Arab American News Focus

News, June 2003, Al-Jazeerah.info

Arab American Institute

6/28/03

By Way of Explanation...
When Countdown started in 2001, it was primarily focused on the candidates and issues of the 2001-2002 election cycle. In the last three years however, Countdown has metamorphosed more than once. Now, as Election 2004 draws near, we are returning to Countdown's original purpose...helping to inform the community about the important issues facing us in the upcoming election. So, from now on, though there will be an occasional story about the happenings in Congress, in the Justice Department, or the Occupied Territories, we will primarily focus on the candidates running for office, particularly the presidential candidates. We will strive to keep you abreast of where they stand on important issues.

MoveOn Primary
Last week, www.moveon.org conducted "an online vote to help our members express their preferences among the current field of Democratic candidates" for president. The vote was a great success, with "317,647 members" voting, making MoveOn's e-primary "larger than both the New Hampshire Democratic primary and Iowa caucuses combined." Here are the results: Howard Dean 43.87%, Dennis Kucinich 23.93%, John Kerry 15.73%, John Edwards 3.19%, Richard Gephardt 2.44%, Robert Graham 2.24%, Carol Moseley Braun 2.21 %, Joseph Lieberman 1.92%, and Al Sharpton 0.53%. Of respondents, 2.01% chose "undecided," while 1.93% chose "other." MoveOn also "announced that any candidate from the field of nine that garnered more than 50% of the vote would receive our endorsement." No candidate reached this threshold however.

Gephardt Has Strong Words on Saudi Arabia
Democratic presidential candidate Richard Gephardt has decided that the best way to fight terrorism, and President George W. Bush, is to stop American dependence on Middle Eastern oil. Gephardt told audiences during a recent West Coast campaign swing that it is "time we stopped behaving like the United States of Saudi Arabia, and started working toward total economic freedom from Saudi Arabia, from the oil it exports and from the radical fundamentalism it has visited on the world." He also stated that "The president is right to begin withdrawing American troops from Saudi Arabia. ... But what good will it do if our government remains shackled to Saudi oil producers? That's why this administration tolerated Saudi silence when we struck back against the Taliban. It's why this administration never spoke out about the clear evidence that Saudi citizens were funding al Qaeda."

Ex-White House Counterterrorism Expert (Now Kerry Advisor) Blasts Bush Again
Newsday reports that career security bureaucrat Rand Beers, who "stunned much of Washington when he resigned on March 17" from the National Security Council (NSC) and subsequently became a foreign policy advisor to Democratic presidential candidate Senator John Kerry (D-MA), has once again come out strongly against the Bush Administration's homeland security policies. Beers stated in a congressional hearing this week that "This administration has been slow to embrace homeland security...The cup of homeland security and the cup of the war on terrorism is more empty than full...There's not enough focus on defense and dealing with the basic sources of humiliation and despair that exist in large segments of the Islamic population." Beers served on the NSC under Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush.

Senate Holds Wahhabi Hearing
This Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee's Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing with the ominous title of "Terrorism: Growing Wahhabi Influence in the United States." As if not interested in a balanced opinion in the least, Senator Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA), the chairman and ranking Democrat of the subcommittee, scheduled Stephen Schwartz and Alex Alexiev to testify at the hearing. Both Shwartz and Alexiev are virulent critics of Arab American and American Muslim activism, and their writings and statements are consistently misinformed and hurtful. So much for scheduling balanced and thoughtful panelists. Please contact Chairman Jon Kyl (R-AZ) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and voice your concerns over their scheduling of such a biased, hurtful, anti-Arab American and anti-Muslim American panel. Please go to http://capwiz.com/arab/issues/alert/?alertid=2691891&type=CU to help!

Heard Around Town...
The Washington Post reports (via the Israeli daily Ha'aretz) that Palestinian Prime Minister Abu Mazen stated that at their Aqaba meeting, President Bush told him the following: "God told me to strike at al Qaeda and I strick them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

ABC's George Will on This Week with George Stephanopoulos "It's not as though the president went to war on the basis of bits and pieces, he went to war on the basis of broad international consensus." What?!?! He also wrote recently that "The doctrine of preemption - the core of the president's foreign policy - is in jeopardy...Preemption presupposes the ability to know things - to know about threats with a degree of certainty not requisite for decisions less momentous than those for waging war...for the president, the missing weapons are not a political problem...But unless America's foreign policy is New Age therapy to make the pubic feel mellow, feeling good about the consequences of an action does not obviate the need to assess the original rationale for the action. Until WMD are found, or their absence accounted for, there is urgent explaining to be done."

Of Note -
Building Government Capacity in Palestine
An international development organization wishes to recruit several highly skilled, energetic and dedicated professionals to a capacity building project in Palestine. The project improves the government's capacity for policy formulation and negotiations by employing a team of internationally recruited professionals to work full-time alongside local project staff and leading international experts in a negotiations support unit. The project works closely with the senior political leadership including government ministers and negotiators on a wide range of issues. The project is funded by, and accountable to, a consortium of donor agencies.

The project wishes to recruit:

·       Lawyers with a minimum of three years of professional experience.
·       Policy Analysts experienced in formulating or advising on public policy
·       Communications Advisers with experience in media relations or journalism.
·       Global Information Systems mapping analysts.

Strong candidates will be at least proficient in Arabic.
Compensation will be above average for the development sector.
Contracts will be for a fixed term of one year with the expectation of a renewal being agreed by both parties at the end of that year.

Applicants should send a covering letter and CV to: NearEastDevelopmentRecruitment@hotmail.com

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Earth, a planet hungry for peace

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03).

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