Do you think we are fucking idiots? It is obvious you are lying.(I hope that you are joking.) Have you been to the rather large slums that pervade Istanbul? Do you know that Turkeys life expectancy is lower than most current EU countries?(You probably do, but that is not your purpose.)
In Turkey they cannot even afford to build things so that they will not fall every single earthquake.(Imagine if Taiwan had such shoddy builiding techniques it would have been a bloodbath during their recent earthquakes).
Turkey will be nothing but a huge insolvent problem for the EU. The EU will be encircled by Britian to the northwest and Turkey to the Southeast. The EU encircled by two of America's best whores! Turkey and Britain. The EU may as well dissolve if Turkey gets accepted!
Those Turkeys are even worse they never bathe. Sometimes they preen their feathers with their beaks but chickens and turkeys are dirty birds. If you touch them you will get ticks on you and they are hard to get out of your hair. You will have to cut the hair off.
In countries like France, Germany, the US, etc. whenever the fascist try to make a gathering of speech they are outnumbered by anti-fascist who gather to stop them. If there are anarchists there, they will bash the fascists, as the pacifists are a bunch of idiot pussies. In Turkey the ultra-right fascist party, MHP, gets 20 percent of the votes.
IE. The founder of Turkey, being a true fascist, proclaimed that Turks were the first civilization and that Turkish is the language all subsequent languages stem from. Of course the fact that this is blatantly false does not matter. Modern Turkish historians try to ignore this act, because it was so ridicilous, they cannot have many Westerners learning of it.
MEDICAL FACILITIES: Medical facilities are available, but may be limited outside urban areas. Cutting edge medical care does not exist in Turkey. Neither do the accepted practices of frequent soapy handwashing or covering of the mouth when coughing or sneezing and then washing hands. Medical providers are not required to update their knowledge regularly therefore medical treatment is often very dated.
There is a serious overuse of medications, especially antibiotics. Virtually no effort is expended to determine the appropriate antibiotic. Often patients are given six or more medications for an illness that may not require any drug therapy, or one drug after another is tried for a few days until the patient responds.
Complex cases involving life-threatening illness or injury cannot be managed in Turkey. Preventative health care is unknown. U.S. citizens traveling or residing in Turkey are urged to purchase insurance that will cover the costs of a medical evacuation should a serious problem occur.
The stuff in teletype is pretty funny! Taken from: http://travel.state.gov/turkey.html
Every anarchist propagandist is familiar with the key objections: who will keep criminals in check [in the anarchist society]? To my mind their concern is exaggerated since delinquency is a phenomenon of little importance compared with the vastness of ever present and general social realities. And one can believe in its automatic disappearance as a result of an increase in material well-being and education, not to mention advances in pedagogy and medicine. But however optimistic may be our hopes, and rosy the future, the fact remains that delinquency and the fear of crime today prevents peaceful social relations, and it will certainly not disappear from one moment to the next following a revolution, however radical and thoroughgoing it may turn out to be. It could even be the cause of upheaval and disintegration in a society of free men, just as an insignificant grain of sand can stop the most perfect machine.
It is worthwhile and indeed necessary that anarchists should consider the problem in greater detail than they normally do, not only in order the better to deal with a popular "objection" but in order not to expose themselves to unpleasant surprises and dangerous contradictions.
Naturally the crimes we are talking about are anti-social acts. That is those which offend human feelings and which infringe the right of others to equality in freedom, and not the many actions which the penal code punishes simply because they offend against the privileges of the dominant classes.
Crime, in our opinion, is any action which tends to consciously increase human suffering, it is the violation of the right of all to equal freedom and to the greatest possible enjoyment of material and moral well-being.
We know that having thus defined delinquency, it is always difficult even for those who accept the definition, to, determine in fact what actions are criminal and which are not; for Man's views differ as to what causes pain or happiness, what is good and what is bad, except in those bestial crimes which offend fundamental human feelings and are therefore universally condemned.
I imagine that no one would be prepared, theoretically, to deny that freedom understood in the sense of reciprocity, is the basic prerequisite of any civilisation, of "humanity"; but only anarchy represents its logical and complete realisation. On this assumption, he is a criminal-not against nature or the result of a metaphysical law, but against his fellow men and because the interests and feelings of others have been offended - whoever violates the equal freedom of others. And so long as such people exist, we must defend ourselves.
This necessary defence against those who violate not the status quo but the deepest feelings which distinguish men from beasts, is one of the pretexts by which governments justify their existence. One must eliminate all the social causes of crime, one must develop in man brotherly feelings, and mutual respect; one must, as Fourier put it, seek useful alternatives to crime. But if, and so long as, there are criminals, either the people will find the means, and have the energy, to directly defend themselves against them, or the police and the magistrature will reappear and with them, government.
It is not by denying a problem that one solves it.
One can, with justification. fear that this necessary defence against crime could be the beginning of and the pretext for, a new system of oppression and privilege. It is the anarchists' mission to see that this does not happen. By seeking the causes of each crime and making every effort to eliminate them; by making it impossible for anybody to derive personal advantage out of the detection of crime, and leaving it to the interested groups themselves to take whatever steps they deem necessary for their defence; by accustoming oneself to consider criminals as brothers who have strayed. as sick people needing loving treatment, as one would for any hydro- phobe or dangerous lunatic - it will be possible to reconcile the complete freedom of all with defence against those who obviously and dangerously threaten it.
Obviously this is possible. when crime will be reduced to sporadic, individual and truly pathological cases. If it were a fact that criminals were too numerous and powerful. If, for example, they were what the bourgeoisie and fascism are today [1922], then it is not a question of discussing what we will do in an anarchist society.
With the growth of civilisation, and of social relations; with the growing awareness of human solidarity which unites mankind; with the development of intelligence and a refinement of feelings there is certainly a corresponding growth of social duties, and many actions which were considered as strictly individual rights and independent of any collective control will be considered. indeed they already are, matters affecting everybody, and must therefore be carried out in conformity with the general interest. For instance, even in our times parents are not allowed to keep their children in ignorance and bring them up in a way which is harmful to their development and future well-being. A person is not allowed to live in filthy conditions and neglect those rules of hygiene which can affect the health of others; one is not allowed to have an infectious disease and not have it treated. In a future society it will be considered a duty to seek to ensure the good of all, just as it will be considered blameworthy to procreate if there are reasons to believe that the progeny will be unhealthy and unhappy. But this sense of our duties to others, and of theirs to us must, according to our social concepts, develop Without any other outside sanction than the esteem or the disapproval of our fellow citizens. Respect, the desire for the well-being of others must enter into the customs, and manifest themselves not as duties but as a normal satisfaction of social instincts.
There are those who would improve the morality of people by force, who would wish to introduce an Article into the penal code for every possible human action, who would place a gendarme alongside every nuptial bed and by every table. But these people if they lack the coercive powers to impose their ideas, only succeed in making a mockery of the best things; and if they have the power to command, make what is good hateful and encourage reaction. For us the carrying out of social duties must be a voluntary act, and one has the right to intervene with material force only against those who offend against others violently and prevent them from living in peace. Force, physical restraint, must only be used against attacks of violence and for no other reason than that of self-defence.
But who will judge? Who will provide the necessary defence ? Who will establish what measures of restraint are to be used? We do not see any other way than that of leaving it to the interested parties, to the people, that is the mass of citizens, who will act in different ways according to the circumstances and according to their different degress of social development. One must, above all, avoid the creation of bodies specialising in police work, perhaps something will be lost in repressive efficiency but one will also avoid the creation of the instrument or every tyranny.
We do not believe in the infallibility, nor even in the general goodness of the masses; on the contrary. But we believe even less in the infallibility and goodness of those who seize power and legislate, who consolidate and perpetuate the ideas and interests which prevail at any given moment.
In every respect the injustice, and transitory violence of the people is preferable to the leaden-rule, the legalised State violence of the judiciary and police.
We are, in any case, only one of the forces acting in society, and history will advance, as always, in the direction of the resultant of all the [social] forces.
We must reckon with a residue of delinquency which we hope will be eliminated more or less rapidly, but which in the meantime will oblige the mass of workers to take defensive action. Discarding every concept of punishment and revenge, which still dominate penal law, and guided only by the need for self-defence and the desire to rehabilitate, we must seek the means to achieve our goal, without falling into the dangers of authoritarianism and consequently finding ourselves in contradiction with the system of liberty and free-will on which we seek to build the new society.
For authoritarians and statesmen. the question is a simple one: a legislative body to list the crimes and prescribe the punishments; a police force to hunt out the delinquents; a magistrature to judge them and a prison service to make them suffer. And, as is understandable, the legislative body seeks through its penal laws to defend, above all established interest, which it represents, and to protect the State from those who seek to "subvert" it. The police force exists to suppress crime, and having therefore an interest in the continued existence of crime becomes provocative, and develops in its officers aggressive and perverse instincts; the migistrate also lives and prospers thanks to crime and delinquents, and serves the interests of the government and the ruling classes, and acquires, in the course of exercising its function, a special way of reasoning, which makes it into a machine for awarding a maximum number of people the longest sentences it can. The warders are, or become, insensitive to the suffering of prisoners and at best, passively observe the rules without a spark of human feeling. One sees the results in statistics on delinquency. The penal laws are changed, the police force and the magistrature are reorganised, the prison system is reformed, and delinquency persists and resists all attempts to destroy or reduce it. It is true of the past and the present, and we think it will apply in the future too. If the whole concept of crime is not changed, and all the organisms which live on the prevention and repression of delinquency are not abolished!
There are in France stringent laws against the traffic in drugs and against those who take them. And as always happens, the scourge grows and spreads in spite, and perhaps because of, the laws. The same is happening in the rest of Europe and in America. Doctor Courtois Suffit, of the French Academy of Medicine, who, already last year 1921, had sounded the alarm against the dangers of cocaine, noting the failure of penal legislation, now demands new and more stringent laws.
It is the old mistake of legislators, in spite of experience invariably showing that laws, however barbarous they may be, have never served to suppress vice or to discourage delinquency. The more severe the penalties imposed on the consumers and traffickers of cocaine, the greater will be the attraction of forbidden fruits and the fascination of the risks incurred by the consumer, and the greater will be the profits made by the speculators, avid for money.
It is useless, therefore to hope for anything from the law. We must suggest another solution. Make the use and sale of cocaine free [from restrictions], and open kiosks where it would be sold at cost price or even under cost. And then launch a great propaganda campaign to explain to the public, and let them see for themselves, the evils of cocaine - no one would engage in counter-propaganda because nobody could exploit the misfortunes of cocaine addicts.
Certainly the harmful use of cocaine would not disappear completely, because the social causes which create and drive those poor devils to the use of drugs would still exist. But in any case the evil would decrease, because nobody could make profits out of its sale, and nobody could speculate on the hunt for speculators. And for this reason our suggestion either will not be taken into account, or it will be considered impractical and mad.
Yet intelligent and disinterested people might say to themselves: Since the penal laws have proved to be impotent, would it not be a good thing, as an experiment, to try out the anarchist method?
We will not repeat the classical arguments against the death penalty. They seem lies, when we hear them used by those who then come out in favour of life imprisonment and other inhuman substitutes for the death penalty. Nor will we speak of the "sanctity of life" which all affirm but violate when it suits them, either by actually taking life or treating others, in such a way as to torment or shorten their lives.
Fortunately only few men are born, or become, moral bloodthirsty and sadistic monsters whose death we would not know how to mourn. If these poor devils were to be a continuous threat to everybody and there were no other way of defending ourselves other than by killing them, one could also admit the death penalty.
But the trouble is that in order to carry out the death penalty one needs an executioner. The executioner is, or becomes, a monster, and on balance it is better to let the monsters that there are go on living, rather than to create others.
And this applies to real delinquents, anti-social beings who arouse no sympathy and provoke no commiseration When it comes to the death penalty as a means of political struggle, then well history teaches us what can be the consequences.
The traditional goal of aesthetics is to make one feel, in privation and absence, certain past elements of life that through the mediation of art would escape the confusion of appearances, since appearance is what suffers from the reign of time. The degree of aesthetic success is measured by a beauty inseparable from duration, and tending even to lay claim to eternity. The Situationist goal is immediate participation in a passionate abundance of life, through the variation of fleeting moments resolutely arranged. The success of these moments can only be their passing effect. Situationists consider cultural activity, from the standpoint of totality, as an experimental method for constructing daily life, which can be permanently developed with the extension of leisure and the disappearance of the division of labor (beginning with the division of artistic labor).
2
Art can cease to be a report on sensations and become a direct organization of higher sensations. It is a matter
of producing ourselves, and not things that enslave us.
3
Mascolo is right in saying ("Le Communisme") that the reduction of the working day by the regime of the
dictatorship of the proletariat is "the most certain assurance that it can give of its revolutionary authenticity." Indeed, "if man is a commodity, if he is treated as a thing, if the general relations of men among themselves are the relations of thing to thing, it is because it is possible to buy his time from him." Mascolo, however, is too quick to conclude that "the time of a man freely employed" is always well spent, and that "the purchase of time is the sole evil." There is no freedom in the employment of time without the possession of modern instruments for the construction of daily life. The use of such instruments will mark the leap of a utopian revolutionary art to an experimental revolutionary art.
4
An international association of Situationists can be seen as a union of workers in an advanced sector of
culture, or more precisely as a union of all those who claim the right to a task now impeded by social conditions; hence as an attempt at an organization of professional revolutionaries in culture.
5
We are separated in practice from true control over the material powers accumulated by our time. The
Communist revolution has not occurred, and we still live within the framework of the decomposition of old cultural superstructures. Henri Lefebvre correctly sees that this contradiction is at the heart of a specifically modern discordance between the progressive individual and the world, and calls the cultural tendency based on this discordance revolutionary- romantic. The defect in Lefebvre's conception lies in making the simple expression of discordance a sufficient criterion for revolutionary action within the culture. Lefebvre renounces beforehand all experiments toward profound cultural change while remaining satisfied with a content: awareness of the (still too remote) impossible-possible, which can be expressed no matter what form it takes within the framework of decomposition.
6
Those who want to overcome the old established order in all its aspects cannot attach themselves to the
disorder of the present, even in the sphere of culture. One must struggle and not go on waiting, in culture as well, for the moving order of the future to make a concrete appearance. It is its possibility, already present in our midst, that devalues all expression in known cultural forms. One must lead all forms of pseudocommunication to their utter destruction, to arrive one day at real and direct communication (in our working hypothesis of higher cultural means: the constructed situation). Victory will be for those who will be able to create disorder without loving it.
7
In the world of cultural decomposition we can test our strength but not employ it. The practical task of
overcoming our discordance with the world, i.e., of surmounting the decomposition by some higher constructions, is not romantic. We will be "revolutionary romantics," in Lefebvre's sense, precisely to the degree of our failure.
I recently bought a copy of Total Liberty v2/4 as it featured an article entitled "Science Fiction as Social Criticism". Having read the item I can only hope that nobody actually takes Peter Neville's piece as representative of anarchist thinking in this area or even remotely accurate or up-to-date. To put it bluntly Peter spends more time banging on about his favourite bugbears than he does addressing the subject under consideration. He also shows a total ignorance of post - 1970 SF which, contrary to his assertion that "we do not have any SF writers in our ranks", has many authors either writing from an explicitly anarchist position or using anarchist themes.
I am amazed, for example that rather than discuss Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", a well-regarded and widely discussed book with an explicit anarchist theme, Peter instead takes umbrage over an totally unrelated issue (feminism) and ignores the anarchist subject matter completely. Again he mentions New Worlds, but fails to have noticed that it was edited for many years by an explicitly anarchist SF writer Michael Moorcock. Neither does Peter bother to mention the recurring character of Nestor Makhno who appears in many of Moorcock's books, the anarchic society portrayed in the Dancers at the End of Time series and the general anarchist slant to his writings that continues to this day (in for example King of the City - a novel of London since the war.)
Other anarchist writers Peter has missed out on totally include Bruce Sterling - his Islands in the Net is an excellent SF novel with explicit anarchist themes; Norman Spinrad, who said of his 'Child of Fortune'..."it's another anarchist novel, because there's no government (All right, so I'm an anarchist - but I'm a syndicalist. You have to have organised anarchy, because otherwise it doesn't work".) How can Peter talk of SF without even mentioning Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus trilogy with its variety of anarchists and themes?
Among contemporary British SF writers, one would have to mention Ken Macleod and Iain M. Banks. Ken's books are SF written by someone who obviously knows the contemporary radical (including anarchist) scene and has used elements for his futuristic visions. There's now five in the series, including "The Stone Canal" which even mentions Freedom bookshop in Angel Alley (p.87)! Iain M. Banks has set his "Culture" series in an anarcho-socialist future and again is widely regarded as some of the best of the British crop of SF writers. One should also mention Alan Moore, whose graphic novel V for vendetta has an explicit anarchist theme. Other current writers who write from an anarchist perspective (or who have done) include Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Rudy Rucker, Marge Piercey, Judith Merril, Harry Harrison and so on and so on. For an excellent anthology do read the Semiotext(e) SF anthology recently reprinted by AK Press or perhaps try the Mirror Shades Cyber punk anthology.
Anyway, you should get the picture. There is much good SF that is of interest to anarchists. It's just a shame that Peter Neville wasted so much space in your wee zine talking about himself and his problems (nothing new there) and failed to do his homework and find out about what he was supposed to be writing about.
Richard Alexander mailto:rick.blackchip@virgin.net
-- Dan Clore mailto:clore@columbia-center.org
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_ Including all my fiction through 2001, and more. http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 1587154838/thedanclorenecro
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I've watched the dogs of war enjoying their feast I've seen the western world go down in the east The food of love became the greed of our time But now we're living on the profits of crime --Black Sabbath, "Hole in the Sky"
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Use of Torture Against Palestinian Political Priso
on
Star Wars as Pulp Sci-Fi
·
· Score: -1, Offtopic
The use of torture against Palestinian political prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.
February 2000
Since its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel has carried out over 600,000 arrests. Today, more than 500 Palestinian prisoners are still being held in Israeli jails without trial; 7 women detainees are held in Talmond prison; 120 are in poor health conditions; 25 are elderly men; approximately 60 are minors and children; 20 detainees are being held in solitary confinement; 40 detainees are Palestinian- Israelis; and 130 detainees are nationals of other Arab countries.
Palestinian political prisoners are subjected to egregious torture by the interrogators of the Israeli General Security Services (the Shin Bet). Torture is used routinely and systematically, even in circumstances where there is no evident threat to Israel's "security."
Torture is defined as the "... infliction of pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, for the purpose of obtaining information or confession by a person acting in an official capacity"- The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, which Israel ratified in 1991.
Israel remains the only state that has legislated for the use of torture. No country other than Israel has "legally" allowed the use torture in its "security" procedures.
In 1987, Israel decided to establish the Landau Commission to investigate allegations of torture against the General Security Service (GSS). However, its recommendations contributed to the systematic torture of hundreds of Palestinians each year. Later that year, it released its report with the exception of a secret appendix. The report stated that the GSS had used force in an unacceptable manner to the international community. Furthermore, the report confirms that GSS personnel had lied under oath about their activities.
The Landau Commission argued that the methods used by the GSS were not "clearly illegal" because the interrogators were "following the orders of their supervisors." The secret appendix provided a detailed outline of the physical and psychological violent methods used and their assessment by the Landau Commission.
The Landau Commission's findings are in violation of Israel's obligations under the Convention. What is clear is that Israel, by adopting the findings of the Landau Commission and then keeping them secret from the Committee, has violated its reporting obligations under Article 19. Israel justifies this secrecy by referring to its rhetoric of "necessity and security."
Between 1987 and 1994, the GSS interrogated some 23,000 Palestinians (Ha'aretz, 13 January 1995).
Interviews conducted between 1988 and May 1992 with more than 700 Palestinians indicate that at least 94% of those interrogated by the GSS were tortured or ill- treated (Al- Haq, Torture for Security). According to LAW, 20 Palestinians died as a result of ill treatment during their interrogation by the Shin Bet.
On September 15, 1999, the Ministerial Committee for GSS Matters, headed by Prime Minister Barak, appointed a committee to "find a lawful solution to the use of physical force in interrogations of terrorist suspects, where there is an immediate security danger."
In October 1999, the draft Criminal Procedure (Powers and Special Interrogation Methods for Security Offences) Law, was introduced into Israel's parliament (the Knesset.) This would allow the General Security Service (GSS) to continue to use coercive measures during interrogations.
Torture methods used by the GSS include the following: Al-Shabeh, suffocation, food deprivation, sleep deprivation and restriction of toilet facilities, beatings, "The Cupboard" treatment, Falaqa, pulling hair off the body, electric shocks and burning, threats, including death threats and violent shaking. (See below for further definition).
Israel is in breach of the object and purpose of the Convention against torture. It is also in grave violation of various other international treaties-- including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, the 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Regulations annexed to the 1907 Hague Convention (IV), the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel in the Protection of Prisoners and Detainees Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Punishment, and numerous others.
Torture is perceived under International law as unjustifiable under any and all circumstances. The prohibition of torture applies to the use of any kind of physical or psychological force in interrogations. International law does not provide any conditions or reservations that sanction the use of torture or ill treatment in interrogations.
More than 100 states have ratified the Convention against torture, which means that they have accepted certain obligations to take effective measures to prevent acts of torture and to ensure the classification of such acts as "an offence" and, thus, punishable under their criminal law. Many national Constitutions, criminal codes, laws and regulations proclaim the prohibition of torture.
All confessions obtained under coercion or through the use of torture and ill-treatment are inadmissible in any court of law. The way in which information is obtained by Israel from Palestinian detainees is unlawful and in violation of Article 15 of the Convention-- since they were obtained by unlawful methods. This information is also often undisclosed and is not passed to the Palestinian National Authority.
In 1991, Israel ratified the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966; it remains, however, in breach of Article 7, which states, " no one shall be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
Israel is also in breach of section 2(2) of the Convention against torture which stipulates that, " No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
A 1994 State Comptroller's Report, which was partially released in summary form in February of 2000, included very severe findings on the work of the GSS interrogation methods, such as disobeying the law, the Landau Commission guidelines, and the internal guidelines formulated by the service itself.
In February 1999, Shin Bet dropped its demand that the Knesset enacts legislation that would accord the secret service " special means"-- a euphemism for physical or mental abuse-- to conduct interrogations. However, 46 Members of Knesset have agreed to sponsor a bill that will grant GSS interrogators the right to use physical force against detainees.
Whenever the subject of torture comes into question in Israel, the debate concentrates on the 'ticking bomb' theory which is the basis given for justifying torture in GSS interrogations. However, there is no justification for torture is acceptable whether on legal, moral, or security grounds.
Definitions of the common Israeli torture methods: 1. Al-Shabeh: a common technique exercised by shackling the detainee to a small chair or a wall, while covering the head with a sack that reeks of vomit and urine. The detainee is then deprived of food and sleep.
2. Suffocation: pressure is applied to the windpipe, which inevitably causes the detainees to lose consciousness.
3. Food deprivation: this is either partial or total during the interrogation process. Sometimes the hands are handcuffed while the detainee eats what is offered, usually small amounts of food or of poor quality.
4. Sleep deprivation and toilet facilities restriction: a detainee who is attempting to sleep would be prevented from doing so by loud noises and constant interference. Access to toilet facilities would also be prevented forcing the detainees to soil themselves, causing humiliation and emotional and physical pressure.
5. Beatings: the use of various tools, such as clubs, fists and boots aiming at sensitive areas such as the genitals, stomach, larynx and head.
6. "The Cupboard" treatment: detainees are put in a confined space (one square meter), in complete darkness, and almost completely closed. The detainee's head is covered with a sack while locked into "the cupboard" for a number of days and is subjected to disturbing noises.
7. Falaqa: detainees are hand cuffed, hooded and laid on the ground in a position so that the bottom of their feet is facing up. Their feet are then whipped numerous times with a stick and/or a plastic hose--causing the victim to lose consciousness.
8. Pulling hair off the body: hair is forcefully pulled off very sensitive areas such as face, body and head.
9. Electric shocks and burning: these are administrated while the detainees are hooded or blindfolded. Lit cigarettes are used to burn sensitive areas of the victims'bodies.
What do you know the Japanese can not speak perfect idiomatic English! Kind of like how you cannot speak a word of Japanese, let alone idiomatic Japanese.
[Asaf Oron, a Sergeant Major in the Giv'ati Brigade, is one of the original 53 Israeli soldiers who signed the "Fighters' Letter" declaring that from now on they will refuse to serve in the Occupied territories. He is signer #8 and one of the first in the list to include a statement explaining his action. (There are 251 signers as of February 17, 2002.) Below is the translation of Oron's statement by Ami Kronfeld of Jewish Peace News.] On February 5, 1985, I got up, left my home, went to the Compulsory Service Center on Rashi Street in Jerusalem, said goodbye to my parents, boarded the rickety old bus going to the Military Absorption Station and turned into a soldier. Exactly seventeen years later, I find myself in a head to head confrontation with the army, while the public at large is jeering and mocking me from the sidelines. Right wingers see me as a traitor who is dodging the holy war that's just around the corner. The political center shakes a finger at me self-righteously and lectures me about undermining democracy and politicizing the army. And the left? The square, establishment, "moderate" left that only yesterday was courting my vote now turns its back on me as well. Everyone blabbers about what is and what is not legitimate, exposing in the process the depth of their ignorance of political theory and their inability to distinguish a real democracy from a third world regime in the style of Juan Peron. Almost no one asks the main question: why would a regular guy get up one morning in the middle of life, work, the kids and decide he's not playing the game anymore? And how come he is not alone but there are fifty... I beg your pardon, a hundred... beg your pardon again, now almost two hundred regular, run of the mill guys like him who've done the same thing? Our parents' generation lets out a sigh: we've embarrassed them yet again. But isn't it all your fault? What did you raise us on? Universal ethics and universal justice, on the one hand: peace, liberty and equality to all. And on the other hand: "the Arabs want to throw us into the sea," "They are all crafty and primitive. You can't trust them." On the one hand, the songs of John Lennon, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bob Marely, Pink Floyd. Songs of peace and love and against militarism and war. On the other hand, songs about a sweetheart riding the tank after sunset in the field: "The tank is yours and you are ours." [allusions to popular Israeli songs - AK]. I was raised on two value systems: one was the ethical code and the other the tribal code, and I naïvely believed that the two could coexist. This is the way I was when I was drafted. Not enthusiastic, but as if embarking on a sacred mission of courage and sacrifice for the benefit of society. But when, instead of a sacred mission, a 19 year old finds himself performing the sacrilege of violating human beings' dignity and freedom, he doesn't dare ask - even himself - if it's OK or not. He simply acts like everyone else and tries to blend in. As it is, he's got enough problems, and boy is the weekend far off. You get used to it in a hurry, and many even learn to like it. Where else can you go out on patrol - that is, walk the streets like a king, harass and humiliate pedestrians to your heart's content, and get into mischief with your buddies - and at the same time feel like a big hero defending your country? The Gaza Exploits became heroic tales, a source of pride for Giv' ati, then a relatively new brigade suffering from low self esteem. For a long time, I could not relate to the whole "heroism" thing. But when, as a sergeant, I found myself in charge, something cracked inside me. Without thinking, I turned into the perfect occupation enforcer. I settled accounts with "upstarts" who didn't show enough respect. I tore up the personal documents of men my father's age. I hit, harassed, served as a bad example - all in the city of Kalkilia, barely three miles from grandma and grandpa's home-sweet-home. No. I was no "aberration." I was exactly the norm. Having completed my compulsory service, I was discharged, and then the first Intifada began (how many more await us?) Ofer, a comrade in arms who remained in the service has become a hero: the hero of the second Giv'ati trial. He commanded a company that dragged a detained Palestinian demonstrator into a dark orange grove and beat him to death. As the verdict stated, Ofer was found to have been the leader in charge of the whole business. He spent two months in jail and was demoted - I think that was the most severe sentence given an Israeli soldier through the entire first Intifada, in which about a thousand Palestinians were killed. Ofer's battalion commander testified that there was a order from the higher echelons to use beatings as a legitimate method of punishment, thereby implicating himself. On the other hand, Efi Itam, the brigade commander, who had been seen beating Arabs on numerous occasions, denied that he ever gave such an order and consequently was never indicted. Today he lectures us on moral conduct on his way to a new life in politics. (In the current Intifada, incidentally, the vast majority of incidents involving Palestinian deaths are not even investigated. No one even bothers.) And in the meantime, I was becoming more of a civilian. A copy of The Yellow Wind [a book on life in the Occupied Territories by the Israeli writer David Grossman, available in English -AK] which had just come out, crossed my path. I read it, and suddenly it hit me. I finally understood what I had done over there. What I had been over there. I began to see that they had cheated me: They raised me to believe there was someone up there taking care of things. Someone who knows stuff that is beyond me, the little guy. And that even if sometimes politicians let us down, the "military echelon" is always on guard, day and night, keeping us safe, each and every one of their decisions the result of sacred necessity. Yes, they cheated us, the soldiers of the Intifadas, exactly as they had cheated the generation that was beaten to a pulp in the War of Attrition and in the Yom Kippur War, exactly as they had cheated the generation that sank deep into the Lebanese mud during the Lebanon invasions. And our parents' generation continues to be silent. Worse still, I understood that I was raised on two contradictory value systems. I think most people discover even at an earlier age they must choose between two value systems: an abstract, demanding one that is no fun at all and that is very difficult to verify, and another which calls to you from every corner - determining who is up and who is down, who is king and who - pariah, who is one of us and who is our enemy. Contrary to basic common sense, I picked the first. Because in this country the cost-effective analysis comparing one system to another is so lopsided, I can't blame those who choose the second. I picked the first road, and found myself volunteering in a small, smoke-filled office in East Jerusalem, digging up files about deaths, brutality, bureaucratic viciousness or simply daily harassments. I felt I was atoning, to some extent, for my actions during my days with the Giv'ati brigade. But it also felt as if I was trying to empty the ocean out with a teaspoon. Out of the blue, I was called up for the very first time for reserve duty in the Occupied Territories. Hysterically, I contacted my company commander. He calmed me down: We will be staying at an outpost overlooking the Jordan river. No contacts with the local population is expected. And that indeed was what I did, but some of my friends provided security for the Damia Bridge terminal [where Palestinians cross from Jordan to Israel and vice versa - AK]. This was in the days preceding the Gulf War and a large number of Palestinian refugees were flowing from Kuwait to the Occupied Territories (from the frying pan into the fire). The reserve soldiers - mostly right wingers - cringed when they saw the female consscripts stationed in the terminal happily ripping open down-comforters and babies' coats to make sure they didn't contain explosives. I too cringed when I heard their stories, but I was also hopeful: reserve soldiers are human after all, whatever their political views. Such hopes were dashed three years later, when I spent three weeks with a celebrated reconnaissance company in the confiscated ruins of a villa at the outskirts of the Abasans (if you don't know where this is, it's your problem). This is where it became clear to me that the same humane reserve soldier could also be an ugly, wretched macho undergoing a total regression back to his days as a young conscript. Already on the bus ride to the Gaza strip, the soldiers were competing with each other: whose "heroic" tales of murderous beatings during the Intifada were better (in case you missed this point: the beatings were literally murderous: beating to death). Going on patrol duty with these guys once was all that I could take. I went up to the placement officer and requested to be given guard duty only. Placement officers like people like me: most soldiers can't tolerate staying inside the base longer than a couple of hours. Thus began the nausea and shame routine, a routine that lasted three tours of reserve duty in the Occupied Territories: 1993, 1995, and 1997. The "pale-gray" refusal routine. For several weeks at a time I would turn into a hidden "prisoner of conscience," guarding an outpost or a godforsaken transmitter on top of some mountain, a recluse. I was ashamed to tell most of my friends why I chose to serve this way. I didn't have the energy to hear them get on my case for being such a "wishy washy" softy. I was also ashamed of myself: This was the easy way out. In short, I was ashamed all over. I did "save my own soul." I was not directly engaged in wrongdoing - only made it possible for others to do so while I kept guard. Why didn't I refuse outright? I don't know. It was partly the pressure to conform, partly the political process that gave us a glimmer of hope that the whole occupation business would be over soon. More than anything, it was my curiosity to see actually what was going on over there. And precisely because I knew so well, first hand, from years of experience what was going on over there, what reality was like over there, I had no trouble seeing, through the fog of war and the curtain of lies, what has been taking place over there since the very first days of the second Intifada. For years, the army had been feeding on lines like "We were too nice in the first Intifada," and "If we had only killed a hundred in the very first days, everything would have been different." Now the army was given license to do things its way. I knew full well that [former Prime Minister] Ehud Barak was giving the army free hand, and that [current Chief of Staff] Shaul Mofaz was taking full advantage of this to maximize the bloodshed. By then, I had two little kids, boys, and I knew from experience that no one - not a single person in the entire world - will ever make sure that my sons won't have to serve in the Occupied Territories when they reach 18. No one, that is, except me. And no one but me will have to look them in the eye when they're all grown up and tell them where dad was when all that happened. It was clear to me: this time I was not going. Initially, this was a quiet decision, still a little shy, something like "I am just a bit weird, can't go and can't talk about it too much either." But as time went by, as the level of insanity, hatred, and incitement kept rising, as the generals were turning the Israeli Defense Forces into a terror organization, the decision was turning into an outcry: "If you can't see that this is one big crime leading us to the brink of annihilation, then something is terribly wrong with you!" And then I discovered that I was not alone. Like discovering life on another planet. The truth is that I understand why everyone is mad at us. We spoiled the neat little order of things. The holy Status Quo states that the Right holds the exclusive rights to celebrate the blood and ask for more. The role of the Left, on the other hand, is to wail while sitting in their armchairs sipping wine and waiting for the Messiah to come and with a single wave of his magic wand make the Right disappear along with the settlers, the Arabs, the weather, and the entire Middle East. That's how the world is supposed to work. So why are you causing such a disturbance? What's your problem? Bad boys! Woe to you, dear establishment left! You haven't been paying attention! That Messiah has been here already. He waved his magic wand, saw things aren't that simple, was abandoned in the midst of battle, lost altitude, and finally was assassinated, with the rest of us (yes, me too) watching from the comfort of our armchairs. Forget it. A messiah doesn't come around twice! There is no such thing as a free lunch. Don't you really see what we are doing, why it is that we stepped out of line? Don't you get the difference between a low key, personal refusal and an organized, public one? (and make no mistake about it, the private refusal is the easier choice.) You really don't get it? So let me spell it out for you. First, we declare our commitment to the first value system. The one that is elusive, abstract, and not profitable. We believe in the moral code generally known as God (and my atheist friends who also signed this letter would have to forgive me - we all believe in God, the true one, not that of the Rabbis and the Ayatollahs). We believe that there is no room for the tribal code, that the tribal code simply camouflages idolatry, an idolatry of a type we should not cooperate with. Those who let such a form of idol worship take over will end up as burnt offerings themselves. Second, we (as well as some other groups who are even more despised and harassed) are putting our bodies on the line, in the attempt to prevent the next war. The most unnecessary, most idiotic, cruel and immoral war in the history of Israel. We are the Chinese young man standing in front of the tank. And you? If you are nowhere to be seen, you are probably inside the tank, advising the driver.
>From Ainriail - the Irish Anarchist bulletin list
Globalisation: The end of the age of imperialism?
IT HAS BECOME increasingly fashionable to use the term globalisation as a description of the international economy and international political relations. Globalisation is meant to have taken over from imperialism, when a handful of large states openly and directly ran most or the world.
The bosses' magazine, The Economist, ran a major article on this New World Order called 'The New Geopolitics' last July. It described this supposed transformation: "The imperial age was a time when countries A, B and C took over the governments of countries X, Y and Z. The aim now is to make it possible for the peoples of X, Y and Z to govern themselves, freeing them from the local toughs who deny them that right."
Many on the left, including some anarchists, have critically adapted this description of the New World Order. Central to this is the idea that the rapid movement of money made possible by the'information age' and the growth of multinationals means that the age of imperialism- when powerful nation states dominated the world - has been replaced by a more abstract and invisible but equally powerful rule by capital which is not tied to any state.
At first sight such a description seems compelling, it is 'common sense' that international trade has increased and that treaties like the European Union are breaking down the old nation state. But does globalisation provide us with an accurate description of how the world works?
In fact the Economist article admits that "...before the first world war some rich countries were doing almost as much trade with the outside world as a proportion of GDP as they are doing now (and Japan was doing far more)". Assuming 'rich' to be a polite word for 'imperialist' here, what has changed is in fact the sheer volume of world trade (and wealth) along with the fact that smaller countries are now far more involved.
End of the nation state?
But this is not the end of the nation state. In fact since 1914 the number of states had rocketed from 62 to 74 by 1946 and today it stands at 193. The other surprise is that in the wealthy nations state spending as a percentage of GDP (a measure of the relative wealth of a country) has actually increased since 1980. The central idea of globalisation - capital becoming increasingly independent of any particular nation state therefore has to be questioned. Again the Economist is unusually honest here in asking what is "the central reason why a state remains". It answers "the State is still the chief wielder of organised armed force".
Recent wars clearly divide into two types. Some involve geographic neighbours fighting each other, commonly over border demarcations like India and Pakistan. Others involve interventions by countries that may be 1000's of km's away, most commonly on the basis of 'humanitarian intervention' as with the UN interventions in Iraq and Somalia or the NATO intervention in Kosovo. But when we look at these second type of interventions we find that, far from the distant countries being a random collection or selected according to size, every single one of these interventions has been led by one country, the USA.
Beyond this the second and third most important forces in the intervention will also be drawn from a very small pool of countries including Britain, France and Italy. Clearly, on the military side at least, such interventions are not random but are dominated by a small number of what the more old fashioned amongst us would term imperialist powers.
The US is the dominant power and, with its NATO junior partners, has proved able to dictate to any and every other nation on the planet. Indeed NATO has no realistic rivals. The closest you might come is an imaginary alliance of China and Russia. This would face a power with not only a larger and far better equipped military force but which also has over ten times the economic muscle (NATO's GDP in 1997 was 16,255 billion dollars, Russia's was 447, China's 902).
However the spread of democratic ideas, and knowledge about other countries, has meant that 'old style' imperialism has lost its popularity. That is why imperialism today is far more likely to hide behind 'humanitarianism' and a whole range of supposedly international bodies. When we look at these 'international' bodies, however, we find that they are constructed in such a way that only the major powers have a real say in decision making.
The United Nations
The United Nations was the great hope for many as an alternative to war, or to a peace where rich countries could do as they please. Even today many well-meaning people all too often refer to the UN as if it was an alternative to US or NATO domination of the globe. The UN may claim to be a global body representing all countries, but in reality - for effective intervention - it may only act with the say so of a tiny number of powerful military powers. These are the five permanent members of the Security Council (USA, Britain, France, Russia and China), each with the ability to veto any intervention that goes against their interests.
In effect the UN is a cover behind which these countries can wage war when it suits them - as when the UN supposedly went into Iraq to protect Kuwaiti sovereignty in the 1991 Gulf war. But they can stop the UN acting in other cases, so for instance no UN body invaded the US to protect Nicaraguan sovereignty when the Reagan administration were mining its harbours in the 1980's.
Even where the smaller countries disapprove and partly block military action behind the UN banner, the NATO countries have proved adapt at ignoring calls for negotiated solutions and using UN resolutions as an excuse for war as in the ongoing bombing of Iraq. Often these excuses are astounding hypocritical. NATO could bomb Serbia supposedly to protect ethnic Albanians living in Kosovo from Serbian paramilitaries yet stands by while Turkey (a NATO member) massacres ethnic Kurds.
The Security Council mechanism by which the major powers control the UN and hence military intervention is quite well known on the left. However what is not so widely realised are the similar mechanisms that exist by which - without resorting to arms - the major imperialist powers, and the US in particular, can control the world economy. Once this is revealed the idea of globalisation becomes no more then a cheap card trick designed to disguise and take away our attention from the imperialist domination of the world.
Economic control - Debt, the World Bank and the IMF
One aspect of this economic control has recently got a lot of attention, if perhaps a little indirectly. That is the massive debt owed by 'Third World' countries. The Jubilee 2000 campaign, which demands that 'unpayable' debt be abolished, has had considerable success in mobilising tens of thousands on demonstrations in support of this demand. Some 800,000 people in Ireland alone have signed the petition for the abolition of the debt. What is seldom mentioned is the central part debt plays for the western powers in dictating how third world economies are organised.
The debt crisis of the late 1970's and early 1980's proved an ideal leverage for the western powers to force 'free trade' on the 'third world'. This occurred when third world countries faced with falling incomes and rising interest rates defaulted on their loans.
Before this many countries had followed a policy of 'import substituionism' which meant that they tried to manufacture goods like, for instance, cars that they had previously imported. Without suggesting this sort of policy offered a positive alternative role it did have one big disadvantage for the imperialist powers, it tended to deny them both markets and cheap raw materials.
What the imperialist powers wanted, and what they essentially have won, was a system where the third world provided cheap raw materials & labour and acted as a market to consume the products of companies with their bases in the imperialist countries. But for obvious reasons this would not be a popular policy for the people of those countries, except perhaps the few who could be promised a share of the profits generated if they would administer the system.
When the debt crisis hit in the mid-1980's, starting with Mexico's declaration that it was unable to repay loans in 1982, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund stepped in. Despite the fact that these institutions are household names most people have very little idea of what they do or how they function. Until recently they were quite happy to keep things that way.
One dollar - one vote
In summary, both these bodies are designed in a way which favours the powerful western nations - they are based on the pro-business principle of "one dollar - one vote". What is more, their internal decision making structure gives the US a veto - enabling it to block any decisions that go against it's economic interests. They are technically part of the UN structure, but in reality the western powers have an even greater say in them then they have in the UN. In the case of the IMF the US holds 17% of the vote while only 15% is required for a veto. In the case of the World Bank it has managed to insist that every single president is a US citizen. Thanks in particular to the debt crisis, the power of these institutions is so great that no country can defy their dictates without losing the ability to engage in foreign trade.
The debt crisis forced most developing nations to hand over control of at least part of their economies to the IMF and World Bank. This occurred in the 1980's when individual countries became unable to repay loans. At that stage the IMF and World Bank would step in and 'offer' to facilitate re-structuring of the loans providing the country concerned implemented an IMF dictated 'Structural Adjustment Program'.
Typically these involve removing barriers to imports and removing whatever protection of workers 'rights' and pay exists. This is usually achieved through high inflation, privatisation and anti-union laws (and indeed physical repression). Alongside this, spending on education and health are slashed. In the 1980's an official of the Inter-American Development Bank described these as "an unparalleled opportunity to achieve, in the debtor countries, the structural reforms favoured by the Reagan administration".
The payoff
It shouldn't be imagined, through, that this means the local ruling class likes these policies. In reality today most Latin American economies are controlled by locally born but US educated economics graduates. As Latin American intellectual Xavier Gorostiaga observed "Neo- liberalism has united the elite's of the South with those of the North and created the biggest convergence of financial, technological and military power in history".
In 1960, the income of the wealthiest 20% of the world's population was 30 times greater than that of the poorest 20%. Today it is over 60 times greater. The top 20%, though, is too crude a measure. According to the UN "the assets of the 200 richest people are more than the combined income of 41% of the world's people."
This highlights what is perhaps the major post- war change to the imperialist system. Before the war the old colonialist countries like Britain and France had controlled it. They favoured a very obvious system of direct rule with the local ruling class being composed of people sent out from the imperialist country for that purpose. This system caused great resentment amongst the local middle class as it denied them the possibility of promotion into these roles, and more often than not the racist nature of the imperialist power meant the local middle class had to put up with all sorts of petty oppressions.
The post-war years saw many anti-colonial revolts in which the working class and peasants, under middle class leadership, united to throw out the imperialists. With the growth of these movements, and the growth in the military and economic might of the US, the old imperialist powers were frequently defeated and a section of the local ruling class would take over the running of the country, often with American aid but sometimes with Russian aid.
As US dominance grew a post-colonial system was constructed where, in return for accepting terms of trade favourable to US business, the local ruling class would be allowed some local control. Some, of course, were not happy with this but by the 1980's the debt crisis on the one hand and the collapse of the USSR on the other meant they had little choice and most came over.
The US has constructed a 'New World Order' in which it pulls almost all the economic and military strings. With such control there is no need for it to rely on 'old fashioned' direct imperialist control. Through the IMF/World Bank and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) it can set the rules of global trade with its junior partners of the G7 nations (the seven most powerful economies).
Recently it has not flinched from using these powers on its 'junior partners' in particular with its attempts at imposing Genetically Modified foods on reluctant European states. The handful of 'rogue' states that are reluctant to accept its rule have been easily contained, militarily and economically in the case of North Korea and Cuba or bombed into the stone age in the case of the ongoing war against Iraq.
Those who suffer from this new imperial order include the workers and peasants of the developing world. Real wages in most African countries have fallen by 50-60% since the early 1980s and in Mexico, Costa Rica and Bolivia average wages have fallen by a third since 1980. But workers in parts of the developed world, and in particular the US, have also seen falling living standards and wages.
This global economic order had given new weapons to the major companies by which they can dictate economic policy to even the governments of the developed world. The threat of mass withdrawal of investment has essentially ended the post- war social democratic compromise throughout Europe, in particular in countries like Britain.
The nation state continues to be central to this 'New World Order'. Multinationals may trade everywhere but their headquarters, administrative and research facilities are concentrated in the imperialist nations. The recent trade war about bananas grown in the Caribbean, for instance, was fought between US and European based transnationals, despite the fact that neither grows significant quantities of bananas.
Limited space here only allows a brief exploration of these bodies behind which US imperialism hides. Importantly I haven't touched on resistance to this domination that has taken many forms. This July saw over 250,000 Turkish workers demonstrating against IMF imposed 'reforms'.
June saw the global J18 day of action; this November will see widespread action against the WTO summit to be held in Toronto, Canada. But what should be obvious is that before we can decide on the most effective form of action against imperialism we need to identify its real nature - despite whatever mask it may choose to hide behind.
Andrew Flood
This article is from Workers Solidarity No 58 published in Oct 1999
More articles from this issue at http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws99.html
>From Irelands's Workers Solidarity Movement http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm.htm l
>From Ainriail - For more info see http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/inter/email_ lists . tml
Re:Good to see misinformation is alive and well.
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You are a good troll. Alot of people are falling for you.
What we have is monopoly of the reproduction of opinion in the hands of the media. Every is entitled to their opinion, but it does not really matter in the end because the media gives most people their opinions.
Even if you tell most people what I just told you, they would not believe me after listening to the media all these years. The media in America rarely if ever covers the deaths of Palestinians. In the early 90s for every Palestinian that killed an Israeli, the IDF killed 20 Palestinians! Yet in the early 90s you never would hear about that in any mainstream American newspaper. Now the ratio is 4-3 Palestinians for every Israeli, but I have yet to hear of any IDF massacre through CNN or Foxnews.
Re:Good to see misinformation is alive and well.
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Chomsky is really pissing me off running around with his "help to strengthen the central government", bullshit. What kind of anarchist would say that? An anarcho-liberal.
Death to Chomsky!
Re:Good to see misinformation is alive and well.
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So imperalism is ok, because the USSR is doing it?
The Zionists wanted a homeland on Israel and they are well -- fascists so they forcibly removed the Palestinians who are the original inhabitants. Most of them now live on the little strips of Gaza, the West Bank and Ramallah. Alot of Palestinians also live in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon.
The only ones who can vote in Israel are the Jews, the arabs allowed there are second class citiziens.
There are some Palestinians in Israel. Like the article said, they are there as a source of a cheap labor. Most Palestinians live in little strips of land controlled by the Israeli Defense Force. Supposedly the Palestinian Authority should control these areas, but Israel likes to attack the Palestinian Authority every few months.
Slashdot Mirror
I know to laugh at you!
Do you think we are fucking idiots? It is obvious you are lying.(I hope that you are joking.) Have you been to the rather large slums that pervade Istanbul? Do you know that Turkeys life expectancy is lower than most current EU countries?(You probably do, but that is not your purpose.)
In Turkey they cannot even afford to build things so that they will not fall every single earthquake.(Imagine if Taiwan had such shoddy builiding techniques it would have been a bloodbath during their recent earthquakes).
Turkey will be nothing but a huge insolvent problem for the EU. The EU will be encircled by Britian to the northwest and Turkey to the Southeast. The EU encircled by two of America's best whores! Turkey and Britain. The EU may as well dissolve if Turkey gets accepted!
Those Turkeys are even worse they never bathe. Sometimes they preen their feathers with their beaks but chickens and turkeys are dirty birds. If you touch them you will get ticks on you and they are hard to get out of your hair. You will have to cut the hair off.
In countries like France, Germany, the US, etc. whenever the fascist try to make a gathering of speech they are outnumbered by anti-fascist who gather to stop them. If there are anarchists there, they will bash the fascists, as the pacifists are a bunch of idiot pussies. In Turkey the ultra-right fascist party, MHP, gets 20 percent of the votes.
IE. The founder of Turkey, being a true fascist, proclaimed that Turks were the first civilization and that Turkish is the language all subsequent languages stem from. Of course the fact that this is blatantly false does not matter. Modern Turkish historians try to ignore this act, because it was so ridicilous, they cannot have many Westerners learning of it.
I kiss you!
MEDICAL FACILITIES: Medical facilities are available, but may be limited outside urban areas. Cutting edge medical care does not exist in Turkey. Neither do the accepted practices of frequent soapy handwashing or covering of the mouth when coughing or sneezing and then washing hands. Medical providers are not required to update their knowledge regularly therefore medical treatment is often very dated.
There is a serious overuse of medications, especially antibiotics. Virtually no effort is expended to determine the appropriate antibiotic. Often patients are given six or more medications for an illness that may not require any drug therapy, or one drug after another is tried for a few days until the patient responds.
Complex cases involving life-threatening illness or injury cannot be managed in Turkey. Preventative health care is unknown. U.S. citizens traveling or residing in Turkey are urged to purchase insurance that will cover the costs of a medical evacuation should a serious problem occur.
The stuff in teletype is pretty funny! Taken from: http://travel.state.gov/turkey.html
"Crime and Punishment"
by Errico Malatesta
Every anarchist propagandist is familiar with the key objections: who will keep criminals in check [in the anarchist society]? To my mind their concern is exaggerated since delinquency is a phenomenon of little importance compared with the vastness of ever present and general social realities. And one can believe in its automatic disappearance as a result of an increase in material well-being and education, not to mention advances in pedagogy and medicine. But however optimistic may be our hopes, and rosy the future, the fact remains that delinquency and the fear of crime today prevents peaceful social relations, and it will certainly not disappear from one moment to the next following a revolution, however radical and thoroughgoing it may turn out to be. It could even be the cause of upheaval and disintegration in a society of free men, just as an insignificant grain of sand can stop the most perfect machine.
It is worthwhile and indeed necessary that anarchists should consider the problem in greater detail than they normally do, not only in order the better to deal with a popular "objection" but in order not to expose themselves to unpleasant surprises and dangerous contradictions.
Naturally the crimes we are talking about are anti-social acts. That is those which offend human feelings and which infringe the right of others to equality in freedom, and not the many actions which the penal code punishes simply because they offend against the privileges of the dominant classes.
Crime, in our opinion, is any action which tends to consciously increase human suffering, it is the violation of the right of all to equal freedom and to the greatest possible enjoyment of material and moral well-being.
We know that having thus defined delinquency, it is always difficult even for those who accept the definition, to, determine in fact what actions are criminal and which are not; for Man's views differ as to what causes pain or happiness, what is good and what is bad, except in those bestial crimes which offend fundamental human feelings and are therefore universally condemned.
I imagine that no one would be prepared, theoretically, to deny that freedom understood in the sense of reciprocity, is the basic prerequisite of any civilisation, of "humanity"; but only anarchy represents its logical and complete realisation. On this assumption, he is a criminal-not against nature or the result of a metaphysical law, but against his fellow men and because the interests and feelings of others have been offended - whoever violates the equal freedom of others. And so long as such people exist, we must defend ourselves.
This necessary defence against those who violate not the status quo but the deepest feelings which distinguish men from beasts, is one of the pretexts by which governments justify their existence. One must eliminate all the social causes of crime, one must develop in man brotherly feelings, and mutual respect; one must, as Fourier put it, seek useful alternatives to crime. But if, and so long as, there are criminals, either the people will find the means, and have the energy, to directly defend themselves against them, or the police and the magistrature will reappear and with them, government.
It is not by denying a problem that one solves it.
One can, with justification. fear that this necessary defence against crime could be the beginning of and the pretext for, a new system of oppression and privilege. It is the anarchists' mission to see that this does not happen. By seeking the causes of each crime and making every effort to eliminate them; by making it impossible for anybody to derive personal advantage out of the detection of crime, and leaving it to the interested groups themselves to take whatever steps they deem necessary for their defence; by accustoming oneself to consider criminals as brothers who have strayed. as sick people needing loving treatment, as one would for any hydro- phobe or dangerous lunatic - it will be possible to reconcile the complete freedom of all with defence against those who obviously and dangerously threaten it.
Obviously this is possible. when crime will be reduced to sporadic, individual and truly pathological cases. If it were a fact that criminals were too numerous and powerful. If, for example, they were what the bourgeoisie and fascism are today [1922], then it is not a question of discussing what we will do in an anarchist society.
With the growth of civilisation, and of social relations; with the growing awareness of human solidarity which unites mankind; with the development of intelligence and a refinement of feelings there is certainly a corresponding growth of social duties, and many actions which were considered as strictly individual rights and independent of any collective control will be considered. indeed they already are, matters affecting everybody, and must therefore be carried out in conformity with the general interest. For instance, even in our times parents are not allowed to keep their children in ignorance and bring them up in a way which is harmful to their development and future well-being. A person is not allowed to live in filthy conditions and neglect those rules of hygiene which can affect the health of others; one is not allowed to have an infectious disease and not have it treated. In a future society it will be considered a duty to seek to ensure the good of all, just as it will be considered blameworthy to procreate if there are reasons to believe that the progeny will be unhealthy and unhappy. But this sense of our duties to others, and of theirs to us must, according to our social concepts, develop Without any other outside sanction than the esteem or the disapproval of our fellow citizens. Respect, the desire for the well-being of others must enter into the customs, and manifest themselves not as duties but as a normal satisfaction of social instincts.
There are those who would improve the morality of people by force, who would wish to introduce an Article into the penal code for every possible human action, who would place a gendarme alongside every nuptial bed and by every table. But these people if they lack the coercive powers to impose their ideas, only succeed in making a mockery of the best things; and if they have the power to command, make what is good hateful and encourage reaction. For us the carrying out of social duties must be a voluntary act, and one has the right to intervene with material force only against those who offend against others violently and prevent them from living in peace. Force, physical restraint, must only be used against attacks of violence and for no other reason than that of self-defence.
But who will judge? Who will provide the necessary defence ? Who will establish what measures of restraint are to be used? We do not see any other way than that of leaving it to the interested parties, to the people, that is the mass of citizens, who will act in different ways according to the circumstances and according to their different degress of social development. One must, above all, avoid the creation of bodies specialising in police work, perhaps something will be lost in repressive efficiency but one will also avoid the creation of the instrument or every tyranny.
We do not believe in the infallibility, nor even in the general goodness of the masses; on the contrary. But we believe even less in the infallibility and goodness of those who seize power and legislate, who consolidate and perpetuate the ideas and interests which prevail at any given moment.
In every respect the injustice, and transitory violence of the people is preferable to the leaden-rule, the legalised State violence of the judiciary and police.
We are, in any case, only one of the forces acting in society, and history will advance, as always, in the direction of the resultant of all the [social] forces.
We must reckon with a residue of delinquency which we hope will be eliminated more or less rapidly, but which in the meantime will oblige the mass of workers to take defensive action. Discarding every concept of punishment and revenge, which still dominate penal law, and guided only by the need for self-defence and the desire to rehabilitate, we must seek the means to achieve our goal, without falling into the dangers of authoritarianism and consequently finding ourselves in contradiction with the system of liberty and free-will on which we seek to build the new society.
For authoritarians and statesmen. the question is a simple one: a legislative body to list the crimes and prescribe the punishments; a police force to hunt out the delinquents; a magistrature to judge them and a prison service to make them suffer. And, as is understandable, the legislative body seeks through its penal laws to defend, above all established interest, which it represents, and to protect the State from those who seek to "subvert" it. The police force exists to suppress crime, and having therefore an interest in the continued existence of crime becomes provocative, and develops in its officers aggressive and perverse instincts; the migistrate also lives and prospers thanks to crime and delinquents, and serves the interests of the government and the ruling classes, and acquires, in the course of exercising its function, a special way of reasoning, which makes it into a machine for awarding a maximum number of people the longest sentences it can. The warders are, or become, insensitive to the suffering of prisoners and at best, passively observe the rules without a spark of human feeling. One sees the results in statistics on delinquency. The penal laws are changed, the police force and the magistrature are reorganised, the prison system is reformed, and delinquency persists and resists all attempts to destroy or reduce it. It is true of the past and the present, and we think it will apply in the future too. If the whole concept of crime is not changed, and all the organisms which live on the prevention and repression of delinquency are not abolished!
There are in France stringent laws against the traffic in drugs and against those who take them. And as always happens, the scourge grows and spreads in spite, and perhaps because of, the laws. The same is happening in the rest of Europe and in America. Doctor Courtois Suffit, of the French Academy of Medicine, who, already last year 1921, had sounded the alarm against the dangers of cocaine, noting the failure of penal legislation, now demands new and more stringent laws.
It is the old mistake of legislators, in spite of experience invariably showing that laws, however barbarous they may be, have never served to suppress vice or to discourage delinquency. The more severe the penalties imposed on the consumers and traffickers of cocaine, the greater will be the attraction of forbidden fruits and the fascination of the risks incurred by the consumer, and the greater will be the profits made by the speculators, avid for money.
It is useless, therefore to hope for anything from the law. We must suggest another solution. Make the use and sale of cocaine free [from restrictions], and open kiosks where it would be sold at cost price or even under cost. And then launch a great propaganda campaign to explain to the public, and let them see for themselves, the evils of cocaine - no one would engage in counter-propaganda because nobody could exploit the misfortunes of cocaine addicts.
Certainly the harmful use of cocaine would not disappear completely, because the social causes which create and drive those poor devils to the use of drugs would still exist. But in any case the evil would decrease, because nobody could make profits out of its sale, and nobody could speculate on the hunt for speculators. And for this reason our suggestion either will not be taken into account, or it will be considered impractical and mad.
Yet intelligent and disinterested people might say to themselves: Since the penal laws have proved to be impotent, would it not be a good thing, as an experiment, to try out the anarchist method?
We will not repeat the classical arguments against the death penalty. They seem lies, when we hear them used by those who then come out in favour of life imprisonment and other inhuman substitutes for the death penalty. Nor will we speak of the "sanctity of life" which all affirm but violate when it suits them, either by actually taking life or treating others, in such a way as to torment or shorten their lives.
Fortunately only few men are born, or become, moral bloodthirsty and sadistic monsters whose death we would not know how to mourn. If these poor devils were to be a continuous threat to everybody and there were no other way of defending ourselves other than by killing them, one could also admit the death penalty.
But the trouble is that in order to carry out the death penalty one needs an executioner. The executioner is, or becomes, a monster, and on balance it is better to let the monsters that there are go on living, rather than to create others.
And this applies to real delinquents, anti-social beings who arouse no sympathy and provoke no commiseration When it comes to the death penalty as a means of political struggle, then well history teaches us what can be the consequences.
I hate soybean milk.
Guy Debord
"Theses on Cultural Revolution"
1
The traditional goal of aesthetics is to make one feel, in privation and absence, certain past elements of life that through the mediation of art would escape the confusion of appearances, since appearance is what suffers from the reign of time. The degree of aesthetic success is measured by a beauty inseparable from duration, and tending even to lay claim to eternity. The Situationist goal is immediate participation in a passionate abundance of life, through the variation of fleeting moments resolutely arranged. The success of these moments can only be their passing effect. Situationists consider cultural activity, from the standpoint of totality, as an experimental method for constructing daily life, which can be permanently developed with the extension of leisure and the disappearance of the division of labor (beginning with the division of artistic labor).
2
Art can cease to be a report on sensations and become a direct organization of higher sensations. It is a matter
of producing ourselves, and not things that enslave us.
3
Mascolo is right in saying ("Le Communisme") that the reduction of the working day by the regime of the
dictatorship of the proletariat is "the most certain assurance that it can give of its revolutionary authenticity." Indeed, "if man is a commodity, if he is treated as a thing, if the general relations of men among themselves are the relations of thing to thing, it is because it is possible to buy his time from him." Mascolo, however, is too quick to conclude that "the time of a man freely employed" is always well spent, and that "the purchase of time is the sole evil." There is no freedom in the employment of time without the possession of modern instruments for the construction of daily life. The use of such instruments will mark the leap of a utopian revolutionary art to an experimental revolutionary art.
4
An international association of Situationists can be seen as a union of workers in an advanced sector of
culture, or more precisely as a union of all those who claim the right to a task now impeded by social conditions; hence as an attempt at an organization of professional revolutionaries in culture.
5
We are separated in practice from true control over the material powers accumulated by our time. The
Communist revolution has not occurred, and we still live within the framework of the decomposition of old cultural superstructures. Henri Lefebvre correctly sees that this contradiction is at the heart of a specifically modern discordance between the progressive individual and the world, and calls the cultural tendency based on this discordance revolutionary- romantic. The defect in Lefebvre's conception lies in making the simple expression of discordance a sufficient criterion for revolutionary action within the culture. Lefebvre renounces beforehand all experiments toward profound cultural change while remaining satisfied with a content: awareness of the (still too remote) impossible-possible, which can be expressed no matter what form it takes within the framework of decomposition.
6
Those who want to overcome the old established order in all its aspects cannot attach themselves to the
disorder of the present, even in the sphere of culture. One must struggle and not go on waiting, in culture as well, for the moving order of the future to make a concrete appearance. It is its possibility, already present in our midst, that devalues all expression in known cultural forms. One must lead all forms of pseudocommunication to their utter destruction, to arrive one day at real and direct communication (in our working hypothesis of higher cultural means: the constructed situation). Victory will be for those who will be able to create disorder without loving it.
7
In the world of cultural decomposition we can test our strength but not employ it. The practical task of
overcoming our discordance with the world, i.e., of surmounting the decomposition by some higher constructions, is not romantic. We will be "revolutionary romantics," in Lefebvre's sense, precisely to the degree of our failure.
Dear Troll,
We are plesed to inform you that, after careful consideration , we have accepted your troll into the Troll Library.
You show a masterful skill at trolling.
Thank you for your time and your contribution.
Dear Total Liberty,
..."it's another anarchist novel, because there's no government (All right, so I'm an anarchist - but I'm a syndicalist. You have to have organised anarchy, because otherwise it doesn't work".) How can Peter talk of SF without even mentioning Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus trilogy with its variety of anarchists and themes?
I recently bought a copy of Total Liberty v2/4 as it featured an article entitled "Science Fiction as Social Criticism". Having read the item I can only hope that nobody actually takes Peter Neville's piece as representative of anarchist thinking in this area or even remotely accurate or up-to-date. To put it bluntly Peter spends more time banging on about his favourite bugbears than he does addressing the subject under consideration. He also shows a total ignorance of post - 1970 SF which, contrary to his assertion that "we do not have any SF writers in our ranks", has many authors either writing from an explicitly anarchist position or using anarchist themes.
I am amazed, for example that rather than discuss Ursula LeGuin's "The Dispossessed", a well-regarded and widely discussed book with an explicit anarchist theme, Peter instead takes umbrage over an totally unrelated issue (feminism) and ignores the anarchist subject matter completely. Again he mentions New Worlds, but fails to have noticed that it was edited for many years by an explicitly anarchist SF writer Michael Moorcock. Neither does Peter bother to mention the recurring character of Nestor Makhno who appears in many of Moorcock's books, the anarchic society portrayed in the Dancers at the End of Time series and the general anarchist slant to his writings that continues to this day (in for example King of the City - a novel of London since the war.)
Other anarchist writers Peter has missed out on totally include Bruce Sterling - his Islands in the Net is an excellent SF novel with explicit anarchist themes; Norman Spinrad, who said of his 'Child of Fortune'
Among contemporary British SF writers, one would have to mention Ken Macleod and Iain M. Banks. Ken's books are SF written by someone who obviously knows the contemporary radical (including anarchist) scene and has used elements for his futuristic visions. There's now five in the series, including "The Stone Canal" which even mentions Freedom bookshop in Angel Alley (p.87)! Iain M. Banks has set his "Culture" series in an anarcho-socialist future and again is widely regarded as some of the best of the British crop of SF writers. One should also mention Alan Moore, whose graphic novel V for vendetta has an explicit anarchist theme. Other current writers who write from an anarchist perspective (or who have done) include Lewis Shiner, John Shirley, Rudy Rucker, Marge Piercey, Judith Merril, Harry Harrison and so on and so on. For an excellent anthology do read the Semiotext(e) SF anthology recently reprinted by AK Press or perhaps try the Mirror Shades Cyber punk anthology.
Anyway, you should get the picture. There is much good SF that is of interest to anarchists. It's just a shame that Peter Neville wasted so much space in your wee zine talking about himself and his problems (nothing new there) and failed to do his homework and find out about what he was supposed to be writing about.
Richard Alexander mailto:rick.blackchip@virgin.net
-- Dan Clore mailto:clore@columbia-center.org
Now available: _The Unspeakable and Others_ Including all my fiction through 2001, and more. http://www.wildsidepress.com/index2.htm http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ 1587154838/thedanclorenecro
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I've watched the dogs of war enjoying their feast I've seen the western world go down in the east The food of love became the greed of our time But now we're living on the profits of crime --Black Sabbath, "Hole in the Sky"
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The use of torture against Palestinian political prisoners and detainees in Israeli jails.
February 2000
Since its occupation of the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, Israel has carried out over 600,000 arrests. Today, more than 500 Palestinian prisoners are still being held in Israeli jails without trial; 7 women detainees are held in Talmond prison; 120 are in poor health conditions; 25 are elderly men; approximately 60 are minors and children; 20 detainees are being held in solitary confinement; 40 detainees are Palestinian- Israelis; and 130 detainees are nationals of other Arab countries.
Palestinian political prisoners are subjected to egregious torture by the interrogators of the Israeli General Security Services (the Shin Bet). Torture is used routinely and systematically, even in circumstances where there is no evident threat to Israel's "security."
Torture is defined as the "... infliction of pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, for the purpose of obtaining information or confession by a person acting in an official capacity"- The Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment, which Israel ratified in 1991.
Israel remains the only state that has legislated for the use of torture. No country other than Israel has "legally" allowed the use torture in its "security" procedures.
In 1987, Israel decided to establish the Landau Commission to investigate allegations of torture against the General Security Service (GSS). However, its recommendations contributed to the systematic torture of hundreds of Palestinians each year. Later that year, it released its report with the exception of a secret appendix. The report stated that the GSS had used force in an unacceptable manner to the international community. Furthermore, the report confirms that GSS personnel had lied under oath about their activities.
The Landau Commission argued that the methods used by the GSS were not "clearly illegal" because the interrogators were "following the orders of their supervisors." The secret appendix provided a detailed outline of the physical and psychological violent methods used and their assessment by the Landau Commission.
The Landau Commission's findings are in violation of Israel's obligations under the Convention. What is clear is that Israel, by adopting the findings of the Landau Commission and then keeping them secret from the Committee, has violated its reporting obligations under Article 19. Israel justifies this secrecy by referring to its rhetoric of "necessity and security."
Between 1987 and 1994, the GSS interrogated some 23,000 Palestinians (Ha'aretz, 13 January 1995).
Interviews conducted between 1988 and May 1992 with more than 700 Palestinians indicate that at least 94% of those interrogated by the GSS were tortured or ill- treated (Al- Haq, Torture for Security). According to LAW, 20 Palestinians died as a result of ill treatment during their interrogation by the Shin Bet.
On September 15, 1999, the Ministerial Committee for GSS Matters, headed by Prime Minister Barak, appointed a committee to "find a lawful solution to the use of physical force in interrogations of terrorist suspects, where there is an immediate security danger."
In October 1999, the draft Criminal Procedure (Powers and Special Interrogation Methods for Security Offences) Law, was introduced into Israel's parliament (the Knesset.) This would allow the General Security Service (GSS) to continue to use coercive measures during interrogations.
Torture methods used by the GSS include the following: Al-Shabeh, suffocation, food deprivation, sleep deprivation and restriction of toilet facilities, beatings, "The Cupboard" treatment, Falaqa, pulling hair off the body, electric shocks and burning, threats, including death threats and violent shaking. (See below for further definition).
Israel is in breach of the object and purpose of the Convention against torture. It is also in grave violation of various other international treaties-- including the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, the Fourth Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, the 1945 Charter of the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Regulations annexed to the 1907 Hague Convention (IV), the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, the United Nations Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, the Principles of Medical Ethics Relevant to the Role of Health Personnel in the Protection of Prisoners and Detainees Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman, or Degrading Punishment, and numerous others.
Torture is perceived under International law as unjustifiable under any and all circumstances. The prohibition of torture applies to the use of any kind of physical or psychological force in interrogations. International law does not provide any conditions or reservations that sanction the use of torture or ill treatment in interrogations.
More than 100 states have ratified the Convention against torture, which means that they have accepted certain obligations to take effective measures to prevent acts of torture and to ensure the classification of such acts as "an offence" and, thus, punishable under their criminal law. Many national Constitutions, criminal codes, laws and regulations proclaim the prohibition of torture.
All confessions obtained under coercion or through the use of torture and ill-treatment are inadmissible in any court of law. The way in which information is obtained by Israel from Palestinian detainees is unlawful and in violation of Article 15 of the Convention-- since they were obtained by unlawful methods. This information is also often undisclosed and is not passed to the Palestinian National Authority.
In 1991, Israel ratified the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights of 1966; it remains, however, in breach of Article 7, which states, " no one shall be subjected to torture, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."
Israel is also in breach of section 2(2) of the Convention against torture which stipulates that, " No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture."
A 1994 State Comptroller's Report, which was partially released in summary form in February of 2000, included very severe findings on the work of the GSS interrogation methods, such as disobeying the law, the Landau Commission guidelines, and the internal guidelines formulated by the service itself.
In February 1999, Shin Bet dropped its demand that the Knesset enacts legislation that would accord the secret service " special means"-- a euphemism for physical or mental abuse-- to conduct interrogations. However, 46 Members of Knesset have agreed to sponsor a bill that will grant GSS interrogators the right to use physical force against detainees.
Whenever the subject of torture comes into question in Israel, the debate concentrates on the 'ticking bomb' theory which is the basis given for justifying torture in GSS interrogations. However, there is no justification for torture is acceptable whether on legal, moral, or security grounds.
Definitions of the common Israeli torture methods: 1. Al-Shabeh: a common technique exercised by shackling the detainee to a small chair or a wall, while covering the head with a sack that reeks of vomit and urine. The detainee is then deprived of food and sleep.
2. Suffocation: pressure is applied to the windpipe, which inevitably causes the detainees to lose consciousness.
3. Food deprivation: this is either partial or total during the interrogation process. Sometimes the hands are handcuffed while the detainee eats what is offered, usually small amounts of food or of poor quality.
4. Sleep deprivation and toilet facilities restriction: a detainee who is attempting to sleep would be prevented from doing so by loud noises and constant interference. Access to toilet facilities would also be prevented forcing the detainees to soil themselves, causing humiliation and emotional and physical pressure.
5. Beatings: the use of various tools, such as clubs, fists and boots aiming at sensitive areas such as the genitals, stomach, larynx and head.
6. "The Cupboard" treatment: detainees are put in a confined space (one square meter), in complete darkness, and almost completely closed. The detainee's head is covered with a sack while locked into "the cupboard" for a number of days and is subjected to disturbing noises.
7. Falaqa: detainees are hand cuffed, hooded and laid on the ground in a position so that the bottom of their feet is facing up. Their feet are then whipped numerous times with a stick and/or a plastic hose--causing the victim to lose consciousness.
8. Pulling hair off the body: hair is forcefully pulled off very sensitive areas such as face, body and head.
9. Electric shocks and burning: these are administrated while the detainees are hooded or blindfolded. Lit cigarettes are used to burn sensitive areas of the victims'bodies.
What do you know the Japanese can not speak perfect idiomatic English! Kind of like how you cannot speak a word of Japanese, let alone idiomatic Japanese.
Personal Testimony of an Israeli Refusenik
by Asaf Oron
Jewish Peace News
February 24, 2002
[Asaf Oron, a Sergeant Major in the Giv'ati Brigade, is one of the original
53 Israeli soldiers who signed the "Fighters' Letter" declaring that from
now on they will refuse to serve in the Occupied territories. He is signer
#8 and one of the first in the list to include a statement explaining his
action. (There are 251 signers as of February 17, 2002.) Below is the
translation of Oron's statement by Ami Kronfeld of Jewish Peace News.]
On February 5, 1985, I got up, left my home, went to the Compulsory Service
Center on Rashi Street in Jerusalem, said goodbye to my parents, boarded the
rickety old bus going to the Military Absorption Station and turned into a
soldier.
Exactly seventeen years later, I find myself in a head to head confrontation
with the army, while the public at large is jeering and mocking me from the
sidelines. Right wingers see me as a traitor who is dodging the holy war
that's just around the corner. The political center shakes a finger at me
self-righteously and lectures me about undermining democracy and
politicizing the army.
And the left? The square, establishment, "moderate" left that only yesterday
was courting my vote now turns its back on me as well. Everyone blabbers
about what is and what is not legitimate, exposing in the process the depth
of their ignorance of political theory and their inability to distinguish a
real democracy from a third world regime in the style of Juan Peron.
Almost no one asks the main question: why would a regular guy get up one
morning in the middle of life, work, the kids and decide he's not playing
the game anymore? And how come he is not alone but there are fifty... I beg
your pardon, a hundred... beg your pardon again, now almost two hundred
regular, run of the mill guys like him who've done the same thing?
Our parents' generation lets out a sigh: we've embarrassed them yet again.
But isn't it all your fault? What did you raise us on? Universal ethics and
universal justice, on the one hand: peace, liberty and equality to all. And
on the other hand: "the Arabs want to throw us into the sea," "They are all
crafty and primitive. You can't trust them."
On the one hand, the songs of John Lennon, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Bob
Marely, Pink Floyd. Songs of peace and love and against militarism and war.
On the other hand, songs about a sweetheart riding the tank after sunset in
the field: "The tank is yours and you are ours." [allusions to popular
Israeli songs - AK]. I was raised on two value systems: one was the ethical
code and the other the tribal code, and I naïvely believed that the two
could coexist.
This is the way I was when I was drafted. Not enthusiastic, but as if
embarking on a sacred mission of courage and sacrifice for the benefit of
society. But when, instead of a sacred mission, a 19 year old finds himself
performing the sacrilege of violating human beings' dignity and freedom, he
doesn't dare ask - even himself - if it's OK or not. He simply acts like
everyone else and tries to blend in. As it is, he's got enough problems, and
boy is the weekend far off.
You get used to it in a hurry, and many even learn to like it. Where else
can you go out on patrol - that is, walk the streets like a king, harass and
humiliate pedestrians to your heart's content, and get into mischief with
your buddies - and at the same time feel like a big hero defending your
country? The Gaza Exploits became heroic tales, a source of pride for Giv'
ati, then a relatively new brigade suffering from low self esteem.
For a long time, I could not relate to the whole "heroism" thing. But when,
as a sergeant, I found myself in charge, something cracked inside me.
Without thinking, I turned into the perfect occupation enforcer. I settled
accounts with "upstarts" who didn't show enough respect. I tore up the
personal documents of men my father's age. I hit, harassed, served as a bad
example - all in the city of Kalkilia, barely three miles from grandma and
grandpa's home-sweet-home. No. I was no "aberration." I was exactly the
norm.
Having completed my compulsory service, I was discharged, and then the first
Intifada began (how many more await us?) Ofer, a comrade in arms who
remained in the service has become a hero: the hero of the second Giv'ati
trial. He commanded a company that dragged a detained Palestinian
demonstrator into a dark orange grove and beat him to death.
As the verdict stated, Ofer was found to have been the leader in charge of
the whole business. He spent two months in jail and was demoted - I think
that was the most severe sentence given an Israeli soldier through the
entire first Intifada, in which about a thousand Palestinians were killed.
Ofer's battalion commander testified that there was a order from the higher
echelons to use beatings as a legitimate method of punishment, thereby
implicating himself.
On the other hand, Efi Itam, the brigade commander, who had been seen
beating Arabs on numerous occasions, denied that he ever gave such an order
and consequently was never indicted. Today he lectures us on moral conduct
on his way to a new life in politics. (In the current Intifada,
incidentally, the vast majority of incidents involving Palestinian deaths
are not even investigated. No one even bothers.)
And in the meantime, I was becoming more of a civilian. A copy of The Yellow
Wind [a book on life in the Occupied Territories by the Israeli writer David
Grossman, available in English -AK] which had just come out, crossed my
path. I read it, and suddenly it hit me. I finally understood what I had
done over there. What I had been over there.
I began to see that they had cheated me: They raised me to believe there was
someone up there taking care of things. Someone who knows stuff that is
beyond me, the little guy. And that even if sometimes politicians let us
down, the "military echelon" is always on guard, day and night, keeping us
safe, each and every one of their decisions the result of sacred necessity.
Yes, they cheated us, the soldiers of the Intifadas, exactly as they had
cheated the generation that was beaten to a pulp in the War of Attrition and
in the Yom Kippur War, exactly as they had cheated the generation that sank
deep into the Lebanese mud during the Lebanon invasions. And our parents'
generation continues to be silent.
Worse still, I understood that I was raised on two contradictory value
systems. I think most people discover even at an earlier age they must
choose between two value systems: an abstract, demanding one that is no fun
at all and that is very difficult to verify, and another which calls to you
from every corner - determining who is up and who is down, who is king and
who - pariah, who is one of us and who is our enemy. Contrary to basic
common sense, I picked the first. Because in this country the cost-effective
analysis comparing one system to another is so lopsided, I can't blame those
who choose the second.
I picked the first road, and found myself volunteering in a small,
smoke-filled office in East Jerusalem, digging up files about deaths,
brutality, bureaucratic viciousness or simply daily harassments. I felt I
was atoning, to some extent, for my actions during my days with the Giv'ati
brigade. But it also felt as if I was trying to empty the ocean out with a
teaspoon.
Out of the blue, I was called up for the very first time for reserve duty in
the Occupied Territories. Hysterically, I contacted my company commander. He
calmed me down: We will be staying at an outpost overlooking the Jordan
river. No contacts with the local population is expected. And that indeed
was what I did, but some of my friends provided security for the Damia
Bridge terminal [where Palestinians cross from Jordan to Israel and vice
versa - AK].
This was in the days preceding the Gulf War and a large number of
Palestinian refugees were flowing from Kuwait to the Occupied Territories
(from the frying pan into the fire). The reserve soldiers - mostly right
wingers - cringed when they saw the female consscripts stationed in the
terminal happily ripping open down-comforters and babies' coats to make sure
they didn't contain explosives. I too cringed when I heard their stories,
but I was also hopeful: reserve soldiers are human after all, whatever their
political views.
Such hopes were dashed three years later, when I spent three weeks with a
celebrated reconnaissance company in the confiscated ruins of a villa at the
outskirts of the Abasans (if you don't know where this is, it's your
problem). This is where it became clear to me that the same humane reserve
soldier could also be an ugly, wretched macho undergoing a total regression
back to his days as a young conscript.
Already on the bus ride to the Gaza strip, the soldiers were competing with
each other: whose "heroic" tales of murderous beatings during the Intifada
were better (in case you missed this point: the beatings were literally
murderous: beating to death).
Going on patrol duty with these guys once was all that I could take. I went
up to the placement officer and requested to be given guard duty only.
Placement officers like people like me: most soldiers can't tolerate staying
inside the base longer than a couple of hours.
Thus began the nausea and shame routine, a routine that lasted three tours
of reserve duty in the Occupied Territories: 1993, 1995, and 1997. The
"pale-gray" refusal routine.
For several weeks at a time I would turn into a hidden "prisoner of
conscience," guarding an outpost or a godforsaken transmitter on top of some
mountain, a recluse. I was ashamed to tell most of my friends why I chose to
serve this way. I didn't have the energy to hear them get on my case for
being such a "wishy washy" softy.
I was also ashamed of myself: This was the easy way out. In short, I was
ashamed all over. I did "save my own soul." I was not directly engaged in
wrongdoing - only made it possible for others to do so while I kept guard.
Why didn't I refuse outright? I don't know. It was partly the pressure to
conform, partly the political process that gave us a glimmer of hope that
the whole occupation business would be over soon. More than anything, it was
my curiosity to see actually what was going on over there.
And precisely because I knew so well, first hand, from years of experience
what was going on over there, what reality was like over there, I had no
trouble seeing, through the fog of war and the curtain of lies, what has
been taking place over there since the very first days of the second
Intifada.
For years, the army had been feeding on lines like "We were too nice in the
first Intifada," and "If we had only killed a hundred in the very first
days, everything would have been different." Now the army was given license
to do things its way. I knew full well that [former Prime Minister] Ehud
Barak was giving the army free hand, and that [current Chief of Staff] Shaul
Mofaz was taking full advantage of this to maximize the bloodshed.
By then, I had two little kids, boys, and I knew from experience that no
one - not a single person in the entire world - will ever make sure that my
sons won't have to serve in the Occupied Territories when they reach 18. No
one, that is, except me. And no one but me will have to look them in the eye
when they're all grown up and tell them where dad was when all that
happened. It was clear to me: this time I was not going.
Initially, this was a quiet decision, still a little shy, something like "I
am just a bit weird, can't go and can't talk about it too much either." But
as time went by, as the level of insanity, hatred, and incitement kept
rising, as the generals were turning the Israeli Defense Forces into a
terror organization, the decision was turning into an outcry: "If you can't
see that this is one big crime leading us to the brink of annihilation, then
something is terribly wrong with you!"
And then I discovered that I was not alone. Like discovering life on another
planet.
The truth is that I understand why everyone is mad at us. We spoiled the
neat little order of things. The holy Status Quo states that the Right holds
the exclusive rights to celebrate the blood and ask for more. The role of
the Left, on the other hand, is to wail while sitting in their armchairs
sipping wine and waiting for the Messiah to come and with a single wave of
his magic wand make the Right disappear along with the settlers, the Arabs,
the weather, and the entire Middle East. That's how the world is supposed to
work. So why are you causing such a disturbance? What's your problem? Bad
boys!
Woe to you, dear establishment left! You haven't been paying attention! That
Messiah has been here already. He waved his magic wand, saw things aren't
that simple, was abandoned in the midst of battle, lost altitude, and
finally was assassinated, with the rest of us (yes, me too) watching from
the comfort of our armchairs. Forget it. A messiah doesn't come around
twice! There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Don't you really see what we are doing, why it is that we stepped out of
line? Don't you get the difference between a low key, personal refusal and
an organized, public one? (and make no mistake about it, the private refusal
is the easier choice.) You really don't get it? So let me spell it out for
you.
First, we declare our commitment to the first value system. The one that is
elusive, abstract, and not profitable. We believe in the moral code
generally known as God (and my atheist friends who also signed this letter
would have to forgive me - we all believe in God, the true one, not that of
the Rabbis and the Ayatollahs). We believe that there is no room for the
tribal code, that the tribal code simply camouflages idolatry, an idolatry
of a type we should not cooperate with. Those who let such a form of idol
worship take over will end up as burnt offerings themselves.
Second, we (as well as some other groups who are even more despised and
harassed) are putting our bodies on the line, in the attempt to prevent the
next war. The most unnecessary, most idiotic, cruel and immoral war in the
history of Israel.
We are the Chinese young man standing in front of the tank. And you? If you
are nowhere to be seen, you are probably inside the tank, advising the
driver.
Go infatida!
The only point in logic refuting idiots is for the benefit of others who may be reading/listening.
More endless polemic! Woot!
Turkey will be the next Argentina.
>From Ainriail - the Irish Anarchist bulletin list
m l
_ lists . tml
Globalisation: The end of the age of imperialism?
IT HAS BECOME increasingly fashionable to use the term globalisation as a description of the international economy and international political relations. Globalisation is meant to have taken over from imperialism, when a handful of large states openly and directly ran most or the world.
The bosses' magazine, The Economist, ran a major article on this New World Order called 'The New Geopolitics' last July. It described this supposed transformation: "The imperial age was a time when countries A, B and C took over the governments of countries X, Y and Z. The aim now is to make it possible for the peoples of X, Y and Z to govern themselves, freeing them from the local toughs who deny them that right."
Many on the left, including some anarchists, have critically adapted this description of the New World Order. Central to this is the idea that the rapid movement of money made possible by the'information age' and the growth of multinationals means that the age of imperialism- when powerful nation states dominated the world - has been replaced by a more abstract and invisible but equally powerful rule by capital which is not tied to any state.
At first sight such a description seems compelling, it is 'common sense' that
international trade has increased and that
treaties like the European Union are breaking
down the old nation state. But does globalisation provide us with an accurate description of how the world works?
In fact the Economist article admits that "...before the first world war some rich
countries were doing almost as much trade with
the outside world as a proportion of GDP as they
are doing now (and Japan was doing far more)".
Assuming 'rich' to be a polite word for
'imperialist' here, what has changed is in fact
the sheer volume of world trade (and wealth)
along with the fact that smaller countries are
now far more involved.
End of the nation state?
But this is not the end of the nation state. In
fact since 1914 the number of states had
rocketed from 62 to 74 by 1946 and today it
stands at 193. The other surprise is that in the
wealthy nations state spending as a percentage
of GDP (a measure of the relative wealth of a
country) has actually increased since 1980. The
central idea of globalisation - capital becoming
increasingly independent of any particular
nation state therefore has to be questioned.
Again the Economist is unusually honest here in
asking what is "the central reason why a state
remains". It answers "the State is still the
chief wielder of organised armed force".
Recent wars clearly divide into two types. Some
involve geographic neighbours fighting each
other, commonly over border demarcations like
India and Pakistan. Others involve interventions
by countries that may be 1000's of km's away,
most commonly on the basis of 'humanitarian
intervention' as with the UN interventions in
Iraq and Somalia or the NATO intervention in
Kosovo. But when we look at these second type of
interventions we find that, far from the distant
countries being a random collection or selected
according to size, every single one of these
interventions has been led by one country, the
USA.
Beyond this the second and third most important
forces in the intervention will also be drawn
from a very small pool of countries including
Britain, France and Italy. Clearly, on the
military side at least, such interventions are
not random but are dominated by a small number
of what the more old fashioned amongst us would
term imperialist powers.
The US is the dominant power and, with its NATO
junior partners, has proved able to dictate to
any and every other nation on the planet. Indeed
NATO has no realistic rivals. The closest you
might come is an imaginary alliance of China and
Russia. This would face a power with not only a
larger and far better equipped military force
but which also has over ten times the economic
muscle (NATO's GDP in 1997 was 16,255 billion
dollars, Russia's was 447, China's 902).
However the spread of democratic ideas, and
knowledge about other countries, has meant that
'old style' imperialism has lost its popularity.
That is why imperialism today is far more likely
to hide behind 'humanitarianism' and a whole
range of supposedly international bodies. When
we look at these 'international' bodies,
however, we find that they are constructed in
such a way that only the major powers have a
real say in decision making.
The United Nations
The United Nations was the great hope for many
as an alternative to war, or to a peace where
rich countries could do as they please. Even
today many well-meaning people all too often
refer to the UN as if it was an alternative to
US or NATO domination of the globe. The UN may
claim to be a global body representing all
countries, but in reality - for effective
intervention - it may only act with the say so
of a tiny number of powerful military powers.
These are the five permanent members of the
Security Council (USA, Britain, France, Russia
and China), each with the ability to veto any
intervention that goes against their interests.
In effect the UN is a cover behind which these
countries can wage war when it suits them - as
when the UN supposedly went into Iraq to protect
Kuwaiti sovereignty in the 1991 Gulf war. But
they can stop the UN acting in other cases, so
for instance no UN body invaded the US to
protect Nicaraguan sovereignty when the Reagan
administration were mining its harbours in the
1980's.
Even where the smaller countries disapprove and
partly block military action behind the UN
banner, the NATO countries have proved adapt at
ignoring calls for negotiated solutions and
using UN resolutions as an excuse for war as in
the ongoing bombing of Iraq. Often these excuses
are astounding hypocritical. NATO could bomb
Serbia supposedly to protect ethnic Albanians
living in Kosovo from Serbian paramilitaries yet
stands by while Turkey (a NATO member) massacres
ethnic Kurds.
The Security Council mechanism by which the
major powers control the UN and hence military
intervention is quite well known on the left.
However what is not so widely realised are the
similar mechanisms that exist by which - without
resorting to arms - the major imperialist
powers, and the US in particular, can control
the world economy. Once this is revealed the
idea of globalisation becomes no more then a
cheap card trick designed to disguise and take
away our attention from the imperialist
domination of the world.
Economic control - Debt, the World Bank and the
IMF
One aspect of this economic control has recently
got a lot of attention, if perhaps a little
indirectly. That is the massive debt owed by
'Third World' countries. The Jubilee 2000
campaign, which demands that 'unpayable' debt be
abolished, has had considerable success in
mobilising tens of thousands on demonstrations
in support of this demand. Some 800,000 people
in Ireland alone have signed the petition for
the abolition of the debt. What is seldom
mentioned is the central part debt plays for the
western powers in dictating how third world
economies are organised.
The debt crisis of the late 1970's and early
1980's proved an ideal leverage for the western
powers to force 'free trade' on the 'third
world'. This occurred when third world countries
faced with falling incomes and rising interest
rates defaulted on their loans.
Before this many countries had followed a policy
of 'import substituionism' which meant that they
tried to manufacture goods like, for instance,
cars that they had previously imported. Without
suggesting this sort of policy offered a
positive alternative role it did have one big
disadvantage for the imperialist powers, it
tended to deny them both markets and cheap raw
materials.
What the imperialist powers wanted, and what
they essentially have won, was a system where
the third world provided cheap raw materials &
labour and acted as a market to consume the
products of companies with their bases in the
imperialist countries. But for obvious reasons
this would not be a popular policy for the
people of those countries, except perhaps the
few who could be promised a share of the profits
generated if they would administer the system.
When the debt crisis hit in the mid-1980's,
starting with Mexico's declaration that it was
unable to repay loans in 1982, the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund stepped in.
Despite the fact that these institutions are
household names most people have very little
idea of what they do or how they function. Until
recently they were quite happy to keep things
that way.
One dollar - one vote
In summary, both these bodies are designed in a
way which favours the powerful western nations -
they are based on the pro-business principle of
"one dollar - one vote". What is more, their
internal decision making structure gives the US
a veto - enabling it to block any decisions that
go against it's economic interests. They are
technically part of the UN structure, but in
reality the western powers have an even greater
say in them then they have in the UN. In the
case of the IMF the US holds 17% of the vote
while only 15% is required for a veto. In the
case of the World Bank it has managed to insist
that every single president is a US citizen.
Thanks in particular to the debt crisis, the
power of these institutions is so great that no
country can defy their dictates without losing
the ability to engage in foreign trade.
The debt crisis forced most developing nations
to hand over control of at least part of their
economies to the IMF and World Bank. This
occurred in the 1980's when individual countries
became unable to repay loans. At that stage the
IMF and World Bank would step in and 'offer' to
facilitate re-structuring of the loans providing
the country concerned implemented an IMF
dictated 'Structural Adjustment Program'.
Typically these involve removing barriers to
imports and removing whatever protection of
workers 'rights' and pay exists. This is usually
achieved through high inflation, privatisation
and anti-union laws (and indeed physical
repression). Alongside this, spending on
education and health are slashed. In the 1980's
an official of the Inter-American Development
Bank described these as "an unparalleled
opportunity to achieve, in the debtor countries,
the structural reforms favoured by the Reagan
administration".
The payoff
It shouldn't be imagined, through, that this
means the local ruling class likes these
policies. In reality today most Latin American
economies are controlled by locally born but US
educated economics graduates. As Latin American
intellectual Xavier Gorostiaga observed "Neo-
liberalism has united the elite's of the South
with those of the North and created the biggest
convergence of financial, technological and
military power in history".
In 1960, the income of the wealthiest 20% of the
world's population was 30 times greater than
that of the poorest 20%. Today it is over 60
times greater. The top 20%, though, is too crude
a measure. According to the UN "the assets of
the 200 richest people are more than the
combined income of 41% of the world's people."
This highlights what is perhaps the major post-
war change to the imperialist system. Before the
war the old colonialist countries like Britain
and France had controlled it. They favoured a
very obvious system of direct rule with the
local ruling class being composed of people sent
out from the imperialist country for that
purpose. This system caused great resentment
amongst the local middle class as it denied them
the possibility of promotion into these roles,
and more often than not the racist nature of the
imperialist power meant the local middle class
had to put up with all sorts of petty
oppressions.
The post-war years saw many anti-colonial
revolts in which the working class and peasants,
under middle class leadership, united to throw
out the imperialists. With the growth of these
movements, and the growth in the military and
economic might of the US, the old imperialist
powers were frequently defeated and a section of
the local ruling class would take over the
running of the country, often with American aid
but sometimes with Russian aid.
As US dominance grew a post-colonial system was
constructed where, in return for accepting terms
of trade favourable to US business, the local
ruling class would be allowed some local
control. Some, of course, were not happy with
this but by the 1980's the debt crisis on the
one hand and the collapse of the USSR on the
other meant they had little choice and most came
over.
The US has constructed a 'New World Order' in
which it pulls almost all the economic and
military strings. With such control there is no
need for it to rely on 'old fashioned' direct
imperialist control. Through the IMF/World Bank
and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) it can
set the rules of global trade with its junior
partners of the G7 nations (the seven most
powerful economies).
Recently it has not flinched from using these
powers on its 'junior partners' in particular
with its attempts at imposing Genetically
Modified foods on reluctant European states. The
handful of 'rogue' states that are reluctant to
accept its rule have been easily contained,
militarily and economically in the case of North
Korea and Cuba or bombed into the stone age in
the case of the ongoing war against Iraq.
Those who suffer from this new imperial order
include the workers and peasants of the
developing world. Real wages in most African
countries have fallen by 50-60% since the early
1980s and in Mexico, Costa Rica and Bolivia
average wages have fallen by a third since 1980.
But workers in parts of the developed world, and
in particular the US, have also seen falling
living standards and wages.
This global economic order had given new weapons
to the major companies by which they can dictate
economic policy to even the governments of the
developed world. The threat of mass withdrawal
of investment has essentially ended the post-
war social democratic compromise throughout
Europe, in particular in countries like Britain.
The nation state continues to be central to this
'New World Order'. Multinationals may trade
everywhere but their headquarters,
administrative and research facilities are
concentrated in the imperialist nations. The
recent trade war about bananas grown in the
Caribbean, for instance, was fought between US
and European based transnationals, despite the
fact that neither grows significant quantities
of bananas.
Limited space here only allows a brief
exploration of these bodies behind which US
imperialism hides. Importantly I haven't touched
on resistance to this domination that has taken
many forms. This July saw over 250,000 Turkish
workers demonstrating against IMF imposed
'reforms'.
June saw the global J18 day of action; this
November will see widespread action against the
WTO summit to be held in Toronto, Canada. But
what should be obvious is that before we can
decide on the most effective form of action
against imperialism we need to identify its real
nature - despite whatever mask it may choose to
hide behind.
Andrew Flood
This article is from Workers Solidarity No 58
published in Oct 1999
More articles from this issue at
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/ws99.html
>From Irelands's Workers Solidarity Movement
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/wsm.ht
>From Ainriail - For more info see
http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/inter/email
You are a good troll. Alot of people are falling for you.
What we have is monopoly of the reproduction of opinion in the hands of the media. Every is entitled to their opinion, but it does not really matter in the end because the media gives most people their opinions.
Even if you tell most people what I just told you, they would not believe me after listening to the media all these years. The media in America rarely if ever covers the deaths of Palestinians. In the early 90s for every Palestinian that killed an Israeli, the IDF killed 20 Palestinians! Yet in the early 90s you never would hear about that in any mainstream American newspaper. Now the ratio is 4-3 Palestinians for every Israeli, but I have yet to hear of any IDF massacre through CNN or Foxnews.
Chomsky is really pissing me off running around with his "help to strengthen the central government", bullshit. What kind of anarchist would say that? An anarcho-liberal.
Death to Chomsky!
So imperalism is ok, because the USSR is doing it?
Congratulations! You are an idiot.
The Zionists wanted a homeland on Israel and they are well -- fascists so they forcibly removed the Palestinians who are the original inhabitants. Most of them now live on the little strips of Gaza, the West Bank and Ramallah. Alot of Palestinians also live in refugee camps in Jordan and Lebanon.
The only ones who can vote in Israel are the Jews, the arabs allowed there are second class citiziens.
Do not listen to the lying provcatuer.
There are some Palestinians in Israel. Like the article said, they are there as a source of a cheap labor. Most Palestinians live in little strips of land controlled by the Israeli Defense Force. Supposedly the Palestinian Authority should control these areas, but Israel likes to attack the Palestinian Authority every few months.