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G4EBT > LOST 30.09.04 22:40l 175 Lines 7655 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 953170G4EBT
Read: GUEST
Subj: Getting out of Iraq, 2 of 2
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Sent: 040930/1651Z @:GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU #:14263 [Blackpool] FBB-7.03a $:953170G4
From: G4EBT@GB7FCR.#16.GBR.EU
To : LOST@WW
The Bush administration has shown scant regard for international law, or
for the UN, which President and Eleanor Roosevelt helped establish after
WW2 to avoid precisely the situation that America - and though a misguided
sense of loyalty and lack of statesmanship, the UK and Australia has now
got themselves into.
Nowhere is this disdain better illustrated than in Bush's gung-ho
statement:
"America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security
of our country".
He doesn't explain in what way Iraq was a threat to the US - all he says
is that regardless of international law, UN resolutions or conventions, or
the Geneva Convention, the US will go where it wants, do what it wants, in
any way it wants. "Might is right". (Not).
Sure, America can roam the globe doing as it wishes and there's no
prospect of being held to account by a higher authority, but there's a
heavy price to pay - not just in financial terms.
If, by its actions, America alienates its long-term friends, it can only
embolden its enemies. Bush has achieved both of these outcomes which is
surely the opposite of what was intended and hugely counter productive.
It's turning the US and UK into police states in which habeus corpus is
swept aside, and people are incarcerated indefinitely without trial or
access to legal advice.
We're told this is "in the interests of national security" but it just
doesn't wash. By spooking the American and UK people, that definition
has been broadened to encompass situations which by no stretch of the
imagination could conceivably be threats to national security.
As law-abiding citizens we're put under ever-more surveillance and
expected to suffer invasions of privacy and indignities on the basis of
"nothing to hide - nothing to fear". Huh, as this bulletin will flow by
internet, all
I need to do to make sure it comes to the attention of the CIA is to
insert some innocent key-words. Like what, for instance?
Ok then, i'll say I'm going to "take out" my dog for a walk, then might
"take out" the engine of my car, and later, "take out" my wife for a meal,
or maybe we'll have a "take out" meal instead. There you go - I've done
it, they're checking it right now in Washington and I'm not joking. If I
say I was in France on D-Day this year (I was), that will be picked up
to."D-Day" has certain connotations other than 6 July 1944.
From today, 33,000 people a day entering the US from the UK will be
fingerprinted and photographed. Yes, guys like me, a 65-year old grandad,
a British citizen and passport holder, positively vetted by the UK
Criminal Records Bureau, with not so much as a parking violation, taking
my grandkids to Disneyland, but hey; you can't be too careful - I might
just be a terrorist.
Give me strength - how did I get out of the UK? How did I manage to get
into and out of France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Spain and the Czech
Republic in the last year? Last time I came home from New York it took
as long to board the 'plane as it took to fly back. Only in America.
All this "security" and yet in the last three days in the UK, three planes
have been ordered to land mid flight and escorted down by fighter jets due
to security scares.
Well excuse me, but how can a plane which was checked out before it took
off, and all the passengers and baggage checked, suddenly experience a
bomb-scare mid-flight? It can't. It must mean that either rampant paranoia
has set it (it has) or security isn't all that it should be (it isn't).
Meanwhile, 20,000 troops are looking for a guy in a cave with a laptop
in Afghanistan or wherever.
The Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press based in Washington
carries out polls of public attitudes to the US highly regarded can be
found at: http://people-press.org/
Unsurprisingly, its polls reveal that as a consequence of the Sharon
government's actions in the occupied Palestinian territories, Europeans
see Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, with the USA close on
its heals, well ahead of Libya, China or Russia. It reports that mistrust
of America in Europe is at its highest level ever, and Muslim anger
persists.
For Muslims, it has become an article of faith that the US sides with
Israel in its conflict with the Palestinians. 99% of Jordanians, 96% of
Palestinians, and 94% of Moroccans agree. Heck - even more than half of
Israelis see it as unfair - only in America do 47% see it as unfair.
Pew Research Centre Poll of European Public:
"Which countries do you see as the biggest threat to world peace?"
Country %
Israel 59
Iran 53
North Korea 53
United States 53
Iraq 52
Afghanistan 50
Pakistan 48
Syria 37
Libya 36
Saudi Arabia 36
China 30
India 22
Russia 21
More encouragingly, Europeans draw a sharp distinction between the US as a
nation, and the American people. Opinion about Americans in the UK,
Germany and Russia Remains favourable, and a majority of French (53%)
still have a positive opinion about Americans, though down from 71% two
years ago.
"Are your views about Americans favourable?"
2002 2003 2004
UK 83% 80% 73%
Germany 70 67 68
Russia 67 65 64
France 71 58 53
Turkey 31 32 32
Morocco - 54 37
Pakistan 17 38 25
Jordan 53 18 21
If America really does care about WMD, it's going to have to do something
about 200 nuclear warheads in Israel. In 1999, Israel bought one of the
largest uranium factories - a complex in Kazakhstan. It doesn't comply
with Nuclear Non-Proliferation Agreements, so it should come as no
surprise that Iran is of the same view, or that Saddam pursued a
cat-and-mouse policy of what Israel calls "ambiguity". "We might have them
- we might not".
We do know they have them - Mordechai Vannunu, the pre-eminent hero of
the nuclear age told us so back in 1986, and for his "crime" spent 18
years in prison, 11 of them in solitary confinement after being illegally
abducted by Mossad. Still being hassled now.
This wicked treatment never broke his will, any more than Nelson
Mandella's will was broken. It's no wonder that Vannunu has been nominated
for the Nobel Peace Prize every year since 1987.
As Israel is the only country in the Middle-East that has nuclear weapons,
it's time the US leaned on it to open its doors to the IAEA, but I doubt
that it will - it sends more weapons to Israel every day to bolster up its
ultimately unsustainable occupation Palestinian land. (Kerry would make no
difference from Bush).
As a child, I was taught at my mothers knee that if you make a mess you
clear it up yourself. For that reason, and that reason only, I hope that
Bush, Blair and John Howard all get re-elected to clear up the mess
they've created in Iraq, and not leave it for someone else to do for them.
The snag is that problems are rarely resolved by those who helped bring
them about in the first place, so we can't expect much to change any time
soon. What we need are people of the calibre of Roosevelt or Churchill,
and there are none.
Sent under the terms of the UK amateur radio licence, BR68 as "Remarks of
a personal character" not on behalf of, or for the benefit or information
of, any social, political or religious organisation, none of which I am or
ever have been, a member.
73 - David, G4EBT @ GB7FCR
QTH: Cottingham, East Yorkshire.
Message timed: 17:35 on 2004-Sep-30
Message sent using WinPack-Telnet V6.70
(Registered).
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