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Politics : DON'T START THE WAR -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (25083)	7/4/2003 4:08:09 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 25898

And I thought that Iraqi oil was earmarked for the reconstruction of the country?? Seems that it'll barely pay for Jewish grievances instead.... Anyway, this whole "war on terrorism" sounds more and more like an attempt by American elites to distract world opinion from the dismal fact that global capitalism is failing... US power players are bamboozling us into a phoney "war of mass distraction" (on terrorism). I mean, think about it: it's now 14 years after the Berlin Wall crumbled, more than 10 years after Russia started playing capitalism with the help of America's most brilliant teachers --the Chicago Boys, Jeffrey Sachs, Soros, and the like... and where's Russia today? Nowhere -- N O W H E R E !! Not only Russia, but Argentina as well: the latter's GDP dropped by 35% over the past 3 years and half of her once thriving middle class has sunk below poverty line... And remember, there ain't any Arab in Argentina... it's a Christian country... shielded from foreign subversion by the so-called Monroe Doctrine... and yet, Argentina is a basket case. Now, the irony is that the only country that's currently outstripping all others on the great capitalist board-game is China, that is, Communist China, go figure! And all the while, America itself, the self-proclaimed Mecca of Capitalism, the sanctuary of free trade and laissezfaire, is plagued with economic scandals: Enron, Arthur Andersen, WorldCom, etc. Hence America's war on Islam: the message being that, no! Capitalism and freetrade are not to blame! It's the Arabs, stupid! How long before the hoax explodes? You tell me... Gus

To: Elmer Flugum who wrote (25083)	7/4/2003 4:56:57 AM
From: GUSTAVE JAEGER	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 25898

Jerusalem, the real, only crux.... Isolating Jerusalem In this third of a four-part series addressing the main points of the Mideast roadmap, Jonathan Cook* focusses on Israel's demographic war over Jerusalem* History was made last month in Jerusalem's municipal elections when the city elected its first ultra-Orthodox mayor, Uri Lupolianski, backed by a majority bloc of religious representatives on the city council. It was an outcome that reflected two of the key demographic factors that have been shaping life in the city since the war of 1967, when Israel conquered the West Bank, including the eastern half of Jerusalem, and began "unifying" the city as its capital. The first was the decision taken by the Israeli leadership in the aftermath of the war to tighten its hold on Jerusalem, and the surrounding area, by transforming the city from a historic and religious symbol for the Jewish people into the concrete heart of the modern Jewish state, pumping the settlement project deep into the occupied West Bank. By creating an enlarged "Jewish" Jerusalem that effectively severed the West Bank in two, Israel was also able to achieve a related goal: to make dreams of Palestinian statehood unrealisable. The city's gradual metamorphosis has been effected over decades by encouraging Jewish migration -- particularly by the ultra-Orthodox -- to the city, including to illegal settlements in occupied East Jerusalem. The ultra-Orthodox were seen as a powerful tool in this demographic battle against the Palestinian population, both because of their religious zealotry and their high birth rates, which closely match those of the Palestinians. To reinforce this trend, the popular Israeli discourse about Jerusalem concentrated ever more on the importance of the holy sites being in Jewish hands. The second demographic factor has been the absence of Jerusalem's Palestinian population from policy-making in the city. Although a third of potential voters in the municipal area are Palestinian, they have no representation in the city council and their voice is silent on decisions made in their name. This impotence is at least partly self-inflicted: the Palestinian population has refused to legitimise Israel's illegal annexation of East Jerusalem, or its continuing rule over their lives, by voting in elections or taking Israeli citizenship. In last month's election only one Arab candidate stood, though he failed to win enough votes to be elected. Moussa Elayan argued that despite repeated calls by Fatah, the ruling party in the Palestinian Authority, for an electoral boycott it was vital that Palestinians asserted control over their lives. "I also don't recognise [Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem], but this is irrelevant," he said. "We must demand our rights. The media focusses on unimportant issues -- whether Fatah issued a declaration or not -- instead of the main problems: water, sewage, education, trash." In fact, by campaigning on issues such as discrimination in garbage collection Elayan was more than underestimating the problem faced by Palestinians in Jerusalem. What Israel has been doing for the past 36 years -- even during the supposed peace process of Oslo -- is reshaping Jerusalem as its "eternal, undivided capital" through an insidious policy of ethnic cleansing: devising measures to encourage Palestinians to leave and Jews to settle in the area. In this, the problem of Jerusalem is no different from that of the West Bank, and to a lesser extent the Gaza Strip. Settlement in and around Jerusalem presents in microcosm the Zionist mission of realising a Greater Israel. In the case of Jerusalem, however, Israel's room for manoeuvre, and obfuscation, is more limited. For this reason, the status of Jerusalem stands as the biggest single obstacle to a peace deal between the Palestinians and Israel. It was the immovable edifice that sank the negotiations at Camp David in July 2000, and it was the touch paper that a few months later, when Ariel Sharon made an incendiary visit to the Haram Al-Sharif in the Old City, lit the slow fuse of the Intifada. It is therefore not surprising that the roadmap, the American-backed initiative to create a Palestinian state by 2005, keeps the issue of Jerusalem on the backburner till as late in the negotiations as possible. In fact the text of the document does not include mention of the city in any of the provisions related to the first and second phases, apart from a fleeting reference to the reopening of closed Palestinian institutions in East Jerusalem on terms acceptable to Israel. Only in the third and final phase is Jerusalem mentioned as one of the key issues to be discussed at an international conference on Palestinian statehood, along with the other intractable problems of final borders, settlements and the refugees' right of return. [snip] weekly.ahram.org.eg