January 13, 2003

Media Compilation #108: Media Compilation #108: A Matter of Conscience... and Truth!


Dear journalist

Once again, please allow me to draw your attention to the following articles.

Check especially "Helen Thomas Socks it to the White House" at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030106-1.html#2

She is not afraid to speak her conscience...

Jean Hudon
Earth Rainbow Network Coordinator
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com

This compilation is archived at
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/Archives2003/MediaCompilation108.htm


"Millions of Americans are so hooked on television that they fit the criteria for substance abuse as defined in the official psychiatric manual, according to Rutgers University psychologist Robert Kubey. Heavy TV viewers exhibit six dependency symptoms--two more than necessary to arrive at a clinical diagnosis of substance abuse. These include using TV as a sedative; indiscriminate viewing; feeling loss of control while viewing; feeling angry with oneself for watching so much; inability to stop watching; and suffering withdrawal when forced to stop watching TV."

- Taken from http://www.corporations.org/media/


CONTENTS

1. UN inspectors fear Bush will ignore them
2. Our quality of life peaked in 1974. It's all downhill now
3. Urge Congress to Reject Sharon's Request


See also:

Who is the greatest threat to peace?
http://www.time.com/time/europe/gdml/peace2003.html
Time Magazine is running an online poll on the biggest threat to world peace. But, for some reason, they've included the US in the list of dangerous countries. And guess what: the online polling this Monday morning has the United States leading at 73.1%, way out ahead of the others with Iraq at 16.5% and North Korea at 10.4% - Total Votes Cast: 73,835

UN prepares for huge Iraqi casualties (Jan 7) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/2636835.stm
Humanitarian effects of war could be grave. Up to 500,000 people could suffer serious injuries during the first phase of an attack on Iraq.

US weapons dossier may remain a secret (Jan 9)
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,3-537103,00.html
DONALD RUMSFELD, the US Defence Secretary, has suggested that Washington may present little or no evidence of Iraq’s quest for banned weapons even if President Bush decides to go to war. (...) Downing Street has indicated that it would prefer a second UN resolution before starting military strikes. But the prospect of a speedy vote is unlikely, partly because of the five incoming members who will change the dynamics of the 15-member body. Spain, Germany, Angola, Chile and Pakistan have taken over five of the ten rotating seats from Colombia, Ireland, Mauritius, Norway and Singapore.

Congressman Kucinich's Toronto Speech
http://www.EarthRainbowNetwork.com/Archives2003/MiscelSubjects170.htm
(Scroll to item #3 to read this important speech)
Keynote Speech by Dennis Kucinich in Canada Calls for Space Preservation Treaty Conference to Ban Space-based Weapons. (...) Canada has a rare opportunity to lead the world in this singular effort to keep space weapons-free. You have the chance to convene an international conference to shift the consciousness of the planet itself, to advance the reconciliation of all nations which is so needed.

Preemptive impeachment
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Ramares010403/ramares010403.html
(...) Boyle is offering his services as counsel, free of charge, to any member of the House of Representatives willing to sponsor articles of impeachment. He is experienced in this work, having undertaken it in 1991 for the late Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez (D-TX), in an effort to stop the first Persian Gulf War. It takes only one member to introduce articles of impeachment. Of course, it will take many more than that to vote for impeachment, which will culminate in a trial in the Senate. Boyle is confident that, once the articles are introduced, others, including Republicans, will co-sponsor them. But we have to convince our Representatives that impeachment is necessary for the country and politically safe for them. This non-violent, constitutional process may be our best way of stopping World War III and saving our civil rights. (...) We don't have to wait for the devastation of Baghdad to impeach the Bush cabal because they have already repudiated the Nuremberg Charter via the so-called Bush Doctrine of preventive war and pre-emptive attack. "This doctrine of pre-emptive warfare or pre-emptive attack was rejected soundly in the Nuremberg Judgment, " Boyle says. "The Nuremberg Judgment... rejected this Nazi doctrine of international law of alleged self-defense." The Bush Doctrine, embodied in the National Security Strategy document, published on the White House web site, is appalling, Boyle says. "It reads like a Nazi planning document prior to the Second World War." (...) Since Bush has indicated that he is not likely to go to war before the end of January or early February, Boyle thinks we have a month to stop the war by impeaching the chain of command: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, along with police state enforcer Ashcroft. Time and the Internet are advantages Rep. Gonzalez did not have in 1991, when the Persian Gulf War was launched the day after he introduced his articles. Boyle is asking the public to push for impeachment in two ways. First, contact your own member of Congress to urge him or her to introduce articles of impeachment, and tell the member that he or she may contact Prof. Boyle for assistance in drafting the articles. Second, demand impeachment by engaging in non-violent direct action, in exercise of your First Amendment rights to free speech, peaceable assembly and petition for redress of grievances. Boyle was pleased that 100,000 people marched around the White House last October 26 to protest the impending war on Iraq. But he says one million people need to peaceably take to the streets with signs, banners and voices shouting, "Impeach Bush!" "The bottom line: it's really up to you and to me to enforce the law and the Constitution against our own government," he says. "We are citizens of the United States of America. We have to act to preserve the republic that we have, to preserve our Constitution, to preserve a rule of law. This is our responsibility as citizens. We simply can't pass the buck and say 'Oh, some judge is going to do it somewhere.' It's up to us to keep this republic."

STOP THE WAR! IMPEACH BUSH... CHENEY, RUMSFELD, ASHCROFT
http://www.rise4news.net/impeach.html

Preemptive Impeachment: Stopping the War by Enforcing the Constitution

An interview with International Law Professor Francis A. Boyle (audio)

Totalitarianism nears (Jan 2)
http://www.roanoke.com/roatimes/news/story142267.html
Without protest, Americans are giving up freedom - IN NAZI Germany at this time of year, people freely shopped in large department stores for gifts for family and friends. The streets were full of traffic. It was "business as usual" for most of the citizens. While in the colonial states conquered by the Nazis, and in the concentrations camps for Jews, gays and communists, life was a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations. In the United States today, people freely shop in large department stores for gifts, and the streets are full of traffic. While in our most recent victim states of Afghanistan, Iraq under murderous sanctions, Argentina after engineering its economic collapse, and Colombia under U.S. military aid for repression, life is a living nightmare of dehumanization and human-rights violations. CLIP

Post-Saddam Iraq: Linchpin of a New Oil Order (Jan 3 - Worldwatch Institute)
http://www.fpif.org/papers/oil.html -- (A MUST READ!)
Only in the most direct sense is the Bush administration’s Iraq policy directed against Saddam Hussein. In contrast to all the loud talk about terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, and human rights violations, very little is being said about oil. The administration has been tight-lipped about its plans for a post-Saddam Iraq and has repeatedly disavowed any interest in the country’s oil resources. But press reports indicate that U.S. officials are considering a prolonged occupation of Iraq after their war to topple Saddam Hussein. It is likely that a U.S.-controlled Iraq will be the linchpin of a new order in the world oil industry. Indeed, a war against Iraq may well herald a major realignment of the Middle East power balance. (...) The pariah state of Iraq, however, is a key prize, with abundant, high-quality oil that can be produced at very low cost (and thus at great profit). At 112 billion barrels, its proven reserves are currently second only to Saudi Arabia’s. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) of the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that additional “probable and possible” resources could amount to 220 billion barrels. And because political instability, war, and sanctions have prevented thorough exploration of substantial portions of Iraqi territory, there is a chance that another 100 billion barrels lie undiscovered in Iraq’s western desert. All in all, Iraq’s oil wealth may well rival that of Saudi Arabia. (...)
Although the U.S. military presence is not solely about oil, oil is a key reason. In 1999, General Anthony C. Zinni, then the head of the U.S. Central Command, testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee that the Persian Gulf region is of “vital interest” to the U.S. and that the country “must have free access to the region’s resources.” Bush administration officials have, however, categorically denied oil is one of the reasons why they are pushing for regime change in Iraq. “Nonsense,” Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told 60 Minutes’ Steve Kroft in mid-December 2002. “It has nothing to do with oil, literally nothing to do with oil.” But oil industry officials interviewed by 60 Minutes on December 15 painted a different picture. Asked if oil is part of the equation, Phillip Ellis, head of global oil and gas operations for Boston Consulting replied, “Of course it is. No doubt.” In fact, oil company executives have been quietly meeting with U.S.-backed Iraqi opposition leaders. According to Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, “The future democratic government in Iraq will be grateful to the United States for helping the Iraqi people liberate themselves and getting rid of Saddam.” And he added that “American companies, we expect, will play an important and leading role in the future oil situation in Iraq.”

SHUT DOWN THE TOWN
http://www.thestranger.com/2003-01-01/feature.html
(...) In Seattle, antiwar activists are getting ready for the day the war starts. Several antiwar coalitions have put together a joint "Emergency Response" plan aimed at drawing attention to antiwar sentiment in Seattle. The plan kicks in as soon as Bush declares war, begins bombing, or deploys troops. (...) Activists predict that tens of thousands of people will take to Seattle's streets, bringing the center of the city to a standstill. CLIP

'Human shields' head for Iraq (Dec 29)
http://www.observer.co.uk/iraq/story/0,12239,866177,00.html
A convoy of anti-war activists, likely to include dozens of British volunteers, will leave London next month to act as human shields protecting strategic sites in Iraq.

The Lies We Are Told About Iraq (January 6)
http://www.latimes.com/la-op-marshall5jan05,0,290533.story
Pentagon Propaganda got us into the first Gulf War. Will we be fooled a second time?
OAKLAND -- The Bush administration's confrontation with Iraq is as much a contest of credibility as it is of military force. Washington claims that Baghdad harbors ambitions of aggression, continues to develop and stockpile weapons of mass destruction and maintains ties to Al Qaeda. Lacking solid evidence, the public must weigh Saddam Hussein's penchant for lies against the administration's own record. Based on recent history, that's not an easy choice.The first Bush administration, which featured Dick Cheney, Paul D. Wolfowitz and Colin L. Powell at the Pentagon, systematically misrepresented the cause of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the nature of Iraq's conduct in Kuwait and the cost of the Persian Gulf War. Like the second Bush administration, it cynically used the confrontation to justify a more expansive and militaristic foreign policy in the post-Vietnam era. (...) To this day, most people regard Operation Desert Storm as remarkably clean, marked by the expert use of precision weapons to minimize "collateral damage." While American TV repeatedly broadcast pictures of cruise missiles homing in on their targets, the Pentagon quietly went about a campaign of carpet bombing. Of the 142,000 tons of bombs dropped on Iraq and Kuwait in 43 days, only about 8% were of the "smart" variety. The indiscriminate targeting of Iraq's civilian infrastructure left the country in ruins. A United Nations mission in March 1991 described the allied bombing of Iraq as "near apocalyptic" and said it threatened to reduce "a rather highly urbanized and mechanized society ... to a preindustrial age." Officially, the U.S. military listed only 79 American soldiers killed in action, plus 59 members of allied forces. A subsequent demographic study by the U.S. Census Bureau concluded that Iraq probably suffered 145,000 dead -- 40,000 military and 5,000 civilian deaths during the war and 100,000 postwar deaths because of violence and health conditions. The war also produced more than 5 million refugees. Subsequent sanctions were estimated to have killed more than half a million Iraqi children, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and other international bodies. CLIP

A Lesson In U.S. Propaganda (Jan 3)
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14877
Why, since Desert Storm, have more than 160,000 of its US veterans been provided medical or disability benefits – over twice the rate of other wars? What were they exposed to on the battlefield? And how many Iraqi soldiers and civilians died? (Like the Pentagon, Saddam Hussein prefers to keep the matter closed.) Was the bombing of civilian infrastructure a deliberate strategy to foment revolution? If so, it was a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Were outright war crimes committed by our side, as journalist Seymour Hersh reported in April 2000? As with the purpose of the factory at Abu Ghreib, such questions do have answers, and those answers might be found – and our democracy would be the stronger for it. Far from coming up with any truths, however, President Bush, in his campaign to re-invade, has only offered us new fabrications. There is no evidence that Saddam Hussein works with al Qaeda, or that his weapons are – like North Korea's – a clear and present danger, or that the president himself does not plan to attack in any case. As we approach the anniversary of the start of Desert Storm, we should be ready for another war, and less inclined than ever to believe in it.

The Lies We Are Told About Iraq (Jan 6)
http://www.latimes.com/la-op-marshall5jan05,0,290533.story
Pentagon Propaganda got us into the first Gulf War. Will we be fooled a second time?

Israel's Sharon Slams Corruption Reports (Jan 8)
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=540&ncid=736&e=10&u=/ap/20030108/ap_on_re_mi_ea/israel_politics
With a widening corruption scandal endangering his re-election campaign, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon on Wednesday angrily denounced reports he is under police investigation for receiving $1.5 million from a South Africa-based businessman. Three weeks before Israel's Jan. 28 election, Sharon's once comfortable lead in the polls has been steadily dwindling since allegations surfaced of vote buying and underworld involvement in last month's primary, in which his Likud chose its candidates for parliament. (...) A poll broadcast on Israel TV, to be published Thursday in Haaretz, showed a dramatic shift. It showed Likud, which was winning 41 out of 120 parliament seats a month ago, now at 27, with Labor winning 24 seats and the reformist Shinui Party winning 17. CLIP

Saudis gave Al Qaida $500 million and never stopped giving (Jan 3)
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/breaking_5.html
Saudi Arabia has transferred $500 million to Al Qaida over the past decade, according to a report prepared for the United Nations.

Who Owns The Media
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/owners.html

The Incredible Shrinking Ownership Group
http://www.corporations.org/media/
In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S. At the time, Ben Bagdikian was called "alarmist" for pointing this out in his book, The Media Monopoly. In his 4th edition, published in 1992, he wrote "in the U.S., fewer than two dozen of these extraordinary creatures own and operate 90% of the mass media" -- controlling almost all of America's newspapers, magazines, TV and radio stations, books, records, movies, videos, wire services and photo agencies. He predicted then that eventually this number would fall to about half a dozen companies. This was greeted with skepticism at the time. When the 6th edition of The Media Monopoly was published in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 5 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world's largest media corporation. CLIP

The Nation's 'Big Ten'
http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html
The world's ten biggest media conglomerates. The 'Big Ten' shows that concentration of media owndership isn't just a problem here - it's happening worldwide.

All the world's a TV screen (Jan 3)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EA04Ak03.html
"Media attention to dire crises can have a tremendous impact on mobilizing the resolve needed to bring solutions. But for most Americans, it is as though these vast human catastrophes do not exist." "It is kind of emblematic of how television news likes to personalize and Americanize stories by devoting more time to one person, an American, as a victim of terrorism over a story that could potentially result in a nuclear war and the deaths of millions of people," said Jim Naureckas, an analyst at the media watchdog Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. And polls show that most of the US public relies primarily on television, as opposed to newspapers, magazines or radio, for most information about international affairs.

An important message from Robert Redford on threats to our environment
http://www.savebiogems.org/takeaction.as



1.

From: http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,868839,00.html

UN inspectors fear Bush will ignore them

Peter Beaumont, and Ed Vulliamy in New York
Sunday January 5, 2003
The Observer

UN weapons inspectors in Iraq fear their work - which has failed to turn up any evidence thus far of weapons of mass destruction - will still be used as an excuse to trigger a US-led invasion of Iraq.

Leaks from the inspections teams - and the two agencies in charge of them, Unmovic and the International Atomic Energy Agency - have fuelled an increasingly frenetic diplomatic effort among opponents of the war.

The weapons inspection teams in Iraq have visited breweries and former nuclear plants, and raided missile factories and pharmaceutical production lines. They have examined former weapons factories and interviewed scientists and university technicians. As of yesterday they had checked 230 sites in all. If one is to believe the few inspectors who have been prepared to be interviewed anonymously, they have found absolutely nothing.

Nuclear weapons sites that the British and the Americans claimed as late as last September had been reactivated have been revealed as rusting, disabled shambles. It may be that Iraq has squirrelled away its most portable weapons and components. But as one inspector complained to the LA Times last week, they had found 'zilch'.

He is not alone in his assessment. Another inspector in Baghdad complained to Newsday : 'If our goal is to catch them with their pants down, we are definitely losing. We haven't found an iota of concealed material yet.'

Other reports have suggested that there have been just two violations uncovered in Iraq - neither of them involving weapons of mass destruction.

And as UN officials in New York prepared to order a final massive blitz to find Iraq's alleged stock of hidden weapons, they told The Observer their conclusion is that either they do not exist or they 'have been outfoxed'.

With barely three weeks to go before the inspectors must produce their report to the UN Security Council on 27 January - and with President George Bush pouring new troops and materiel into the region - America and its closest ally, the UK, appear to be losing the propaganda war to Iraq.

Iraqi officials have taken to announcing on a daily basis, as each round of inspections finishes, what the inspectors know - that they have found nothing.

Neither the vast nuclear and chemical laboratories alleged by the Iraqi opposition and hawks in the US administration, nor the mobile biological laboratories said to be travelling the wastelands of Iraq, have been traced. And as time runs out before the UN deadline, even British Cabinet sources have started to trim their more bellicose statements of last year, admitting in private briefings that the prospect of war was now '60-40 against'.

Although Downing Street has refused to comment on reports that Ministers believe a war on Iraq can be avoided, both Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, are still hopeful that military conflict can be avoided by diplomatic means, putting them at odds with Bush, who told cheering US servicemen that Saddam had chosen the path of 'defiance' and that they could be called on to 'liberate Iraq'.

The new British assessment comes in the face of ever increasing opposition to an invasion of Iraq in the region, as even Turkey - America's strongest ally and main beneficiary of military aid in the area after Israel - has embarked on a round of energetic diplomacy to avoid a war. Turkish Prime Minister Abdullah Gul arrived in Syria yesterday for a brief visit to reinforce Turkey's relations with the Arab world in view of a prospective war.

Turkey says it is opposed to military action in Iraq, its southeastern neighbour. But it also depends on Washington's support for massive IMF loans and has not ruled out allowing American forces to use Turkish bases to launch attacks on Iraq.

The Turkish diplomatic effort has come amid increasing evidence of efforts by Iraq's neighbours to formulate a proposal to persuade America and Britain to allow them to persuade Saddam Hussein to step down and - perhaps - seek exile, thus averting war.

'It has been the private view for some time of a number of Iraq's neighbours that there should be a clean regime change without war against Iraq,' said one European diplomat last week. 'There have been suggestions in the last couple of weeks that this is a serious effort and that they would like the opportunity to persuade Saddam to go.'

Yesterday, as they set up a new base near Mosul in northern Iraq, UN inspectors were more aware than ever that it was their work that would be likely to trigger a war. Some of the inspectors are understood to be convinced that their mission has become a 'set-up job' and America will attack Iraq regardless of what they find.

CLIP



I ALREADY RECOMMENDED THIS ARTICLE TO YOUR ATTENTION BUT IT IS SO VITALLY IMPORTANT THAT I'M INCLUDING IT IN FULL

2.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,866785,00.html

Our quality of life peaked in 1974. It's all downhill now

We will pay the price for believing the world has infinite resources

George Monbiot
December 31, 2002
The Guardian

With the turning of every year, we expect our lives to improve. As long as the economy continues to grow, we imagine, the world will become a more congenial place in which to live. There is no basis for this belief. If we take into account such factors as pollution and the depletion of natural capital, we see that the quality of life peaked in the UK in 1974 and in the US in 1968, and has been falling ever since. We are going backwards.

The reason should not be hard to grasp. Our economic system depends upon never-ending growth, yet we live in a world with finite resources. Our expectation of progress is, as a result, a delusion.

This is the great heresy of our times, the fundamental truth which cannot be spoken. It is dismissed as furiously by those who possess power today - governments, business, the media - as the discovery that the earth orbits the sun was denounced by the late medieval church. Speak this truth in public and you are dismissed as a crank, a prig, a lunatic.

Capitalism is a millenarian cult, raised to the status of a world religion. Like communism, it is built upon the myth of endless exploitation. Just as Christians imagine that their God will deliver them from death, capitalists believe that theirs will deliver them from finity. The world's resources, they assert, have been granted eternal life.

The briefest reflection will show that this cannot be true. The laws of thermodynamics impose inherent limits upon biological production. Even the repayment of debt, the pre-requisite of capitalism, is mathematically possible only in the short-term. As Heinrich Haussmann has shown, a single pfennig invested at 5% compounded interest in the year AD 0 would, by 1990, have reaped a volume of gold 134bn times the weight of the planet. Capitalism seeks a value of production commensurate with the repayment of debt.

Now, despite the endless denials, it is clear that the wall towards which we are accelerating is not very far away. Within five or 10 years, the global consumption of oil is likely to outstrip supply. Every year, up to 75bn tonnes of topsoil are washed into the sea as a result of unsustainable farming, which equates to the loss of around 9m hectares of productive land.

As a result, we can maintain current levels of food production only with the application of phosphate, but phosphate reserves are likely to be exhausted within 80 years. Forty per cent of the world's food is produced with the help of irrigation; some of the key aquifers are already running dry as a result of overuse.

One reason why we fail to understand a concept as simple as finity is that our religion was founded upon the use of other people's resources: the gold, rubber and timber of Latin America; the spices, cotton and dyes of the East Indies; the labour and land of Africa. The frontier of exploitation seemed, to the early colonists, infinitely expandable. Now that geographical expansion has reached its limits, capitalism has moved its frontier from space to time: seizing resources from an infinite future.

An entire industry has been built upon the denial of ecological constraints. Every national newspaper in Britain lamented the "disappointing" volume of sales before Christmas. Sky News devoted much of its Christmas Eve coverage to live reports from Brent Cross, relaying the terrifying intelligence that we were facing "the worst Christmas for shopping since 2000". The survival of humanity has been displaced in the newspapers by the quarterly results of companies selling tableware and knickers.

Partly because they have been brainwashed by the corporate media, partly because of the scale of the moral challenge with which finity confronts them, many people respond to the heresy with unmediated savagery.

Last week this column discussed the competition for global grain supplies between humans and livestock. One correspondent, a man named David Roucek, wrote to inform me that the problem is the result of people "breeding indiscriminately ... When a woman has displayed evidence that she totally disregards the welfare of her offspring by continuing to breed children she cannot support, she has committed a crime and must be punished. The punishment? She must be sterilised to prevent her from perpetrating her crimes upon more innocent children."

There is no doubt that a rising population is one of the factors which threatens the world's capacity to support its people, but human population growth is being massively outstripped by the growth in the number of farm animals. While the rich world's consumption is supposed to be boundless, the human population is likely to peak within the next few decades. But population growth is the one factor for which the poor can be blamed and from which the rich can be excused, so it is the one factor which is repeatedly emphasised.

It is possible to change the way we live. The economist Bernard Lietaer has shown how a system based upon negative rates of interest would ensure that we accord greater economic value to future resources than to present ones. By shifting taxation from employment to environmental destruction, governments could tax over-consumption out of existence. But everyone who holds power today knows that her political survival depends upon stealing from the future to give to the present.

Overturning this calculation is the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced. We need to reverse not only the fundamental presumptions of political and economic life, but also the polarity of our moral compass. Everything we thought was good - giving more exciting presents to our children, flying to a friend's wedding, even buying newspapers - turns out also to be bad. It is, perhaps, hardly surprising that so many deny the problem with such religious zeal. But to live in these times without striving to change them is like watching, with serenity, the oncoming truck in your path.

http://www.monbiot.com



3.

Jan 10, 2003

From: Alerts@naaa-adc.org (Alerts@naaa-adc.org)

ACTION ALERT

Urge Congress to Reject Sharon's Request

ISSUE:

A high-ranking Israeli delegation headed by Sharon's bureau chief Dov Weisglass and Israeli Defense Ministry director-general Amos Yaron held talks on January 6, 2003, with Bush Administration officials regarding Israel's request for additional U.S. military assistance and loan guarantees. The Sharon Government is seeking an additional $12 billion from Washington, including $4 billion in special assistance to cover military expenses related to responding to the conflict with the Palestinians and the anticipated war with Iraq and $8 billion in U.S.- backed loan guarantees over a five-year period to help Israel recover from its current economic crisis.

The Sharon Government has been anxious to secure a public commitment for additional aid from the Bush Administration to counter domestic criticism in Israel for the sorry state of its economy under Sharon. However, the Administration, although sympathetic, does not seem willing to commit to a response at this time. Department of State Spokesman Richard Boucher explained on January 7, "I would not expect us to be able to react that quickly to specific dollar figures or requests. So we have had discussions with the Israelis, and I am sure we will continue and discuss it with them as we consider what we can do."

RESPONSE:

The U.S. already provides a total of $2.7 billion in military and economic assistance to Israel each year. Israel is also slated to receive an additional $200 million in fiscal year 2003 to help that country "combat terrorism." In effect, Israel is already receiving over $3 billion in U.S. tax dollars every year. Saddling the American taxpayer with a spending increase of $12 billion in additional military assistance and U.S. loan guarantees for Israel at this time makes bad economic sense for all Americans. On the foreign policy level, granting Sharon's request fails to account for the long-term political and strategic implications for U.S. national interests at this critical juncture in the Arab world if the U.S. appears to be supporting hard-line Israeli policies.

TAKE ACTION:

NAAA-ADC is strongly opposed to giving Israel an additional $12 billion in U.S. tax-payers' money at this time. Please, join us in sending a clear message to the Congress that America's priorities at this time should focus on helping Americans and putting the American economy back on track. Go to http://www.naaa-adc.org or visit http://capwiz.com/adc/home to make your voice heard now.

Together, we will make a difference.

NAAA-ADC, the government affairs affiliate of the American-Arab
Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC)
4201 Connecticut Ave., N.W.,
Suite 300
Washington, D.C. 20008
Tel: (202) 244-2990
Fax: (202) 244-3196
http://WWW.NAAA-ADC.org




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