From: Jei (jei@cc.hut.fi)
Date: Sat Jan 24 2004 - 13:17:01 MST
This is the guy, Mordechai Vanunu, that I couldn't remember earlier.
And it was 11 years in solitary confinement - memes must wreack havoc
in that time. Seems they also do for people in Guantanamo, considering
the suicide rate is 5%.
http://usa.mediamonitors.net/content/view/full/4232/
Israel's Nuclear Arms and the Bush Administration
by George S. Hishmeh
(Saturday 24 January 2004)
"Israel’s continued disregard of international inspections will continue to
drive countries in the region to acquire chemical and biological weapons, if
not nuclear arms."
Overview:
According to the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Israel is
the fifth largest nuclear power in the world. The CIA estimates Israel’s
nuclear weapons to number between 200 and 400. According to published
research on Israel’s nuclear program, Israel’s arsenal enables it to
obliterate all imaginable targets in most Arab countries." Furthermore, a
1993 official report to the U.S. Congress states that Israel has "undeclared
offensive chemical warfare capabilities" and is "generally reported as
having an undeclared offensive biological warfare program." Yet despite
Israel’s nuclear might, polls have shown that only 18.3 percent of Israelis
have a sense of national security. Moreover, one in four Israelis believe
that the country should give up its nuclear arsenal.
On the international level, there has been continuous apprehension over
Israel’s "alleged" nuclear program. Israel has purposely remained ambiguous
about its nuclear program, maintaining that it would not be the first to
introduce" nuclear weapons in the region. Successive U.S. governments have
refused to raise the issue with Israel and have remained silent as
international demands on Israel to tell the truth increase.
But with the growing tensions in the Middle East and the Bush
administration’s "crusade" to rid the Middle East of weapons of mass
destruction, can the United States justify its insistence that Iran, Libya
and Syria allow inspections while allowing Israel to disregard international
inspections?
Revealing the Secret - Mordechai Vanunu:
Details of Israel’s secret nuclear program were brought to light 18 years
ago by Mordechai Vanunu, the Israeli scientist at Israel’s top-secret Dimona
reactor. Vanunu, who has served 17 years in an Israeli prison—11 of which
were in harsh solitary confinement—took photographs of the sensitive areas
of the reactor complex and smuggled them to the United Kingdom were they
were published in the London Sunday Times. The revelations were the first
confirmation that Israel had an extensive nuclear program. Vanunu’s
scheduled release in less than three months is sure to spark speculation
over whether the whistle-blower still holds secrets that would add to
international apprehension over Israel’s nuclear program.
The Israeli nuclear program is rarely discussed in the United States, and
less so in Israel. The United Nations General Assembly and the International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference have adopted 13 resolutions
since 1987 appealing to Israel to join the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
With the resolutions being non-binding, Israel has ignored them.
The United States, United Nations, and Israel’s Weapons:
In May 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy told then-Israeli Prime Minister
David Ben Gurion that the Dimona reactor "seriously jeopardized U.S.-Israeli
relations." According to published materials, it was clear to the United
States that Israel was building an atomic bomb to the "vexation of Kennedy,
for whom nuclear non-proliferation was a touchstone." However, the Israelis
were "splendidly" evasive on the subject, setting off a flurry of diplomatic
activity with Washington demanding to inspect the site. Today, the United
States carefully avoids addressing Israel’s nuclear program and whether it
is in favor of international inspections of Israel’s nuclear stockpile. When
asked specifically about Israel, U.S. officials simply reiterate that the
United States "has a long-standing position of universal adherence to the
treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons."
Most disconcerting however, is the Bush administration’s relentless approach
on nuclear and chemical weapons in Iran and Libya, even Syria, while it
refuses to raise the issue with Israel. Israel’s nuclear program has
advanced rapidly since its initiation in the 1950s. Today, Israel is capable
of launching a nuclear attack by air, land and sea with its Dolphin Class
submarines from Germany specifically equipped with modified cruise missiles.
The German submarines are said to be the most advanced diesel submarines in
the world with only the United States capable of destroying them.
Representatives of the United Nations have also expressed concern over
Israel’s nuclear program. In late 2003, Mohammed Al Baradei told Israel’s
Haaretz newspaper that he believed Israel had nuclear weapons and that the
stockpile should be eliminated in order to promote peace in the Middle East.
He stressed that Israel has never tried to deny or disprove the assumption
that it has nuclear capability.
Nuclear Weapons or Peace:
The most puzzling decision has been the Bush administration’s lukewarm
reaction, to put it mildly, to Syria’s recent proposal at the United Nations
Security Council to make the Middle East an area free of weapons of mass
destruction. The Syrian proposal also included a call for all countries in
the Middle East to join the Non-Proliferation Treaty. To this day, Israel
remains the only country in the region that has yet to subscribe to this
international accord.
Israel’s continued disregard of international inspections will continue to
drive countries in the region to acquire chemical and biological weapons, if
not nuclear arms. Efforts to reach a stable and lasting peace between
countries that rely on having superior arms for leverage on the negotiating
table will fail. The best way to avoid calamity may be in linking nuclear
non-proliferation with an all-encompassing Middle East settlement.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/23/1074732600084.html
Guantanamo: a symbol of US loss of values
By Richard Cohen
January 24, 2004
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The US does not believe the old rules apply in the war against terror.
If you are about my age, you grew up on combat movies in which some
American POW told an enemy interrogator that he would supply only his
name, rank and serial number.
In the next breath, the American would cite the Geneva Convention in
demanding fair treatment of prisoners. Then, that sounded as American
as apple pie. Now, we're getting that pie in our face.
The reason, of course, is that the United States continues to hold
hundreds of suspected Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters at a special
military prison facility at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba.
I emphasise the word "suspected," because already more than 80 of the
original 660 detainees have been released - a few to be jailed in
their home countries, most just to go free.
It's not clear if the Geneva Convention applies - or can apply - to
detainees who are not conventional prisoners of war.
After all, al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation, not a state, and it
is not likely it will ever sign an armistice agreement ending
hostilities.
It's hard to believe that an al-Qaeda fighter, freed from Guantanamo,
would simply collect some doughnuts from the Red Cross and go home.
The nature of war has changed.
But not, I would hope, the nature of the United States. Yet for more
than two years now, the United States has been holding detainees
without the benefit of counsel when, the law of averages says, some of
them are bound to be innocent.
One of them might be David Hicks, a 28-year-old Australian who was
captured in Afghanistan in December 2001. It was not until last month
that Hicks was visited by his lawyer - the first time any Guantanamo
detainee had seen a lawyer.
It could be that Hicks, like some of the other detainees, was just in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
The word Guantanamo has become shorthand throughout the world for
American arrogance.
Whatever the case, this is where lawyers prove useful - and why
defendants in the United States are guaranteed the right to counsel.
Given enough time and enough pressure, even the innocent will confess
to something - anything just to end the isolation and deprivation.
From all accounts, Guantanamo is not a particularly harsh place. US
authorities don't go in for physical torture and all the Muslims are
allowed to pray.
But the isolation, the sheer hopelessness of the situation, has taken
its toll. Vanity Fair magazine reported last month that 20 per cent on
the detainees are on anti-depressants and that by the end of the year,
32 of them had attempted suicide. In the end, jail is jail.
In any sort of sweep such as the kind the US and its allies conducted
in Afghanistan, the innocent are bound to be found among the guilty.
That's a mathematical truth - especially when Afghan warlords were
given bounties for captured Taliban. What did they care if they hauled
in some innocent characters? It is these people, the innocent or the
merely deluded, who are bound to be in Guantanamo - and have been for
at least two years now.
To an amazing degree, the word Guantanamo has become shorthand
throughout the world for American arrogance and unilateralism. We
insist that our POWs and others be treated by universally accepted
rules - the Geneva Convention, for instance. But when we capture some
people, we say the old rules don't apply.
No one better articulated American arrogance than Defence Secretary
Donald Rumsfeld who, when asked in January 2002 why the Geneva
Convention did not apply to the detainees, replied that he did not
have "the slightest concern" about the treatment after what they had
done.
The Economist magazine, hardly an anti-American news weekly, called
Rumsfeld's remarks "unworthy of a nation which has cherished the rule
of law from its very birth".
My own education in this matter came last October when I went to visit
the former president of Germany, Richard von Weizsaecker, at his home
in Berlin. Weizsaecker - both pro-American and adamant in insisting
that Germany face its past - answered all my questions but then
brought up one himself: Guantanamo: "What is the rule of law and what
is a human right?"
These are excellent questions - directed not at me, but at the
President and Congress alike. Both have been awfully slow to respond.
To Weizsaecker, Guantanamo represents an America that has turned its
back on its values. Anyone who watched the old war movies can only
agree.
Richard Cohen is a columnist with The Washington Post.
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