des gens censés monter la garde contre un danger qui ne se présente jamais ont tendance à roupiller et ils ne sont pas là le jour où on a besoin d'eux.

LES FRUSTRÉS

The Secrets of September 11

Michael Isikoff & Mark Hosenball

 

05/01/03 (Newsweek) Even as White House political aides plot a 2004 campaign plan designed to capitalize on the emotions and issues raised by the September 11 terror attacks, administration officials are waging a behind-the-scenes battle to restrict public disclosure of key events relating to the attacks.

At the center of the dispute is a more-than-800-page secret report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry detailing the intelligence and law-enforcement failures that preceded the attacks--including provocative, if unheeded warnings, given President Bush and his top advisers during the summer of 2001.

The report was completed last December; only a bare-bones list of "findings" with virtually no details was made public. But nearly six months later, a "working group" of Bush administration intelligence officials assigned to review the document has taken a hard line against further public disclosure. By refusing to declassify many of its most significant conclusions, the administration has essentially thwarted congressional plans to release the report by the end of this month, congressional and administration sources tell Newsweek. In some cases, these sources say, the administration has even sought to "reclassify" some material that was already discussed in public testimony--a move one Senate staffer described as "ludicrous." The administration's stand has infuriated the two members of Congress who oversaw the report--Democratic Sen. Bob Graham and Republican Rep. Porter Goss. The two are now preparing a letter of complaint to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Graham is "increasingly frustrated" by the administration's "unwillingness to release what he regards as important information the public should have about 9-11," a spokesman said. In Graham's view, the Bush administration isn't protecting legitimate issues of national security but information that could be a political "embarrassment," the aide said. Graham, who last year served as Senate Intelligence Committee chairman, recently told Newsweek: "There has been a cover-up of this."

Graham's stand may not be terribly surprising, given that the Florida Democrat is running for president and is seeking to use the issue himself politically. But he has found a strong ally in House Intelligence Committee Chairman Goss, a staunch Republican (and former CIA officer) who in the past has consistently defended the administration's handling of 9-11 issues and is considered especially close to Cheney.

"I find this process horrendously frustrating," Goss said in an interview. He was particularly piqued that the administration was refusing to declassify material that top intelligence officials had already testified about. "Senior intelligence officials said things in public hearings that they [administration officials] don't want us to put in the report," said Goss. "That's not something I can rationally accept without further public explanation."

Unlike Graham, Goss insists there are no political "gotchas" in the report, only a large volume of important information about the performance and shortcomings of U.S. intelligence and law-enforcement agencies prior to September 11.

And even congressional staffers close to the process say it is unclear whether the administration's resistance to public disclosure reflects fear of political damage or simply an ingrained "culture of secrecy" that permeates the intelligence community--and has strong proponents at the highest levels of the White House.

The mammoth report reflects nearly 10 months of investigative work by a special staff hired jointly by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and overseen by Eleanor Hill, a former federal prosecutor and Pentagon inspector general. Hill's team got access to hundreds of thousands of pages of classified documents from the CIA, FBI, National Security Agency and other executive-branch agencies. The staff also conducted scores of interviews with senior officials, field agents and intelligence officers. (They were not, however, given access to some top White House aides, such as national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice or other principals like Secretary of State Colin Powell or Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.) The team's report was approved by the two intelligence committees last Dec. 10. But because the document relied so heavily on secret material, the administration "working group," overseen by CIA director George Tenet, had to first "scrub" the document and determine which portions could be declassified.

More than two months later, the working group came back with its decisions--and some members were flabbergasted. Entire portions remained classified. Some of the report--including some dealing with matters that had been extensively aired in public, such as the now famous FBI "Phoenix memo" of July 2001 reporting that Middle Eastern nationals might be enrolling in U.S. flight schools--were "reclassified." Hill has since submitted proposed changes to the working group, pointing out the illogic of trying to pull back material that was already in the public domain. But officials have indicated the "review" process is likely to drag on for months--with no guarantees that the "working group" will be any more amenable to public disclosure. [...]

Some sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States--and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike "in the coming weeks," the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning."

The substance of that intelligence report was first disclosed at a public hearing last September by staff director Hill. But at the last minute, Hill was blocked from saying precisely who within the Bush White House got the briefing when CIA director Tenet classified the names of the recipients. (One source says the recipients of the briefing included Bush himself.) As a result, Hill was only able to say the briefing was given to "senior government officials."

That issue is now being refought in the context over the full report. The report names names, gives dates and provides a body of new information about the handling of many other crucial intelligence briefings--including one in early August 2001 given to national-security adviser Rice that discussed Al Qaeda operations within the United States and the possibility that the group's members might seek to hijack airplanes. The administration "working group" is still refusing to declassify information about the briefings, sources said, and has even expressed regret that some of the material was ever provided to congressional investigators in the first place.

A new hand in homeland security

The White House is once again shuffling the deck in the staffing of top terrorism jobs, Newsweek has learned. Gen. John A. Gordon--who has wielded broad if largely unseen powers as deputy national-security advisor in charge of combating terrorism--is moving up to become White House homeland-security adviser, a post formerly held by Tom Ridge. The new job is expected to give the brusque and secretive Gordon even more power as a "principal" with direct access to Bush. (Ridge is now secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.) Sources say Gordon beat out ex-FBI official James Kallstrom--an old ally of former FBI director Louis Freeh--for the key post. [...]

Newsweek

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3180.htm>

FANTÔMES

Nous avons mentionné ce site, mais dans une version antérieure:

Ghost Riders in the Sky, An Alternative 9-11 Scenario

by A. K. Dewdney

Release Version 1.4; December 5th 2002

<http://www.feralnews.com/issues/911/dewdney/ghost_riders_1-4_1.html>

Summary

This document describes an alternate method to achieve the effects witnessed on the morning of September 11, 2001. There can be little doubt that the method, consisting of the sarin/INS component and the cellphone operation, will work. No claim is made that this method was actually used, only that a clandestine operation by the side with the most to gain happens to be more consistent with various facts on the ground (about which there is no dispute) than is the standard explanation involving "Arab hijackers" and Al Qaida.

These facts include the political background, wherein Al Qaida is the only terrorist organization ever to attack a target or targets without claiming responsibility, and wherein Israel and the United States are the real beneficiaries of the attacks.

The alternate scenario is also more consistent with the following events than is the standard explanation: intelligence leaks; the virtual celebration in Palestine on the day of the attacks; the prior attempt to blow up the World Trade Center towers; the missing interceptors; the missing passengers; the missing black boxes; the (apparently) planted evidence; the mystery of Ziad Jarrah. In short, if the entire constellation of events behind the September 11 attacks is regarded as a jigsaw puzzle, the pieces of the puzzle already in place would represent the facts which everyone knows and about which there is no disagreement from any quarter. The pieces not yet placed include the White House scenario and the alternate scenario described here. The first piece has the right overall shape but, when we try to actually put it in the proposed space of the puzzle, it doesn't actually fit. The piece proposed by the White House must find a very different place in the puzzle, perhaps in the cover-story corner.

One may approach the problems posed by the official White House explanation of September 11 from a scientific point of view. What is the probability that the standard explanation is correct ? To find out, one would simply multiply the probabilities of the component parts: Thus if one says that interceptors are sent up only half the time when airliners go off course (instead of all the time), that black boxes are found only half the time (instead of virtually all the time), that passengers are missing from passenger lists half the time (instead of rarely), that at least one out of 100 cellphone calls get through at least half the time, then the probability that all four elements are present in an event (without taking any of the other elements into account) is no more than one-sixteenth. This should be enough to make any rational person suspicious, especially as this brief probability analysis goes out of its way to favor the official explanation.

The author is aware of allegations made by others that the Pentagon attack was in some manner faked, involving a much smaller aircraft, that the WTC towers were assisted in their demolition by planted explosives, and that approximately 130 Israelis that should have been among the WTC dead were not. Such possibilities have been excluded from the present analysis for the sake of simplicity and without further comment. Also excluded is the analysis of potentially endless faked terror attacks, such as the bombing in Bali (Israeli-made C4 plastic explosive discovered on site) or the Washington area sniper (Mr. Muhamad's name was not actually "Muhamad," he had no "white van," etc. etc.).

6 -- Le ROW

LA FASCISATION DE L'AMÉRIQUE

I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA Patriot Act

By Jason Halperin

 

Two weeks ago I experienced a very small taste of what hundreds of South Asian immigrants and U.S. citizens of South Asian descent have gone through since 9/11, and what thousands of others have come to fear. I was held, against my will and without warrant or cause, under the USA PATRIOT Act. While I understand the need for some measure of security and precaution in times such as these, the manner in which this detention and interrogation took place raises serious questions about police tactics and the safeguarding of civil liberties in times of war.

That night, March 20th, my roommate Asher and I were on our way to see the Broadway show "Rent." We had an hour to spare before curtain time so we stopped into an Indian restaurant just off of Times Square in the heart of midtown. I have omitted the name of the restaurant so as not to subject the owners to any further harassment or humiliation.

We helped ourselves to the buffet and then sat down to begin eating our dinner. I was just about to tell Asher how I'd eaten there before and how delicious the vegetable curry was, but I never got a chance. All of a sudden, there was a terrible commotion and five NYPD in bulletproof vests stormed down the stairs. They had their guns drawn and were pointing them indiscriminately at the restaurant staff and at us.

"Go to the back, go to the back of the restaurant," they yelled.

I hesitated, lost in my own panic.

"Did you not hear me, go to the back and sit down," they demanded.

I complied and looked around at the other patrons. There were eight men including the waiter, all of South Asian descent and ranging in age from late-teens to senior citizen. One of the policemen pointed his gun point-blank in the face of the waiter and shouted: "Is there anyone else in the restaurant?" The waiter, terrified, gestured to the kitchen.

The police placed their fingers on the triggers of their guns and kicked open the kitchen doors. Shouts emanated from the kitchen and a few seconds later five Hispanic men were made to crawl out on their hands and knees, guns pointed at them.

After patting us all down, the five officers seated us at two tables. As they continued to kick open doors to closets and bathrooms with their fingers glued to their triggers, no less than ten officers in suits emerged from the stairwell. Most of them sat in the back of the restaurant typing on their laptop computers. Two of them walked over to our table and identified themselves as officers of the INS and Homeland Security Department.

I explained that we were just eating dinner and asked why we were being held. We were told by the INS agent that we would be released once they had confirmation that we had no outstanding warrants and our immigration status was OK'd.

In pre-9/11 America, the legality of this would have been questionable. After all, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution states: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized."

"You have no right to hold us," Asher insisted.

"Yes, we have every right," responded one of the agents. "You are being held under the Patriot Act following suspicion under an internal Homeland Security investigation."

The USA Patriot Act was passed into law on October 26, 2001 in order to facilitate the post 9/11 crackdown on terrorism (the name is actually an acronym: "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.") Like most Americans, I did not recognize the extent to which this bill foregoes our civil liberties. Among the unprecedented rights it grants to the federal government are the right to wiretap without warrant, and the right to detain without warrant. As I quickly discovered, the right to an attorney has been seemingly fudged as well.

When I asked to speak to a lawyer, the INS official informed me that I do have the right to a lawyer but I would have to be brought down to the station and await security clearance before being granted one. When I asked how long that would take, he replied with a coy smile: "Maybe a day, maybe a week, maybe a month."

We insisted that we had every right to leave and were going to do so. One of the policemen walked over with his hand on his gun and taunted: "Go ahead and leave, just go ahead."

We remained seated. Our IDs were taken, and brought to the officers with laptops. I was questioned over the fact that my license was out of state, and asked if I had "something to hide." The police continued to hassle the kitchen workers, demanding licenses and dates of birth. One of the kitchen workers was shaking hysterically and kept providing the day's date March 20, 2003, over and over.

As I continued to press for legal counsel, a female officer who had been busy typing on her laptop in the front of the restaurant, walked over and put her finger in my face. "We are at war, we are at war and this is for your safety," she exclaimed. As she walked away from the table, she continued to repeat it to herself? "We are at war, we are at war. How can they not understand this."

I most certainly understand that we are at war. I also understand that the freedoms afforded to all of us in the Constitution were meant specifically for times like these. Our freedoms were carved out during times of strife by people who were facing brutal injustices, and were intended specifically so that this nation would behave differently in such times. If our freedoms crumble exactly when they are needed most, then they were really never freedoms at all.

After an hour and a half the INS agent walked back over and handed Asher and me our licenses. A policeman took us by the arm and escorted us out of the building. Before stepping out to the street, the INS agent apologized. He explained, in a low voice, that they did not think the two of us were in the restaurant. Several of the other patrons, though of South Asian descent, were in fact U.S. citizens. There were four taxi drivers, two students, one newspaper salesman unwitting customers, just like Asher and me. I doubt, though, they received any apologies from the INS or the Department of Homeland Security.

Nor have the over 600 people of South Asian descent currently being held without charge by the Federal government. Apparently, this type of treatment is acceptable. One of the taxi drivers, a U.S. citizen, spoke to me during the interrogation. "Please stop talking to them," he urged. "I have been through this before. Please do whatever they say. Please for our sake."

Three days later I phoned the restaurant to discover what happened. The owner was nervous and embarrassed and obviously did not want to talk about it. But I managed to ascertain that the whole thing had been one giant mistake. A mistake. Loaded guns pointed in faces, people made to crawl on their hands and knees, police officers clearly exacerbating a tense situation by kicking in doors, taunting, keeping their fingers on the trigger even after the situation was under control. A mistake. And, according to the ACLU a perfectly legal one, thanks to the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act is just the first phase of the erosion of the Fourth Amendment. From the Justice Department has emerged a draft of the Domestic Securities Enhancement Act, also known as Patriot II. Among other things, this act would allow the Justice Department to detain anyone, anytime, secretly and indefinitely. It would also make it a crime to reveal the identity or even existence of such a detainee.

Every American citizen, whether they support the current war or not, should be alarmed by the speed and facility with which these changes to our fundamental rights are taking place. And all of those who thought that these laws would never affect them, who thought that the Patriot Act only applied to the guilty, should heed this story as a wake-up call. Please learn from my experience. We are all vulnerable so speak out and organize, our Fourth Amendment rights depend upon it.

AlterNet, 30 avril 2003.

Jason Halperin lives in New York City and works at Doctors Without Borders/Medicins San Frontieres.

<http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15770>

On admirera la naïveté de ce texte. L'auteur et son copain Asher portent des noms apparemment juifs. Les "Asiatiques du Sud" sont originaires du sous-continent indien. Les Américains "blancs" ne s'aperçoivent de l'inhumanité de leur système politique que quand ils en sont victimes. Les Noirs, les Latinos et tous les étrangers, eux, connaissent la musique et le racisme manifeste des institutions. Les salauds de la police new-yorkaise ne se comportent pas de cette façon dans un restaurant pour "blancs". On remarquera que les cuistots du restaurant indien sont des Latinos, les soutiers des Etats-Unis.

Voir la suite, ci-dessous:

LES AVOCATS ENFIN AU GNOUF

Privilege Revoked

The government says it can pry into the attorney-client relationship all it wants.

by Geov Parrish

 

Lynne Stewart, a New York human-rights lawyer with a taste for radical politics, is accustomed to representing unpopular clients. She never dreamed it would become illegal.

Stewart was in Seattle on Monday as part of a national campaign to drum up support -- not for a client, but for her own case. Stewart was a member of the court-appointed defense team for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, who is serving a life sentence in connection with the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. After his conviction, Stewart continued as one of the lawyers representing Abdel Rahman. The Seattle visit came just over a year after her arrest April 8, 2002, when she was taken from her home without warning. Federal agents combed through her office, seizing files on all of her cases, and Attorney General John Ashcroft proudly announced that Stewart had been charged in a four-count criminal indictment with aiding and abetting a terrorist organization --solely for her work in representing Abdel Rahman.

Stewart's case, now winding its way through pretrial motions toward a January trial, stands as a critical test for the Bush administration's newly reserved right to violate lawyer-client confidentiality in order to wage the war on terror. It also has a significant First Amendment component. Stewart's indictment charges her with discussing Abdel Rahman's case with a Reuters reportereven though no gag order barred her from doing so; with talking while an interpreter was speaking with her client during a consultation in his prison cell, thereby preventing the Justice Department from taping their conversation in Arabic; and with allowing the interpreter and client to speak in Arabic about nonlegal matters. If convicted, she faces 40 years in prison.

The charges strike at the heart of the U.S. Constitution's Sixth Amendment guarantee that all people accused of a crime are entitled to effective representation by an attorney. Courts have long held that attorney-client confidentiality is essential to that right; without the ability to speak freely about what they have, and have not, done, defendants are severely impaired from learning their legal status and options, and attorneys cannot mount the best defense. But Stewart's case has broader implications. In the future, attorneys will be less willing to represent clients like Abdel Rahman.

And since Stewart's indictment, Ashcroft has gone even further, declaring noncitizens, and later, U.S. citizens as well, "enemy noncombatants" so as to hold them indefinitely without charges, denying access to any attorney at all.

Whether or not the "enemy noncombatant" ruse is eventually ruled unconstitutional, Stewart's case risks setting a precedent that could literally destroy an accused terrorist's right to counsel -- while allowing the government to choose who qualifies as a "terrorist." Even before 9/11, several federal provisions allowed investigators to violate attorney-client privilege: when the state had reason to believe the attorney and client were complicit in criminal behavior; as a court-approved part of international espionage; or if a court barred incarcerated clients from communicating with the outside world, including their attorneys, about nonlegal matters.

But Ashcroft's provisions, announced and implemented without public notice or comment less than three weeks after 9/11, are far broader -- allowing the monitoring of attorney-client conversations without a court order or supervision or even the suspicion of criminal behavior by the attorney, if the client is accused of terrorism. The regulation allows surveillance "to the extent determined to be reasonably necessary for the purpose of deterring future acts of violence or terrorism." The Department of Justice alone does the determining.

Among other things, such monitoring allows the government complete access to everything the defense knows and every strategy the defense plans. It raises the possibility that attorneys could be called to testify against their clients or that attorneys could be charged for withholding information on a crime from investigators. Attorneys' personal jeopardy creates an impossible conflict of interest with their professional duty to fully represent their clients. The government, at its leisure, can target lawyersones like Stewart, with a long history of representing unpopular clients, or like the lead attorney in Stewart's defense, Michael Tigar, famed for saving Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols from execution. And Ashcroft's regulation, if upheld, sets a precedent that state and local jurisdictions can rush to emulate.

Lynne Stewart is a guinea pig -- a chance for the Bush administration to see how far it can push its evisceration of the Bill of Rights. The attack on attorney representation is only one of a staggering number of its post-9/11 assaults on the Constitution, but it's one of the most important.

Invariably, the least sympathetic among us -- the accused terrorists and the radical lawyers -- are the first to lose basic rights. The rest of us follow.

Seattle Weekly, 28 avril 2003

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3150.htm>

LE PAYS DE LA PEUR

Voir aussi "Americans have good reason to be afraid of their leaders", Barbara Sumner Burstyn, 04/28/2003: (New Zealand Herald)

Elle dit:

But then in America, uttering any threatening remark about the President is illegal and likely to land you in jail. Writer Jonathan Freedland, looking at America's history of tolerance and diversity, said in the Guardian that the country was turning into a very un-American America, "where the limits of acceptable discussion have narrowed sharply and anyone commenting negatively on the war or the President is denounced as unpatriotic". [...]

The Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, in New York, warns that for the first time in United States history, the act will explicitly authorise secret arrests, not to mention sneak-and-peek searches.

That cute term means federal agents can enter your home, download your computer and internet viewing history, take your private business records and any other material, including confidential library and bookstore records - without telling you, without proof of probable cause, or without getting a court order.

<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article3148.htm>

LE SYSTEME DE MASSACRE AMÉRICAIN a déjà été expériementé en 1993 à Waco, Texas. Cette histoire est peu connue en dehors des Etats-Unis, et même là-bas elle est ensevelie sous un monceau de mensonges qui tendent à justifier le massacre commis par les soi-disant "forces de l'ordre", en réalité une bande d"assassins assoiffés de sang. Voir l'ensemble de la documentation, rassemblée par Carol Valentine, à

<http://www.public-action.com/SkyWriter/WacoMuseum/>

Voici, sur le même sujet, un petit texte mis en circulation par notre ami I. Shamir:

It All Started in Waco

by Tom Mysiewicz

 

Few overseas may realize it, but the prototype of the current war-disinformation campaign was tested in the U.S. in 1993. And it worked. Look for a replay in Iraq.

1993...a curious year in the U.S...the first attack on the World Trade Center, the attack by Federal authorities on a religious group in Waco, Texas (near the ranch of George W. Bush), and--of minor import--the year I was run out of the journalism business.

The massacre of nearly 100 men, women and children of the Branch Davidian Sect (an offshoot of the Seventh Day Adventist Church) in Waco reportedly started with a complaint to the U.S. Justice Department by the ADL-related Cult Awareness Network.

At once, the new concept of "embedded" journalism was put into effect. Journalists were segregated and kept apart from the action on a so-called "carnival hill"--too far away to really see what was going on. These reporters dutifully reported what they were told at government press conferences and virtually no mainstream media voices contradicted them. Part of this was due to the fact that Bill Clinton was president, and many Democratic reporters felt a need to be loyal to their party, and part was due to the increasing corporate centralization of media control. Among the accusations howled daily by this crowd--all of which later turned out to be false:

 

*David Koresh was a polygamist and child molester

 

*Children had been molested at the church (previously ruled out by Texas

 

officials)

 

*A substantial tunnel network existed on church property

 

*Koresh had .50-Cal. machine guns

 

*Koresh had .50-Cal. armor-piercing ammunition

 

*Koresh had either biological or chemical weapons

 

*Koresh planned to overthrow the U.S. Government

(Some decent conservatives termed this as "demonization".)

After passing several opportunities to peacefully arrest the "cult" leader, the Feds launched a 300-man shooting assault on the church, including 20-mm cannon fire from a helicopter. Koresh was wounded and several Federal agents were shot, although it has been argued that the killings were from friendly crossfire. A 51-day siege of the church (now termed a "compound") was launched. Razor wire was strung around the church, loud music and lights were put on every night, power and water were cut off, food was denied those inside, and Red Cross representatives were not allowed inside to check on the welfare of the children.

While constantly reassuring Americans through the "embedded" reporters that the situation would be resolved peacefully, and even allowing some of the children to have milk and eventually allowing a small number of Davidians to come out (these were later given stiff Federal prison sentences, despite assurances to the contrary, and defense experts mysteriously died while preparing vital defense evidence)the Federales apparently had other ideas.

After about a month, I recall my wife telling me--after she had heard that others trying to leave the church and surrender had been driven back by stun grenades and gunfire--"they're going to kill those people." "No way," I replied. After all, the "embedded" reporters said all Koresh wanted to do was to make a prophesy and unlock a "key to scripture" and he would come out. Well, my wife was right. One day (well before the deadline Koresh had been given) there was a massive assault with armored cars and Delta Forces. The rest is history. Most of the church members were either burned to death or shot at close range. Only a few survived, and these were jailed also.

I am constantly reminded of Waco when I hear the current stream of cynical outright lies about prisoner shootings, uprisings and the like in Iraq. True, Saddam Hussein may be a bad man to some, but how many leaders could resist using "weapons of mass destruction" (if they actually had them) when two thirds of their country was in the hands of an invading force? The "embedded" reporters say Saddam has got to be the most evil man that ever existed--just like David Koresh was briefly. Koresh and Saddam were both wounded in the initial attack. I'm only afraid we may get the same ending in Baghdad.

<[email protected]>

GRILLADE A RYAD

Autoattentato statunitense a Riyad, in Arabia Saudita.

Ecco il motivo

di John Kleeves

 

Come sapete due giorni fa, il lunedì 12 maggio 2003 alle ore 23.30, a Riyad, capitale dell,Arabia Saudita, quattro auto imbottite di tritolo con in tutto nove uomini a bordo hanno fatto irruzione in un complesso residenziale e si sono lanciate contro altrettanti palazzi, facendosi e facendoli saltare in aria. Il complesso era recintato e sorvegliato da uomini armati, quasi fortificato, e per entrare il commando di kamikaze ha dovuto prima sterminare le guardie al cancello di ingresso, che sembra fossero almeno tre. Nel complesso vivevano con le famiglie degli stranieri -- in maggioranza statunitensi e inglesi ma anche italiani e turchi -- che si occupavano, là a Riyad, di attività malviste dalla popolazione locale, e che quindi erano da tenere in residenze sorvegliate perché la medesima avrebbe potuto desiderare delle ritorsioni; per quello che si può arguire da casi analoghi, potevano essere spie, addetti militari, consulenti di polizia, istruttori di tortura, missionari, giornalisti di disinformazione, sperimentatori di medicinali, corrieri di organi umani, trafficanti governativi di droga, cose del genere. Le prime notizie hanno riportato un numero totale di 29 vittime fra le quali, oltre ai 9 attentatori, ci sarebbero stati anche una decina di cittadini statunitensi. Fra i feriti anche tre italiani con uno grave. Poi il vice presidente statunitense Cheney ha parlato di 91 morti e 200 feriti, ma è bene attendere il bilancio definitivo che non potrà arrivare prima di diversi giorni.

Chi è stato ? Immediatamente sembra che sia pervenuta una rivendicazione di Al Qaeda, ma chiunque può adoperare questo nome, mentre sulla stessa Al Qaeda ci sono dubbi su cosa sia in realtà e per chi lavori, e anche se esista effettivamente.

Io ho una opinione: si tratta di una iniziativa del governo statunitense. Si tratta in breve di un altro autoattentato, come fu quello clamoroso dell'attacco alle Twin Towers di New York dell'11 settembre 2001 che fece circa 2650 morti, anche se naturalmente di dimensioni molto più piccole.

Oramai è certo che gli Stati Uniti per raggiungere i loro scopi di politica estera hanno deciso di usare sistematicamente un metodo che in fin dei conti hanno sempre adoperato ma che negli ultimi anni sembra che abbiano portato a un livello di perfezione tecnica stupefacente, inimmaginabile, davvero degno di loro: il metodo di organizzare, di creare o indurre in qualche modo degli attentati terroristici contro sé stessi, contro cittadini e beni statunitensi in patria o all'estero, per avere poi la scusa di effettuare rappresaglie o prendere comunque dei provvedimenti ostili contro Paesi prefissati. Come detto è un sistema che gli USA hanno sempre adoperato, a partire dal Boston Tea Party del 1773, quando i patrioti di Hancock e Franklin assaltarono una nave mercantile travestiti da indiani per minare la loro alleanza con il governo coloniale inglese, per continuare con l'autoattentato al loro stesso incrociatore Maine nel 1898 per incolpare gli Spagnoli, con l'esca confezionata col Lusitania nel 1915 per danneggiare i Tedeschi, con l'esca di Pearl Harbor nel 1941 per entrare in guerra, con il finto incidente del Golfo del Tonchino nel 1964 per escalare i bombardamenti a tappeto sul Vietnam, con molti altri episodi minori sparsi in quasi tutti i conflitti e le sovversioni politiche degli USA nel mondo, nel contesto delle quali ultime potremmo citare tutti ma proprio tutti gli episodi della Strategia della tensione in Italia.

Ora appunto questo metodo è stato perfezionato ed adottato ufficialmente anche se segretamente: secondo il politologo Chris Floyd così ha in pratica rivelato l'analista militare statunitense William Arkin in un articolo pubblicato sul Los Angeles Times della domenica 28 ottobre 2002: qui, parlando dell'enorme espansione dei servizi segreti favorita da Donald Rumsfeld (l'attuale ministro della Difesa degli USA) sin da quando era un semplice consulente di Richard Nixon, Arkin avrebbe nominato un nuovo dipartimento che è stato costituito ai confini tra la CIA e il Pentagono, chiamato P2OG ( Proactive Preemptive Operations Group, cioè "Gruppo per Operazioni Incentivate e Preventive"), che si occuperebbe proprio di "eseguire missioni segrete studiate per stimolare reazioni nei gruppi terroristici inducendoli a commettere atti violenti che poi li esporrebbero al contrattacco delle forze USA". Il P2OG insomma progetta ed esegue, o fa eseguire, autoattentati.

Autoattentati appunto come quello macroscopico alle Twin Towers e come quello dell'altro ieri a Riyad. L'autoattentato alle Twin Towers aveva uno scopo che nel tempo si è poi chiarito in modo direi cristallino, indubitabile: inventare il "Terrorismo internazionale" con gli annessi e connessi di Osama Bin Laden e di Al Qaeda ( entrambi in effetti delle creature statunitensi risalenti al periodo della guerriglia antirussa in Afganistan ) allo scopo di avere la scusa per eseguire l'occupazione tramite guerra di alcuni Paesi esteri, cosa che è poi effettivamente avvenuta con l'Afganistan e con l'Iraq mentre gli altri da me già debitamente segnalati oramai da più di un anno sono destinati a seguire.

Quale lo scopo dell'attentato a Riyad ? Oltre alla funzione di rafforzare genericamente la fasulla idea precedente del "Terrorismo internazionale", a mio avviso questo attentato ha uno scopo estremamente preciso, direi circoscritto e localizzato: bloccare i crediti in dollari dell'Arabia Saudita custoditi negli USA. Sappiamo come fanno gli Stati Uniti a vivere al di sopra dei loro mezzi: obbligano con la forza i Paesi produttori di materie prime a venderle in dollari, che sono dei foglietti di carta che loro producono a volontà, a costo circa nullo (cioè alla spesa di stampa, qualche cent per ogni biglietto da mille dollari ), e poi costringono gli stranieri che accumulano tanti di quei biglietti a trasformarli in titoli di Stato USA depositati presso banche in USA. Il risultato netto dell,operazione è che gli USA consumano beni del pianeta come bestie in cambio dell,aumento di un debito estero in dollari che è solo teorico perché essi non hanno alcuna intenzione di pagarlo, né in verità potrebbero. Da sempre i maggiori detentori esteri dei titoli di Stato USA sono gli Arabi, perché appunto in cambio del petrolio ricevono i soliti coriandoli verdi che loro trasformano in titoli di Stato USA custoditi negli USA, e bene, tutto è sempre filato liscio sino adesso, quando l,atteggiamento dell,Arabia Saudita, per ragioni che non è il momento di approfondire, è cambiato: da qualche tempo in qua, infatti, l'Arabia Saudita sta trasformando piano piano i suoi titoli in dollari in titoli in euro, che custodisce in Europa e in Russia. La manovra sembra si sia accentuata dopo l,aggressione statunitense all'Iraq, causando quel brusco e inaspettato apprezzamento dell'euro nei confronti del dollaro cui stiamo assistendo.

Ecco, gli USA non possono permettere che ciò continui. Anche perché l'esempio dell'Arabia Saudita potrebbe trovare imitatori, innescando un fenomeno che potrebbe portare al crollo della valutazione del dollaro con conseguenze catastrofiche sia sul piano interno che estero. L'autoattentato di Riyad serve perfettamente allo scopo. Sono stati uccisi dei cittadini statunitensi, altri sono stati feriti, partono delle cause di risarcimento danni in cui vengono chieste somme astronomiche. Il governo dell'Arabia Saudita forse non c'entra ma non si sa mai; inoltre c'è sempre l'accusa della protezione insufficiente, forse colpevolmente o anche solo colposamente insufficiente: per cautelare i diritti dei cittadini statunitensi il governo federale USA può decidere di bloccare tutti gli averi dell'Arabia Saudita negli USA. Anzi potrebbe farlo un semplice giudice federale. Ed il problema è risolto.

Tutto ciò si accorda con l'atteggiamento già preso dagli USA: il governo di Riyad parla di 29 vittime, ma il vicepresidente USA Cheney ha subito parlato di 91 morti e di 200 feriti. Chiaro perché: più sono i morti più si può giustificare un provvedimento così clamoroso come il blocco dei beni sauditi negli USA.

Io invito il pubblico a seguire la vicenda.

John Kleeves, <http://www.clorofilla.it> 15 may 03

LE JUIFS PRÉPARENT L'ASSAUT DE L'IRAN

New front sets sights on toppling Iran regime

by Marc Perelman

 

A budding coalition of conservative hawks, Jewish organizations and Iranian monarchists is pressing the White House to step up American efforts to bring about regime change in Iran. For now, President Bush's official stance is to encourage the Iranian people to push the mullah regime aside themselves, but observers believe that the policy is not yet firm, and that has created an opportunity for activists. Neoconservatives advocating regime change in Tehran through diplomatic pressure -- and even covert action -- appear to be winning the debate within the administration, several knowledgeable observers said.

"There is a pact emerging between hawks in the administration, Jewish groups and Iranian supporters of Reza Pahlavi [the exiled son of the former shah of Iran] to push for regime change," said Pooya Dayanim, president of the Iranian-Jewish Public Affairs Committee in Los Angeles and a hawk on Iran.

The emerging coalition is reminiscent of the buildup to the invasion of Iraq, with Pahlavi possibly assuming the role of Iraqi exile opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, a favorite of neoconservatives. Like Chalabi, Pahlavi has good relations with several Jewish groups. He has addressed the board of the hawkish Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs and gave a public speech at the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, and met with Jewish communal leaders.

Pahlavi also has had quiet contacts with top Israeli officials. During the last two years, according to a knowledgeable source, he has met privately with Prime Minister Sharon and former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as Israel's Iranian-born president, Moshe Katsav.

In another parallel to the pre-invasion debate over Iraq, an intense policy battle is heating up between the State and Defense departments over what to do in Iran. "The president, the vice president and, even more so, the Pentagon support regime change," said a source who follows the internal debate closely. "But State does not want to meddle in Iran, so you have a big fight right now within the administration."

As was the case during the Iraq debate, Weekly Standard editor William Kristol is leading the charge for a more aggressive policy on Iran. In the magazine's May 12 issue, he wrote an editorial pushing for covert action and other steps to trigger regime change in Tehran. Advocates of a more restrained policy note that American and Iranian officials meet regularly, but say that the disappointing performance of the reformist camp in Iran has undercut their efforts to promote American engagement with Iran.

"Some people at the Pentagon have concluded that the reformists are just mullahs with smiling faces and that regime change is the only way," said Gary Sick, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University and an advocate of engaging Iran. "They believe that Iran is ripe for revolution, but I think this is highly questionable." Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and his deputies Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith are known to support regime change, although they have been much less vocal about Iran than Iraq.

At a lower level, two sources said, Iran expert Michael Rubin is now working for the Pentagon's "special plans" office, a small unit set up to gather intelligence on Iraq, but apparently also working on Iran. Previously a researcher at the Washington Institute for Near East policy, Rubin has vocally advocated regime change in Tehran. He did respond to e-mails seeking comment.

Intelligence sources have complained about what they describe as the tendency of the secretive office to color intelligence on Iraq according to its hard line. "The office of special plans has been interviewing people and gathering intelligence on Iran in order to be ready to support democracy," a hawkish source said. "They have spent much more time doing that than the State experts on Iran."

Meanwhile, in Congress, Democrat Rep. Tom Lantos of California is sponsoring a resolution supporting the people of Iran against the regime. Republican Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas has introduced an amendment that would set aside $50 million to fund Iranian opposition television and radio stations in Los Angeles most of which promote a restoration of the shah's monarchy as well as human rights and pro-democracy groups.

Supporters of the shah's son, Pahlavi, have been supporting Brownback's amendment, know as the Iran Democracy Act. So has the main pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. "We support efforts to encourage the people of Iran to cut the regime's ties to terrorism and its pursuit of nuclear weapons," said Rebecca Dinar, a spokeswoman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. While Morris Amitay, a former Aipac director and active hawk on Iran, told the Forward that it would only be natural for Jewish groups to openly back regime change in Iran, most prefer to keep a low profile on this issue.

For example, Pahlavi was slated to meet Iranian Jewish members of Aipac at the group's annual conference this spring. But Aipac officials, worried that it could be seen as inappropriate, scuttled the plan, two sources said. "The Jewish groups are telling Reza that they will give him private support and help arrange meetings with U.S. officials," one of the sources said.

Iranian Jewish groups are playing a key role in forging the relationship. The Iranian Jewish Public Affairs Committee's Dayanim, a regular contributor to the National Review Online, has been one of the most active hawks. He argued that support for Pahlavi among Iranian Americans may have less to do with deep pro-monarchist feelings than with his status as the most recognizable opposition figure among immigrants. Still, Dayanim acknowledged that many Iranian Jews were "in love with Pahlavi" because they see his father's reign as a golden era for Jews. Pahlavi has expressed support for democracy while calling for a referendum restoring the monarchy.

One key Pahlavi supporter who has become popular in Iranian American circles is former Reagan administration official Michael Ledeen, now a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. In numerous addresses and articles, Ledeen has been arguing that the mullah regime is on the brink of collapse and that the time has come for Washington to push it over the edge. He has joined with Amitay, ex-CIA head James Woolsey, former Reagan administration official Frank Gaffney, former Senator Paul Simon and oil consultant Rob Sobhani to set up a group called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran. Several of them took part May 6 in a one-day American Enterprise Institute conference titled "The Future of Iran." During the event, Ledeen argued that help from outside actors was needed to help ignite revolutionary changes in Iran.

While Ledeen has not called for military action, some of his declarations appear to suggest that aggressive action could be taken. Last month, Ledeen gave a speech to a pro-monarchist crowd in Los Angeles. In the question-and-answer session, he reportedly said that with $20 million, there could be a "free Iran" -- and that he knew how best to use the money.

Ledeen, who was involved in the Iran-contra scandal but never charged, declined comment. Asked about the possibility of covert action, a member of the Pentagon-linked Defense Policy Board answered with one word: "maybe." He refused to elaborate.

Forward -- May 16, 2003 (Forward is an influential, nationally-circulated Jewish community weekly, published in New York City.)

<http://www.forward.com/issues/2003/03.05.16/news2.html>

TERRORISME POUR LONGTEMPS

Terror's myriad faces

 

Jason Burke, a world expert on international terrorism, says those leading the war against the bombers misunderstand the true nature of al-Qaeda

It has not been a good week for counter-terrorism. After a brief pause following the war in Iraq, it is now business as usual for the bad guys. This weekend sees terror alerts covering a great part of the world. The past few days have brought a casualty list running into the hundreds. 'It's dangerous in the world,' President George Bush said on Friday with his customary perspicacity, 'and it's dangerous so long as al-Qaeda continues to operate.'

In part, the President is right. It is dangerous in the world. In fact, it is becoming more dangerous with every passing day. This is because the President and the men who answer to him and his allies are not winning the war on terror, they are losing it.

The reason for this is to be found in the second part of Bush's statement. He believes eliminating al-Qaeda will end the threat of Islamic militant terrorism. Though this is rubbish, as a close analysis of recent terrorist attacks shows, it is the conventional wisdom among most of those charged with ending the violence that we are now being subjected to.

Al-Qaeda, conceived of as a tight-knit terrorist group with cadres and a capability everywhere, does not exist in that form. It barely existed before the war in Afghanistan in 2001 destroyed Osama bin Laden's carefully constructed infrastructure there. It certainly does not exist now. Instead, we are facing a different kind of threat. Al-Qaeda can only be understood as an ideology, an agenda and a way of seeing the world that is shared by an increasing number of predominantly young, predominantly male Muslims. Eliminating bin Laden and a few hundred senior activists will do nothing to counter this al-Qaeda. Hundreds more will come forward to fill their ranks. Al-Qaeda, however understood, will continue to operate. The threat will remain and it will grow.

It is too early for us to have any real idea of how Friday's attacks in Casablanca were brought about. But a year ago there was an unsuccessful attempt to launch a series of suicide attacks in Morocco and they give us a clue both to the specific organisation of the most recent blasts and, more generally, to how modern Islamic terrorism works. It was led by a Saudi called Mohammed al-Tubaiti. He had made his way in late 1999 to Afghanistan, where he had requested a 'martyrdom mission' from al-Qaeda. He had received short shrift from bin Laden's lieutenants.

According to his Moroccan court indictment, they told him to come back when he had his own plan, and then they would consider it. Al-Tubaiti went to Morocco, recruited some young men and returned to the Afghan camps with a scheme. He was given money and told to go back to Morocco and start work. Though he successfully recruited more people to join his team, mistakes allowed local police to roll up the group before the attacks could be launched.

Al-Tubaiti's story tells us two important things. The first is that the hard core of senior al-Qaeda figures operating in Afghanistan until late 2001 acted as a clearing house for projects that were submitted to them, not vice versa. Most of al-Qaeda's terrorist operations originated in the minds of volunteers all over the Islamic world who then made their way to Afghanistan and bin Laden to seek help in executing them. That would imply that, even if bin Laden and his associates are eliminated, there will still be young men with dreams of destruction. If bin Laden no longer exists to give them aid, they will simply find someone else. Given that all a terrorist needs is a hand grenade, a nightclub and a desperate will, that is a stark and frightening truth. The second element is revealed by the ease with which al-Tubaiti found volunteers. That indicates that such young men are plentiful.

In fact, to understand what is happening we need to look beyond the big headline attacks such as that at Riyadh mid-week and examine the 'background noise', now almost continuous, of Islamic violence. On Thursday morning 18 small bombs detonated virtually simultaneously at Shell petrol stations in the Pakistani port city of Karachi. Pakistani investigators suspect a local group, probably led by someone who was in Afghanistan with bin Laden, is responsible. Like al-Tubaiti in Morocco, that individual has been able to draw together local people, probably already in some kind of activist organisation, to undertake a more effective terrorist action. No longer do local militants need to head to Afghanistan to find someone to help them turn their dreams into reality. Someone will come to them.

A closer look at the terrorist activities of the last few days reinforces this pattern. In Algeria, where militants returning from Afghanistan have sparked an upsurge in violence, a locally recruited group fought a gun battle with government security forces trying to liberate a group of hostages. In Yemen, the native land of a huge number of the volunteers that made their way to the Afghan camps, a local group bombed a court where a militant had been convicted a few weeks earlier; in Lebanon, police arrested nine men plotting an attack on the US embassy. They were not linked to al-Qaeda, the authorities said. In Chechnya, well-established militant groups who have no real connection to bin Laden pulled off two suicide bombings that killed scores. The decision to halt British flights to and from Kenya was prompted, intelligence sources say, not by the supposed sighting of a senior al-Qaeda operative in Somalia alone, but by reports indicating that he might be about to link up with 'local groups' in Mombasa or Nairobi to attack a British Airways plane. This picture of interaction between hardened activists, some of whom are linked to bin Laden, and local groups is repeated everywhere.

The man thought to be behind last week's bombs in Riyadh is a young Saudi Arabian called Khaled Jehani. Jehani left his native land at 18 and fought in Bosnia and Chechnya. By the late Nineties he was based in one of the many training camps in Afghanistan, probably one controlled by bin Laden. In the spring of 2001 he recorded a martyrdom video, later found in the rubble of an al-Qaeda house in Kabul. Jehani fought US-led forces at Tora Bora six months later, escaped across the border at the end of the fighting and went to ground for at least a year in the seething, anarchic cities of Pakistan. From Pakistan he made his way, probably via Yemen, into Saudi Arabia several months ago.

Once there Jehani, like al-Tubaiti had done in Morocco, started drawing together the constituent elements he needed to launch an ambitious terrorist attack.

Knowing that the most important element in any such strike is personnel, he concentrated on that first. In the Afghan camps volunteers were taught that, only once the people needed have been found, could funds, weapons, explosives, vehicles and false documents be obtained and a target agreed on. In Saudi Arabia, a country with profound internal tensions, Jehani found plenty of volunteers. Indeed, there was a group of about 50 men, drawn together by their own profound Islamic militant beliefs, who had long been ready for action. Sympathy for Jehani's scheme was so widespread that his group seems to have had little difficulty in sourcing substantial funds and a huge amount of explosives (including military explosives) and weapons very quickly. The group were even able to get inside information on the security arrangements at their targets and appear to have been tipped off about the raid on their safe house by Saudi security forces two weeks ago. How else, Western intelligence sources wondered last week, could 19 men, whose names were known to the authorities, all escape a supposedly surprise raid?

All of which reinforces the message of the rest of last week's attacks. To focus on al-Qaeda or 'foreigners', as the Saudi Prince Naif has it, seems perverse. After any attack, most analysts concentrate on the individual leaders rather than the volunteers who were so happy to join them. But, without the co-operation of local sympathisers and the readiness of scores of local men to sacrifice themselves, Jehani would have been unable to do anything. Nor, without such local local support, would anything have been happened in Pakistan, Yemen, Chechnya, Algeria or, it seems fair to surmise, Morocco. It is the local factors that are crucial, not the activities of an ill-defined entity dubbed al-Qaeda. Just because the Afghan camps have been shut does not mean that the reasons that motivated so many young men to travel there have disappeared. This is what Bush and many of those charged with conducting the war on terror fail to understand.

So what does this mean for all of us who are caught in this nasty crossfire? Will we ever be safe again? Sadly, the answer, at least in the short term, is no.

From 1996 to 2001 a group of hardened militants coalesced in Afghanistan around bin Laden. They were able to build links with groups all over the Islamic world and offer extraordinary facilities to anyone with their own terrorist ambitions. This hardcore and 'the network of networks' it was able to build was 'al-Qaeda'. The war of 2001 destroyed that base, scattered the group and effectively ended the umbrella role bin Laden and his associates had played.

Now the situation has reverted to how things were before bin Laden created his Afghan base. There are lots of local groups fighting their own battles and a number of experienced militants moving from country to country with the aim of pulling together the constituent elements necessary for a major strike.

There are two major differences from the pre-1996 situation, however. First, 11 September, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the crisis in Israel-Palestine, and the actions of governments and Islamic campaigners all over the Muslim and non-Muslim world, have led to an unprecedented wave of anger and resentment that easily translates into violence. The Islamic world is a far more radicalised place than it was previously. That the conflict in Iraq led to a rise in recruitment for radical groups is now so clear that even US officials admit it. This is a huge setback in the 'war on terror'.

Second, the militants' targets are not, as they once were, merely the regimes in their own countries. The target now is the so-called 'Crusader-Zionist Alliance' and that means all Westerners are enemies. There are no civilians. There are no safe havens.

The spate of attacks and threatened attacks last week owed less to 'the return of al-Qaeda', as trumpeted by some headlines, and more to a broad-based Islamic militant movement that is growing in strength everywhere between Malaysia and Morocco. Those involved may share many of the aims of bin Laden and his associates, they may even accept temporary help from experienced senior individual activists, but they are not part of his group. They do not carry membership cards, they have not taken any oath of allegiance. If these groups, cells and individuals are part of al-Qaeda, they are merely part of an 'al-Qaeda movement' not any structured, hierarchical organisation. This movement is as diverse as the many countries from which its members come. Unless this is understood, and a fundamental change made in the way al-Qaeda is viewed and combated, we will all suffer for a long time to come.

The Observer, 18 mai 2003. Jason Burke's book on al-Qaeda will be published by I.B.Tauris next month

<http://207.44.245.159/article3431.htm>

Gringo, lui pas totalement idiot.

W. MOLLIT DEVANT LE MOLLAH

US Cancels US-Iranian Talks Over Terror

 

The Guardian is reporting that the United States has "suspended tentative diplomatic discussions" with Iran that were to take place in Geneva because the United States claims an al-Qaeda cell is operating out of Iran. An unnamed source at the Bush White House told the LA Times that "We decided not to continue talks because of what happened in Saudi Arabia and the potential links to people who are now in Iran."

I wonder how many times the United States has cancelled talks with Germany due to the fact that the September 11th terrorists operated out of that country.

Previously the United States had spoken only of Iranian support for anti-Israel terrorists. Now the Bush Administration is alleging that Iran is intentionally failing to clamp down on al-Qaeda operatives. Next, I suspect, we may hear rhetoric about how Iran actually supports al-Qaeda. It worked with Iraq, right? Maybe within a few months of spin doctoring a majority of Americans will believe that the September 11 hijackers were Iranian.

It should be noted that this marks a sharp increase in magnitude from previous rhetoric against Iran. It should be noted, though, that the Project for a New American Century considers Iran the next target for regime change.

Posted by George Paine | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)

From the "Liberation Theology" Department as of 12:05 PM

<http://www.warblogging.com/archives/000649.php#000649>

GOOGLE CENSURE

May 19, 2003

 

Google News has reportedly confirmed they have removed Indymedia from their list of news sources. Why you ask? Apparently Google bowed to pressure brought upon them by an email campaign organized by people who disagree with some of what gets posted under IndyMedia's policy of allowing anyone to post to the newswire, and not exerting editorial control. People are claiming IndyMedia is "anti-semitic", because of trolls who sometimes post hateful posts on the unedited, user-supplied newswire. Check out the thread on Little Green Footballs or Silent Running or this one at Yourish.com. Inexplicably, Yourish points to this mailing list posting as proof of IndyMedia's "anti-semitism". If you go to Google news and search for indymedia sorted by date, nothing after May 16th comes up. Now in their effort to remove truly anti-semitic material from Google News, they've removed all the legitimate stories of IndyMedia from Google News as well.

<http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/25872>

NN

*@*@*

Depuis plusieurs mois, l'équipe du Point d'information Palestine réfléchit à son développement. Avec plus de 7000 destinataires répartis dans 58 pays, notre "newsletter" bien que privée et réalisée bénévolement s'est imposé comme un outil d'information essentiel. C'est pour assurer la continuité de sa parution que La Maison d'Orient, association loi 1901, a été créée en février dernier par des membres et sympathisants de l'AMFP Marseille (association médicale franco-palestinienne) renforcée par les intervenants réguliers et occasionnels du Point d'information Palestine en Europe et au Proche-Orient. La récente campagne de déstabilisation [Cf. Point d'information Palestine n·217], les menaces et intimidations dont nous continuons de faire l'objet, ne font que conforter notre volonté de poursuivre et développer cette aventure commencée il y a bientôt quatre ans. Notre attachement à l'AMFP Marseille sans laquelle de nombreuses rencontres déterminantes dans le développement du Point d'information Palestine n'auraient pu se faire, restera bien évidement entier. Nous regrettons cependant que le nom de cette respectable association ait été diffamé par deux sinistres irresponsables (ils se reconnaîtront) lors de la campagne de diffamation qu'ils ont orchestrée contre le Point d'information Palestine. Mais tout cela est du passé et La Maison d'Orient est heureuse de vous ouvrir ses portes "mawwart-l-beït"...

<[email protected]>

Nous recommandons vivement cet excellent bulletin.

*@*@* Grâce à la générosité d'un souscripteur, le site Web From the Wilderness a pu passer une annonce violemment critique des pratiques de l'équipe Bush dans le Washington Post.

Elle se termine sur ce conseil: voyez d'autres sites indépendants:

<www.globalresearch.ca>

<www.cooperativeresearch.org>

<www.onlinejournal.com>

<www.publiintegrity.org>

<www.indymedia.org>

<www.narconews.com>

<www.gata.org>

<www.sandersresearch.com>

<www.rise4news.net>

<www.guerillanews.com>

<www.whatreallyhappened.com>

<www.scoop.co.nz>

<www.madcow.com>

<www.truthout.com>

<www.unansweredquestions.org>

<www.lemetropole.cafe.com>

<http://www.fromthewilderness.com/PDF/Washpost_2003_05_16_p25.pdf>

La seconde lettre de Coleen Rowley, celle qui s'est plainte que le FBI n'a pas assez squeezé Moussaoui pendant l'été 2001; elle est Special Agent à Minneapolis:

<http://www.startribune.com/stories/484/3738192.html>

Ode funèbre pour le régime de Saddam, par Mani Shankar Aiyar, député du Congrès au parlement indien. Il a vécu à Baghdad:

<http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20030406-014616-1683r>

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