AS THE WORLD SQUIRMS

 

Tuesday

4.20.04

 

 

Political Commentary

Owen Whitman

 

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"What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?... What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals?... The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong... Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty."

Gandhi

 

 

COMMENTARY

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WORDS OF WISDOM

 

 

 

 

WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

 

 

Every nation has its war party.

It is not the party of democracy.

It is the party of autocracy.

It seeks to dominate absolutely.

 

 

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily.

But the authority acquired by the state hangs

on; political power never abdicates.

 

 

Of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm

want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back

to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood.

But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger .

 

Hermann Goering

At Nuremberg before being sentenced to death

 

FASCISM

(As defined by its Father)

 

...The Fascist State organizes the nation, but leaves a sufficient margin of

liberty to the individual; the latter is deprived of all useless and possibly

harmful freedom, but retains what is essential; the deciding power in

this question cannot be the individual, but the State alone....

...For Fascism, the growth of empire, that is to say the expansion of the

nation, is an essential manifestation of vitality, and its opposite a sign of decadence.

…But empire demands discipline, the coordination of all forces and a deeply felt sense of duty and sacrifice: this fact explains many aspects of the practical working of the regime, the character of many forces in the State, and the necessarily severe measures which must be taken against those who would oppose this spontaneous and inevitable movement of Italy in the twentieth century, and would oppose it by recalling the outworn ideology of the nineteenth century - repudiated wheresoever there has been the courage to undertake great experiments of social and political transformation; for never before has the nation stood more in need of authority, of direction and order.

… If every age has its own characteristic doctrine, there are a thousand signs which point to Fascism as the characteristic doctrine of our time. For if a doctrine must be a living thing, this is proved by the fact that Fascism has created a living faith; and that this faith is very powerful in the minds of men is demonstrated by those who have suffered and died for it.

 

 

EDUCATION

Education is a weapon whose effects depend on

who holds it in his hands and at whom it is aimed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monetary cost of the War in Iraq - thus far

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PERSPECTIVE ON THE NEWS
 

 

BRING IT ON!

 

 

Flag-draped coffins are secured inside a cargo plane on April 7 at Kuwait International Airport. Military and civilian crews take great care with the remains of U.S. military personnel killed in Iraq. Soldiers form an honor guard and say a prayer as, almost nightly, coffins are loaded for the trip home.

 

The somber task of honoring the fallen

By Hal Bernton (SEATTLE TIMES 4.20.04)
 

The aluminum boxes, in ordered rows, are bound by clean white straps on freshly scrubbed pallets. American flags are draped evenly over the boxes. Uniformed honor guards form on either side of the pallets as they move from the tarmac to the entryways of the cargo planes. There are prayers, salutes and hands on hearts. Then the caskets are carefully placed in cargo holds for a flight to Germany.

In recent weeks, military and civilian contract crews have loaded scores of these caskets onto planes departing the U.S. military area of Kuwait International Airport, south of Kuwait City. And the rituals are repeated over and over again.

"The way everyone salutes with such emotion and intensity and respect. The families would be proud to see their sons and daughters saluted like that," says Tami Silicio, a contract employee from the Seattle area who works the night shift at the cargo terminal.

For U.S. troops, April has been the worst month of this war, with at least 94 service members killed by hostile fire.

"So far this month, almost every night we send them home," Silicio said. "... It's tough. Very tough."

 

NON SEQUITUR – By Wiley

An Iraqi youth cries near the gravestone of Falluja resident Abu Abdullah, at a makeshift cemetery in the besieged town, April 20, 2004. The script in Arabic reads, "Abu Abdullah the martyr, mutilated by Americans." Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel's assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday. Mubarak, who visited the U.S. last week, told French newspaper Le Monde that Washington's actions had caused despair, frustration and a sense of injustice in the Arab world.

 

Mubarak: Arabs Hate U.S. More Than Ever

 

REUTERS - Apr 20, 9:00 AM (ET)

 

 

"Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region," he said in an interview given during a stay in France, where he met President Jacques Chirac Monday.

He blamed the hostility partly on U.S. support for Israel, which assassinated Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi in a missile strike in the Gaza Strip Saturday weeks after killing his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

"At the start some considered the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred of the Americans. After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it," Mubarak said.

 



PARIS (Reuters) - Arabs in the Middle East hate the United States more than ever following the invasion of Iraq and Israel's assassination of two Hamas leaders, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said in comments published Tuesday.

Mubarak, who visited the United States last week, told French newspaper Le Monde that Washington's actions had caused despair, frustration and a sense of injustice in the Arab world.

"Today there is hatred of the Americans like never before in the region," he said in an interview given during a stay in France, where he met President Jacques Chirac Monday.

He blamed the hostility partly on U.S. support for Israel, which assassinated Hamas leader Abdel-Aziz al-Rantissi in a missile strike in the Gaza Strip Saturday weeks after killing his predecessor, Sheikh Ahmed Yassin.

"At the start some considered the Americans were helping them. There was no hatred of the Americans. After what has happened in Iraq, there is unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it," Mubarak said.

"People have a feeling of injustice. What's more, they see (Israeli Prime Minister Ariel) Sharon acting as he pleases, without the Americans saying anything. He assassinates people who don't have the planes and helicopters that he has."

OH CINDY! HOW COULD YOU?

 

BACKGROUND: The Spy and the Man She Busted

By Susan Taylor Martin - St. Petersburg Times (Florida) 3.21.04

 

 

Cheryl Hanin Ben Tov

a/k/a ”Cindy”

[St. Petersburg Times photo: Susan Taylor Martin]

Cheryl Hanin, who worked as an agent for the Mossad, Israel's intelligence agency, lives in [a] 4,000-square-foot [home] in an exclusive gated community [Alaqua] in suburban Orlando [Longwood].

 

Eyeballing home sweet home!

(1999 Aerial Photo)

 

 

 Tue Apr 20, 6:52 PM ET – AFP

Foreign supporters of Mordechai Vanunu demonstrate outside the Shikma jail in Ashkelon, south from Tel Aviv. Vanunu will be released from this jail after being sentenced for 18 years for exposing Israel's nuclear secrets tomorrow. (AFP/Yoav Lemmer)

 

Vanunu kidnapper - Israeli 'honeytrap' spy - seeks quiet life in Orlando, Florida
THE TIMES (London - FROM IAN MCKINNON IN JERUSALEM: 4.20.04)

 

The blonde [?] Israeli spy who seduced and helped to capture [kidnap] Mordechai Vanunu, Israel’s nuclear whistle-blower, remains haunted by the fear of exposure, it has been revealed. The mysterious "Cindy", an agent for the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad, has changed addresses countless times as the international media tracked down the femme fatal who posed as a 26-year-old US student to lure Vanunu to his seizure in Rome.

 

A day before his release the Israeli media once more unearthed her. Yet now Cheryl Bentov, who uses her maiden name Hanin, is a slightly podgy 44-year-old mother of two daughters living the quiet life with her husband [Ofer Ben-Tov], a former military intelligence major, in Orlando, Florida.

 

A pillar of Orlando's Jewish community - her daughters aged 12 and 16 speak Hebrew - Mrs Hanin is wary of friendships to the point of paranoia, fearful that her part in the snaring of Vanunu will once more come back to haunt her.

 

"She left Israel to flee the media and the people who burrowed into her life," a friend in Florida told the Israeli daily, Yedioth Ahronoth.

 

"This bothered her a lot. She was terrified. She felt the need to run. Since this affair Cheryl only wants one thing: a normal quiet life."

 

 

 

An extraordinarily prescient TV interview with General Norman Schwarzkopf and Robert Gates - Deputy National Security Advisor to George Bush Sr.

 

Why Invading Iraq Was

 A Very Stupid Idea…

 

 

(click on blinking dot above for video)

 

 

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And so it goes.

 

Your Pal,