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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: AK2004 who wrote (276914)	2/27/2006 5:11:04 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572711

Students Call for Banning of Peace Studies Class Bethesda-Chevy Chase High Protesters Say That Teachings Are Skewed By Lori Aratani Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, February 26, 2006; C03 washingtonpost.com For months, 17-year-old Andrew Saraf had been troubled by stories he was hearing about a Peace Studies course offered at his Bethesda high school. He wasn't enrolled in the class but had several friends and classmates who were. Last Saturday, he decided to act. He sat down at his computer and typed out his thoughts on why the course -- offered for almost two decades as an elective to seniors at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School -- should be banned from the school. "I know I'm not the first to bring this up but why has there been no concerted effort to remove Peace Studies from among the B-CC courses?" he wrote in his post to the school's group e-mail list. "The 'class' is headed by an individual with a political agenda, who wants to teach students the 'right' way of thinking by giving them facts that are skewed in one direction." He hit send. Within a few hours, the normally staid e-mail list BCCnet -- a site for announcements, job postings and other housekeeping details in the life of a school -- was ablaze with chatter. By the time Principal Sean Bulson checked his BlackBerry on Sunday evening, there were more than 150 postings from parents and students -- some ardently in support, some ardently against the course. Since its launch at the school in 1988, Peace Studies has provoked lively debate, but the attempt to have the course removed from the curriculum is a first, Bulson said. The challenge by two students comes as universities and even some high schools across the country are under close scrutiny by a growing number of critics who believe that the U.S. education system is being hijacked by liberal activists. At Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Peace Studies is taught by Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post reporter and founder and president of the Center for Teaching Peace. Though the course is taught at seven other Montgomery County high schools, some say B-CC's is perhaps the most personal and ideological of the offerings because McCarthy makes no effort to disguise his opposition to war, violence and animal testing. Saraf and Avishek Panth, also 17, acknowledge that with the exception of one lecture they sat in on this month, most of what they know about the course has come from friends and acquaintances who have taken the class. But, they said, those discussions, coupled with research they have done on McCarthy's background, have convinced them that their school should not continue to offer Peace Studies unless significant changes are made. This is not an ideological debate, they said. Rather, what bothers them the most is that McCarthy offers students only one perspective. "I do recognize that it is a fairly popular class," Saraf said. "But it's clear that the teacher is only giving one side of the story. He's only offering facts that fit his point of view." For his part, McCarthy, 67, finds the students' objections a bit puzzling. He said that although the two sat in on a recent class, they have not talked to him in depth about their concerns. "I've never said my views are right and theirs are wrong," he said about the students who take his course. "In fact, I cherish conservative dissenters. I wish we could get more of them in." The course is also offered at Montgomery Blair, James Hubert Blake, Albert Einstein, Walter Johnson, Northwest, Northwood and Rockville high schools, but the Peace Studies course at Bethesda-Chevy Chase is unique for a number of reasons. Although a staff teacher takes roll and issues grades, it is McCarthy as a volunteer, unpaid guest lecturer who does the bulk of the teaching. He does not work from lesson plans, although he does use a school system-approved textbook -- a collection of essays on peace that he edited. For McCarthy, it seems Peace Studies is not just a cause; it is a crusade. "Unless we teach them peace, someone else will teach them violence," he said. Students might spend one class period listening to a guest speaker who opposes the death penalty and another, if they choose, standing along East West Highway protesting the war. But that, students said, is part of the course's appeal. "We're all mature enough to take it all in with a hint of skepticism," said Megan Andrews, 17. "We respect Mr. McCarthy's views, but we don't absorb them like sponges." When they walk through the door of their fourth-floor classroom, students said, they never know what they might find. Once McCarthy brought in a live turkey to illustrate a point about animal rights. Everything went well until the turkey escaped and urinated in the hallway. And Friday, when students opened the door, they saw Mahatma Gandhi -- or, rather, Bernard Meyer, a peace activist from Olympia, Wash., dressed as Gandhi. Meyer spent most of the class time taking questions from students about "life" as Gandhi. McCarthy, too, jumped in, quizzing Gandhi about his views on arranged marriage. At the end of the period, he jumped from his chair. "Let's take a photo of us with Gandhi," he said, gathering the students. Susie Doyle, 18, said she respects Saraf and Panth for having the courage to speak out on the school e-mail list about their concerns. She does not agree, but said: "It would be a little hypocritical to jump on them. I have a little trouble with them criticizing the course since they haven't taken it, but it's important that they speak up." In the meantime, Saraf and Panth said, they plan to do more research and present their case for discontinuing the course to the administration. For now, however, the administration said it has no plan to do away with Peace Studies. "Peace Studies is one of the things that makes B-CC unique," Bulson said. "It's been an institution here, and kids from all across the spectrum have taken it. It's not about indoctrination. It's about debate and dialogue."

To: AK2004 who wrote (276914)	2/27/2006 5:19:35 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 1572711

Palestinians March in Support of Saddam AP 01/17/2003 GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip -- Thousands of Palestinians toting pictures of Saddam Hussein marched in support of the Iraqi leader Friday as Israelis lined up for gas masks, fearing attack on their cities if the United States goes to war with Iraq. Also Friday, the Islamic militant group Hamas claimed responsibility for a botched attack with a booby-trapped raft. An Israeli navy gunship fired on the dinghy, causing a large explosion off northern Gaza. Hamas did not say what the attacker's target was, but several Jewish settlements are near the shore in that area. In Gaza City, about 3,500 Palestinians filled narrow streets with fluttering Iraqi flags and pictures of Saddam. Some chanted together, "Our beloved Saddam, strike Tel Aviv," reviving an old slogan from the 1991 Gulf War. Flanked by three guards hefting submachine guns, Abdel Aziz Rantisi, a Hamas leader, told reporters that the march was evidence of strong Palestinian support for Iraq. "The Palestinian people and Iraqi people are in the same trench of resistance against the aggression and against injustice," he said. At a rally in a Palestinian refugee camp in Lebanon, militants urged Arabs to volunteer to help defend Iraq from any attack. "We call upon all nationalist and Islamist forces to immediately call for opening the doors to recruit volunteers to defend Iraq and its people," Salah el-Youssef, a senior official in the Palestine Liberation Front, a pro-Iraqi group, told the gathering of about 500 people in the Ein el-Hilweh camp. In Jerusalem's largest shopping mall, dozens of Israelis lined up to get gas masks, with fears of war revived by Thursday's discovery of empty chemical warheads near Baghdad. Most of Israel's 6.6 million people have received gas masks from the military over the years. Israel's Defense Ministry is to award a contract in the next few weeks for production of an improved gas mask with a battery-operated air pump and a more comfortable fit, especially for people with beards, ministry spokeswoman Rachel said. The first of the new masks, which Israel has been working for years to develop, will be ready by late spring, she said. Last month, a Defense Ministry expert, Esther Crasser, told an Israeli newspaper, that only one-third of the type of gas masks distributed in recent years are effective. Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital, which has a staff well-drilled in treating victims of Palestinian suicide bomb attacks, is preparing to take in several hundred victims of chemical and biological weapons attacks. The hospital said it could treat Israelis wounded at home as well as American soldiers injured in Iraq. The hospital, one of the best-equipped in the Middle East, is updating computer systems to handle registration of patients with foreign passports, spokeswoman Yael Bossem-Levy said. In particular, the hospital staff is readying to treat burns and lung injuries in case they receive soldiers hurt by chemical or biological weapons, she said. The hospital did not receive a specific request from the Americans to take in wounded soldiers, she said. Israel this week went into a higher stage of alert, code-named "Red Hail." Hundreds of American soldiers are in place in southern Israel for joint maneuvers to prepare anti-missile defenses in case Iraq strikes Israeli cities as it did in 1991. At the time, Iraq fired 39 Scud missiles at Israel. Preliminary exercises have begun and a live-fire drill is planned, involving two anti-missile systems, the American-made Patriot and the Arrow, developed by Israel and the United States. U.S. soldiers have brought Patriot anti-missile batteries with them and are to remain in Israel until the end of any war on Iraq.

To: AK2004 who wrote (276914)	2/27/2006 5:24:00 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572711

Wall Street Journal January 10, 2002 The Arafat I Know By Ion Mihai Pacepa. Wall Street Journal January 10, 2002 Gen. Pacepa was the highest ranking intelligence officer ever to have defected from the former Soviet bloc. He is author of "Red Horizons" (1987), a memoir. Last week, Israel seized a boat carrying 50 tons of Iranian-made mortars, long-range missiles and anti-tank rockets destined for the Palestinian Authority. The vessel, Karim A., is owned by the Palestinian Authority and its captain and several crew are members of the Palestinian naval police. I am not surprised to see that Yasser Arafat remains the same bloody terrorist I knew so well during my years at the top of Romania's foreign intelligence service. I became directly involved with Arafat in the late 1960s, in the days when he was being financed and manipulated by the KGB. In the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel humiliated two of the Soviet Union's Arab client states, Egypt and Syria. A couple of months later, the head of Soviet foreign intelligence, Gen. Aleksandr Sakharovsky, landed in Bucharest. According to him, the Kremlin had charged the KGB to "repair the prestige" of "our Arab friends" by helping them organize terrorist operations that would humiliate Israel. The main KGB asset in this joint venture was a "devoted Marxist-Leninist": Yasser Arafat, co-founder of Fatah, the Palestinian military force. Gen. Sakharovsky asked us in Romanian intelligence to help the KGB bringing Arafat and some of his fedayeen fighters secretly to the Soviet Union via Romania, in order for them to be indoctrinated and trained. During that same year, the Soviets maneuvered to have Arafat named chairman of the PLO with public help from Egypt's ruler, Gamal Abdel Nasser. When I first met Arafat, I was stunned by the ideological similarity between him and his KGB mentor. Arafat's broken record was that American "imperial Zionism" was the "rabid dog of the world," and there was only one way to deal with a rabid dog: "Kill it!" In the years when Gen. Sakharovsky was the chief Soviet intelligence adviser in Romania, he used to preach in his soft, melodious voice that "the bourgeoisie" was the "rabid dog of imperialism," adding that there was "just one way to deal with a rabid dog: Shoot it!" He was responsible for killing 50,000 Romanians. In 1972, the Kremlin established a "socialist division of labor" for supporting international terrorism. Romania's main clients in this new market were Libya and the PLO. A year later, a Romanian intelligence adviser assigned to the PLO headquarters in Beirut reported that Arafat and his KGB handlers were preparing a PLO commando team headed by Arafat's top deputy, Abu Jihad, to take American diplomats hostage in Khartoum, Sudan, and demand the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the Palestinian assassin of Robert Kennedy. "St-stop th-them!" Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu yelled in his nervous stutter, when I reported the news. He had turned as white as a sheet. Just six months earlier Arafat's liaison officer for Romania, Ali Hassan Salameh, had led the PLO commando team that took the Israeli athletes hostage at the Munich Olympic Games, and Ceausescu had become deathly afraid that his name might be implicated in that awful crime. It was already too late to stop the Abu Jihad commandos. After a couple of hours we learned they had seized the participants at a diplomatic reception organized by the Saudi embassy in Khartoum and were asking for Sirhan's release. On March 2, 1973, after President Nixon refused the terrorists' demand, the PLO commandos executed three of their hostages: American Ambassador Cleo A. Noel Jr., his deputy, George Curtis Moore, and Belgian charge d'affaires Guy Eid. In May 1973, during a private dinner with Ceausescu, Arafat excitedly bragged about his Khartoum operation. "Be careful," Ion Gheorghe Maurer, a Western-educated lawyer who had just retired as Romanian prime minister, told him. "No matter how high-up you are, you can still be convicted for killing and stealing." "Who, me? I never had anything to do with that operation," Arafat said, winking mischievously. In January 1978, the PLO representative in London was assassinated at his office. Soon after that, convincing pieces of evidence started to come to light showing that the crime was committed by the infamous terrorist Abu Nidal, who had recently broken with Arafat and built his own organization. "That wasn't a Nidal operation. It was ours," I was told by Ali Hassan Salameh, Arafat's liaison officer for Romania. Even Ceausescu's adviser to Arafat, who was well familiar with his craftiness, was taken by surprise. "Why kill your own people?" Col. Constantin Olcescu asked. "We want to mount some spectacular operations against the PLO, making it look as if they had been organized by Palestinian extremist groups that accuse the chairman of becoming too conciliatory and moderate," Salameh explained. According to him, Arafat even asked the PLO Executive Committee to sentence Nidal to death for assassinating the PLO representative in London. Arafat has made a political career by pretending that he has not been involved in his own terrorist acts. But evidence against him grows by the day. James Welsh, a former intelligence analyst for the National Security Agency, has told a number of U.S. journalists that the NSA had secretly intercepted the radio communications between Yasser Arafat and Abu Jihad during the PLO operation against the Saudi embassy in Khartoum, including Arafat's order to kill Ambassador Noel. The conversation was allegedly recorded by Mike Hargreaves, an NSA officer stationed in Cyprus, and the transcripts were kept in a file code-named "Fedayeen." For over 30 years the U.S. government has considered Arafat a key to achieving peace in the Middle East. But for over 20 years, Washington also believed that Ceausescu was the only Communist ruler who could open a breech in the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War era, two American presidents went to Bucharest to pay him tribute. In November 1989, when the Romanian Communist Party re-elected Ceausescu, he was congratulated by the United States. Three weeks later, he was accused of genocide and executed, dying as a symbol of communist tyranny. It is high time the U.S. end the Arafat fetish as well. President Bush's current war on international terrorism provides an excellent opportunity. URL for this Article: interactive.wsj.com <http://interactive.wsj.com/archive/retrieve.cgi?id=SB1010628554948102920.dj m>

To: AK2004 who wrote (276914)	2/27/2006 5:26:57 AM
From: paret	Respond to of 1572711

The Terror Masters-Abu Abbas, Arafat, Syria: They've all killed Americans. Wall St Journal ^ \| April 18, 2003 \| STEVEN EMERSON Eighteen years after the execution of American Leon Klinghoffer on the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro, the U.S. has demonstrated by the capture of Abu Abbas that it will not wipe the slate clean on international terrorism. For years, however, diplomatic niceties and misplaced State Department priorities subverted this principle, enabling purveyors of terrorism to literally get away with murder. The war of liberation in Iraq now provides the U.S. with an opportunity to ensure that those Arab leaders and regimes who have carried out or threatened attacks against this country and its citizens are subject to American justice. * * * Because of its conspicuously brazen support for Saddam Hussein in transferring military supplies to Baghdad and providing sanctuary to Iraqi Baathists, and in encouraging Arab fighters to go to Iraq to kill Americans, Syria's role in supporting terrorism and threatening American interests has finally come into focus. That it took actual complicity in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq for us to finally confront Damascus is a measure of how successful Syria was in deceiving the world, with the connivance of even the U.S. All one has to do is read the State Department's annual reports on international terrorism which have stated with mantra-like repetition, that Syria has not been involved in "international terrorism" since 1986. Given the fact that the Israeli borders with Syria and Lebanon are international borders, I have always failed to see how the State Department could portray Damascus in this light given its direct support, training, supplies and sanctuary extended to Hamas, Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah, to name just a few of the groups that serve as de facto members of the Syrian foreign service. Since 1988, more than 1200 Israelis and some 30 Americans have been killed in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza by groups headquartered in, or sponsored by, Damascus. Recently, the U.S. indicted the head of Islamic Jihad, Ramadan Abdullah Shallah, on charges including murder. Shallah continues to receive sanctuary in Damascus, where he routinely issues threats against the U.S. After Sept. 11, Syria pretended to be helping the U.S. in the war on al Qaeda, as evidenced by Damascus' arrest of a senior suspected al Qaeda operative. The State Department even issued a statement lauding Syria's role in the fight against al Qaeda. But the reality was different. Testimonies, court records and wiretaps introduced in Italian trials of al Qaeda and other militant Islamic leaders show that Syria has been working hand-in-hand with Islamic extremists in Europe for years, providing transit, sanctuary and training for al Qaeda terrorists traveling between Iraq and the Arab world. An eye-opening expose, by Sebastian Rotella in this week's Los Angeles Times, shows in incredible detail how Syria served as a hub for al Qaeda terrorists shuttling between Iraq, Syria and Europe. U.S. officials believe that at least one of the primary 9/11 plotters spent extensive time in Syria and that Syrian front-companies in Europe worked intimately with al Qaeda. According to U.S. intelligence, conspirators in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 American servicemen met repeatedly in Syria to plan the terrorist operation -- meetings that could not have taken place without the knowledge of the Syrian regime. Syria's role in attacking Americans goes way back. In 1983, Syria -- together with Iran and the Hezbollah -- coordinated the bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241 Marines. The capture of Palestinian terrorist leader Abu Abbas has provoked demands from the Palestine Authority that he be immediately released and claiming that the slate had been wiped clean by the Oslo Accords. Under the PA's reasoning, compliance with treaties need only be one-way since both Abbas and the PA brazenly violated the terms of Oslo by continuing to carry out terrorist attacks. Since October 2000, Abbas's group, the Palestine Liberation Front, has transferred millions of dollars to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers. Abbas has dispatched terrorists trained in his Iraq-based training camps to the West Bank to carry out major attacks on Ben Gurion airport, poison Israel's water supply and attack schools and other civilian targets. The Palestinian Authority's defense of Abbas is not just symbolic; it's self-protecting. If Abbas goes down, so could Yasser Arafat. If Abbas is prosecuted for Achille Lauro, or for the funding given to the families of suicide bombers (some of whose victims included Americans in Israel), Arafat's complicity in these terrorist plots would almost certainly be exposed. And if a true accounting were to be made, the role of the Tanzim and the al Aqsa Brigades -- terrorist groups directly sponsored by Arafat -- would show their roles in the killing of hundreds of Israelis and at least 15 Americans in the past 30 months. As for the mass murder carried out by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, the PA today continues to protect the killers and masterminds. The duplicitous role of Saudi Arabia in extending support to al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist groups also needs to be fully exposed. In the buildup to the war, Saudi Arabia demonstrated where it really stood on al Qaeda by releasing Sheikh Saeed bin Zuair, a militant Islamic cleric whose release had been demanded by Osama bin Laden in a tape distributed last year. (The other person whose release was demanded by bin Laden was Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, convicted for his role in the WTC related conspiracies in 1993.) In unprecedented ways, the war of liberation of Iraq has provided a unique opportunity to see exactly where Arab nations and Islamic leaders have stood on the issue of international terrorism. If anything, the war has enabled Americans to see an unvarnished reality of true attitudes toward the U.S. Mr. Emerson, executive director of the Investigative Project, is the author of "American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us" (Free Press, 2003). Updated April 18, 2003

To: AK2004 who wrote (276914)	2/27/2006 5:29:56 AM
From: paret	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572711

Will $1 billion be buried with Arafat? By Paul Martin THE WASHINGTON TIMES November 8, 2004 LONDON -- Palestinian officials who gathered around Yasser Arafat in recent weeks have been anxious to extract from their ailing leader the secret codes and locations of bank accounts they believe contain more than $1 billion diverted from official Palestinian funds. "A huge scramble has been going on to get the codes he holds in his head for various bank accounts he holds in secret," says a senior Palestinian banker. "It's an uphill struggle, and we may never get the bulk of it," says the official, who declined to be identified out of fear for his safety. "It's been his key to holding on to power and influence, and some of it may go to the grave with him. If the numbers die with him, then the Swiss bankers and other bankers worldwide will be rubbing their hands in glee," the Palestinian banker says. Palestine Liberation Organization Secretary-General Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Ahmed Qureia and Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath were flying to Paris and hoped to see Mr. Arafat today. Mr. Arafat's wife lashed out at his top lieutenants, accusing them of traveling to Paris with plans to "bury" her husband "alive," the Associated Press reported today. In a screaming telephone call from Mr. Arafat's hospital bedside, Suha Arafat told Al Jazeera television that his top aides were conspiring to usurp her husband's four-decade role as Palestinian leader. Jawad Ghussein, who was secretary-general of the Palestinian National Fund until 1996 but now lives in London, charged last week that Mr. Arafat had for years misappropriated Palestinian funds -- much of it donated by oil-rich Arab governments -- for personal use. "The billions Arafat has stolen over the years from the Palestinian people facilitated the corruption of the Palestinian leadership, and is the source of his power over them," Mr. Ghussein says. Mr. Ghussein says that for 12 years he had deposited $7.5 million to $8 million each month into Mr. Arafat's personal bank account. "The money is in personal accounts under his complete control," he was quoted as saying. "Only one person knew where [the money] went, and that was Arafat." Saudi contributions until 2003 amounted to $15.4 million every two months, and the United States has increased its annual contribution to the Palestinian Authority to $223 million. An International Monetary Fund report, "Economic Performance and Reforms under Conflict Conditions," released in September 2003, concluded that $900 million in Palestinian Authority revenues from 69 commercial enterprises had "disappeared" between 1995 and 2000. The report also found that $34 million out of the $74 million 2003 budget for Mr. Arafat's own office was missing after having been transferred to pay unidentified organizations and individuals. The IMF report traced some $1.1 billion diverted by Mr. Arafat to a "special account" at Bank Leumi in Tel Aviv. It is not clear what happened to that money but, according to some Palestinian reports, during the past year Mr. Arafat and his close aides have switched banks and have diversified the portfolio. Shortly before Mr. Arafat was flown from Ramallah for treatment in France, his wife received $60 million in her Paris bank account. According to French press reports, authorities in France are investigating the transfer. Banking sources in Geneva say some accounts, either numbered or in the name of the Palestinian leader's wife, have been moved from Switzerland to Caribbean financial havens. These apparently include about $300 million previously held by Mr. Arafat at the Odier Bank in Geneva. The New York-based American Center for Democracy said in a report in July that Mr. Arafat also personally controlled 60 percent of the security-apparatus budget, which left him with an additional $360 million per year to spend as he chose. The center said that from July 2002 to September 2003, Mr. Arafat transferred $11.4 million to bank accounts controlled by Mrs. Arafat, who is living luxuriously in Paris and is known for her extravagant shopping habits. As of August 2002, the center reported, Mr. Arafat's personal holdings included $500 million that rightfully belonged to the Palestine Liberation Organization. In all, his holdings were estimated to total $1.3 billion at that time. The money "is enough to feed 3 million Palestinians for one year, and also buy 1,000 mobile intensive care units, as well as to fund 10 hospitals for a decade," the center said. At least 60 percent of the Palestinian Authority's budget comes from international aid contributions, of which the European Union is the largest donor. According to the Palestinian Ministry of Planning and International Cooperation, individual EU member states have donated at least $1.3 billion to the Palestinian Authority. Total aid from Europe -- including EU donations -- from 1998 to 2001 has totaled at least $4 billion. In December the United States, Japan, the European Union and Norway, joined by the Arab League countries and the International Monetary Fund, approved another $1.2 billion to the Palestinian Authority for the 2004 budget. Andrew Borowiec in Cyprus contributed to this report.