Ariga: September 1999

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September 1999

Sept 27 1999
Announcing: I.C.E.-I.T. The International Citizens' Empowerment Internet Task-force.

A call for volunteers to join the I.C.E. Internet task-force monitoring extremist sites which incite violence against innocents on the civilian frontier.
A quick virtual tour of the underworld of the internet can unearth a seething transnational dialogue between dangerous extremists opposed to the existing world order. Had these debates taken place in the real world of street corners and assembly halls, there would be an outcry. But until some critical point in which an apparently lone operator conducts a horrific act of terror, this underworld seems benign.
Should we feel threatened by a viable dialogue between world extremist groups sharing nothing but an agenda for global chaos in the new millennium? Should we fear its influence as the technology for incitement becomes more accessible? Should it bother us that Islamic extremist sites link to neo-nazi and that neo-nazis link to doomsday cults like the Branch Davidians (WACO)?
In the virtual world, the fashion of terrorism using weapons of mass destruction is already a reality. Oblivious to technical difficulty and the high chance of being caught by the world intelligence community, opposers of the "new world order" openly cite terrorism using anthrax, VX gas or nuclear devices as the great hope of the global uprising. In the virtual world, unholy alliances are being formed to achieve common objectives. The common element uniting these groups is a desire for mass destruction of innocents (anthrax spores will not distinguish between arabs and Jews, blacks, white and yellow (at least, not yet)).
In the on-line Militiaman's Handbook of the White Resistance, the influence of Saddam Hussein (technically a "mud person", according to white supremacists) is easy to find. In a lengthy volume on anthrax and biological warfare, white Americans are called to arm themselves with anthrax and to be involved in the "first strike" in the inevitable non-conventional poisoning of the streets of America. US foreign policy in the Middle East is seen as victimizing Saddam Hussein in order to protect "the rogue jew state" (they spare no tears for the innocent Kurds and Iranians poisoned by cyanide gas). White Americans are urged to prepare for the coming confrontation by studying an enclosed survival manual and withdrawing in a crisis to small rural communities and shooting anyone who comes near (especially "blacks" and "Jews")
The internet is a great empowerment tools for citizens of the world. It is our duty as surfers to conduct an occasional watch over sites of all affiliations designed to cause carnage among those same children of a free world.

BIRZEIT UNDERTAKES MAJOR UPDATE TO THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO PALESTINE'S WEBSITES AND RELEASES A REPORT ON THE STATE OF THE PALESTINIAN INTERNET
26 September 1999 -- Yesterday, Birzeit Webmaster Adam Hanieh announced a major update of the Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites and the awarding of the 1999 Golden Olive Awards to websites of outstanding quality based in Palestine.
At the end of 1998/beginning of 1999 there were around 170 local websites listed on the Complete Guide to Palestine's Websites. All sites listed on the guide have been re-reviewed. Some of those sites no longer exist so a new section has been added to each category called "Websites that Once Were But Are No Longer".
"The point of this section," explained Hanieh, "is to record the development and history of the WWW in Palestine. When the definitive history comes to be written one day, it will be useful to have a record of sites that existed and then became defunct."
Thirty-one new sites have been added to the Complete Guide, bringing the total number of websites on the Guide up to 228 distributed in 14 categories (Academic and Research, Arts and Culture, Business and Economy, Government and Services, Human Rights, Industry and Products, Internet and Computers, News and Media, Online Memorials, Organizations and Associations, Personal Pages, Political Parties, Schools and Universities, Tourist Information).
Golden Olives are given to websites of outstanding quality based in the West Bank, Gaza Strip or Jerusalem. For more information about the Golden Olive Award, visit http://www.birzeit.edu/links/goldeno.html

Sept 27 1999 Event Announcement
What do you know about El Chiam prison? Probably not much, if you rely on the Israeli press for information. Every year, 100's of Lebanese citizens are detained in this prison, under administrative arrest and without trial. Without any kind of legal supervision. It is probably the most demonic facility operated by the Israeli government. For years, it has been strictly closed to the press. Ex-detainees have reported torture in medieval dimensions, including electric shocks.
A recent arrest of Cosette Ibrahim, a 25-year old Lebanese journalist, has attracted the attention of human rights groups around the world to El Chiam. Cosette was accused of writing reports about South Lebanon, and transferring information to Hizbullah and the Lebanese army. The Lebanese claim that the Israeli army wanted her silenced because she wrote anti-Israeli articles about the situation in South Lebanon. Which version is true? Does it even matter when there is no trial?
We don't know about El Chiam because they don't want us to know.
It is our civil duty to DEMAND to know what our army is doing in our name.
On Monday, Sep 27, we plan to meet at 17:00 in Kaplan st. in Tel Aviv, in front of the main entrance to the Kiria.

We will protest against the fact that we don't know.

We will meet with people who DO know and get the information that we are denied about El Chiam.

We will demand the stop of dark, illegal activities that require a code of silence that is more than a decade old.
This protest is privately organized by Yona Rochlin, and does not formally belong to any group.
In order to make the necessary arrangements (police approval, etc..) we need to know how many people plan to attend. If you do, please let us know Yona: yona@netvision.net.il or 09-7603016

Sept 25 1999:

September 12 1999

A Poem for Yom Kippur:
To Snow they Shall be Whitened
By Karen Alkalay-Gut

It gets worse and worse
The painting over of old sins
With new rationalizations, hopes
To contradict truth- -Now
I sit once again, in the
Women's section- -and instead
Of prayers my mind
Seeks and find
Big words to clear the slate
Greater sinners
To make me pure

Though our sins be as scarlet

September 11 1999
Poem for the Jewish New Year
The Book
by Asher Reich

When I moved recently, I suddenly found
my forgotten Bible:

A Bar-Mitzvah present, the only thing
I took with me when I deserted the home of my youth
for forty years in the desert.

I leafed through the book: some pages stuck together
as in a classified secret. Cain, of course, is still murdering his brother.
For every murder, two other brothers sprout up in the field.
Goliath takes off his armor and goes out to lunch

From his eternal battle with the little Israelite.
the Philistine's head is already adorned with rubber bullets
like kinky curls. The first astronaut,
Elijah, shoots up in a storm to heaven in a regular launch.
Locally made UFO's sail in the skies of Ezekiel.

I continued skimming: the pages had already blackened with blood,
gory wars that continue on their own.
Only the sins remain like white stains, prophets
disappear from the book to prophesize far away. Kings
escaped to the Diaspora. Angels flew back to the caves of the firmament.
From his couch, God sadly ascended and turned out our light.

Asher Reich is a leading Israeli poet and translator into Hebrew. This poem was translated by Karen Alkalay-Gut, who has other poems of her own here You can also email her with your comments on her or Asher's New year's poems.

September 10 1999 Gush Shalom AdTHE SETTLEMENTS: TICKING BOMBS Our warnings against the settlements, since their very beginning, are coming true now. The settlements are today the foremost obstacle on Israel's road to peace and historic reconciliation. The government is drawing the peace map according to the map of the settlements, contrary to every Israeli interest. This is a national danger, a cause for tears for generations to come. In addition to the danger to our security, the settlements demand from us a heavy price in health, education, welfare and development. While the government is debating how to curtail these services, it ignores the fact that never did we have in Israel citizens so expensive and so spoilt as these violent fanatics. The price of the settlements will be paid by all of us, in blood and money. How long? Gush Shalom

Setpember 6 1999 From LAW: The Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human Rights and the Environment: AFTER 18 MONTHS, ISRAEL'S HIGH COURT OUTLAWS TORTURE This morning, a special nine-judge panel of the Israeli High Court issued a judgement outlawing torture methods, such as sleep deprivation, shaking or detention in uncomfortable positions. The High Court's decision finally overturns years of arguments by Israel that these methods were necessary and legal... LAW welcomes the High Court's decision and demands the Israeli Government immediately apologize for its use of torture. LAW requires it to fully comply with the High Court's decision by:

Issuing an order and amending the law against torture and other similar treatment,
Transferring present interrogators from their duties and replacing them with properly trained civilian officials,
Working with international and Palestinian observers to ensure the end of torture, while developing lawful and effective security methods,
Reviewing all prisoners' cases and ordering retrials where torture was involved,
Compensating victims of torture and false imprisonment.

LAW is the Palestinian Society for the Protection of Human rights and the Environment is a non-governmental organisation dedicating to advancing human rights through legal advocacy LAW is affiliate to the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) and the Federation Internationale des Ligues de Droits de l'Homme (FIDH) and the World Committee Against Torture (OMCT) Visit their web site at http://www.lawsociety.org/

September 4 1999 An Ariga Update Message So many have asked lately, from abroad and locally, why Ariga wasn't updated for so long ( See Ariga by Month and the only answer is that nothing's happened that is enough to begin to explaion what's happening (including, according to the logs, Ariga hitting a million visitors this year since it opened in mid-1995.)
But just a moment ago,, as can happen on the Internet Joe Shea's American Reporter at http://www.american-reporter.com sent me a message saying that AP reported Israel and the Palestinian Autonomy reached a new deal. That's what I've been waiting for for this short update.
Don't doubt peace is possible. If you do, you'll help prevent it. It's going to take a lot of luck for the peace process to progress, just like in any business. But luck can be created by looking for win-win situations -- or why call it a peace process?
Do Arafat and Barak and Assad and everyone else understand this? No database can tell us, truly. But Barak and Arafat both have seen the Internet at work, even if they never read its Declaration of Independence and by now, with Assad's son an opthamologist, I'm sure the Syrian, too has seen it. They know the Internet already has -- or will soon have -- a billion users, and that will make it the biggest collection of humans even if each and everyone is unique no matter all the ideologies. Netizenship is the future of us all, even if local shit is still bothersome or wonderful depending on a cross between work, class and, yes, luck. They can't stop it. They know that, so they try to slow it down, when the logical thing would be to speed up a peace process.
Best for the Jewish New Year and any other new year being celebrated in the coming months
p.s. Meanwhile, remember: what you figured would be lucky for you when you were in trouble, does not necessarily solve the problem of the person asking you for help right now -- and someone always is doing just that, somewhere. Subscribe to the Ariga Update to get such occasional mesages

Previously:

New poetry: Thomas Fortenberry on Jerusalem and other subjects, John Marks writes about Deadsville.com, and 10 10-line poems about fruits, vegetables, love and sex by Ben Landy. He calls it Ripening Love.

Currently recommended:

Visit Middle East Web , a tri-lingual site promoting peace activities in the Middle East. Highly recommended for its grass-roots origin on the 'net. Ariga belongs...

The Roma People, also known as gypsies, have a web site with news about their trials and tribulations -- particularly in the former Yugoslavia -- at http://www.romnews.com/

Stratfor, a news analysis service on security issues, has opened a Middle East section at http://www.stratfor.com/MEAF/

Terrorism, Peace, Doomsday. An important article at Sleeping Giant, a site devoted to the issues of non-conventional warfare, particular biochem warfare.

A report on the Water Shortage in the West Bank is available at B'tselem, The Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories

An Accidental Murder, An Avram Cohen Mystery by Robert Rosenberg
Click on the cover to read the first chapter and from there you can order your copy from Amazon -- or visit the full Avram Cohen site where you can get the first chapters of all four books, information about the books, and how to order a customized email serialization of the first two books, direct to your email address.

The Avram Cohen Mystery Quartet was written by Robert Rosenberg, owner/operator of Ariga. If you want to help keep the Ariga of peace and poetry going but feel uncomfortable about making a (non-tax-deductible) donation, clicking through to Amazon to buy An Accidental Murder would surely help. Indeed, if you are a regular Amazon customer, could you please use the Ariga portal to Amazon? Meanwhile, This link takes you directly to An Accidental Murder at Amazon Books where the List Price: $22.00 -- Amazon's Price: $15.40 -- You Save: $6.60 (30%)

From the Ha'aretz newspaper review: ... Bialik once said that the Jewish people will not be a normal nation until it has its own criminals and policemen... Click on the paragraph for the full review.

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