New York Times on the Web Forums Science

Missile Defense

Technology has always found its greatest consumer in a nation's war and defense efforts. Since the last attempts at a "Star Wars" defense system, has technology changed considerably enough to make the latest Missile Defense initiatives more successful? Can such an application of science be successful? Is a militarized space inevitable, necessary or impossible?

Read Debates, a new Web-only feature culled from Readers' Opinions, published every Thursday.

lchic - 05:31pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1543 of 1566)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

Anger burns in the rubble of JENIN _{http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,4166004%5E2703,00.html} THE stench came first. The smell of death leaked from somewhere inside a pile of rubble and Shouja Damaj, 22, says he long ago gave up hope of finding anyone alive. He beckons and we begin to climb the heap of concrete and mangled metal towards the entrance of a small apartment block.

Every few steps, objects from everyday life appear underfoot – a baby's knitted jumper, a drawer still filled with plastic cups, a child's mathematics homework. And then it becomes clear: the rubble was once a kitchen. Above it is the exposed interior of a house, the entire wall shaved off. A mirror still hangs above a couch. Jagged pieces of plaster and wood dangle over the street.

Inside the adjoining block we pass a concrete wall with large yellow painted letters in Hebrew declaring the name of the Israeli Defence Force unit that had occupied it. "This is where the Israelis sat to eat," says Shouja. "And this is blood." He points to splashes of red along a wall in what was once a bathroom. Slivers of broken glass litter the floor and a Star of David has been scratched into the dust.

Shouja says his brother lived here. It was a new house built for his brother's upcoming wedding. "I don't know where he is," Shouja says. "Every day we hear a new story. He ran away, he is in prison, he is dead."

From the balcony of the room upstairs, which has been gutted by fire, the full horror of Jenin refugee camp unfolds. We look down on emptiness. An area of about 500sq m – once crammed with homes for the camp's 15,000 refugees – is Jenin's ground zero.

Smoke rises from piles of rubble. What looks like a network of roads snakes between the piles.

But these are not roads – they are homes so crushed by tanks there can be little hope of finding anything or anyone underneath.

The people who cower in broken buildings that look close to collapse still refuse to give up. Every day someone reports they have heard the sound of screaming coming from the earth. "I heard a voice," says one man. "Someone was crying and calling for help." When we pass the spot there is only silence.

More than two weeks after Operation Defensive Shield moved into the camp, help has not arrived. In the middle of one of the "roads" Yehidya hacks at the ground with a rusted hoe, filling small plastic buckets with rubble and ferrying them on foot to a larger pile 10m away.

Yehidya is an old man. He has worked all morning – during a few hours' break in the curfew – to clear a space about the size of a coffin. He says he has found the spot where his house once stood. A row of coloured bathroom tiles, which identify his home, have been exposed. Yehidya is looking for money and jewellery: "I have nothing left," he says.

Further on, Roud, 22, who was born in Jenin camp, has returned to see what remains of her family home. She is luckier than some. The front bedroom has been bombed. Bullet holes make an arc shape across one wall. But the back of the house is almost intact.

It was attacked about a week after the camp was invaded. Roud's family had spent days cowering inside and watching the horror outside. "We saw an old man killed and there was shooting in our neighbour's house," says Roud. "Another neighbour died and we found him yesterday but he was hard to recognise because he had turned black."

The bombs came for them at about 10am on April 9. When the first missile hit, Roud and her family broke a window and, carrying a scrap of white fabric to show they were unarmed, ran to relative safety nearby. "I was visualising myself dead,"

lchic - 05:32pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1544 of 1566)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

Did you see the ariel satallite photos - Jenin before, Jenin after ..... ?

lchic - 05:40pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1545 of 1566)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

U.s. Scientist Off Climate Panel / Guardian

Friday April 19, 2002 9:10 PM

GENEVA (AP) - A U.S. scientist was voted off an international climate panel Friday after what campaigners claimed was pressure from the oil industry and Washington http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-1674980,00.html

lchic - 05:41pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1546 of 1566)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

SAT:Ariel photos ... didn't USA take complete control over all such photograhs ?!

lchic - 05:46pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1547 of 1566)
USA - Jenin - Transparency --- really?!!

'Independent' writers are honoured in George Orwell awards
_{By Louise Jury Media Correspondent / 16 April 2002}

Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, The Independent columnist, has won the George Orwell Prize for a journalist judged to have made political writing into an art.

Ms Alibhai-Brown, who writes extensively on a range of issues – but notably Asian affairs – received the award at a ceremony in London last night, where Rupert Cornwell, The Independent's Washington correspondent, was also commended. Peter Hennessy, the history professor and a member of the judges' panel, said: "We had a very rich field this year, several of whom dealt with the word and the world in a fashion that we think would have satisfied Orwell the critic, Orwell the stylist and, sometimes, Orwell the polemicist. Yasmin's columns on politics and justice, and Islam and society, brought light where there was heat in a sustained and often truly brave fashion." http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=285418 http://www.independent.co.uk/search.jsp?keywords=fisk&submit=Go

almarst-2001 - 06:35pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1548 of 1566)

mazza,

Does one have to be of European origin to understand what Fascism is?

almarst-2001 - 06:42pm Apr 19, 2002 EST (#1549 of 1566)

Chronology of American State Terrorism - http://free.freespeech.org/americanstateterrorism/ChronologyofTerror.html

(17 following messages)

New York Times on the Web Forums Science Missile Defense