Chomsky -Tots som ....

Tots som... (ompliu l’espai en blanc)

(in English)

El brutal atac perpetrat contra la revista satírica francesa Charlie Hebdoha horroritzat el món. Steven Erlanger, corresponsal del New York Times, ha descrit en termes molt gràfics les escenes immediatament posteriors al que molts anomenen l’11 de Setembre francès: “Un dia de sirenes, helicòpters al cel i frenesí informatiu; de cordons policials i multituds angoixades; de nens allunyats de l’escola per portar-los a un lloc segur”.

L’immens clamor que s’ha alçat a tot el món contra aquest atemptat ha anat acompanyat d’una reflexió sobre les arrels profundes d’aquesta atrocitat. Molts hi han vist un xoc de civilitzacions.

Les reaccions d’horror i repugnància davant d’aquests crims estan justificades, i també és justificable la recerca d’unes raons de fons, però sempre a condició que tinguem ben presents uns quants principis.

La nostra reacció ha de ser totalment independent de l’opinió que tinguem sobre Charlie Hebdo i el que publica. Les consignes apassionades i omnipresents, com ara “Jo sóc Charlie ” o d’altres, no han de reflectir, ni tan sols insinuar, cap associació amb aquesta publicació, si més no en el context de la defensa de la llibertat d’expressió. Han d’expressar que defensem el dret a la llibertat d’expressió amb independència del que pensem del contingut de la revista, encara que ens sembli abominable o depravat.

I aquests eslògans també han d’expressar la condemna de la violència i el terror. Davant dels assassinats de Charlie Hebdo, Isaac Herzog, president del Partit Laborista israelià i principal contrincant del primer ministre Netanyahu a les pròximes eleccions, ha dit que “totes les nacions que volen pau i llibertat han d’afrontar l’immens repte” del terrorisme, i té raó, sempre que deixem de banda la seva interpretació selectiva d’aquest repte. “El terrorisme és terrorisme”, afegia Herzog. “No hi ha dues maneres de veure’l”.

El periodista independent David Peterson ha assenyalat que, fa anys, Erlanger ja va cobrir a Belgrad un altre atemptat contra un mitjà de comunicació. El 24 d’abril del 1999 Erlanger va informar sobre un atac de l’OTAN (volia dir els EUA) durant el qual es van disparar “míssils contra l’edifici de la televisió estatal sèrbia” i es van tallar així les emissions de la Radiotelevisió Sèrbia.

Erlanger reproduïa les paraules d’un dels periodistes supervivents: “Tot es va desplomar. No hi havia escapatòria. Hi havia fum per tot arreu. Va ser espantós. La gent cridava. Un veritable malson”.

“L’escena -explicava Erlanger- cada vegada resultava més familiar: vidres trencats, parets derruïdes, fustes retorçades, pintura socarrimada i devastació emocional”. Deu persones com a mínim van morir a l’acte arran de l’explosió, i hi va haver 20 desapareguts, “probablement enterrats sota la runa”.

“L’OTAN i els responsables polítics nord-americans van defensar l’atac -explicava Erlanger-, al·legant que el seu objectiu era debilitar el règim del president de Iugoslàvia, Slobodan Milosevic”. El portaveu del Pentàgon, Kenneth Bacon, va declarar durant una conferència de premsa a Washington que la televisió sèrbia era “un element tan important de la maquinària assassina de Milosevic com les seves forces armades”, i això la convertia, per tant, en un blanc legítim.

A ningú li va semblar aleshores necessari investigar les raons de fons d’un atac d’aquesta mena, ni ningú va formular preguntes filosòfiques sobre qui representa la civilització i qui representa la barbàrie.

Així doncs, Isaac Herzog s’equivoca quan diu: “El terrorisme és terrorisme. No hi ha dues maneres de veure’l”. I tant que hi ha dues maneres de veure’l: el terrorisme no és terrorisme si els autors de l’atemptat són els justos -que es converteixen en justos precisament en virtut del seu poder-. Anàlogament, la llibertat d’expressió no corre cap perill quan els justos destrueixen un canal de televisió que dóna suport a un govern que és objecte dels seus atacs.

Per la mateixa regla de tres, resulta molt fàcil entendre la carta publicada al New York Times per Floyd Abrams, advocat especialista en drets humans i conegut per defensar la llibertat d’expressió, en la qual assenyala que l’atemptat contra Charlie Hebdo “és l’agressió més greu contra el periodisme de què tenim memòria”. Fa ben fet de precisar “de què tenim memòria”, perquè divideix així les agressions contra el periodisme i els actes terroristes en dues categories: els dels altres, que són esgarrifosos, i els nostres, que són virtuosos i se’ns esborren fàcilment de la memòria.

Val la pena subratllar que el de Belgrad és només un exemple dels nombrosos atacs contra la llibertat d’expressió perpetrats pels justos.

N’esmentarem només un altre que també se’ns va esborrar fàcilment de “la memòria”: l’ofensiva de l’exèrcit nord-americà contra Fal·luja el novembre del 2004, un dels pitjors crims comesos durant la invasió de l’Iraq. L’atac va començar amb l’ocupació militar de l’Hospital General. No cal dir que l’ocupació militar d’un hospital és ja per se un greu crim de guerra, deixant de banda les circumstàncies en què es va desenvolupar aquesta ocupació.

Com informava un reportatge publicat a primera pàgina pel New York Times : “Uns soldats armats van treure de les habitacions els pacients i empleats de l’hospital, a qui van ordenar que s’asseguessin o s’ajaguessin a terra mentre les tropes els lligaven les mans darrere de l’esquena”. Un altre reportatge afegia: “L’ofensiva ha permès clausurar el que, segons els oficials, havia esdevingut una eina propagandística al servei dels milicians: l’Hospital General de Fal·luja i el seu enfilall d’informes sobre el nombre de víctimes civils”.

Esclar, no es podia tolerar que una agència de propaganda d’aquesta mena continués vomitant vulgars obscenitats.

Noam Chomsky - reflections and reflexes

We Are All – Fill in the Blank 

By Noam Chomsky
(in French ) (in Catalan -ara.com)

11/ January 2015  Posted in: Foreign Policy, Comments: 10

The world reacted with horror to the murderous attack on the French satirical journal Charlie Hebdo.  In the New York Times, veteran Europe correspondent Steven Erlanger graphically described the immediate aftermath, what many call France’s 9/11, as “a day of sirens, helicopters in the air, frantic news bulletins; of police cordons and anxious crowds; of young children led away from schools to safety. It was a day, like the previous two, of blood and horror in and around Paris.” The enormous outcry worldwide was accompanied by reflection about the deeper roots of the atrocity. “Many Perceive a Clash of Civilizations,” a New York Times headline read.

The reaction of horror and revulsion about the crime is justified, as is the search for deeper roots, as long as we keep some principles firmly in mind.  The reaction should be completely independent of what thinks about this journal and what it produces.  The passionate and ubiquitous chants “I am Charlie,” and the like, should not be meant to indicate, even hint at, any association with the journal, at least in the context of defense of freedom of speech.  Rather, they should express defense of the right of free expression whatever one thinks of the contents, even if they are regarded as hateful and depraved.

And the chants should also express condemnation for violence and terror.  The head of Israel’s Labor Party and the main challenger for the upcoming elections in Israel, Isaac Herzog, is quite right when he says that “Terrorism is terrorism.  There’s no two ways about it.” He is also right to say that “All the nations that seek peace and freedom [face] an enormous challenge” from murderous terrorism – putting aside his predictably selective interpretation of the challenge.

Erlanger vividly describes the scene of horror.  He quotes one surviving journalist as saying that “Everything crashed.  There was no way out. There was smoke everywhere. It was terrible. People were screaming. It was like a nightmare.” Another surviving journalist reported a “huge detonation, and everything went completely dark.” The scene, Erlanger reported, “was an increasingly familiar one of smashed glass, broken walls, twisted timbers, scorched paint and emotional devastation.” At least 10 people were reported at once to have died in the explosion, with 20 missing, “presumably buried in the rubble.”

These quotes, as the indefatigable David Peterson reminds us, are not, however, from January 2015.  Rather, they are from a story of Erlanger’s on April 24 1999, which made it only to page 6 of the New York Times, not reaching the significance of the Charlie Hebdo attack.  Erlanger was reporting on the NATO (meaning US) “missile attack on Serbian state television headquarters” that “knocked Radio Television Serbia off the air.”

There was an official justification. “NATO and American officials defended the attack,” Erlanger reports, “as an effort to undermine the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia.” Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon told a briefing in Washington that “Serb TV is as much a part of Milosevic’s murder machine as his military is,” hence a legitimate target of attack.

The Yugoslavian government said that “The entire nation is with our President, Slobodan Milosevic,” Erlanger reports, adding that “How the Government knows that with such precision was not clear.”

No such sardonic comments are in order when we read that France mourns the dead and the world is outraged by the atrocity.  There need also be no inquiry into the deeper roots, no profound questions about who stands for civilization, and who for barbarism.

Isaac Herzog, then, is mistaken when he says that “Terrorism is terrorism.  There’s no two ways about it.” There are quite definitely two ways about it: terrorism is not terrorism when a much more severe terrorist attack is carried out by those who are Righteous by virtue of their power.  Similarly, there is no assault against freedom of speech when the Righteous destroy a TV channel supportive of a government that they are attacking.

By the same token, we can readily comprehend the comment in the New York Times of civil rights lawyer Floyd Abrams, noted for his forceful defense of freedom of expression, that the Charlie Hebdo attack is “the most threatening assault on journalism in living memory.” He is quite correct about “living memory,” which carefully assigns assaults on journalism and acts of terror to their proper categories: Theirs, which are horrendous; and Ours, which are virtuous and easily dismissed from living memory.

We might recall as well that this is only one of many assaults by the Righteous on free expression.  To mention only one example that is easily erased from “living memory,” the assault on Falluja by US forces in November 2004, one of the worst crimes of the invasion of Iraq, opened with occupation of Falluja General Hospital.  Military occupation of a hospital is, of course, a serious war crime in itself, even apart from the manner in which it was carried out, blandly reported in a front-page story in the New York Times, accompanied with a photograph depicting the crime.  The story reported that “Patients and hospital employees were rushed out of rooms by armed soldiers and ordered to sit or lie on the floor while troops tied their hands behind their backs.” The crimes were reported as highly meritorious, and justified: “The offensive also shut down what officers said was a propaganda weapon for the militants: Falluja General Hospital, with its stream of reports of civilian casualties.”

Evidently such a propaganda agency cannot be permitted to spew forth its vulgar obscenities.

Chomsky -Nous sommes tous (remplir ici)

 translated article from Noam CHOMSKY

Le monde a été horrifié par l’attaque meurtrière du journal satirique français Charlie Hebdo. Dans le New York Times, le correspondant européen de longue date Steven Erlanger a décrit de manière saisissante les répercussions immédiates de ce que beaucoup désignent comme le « 11 septembre » français. Ce fut « une journée au cours de laquelle se succédèrent des sirènes retentissantes et des ballets d’hélicoptères. Une journée de frénésie médiatique, de cordons de police, de foules en panique et de jeunes enfants éloignés des écoles par mesure de sécurité. Une journée, à l’instar des deux qui suivirent, de sang et d’horreur à Paris, et aux alentours ». L’immense tollé mondial déclenché par l’attentat, fut accompagné d’ une réflexion sur les racines profondes de cette atrocité. « Nombreux sont ceux qui y voient un choc de civilisations », titrait un article du New York Times.
Les réactions d’horreur et d’indignation envers ces crimes sont justifiées, tout comme la recherche des causes profondes, tant que nous gardons fermement à l’esprit quelques principes. La réaction devrait être complètement indépendante de l’opinion qu’on se fait de ce journal et de ce qu’il produit. Les slogans omniprésents du style « Je suis Charlie », ne devraient indiquer, ni même sous-entendre, aucune association avec le journal, du moins dans le contexte de la défense de la liberté d’expression. Ils devraient plutôt exprimer une défense de la liberté d’expression quoique on puisse penser du contenu, même si ce dernier est jugé méprisant et dépravé.
Et ces slogans devraient aussi exprimer la condamnation de la violence et de la terreur. Le dirigeant du parti des travailleurs d’Israël et principal opposant pour les élections à venir, Isaac Herzog, a bien raison quand il dit que « Le terrorisme c’est du terrorisme. Il n’y a aucun doute là-dessus » Il a aussi raison de dire que « Toutes les nations qui souhaitent la paix et la liberté font face à un défi énorme » à cause du terrorisme meurtrier – si on met de côté son interprétation sélective du défi.
Erlanger décrit de façon frappante la scène d’horreur. Il cite l’un des journalistes survivants comme ayant dit « Tout s’est effondré. Il n’y avait aucune issue. Il y avait de la fumée partout. C’était terrible. Les gens criaient. C’était un cauchemar. » Un autre journaliste survivant rapporta « une immense déflagration avant d’être plongés dans l’obscurité la plus totale. » La scène, rapporta Erlanger, « était de plus en plus familière, avec ses débris de verre, ses murs effondrés, ses boiseries arrachées, ses peintures déchiquetées et sa dévastation émotionnelle ». Au moins 10 personnes seraient mortes dans l’explosion, et 20 disparus, « probablement enfouis sous les décombres. »
Ces citations, comme nous le rappelle l’infatigable David Peterson, ne datent pas de Janvier 2015. Elles sont en réalité extraites d’une histoire rapportée par Erlanger le 24 Avril 1999, qui n’eut droit qu’à la sixième page du New York Times, n’atteignant donc pas l’importance de l’attaque de Charlie Hebdo. Erlanger y décrivait le « tir de missile sur le siège de la télévision d’état serbe » par l’OTAN (comprenez : les USA) qui « fit taire la radiodiffusion serbe ».

Les locaux de la télévision serbe bombardés par l’OTAN

Il y eut un communiqué officiel. « L’OTAN et les représentants Américains ont justifié l’attaque », rapporte Erlanger, « comme une tentative de déstabilisation du régime du Président Slobodan Milosevic de Yougoslavie. » Le porte-parole du pentagone, Kenneth Bacon rapporta lors d’une conférence à Washington que « la télévision serbe faisait partie intégrante de la machine meurtrière de Milosevic, autant que ses forces armées » ce qui en faisait donc une cible légitime d’attaque.
Le gouvernement yougoslave a déclaré que « la nation entière soutient le Président Slobodan Milosevic », rapporte Erlanger qui ajoute « comment le gouvernement sait cela avec autant de précision demeure plutôt flou ».
Aucun commentaire aussi sardonique ne serait le bienvenu quand on lit que la France est en deuil et que le monde est outré par cette atrocité. Il ne n’est pas nécessaire non plus de chercher les causes profondes ni de se demander qui représente la civilisation, et qui représente la barbarie.
Isaac Herzog se trompe donc lorsqu’il affirme que « Le terrorisme c’est du terrorisme. Il n’y a aucun doute là-dessus ». On peut affirmer qu’il existe un doute : le terrorisme ne s’appelle pas terrorisme dans le cas d’une attaque bien plus violente, mais menée par ceux qui sont dans leur bon droit, ceux dont le pouvoir fait la vertu. De la même façon, il n’y a pas atteinte à la liberté d’expression quand ces vertueux détruisent une chaine de télévision soutenant le gouvernement qu’ils attaquent.
De la même manière, on comprend facilement le commentaire dans le New York Times de l’avocat des droits civiques Floyd Abrams, connu pour sa défense passionnée de la liberté d’expression, déclarant que l’attaque de Charlie Hebdo est « l’assaut le plus menaçant sur le journalisme de mémoire d’homme ». Il a raison de préciser « de mémoire d’homme », ce qui range déjà les assauts sur le journalisme et les actes de terreur dans leur catégorie propre : Les leurs, qui sont affreux ; et les nôtres, qui sont vertueux et facilement effaçables de la « mémoire d’homme ».

L’occupation militaire de l’hôpital de Falluja

Nous pourrions aussi rappeler qu’il ne s’agit là que d’’une des nombreuses attaques de ceux qui sont dans leur bon droit contre la liberté d’expression. Citons encore un exemple qui fut facilement effacé de la « mémoire d’homme », l’attaque de Falluja par les troupes américaines en Novembre 2004, l’un des crimes les plus épouvantables de l’invasion irakienne et qui commença par l’occupation de l’hôpital général de Falluja. L’occupation militaire d’un hôpital est, bien évidemment, un sérieux crime de guerre en soi, indépendamment même de la manière dont elle a été menée et décrite avec banalité en première page du New York Times dans un article illustrée par une seule photo du crime. Le texte rapportait que « les patients et le personnel hospitalier furent sortis précipitamment des chambres par des soldats armés qui leur ordonnèrent de s’assoir ou de se coucher à même le sol pendant que les troupes leur ligotaient les mains dans le dos ». Ces crimes furent décrits comme hautement méritoires, et justifiés : « L’offensive a aussi mis fin à ce que les officiers décrivaient comme une arme de propagande pour les militants : l’hôpital général de Falluja, avec son flux incessant de rapports sur les victimes civiles ».
Bien évidemment, on ne peut permettre à de telles agences de propagande de continuer à cracher leurs obscénités.
Noam Chomsky
Article original https://zcomm.org/znetarticle/we-are-all-fill-in-the-blank/
Traduction : Nicolas CASAUX

Dilemmas, disputes and repentance on the road to Manresa

The Autobiography of St. Ignatius 

dictated to Father Louis Gonzalez da Camara by St. Ignatius 

Ed,by J.F.X.O'CONOR, SJ  (1899). 

Autobiography of St. Ignatius 

Defence of the Blessed Virgin (ch. 2-page 34) 

From Aranzazi to Montserrat (March, 1522)

After his recovery his one wish was to 

make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He 

fasted frequently and scourged himself to 

satisfy the desire of penance.

Then dismissing 

his two remaining servants, he rode forth 

alone from Navarre in the direction of 

Montserrat, a mountain town of Catalonia 

in the northern part of Spain. (...)

(Some miles west from Saragosa)

While he journeyed on, a Saracen 

mounted on a horse came up with him. 

In the course of the conversation mention 

was made of the Blessed Virgin. The 

stranger remarked that though he 

admitted that the Mother of Christ had 

conceived without detriment to her virginal 

purity, yet he could not believe that 

after the conception of her divine Son she 

was still a virgin. He was so obstinate 

in holding this opinion, that no amount 

of reasoning on the part of Ignatius 

could force him to abandon it. Shortly 

afterward the Saracen rode on, leaving 

the pilgrim to his own reflections. These 

were not of the most peaceful nature. 

He was sorely troubled as he thought 

over the conduct of his recent fellow-
traveler, and felt that he had but poorly  

acquitted himself of his duty of honoring 

the Mother of God. The longer his 

mind thought upon the matter, the more 

his soul was filled with indignation against 

himself for having allowed the Saracen to 

speak as he had done of the Blessed Virgin, 

and for the lack of courage he fancied 

he had shown in not at once resenting the insult.

He consequently felt impelled by 

a strong impulse to hasten after him and 

slay the miscreant for the insulting lan 

guage he had used. After much internal 

conflict with these thoughts, he still  

remained in doubt, nor could he decide 

what course to follow. The Saracen, who 

had ridden on, had mentioned to him that 

it was his intention to proceed to a town 

not far distant from the highroad. At 

length, Ignatius, wearied by his inward 

struggle and not arriving at any determination, 

decided to settle all his doubts in 

the following novel way : 

      he would give free rein to his horse, and

• if,on coming to the cross-road, 

             his horse should turn into 

    the path that led to the destination of the     Moor, he would pursue him and kill him ; 

•  but if his horse kept to the highroad  

he would allow the wretch to escape.

 Having done as he had decided, it happened 

through the Providence of God that his 

horse kept to the highroad, though the 

place was distant only about thirty or forty 

yards, and the way leading to it was very 

wide and easy. 

Arriving at a large village situated a 

short distance from Montserrat, he determined 

to procure a garment to wear on 

his journey to Jerusalem. He therefore 

bought a piece of sackcloth, poorly 

woven, and filled with prickly wooden fibres. 

(...) and ended in Manresa.

Writer of Spiritual Exercises.

Founder of Manresa House (60 in the world). Plenty at the USA.

Discussions:

The Quran states that when the pains of childbirth came upon Mary, she held onto a nearby palm tree, at which point a voice came from "beneath the (palm-tree)" or "beneath her", which said " "Grieve not! for thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee; "And shake towards thyself the trunk of the palm-tree: It will let fall fresh ripe dates upon thee."

Then vv. 15-40 follows the story of the birth of Jesus, but like the account of the birth of John it differs significantly from the Gospel account. For one thing, the angel tells her only that she will be the mother of a “holy son” (v. 19) – there is not a word, of course, about his being “Son of the Most High” (Luke 1:32), a concept rejected again in v. 35. Jesus is virginally conceived (v. 20). Ibn Kathir says that many scholars believe she conceived by the breath of the angel Gabriel: “Many scholars of the predecessors (Salaf) have mentioned that at this point the angel (who was Jibril [Gabriel]) blew into the opening of the garment that she was wearing. Then the breath descended until it entered into her vagina and she conceived the child by the leave of Allah.”

Mary still suffers the pains of childbirth (v. 23) – while in some Christian traditions she does not, since those are the result of the sin (Genesis 3:16) that Jesus is taking upon himself and expiating (I Corinthians 15:22). Here, Mary gives birth to Jesus under a palm tree (not in a manger as in Luke 2:7) as Allah comforts her in her pains with dates (vv. 24-26). A voice cries out from beneath her, “Grieve not! For thy Lord hath provided a rivulet beneath thee”

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/03/30/blogging-the-qur’an-sura-19-“mary”/ 

what drives man to war- from Charlie hebdo to Terzani

 "what is it that drives man to war?" Einstein asked Sigmund Freud (letter -1932)

David Brooks

Who are not Charlie Hebdo

(9 January, 2015) The journalists at Charlie Hebdo are now rightly being celebrated as martyrs on behalf of freedom of expression, but let’s face it: If they had tried to publish their satirical newspaper on any American university campus over the last two decades it wouldn’t have lasted 30 seconds. Student and faculty groups would have accused them of hate speech. The administration would have cut financing and shut them down. Public reaction to the attack in Paris has revealed that there are a lot of people who are quick to lionize those who offend the views of Islamist terrorists in France but who are a lot less tolerant toward those who offend their own views at home.

(...) Healthy societies, in other words, don’t suppress speech, but they do grant different standing to different sorts of people. Wise and considerate scholars are heard with high respect. Satirists are heard with bemused semirespect. Racists and anti-Semites are heard through a filter of opprobrium and disrespect. People who want to be heard attentively have to earn it through their conduct.

(...) 

After 11/9  2001.  War, enemy, terrorism, one-sided opinions

T. Terzani, in his Letters against the war (2002) warned us agains the Enemy. You may download them from wikipedia.

There are days in our lives when nothing happens, days which go by leaving nothing to 

remember and no trace of their passing, almost as though we hadn't lived them at all. 

Come to think of it, most days are like that. But when it dawns on us that the number 

of days we have left is limited, we wonder how we could possibly have let so many slip 

by unnoticed. But this is how we're made. Only afterwards do we appreciate what came 

before. Only when something is in the past do we understand what it would be like to 

have it in the present. But by then it's too late. 

 For me, and not just for me I am sure, 10 September 2001 was one such 

day. I remember nothing about it.

First Letter:

When we came to the elephantine, whiter-than-white statue of Abraham Lincoln seated on a great white armchair in a huge white copy of a Greek temple, I found myself saying, "This reminds me of Kim Il Sung", aware that my friend too had been in North Korea.

He was offended, as if I'd blasphemed against something sacred. "We love this man", he said. I refrained from pointing out that a North Korean would have said exactly the same thing, but it was America itself that had given me this impression. 

The comparison lay not just in the elephantine size of the monument, but also in the fact that the Americans too struck me as having undergone some kind of brainwashing, whereby everyone says the same things and thinks the same way. The difference is that, unlike the North Koreans, the Americans think they are acting freely and don't realize their conformity is the product of everything they see, drink, hear and eat. 

3rd letter:

An elderly academic at Berkeley University, a man whom no-one would suspect of anti-Americanism or leftist sympathies, has given a completely different interpretation of the event. "The suicidal assassins of September 11 2001 did not 'attack America', as our political leaders and news media like to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy," writes Chalmers Johnson in the October issue of The Nation. 

For Johnson, the author of several books, the latest of which, Blowback, was published last year and has an almost prophetic quality, it represents the umpteenth "blowback", deriving from the fact that the United States has managed to maintain its imperial network of some 800 military installations around the world despite the end of the Cold War and the break-up of the Soviet Union. 

   (...) We need a St Francis. There were crusades in his day, too, but he was concerned with the others, the ones the crusaders were fighting against. He did all he could to go and find them. The first time he tried, the ship he was sailing on was wrecked, and he only just survived. He tried again, but fell ill on the way and had to turn back. 

Then, in the siege of Damietta in Egypt during the fifth crusade, embittered by the crusaders' behaviour ("he saw evil and sin"), but deeply moved by the sight of the dead on the battlefield, he finally crossed the front line. He was taken prisoner, chained and brought before the Sultan, Saladdin. It's a shame CNN didn't exist in 1219, because it would have fascinating to see this meeting on television. It must have been remarkable, because after a conversation which doubtless lasted deep into the night, the Sultan allowed St Francis return unharmed to the crusaders' encampment the next morning. 

   (...) 

Yet we must accept that for others, the "terrorist" may be the businessman who arrives in a poor Third World country, not with a bomb in his briefcase but plans for a chemical factory, which could never have been built in a wealthy First World country because of the risks of explosion and pollution. And what about the nuclear power station which gives cancer to the people living nearby, or the dam which makes thousands of families homeless? Or even the construction of hosts of little factories, which concrete over ancient ricefields in order to produce transistor radios or trainers, until such time as it is cheaper to take production elsewhere and the factories are closed, leaving the workers unemployed and bereft of the fields in which they could have grown rice, and the people to die of starvation?

NSA -Singint, Elint - Raw intellgence units and collateral damages

The NSA’S SPY NETWORK

Once it’s operational, the Utah Data Center will become, in effect, the NSA’s cloud. The center will be fed data collected by the agency’s eavesdropping satellites, overseas listening posts, and secret monitoring rooms in telecom facilities throughout the US. All that data will then be accessible to the NSA’s code breakers, data-miners, China analysts, counterterrorism specialists, and others working at its Fort Meade headquarters and around the world. Here’s how the data center appears to fit into the NSA’s global puzzle.—J.B.

1. An account of the Liberty doomed fate 

(according to news 2003, 2007, 2014)  

On June 8, 1967, during the Six-Day War, the Israeli military attacked the USS Liberty, an American spy ship which had been monitoring Israeli transmissions about the conflict.

1A-  Fox News - 2003 

Capt Word Boston says Israeli attack on Liberty was deliberate -2003

A former Navy attorney who helped lead the military investigation of the 1967 Israeli attack on the USS Liberty (search) that killed 34 American servicemen says formerPresident Lyndon Johnson (search) and his defense secretary, Robert McNamara(search), ordered that the inquiry conclude the incident was an accident.

1B.  Chicago Tribune -2007 

Lockwood was aboard the USS Liberty, a super-secret spy ship on station in the eastern Mediterranean, when four Israeli fighter jets flew out of the afternoon sun to strafe and bomb the virtually defenseless vessel on June 8, 1967, the fourth day of what would become known as the Six-Day War.

The documents also suggest that the U.S. government, anxious to spare Israel's reputation and preserve its alliance with the U.S., closed the case with what even some of its participants now say was a hasty and seriously flawed investigation.

In declassifying the most recent and largest batch of materials last June 8, the 40th anniversary of the attack, the NSA, this country's chief U.S. electronic-intelligence-gatherer and code-breaker, acknowledged that the attack had "become the center of considerable controversy and debate."

conclusions  can be drawn from a thorough review of this material," available at   http://www.nsa.gov/liberty . 

An Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mark Regev, called the attack on the Liberty "a tragic and terrible accident, a case of mistaken identity, for which Israel has officially apologized." Israel also paid mildly for reparations. 

1.c. A USS LIBERTY’S HERO’S PASSING

AUGUST 17, 2014

Terry Halbardier, the hero who got off the SOS that saved the USS Liberty from Israeli destruction in 1967, died last week in California, prompting ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern to recall the murderous attack and the cowardly cover-up that followed.