Can the United States and European alliance be serious about eliminating terrorism and the potential threat of mass destruction while holding arsenals of their own.
What is really the agenda?

Dear John, All,

I think you bring up a very valid point. My personal stake in this is to eliminate all weapons lethal to civilian populations, especially land mines. I am puzzled as to why the United States has refused to sign the treaty limiting land mines. On the other hand, I recognize that we live in a dangerous and coercive world, so weapons for defense are justified. If we were to look at this in the way we limit the lethality of assault weapons allowed for private citizens, and in some countries no weapons are allowed at all; then we could hold the same analogy for nations, where the lethality of their weapons should be kept down to some standard. The Big question is then, who will administer this kind of limitation? To which third party can we turn for arbitration? The United Nations is one such body, though I doubt its corrupt and self serving member representatives are up to the job, in between parties. Another would be to form a coalition of savants, or ethical religious leaders, or friendly aliens... just don't know.

Thanks for your valuable input, an idea worth thinking about.

Ivan

http://www.ccmep.org/palestine.html
Where are the International Aid Organizations?
Wednesday, April 24 2002 @ 03:58 PM GMT

By Brian Wood in Jenin Refugee Camp
Via cell phone

"For the last four days I've been in the Jenin Refugee Camp trying to
help in digging the corpses from under the rubble. Every day more
corpses are dug out, and somehow some people still have come out alive.

It has been quite miraculous because some have been under their homes
for two weeks. There were three people yesterday I heard that came out
alive. Today one person came out alive.

The problem is that the people here don't have the equipment to do this
kind of rescue operation and they are still receiving so little help
from outside. They have only three bulldozers working in the entire
refugee camp removing some of the rubble and getting closer to where the
bodies are and removing them by hand. In an area of four city blocks
long and two city blocks wide, there are two hundred homes that are all
completely destroyed. So this is where the majority of the rescue
operation is taking place.

Where is the Red Cross?

The Red Crescent is mainly the people that do a lot of the digging. Also
involved were some of the brothers of the victims and other family
members with the help of Red Crescent workers. But the Red Crescent
workers there are barely even trained. They are volunteers. They just
slap on rubber gloves and a mask over their face to try to protect them
a little bit from the horrible horrible stench and start digging with
small shovels. They are trying to remove whole houses from on top of
these people.

I can't understand why there is not more help. Even Israelis. There is
supposedly a peace movement in Israel. Why can't they bring bulldozers
over and take them into Jenin Refugee Camp?

The Israeli army has been pretty much out of the camp for three or four
days, and just today five people of the Red Cross from Britain showed
up, specializing in rescue operations. And they got a briefing about all
the explosive ordinances on the ground and in the homes from the Israeli
army, Apache helicopters and some of the booby-traps left by the
Palestinian resistance fighters.

The unexploded ordinances are being tripped every day by people coming
across them.

There are dozens of injuries in the last three days because people run
across exploding devices and they blow up. Today I just came from the
hospital visiting two ten year old boys I'm actually friends of their
family. One is Assad Ibrahim Arsal. He lost his left arm at the shoulder
and both of his legs are injured, barely still attached, in horrible
condition. We don't expect him to live, he looks horrible - he's the
cousin of one of my friends here. The other Palestinian boy is named is
Saed Sobhay Wahsh. He is also in pretty bad shape, but he looks like he
will survive. Both of his legs, torso and face have a lot of cuts,
burns, his eyes are sealed shut, pus oozing out of his body. He will
need a lot of treatment and time to recover.

These two kids likely stepped on a land mine in an area we recently
observed about ten Israeli soldiers. Every day, we hear two or three
explosions a day and every time we know exactly what happened. Every day
several people are injured by unexploded ordinances." ...

Where is the international aid???