An article on CounterPunch describes "the scenes of destruction at the Palestinian Ministry of Culture left behind after Israeli military forces lifted their siege of the towns of Ramallah and its suburb al-Birah, where the ministry is located.

Entering the building after its month-long occupation by an Israeli military unit, ministry officials, foreign cultural attaches, and reporters found a scene of grotesque vandalism. Equipment from the local radio and television station had been hurled from windows in the multi-story building, electronic equipment was destroyed or had been stolen, furniture was broken and piled up on heaps of papers, books, computer disks, and broken glass. Children's paintings had been destroyed.

And then there was this, as described by Hass: "There are two toilets on every floor, but the soldiers urinated and defecated everywhere else in the building, in several rooms of which they had lived for about a month. They did their business on the floors, in emptied flowerpots, even in drawers they had pulled out of desks. They defecated into plastic bags, and these were scattered in several places. Some of them had burst. Someone even managed to defecate into a photocopier. The soldiers urinated into empty mineral water bottles. These were scattered by the dozen in all the rooms of the building, in cardboard boxes, among the piles of rubbish and rubble, on desks, under desks, next to the furniture the soldiers had smashed, among the children's books that had been thrown down. Some of the bottles had opened and the yellow liquid had spilled and left its stain.

"It was especially difficult to enter two floors of the building because of the pungent stench of feces and urine. Soiled toilet paper was also scattered everywhere. In some of the rooms, not far from the heaps of feces and the toilet paper, remains of rotting food were scattered. In one corner, in the room in which someone had defecated into a drawer, full cartons of fruits and vegetables had been left behind. The toilets were left overflowing with bottles filled with urine, feces and toilet paper. Relative to other places, the soldiers did not leave behind them many sayings scrawled on the walls. Here and there were the candelabrum symbols of Israel, stars of David, praises for the Jerusalem Betar soccer team."

This is not a tale we are ever likely to see in the American press... Can it, for instance, be called terrorism if an entire unit of the Israeli army forsakes purity of arms and spends a month crapping on floors, on piles of children's artwork, in desk drawers, on photocopiers? Is it anti-Semitic to wonder what happened to the moral compass of a society that spawns a group of young men who will intermingle their own religious and national symbols with feces and urine, as if the drawings and the excrement both constitute valued autographs? "


IN other news, today (November 7th, 2002, two days after the November elections in the U.S.) Trent Lott, obviously relieved that the Democrats will not be in any position to bring up the subject of the poor and elderly in America, in a story reported beside a picture of the normally dour looking Lott beaming with joy, reported that Lott said that "We need pension reform, welfare reform. We need to do more in education," Lott said."Let's quit talking about doing something for low-income elderly that need prescription drugs. Let's look at what we can do to target some tax cuts that would help the economy. Let's have fiscal restraint."

One thing you can say about those Republicans. At least they don't beat around the Bush, well except for that bit about 'reforming welfare', while increasing welfare for real rich people (called 'tax cut'), while at the same time, of course, finally at long last the country can stop listening to a bunch of talk about poverty stricken old people and just talk about cutting taxes or something like that instead. By the way, just as an aside, the defense budget is scheduled to be increased by big 20 per cent, but then with the long history of going over budget on these programs, maybe even 25 per cent, and one can only wonder how that will be paid for with all these fresh new tax cuts which apparently the country needs a lot more than say, welfare or something like that, which won't increase by 25 per cent, but rather will probably just disappear, or so one would think, given the way things go on this planet.

According to the press reports this is the first time since Eisenhower got in that the Republicans have both houses, and the first time since Hoover that they also have the Supreme court, all three branches of the govt.

Speaking of Eisenhower, CounterPunch also has a very interesting article on the military industrial complex, the great big fat jump in defense spending and the 'war on terrorism'.

Has anyone ever noticed that whenever a Republican says 'fiscal restraint' that means sacking welfare or maybe cutting social security...or perhaps putting social security into something real safe like the stock market. As I ponder this weird sounding mixed message I can't help but wonder how you can have 'fiscal restraint' while cutting taxes for rich people and jacking up the Pentagon budget by 20 (or more than likely 25) per cent, but in the weird math of Reagonomics I suppose that if you nail enough grannies and those invidious welfare queens that could still count as fiscal restraint, right. Let's just say if those Republicans really llike fiscal restraint and cutting taxes for rich people and jacking up the Pentagon budget as much as they say they like all three someone is going to have to get nailed, right, and we know then that it won't be rich people or the Pentagon, the latter for reasons discussed on that page about the military industrial complex, so I must suppose that the poorest people and maybe even middling people will have to restrain themselves for all that to work out for the Republicans...

Have a nice day...

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