Fundamentalisms, media, and the new McCarthyism: how demagogues are hijacking Washington, DC
Laurie King-Irani, The Electronic Intifada, 18 December 2002
"Faiths strive for one objective: War against the self-appointed gods and tyrants of earth, and support for the oppressed and the unjustly treated, which are two versions of a single reality. Faiths achieve victory and the oppressed become triumphant, only to be shocked by the fact that tyrants have ruled in the name of faiths....Thus begins religions' chaos." -- Imam Musa Sadr  ---- As soon as we learned that jetliners had crashed into the Twin Towers in Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington last year, my Lebanese husband and I felt a chill of fear and foreboding sweep over us. "God help us if this is from the Middle East!" he said. More than a year later, we are still worried about the implications and repercussions of the tragic events of September 11th on the Middle East, the religion of Islam--a religion of justice and compassion; our friends and family in Lebanon, Palestine and elsewhere; and our Arab American and Muslim American friends and colleagues.

The banalization of nuclear weaponry
By Reuven Pedhatzur, Ha'aretz, December 18, 2002
Last week the U.S. administration took another step on the dangerous road toward turning nuclear weapons into a legitimate military instrument used for offensives even if the U.S. is not facing an existential danger. This is a genuine revolution in attitudes toward nuclear weapons and has far-reaching implications regarding their use. The new American concept also has an influence on Israel's own nuclear weapons policies. While during the Cold War, atomic bombs were meant as a deterence against a rival's use of such weapons, in the last year the Bush administration has been conducting a process of legitimization of nuclear weapons as valid instruments for use against countries that are not armed with nuclear bombs and, according to the six-page memo issued by the president, against terror organizations as well. America has thus abandoned one of the traditional cornerstones of its nuclear policy. Nuclear weapons are no longer a weapon of last resort, when America is in grave danger, but rather a legitimate and desirable weapon for the management of war.

The UN route is still the best way forward to retain unity over Saddam
By Donald Macintyre, The Independent, December 17, 2002
For an organisation so weirdly put together, the UN Security Council still remains an astonishingly benign global brand -- In the run-up to the 1992 US Presidential election, the right-wing Republican hopeful Pat Buchanan had his people issue a bumper sticker which sought to taunt George Bush I for both the state of the economy and the failure of US troops to go all the way to Baghdad at the end of the Gulf War. "Saddam Hussein's still got a job," it said. "Have you?" It is looking increasingly as if no one will be able to use that slogan against George Bush II. Nothing is definite. But Tony Blair's declaration yesterday that war is still avoidable, while true, cannot disguise the fact that it looks more rather than less probable than it did even a few weeks ago.

Future of the region and Arab absence
By Amir Taheri, Arab News, December 20, 2002
With the future of Iraq in balance, the Middle East may be heading for the biggest change it has experienced since the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire eight decades ago. The first change was brought about by the intervention of a major outside power, Great Britain, later joined by France in redrawing the map of the region. The second change, now taking shape, will see the United States as catalyst. As always, history does not repeat itself in the same way.

Saving Iraqi people must be part of war preparation
By Kenneth Bacon, Reuters AlertNet, December 13, 2002
Everybody recognises that an American led attack against Iraq could lead to a humanitarian disaster, characterised by civilian casualties, massive human displacement, food shortages and interruptions of crucial services, such as electricity, water and health care. If Iraq were to use chemical or biological weapons, addressing these problems could be both dangerous and almost unimaginably complicated. Unlike Afghanistan, where relief agencies have been working for years, there is little U.N. and relief organisation infrastructure to deal with a humanitarian disaster in Iraq. Stockpiling food, assembling supplies and medicine and building relief teams will take planning, time and money, mainly from the United States.

Report from Rafah Block 'O'
By Kristen Ess, The Electronic Intifada, December 19, 2002
Block O is almost empty now. Most of the people have gone. The sewage flood is knee deep in places. One old man is walking around the muddy edges. His house is flooded. The 8 meter high, 10 meter deep prison wall that the Israeli military government is building -- as it devastates Rafah -- is growing. Reddish brown steel riddles the landscape that the Israeli military has destroyed. The standing houses now appear to be made of bullet holes. Across from them, lining the wall, are sniper towers, green and draped in dark mesh. Israeli driven Caterpillar bulldozers have created another wall with rubble from homes -- bed springs, a plastic rocking horse, some torn sheets, and the concrete that the homes were built with. This rabid destruction has further complicated the sewage drainage system in the area. A friend and engineer in the Water Municipality of Rafah says the way to drain the flood is to break this wall apart to allow a simple flow. The houses cannot be rebuilt. The area is under seige.

On Israeli Terror Groups
By Gabriel Ash, Palestine Chronicle, December 19, 2002
"Ateret Cohanim, The Jewish Underground, the Jewish Defense League, Kach, Kahana Khai, Eyal, etc. are among the many groups that planned and/or carried out terrorist attacks against mostly Palestinian civilians from the 1970s onwards .." --  A teapot scandal erupted after Harvard's English Department invited the distinguished British poet Tom Paulin to give a prestigious lecture on campus. Some folks were shocked to discover the things Paulin had said in an interview with an Egyptian magazine. In that interview, Paulin apparently called the Brooklyn-born Jewish fundamentalist settlers in the Occupied Territories "Nazis" and said that they ought to be shot. From the left, The Nation's Eric Alterman called Paulin's views "disgusting." From the right, Andrew Sullivan labeled them "anti-Semitic." Let's take a close look, beginning with the "Nazi" word. After reading the press, both "liberal" and "conservative," you'd think Nazism and Jewish fundamentalism are miles apart, so many miles apart that comparing them is not merely wrong, but disgusting, anti-Semitic, beyond the pale, etc. You'd be surprised then to learn a few things. A basic tenet of the Jewish settlers' religious doctrine is that Jews have the duty to conquer every piece of land in "Greater Israel," an ill-defined territory that can stretch as far as Iraq, and includes areas in Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. In conquering that area, Jews have a right to kill "every single one" of the inhabitants until "not a memory or trace" remains (these words of love, belonging to Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, appeared in the settlers' principal magazine Nekudah). To turn this political project into the Nazi ideology of Lebensraum, we need but substitute Europe for the Middle East, and Aryans for Jews.

All the News That's Fit to Print, Except Unfavorable News about Israel
By Raff Ellis, YellowTimes.org, December 18, 2002
Everyone knows the above popular slogan, slightly modified of course, belongs to a major national newspaper. In today's world, such slogans have become entirely meaningless and are as hollow as the sound you get banging on an empty oil drum. Equally meaningless are the names of newspapers, which in yesteryear were meant to signify integrity in news reporting. The herald, tribune, sentinel, beacon, chronicle, etc. are names associated with the ancient tradition of information gathering and distribution. Sadly, that tradition has fallen victim to the corporate and political manipulation that has rendered unbiased reporting obsolete.