CUANAS

Quote of the Day
"I think the decision of the court is clear. Whilst we all accept the government of Israel has a responsibility, and indeed the duty to protect its citizens, any action it takes has to be in conformity with international law"
- UN Secretary General "Monkey Cloud" Kofi Annan.
I wonder what he means when he says "any action it takes."

The following "actions" are apparently not in "conformity with international law":


Building a fence to keep terrorists out of Israel

Targeting the terrorists from the air, even when they are 'ticking bombs'

Fighting the terrorists on the ground, like any enemy army

Which only leaves "just sit there and die."

The Catholic Church condemned anti-Zionism as a cover for anti-Semitism by means of a joint statement issued by a forum of Catholic-Jewish intellectuals this week.

The announcement was made at a gathering of religious, academic and other leading Jewish and Catholic figures in Buenos Aires.

"We oppose anti-Semitism in any way and form, including anti-Zionism that has become of late a manifestation of anti-Semitism," the statement said.

This is the first time that anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism have been equated by the Catholic Church.

The statement also includes a stern condemnation of terrorism, particularly terror in the name of faith.

"Terror is a sin against man and against God. Fundamentalist terrorism in the name of God has no justification and cannot be justified."

Ilan Steinberg, director of the World Jewish Congress, one of the forum's organizers, described the joint statement as "an historic moment."

"For the first time, the Catholic Church recognizes in anti-Zionism an attack not only against Jews, but against the whole Jewish people."

Senior Jewish figures called the announcement a significant, public statement of support by the Catholic Church in the face of anti-Zionism.

"In the past, Zionism was equated with racism, and this statement turns anti-Zionism statements to a form of racism," a Jewish leader said in New York.

The statement joins a prior European Union announcement and UN declaration of war against anti-Semitism as part of a global front fighting the scourge.

The UN Security Council is debating a US draft resolution imposing sanctions on militias accused of "ethnic cleansing" against non-Arabs.

The US also hinted that the sanctions could be extended to the government.

Meanwhile, African leaders have urged Khartoum to stop bombing Darfur and say their proposed 300-strong force will have a mandate to protect civilians.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell says promises to reign in the pro-government militia, known as the Janjaweed, have not been kept by Khartoum so far.

"Only action not words can win the race against death in Darfur," he said.

Some one million people have fled their homes and at least 10,000 have been killed in what the UN calls "the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

A rebellion broke out in Darfur early last year, when two groups took up arms, accusing the government of ignoring the region.

"In Darfur, it would be better to help the Sudanese get over the crisis so their country is pacified rather than sanctions which would push them back to their misdeeds of old," junior Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told French radio.

France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, France also has significant oil interests in Sudan.

Mr Muselier also dismissed claims of "ethnic cleansing" or genocide in Darfur.

"I firmly believe it is a civil war and as they are little villages of 30, 40, 50, there is nothing easier than for a few armed horsemen to burn things down, to kill the men and drive out the women," he said.

Human rights activists say the Janjaweed are conducting a genocide against Darfur's black African population.

Those who have fled their homes say the Janjaweed ride on horses and camels into villages which have just been bombed by government aircraft, killing the men and raping the women.

"Egyptian military exercises are ominously geared toward an Israeli enemy.” That statement was not made by an Israeli intelligence officer with esoteric information, or an Israeli settler desperate to stop the withdrawal from Gaza, but by Tom Lantos, Democratic Congressman from California, during a visit to Israel last week.

Lantos, who is the ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, noted that Egypt, a country under no serious threat from its neighbors, keeps adding weaponry and forces to its already massive army. In particular, it recently supplemented its navy with eleven new battle units.

When you add the fact that previous Egyptian buildups have always led to war against Israel, and that the anti-Semitic demonization of Israel in Egypt’s state-controlled media continues without letup, it’s not a reassuring picture. Lantos, in reaction, aims to introduce legislation to phase out the annual $1.3 billion in U.S. military aid to Egypt, while converting it to much-needed economic assistance instead.

Considering that Egypt’s anti-Semitic incitement has already prompted debates in Congress in recent years about the prudence of enabling its military buildup, it may not be totally Pollyannaish to wish Lantos success. His task won’t be made easier, though, by the legitimacy Israeli Prime Minister Sharon keeps bestowing on Egypt by treating it as a wise arbiter that could be trusted to keep Gaza quiet after an Israeli withdrawal.

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - A doctor who aborted a fetus accidentally cannot be charged with manslaughter because European states do not agree whether an unborn baby is a person, the European Court of Human Rights ruled Thursday.

The court ruled that it could not answer the question of when the right to life begins and had to leave decisions on the issue to be taken at a national level.

The ruling, which carries the weight of a precedent in European countries, contrasts with United States laws that have increasingly given fetuses some legal rights. (Huh?)

The court turned down an appeal by Thi-Nho Vo, a French citizen of Vietnamese origin, against the hospital doctor who pierced her amniotic sac during an examination and had to abort her six-month-old fetus.

Under continued pressure to be truthful about its nuclear activities and ambitions, (current Iranian President Muhammed) Khatami has further suggested that Iran will withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Regardless, Iran has just announced its intention to resume centrifuge production - a move that would facilitate the development of weapons grade nuclear material. In light of these disturbing events, it is imperative to recall the “Al-Quds Day” December 14, 2001 sermon of former Iranian President Ali Akhbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. During this “pious” address, Rafsanjani, who was also deemed a “moderate” while President, argued that nuclear weapons could solve the “Israel problem,” because, as he observed, “...the use of a nuclear bomb in Israel will leave nothing on the ground, whereas it will only damage the world of Islam.”

Did you ever notice that there are no Germans going around the world saying, or making movies about, how awful Germany is or has been? Given that Germany unleashed two world wars and invented industrialized genocide, why has there been no German Michael Moore?

Are there any Japanese making films about the absence of Japanese soul-searching or expressions of sorrow over their country's enslavement, torture and murder of Asians in World War II? Has anyone ever encountered any Japanese self-hate?

Any Belgians telling the world how bad their country is? Argentinians? French? France surely has reason to produce people ashamed of their country.

The answer, of course, is no. In fact, among all the world's peoples, only two produce large numbers of individuals who have greater sympathy for those who hate their country or national/ethnic group than for those who love it -- Americans and Jews.

Many on the American Left loathe America (they love the Constitution and their vision of what America could be) and have contempt for the average American. That is why most of the Left has such admiration for Michael Moore, who has said, among so much more, the following:

Americans "are possibly the dumbest people on the planet . . . in thrall to conniving, thieving, smug p----s" (London Daily Mirror).
"Should such an ignorant people lead the world?" (open letter to the German People in Die Zeit).
Elsewhere, he speaks of America as bringing immeasurable misery and sadness to the world and as essentially deserving attacks on it.

There are no comparable self-haters in any other country except Israel, whose leftists have the same contempt for their country, nor among any other group except the Jews, whose Left also generally loathe the Jewish state (and America). Israeli professors in the West are often the leaders in anti-Israel demonstrations and movements. Jews such as Professors Norman Finkelstein and Noam Chomsky devote much of their lives to trying to harm the one Jewish country in the world (and America) and express deep hatred of Jewish institutions.

Here is Finkelstein:

Jewish organizations "steal, and I do use the word with intent, 95 percent of the monies earmarked for victims of Nazi persecution" (Counterpunch, Dec. 13, 2001).
Jews "are not Zionist by conviction, they are Zionist because it is useful for their political and more recently financial self-interest" (same).
In a lecture delivered in Beirut, Finkelstein likened Israeli actions to "Nazi practices" during World War II, albeit with some added "novelties to the Nazi experiments" (Commentary, June 2002).
And Noam Chomsky wrote the foreword to a book denying the Holocaust. This is the same as a black professor writing the foreword to a book by a Ku Klux Klansman.

This self-loathing on the part of Americans and Jews is all the more remarkable when you consider that leftists of every other group strongly affirm their national, cultural and ethnic identities. For example, while American and Jewish leftists ceaselessly attack America and Israel, black and Hispanic leftists ceaselessly defend blacks and Hispanics.

How, then, to explain this anomaly of American and Jewish self-loathing?

I offer four explanations in no order of importance.

First, those Jews and Americans who loathe Israel and America are virtually always on the Left, and the Left around the world hates America and Israel. You can't be a leftist and strongly defend America or Israel. The Left will shun you. And since most of these individuals' primary identity comes from being a leftist, being ostracized from fellow leftists is hell on earth.

Second, many leftists are psychologically adolescents. And one feature of adolescent psychology is anger at a parent who claims very high ideals and turns out to be flawed. Many on the Left are angry at America and Israel for being imperfect and therefore disappointing them.

Third, the words "American" and "Jewish" both represent distinctive value systems, not only national and ethnic identities. And these value systems clash with leftist values. Both American and Jewish identities are rooted in religion and divine chosenness. And the further left one goes, the greater the hostility to religion -- especially to Judaism and Christianity (not to Islam, which the Left often defends, because many Muslims hate Judaism and Christianity as much as the Left does) -- not to mention to any notion of national or religious exceptionalism. When you add to this that America also represents capitalism and holds liberty higher than equality, you can further understand why America elicits so much hatred from its own leftists.

Fourth, since America and Israel are the two most hated countries in the world, and the Jews are the most hated ethnic/religious group, many Americans and Jews would rather identify with the haters than with the hated. That is why, for example, so many American leftists base a large part of their case against George W. Bush on his having increased anti-American sentiments around the world. This makes leftists livid -- again, like adolescents, they yearn to be part of the in-crowd (meaning America- and Israel-haters) and fear being disliked.

"If the American administration changes in November, it will be catastrophic ... because those Democrats do not understand a thing about foreign policy, and they lack the determination to make decisions the way (President George W.) Bush made them in Iraq and elsewhere...Our only hope is that this (Bush) administration will continue for the next few years to finish off dealing with our regional problems"

As Dutch soccer teams begin preparing for the upcoming season, the heated battle between the top two teams in the country has escalated into the publishing of anti-Semitic threats.

Fans of the Feyenoord Rotterdam club have published anti-Semitic slurs against Ajax Amsterdam’s Jewish player Rafael Van-Der Vaart on Feyenoord’s website. The slurs were also directed at Amsterdam’s Jewish community, which is known as a staunch supporter of the team, known as the ‘Jewish team’.

The Feyenoord fans called on its supporters to come to the next game with Ajax equipped with a bomb in order to kill all Jews in the stadium.

Feyenoord fans have been no strangers to anti-Semitism as far back as the 1970s. Numerous extremist incidents were recorded at the time the brothers Ronald and Frank de Boer played for Ajax, with "gas, gas, gas" calls directed at Ronald's Jewish wife.

Several years ago, Feyenoord fans appeared on Dutch television as they were rioting and singing "Hamas, Hamas, all Jews to the gas chambers". Their behavior sank to such lows that the Dutch parliament asked that the team be punished by playing games without any fans in the stands. Two years ago, when their team played against the Turkish Fenerbahce, the fans composed new hate-songs dedicated to Israeli soccer star Haim Revivo, who played for the Turkish team.

JAKARTA, Indonesia - U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) donned a hard hat and tucked a hammer in his belt Friday, performing a version of the Village People's hit "YMCA" at the conclusion of Asia's largest security meeting.

Tradition dictates that the meeting wrap up with a night of song and dance, provided by the diplomats themselves.

In 1997 Madeleine Albright (news - web sites), then secretary of state, bowled over the ministers when she performed a musical skit dressed as Evita Peron.

On Friday, Powell danced alongside five other U.S. officials sporting costumes that included an Indian headdress.

The group blasted out a version of the 1970s disco classic, to the delight of foreign ministers from across the Asia-Pacific and Europe.

"President Bush (news - web sites), he said to me: 'Colin, I need you to run the Department of State. We are between a rock and a hard place," Powell and his colleagues sang to the tune of the disco classic.

The after-dinner show is an annual highlight of the ASEAN Regional Forum, a time for ministers to loosen up after discussing security issues.

The event is closed to the press, but reporters regularly go out of their way to get the scoop.

The Russian delegation, headed by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, sang a version of the Beatles "Yellow Submarine" as a woman waving a Russian flag ran around the dinner tables.

Jenkins seems to have fallen under the spell of a new book, 'America Alone' by Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, which apparently avers that 'a small group of neoconservatives contrived to take the greatest nation on Earth to war and kill thousands of people'. And the reason? Their support for Israel. This is what Jenkins says Halper and Clarke are saying, with which he agrees:

'Their Iraq war is not about oil but about the agenda of a small group of Washington ideologues, whom they hold as traitors to the American conservative tradition. This group’s seizure of Washington (and London) after 9/11 makes a fascinating study in power. Known colloquially as the Vulcans, they embraced Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and the Pentagon architect of the Iraq occupation, Douglas Feith. Dick Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush were their front men. Their first commitment was to the defence of Israel.

This pernicious theory is, of course, demonstrably ludicrous. The power of this tiny group of 'neocons' has been exaggerated out of all proportion. The idea that such a fragment of the US administration could somehow have reprogrammed the minds of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and all the rest belongs to the wilder shores of paranoid fantasyland. The idea that, almost overnight, these neocons vanquished the vast interests of big oil and that lobby's myriad connections with the US administration is jaw-droppingly asinine. The idea that they could have persuaded Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al to act in the interests of Israel and against the interests of America is simply bizarre.

It also ignores various contrary facts. Like the fact that Israel actually regarded the Iraq war as a diversion from what it sees as the number one threat, Iran. Or like the fact that Rumsfeld and Cheney themselves believed straight after 9/11 that Iraq had been involved in those attacks, and that whether they were right or wrong this and this alone is why Iraq was in their sights. No other explanation is necesary, certainly not a demented conspiracy theory which would do credit to the ravings of Saudi Arabia about the Zionist hand behind terrorism in that country.

But alas, actual facts are irrelevant here. For what we are seeing is a vicious prejudice which is simply impervious to reason. It is the resurrection of the vile and disgusting belief -- which we can now see has never gone away, however we in Britain and America may have deluded ourselves about our 'civilised' society -- that the Jews possess extraordinary and sinister power which they exercise in a covert way to advance their own interests and harm the rest of mankind. Thus, as in the passage above, the Jews have 'seized' Washington, are 'traitors' to the conservative tradition (hello, neocons have their roots in the liberal tradition) and by implication to America itself, 'disdain' law and diplomacy because they are crazed by power-lust and the desire to kill people, and so 'deftly' provided a new threat to terrify the world after communism -- a threat which doubtless is a figment of their war-crazed imagination and nothing whatever to do with the fact that an Islamist death-cult, financed, trained and supported by a network of rogue states and which has now fanned out across the globe, has declared war on the west and is busy pursuing that murderous objective.

Note also the sneer by Jenkins at the idea that there is antisemitism at work here. What else are we supposed to call an attitude which irrationally singles out a tiny group of Jews for exercising superhuman powers they patently do not possess, to influence people with real power who did not need to be influenced, to support a country which did not seek this kind of support but thought it might be a distraction from more urgent considerations, and in a way that makes them deeply disloyal and traitorous to their own country because they actually display a higher loyalty to another?

Actually, I wouldn't call this antisemitism, a word invented by an antisemite. I'd call this straightforward Jew-hatred. Alas, its open expression is now a commonplace. Only this week, I was told by a prominent and distinguished opponent of the war in Iraq that he had been stopped from writing about it in sections of the British press by 'the Jewish lobby in America', and that Bush had gone to war in Iraq because 'he had Ariel Sharon's hand up his back'.

But then, of course, any protest at such loathsome attitudes is held up as triumphant proof of the Jewish lobby at its sinister work. Well, to hell with that. This abomination must be called by its proper name, and fought wherever it rears its ugly head.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations (news - web sites) to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.

Recalling the long, drawn out process in the southern state, nine lawmakers, including four blacks and one Hispanic, sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) asking that the international body "ensure free and fair elections in America," according to a statement issued by Florida representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

"As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election," she said in the letter.

"This is the first step in making sure that history does not repeat itself," she added after requesting that the UN "deploy election observers across the United States" to monitor the November, 2004 election.

The lawmakers said in the letter that in a report released in June 2001, the US Commission on Civil Rights "found that the electoral process in Florida resulted in the denial of the right to vote for countless persons."

The bipartisan commission, they stressed, determined "that the 'disenfranchisement of Florida's voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters' and in poor counties." Both groups vote predominantly Democratic in US elections.

The commission also concluded, the lawmakers added, that "despite promised nationwide reforms (of the voting system) ... adequate steps have not been taken to ensure that a similar situation will not arise in 2004 that arose in 2000."

Thirty-six days after the November 7, 2000 presidential election, after several state court interventions and vote recounts in numerous Florida counties, the US Supreme Court ruled in favor of Republican George W. Bush, awarding him all of Florida's 25 electoral votes.

The ruling tipped the balance against Democratic contender and then vice president Al Gore (news - web sites), who with 267 electoral votes lost to Bush's 271, only one more than the minimum 270 needed to clinch the presidential election.

In Afghanistan, I found it difficult to walk down the street because I didn't understand that women always scurried around in their burqas because they were always expected to get out of the way of any man on the sidewalk. I met a woman who'd been crippled by a beating from the Vice and Virtue Police because - unaccustomed to seeing out of a burqa - she's tripped on the street and exposed a little ankle. I interviewed extraordinary women who'd been active professionals before the rise of the Taliban who'd endured their confinement by addicting themselves to sedatives or by abusing their husbands and kids.

In Iran, I got on a bus one afternoon and was directed to the back of the bus, which is where women are expected to ride. In Turkmenistan, I heard about arranged marriages to uncles, about women who refused to agree to such marriages being driven out by their families. In Kyrgyzstan, I learned about hymen replacement surgery - surely an amazing symbol of the plight of young women caught between modernization and tradition. If these women couldn't produce bloody sheets on the night of their weddings, they would, as a minimum, be shunned, at a maximu, be killed. In Iraq, urban women had watched as Saddam became more religious, and as short-sleeve dresses disappeared from the stores and women were pushed out of public life.

So when I came home, I fully expected the feminist movement to be up in arms, demanding that the U.S. government do more to defend these women, marching on the United Nations in defense of their sisters.

Instead, I found NOW working on its annual Love Your Body Day. And if I didn't hit a wall earlier, I hit it several weeks ago during the March for Women's Lives. Whoopi Goldberg declared that "there's a war going on, a war against women." I agreed. Unfortunately, we were talking about different wars.

The marchers insisted that George W. Bush is the world's greatest threat to women. What I'd seen and heard during a year's travels was that Muslim fundamentalists were the world's greatest threat to women. That's certainly what the women I met - on the street, in the market, in the classroom, on buses and during interviews - told me. They weren't worried about access to abortion. They were worried about access to jobs, about the right to work, about the right to run to the store without having to cover themselves, about the right to select their own husband, the right to educate themselves and their daughters.

And a march focused on George Bush and access to abortion belittled their situations and their struggles. How can you care about women, as the feminists insist they do, and not care about the actual threats to their lives?