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Friday, October 10, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE DAY
"More and more states are realizing the deficit in possessing nuclear weapons and that nuclear weapons do not promote economic development in most of the undeveloped states. These countries are ready to back and support any initiative that will bring the end of nuclear weapons in the entire world. They know that the abolition of nuclear weapons in Europe, the US and the entire world will only bring help and encouragement to global economic activities, including globalization. So anti-nuclear activists should work in this new field to use economic reasons and alliances to defeat nuclear weapons. This could be done especially at economic summits like the G-8 and WTO meetings where decisions or declarations could be issued to abolish nuclear weapons. Rather than fighting the WTO like anarchist environmentalists, we can recreate the WTO and G-8 to begin working toward zero nuclear weapons."
- - Mordechai Vanunu (Israeli Nuclear Whistleblower)
KNOW YOUR HISTORY - OCTOBER
1990 -- Reparations payments begin, to survivors & families of Japanese-Americans taken from their homes & put into concentration camps during World War II. In the entire course of the war, 10 people were convicted of spying for Japan - all of whom were Caucasian.
1997 -- Jody Williams & International Campaign to Ban Landmines win Nobel Peace Prize.
RHINO HERE:
Continuing to catch up on issues other than California's Governor's chair, today Rhino once again wades into the controversial desert waters of the Palestine/Israeli conflict. With the recent step-up of suicide bombings and the retaliatory bombing of an alleged training camp in Syria, followed by a new push in the U.S. Congress for sanctions against Syria, things are heating up. Here's a few items, beginning with a recent IMF audit claiming that between 1995 & 2000 Yasser Arafat diverted hundreds of millions of dollars from the Palestinian Authority budget into a special bank account under his personal control. That while many Palestinian people starve & their universities are bankrupt.
Governor Howard Dean gave an depth interview to "Jewish Week" magazine explaining his vision on the Middle East. Next, veteran journalist Lawrence Pintak, the Howard R. Marsh Visiting Professor of Journalism at the University of Michigan writes that, "President Bush's defense of Israel's attack on Syria... has strengthened the hand of the radicals, and left Muslims who favor a dialogue with the West shaking their heads in disbelief." Finally, RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE gathers various resource material on the case of Mordechai Vanunu, the man who revealed Israel's Nuclear Weapons program in 1986.
Arafat's 'Investments'
Editorial , The New York Post, October 2, 2003
The next time you hear the Palestinians and their supporters bemoaning how Israel's determination to defend itself against terror has "crippled" the Palestinian economy, consider a new report from the International Monetary Fund. The IMF recently disclosed that its own audit uncovered the fact that Palestinian Authority President Yasser Arafat between 1995 and 2000 diverted fully $591 million from the PA budget into a special bank account under his personal control. That's nearly $100 million a year! Talking about hitting the lottery. According to the IMF's Karim Nashashibi, the money - which came from tax revenues collected by Israel and turned over to Arafat - was used to invest in 69 domestic and foreign commercial companies, whose actual owners were not disclosed. (Arafat's investments, by the way, returned a profit of $300 million. Not bad for a Marxist revolutionary.) This at a time when, as one member of the Palestinian Legislative Council complains, "the Palestinian people are starving and the universities are bankrupt."
READ THE REST AT: http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/7031.htm
Dean Does Damage Control
In exclusive Jewish Week interview, he lays out Mideast vision, raps Bush.
by James D. Besser, Jewish Week, 10/03/2003
Democratic presidential frontrunner Howard Dean, in an exclusive Jewish Week interview, promised if elected to roll back "every single one" of President George W. Bush's executive orders opening up government grants to religious groups providing health and social services. In a wide-ranging 45-minute interview last Thursday in the newspaper's Times Square offices, Dean also slammed the Bush administration for its refusal to confront Saudi Arabia on its support for terrorism and said he would like to send former President Bill Clinton to the Middle East to lead negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Dean's campaign sought the interview in response to a barrage of damaging stories focusing on the candidate's recent comments suggesting the United States "not take sides" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In the interview, during which he seemed confident, personable and well prepared, Dean said the controversy stemmed from his not understanding the "shorthand" of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict...
IT'S ALL AT: http://www.thejewishweek.com/news/newscontent.php3?artid=8528
It's the Policy, Stupid
Muslim Antipathy Driven Home by Latest White House Comments
by Lawrence Pintak, CommonDreams.org , October 8, 2003
Once again American strategic interests in the Islamic world have been sucker-punched by the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and much of the U.S. body politic remains oblivious to the fact that they are even in the fight. President Bush's defense of Israel's attack on Syria in the wake of Saturday's suicide bombing in Haifa has strengthened the hand of the radicals and left Muslims who favor a dialogue with the West shaking their heads in disbelief. The president's declaration that Israel "must not feel constrained" in striking out at its enemies and Ariel Sharon's promise that Israel will "hit its enemies any place and in any way" have been headlines across the Islamic world. In the view of Muslims, the comments drive home what they already know: American policy is inextricably linked with that of Israel...
READ THE REST AT: http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1008-08.htm
7:27:14 AM 
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The Vanunu Story
From The U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu
Mordechai Vanunu, a former Israeli nuclear technician, is serving an 18-year sentence in an Israeli prison for blowing the whistle on his government's secret nuclear weapons program. Captured by Israeli agents on September 30, 1986, he spent more than 11 1/2 years in solitary confinement. One of 11 children of Moroccan Jewish parents who emigrated to Israel in 1963, when he was aged 9, Vanunu served in the Israeli army and then went to work as a young man in the Dimona nuclear "research center" in the Negev Desert near his home at Beersheba. The facility harbored an underground plutonium separation plant operated in strictest secrecy. As the years went by he grew increasingly troubled about his work in the nuclear bomb program. In 1985, before leaving Dimona, he took extensive photographs inside the factory in order to document the truth for his countrymen and the entire world.
Traveling through Asia with the film in his backpack, Vanunu made his way to Sydney, Australia, where he found companionship in an Anglican church social justice community with whom he shared the story of his nuclear background. In Sydney he also converted to Christianity and was baptized in July, 1986. A British newspaper, the London Sunday Times, learned of his story and sent a reporter to Sydney to check it out. The newspaper then flew Vanunu to England, where his photos and facts were further checked by British scientists familiar with nuclear weapons. Vanunu's story, published October 5, 1986, gave the world its first authoritative confirmation that tiny Israel had become a major nuclear weapons power, with material for as many as 200 nuclear warheads of advanced design.
Israeli agents got early wind of Vanunu's intentions. Even before publication of the story they had lured him from Britain, abducted him in Italy, and dumped his drugged body onto an Israeli cargo vessel bound for Israel. In the following months he was charged with espionage and treason and convicted at a closed-door trial. All legal appeals have been exhausted. For the first 11 1/2 years of his imprisonment Vanunu was held in solitary confinement, denied human contact except with his guards, a lawyer, a priest, and the occasional visits of his siblings. This treatment was condemned by Amnesty International as "cruel, inhuman, and degrading." In recent years, he has also been able to have occasional visits with Nicholas and Mary Eoloff, the St. Paul, Minnesota couple who adopted him in the fall of 1997. On March 12, 1998, he was released into the prison population but denied other privileges. Since then, he has been returned occasionally to solitary confinement due to minor rule infractions. He has also been denied parole or probation. There is growing concern about the effect of his prolonged isolation on his physical and mental health.
POSTED AT: http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/morestory.html
RELATED SITES:
The U.S. Campaign to Free Mordechai Vanunu
http://www.nonviolence.org/vanunu/
Free Vanunu
http://www.vanunu.freeserve.co.uk/
ISRAEL'S RESPONSE (From Israeli Justice Ministry response to 1995 Amnesty International Report, communicated by Justice Ministry Spokesperson on 7/5/95):
"We wish to point out that, according to Amnesty International itself, Mordechai Vanunu is not a prisoner of conscience. Amnesty has called for Vanunu's release on the basis that his solitary confinement is a violation of human rights. Although there are thousands of similarly situated individuals all over the world, to the best of our knowledge Amnesty has not campaigned for the release of such prisoners on these grounds. Israel maintains that Amnesty's allegations of Vanunu's inadequate prison conditions are unjustified. Vanunu, a former worker at the Atomic Research Center in Dimona, still poses a serious security threat to Israel since he continuously vows to make public additional secret information in his possession. Vanunu has chosen to remain alone in his cell by twice refusing the offer of a cell mate.
Vanunu has unfettered access to the Israeli Courts including the High Court of Justice, which he has made use of on numerous occasions. Every aspect of Vanunu's case has been in accordance with the principles of law and due process." (click here to link to website page)
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6:49:44 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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