Israel in the Gaza - Ghetto - or how to breed terrorists

Last update - 13:12 13/11/2006

How a Beit Hanun family was destroyed

By Amira Hass

The first shell that struck the house sent up a big cloud of dust and smoke. The parents and older children felt around in the sudden darkness of the morning, looking for the small children - to see if anyone had been hurt, to find and hold them, to run with them into the street. Zahar, 33, is now lying wounded in the hospital in Beit Hanun; she has undergone one operation to remove shrapnel from her abdomen and is waiting for another on her leg. She was unhurt by the first shell. So was her 9-year-old son Sa'ed. They lived on the first floor of the house, in the east wing. After the first shell, she ran to where he was sleeping under the window. The light filtered in through the cloud of dust, and she saw his blanket was covered by fragments of broken glass. She pulled it off and found him shaking. "You weren't hit," she said, urging him to run and join her other children, May, Rami and Fadi, who fled with her downstairs. Her 14-year-old daughter May helped her find her headscarf, skirt and pants, but she had no time to cover her head. Holding 5-month-old Maha, Zahar ran to the lane below the house. She gave the baby to a sister-in-law so she could put on her scarf, and then the second shell fell on the east wing of the house. Was Sa'ed killed by this shell or by the third one, which also struck the house dead on? She does not remember. She was hit by the fourth shell, which struck the veranda. But at this point, Zahar was still unharmed. She bent over Sa'ed, who was lying with all the other dead and wounded in the lane. A few seconds earlier, the other family members had run panicked into the street to get out of the house after the first shell. Zahar wiped the blood from Sa'ed's mouth and ran to the main street, calling for help. She ran back to her son to try to revive him, to wake him, and then the fourth shell hit. At first she did not notice she had been wounded, that she was bleeding and her leg was torn down to the bone. She sat down among the bodies and tried to bring Sa'ed back to life. Her second son, Fadi, was injured. She doesn't know which shell did it. Her third son, Rami, fled into the garden of his uncle and neighbor, Dr. Hussein Athamneh, but the sixth shell found him there. Rami then ran into the street, toward the house of his uncle and aunt. The seventh shell found him outside their house, where it exploded. The seven shells killed 18 members of the Athamneh family that day. The shells had eyes "It was as if the shells had eyes: Wherever we ran, they followed us," said Tahani, Zahar's sister-in-law, whose 12-year-old son Mahmoud was killed by the second shell. "The first shell woke us. I gathered the children. The son whose hand I was holding, Mahmoud, is the one I lost. We didn't know where to go. We ran downstairs, we were barefoot. My daughter said her feet were burning from the heat of the explosion. The second shell fell when we were already downstairs. I went and turned over the children's bodies, to see who was who, until I found Mahmoud. "Not even one day had passed since we buried my brother Mazen. The army detained him and thousands of other men. They took them for a short interrogation and then released them. He and our cousin were arrested together and freed together. They told them at the detention point in Erez that they could go home. They went home, but there was a curfew. So other soldiers shot him because they violated the curfew. My cousin is in the hospital, seriously wounded. And Mazen, the uncle of my son Mahmoud, is dead. "Less than one day after we buried his uncle, Mahmoud was lying on the floor among the dead. I tried to wake him, but he did not respond. Then the third shell hit. I fled into the house. The daughter of my brother-in-law also fled, but the shell followed her. My 14-year-old nephew fled and the shell followed him. It exploded, and he saw his hand fall to the floor. Now he is hospitalized in Egypt. Only people without a conscience could do that." Hayat Athamneh, 55, Tahani and Zahar's mother-in-law, lost three children and two grandchildren in the shelling. "When the shells had enough of us, they went to the house of our relatives, but, thank God, they had fled. When the shells had enough of our relatives, they went to our neighbors. My children also fled, but the shells found them. And my ears started to go deaf from the noise. I could not hear a thing. I could only see. Black smoke, a lot of black smoke. "And then I saw my son Mahdi, lying here in the west part of the house, near the garden." Athamneh bent down, picked up a bloodstained stone and kissed it. "It is my son Mahdi's blood," she said. "I saw him lying here, his brains on one side and his head on the other." Thousands of mourners Dressed in black, Athamneh came from the mourners' tent in the yard of a neighboring building. For three days, thousands of mourners have streamed there from all over the Gaza Strip. Some of them went to look at the Athamneh family's house, passing through the lane still filled with rubble, shell fragments, shrapnel and pools of blood. On Friday afternoon, some of the mourners gathered outside the home of Bassam Kafarneh, the neighbor who was hit by a shell when he ran to help the first casualties. He died in an Israeli hospital. His mother, also hospitalized in Israel, is in very serious condition. Athamneh walked to where her son Majdi sits with other mourners. Praising the lord, she told the group how her family died and pointed to the places where every person fell. "I saw Tahani, Mahmoud's mother. I told her that Mahmoud was thrown on the floor here. Dead. And I saw my husband's brother Mas'oud and his wife Sabah, and Sanaa, whose husband died a year ago, and Manal, the wife of his son Ramez, and their two daughters, one eight months old and the other three. I saw them all. Dead. "The steel in the house was bent and torn from its place. How could people not be torn apart by those shells?" No tears Athamneh's eyes were dry as she told about her dead. So were Tahani's. Zahar, lying in a hospital bed surrounded by family and friends, began to cry only when she remembered that Sa'ed's new glasses were ready. They had ordered them a day or two before the Israel Defense Forces invaded. The day the shells fell, Athamneh's daughters Tamam and Najat had been sleeping in the house with their children, because their houses had been badly damaged during the last IDF invasion. No one is investigating whether they were hit by tanks or bulldozers, shells or missiles, or from an explosion when the soldiers blasted holes in the walls to pass between houses. Four hundred homes were damaged in Beit Hanun in one week, including 25 that were completely destroyed. The soldiers' invasion of the Athamneh family home has also been almost forgotten. At 10 A.M., on November 1, a tank entered the garden, destroying hothouses, trees, pipes and a generator, until it hit a wall. The soldiers made a hole in the wall and entered the house, gathered all the family members and sent the women to a room on the first floor. The men were put in the kitchen and bathroom. The soldiers collected all the cell phones, and with leashed dogs, searched all the rooms on all four floors. They called out the names of all the family members. Majdi, Zahar's husband, has a pacemaker. He said he felt ill and asked the soldiers to call an ambulance. He overheard one say someone was sick. Another soldier responded, "Let him die." Majdi showed the soldiers his medical papers. One of the soldiers hit him in the chest and his nose started bleeding. After two hours, the soldiers left. They returned three days later through the hole in the wall. They again gathered all the family members, counted them, searched and left after three hours. "They knew very well who was in the house, how many children, how many women. They knew very well there were no terrorists and no arms in this house," said Majdi. Majdi showed visitors the walls and ceilings hit by the shells, the clothes strewn by the blast, the broken furniture and concrete. "I believe the soldiers are happy they killed us," he said. "They had an order from [Defense Minister Amir] Peretz and [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert to kill us. They wouldn't do it without orders. What kind of a mistake is it, if 10 shells hit one after the other, killing people in their beds? Not one shell was a mistake. I collected the martyrs. One by one. Avigdor Lieberman said Israel must act like the Russians in Chechnya. He just joined the government, and they immediately started doing what he said." Article published on http://www.haaretz.com

If true, then pandora's box has been opened

9 novembre 2006

Maurizio Torrealta presents a new documentary

KHIAM SOUTHERN LEBANON
A BOMB’S ANATOMY
By Flaviano Masella, Angelo Saso, Maurizio Torrealta

The special report was triggered by the radioactivity measurements reported on a crater probably created by an Israeli Bunker Buster bomb in the village of Khiam, in southern Lebanon. The measurements were carried out by two Lebanese professors of physics - Mohammad Ali Kubaissi and Ibrahim Rachidi. The data - 700 nanosieverts per hour – showed remarkably higher radiocativity then the average in the area (Beirut = 35 nSv/hr ). Successivamente, on September 17th, Ali Kubaissi took British researcher Dai Williams, from the environmentalist organization Green Audit, to the same site, to take samples that were then submitted to Chris Busby, technical adisor of the Supervisory Committee on Depleted Uranium, which reports to the British Ministry of Defense. The samples were tested by Harwell’s nuclear laboratory, one of the most authoritative research centers in the world. On October 17th, Harwell disclosed the testing results - two samples in 10 did contain radioactivity.

On November 2nd, another British lab, The School of Oceanographic Sciences, confirmed Harwell’s results – the Khiam crater contains slightly enriched uranium. Rainews24 also took a sample taken by Dai Williams for testing by the Department of Earth Sciences of the University of Ferrara. The testing - which is still ongoing - found an anomalous structure: the sample’s surface includes alluminium and iron silicates, normal elements in a soil fragment. Yet, looking inside, estremely small bubbles can be found with high concentration of iron. Further testing will clarify the origin of these structures: what seems to be certain at the moment is that they are not caused by a natural process.

What kind of weapon is this? What weapon leaves traces of radiation and produces such lethal and circumscribed consequences?

Researcher Dai Williams believes this is a new class of weapons using enriched uranium, not through fission processes but through new physical processes kept secret for at least 20 years.

Physicist Emilio del Giudice form the National Institute of Nuclear Phisics came to the same conlcusion: “There are two ways to explain the origin of the enriched uranium found in Khiam:

About the origin of enriched Uranium there are two possibilities:

1) this material was present already in the structure of the bombs, but I am puzzled since one should explain the rationale of the use of a material which is both expensive and dangerous , because of its enhanced radioactivity, to people handling it , including military personnel of Israeli Army.

2) the enrichment has been the consequence of the use of the bomb; this possibility is hardly compatible with the known effects of conventional nuclear weapons and should imply that some newly discovered nuclear phenomenon could be at work.

The Israeli army denied the use of uranium-based weapons in Lebanon. So, how can people defend themselves from potential uranium-related harm? What precautions will the Unifil troops in the area take, and what kind of testing has been carried out to prevent the risks? The documentary directly covers those qestions.

Translation by Desiree Berlangieri and Maria Letizia Tesorini

Watch the docu-video here (WMV player)

Leaving Irak with a justification .....

Here come the odious excuses

The philosophers behind the bloodbath in Iraq are now washing their hands

By Robert Fisk

11/11/06 "The Independent" -- -- "Great news from America!" the cashier at my local Beirut bookshop shouted at me yesterday morning, raising her thumbs in the air. "Things will be better after these elections?" Alas, I said. Alas, no. Things are going to get worse in the Middle East even if, in two years' time, America is blessed with a Democrat (and democratic) president. For the disastrous philosophers behind the bloodbath in Iraq are now washing their hands of the whole mess and crying "Not Us!" with the same enthusiasm as the Lebanese lady in my book shop, while the "experts" on the mainstream US east coast press are preparing the ground for our Iraqi retreat - by blaming it all on those greedy, blood-lusting, anarchic, depraved, uncompromising Iraqis.

I must say that Richard Perle's version of a mea culpa did take my breath away. Here was the ex-chairman of the Pentagon's Defence Policy Board Advisory Committee - he who once told us that "Iraq is a very good candidate for democratic reform" - now admitting that he "underestimated the depravity" in Iraq. He holds the president responsible, of course, acknowledging only that - and here, dear reader, swallow hard - "I think if I had been Delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said: 'Should we go into Iraq?' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies...'"

Maybe I find this self-righteous, odious mea culpa all the more objectionable because the same miserable man was shouting abuse down a radio line to me in Baghdad a couple of years ago, condemning me for claiming that America was losing its war in Iraq and claiming that I was "a supporter of the maintenance of the Baathist regime". This lie, I might add, was particularly malicious since I was reporting Saddam's mass rapes and mass hangings at Abu Ghraib prison (and being refused Iraqi visas) when Perle and his cohorts were silent about Saddam's wickedness and when their chum Donald Rumsfeld was cheerfully shaking the monster's hand in Baghdad in an attempt to reopen the US embassy there.

Not that Perle isn't in good company. Kenneth Adelman, the Pentagon neocon who also beat the drums for war, has been telling Vanity Fair that "the idea of using our power for moral good in the world" is dead. As for Adelman's mate David Frumm, well he's decided that George Bush just "did not absorb the ideas" behind the speeches Frumm wrote for him. But this, I'm afraid, is not the worst to come from those who encouraged us to invade Iraq and start a war which has cost the lives of perhaps 600,000 civilians.

For a new phenomenon is creeping into the pages of The New York Times and those other great organs of state in America. For those journalists who supported the war, it's not enough to bash George. No, they've got a new flag to fly: the Iraqis don't deserve us. David Brooks - he who once told us that neocons such as Perle had nothing to do with the President's decision to invade Iraq - has been ransacking his way through Elie Kedourie's 1970 essay on the British occupation of Mesopotamia in the 1920s. And what has he discovered? That "the British tried to encourage responsible leadership to no avail", quoting a British officer at the time as concluding that Iraqi Shia "have no motive for refraining from sacrificing the interests of Iraq to those which they conceive to be their own".

But the Brooks article in The New York Times was also frightening. Iraq, he now informs us, is suffering "a complete social integration", and "American blunders" were exacerbated "by the same old Iraqi demons: greed, blood lust and a mind-boggling unwillingness to compromise, even in the face of self-immolation". Iraq, Brooks has decided, is "teetering on the edge of futility" (whatever that means) and if American troops cannot restore order, "it will be time to effectively end Iraq", diffusing authority down to "the clan, the tribe or sect" which - wait for it - are "the only communities which are viable".

Nor should you believe that the Brooks article represents a lone voice. Here is Ralph Peters, a USA Today writer and retired US army officer. He had supported the invasion because, he says, he was "convinced that the Middle East was so politically, socially, morally and intellectually stagnant that we (sic) had to risk intervention - or face generations of terrorism and tumult". For all Washington's errors, Peters boasts, "we did give the Iraqis a unique chance to build a rule-of-law democracy".

But those pesky Iraqis, it now seems, "preferred to indulge in old hatreds, confessional violence, ethnic bigotry and a culture of corruption". Peters' conclusion? "Arab societies can't support democracy as we know it." As a result, "it's their tragedy, not ours. Iraq was the Arab world's last chance to board the train to modernity, to give the region a future...". Incredibly, Peters finishes by believing that "if the Arab world and Iran embark on an orgy of bloodshed, the harsh truth is that we may be the beneficiaries" because Iraq will have "consumed" "terrorists" and the United States will "still be the greatest power on earth".

It's not the shamefulness of all this - do none of these men have any shame? - but the racist assumption that the hecatomb in Iraq is all the fault of the Iraqis, that their intrinsic backwardness, their viciousness, their failure to appreciate the fruits of our civilisation make them unworthy of our further attention. At no point does anyone question whether the fact that America is "the greatest power on earth" might not be part of the problem. Nor that Iraqis who endured among their worst years of dictatorship when Saddam was supported by the United States, who were sanctioned by the UN at a cost of a half a million children's lives and who were then brutally invaded by our armies, might not actually be terribly keen on all the good things we wished to offer them. Many Arabs, as I've written before, would like some of our democracy, but they would also like another kind of freedom - freedom from us.

But you get the point. We are preparing our get-out excuses. The Iraqis don't deserve us. Screw them. That's the grit we're laying down on the desert floor to help our tanks

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

Israel Lobby in the University

A report by the australian tv magazine Dateline about the influence of the Israel-lobby in US universities:

the transcript English

the film can be seen here: 20mins English

Interesting. There are now lobbying groups in the European Parliament too. Where else?

Iran: woher stammen die Informationen über das Nuklearprogramm?

Ein Bericht des australischen Fernsehmagazins Dateline über die Herkunft der Informationen zum iranischen Nuklearprogramm. Im Irak war es Chalabi der die Geschichte über Massenvernichtungswaffen an die USA verkaufte, und jetzt ist es wieder eine dubiose Organisation die eine ähnliche Story über den Iran verbreitet, und Washington hört zu.....

Der Fernsehbericht von Dateline: 29min English

Ein Transskript findet sich auf der Homepage von Dateline Australien

Ein Bericht, der die halbe Stunde mehr als Wert ist!

Eine kleine Nachtmusik !

Cello Quartett klingt sehr nett!


Link auf youtube.com
innehalten und geniessen.

cheers

War is a racket! Then and now

Smedley Butler on Interventionism

-- Excerpt from a speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of 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 masses. I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else. If a nation comes over here to fight, then we'll fight. The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service. I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912 (where have I heard that name before?). I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested. During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. Looking back on it, I feel that I could have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.

http://www.fas.org/man/smedley.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smedley_Butler

Medienlandschaft in Russland

Der Mord an der russischen Journalistin Anna Politkovskaja hat auch in der Schweiz Schlagzeilen gemacht. (URSUS berichtete hier und hier und hier).

Der Russian Analytical Digest der ETH Zürich hat eine Analyse der russischen Medienlandschaft herausgbracht:

PDF 18Seiten 280kb, English

Noch einen Drauf...... :-)

Für Bush, und Rumsfeld, sind die amerikanischen Kongresswahlen ja nicht gerade berauschend ausgefallen. Und weil wir hier @URSUS nicht sooo sein wollen, feiern wir das Resultat mit der Rede Stephen Colbert's, gehalten anlässlich des White House Correspondents Dinner im April 2006.

Google video Clip 25min English

:-)

Very amusing :-)

Nun da Bush mehr oder weniger deutlich gesagt hat, dass Oel ein bestimmender Faktor für die Invasion des Irak war, lohnt es sich mal wieder diesen Clip anzugucken. Geo-Politik auf very amusing Art und Weise erklärt vom britischen Komiker Paul Newman:

The history of oil 45min google video English

Enjoy!

:-)

Rigging the election - a dire perspective

Here's how the 2006 mid-term election was stolen.

Note the past tense. And I'm not kidding.

By Greg Palast

11/07/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- And shoot me for saying this, but it won't be stolen by jerking with the touch-screen machines (though they'll do their nasty part). While progressives panic over the viral spread of suspect computer black boxes, the Karl Rove-bots have been tunneling into the vote vaults through entirely different means.

For six years now, our investigations team, at first on assignment for BBC TV and the Guardian, has been digging into the nitty-gritty of the gaming of US elections. We've found that November 7, 2006 is a day that will live in infamy. Four and a half million votes have been shoplifted. Here's how they'll do it, in three easy steps:

Theft #1: Registrations gone with the wind.

On January 1, 2006, while America slept off New Year's Eve hangovers, a new federal law crept out of the swamps that has devoured 1.9 million votes, overwhelmingly those of African-Americans and Hispanics. The vote-snatching statute is a cankerous codicil slipped into the 2002 Help America Vote Act -- strategically timed to go into effect in this mid-term year. It requires every state to reject new would-be voters whose identity can't be verified against a state verification database.

Sounds arcane and not too threatening. But look at the numbers and you won't feel so fine. About 24.3 million Americans attempt to register or re-register each year. The New York University Law School's Brennan Center told me that, under the new law, Republican Secretaries of State began the year by blocking about one in three new voters.

How? To begin with, Mr. Bush's Social Security Administration has failed to verify 47% of registrants. After appeals and new attempts to register, US Elections Assistance Agency statistics indicate 1.9 million would-be voters will still find themselves barred from the ballot on Tuesday.

But don't worry: those holding passports from their ski vacations to Switzerland are doing just fine. And that's the point. It's not the number of voters rejected, it’s their color. For example, California's Republican Secretary of State Bruce McPherson figured out how to block 40% of registrants, mostly Hispanics. In a rare counter-move, Los Angeles, with a Hispanic mayor, contacted these citizens, "verified" them and got almost every single one back on the rolls. But throughout the rest of the West, new Hispanics remain victims of the "José Crow" treatment.

In hotly contested Ohio, Kenneth Blackwell, Secretary of State and the Republican's candidate for Governor, remains voter-rejection champ -- partly by keeping the rejection criteria a complete secret.

Theft #2: Turned Away - the ID game

A legion of pimple-faced Republicans with Blackberries loaded with lists of new voters is assigned to challenge citizens in heavily Black and Hispanic(i.e. Democratic) precincts to demand photo ID that perfectly matches registration data.

Sounds benign, but it's not. The federal HAVA law and complex new ID requirements in states like New Mexico will easily allow the GOP squads to triple the number of voters turned away. Rather than deny using these voter suppression tactics, Republican spokesmen are claiming they are "protecting the integrity of the vote."

I've heard that before. In 2004, we got our hands on fifty confidential internal memos from the files of the Republican National Committee. Attached to these were some pretty strange spreadsheets. They called them "caging lists" -- and it wasn't about zoo feeding times. They were lists (70,000 for Florida alone) of new Black and Jewish voters -- a very Democratic demographic -- to challenge on Election Day. The GOP did so with a vengeance: In 2004, for the first time in half a century, more than 3.5 million voters were challenged on Election Day. Worse, nearly half lost their vote: 300,000 were turned away for wrong ID; 1.1 million were allowed a "provisional" ballot -- which was then simply tossed out.

Tomorrow, new federal ID requirements and a dozen new state show-me-your-ID laws will permit the GOP challenge campaign to triple their 300,000 record to nearly one million voters blocked.

Theft #3: Votes Spoiled Rotten

The nasty little secret of US elections is that three million ballots are cast in national elections but not counted -- 3,600,380 not counted in 2004 according to US Election Commission stats. These are votes lost because a punch card didn't punch (its chad got "hung"), a stray mark voided a paper ballot and other machinery glitches.

Officials call it "spoilage." I call it, "inaugurating Republicans." Why? According to statisticians working with the US Civil Rights Commission, the chance your vote will "spoil" this way is 900% higher for Black folk and 500% higher for Hispanics than for white voters. When we do the arithmetic, we find that well over half of all votes spoiled or "blank" are cast by voters of color. On balance, this spoilage game produces a million-vote edge for the GOP.

That's where the Black Boxes come into play. Forget about Karl Rove messing with the software to change your vote. Rather, the big losses occur when computers crash, fail to start or simply don't respond to your touch. They are the new spoilage machines of choice with, statistically, the same racial bias as the old vote-snatching lever machines. (Funny, but paper ballots with in-precinct scanners don't go rotten on Black voters. Maybe that's why Republican Secretaries of State have installed so few of them.)

So Let's Add it Up

Two million legitimate voters will be turned away because of wrongly rejected or purged registrations.

Add another one million voters challenged and turned away for "improper ID."

Then add yet another million for Democratic votes "spoiled" by busted black boxes and by bad ballots.

And let's not forget to include the one million "provisional" ballots which will never get counted. Based on the experience of 2004, we know that, overwhelmingly, minority voters are the ones shunted to these baloney ballots.

And there's one more group of votes that won't be counted: absentee ballots challenged and discarded. Elections Assistance Agency data tell us a half million of these absentee votes will go down the drain.

Driving this massive suppression of the vote are sophisticated challenge operations. And here I must note that the Democrats have no national challenge campaign. That's morally laudable; electorally suicidal.

Add it all up -- all those Democratic-leaning votes rejected, barred and spoiled -- and the Republican Party begins Election Day with a 4.5 million-vote thumb on the vote-tally scale.

So, what are you going to do about it? May I suggest you … steal back your vote.

It's true you can't win with 51% of the vote anymore. So just get over it. The regime's sneak attack via vote suppression will only net them 4.5 million votes, about 5% of the total. You should be able to beat that blindfolded. If you can't get 55%, then you're just a bunch of crybaby pussycats who don't deserve to win back America.

Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Armed Madhouse."

Ideenaustausch SVP - GOP?

In den USA finden heute ja die Mid-Term Kongresswahlen statt. In den Tagen bevor den Wahlen machte die repuplikanische Partei computergesteuerte ziemlich aufdringliche Telefonanrufe. Klingt wie die SVP Telefonpropaganda in der Schweiz.

http://movies.crooksandliars.com/CD-RoboCalls.wmv (5min English)
oder:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/11/06/enough-is-enough/

Ob die zwei Parteien zusammenarbeiten? Ein Ideenaustausch sozusagen.

Paul Krugmann on the US mid term elections (New York Times op-ed column)

NYT op-ed on the US mid-term elections

Paul Krugmann: Limiting the Damage

President Bush isn’t on the ballot tomorrow. But this election is, nonetheless, all about him. The question is whether voters will pry his fingers loose from at least some of the levers of power, thereby limiting the damage he can inflict in his two remaining years in office.

There are still some people urging Mr. Bush to change course. For example, a scathing editorial published today by The Military Times, which calls on Mr. Bush to fire Donald Rumsfeld, declares that “this is not about the midterm elections.” But the editorial’s authors surely know better than that. Mr. Bush won’t fire Mr. Rumsfeld; he won’t change strategy in Iraq; he won’t change course at all, unless Congress forces him to.

At this point, nobody should have any illusions about Mr. Bush’s character. To put it bluntly, he’s an insecure bully who believes that owning up to a mistake, any mistake, would undermine his manhood — and who therefore lives in a dream world in which all of his policies are succeeding and all his officials are doing a heckuva job. Just last week he declared himself “pleased with the progress we’re making” in Iraq.

In other words, he’s the sort of man who should never have been put in a position of authority, let alone been given the kind of unquestioned power, free from normal checks and balances, that he was granted after 9/11. But he was, alas, given that power, as well as a prolonged free ride from much of the news media.

The results have been predictably disastrous. The nightmare in Iraq is only part of the story. In time, the degradation of the federal government by rampant cronyism — almost every part of the executive branch I know anything about, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been FEMAfied — may come to be seen as an equally serious blow to America’s future.

And it should be a matter of intense national shame that Mr. Bush has quietly abandoned his fine promises to New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast.

The public, which rallied around Mr. Bush after 9/11 and was still prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt two years ago, seems to have figured most of this out. It’s too late to vote Mr. Bush out of office, but most Americans seem prepared to punish Mr. Bush’s party for his personal failings. This is in spite of a vicious campaign in which Mr. Bush has gone further than any previous president — even Richard Nixon — in attacking the patriotism of anyone who criticizes him or his policies.

That said, it’s still possible that the Republicans will hold on to both houses of Congress. The feeding frenzy over John Kerry’s botched joke showed that many people in the news media are still willing to be played like a fiddle. And if you think the timing of the Saddam verdict was coincidental, I’ve got a terrorist plot against the Brooklyn Bridge to sell you.

Moreover, the potential for vote suppression and/or outright electoral fraud remains substantial. And it will be very hard for the Democrats to take the Senate for the very simple reason that only one-third of Senate seats are on this ballot.

What if the Democrats do win? That doesn’t guarantee a change in policy.

The Constitution says that Congress and the White House are co-equal branches of government, but Mr. Bush and his people aren’t big on constitutional niceties. Even with a docile Republican majority controlling Congress, Mr. Bush has been in the habit of declaring that he has the right to disobey the law he has just signed, whether it’s a law prohibiting torture or a law requiring that he hire qualified people to run FEMA.

Just imagine, then, what he’ll do if faced with demands for information from, say, Congressional Democrats investigating war profiteering, which seems to have been rampant. Actually, we don’t have to imagine: a White House strategist has already told Time magazine that the administration plans a “cataclysmic fight to the death” if Democrats in Congress try to exercise their right to issue subpoenas — which is one heck of a metaphor, given Mr. Bush’s history of getting American service members trapped in cataclysmic fights where the deaths are anything but metaphors.

But here’s the thing: no matter how hard the Bush administration may try to ignore the constitutional division of power, Mr. Bush’s ability to make deadly mistakes has rested in part on G.O.P. control of Congress. That’s why many Americans, myself included, will breathe a lot easier if one-party rule ends tomorrow.

Leaving the US might get more interesting...

another GDR on the making?

As of January 14th 2007 a new rule regulating the disclosure of details about international travelers leaving the United States of America will come into effect. Another element of control .... what is next in the land of the free?

The new rule on paper (1 page pdf English)

And how it will be handled. Interesting.

What was that Benjamin Franklin statement again? Well, something about liberty and freedom and the possibility of the two colliding.

und der Irak Krieg kostet........

ca. ziemlich viel...... man lese hier:
Artikel geschrieben vom Nobelpreisträger Joseph Stiglitz und der Harvard Dozentin Linda Bilmes (8 Seiten pdf English) .


and the prize of the Iraq War is..... rather a lot as Nobel prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Harvard lecturer Linda Bilmes explain (8 pages pdf English)

Collateral damage.....

The Japan Times
More deadly than Saddam

By GWYNNE DYER

LONDON -- The final indignity, if you are an Iraqi who was shot for accidentally turning into the path of a U.S. military convoy (they thought you might be a terrorist), or blown apart by a car bomb or an airstrike, or tortured and murdered by kidnappers, or just for being a Sunni or a Shiite, is that U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair will deny that your death happened. The script they are working from says (in Bush's words last December) that only "30,000, more or less" have been killed in Iraq during and since the invasion in March, 2003.

So they have a huge incentive to discredit the report in the British medical journal The Lancet last week that an extra 655,000 Iraqis have died since the invasion in excess of the natural death rate: 2.5 percent of the population.

"I don't consider it a credible report," said Bush, without giving any reason why he didn't.

"It is a fairly small sample they have taken and they have extrapolated it across the country," said a spokesman of the British Foreign Office, as if that were an invalid methodology. But it's not.

The study, led by Dr. Les Roberts and a team of epidemiologists from the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, was based on a survey of 1,849 households, containing 12,801 people, at 47 different locations chosen at random in Iraq. Teams of four Iraqi doctors -- two men and two women -- went from house to house and asked the residents if anybody had died in their family since January, 2002 (15 months before the invasion).

If anybody had, they then inquired when and how the person had died. They asked for death certificates, and in 92 percent of cases the families produced them. Then the Johns Hopkins team of epidemiologists tabulated the statistics and drew their conclusions.

The most striking thing in the study, in terms of credibility, is that the prewar death rate in Iraq for the period January 2002-March 2003, as calculated from their evidence, was 5.5 per thousand per year. That is virtually identical to the U.S. government estimate of the death rate in Iraq for the same period. Then, from the same evidence, they calculate that the death rate since the invasion has been 13.3 per thousand per year. The difference between the prewar and postwar death rates over a period of 40 months is 655,000 deaths.

More precisely, the deaths reported by the 12,801 people surveyed, when extrapolated to the entire country, indicates a range of between 426,369 and 793,663 excess deaths -- but the sample is big enough that there is a 95 percent certainty that the true figure is within that range. What the Johns Hopkins team have done in Iraq is more rigorous version of the technique that is used to calculate deaths in southern Sudan and the eastern Congo. To reject it, you must either reject the whole discipline of statistics, or you must question the professional integrity of those doing the survey.

The study, which was largely financed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Center for International Studies, has been reviewed by four independent experts. One of them, Paul Bolton of Boston University, called the methodology "excellent" and said it was standard procedure in a wide range of studies he has worked on: "You can't be sure of the exact number, but you can be quite sure that you are in the right ballpark."

This is not a political smear job. Johns Hopkins University, Boston University and MIT are not fly-by-night institutions, and people who work there have academic reputations to protect. The Lancet, founded 182 years ago, is one of the oldest and most respected medical journals in the world. These numbers are real. So what do they mean?

Two-thirds of a million Iraqis have died since the invasion who would almost all be alive if it had not happened. Human Rights Watch has estimated that between 250,000 and 290,000 Iraqis were killed during Saddam Hussein's 20-year rule, so perhaps 40,000 people might have died between the invasion and now if he had stayed in power. (Though probably not anything like that many, really, because the great majority of Saddam's killings happened during crises like the Kurdish rebellion of the late 1980s and the Shiite revolt after the 1990-91 Gulf War.)

Of the 655,000 excess deaths since March 2003, only about 50,000 can be attributed to stress, malnutrition, the collapse of medical services as doctors flee abroad, and other side effects of the occupation. All the rest are violent deaths, and 31 percent are directly due to the actions of foreign "coalition" forces.

The most disturbing thing is the breakdown of the causes of death. Over half the deaths -- 56 percent -- are due to gunshot wounds, but 13 percent are due to airstrikes. Terrorists don't do airstrikes. No Iraqi government forces do airstrikes, either, because they don't have combat aircraft. Airstrikes are done by "coalition forces" (i.e. Americans and British), and airstrikes in Iraq have killed over 75,000 people since the invasion.

Oscar Wilde once observed that "to lose one parent . . . may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness." To lose 75,000 Iraqis to airstrikes looks like carelessness, too.

Gwynne Dyer is a London-based independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.

The Japan Times: Monday, Oct. 16, 2006

(C) All rights reserved

Interview with former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter

Radio Interview with Scott Ritter about Iran:

written interview on Democracy Now!

The interview as real-player video-stream (19mins)


Worth listening to!

Back to Iran

America Moves Toward War with Iran

By William R. Polk

10/16/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- After careful study of recent moves and statements by the Bush Administration, I have concluded that there is at least a 10% chance of an American attack on Iran before the November 7 Congressional elections and about a 90% chance before the administration’s end in 2008. In this and following articles I will explain that prediction, illustrate what moves are now being made the prepare for war, analyze what the results of such actions would be and, finally, discuss what alternatives America has to bring about what it wishes to achieve in Iran. I begin with the prediction.

Twelve years before he ran for the presidency, George W. Bush sought to rally the American religious fundamentalists to his father’s election. He realized that about one in five Americans considered themselves part of this movement and so could be formed into a massive voting bloc. From this time also, Mr. Bush underwent a personal “rebirth” and emerged from what he described as a life-long alcoholic haze into the belief that he had a God-given role to fight off the forces of evil and prepare a new world order.

What that was to be, he only vaguely perceived, but in the following years he was guided by some of his father’s old retainers including Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to an already-formed group that came to be called the Neoconservatives. These men and women already had a plan and an objective. Young Bush eagerly adopted both and, when he was elected, appointed Cheney, Rumsfeld and Neoconservatives to key positions in his administration. These men have consistently favored military action against Middle Eastern regimes for the past seventeen years. They are still doing so.

As the heart of their doctrine, Neoconservatives took Leon Trotsky’s concept of “permanent revolution” and adapted it to their own radical ideology in the guise of “permanent war.” Just as Trotsky (and later Mao) saw permanent revolution, so the Neoconservatives saw what the US Defense Department now calls “the long war” as the means to destroy foreign opponents and silence domestic critics who would fear to be charged as unpatriotic. Their doctrine has been incorporated in the March 6, 2006 “National Security Strategy of the United States.” Mr. Bush summarized its imperatives on March 16, 2006 thus: “We choose to deal with challenges now rather than leaving them for future generations. We fight our enemies abroad instead of waiting for them to arrive in our country. We seek to shape the world, not be merely be shaped by it; to influence events for the better instead of being at their mercy.” Having identified Iran as part of “the Axis of Evil,” he specified that “we may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran” because, he charged, it threatens Israel, sponsors terrorism, oppresses its people and, above all, is embarked on acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The nuclear weapons charge is the most critical. Iran (along with the US, France, Britain and other countries) had signed the 1968 Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty. The treaty obligated the signers who did not yet have nuclear weapons to refrain from moves toward acquiring them and those that already had weapons to move toward giving them up. Neither Israel, Pakistan, India nor North Korea signed the treaty and the established nuclear powers have publicly acknowledged their violation of the treaty both by retaining their full stocks of weapons and by building more. What Iran is doing is uncertain. So far as is known, it has not violated the treaty, but intelligence specialists guess that it is determined to have nuclear weapons. A program to manufacture them was begun with American assistance under the regime of the Shah, then stopped and probably restarted. US intelligence consensus is that Iran is today five to ten years away from getting them.

The Neoconservatives also believe that Iran is a threat to Israel and quote President Mahmoud Ahmad-i Nejad’s pronouncements as proof. He foolishly denied the reality of the holocaust and harshly criticized Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. Worse he described Zionism as a has-been and predicted that Israel would decline and fall. But he was misquoted as saying that Israel would be “wiped off the map.” Even if he wished it would, his country is incapable of making it happen: Israel has the strongest army in Western Asia, the second most powerful air force in the world and a stockpile estimated to contain 400 or more nuclear weapons while Iran has a large but immobile army, a small but antiquated air force and no nuclear weapons. More important, Israel acts in close association with the United States while Iran has no effective allies. As a state it is no threat to anyone.

Mr. Bush also charged Iran with sponsoring terrorism. Yet, Iran helped the US to bring down the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and has consistently opposed al-Qaida. True, it has given money and weapons to the Lebanese Hizbullah against which Israel has been fighting. Moreover, it has, itself, been the target of terrorism for which it blames America.

Finally, while the Iranian fundamentalist regime is oppressive so are a number of other regimes that the Bush administration warmly approves. And, unlike Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Uzbekistan, its government is the product of what, by local standards, was a reasonably free election. In fact, most observers believe that if a new election were held today, it would be overwhelmingly returned to office. Thus, although President Bush is right that the government denies the right of its people to live as Americans think they should, it has done so with the consent of the governed.

So why do I predict an American attack on Iran?

The answer is composed of the same elements I have described: Mr. Bush’s belief that he has a God-given task which he must accomplish before he leaves office – and perhaps even before the forthcoming Congressional elections might cripple his means of action. His belief that what his own intelligence experts tell him is wrong, that Iran actually is about to acquire the bomb, is stirring the pot of Middle Eastern terrorism and is a threat to the existence of Israel. Finally, he believes he has the authority, given by the American people in his two elections and through Congressional approval of his war with Afghanistan, to act. In the next article, I will discuss what he is doing to effect his policy.

Mr. Polk was the member of the U.S. Policy Planning Council responsible for the Middle East from 1961 to 1965. Subsequently, he was professor of history and director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Chicago and later president of the Adlai Stevenson Institute of International Affairs. Author of many books on international affairs, world and Middle Eastern history, he recently wrote Understanding Iraq (HarperCollins, New York and London 2005 and 2006) and, together with former Senator George McGovern, Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now (Simon & Schuster, New York, 2006).

A voice from Israel about Israel

The Great Experiment

By Uri Avnery

10/14/06 "Information Clearing House" -- -- IS IT possible to force a whole people to submit to foreign occupation by starving it?

That is, certainly, an interesting question. So interesting, indeed, that the governments of Israel and the United States, in close cooperation with Europe, are now engaged in a rigorous scientific experiment in order to obtain a definitive answer.

The laboratory for the experiment is the Gaza Strip, and the guinea pigs are the million and a quarter Palestinians living there.

IN ORDER to meet the required scientific standards, it was necessary first of all to prepare the laboratory.

That was done in the following way: First, Ariel Sharon uprooted the Israeli settlements that were stuck there.

After all, you can't conduct a proper experiment with pets roaming around the laboratory. It was done with "determination and sensitivity", tears flowed like water, the soldiers kissed and embraced the evicted settlers, and again it was shown that the Israeli army is the most-most in the world.

With the laboratory cleaned, the next phase could begin: all entrances and exits were hermetically sealed, in order to eliminate disturbing influences from the world outside.

That was done without difficulty. Successive Israeli governments have prevented the building of a harbor in Gaza, and the Israeli navy sees to it that no ship approaches the shore. The splendid international airport, built during the Oslo days, was bombed and shut down. The entire Strip was closed off by a highly effective fence, and only a few crossings remained, all but one controlled by the Israeli army.

There remained a sole connection with the outside world:

the Rafah border crossing to Egypt. It could not just be sealed off, because that would have exposed the Egyptian regime as a collaborator with Israel. A sophisticated solution was found: to all appearances the Israeli army left the crossing and turned it over to an international supervision team. Its members are nice guys, full of good intentions, but in practice they are totally dependent on the Israeli army, which oversees the crossing from a nearby control room. The international supervisors live in an Israeli kibbutz and can reach the crossing only with Israeli consent.
So everything was ready for the experiment.

THE SIGNAL for its beginning was given after the Palestinians had held spotlessly democratic elections, under the supervision of former President Jimmy Carter.

George Bush was enthusiastic: his vision of bringing democracy to the Middle East was coming true.

But the Palestinians flunked the test. Instead of electing "good Arabs", devotees of the United States, they voted for very bad Arabs, devotees of Allah. Bush felt insulted. But the Israeli government was ecstatic: after the Hamas victory, the Americans and Europeans were ready to take part in the experiment. It could start:

The United States and the European Union announced the stoppage of all donations to the Palestinian Authority, since it was "controlled by terrorists". Simultaneously, the Israeli government cut off the flow of money.

To understand the significance of this: according to the "Paris Protocol" (the economic annex of the Oslo agreement) the Palestinian economy is part of the Israeli customs system. This means that Israel collects the duties for all the goods that pass through Israel to the Palestinian territories - actually, there is no other route. After deducting a fat commission, Israel is obligated to turn the money over to the Palestinian Authority.

When the Israeli government refuses to pass on this money, which belongs to the Palestinians, it is, simply put, robbery in broad daylight. But when one robs "terrorists", who is going to complain?

The Palestinian Authority - both in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip - needs this money like air for breathing. This fact also requires some explanation: in the 19 years when Jordan occupied the West Bank and Egypt the Gaza Strip, from 1948 to 1967, not a single important factory was built there. The Jordanians wanted all economic activity to take place in Jordan proper, east of the river, and the Egyptians neglected the strip altogether.

Then came the Israeli occupation, and the situation became even worse. The occupied territories became a captive market for Israeli industry, and the military government prevented the establishment of any enterprise that could conceivably compete with an Israeli one.

The Palestinian workers were compelled to work in Israel for hunger wages (by Israeli standards). From these, the Israeli government deducted all the social payments levied on Israeli workers, without the Palestinian workers enjoying any social benefits. This way the government robbed these exploited workers of tens of billions of dollars, which disappeared somehow in the bottomless barrel of the government.

When the intifada broke out, the Israeli captains of industry and agriculture discovered that it was possible to get along without the Palestinian workers. Indeed, it was even more profitable. Workers brought in from Thailand, Romania and other poor countries were ready to work for even lower wages and in conditions bordering on slavery.

The Palestinian workers lost their jobs.

That was the situation at the beginning of the experiment:

the Palestinian infrastructure destroyed, practically no means of production, no work for the workers. All in all, an ideal setting for the great "experiment in hunger".

THE IMPLEMENTATION started, as mentioned, with the stoppage of payments.

The passage between Gaza and Egypt was closed in practice.

Once every few days or weeks it was opened for some hours, for appearances' sake, so that some of the sick and dead or dying could get home or reach Egyptian hospitals.

The crossings between the Strip and Israel were closed "for urgent security reasons". Always, at the right moment, "warnings of an imminent terrorist attack" appeared.

Palestinian agricultural products destined for export rot at the crossing. Medicines and foodstuffs cannot get in, except for short periods from time to time, also for appearances, whenever somebody important abroad voices some protest. Then comes another "urgent security warning" and the situation is back to normal.

To round off the picture, the Israeli Air Force bombed the only power station in the Strip, so that for a part of the day there is no electricity, and the water supply (which depends on electric pumps) stops also. Even on the hottest days, with temperatures of over 30 degrees centigrade in the shade, there is no electricity for refrigerators, air conditioning, the water supply or other needs.

In the West Bank, a territory much larger than the Gaza Strip (which makes up only 6% of the occupied Palestinian territories but holds 40% of the inhabitants), the situation is not quite so desperate. But in the Strip, more than half of the population lives beneath the Palestinian "poverty line", which lies of course very, very far below the Israeli "poverty line". Many Gaza residents can only dream of being considered poor in the nearby Israeli town of Sderot.

What are the governments of Israel and the US trying to tell the Palestinians? The message is clear: You will reach the brink of hunger, and even beyond, if you do not surrender. You must remove the Hamas government and elect candidates approved by Israel and the US. And, most

importantly: you must be satisfied with a Palestinian state consisting of several enclaves, each of which will be utterly dependent on the tender mercies of Israel.

AT THE moment, the directors of the scientific experiment are pondering a puzzling question: how on earth do the Palestinians still hold out, in spite of everything?

According to all the rules, they should have been broken long ago!

Indeed, there are some encouraging signs. The general atmosphere of frustration and desperation creates tension between Hamas and Fatah. Here and there clashes have broken out, people were killed and wounded, but in each case the deterioration was halted before it became a civil war. The thousands of hidden Israeli collaborators are also helping to stir things up. But contrary to all expectations, the resistance did not evaporate. Even the captured Israeli soldier has not been released.

One of the explanations has to do with the structure of Palestinian society. The Hamulah (extended family) plays a central role there. As long as one person in the family is working, the relatives, too, do not die of hunger, even if there is widespread malnutrition. Everyone who has any income shares it with all his brothers and sisters, parents, grandparents, cousins and their children. That is a primitive system, but quite effective in such circumstances. It seems that the planners of the experiment did not take this into account.

In order to quicken the process, the whole might of the Israeli army is now being used again, as from this week.

For three months the army was busy with the Second Lebanon War. It became apparent that the army, which for the last

39 years has been employed mainly as a colonial police force, does not function very well when suddenly confronted with a trained and armed opponent that can fight back.

Hizbullah used deadly anti-tank weapons against the armored forces, and rockets rained down on Northern Israel. The army has long ago forgotten how to deal with such an enemy.

And the campaign did not end well.

Now the army returns to the war it knows. The Palestinians in the Strip do not (yet) have effective anti-tank weapons, and the Qassam rockets cause only limited damage. The army can again use tanks against the population without hindrance. The Air Force, which in Lebanon was afraid to send in helicopters to remove the wounded, can now fire missiles at the houses of "wanted persons", their families and neighbors, at leisure. If in the last three months "only" 100 Palestinians were killed per month, we are now witnessing a dramatic rise in the number of Palestinians killed and wounded.

How can a population that is hit by hunger, lacking medicaments and equipment for its primitive hospitals and exposed to attacks on land, from sea and from the air, hold out? Will it break? Will it go down on its knees and beg for mercy? Or will it find inhuman strength and stand the test?

In short: What and how much is needed to get a population to surrender?

All the scientists taking part in the experiment - Ehud Olmert and Condoleezza Rice, Amir Peretz and Angela Merkel, Dan Halutz and George Bush, not to mention Nobel Peace Price laureate Shimon Peres - are bent over the microscopes and waiting for an answer, which undoubtedly will be an important contribution to political science.

I hope the Nobel Committee is watching.

Uri Avnery is an Israeli author and activist. He is the head of the Israeli peace movement, "Gush Shalom".

Legal worries in the US, interesting author; US-Gulag on the horizon?

American Prison Camps Are on the Way

Kellogg Brown & Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of Bush's "unlawful enemy combatants." Americans are certain to be among them.

By Marjorie Cohn

10/13/06 "AlterNet" -- -- The Military Commissions Act of 2006 governing the treatment of detainees is the culmination of relentless fear-mongering by the Bush administration since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Because the bill was adopted with lightning speed, barely anyone noticed that it empowers Bush to declare not just aliens, but also U.S. citizens, "unlawful enemy combatants."

Bush & Co. has portrayed the bill as a tough way to deal with aliens to protect us against terrorism. Frightened they might lose their majority in Congress in the November elections, the Republicans rammed the bill through Congress with little substantive debate.

Anyone who donates money to a charity that turns up on Bush's list of "terrorist" organizations, or who speaks out against the government's policies could be declared an "unlawful enemy combatant" and imprisoned indefinitely. That includes American citizens.

The bill also strips habeas corpus rights from detained aliens who have been declared enemy combatants. Congress has the constitutional power to suspend habeas corpus only in times of rebellion or invasion. The habeas-stripping provision in the new bill is unconstitutional and the Supreme Court will likely say so when the issue comes before it.

Although more insidious, this law follows in the footsteps of other unnecessarily repressive legislation. In times of war and national crisis, the government has targeted immigrants and dissidents.

In 1798, the Federalist-led Congress, capitalizing on the fear of war, passed the four Alien and Sedition Acts to stifle dissent against the Federalist Party's political agenda. The Naturalization Act extended the time necessary for immigrants to reside in the U.S. because most immigrants sympathized with the Republicans.

The Alien Enemies Act provided for the arrest, detention and deportation of male citizens of any foreign nation at war with the United States. Many of the 25,000 French citizens living in the U.S. could have been expelled had France and America gone to war, but this law was never used. The Alien Friends Act authorized the deportation of any non-citizen suspected of endangering the security of the U.S. government; the law lasted only two years and no one was deported under it.

The Sedition Act provided criminal penalties for any person who wrote, printed, published, or spoke anything "false, scandalous and malicious" with the intent to hold the government in "contempt or disrepute." The Federalists argued it was necessary to suppress criticism of the government in time of war. The Republicans objected that the Sedition Act violated the First Amendment, which had become part of the Constitution seven years earlier. Employed exclusively against Republicans, the Sedition Act was used to target congressmen and newspaper editors who criticized President John Adams.

Subsequent examples of laws passed and actions taken as a result of fear-mongering during periods of xenophobia are the Espionage Act of 1917, the Sedition Act of 1918, the Red Scare following World War I, the forcible internment of people of Japanese descent during World War II, and the Alien Registration Act of 1940 (the Smith Act).

During the McCarthy period of the 1950s, in an effort to eradicate the perceived threat of communism, the government engaged in widespread illegal surveillance to threaten and silence anyone who had an unorthodox political viewpoint. Many people were jailed, blacklisted and lost their jobs. Thousands of lives were shattered as the FBI engaged in "red-baiting." One month after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, United States Attorney General John Ashcroft rushed the U.S.A. Patriot Act through a timid Congress. The Patriot Act created a crime of domestic terrorism aimed at political activists who protest government policies, and set forth an ideological test for entry into the United States.

In 1944, the Supreme Court upheld the legality of the internment of Japanese and Japanese-American citizens in Korematsu v. United States. Justice Robert Jackson warned in his dissent that the ruling would "lie about like a loaded weapon ready for the hand of any authority that can bring forward a plausible claim of an urgent need."

That day has come with the Military Commissions Act of 2006. It provides the basis for the President to round-up both aliens and U.S. citizens he determines have given material support to terrorists. Kellogg Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton, is constructing a huge facility at an undisclosed location to hold tens of thousands of undesirables.

In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Justice Louis Brandeis cautioned, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well meaning but without understanding." Seventy-three years later, former White House spokesman Ari Fleischer, speaking for a zealous President, warned Americans "they need to watch what they say, watch what they do."

We can expect Bush to continue to exploit 9/11 to strip us of more of our liberties. Our constitutional right to dissent is in serious jeopardy. Benjamin Franklin's prescient warning should give us pause: "They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security."

Marjorie Cohn, a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, is president-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the U.S. representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. Her new book, "Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law," will be published in 2007 by PoliPointPress

Aha, wacht man langsam auf? A wake up call.....

14. Oktober 2006, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
Britischer Heereschef gegen Blairs Irak-Politik
Gefährdung auch für Grossbritanniens Sicherheit

Der neue Chef des britischen Heeres, Dannatt, hat in ungewöhnlicher Form die Irak-Politik der Regierung Blair kritisiert, die auch die Sicherheit im eigenen Land und dessen christliche Werte gefährde. Er forderte, sich auf die Mission in Afghanistan zu konzentrieren.

Mr. London, 13. Oktober

Der erst im August als oberster Heeresführer ernannte General Richard Dannatt, der über weitreichende Erfahrung im Auslandeinsatz verfügt, hat im konservativen Massenblatt «Daily Mail» vom Freitag in ungewöhnlicher Offenheit Stellung zum britischen Einsatz im Irak und in Afghanistan und zu den Folgen für die Sicherheit in Grossbritannien genommen. Während Blair gleichzeitig in Schottland den Nordirland-Konflikt zu lösen versuchte, hat Dannatt damit die grösste aussenpolitische Schwäche Blairs ins Rampenlicht gerückt, mit Argumenten, die über die Kompetenz eines Militärs hinausgehen, aber von den konservativen und liberalen Oppositionsparteien - und letztlich auch von breiten Kreisen bei Labour - mehr oder weniger geteilt werden.

Verlegenheit der Regierung
Dannatt hat versucht, am Freitag in Radio und Fernsehen seine Haltung abzuschwächen, aber seine Kritik am Regierungskurs konnte er nicht rückgängig machen. Das Verteidigungsministerium veröffentlichte einen Kommentar, in dem erklärt wurde, dass Dannatts Erklärungen aus dem Zusammenhang gerissen worden seien. Das Premierministeramt versicherte ihm noch seine Unterstützung, aber machte klar, dass die britischen Truppen im Irak auf Wunsch der dortigen Regierung und der Uno stationiert seien.

Dannatt hat letztlich die immer wieder geäusserten Bedenken der im Irak stationierten Offiziere bestätigt, wonach sich ihre Mission seit 2003 drastisch geändert und verschlechtert habe. 7000 britische Soldaten sind im Einsatz, vor allem im Südirak. Diese für so lange Zeit nicht vorhergesehene Konzentration behindert auch einen vernünftigen Soll-Bestand in Afghanistan, wo die britischen Truppen unter extremen Situationen ausharren. Die Armee beklagt im Irak bisher 119 Tote. Die beabsichtigte Förderung eines Wiederaufbaus unter möglicherweise «naiven» prowestlichen Vorstellungen habe, erklärte Dannatt, eindeutig kontraproduktiv zu Ablehnung bei der Bevölkerung geführt, ausser in Basra. Dannatt liess offen, ob dies vor allem amerikanisches Verschulden sei, plädierte aber für «weniger Ehrgeiz». Hingegen beklagte er den negativen Einfluss dieser Politik in Grossbritannien selbst, wo man auf die eigenen «christlichen Werte» immer mehr verzichte, um sich nach dem «vorherrschenden Wind» - Rücksicht auf die islamische Minderheit - zu richten.

Vorrang für Afghanistan
Die konservative und liberale Opposition griff Dannatts Kritik sofort auf, obwohl dieser selbst am Freitag versuchte, seine pessimistische Stellungnahme abzuschwächen, um sich wieder mehr auf die offizielle Linie eines Abzugs in den nächsten zwei bis drei Jahren zurückzuziehen. Er erklärte, dass seine Äusserungen vom «Daily Mail» zerstückelt worden seien - sie wurden in der Tat mit eigenen redaktionellen Verschärfungen angereichert - und dass er sich vor allem über die Zukunft des Heeres in den nächsten fünf bis zehn Jahren Sorgen mache. Damit sprach er auch das von den Militärs als zu knapp betrachtete Budget für Verteidigung an. Priorität hat gemäss Dannatt Afghanistan, aber die Forderung der Militärs nach vorhergehender Entlastung im Irak konnte von der Regierung nicht realisiert werden. Andere Militärführer hatten vor Dannatt in diesem Zusammenhang bereits auf ungenügende Mittel hingewiesen. Blair hatte vor kurzem mehr Geld versprochen, aber nicht mehr Truppen und auch nicht mehr Helikopter.
http://www.nzz.ch/2006/10/14/al/articleEKGUL.html

Gewalt im Christentum

14. Oktober 2006, Neue Zürcher Zeitung
«Nötige sie hereinzukommen, damit mein Haus voll werde!»
Über Gewalt im Christentum

Empörung schlug Papst Benedikt nach seinen Äusserungen zum Verhältnis von Religion und Gewalt von islamischer Seite auch deswegen entgegen, weil er die Gewaltgeschichte des Christentums mit keinem Wort erwähnt hatte. - Ein Rückblick auf ein Thema, das alle an einem interreligiösen Dialog Beteiligten zu Selbstkritik bewegen könnte.

Von Hans Maier

Ist der militante Islamismus unserer Zeit ein Sonderfall? Oder ist es seit je in allen Religionen gewalttätig zugegangen - wenigstens zeitweilig? Handelt es sich bei dieser Gewalt speziell um ein Problem monotheistischer Religionen? Schliesst der Wahrheitsanspruch einer Religion Toleranz gegenüber anderen Religionen aus? - Das sind Fragen, die in jüngster Zeit heftig diskutiert werden und die im Anschluss an die Regensburger Vorlesung Papst Benedikts XVI. erneut ein vielstimmiges und kontroverses Echo finden. Längst schliesst die Diskussion über die Ursachen und Formen religiös motivierter Gewalt die monotheistischen Religionen ein. Sie konzentriert sich auf den Islam, erstreckt sich aber inzwischen auch auf Judentum und Christentum.

NICHT DAS LETZTE WORT
Mohammed, Religionsstifter und Eroberer zugleich, steht nicht von ungefähr im Mittelpunkt der Debatte - aber auch der Mann Moses, der den Einen Gott proklamierte und die vielen Götter zu Götzen machte, ist in dieser Thematik eine zentrale Figur. Hat er doch, folgt man Jan Assmann, die antiken Polytheismen in die Unwahrheit gestossen und damit der Unterwerfung religiöser Identitäten den Weg bereitet. Und wie steht es mit jenen christlichen Denkern, die aus der biblischen Weisung des zum Gastmahl einladenden Herrn an seinen Knecht: «Nötige sie hereinzukommen, damit mein Haus voll werde» (Lukas 14, 23), eine schrankenlose Ermächtigung zur Missionierung der Heiden machten - notfalls gewaltsam und gegen deren Willen?

Eine vorläufige Antwort könnte lauten, dass Religion und Gewalt zwar nicht in einem religionsgeschichtlich eindeutigen systematischen Zusammenhang stehen, dass sie aber in der Geschichte vielfältige kontingente Verbindungen miteinander eingegangen sind. Gewalt spielt im Leben der Religionen - und bei Zusammenstössen zwischen unterschiedlichen Glaubensweisen - eine unübersehbare Rolle. Der Missionsauftrag Jesu an die Jünger - «Gehet hinaus in alle Welt und taufet alle Völker!» - hat sich in der Geschichte nicht selten mit Gewalttaten, Ausschreitungen, Pogromen verbunden. Oft genug wurden die Grenzen fliessend zwischen Mission, Expansion, Kolonisierung, Unterwerfung.

Allerdings: Das letzte Wort behielt die Gewalt im Judentum und im Christentum nicht; denn von Anfang an gab es gegen Zwangsbekehrungen fremder Völker kräftige Widerstände im Inneren der Religion selbst. In der Bibel finden sich, bis in frühe Schichten hinein, Elemente der Gewaltkritik und Gewaltbegrenzung. So ist schon der Talionsgrundsatz «Leben für Leben, Auge für Auge, Zahn für Zahn!» - entgegen dem geläufigen Verständnis - keineswegs ein Aufruf zu massiver Vergeltung; er legt vielmehr Rechtsgrundsätze für die Entschädigung fest, versucht also Rache durch Recht zu ersetzen. Diese Gewaltkritik hinterlässt vor allem seit der Zeit des babylonischen Exils ihre Spuren im jüdischen Gottesbild. Die Bergpredigt Jesu kann insoweit als Steigerung und Überbietung prophetischer Überlieferungen erscheinen. Und auch im Christentum steht der Tendenz zur missionarisch oder kulturell begründeten Expansion das Gebot des Friedens und der Liebe gegenüber - einer Liebe, die selbst den Feinden gilt. Vollends ist mit dem Kreuz Jesu ein Symbol des Gewaltverzichts aufgerichtet, auf das «die Kritiker einer Gewaltanwendung im Bereich christlicher Geschichte sich immer wieder berufen konnten» (Karl Lehmann).

Freilich darf man die Gewaltanfälligkeit des Christentums nicht verharmlosen. Man darf sie auch dann nicht übergehen, wenn man den islamisch motivierten Terrorismus von heute mit gutem Grund als Verirrung und Verbrechen verurteilt. Wenigstens zweimal ist Gewalt in der Geschichte des Christentums massiv zutage getreten: in den Kreuzzügen und in den Anfängen der europäischen Expansion. Es lohnt sich, nach den historischen Beweggründen für diesen doppelten Ausbruch zu fragen.

KREUZZÜGE UND KOLONIALE EXPANSION
Dass die Eroberung Palästinas durch den Islam christlichen Pilgern den Weg zu den heiligen Stätten versperrte, empfanden viele Christen im Abendland als eine schwer erträgliche Demütigung. So begannen die Kreuzzüge «mit dem Doppelziel, die Christen im Osten von der Herrschaft der Muslime zu erlösen und das Heilige Grab in Jerusalem zu befreien» (Victor Conzemius). In seiner Kreuzzugspredigt in Clermont-Ferrand (1095), einem der wirkungsvollsten Aufrufe der Weltgeschichte, hob Papst Urban II. auf drei Dinge ab: den Hilferuf des byzantinischen Kaisers, dem man folgen müsse, das Grab Christi, das es den Heiden zu entreissen gelte - und den zur Befreiung nötigen Kampf der Ritter («milites»), die durch päpstliche Ermächtigung und geistlichen Lohn zu «milites Christi» (Soldaten Christi) werden sollten.

Neben den Waffen empfingen die Kreuzfahrer das Pilgerkreuz. Als Anführer des Kreuzritterheeres galt Christus selbst. Auf Darstellungen reitet er den Rittern voran, das Schwert zwischen den Zähnen, das Buch des Lebens in den Händen. «Und wenn einer dort in wahrer Busse fällt», so Urban II., «so darf er fest glauben, dass ihm Vergebung seiner Sünden und die Frucht ewigen Lebens zuteil werden wird.» - Was ist das anderes als eine Aufforderung zum «gerechten Krieg» um die heiligen Stätten? Die Ähnlichkeiten mit heutigen Jihad-Aufrufen aus islamischen Ländern springen in die Augen. Vor allem der Hinweis auf den unmittelbar bevorstehenden Paradieseslohn erinnert an Äusserungen sich selbst opfernder islamistischer Krieger von heute - sie heissen inzwischen in der ganzen islamischen Welt (auch in laizistischen Ländern wie der Türkei) «Märtyrer», was beunruhigend ist.

Die Zeit der Kreuzzüge hat nicht nur das Verhältnis zwischen Christentum und Islam dauerhaft belastet (und ebenso das Verhältnis zwischen Christen und Juden wegen der heimischen Pogrome), sie bot dem Islam auch Gelegenheit, eigene Angriffe und Eroberungen als «Verteidigungskriege» zu deklarieren, und das bis heute. Bis heute werden die Christen in der muslimischen Terminologie zugespitzt «Kreuzzügler» genannt - und wenn George W. Bush von «Kreuzzügen gegen den Terror» spricht, so hören Muslime in diesem Wort nicht etwa eine abgeblasste, säkularisierte Formel (wie bei «Kreuzzügen» gegen Hunger, Kälte, Armut, Drogenmissbrauch), sondern sie erinnern sich an konkrete Ereignisse, die bis heute ihr Geschichtsbild prägen.

Umgekehrt wurde die Zeit der Kreuzzüge im Abendland zum Auftakt für eine doppelte Bewegung: die Ausbreitung und Festigung des Friedens im Inneren der europäischen Staaten einerseits, die zunehmend schärfere Abgrenzung nach draussen, zur nichtchristlichen Welt hin, anderseits. Gottesfriede im Inneren als Vorstufe des späteren Landfriedens und des sich entfaltenden staatlichen Rechts- und Friedensraumes - Krieg im Äusseren, «beyond the line», gegen die Heiden in der nichtchristlichen Welt: Das führt zum zweiten Ausbruch von Gewalt in der Geschichte des Christentums: zur europäischen Expansion im 15. und 16. Jahrhundert. «Jenseits des Äquators ist der Europäer ein gezähmter Tiger, der in den Wald zurückkehrt» (Guillaume Raynal).

Joseph Höffner hat in seinem klassischen Werk «Kolonialismus und Evangelium» gezeigt, dass die Härte der Kriege gegen die Eingeborenen in der Neuen Welt auch mit der Verschärfung der Lehre vom «gerechten Krieg» zusammenhing, die sich schon in der Zeit der Kreuzzüge vorbereitet hatte. So lehrte Papst Innozenz IV. (1243 bis 1254), der Papst könne den Ungläubigen befehlen, christliche Glaubensboten in den Ländern ihrer Herrschaft zuzulassen - sollten sie den Gehorsam verweigern, seien sie mit weltlicher Gewalt zu zwingen. Möglicher Grund für einen gerechten Krieg war also nicht mehr nur das Unrecht von Heiden gegen Christen - es war vielmehr das Unrecht (des Nichtglaubens) gegen Gott schlechthin. Theoretisch war damit «das Verhältnis zu den Heidenvölkern als dauernder Kriegszustand gekennzeichnet» (Höffner).

Gewiss, gegen diese Verengung und Zuspitzung des biblischen «Nötige sie!» erhob sich Protest auch unter christlichen Theologen und Juristen - der Kampf des Las Casas gegen die Übergriffe der spanischen Kolonisatoren und die Entwicklung einer neuen Kolonialethik durch Vitoria zeigen es. Doch es dauerte noch längere Zeit, bis sich die Kirche von dem im Lauf der Zeit immer mehr profan gewordenen, nicht mehr religiös unterfangenen Kolonialismus zu lösen begann. Spätestens um 1890 war dieser Punkt erreicht - symbolisch greifbar in der Gegenüberstellung des französischen Ministerpräsidenten, Kirchenfeindes und Vaters der französischen Trennungsgesetze, Jules Ferry, der aus der kulturellen Überlegenheit der weissen Rasse die letzten Konsequenzen kolonialer Hegemonie zog, einerseits und des Papstes Leo XIII. andererseits, der zur gleichen Zeit vorsichtig damit begann, Kolonialismus und Mission zu entkoppeln und in den aussereuropäischen Ländern einen indigenen Klerus aufzubauen.

Rückfälle in die Anwendung religiös motivierter Gewalt gibt es sowohl beim Christentum wie beim Islam. Die Praxis solcher Gewalt bietet ein weites Feld für die historische Betrachtung. Sowohl die kriegerischen Vorstösse des Islams in den Mittelmeerraum und nach Südeuropa wie auch die Kreuzzüge und der heutige Jihadismus müssten im Einzelnen untersucht und systematisch verglichen werden. Das ist ein weites Feld für eine vergleichende Religionsgeschichte - vor allem aber für unvoreingenommene, der Klärung dienende Gespräche zwischen heutigen Muslimen, heutigen Christen.

LEHREN DER GESCHICHTE?
Kann man Lehren aus den Ereignissen ziehen? Am Anfang müsste ein Blick auf die jeweils eigene Geschichte stehen. Hier hat Papst Johannes Paul II. in seinem Schuldbekenntnis und seiner Vergebungsbitte (am 12. März 2000) allem früheren katholischen Triumphalismus in Sachen Kreuzzüge und Kolonisierung eine Absage erteilt: «. . . oft haben die Christen das Evangelium verleugnet und der Logik der Gewalt nachgegeben. Die Rechte von Stämmen und Völkern haben sie verletzt, deren Kulturen und religiöse Traditionen verachtet . . . Vergib uns!»

Wäre ein solches Mit-sich-selbst-ins-Gericht- Gehen auch im Islam denkbar? Man vermisst es bis heute, aber ganz ausschliessen sollte man es für die Zukunft nicht. Geduld ist nötig. Vielleicht ist der Islam - bei all seiner oftmals berechtigten Kritik an den «Kreuzzüglern» und ihren Nachfahren - als jüngste der drei abrahamitischen Religionen gegenwärtig selbst noch in einer «Kreuzzugsphase».

Hans Maier amtete von 1976 bis 1988 als Präsident des Zentralkomitees der deutschen Katholiken. Bis 1999 hatte er an der Universität München den Lehrstuhl für christliche Weltanschauung, Religions- und Kulturtheorie inne. Vor zwei Jahren ist von ihm das Buch «Das Doppelgesicht des Religiösen. Religion - Gewalt - Politik» (Herder, Freiburg i. Br.) erschienen.
http://www.nzz.ch/2006/10/14/li/articleEIFWP.html

Der deutsche Theologe Eugen Drewermann über Islamismus und Terrorismus

© Tages-Anzeiger; 13.10.2006; Seite 55

Kultur

«Terror ist die Sprache der Verzweifelten»

Für den deutschen Theologen Eugen Drewermann ist die konsequente Gewaltfreiheit das angemessene Mittel gegen den islamistischen Terror.

Mit Eugen Drewermann sprach Michael Meier

Nicht nur Unglückspropheten künden heute, dass wir auf einen Kampf der Religionen zusteuern. Sie auch, Herr Drewermann?

Der Kampf der Religionen ist in Wirklichkeit ein kaschierter Machtkampf um die Verteilung der Ressourcen und die hegemoniale Rolle der USA. Es gibt Hinweise, dass man nach dem Zusammenbruch des Sowjetimperiums 1989 im Pentagon und im Weissen Haus aktiv darüber nachdachte, wie man einen Ersatzfeind findet, und man hielt den Islam für gut geeignet. Erstens ist das meiste Erdöl bei den Arabern versteckt. Zweitens ist der Islam ein Kulturkreis, der mit 1,2 Milliarden Menschen eine relative religiöse Geschlossenheit hat. Deswegen ist die Destabilisierung der arabischen Kultur von all den chaotischen Zuständen, Fanatismen und Regressionen begleitet, wie wir sie jetzt erleben. Gleichzeitig haben wir es mit einem Typus von Christentum zu tun, der selber fundamentalistisch ist. Im Bibelgürtel der USA dankt man Gott dafür, in diesen Krisenzeiten George W. Bush an der Macht zu haben. Und dieser Mann redet inzwischen von Islamfaschismus. Er gibt vor, dass man den Islamismus mit militärischen Mitteln bekämpfen könnte wie das Nazi-Regime von einst. Das ist absurd.

Was kann angesichts des islamistischen Terrors der viel beschworene Dialog noch bewirken?

Ein ehrlicher Dialog müsste bei der Definition des Terrors anfangen: Wir nennen Terror, wenn man Menschen zum Erreichen eines politischen Zieles tötet. Jemand, der sich einen Sprenggürtel um den Bauch bindet und sich in Tel Aviv in die Luft sprengt, ist ein Terrorist. Ist aber derjenige, der aus der Luft Streubomben in Wohngebiete abfeuert, nicht auch ein Terrorist? Liegt der Unterschied nur in der technischen Überlegenheit? Wir nennen das eine einen legalen Militärschlag und das andere Terrorismus. Das ist so verlogen. Krieg selber ist Terrorismus. Wir müssten uns auch unserer Schuld bewusst werden, den islamischen Kulturraum von den Maghrebstaaten bis nach Indonesien in Form der Kolonialregimes ausgebeutet und kulturell überfremdet zu haben.

Im Terrorismus wirkt die koloniale Vergangenheit nach?

Ja. Was wir heute asymmetrische Kriegsführung nennen, war ein Problem im ganzen 20. Jahrhundert: Die Länder der Dritten Welt, die alle fast ausnahmslos unter Kolonialverwaltung standen, haben den Weg in die Freiheit nie anders gehen können als mit asymmetrischer Kriegsführung. Damals nannte man das Guerillakrieg, heute nennen wir es Terror. Beides ist im Grunde die Kapitulation gegenüber dem Glauben, dass die Machthaber die Sprache von Gerechtigkeit und Menschlichkeit verstehen. Der Einzige, der hier einen Ausweg gefunden hatte, war Mahatma Gandhi. Natürlich wünschte ich mir, es gäbe auf der Westbank und im Gazastreifen eine vergleichbare charismatische Gestalt. Angesichts einer moralischen Autorität, die mit gewaltlosen Mitteln operieren würde, wäre die Besatzungspolitik der Israeli in den palästinensischen Gebieten überhaupt nicht durchführbar. Der Weg gegen den Terrorismus kann nur in einer grundlegenden Gewaltfreiheit bestehen.

Stattdessen potenziert der Antiterrorkrieg den Terror bloss.

Gewalt ist eine Sprache der Verzweifelten auf dem Hintergrund verweigerter Dialoge. Das rechtfertigt die Dinge nicht, aber es kann sie erklären. Wir müssen verstehen, was in den grässlichen Handlungen der Selbstmordattentäter noch als so wertvoll erscheint, dass sie diese ungeheuerlichen Opfer in Kauf nehmen. Begreifen wir das nicht, lässt sich der Terrorismus nicht abschaffen. Führt man Hinrichtungsoperationen durch wie jetzt im Libanon, muss man für jeden getöteten Terroristen die Auferstehung von zwei anderen gewärtigen. So bekämpft man den Terrorismus nicht, so schürt man ihn. Das ist eine bittere Pille, die inzwischen, Gott sei Dank, auch in Amerika erkannt wird. Die Art des Antiterrorkriegs, wie ihn Bush führt, hat den Terrorismus im Irak erst im grossen Stil eingeführt. Gegen jedes bessere Wissen und mit unglaublichen Lügen hatte er bei Kriegsbeginn Saddam Hussein in Verbindung mit der al-Qaida gebracht.

Nochmals: Kann in dieser Situation der Dialog der Religionen überhaupt etwas ausrichten?

Die Wahrheit des Dialogs bestünde darin, zuerst die Andersartigkeit des anderen kennen zu lernen. Das heisst im Fall des Islam, den Zauber des Orients, die Schönheit der islamischen Kultur wahrzunehmen. Der Islam ist ein grossartiges Angebot einer internationalen Glaubensgemeinschaft: Nur Gott ist Gott, und die Menschen finden im Gegenüber zu Gott zur Einheit der Person. Ob der Islam eine Schamkultur hat, in der die Frau verschleiert ist - was geht das uns an? Muslime haben das Recht, unsere Kultur für obszön zu halten. Über solche Unterschiede müsste man verhandeln dürfen, statt sie hochzustilisieren. Wir aber meinen, den Muslimen beibringen zu müssen, was Menschenrechte sind, was Trennung von Staat und Kirche und Gleichberechtigung bedeutet. Das ist eine Propagandasprache der Rechthaberei. Die Muslime müssen sich selbst entwickeln dürfen.

Sie scheinen den Islam zu idealisieren. Ist in Islam und Koran das Gewaltpotenzial nicht doch grösser als in Bibel und Christentum?

Wir sollten nicht mit der Bibel in der Hand den Koran bessern wollen. Punkto Gewalt ist das Alte Testament noch viel schlimmer als der Koran. Und der Islam hat in vielen Jahrhunderten bewiesen, dass er ungleich friedfertiger ist als das Christentum. Beispielsweise im 8. Jahrhundert, als die Mauren in Spanien regierten: Sie waren den Christen in allen Sektoren wie Medizin, Astronomie, Mathematik und Naturwissenschaften hoch überlegen. Anders als die Christen schworen sie damals der Gewaltmission ab. Oder: Als die christlichen Kreuzfahrer 1099 Jerusalem eroberten, metzelten sie alle Ungläubigen nieder. Der spätere Eroberer Sultan Saladin indessen ging ganz anders vor: Er öffnete die Heilige Stadt für die Wallfahrer. Wohl kassierte er Geld dafür, aber er unterdrückte die Religionen nicht.

Speziell Christen von rechts argumentieren, der Islam werde auch im Westen als so stark wahrgenommen, weil das Christentum so schwach sei. Muss der Westen religiös aufrüsten?

Leider wird religiös aufgerüstet. Und die Debatte um das Kopftuch wird zum Integrationsfaktor für die neue konservative Phalanx. Ich finde das ganz entsetzlich, weil man damit Elemente der Aufklärung verleugnet, die uns wirklich weiterbringen. Wir müssen religiös nicht aufrüsten, wir müssen abrüsten. Wir müssten sehen, dass die Ernstnahme der Religion nicht einfach bedeutet, konservative Dogmen zu stabilisieren oder sich der Papstautorität zu unterwerfen. Seine Heiligkeit Benedikt XVI. sagte in Polen: «Glauben ist akzeptieren, was die Kirche sagt.» Die Kirche aber sagt lauter Dinge, die der Islam nicht brauchen kann, weil sie nicht mystisch und innerlich sind.

Sie setzen auf den Dialog nicht der Institutionen, sondern der mystisch verinnerlichten Gläubigen?

Ja. Und auf das gegenseitige Zuhören. Bei Benedikt heisst Dialog immer, den Anderen monolithisch etwas vorzulesen, ohne mit ihnen ins Gespräch zu kommen - so auch neulich in Castel Gandolfo, als er im Nachgang zur Regensburger Vorlesung muslimische Diplomaten empfing. Noch ein Aperçu: In Regensburg erklärte der Papst im Rückgriff auf den byzantinischen Kaiser Manuel, der Islam habe nichts Neues gebracht. Offensichtlich empfindet Benedikt darin etwas Defizitäres. Mohammed aber wollte niemals etwas Neues bringen. Der ganze Islam besteht im Kern darin, die Religion zu bringen, an welche schon Noah, Moses und Abraham glaubten. Es ist die Religion, die Allah für alle Menschen zu allen Zeiten vermittelt, nur jetzt mal auf Arabisch. Da könnte man sich die Hände reichen.

BILD DORIS FANCONI