February 12, 2002
Media compilation #48: The Corrupted Ones
Dear journalist
Amidst the growing concerns that Enron is not the only bad economic apple, let's hope that some of the global focus will shift towards the worst corrupted ones at the top of the political ladder.
That would seem like a sensible thing to do...
Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.cybernaute.com/earthconcert2000
"The current situation is a scandal of almost incomprehensible magnitude."
- From "Multi-Trillion Dollar Financial Scandal" below
CONTENTS
1. Multi-Trillion Dollar Financial Scandal - 'This Thing Involves Everybody'
2. You Can’t Touch Pug Winokur
3. Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Hussein
4. Happy Days, Here Again
5. WAR AND PEAS
6. 10,000 gathered for peace in Tel Aviv last Feb 9
SEE ALSO:
ENRON: NOT THE ONLY BAD APPLE (by Greg Palast - Feb 11, 2002)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12392
Enron is not the only power company to push hard for and profit wildly from deregulation -- and not the only one to be associated with a mysterious suicide.
ENRON IN INDIA: THE GIANT'S FIRST FALL
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12375
Enron's collapse may have begun half a world away, in Dabhol India. Mired in controversy from the get-go, the Dabhol project was an economic and human rights disaster.
Released Afghans Tell of Beatings
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/11/international/asia/11PRIS.html
Afghan prisoners captured by American forces in two night raids last month said Sunday that they were beaten and abused by American soldiers.
THE ULTIMATE ARGUMENT AND THE ULTIMATE TEST
http://www.gold-eagle.com/editorials_02/tlaga021102pv.html
This is about a lawsuit filed by Reginald Howe against the Bank of International Settlements, the Federal Reserve, Goldman Sachs, etc. and all the corruption going on there.
American power - Is America too powerful for its own good?
http://www.observer.co.uk/worldview/story/0,11581,648112,00.html
IRRADIATED FOOD FIGHT (The Pros and Cons of Irradiated Food)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=12389
See also all the EnviroHealth issues at http://www.alternet.org/?IssueAreaID=18
All the Columnists of the Working for Change website (WORTH A GOOD LOOK!)
http://www.workingforchange.com/columnists.cfm
1.
From: http://www.makethemaccountable.com/podvin/media/020203_MissingOverall.htm
or also from http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=18226
Multi-Trillion Dollar Financial Scandal - 'This Thing Involves Everybody'
By David Podvin
2-4-2
"Immediately after business slave George W. Bush took power, Corporate America went on a lying spree. Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings appear loath to report that such high profile companies as Viacom, General Electric, and Disney are also engaging in the accounting scheme."
Missing The Overall
A multi-trillion dollar financial scandal is occurring in the United States right now. It threatens to inflict unprecedented carnage upon Corporate America and horrific damage to our national economy. The mainstream media is aware of it, but most Americans are not, because the corporate news outlets refuse to report on it. It is not conspiracy. It is complicity.
The coverage of the Enron situation has primarily focused on the disintegration of a powerful corporation due to the deceit and criminality of those who ran the company. The few reporters who have looked below the surface have proven linkage between Enron's corruption and its political connections to the Bush administration. While the crimes of former Enron chairman Kenneth Lay and the collusion of former Texas governor George W. Bush are significant, the corporate media is selfishly choosing not to focus on the big story.
In February of 2001, Enron stock was trading above $80 per share, which placed a market value of more than $60 billion on the company. Today, the stock no longer trades, rendering Enron virtually worthless. It is crucial to remember that, despite the harrowing decline in its fortunes, the company never reported a bad earnings quarter.
Enron's duplicity is an extreme symptom of a financial cancer that threatens the health of the economy. The disease is a malignant accounting method that has received legal protection from conservative politicians on behalf of their corporate benefactors. It is called 'pro forma'. Originally intended to allow companies to compensate for extraordinary events that distorted their financial reports, the pro forma accounting method has led to the greatest fraud ever perpetrated.
Previously, publicly owned companies had been legally required to provide shareholders with an honest accounting of their earnings. The standard used was GAAP, Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. Under this method, a company would state its earnings based on the old fashioned equation of income minus expenses. Using pro forma, companies decide which expenses are irrelevant, thereby providing great latitude for creativity.
Freed from concerns about regulatory oversight, this country's biggest companies became dramatically more 'creative' with their earnings reports. Current estimates for S&P 500 corporations are that they have collectively earned about $410 billion in 2001 when using the pro forma accounting method. However, when using GAAP, they have collectively earned about $240 billion.
Those who claim that Enron was an exceptional case are technically correct. While Enron overestimated its earnings by 100%, the average large publicly held American corporation is overestimating its earnings by only 42%.
IBM reports pro forma earnings. So does Intel. And Cisco Systems. And Dell. And Sun Micro. And Motorola. And Microsoft. And... By engaging in such manipulation, with the assent of accountants and governmental oversight agencies, Corporate America has conned the public into investing trillions of dollars based on phony earnings. Cisco, for example, has used its artificially inflated stock price as capital to acquire other companies. Many corporate empires have been built on such accounting legerdemain, including General Electric (NBC), Viacom (CBS), Disney (ABC), AOL/Time Warner (CNN, Time Magazine), News Corporation (Fox), The Washington Post Company (Washington Post, Newsweek), the Tribune Corporation (Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times), and the New York Times Company (New York Times, Boston Globe).
Enron is the tip of an iceberg on which sits the entire mainstream media. A national association of accounting firms has called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to require all publicly held corporations to report real GAAP earnings. The return to ethical accounting standards would mean that, in order to reflect the current valuation of the Dow Industrials, the average would fall to 5825. In order to reach the historical norm based on GAAP, the Dow would decline to 3300.
A major decline in stock prices would erase trillions of dollars of investors' wealth. With the uninformed public currently heavily invested in the market, this would have a crushing impact on the finances of the average American.
In 1995, Senate Republicans and almost half of their Democratic colleagues joined to override President Clinton's veto of legislation providing corporations with protection from shareholder lawsuits. The leader of the effort to dramatically reduce civil liability for companies that report phony earnings was Wall Street lobbyist Harvey Pitt, who has made a career of defending the shady dealings of stock market thieves like Ivan Boesky.
Just as his father hid the magnitude of the savings and loan scandal until after the 1988 election, Bush is desperately trying to obscure the truth about Corporate America's financial sleight of hand in order to defer the tumbling of the house of cards until after the 2004 campaign. He expects to be helped in this effort by the man he appointed to be Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, the one who is most responsible for seeing that corporations accurately report their earnings. Harvey Pitt.
The powers that be are pulling out all the stops. What they are fighting is the law of gravity. As the high powered executives at Enron learned, all the political machinations in the world can't prevent a stock from falling when the word gets out that the books have been cooked.
After investors discover they've been scammed, they sell, and the mightiest of companies can be crushed. Less than a year ago, Enron was the seventh largest corporation in America. Today, it is no longer functioning as a business entity. It is, for all intents and purposes, dead.
The greatest legacy of the Enron debacle will be increased public pressure on companies to report their real earnings. If corporations are forced to be honest, then there will be shocking revisions in the financial statements of America’s most prominent businesses.
The current situation is a scandal of almost incomprehensible magnitude, but it is not a conspiracy. For years, the disgrace of earnings manipulation has been an open, dirty little secret. Dissidents like the highly respected money managers at Comstock Partners (http://www.comstockfunds.com/) and brokerage analyst Alan Newman (http://www.cross-currents.net/charts.htm) have been screaming bloody murder about how Corporate America is cheating the public.
Their voices have not been amplified. Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings appear loath to report that such high profile companies as Viacom, General Electric, and Disney are also engaging in the accounting scheme.
The current reported level of corporate earnings is a mirage. The investing public has been taken for a magic carpet ride. The deceit of management, now so evident in the case of Enron, is endemic in corporate boardrooms across America. It is the massive impending economic fallout from that bitter reality which is the looming tragedy in this story.
While the media continues to focus on the microcosm of corruption at Enron, the public at large has yet to be informed of the epidemic of the earnings lies. As Deep Throat told Bob Woodward during the Watergate scandal, when the reporter was focusing on the criminal behavior of Nixon functionary Donald Segretti, "You're missing the big picture. You're missing the overall." "This thing involves everybody."
Sources: CLIP
"William Fleckenstein, president of Fleckenstein Capital, a money-management firm in Seattle that engages in short selling, says that General Electric is a company that fits this description. Although Fleckenstein is not shorting GE (GE: down $1.23 to $38.50, Research, Estimates), he says that investors would be wise to stay away from the stock because of all its moving parts -- a mish-mash of different businesses in several countries reporting in a variety of currencies. It's literally impossible to know what's going on there," he says.
CLIP
2.
From: http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=18376
You Can’t Touch Pug Winokur
Herbert “Pug” Winokur was the chairman of the Enron Finance Committee that approved the loss hiding and profit boosting accounting measures blamed for the bankruptcy of the largest company in US history.
He is also on the ultra-secretive non-elected Board of Governors of the Harvard Corporation.
And he is a director of DynCorp – a mega-corporation in the security, telecomms and military contracting arena which provides security and communications systems to most of the US Government – including the Department of Justice - and many of the US banks and mega corporations. It also provides mercenaries to the war on drugs in Colombia among other things.
Several members of the George W. Bush cabinet are former executives and shareholders in Enron including the Vice President. Many also have ties to Dyncorp and George himself went to Harvard.
Pug Winokur is believed to have been involved in the Harken Energy deal that connects George to financing from Osama bin Laden. (See… The GW Bush - Osama Bin Laden Connection http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0109/S00108.htm)
Hopefully you by now have the picture.
Now, according to the US President's spokesman no special care need be taken with ensuring the Department of Justice investigation into Enron is sufficiently independent.
In Sludge’s view if ever there was a case for having a special counsel appointed for investigation of a President and his Government – ala Kenneth Star – then now is that occasion.
According to the rule of law no-one should be untouchable from investigation. CLIP
3.
FOR THE RECORD...
Cheney Made Millions Off Oil Deals with Hussein
San Francisco Bay Guardian
November 13, 2000
by Martin A. Lee
Here's a whopper of a story you may have missed amid the cacophony of campaign ads and stump speeches in the run-up to the elections.
During former defense secretary Richard Cheney's five-year tenure as chief executive of Halliburton, Inc., his oil services firm raked in big bucks from dubious commercial dealings with Iraq. Cheney left Halliburton with a $34 million retirement package last July when he became the GOP's vice-presidential candidate.
Of course, U.S. firms aren't generally supposed to do business with Saddam Hussein. But thanks to legal loopholes large enough to steer an oil tanker through, Halliburton profited big-time from deals with the Iraqi dictatorship. Conducted discreetly through several Halliburton subsidiaries in Europe, these greasy transactions helped Saddam Hussein retain his grip on power while lining the pockets of Cheney and company.
According to the Financial Times of London, between September 1998 and last winter, Cheney, as CEO of Halliburton, oversaw $23.8 million of business contracts for the sale of oil-industry equipment and services to Iraq through two of its subsidiaries, Dresser Rand and Ingersoll-Dresser Pump, which helped rebuild Iraq's war-damaged petroleum-production infrastructure. The combined value of these contracts exceeded those of any other U.S. company doing business with Baghdad.
Halliburton was among more than a dozen American firms that supplied Iraq's petroleum industry with spare parts and retooled its oil rigs when U.N. sanctions were eased in 1998. Cheney's company utilized subsidiaries in France, Italy, Germany, and Austria so as not to draw undue attention to controversial business arrangements that might embarrass Washington and jeopardize lucrative ties to Iraq, which will pump $24 billion of petrol under the U.N.-administered oil-for-food program this year. Assisted by Halliburton, Hussein's government will earn another $1 billion by illegally exporting oil through black-market channels.
With Cheney at the helm since 1995, Halliburton quickly grew into America's number-one oil-services company, the fifth-largest military contractor, and the biggest nonunion employer in the nation. Although Cheney claimed that the U.S. government "had absolutely nothing to do" with his firm's meteoric financial success, State Department documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times indicate that U.S. officials helped Halliburton secure major contracts in Asia and Africa. Halliburton now does business in 130 countries and employs more than 100,000 workers worldwide.
Its 1999 income was a cool $15 billion.
In addition to Iraq, Halliburton counts among its business partners several brutal dictatorships that have committed egregious human rights abuses, including the hated military regime in Burma (Myanmar).
EarthRights, a Washington, D.C.-based human rights watchdog, condemned Halliburton for two energy-pipeline projects in Burma that led to the forced relocation of villages, rape, murder, indentured labor, and other crimes against humanity.
A full report (this is a 45 page pdf file -- there is also a brief summary) on the Burma connection, "Halliburton's Destructive Engagement," can be accessed on EarthRights' Web site.
Human rights activists have also criticized Cheney's company for its questionable role in Algeria, Angola, Bosnia, Croatia, Haiti, Rwanda, Somalia, Indonesia, and other volatile trouble spots. In Russia, Halliburton's partner, Tyumen Oil, has been accused of committing massive fraud to gain control of a Siberian oil field.
And in oil-rich Nigeria, Halliburton worked with Shell and Chevron, which were implicated in gross human rights violations and environmental calamities in that country. Indeed, Cheney's firm increased its involvement in the Niger Delta after the military government executed several ecology activists and crushed popular protests against the oil industry.
Halliburton also had business dealings in Iran and Libya, which remain on the State Department's list of terrorist states. Brown and Root, a Halliburton subsidiary, was fined $3.8 million for re-exporting U.S. goods to Libya in violation of U.S. sanctions.
But in terms of sheer hypocrisy, Halliburton's relationship with Saddam Hussein is hard to top. What's more, Cheney lied about his company's activities in Iraq when journalists fleetingly raised the issue during the campaign.
Questioned by Sam Donaldson on ABC's This Week program in August, Cheney bluntly asserted that Halliburton had no dealings with the Iraqi regime while he was on board.
Donaldson: I'm told, and correct me if I'm wrong, that Halliburton, through subsidiaries, was actually trying to do business in Iraq?
Cheney: No. No. I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq even arrangements that were supposedly legal.
And that was it! ABC News and the other U.S. networks dropped the issue like a hot potato. As damning information about Halliburton surfaced in the European press, American reporters stuck to old routines and took their cues on how to cover the campaign from the two main political parties, both of which had very little to say about official U.S. support for abusive corporate policies at home and abroad.
But why, in this instance, didn't the Democrats stomp and scream about Cheney's Iraq connection? The Gore campaign undoubtedly knew of Halliburton's smarmy business dealings from the get-go.
Gore and Lieberman could have made hay about how the wannabe GOP veep had been in cahoots with Saddam. Such explosive revelations may well have swayed voters and boosted Gore's chances in what was shaping up to be a close electoral contest.
The Democratic standard-bearers dropped the ball in part because Halliburton's conduct was generally in accordance with the foreign policy of the Clinton administration. Cheney is certainly not the only Washington mover and shaker to have been affiliated with a company trading in Iraq. Former CIA Director John Deutsch, who served in a Democratic administration, is a member of the board of directors of Schlumberger, the second-largest U.S. oil-services company, which also does business through subsidiaries in Iraq.
Despite occasional rhetorical skirmishes, a bipartisan foreign-policy consensus prevails on Capital Hill, where the commitment to human rights, with a few notable exceptions, is about as deep as an oil slick.
Truth be told, trading with the enemy is a time-honored American corporate practice or perhaps "malpractice" would be a more appropriate description of big-business ties to repressive regimes.
Given that Saddam Hussein, the pariah du jour, has often been compared to Hitler, it's worth pointing out that several blue-chip U.S. firms profited from extensive commercial dealings with Nazi Germany.
Shockingly, some American companies including Standard Oil, Ford, ITT, GM, and General Electric secretly kept trading with the Nazi enemy while American soldiers fought and died during World War II.
Today General Electric is among the companies that are back in business with Saddam Hussein, even as American jets and battleships attack Iraq on a weekly basis using weapons made by G.E. But the United Nations sanctions committee, dominated by U.S. officials, has routinely blocked medicines and other essential items from being delivered to Iraq through the oil-for-food program, claiming they have a potential military "dual use." These sanctions have taken a terrible toll on ordinary Iraqis, and on children in particular, while the likes of Halliburton and G.E. continue to lubricate their coffers.
"William Douglas, Jr." - cian9_11@hotmail.com
4.
From: NCEpanacea@aol.com
Date: Fri, 8 Feb 2002
Subject: Happy Days, Here Again
From: http://www.nypress.com/15/6/taki/bunker.cfm
Top Drawer-The Bunker
George Szamuely
Happy Days, Here Again
Forget the war on terrorism. The United States is once again supporting the drug dealers, gangsters and warlord fundamentalists. The other day a State Dept. official met Chechnya's self-declared foreign minister, Ilyas Akhmadov. The Russians were dismayed. Having thrown their lot in with the supposed common struggle against terrorism, they find the Americans giving support to terrorists. Last month, after a post-Sept. 11 lull, the U.S. stepped up its criticism of human rights abuses in Chechnya. The Russians professed to be "amazed" that the United States, as Agence France Presse reported, would meet with Chechens, "whose direct links with Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda are being proven with constantly emerging, irrefutable evidence."
Chechnya has always been seen here as a rerun of Kosovo, which itself was a rerun of Afghanistan. All the ingredients are there: a spurious "national liberation" struggle financed by organized crime, drug trafficking and the global Islamic network; support from Western governments and human rights groups; Islamic fundamentalism as a substitute for genuine nationhood; violently enforced clan loyalty; political legitimacy based on appeals to Islam; and terrorists in power. Consider Kosovo: The U.S. is currently brokering a deal on the distribution of power. Leaders of the three leading Kosovo Albanian parties recently met the head of the U.S. office in Pristina, John Menzies, and it was proposed that the job of prime minister should go to Hashim Thaci's Democratic Party of Kosovo (DPK). Thaci is the leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Its links to Islamic terrorism and bin Laden have been amply documented. The KLA allegedly disbanded after the NATO takeover and reconstituted itself as a "civil defense force," the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC). Its wages were paid by the UN.
Last summer, the Bush administration discovered that the KPC was a terrorist organization after all and that it was fueling a terrorist insurgency in neighboring Macedonia. The President signed two decrees depriving "Albanian extremists who were threatening the stability of Macedonia" of all financial or material support. The decrees also barred them from entering the United States. This followed the embarrassing revelation that the U.S. military had facilitated the escape of NLA terrorists holed up in Arcinovo from the Macedonian army. According to Hamburger Abendblatt, "Among the rebels that were withdrawing were 17 "instructors" - former US officers that provided military training for the rebels. Not only that: the Macedonian security forces claim that 70 percent of the equipment that the guerrilla fighters took with them are of US production." The "instructors" were almost certainly members of an outfit called Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI). It is filled with former senior U.S. Army personnel and works on contract for the U.S. government. It had trained and directed the Croatian army during Operation Storm, in which something like 300,000 Serbs were driven out of their homes in Krajina. One of the commanders of Operation Storm was an Albanian, Agim Ceku, who also happens to be the chief of the Kosovo Protection Corps.
The people Bush banned from entering the United States included Gezim Ostremi, the KPC's chief-of-staff; his replacement, Daut Haradinaj; the commander and deputy commander of the KPC'ôs elite force, the Rapid Reaction Corps, plus the leaders of two of its six regional divisions, Sami Lushtaku and Mustafa Rrustem. The UN expressed shock and surprise and demanded proof that people on its payroll were terrorists. This was an odd request. The UN had itself reported a year earlier that the KPC was a bunch of gangsters.
The U.S. decrees were more rhetoric than reality. As an Irish Times report put it sarcastically: "Commander Rrustem earned fame during the Kosovo war as one of the most successful guerrilla commanders. He has since become a favourite with NATO commanders, whose glowing commendations line the walls of his office. Certainly if the Americans have reservations about him they have yet to show it: on Tuesday two separate US army teams came to his base to train his men."
There we have it: The KLA-NLA terrorists are funded by U.S. military aid, the UN peacekeeping budget, Al Qaeda and by drug trafficking and prostitution. If everything goes according to plan, their leader is about to be appointed prime minister thanks to U.S. efforts. O what a lovely war! Now on to Central Asia.
Washington now has 13 bases in nine countries ringing Afghanistan and in the Gulf. Agreements are in place to use airfields in Tajikistan. An air base is being built in Kyrgyzstan to hold 3000 troops. Gen. Tommy Franks vows to crush the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones promises $160 million in aid. Some 1500 U.S. servicemen are already stationed there; 3000 American troops are in Kyrgyzstan. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz says the bases will serve to facilitate cooperation and training with the local military. In other words, the U.S. will, as in the Balkans, play the Islamists and anti-Islamists off against each other and reduce the countries to abject dependence. If the fates of Kosovo and Macedonia are anything to go by, the Soviet Union era will soon seem like a glorious one.
5.
DAILY GRIST
08 Feb 2002
http://www.gristmagazine.com
1.
WAR AND PEAS
War is hell -- and not just for human beings. A team of researchers from the U.N. Environment Programme is headed to Afghanistan to measure the ecological damage of decades of war, drought, famine, and more war. The study, which is part of a relatively new trend of analyzing the effects of human conflict on the natural world, will be the first environmental assessment of any sort to take place in Afghanistan in 25 years. The UNEP team will tally the damage done to everything from forests to water supplies to endangered species. However, its work will be complicated by the remoteness of the landscape, the country's varying topography (from towering mountains to arid sand dunes), and ongoing safety threats. Environmental scientists anticipate depressing findings: "The groundwork has been laid for an environmental disaster," said wildlife biologist Peter Zahler.
Seattle Times, Associated Press, Joseph B. Verrengia, 07 Feb 2002
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/134401110_ecoafghan07.html
Afghanistan's environmental crisis
http://www.gristmagazine.com/grist/best/best012202.asp?source=daily#afghan
To subscribe to DAILY GRIST, send a blank email message to <daily-grist-subscribe@yahoogroups.com>
6.
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002
From: Gila Svirsky <gsvirsky@netvision.net.il>
Subject: 10,000 gathered for peace in Tel Aviv last Feb 9 - Imagine all the People
10 February 2002
Friends,
We knew there would be a big turnout for the peace demonstration last night just from the deluge of pro-peace ads in Ha'aretz the day before -- page after page of statements and petitions, all critical of the occupation. Some excerpts:
***"There is a choice!"An expanded new list of 200 combat officers and soldiers who refuse to serve in the army of occupation.
***"There's a limit!"Support for the new soldiers, and the names of others who have consistently refused to serve, placed by Yesh Gvul.
***"We support the soldiers who refuse to serve the occupation" - a petition placed by civilian supporters.
***"Peres, you are a collaborator in war-crimes!" placed by Gush Shalom.
***"Do not say 'we did not see, we did not know' - the price of keeping the territories" - placed by the Israel Committee Against House Demolitions.
***"A Recipe for National Suicide" - placed by a private citizen.
And a huge, blood-red ad, "The Occupation is Killing Us All", signed by the 28 organizations that came together to hold last night's impressive rally in Tel-Aviv.
This was the largest pro-peace rally since this Intifada began in September 2000, with an estimated 10,000 participants - Jews and Arabs from all over Israel filling the large Tel-Aviv Museum plaza. The mood is clearly swinging in Israel, and the homemade signs of people who had not attended a demonstration for years reflected the new thinking -- "Stop Sharon before he kills us all", "More conscientious objectors!", "Occupation itself is a war crime", and all permutations of "Share Jerusalem", "Dismantle Settlements", and "Bring our soldiers home".
By the time veteran peace activist Yehudit Harel opened the ceremony, the crowd was a mass of people amazed and buoyed by each other's presence, with a great deal of hugging by people glad to be sharing the moment. And then Yehudit's opening words in fluent Hebrew and Arabic set the tone for the entire evening -- we Israeli Jews and Arabs together will no longer abide the crimes that the Israeli government is carrying out.
"There is only one flag held aloft here today," said Yehudit, "and it is the black flag of pain, mourning, death, bereavement, and the immorality of war crimes that are being committed in our name." At her words, hundreds of black flags were raised high by the crowd, symbolizing the statement made years ago by an Israeli court that if a military order has "a black flag of immorality" hanging over it, the order must be refused.
This was a rally in which the young men who refused to serve in the army of occupation were the heroes of the evening, receiving ovation after ovation at every mention.
"I once disagreed with refusal to serve in the army," said Uri Avnery to the crowd, "but today I salute those who will not serve. Refusal is the beginning of the end of the occupation."
Some of these brave young men have been stripped of their command, demoted, and face court martial, but continue to answer to their conscience.
"How can we serve in an army that kills children?" asked Yishai Rosen-Zvi, an Orthodox tank corps sergeant in the reserves, "How can we serve an army that demolishes homes, does not allow the sick to get medical attention, seeks to humiliate an entire population, and reduces them to hunger and poverty?"
Between speakers and sometimes during them, the crowd broke into chanting of familiar slogans: "Fuad, Fuad, Minister of Defense, How many kids did you kill today?" "Occupation, No!Peace, Yes!", "Money for the poor, not for settlers!"
It was a rally in which the stage was shared by Arabs and Jews, women and men, Mizrahim and Ashkenazim, young and old, religious and secular. Distinguished elderly author Sammy Michael pointed out the futility of the ongoing occupation: "Death is not a threat to people who willingly give their lives for a cause."And Shulamit Aloni, former government minister and perennial conscience of Israel, called out her message of hope, "All of you here today are the harbingers of a mass movement that already has begun. You will be the teachers of democracy to this government. You will set an example of morality. We shall clean out the crimes of this country and fill it with peace!"
There were many moments that brought tears to my eyes last night. I will tell you of two: Famed singer Ahinoam Nini (known as "Noa", I believe, to her American fans) took the risk of alienating her Israeli right-wing fans, and sang to the crowd a Hebrew, Arabic, and English version of "Imagine" by the Beatles: "You may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one; I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one."
And the other was the transformation of a beloved Zionist song "Ein li eretz aheret". Reciting this song in two languages, Hebrew and Arabic, suddenly infused it with new meaning: "I have no other country to go to. And even if the land is burning under my feet, this is my home." For the Arabs in the crowd, the song suddenly became theirs, too, and for the Jews, it meant a land we both love deeply.
I hope someday you'll join us, and the world will be as one.
Gila Svirsky
Jerusalem
Coalition of Women for a Just Peace:
http://www.coalitionofwomen4peace.org
