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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (70499)	7/18/2003 7:35:52 AM
From: zonder	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

This is funny Neo-Nazis, Extremist Jews Unite Reuters wired.com 09:42 AM Jul. 17, 2003 PT French neo-Nazis formed an alliance with extremist Jewish groups on the Internet to publish a torrent of hate messages directed against Arabs and Muslims, according to a report by a leading anti-racist group. Members of extreme-right groups were prepared to set aside their anti-Semitic feelings to share Web space and know-how with extremist pro-Israeli campaigners, amid a rise in violence in the Middle East, the report said. "This is a new phenomenon," said Mouloud Aounit, head of the MRAP group which published the 170-page report. "We wanted to ring an alarm bell over the worrying development of this form of racism which is not only virtual, but has also spread to everyday life." The report said 26 websites, traced to right-wing and Jewish extremists groups in France, operated from the same server in the United States between 1999 and March this year. Members of the groups also shared advice on how to send messages without leaving electronic trails. Investigators believed the sites were taken down because of disagreement between the groups over the U.S.-led war in Iraq. Jewish extremists supported the action but some French far right-wingers were against it. French police had no reaction to the report and France's main Jewish organization, CRIF, was not immediately available for comment. Aounit said the unlikely alliance could resurface soon. The report said that between 2001 and 2003, the groups sent 1,000 messages a day, including incitements to attack mosques in the hope of triggering civil war between Arabs and other French people. They also included messages calling for the assassination of President Jacques Chirac, referred to ironically as Ben Shirak, whom extremists accused of handing power to Muslim interests. A year ago, a member of the anti-foreigner National Republican Movement tried to gun down Chirac at the annual Bastille Day parade, days after posting a message on a British neo-Nazi site boasting that he would soon be famous. Chirac has called for a crackdown on racism following anti-Semitic attacks and signs that the war in Iraq had increased tension between France's Jews and Muslims. However, Aounit said the government remained indifferent to the flood of hate messages pouring out over the Internet. "There is obviously the question of legislation, which must be addressed at the European level," Aounit said. "But if there is the political will, if you give cyber-cops the means to investigate, you could very rapidly arrest, identify the authors."

To: Cary Salsberg who wrote (70499)	7/18/2003 10:53:47 AM
From: runes	Respond to of 70976

<<We need the force of average Americans and their families facing a draft...>> OK so now you have shifted from punishing a whole population in order to punish the leaders to punishing a whole population to just pressure the leaders. ...And it is a sound theory. But, unfortunately, there is a problem - the leaders get to where they are because they are so effective at influencing the population. In Vietnam we were fed the domino theory and it took years to see through that facade. And even with Iraq, 35% of the population believed that Saddam was involved in 9-11. (So much for the theory that you can't fool us twice!) And again, if it is tragic to have to send 100 professional soldiers out to die, how would you describe choosing to send out 150 "volunteers" to die instead? Is that justice or is that a crime unto itself? ...I do support what you are trying to do. I agree that war should not be something that the leaders and the general population are insulated from. But I reject the idea that we should make war worse so that we feel it more. And now the good news - our system to stop gratuitous wars isn't that bad. No, it didn't keep us out of Iraq but it took a national calamity (9-11) coupled with an extreme (and improperly elected) person like Bush to get us in there. And even then he had to bend the truth too far (and now that is coming back to bite him in the ass.) That for a war that might end up being a good thing (despite Bush). ...And for being the most powerful nation on earth, think about all the conflicts that we have stayed out of or managed to avoid diplomatically. Even Bush wouldn't dare to invade North Korea despite his feelings about the pygmy. Beyond that - if you want to beef up the leaders sensitivity to war, try a more targeted approach. How about mandatory elections 6 months after the conclusion of the war - a sort of vote of confidence? How about requiring the commander in chief to personally deliver the news of each death to the each family? How about making the US financially liable for all damages inflicted on the civilian population? ...These things would increase the political and economic costs of a war without increasing the brutality. Better?