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From:       Eddie Chumney
To:            heb_roots_chr@hebroots.org
Subject:       News of Interest: May 18 to May 29, 2000

                            News of Interest
                      May 18 to May 29, 2000

ISRAEL

U. S. WANTS VETO OVER ISRAELI ARMS DEALS
By Aluf Benn, Ha'aretz 23 May 2000 via IMRA

[IMRA: The U.S. moves comes on the heels of the brutally honest
admission by U.S. defense officials, in discussing the sale of
the most advanced jet in the wrold to teh UAE (more advanced that
what the US Air Force will itself have) that there are no
effective limits on the conventional weapons technology that the
U.S. is willing to sell to the the Arabs]

The United States has demanded tighter supervision over Israel's
arms sales as a condition of the extensive military aid that
Prime Minister Ehud Barak has asked for following an agreement
with the Palestinians.  The American administration, which has
demanded that Israel cancel the sale of its Phalcon spy plane to
China, now wants to establish a joint committee to supervise
Israeli arms deals in order to make sure that they do not contain
American components or technology, and that Israel does not sell
arms to "countries arousing concern" in the eyes of the United
States.

An American source said, "We want to create a new mechanism to
supervise the transfer of technology to make sure that the matter
is taken care of properly."  The American demand is viewed in
Israel as a diktat and as an attempt to impose an American veto
on all of Israel's defense exports.

The administration has recently conveyed a series of forceful
messages to Israel.  National Security Adviser Sandy Berger met
on Friday with the prime minister to discuss the aid Israel has
requested following an agreement with the Palestinians.  Barak
wants an aid package worth billions of dollars in order to
conduct a comprehensive modernization of the IDF.  Berger
promised that the United States will help Israel just as it did
during the earlier stages of the peace process, but made it clear
that the United States expects Israel to accede to America's
demand to cancel the deal with China and tighten supervision over
the "transfer of technology."

ISRAEL SEEKS ALTERNATIVES as US freezes supply process for new
military equipment and demands veto on all Israel export sales
By Amir Oren Ha'aretz Correspondent - Ha'aretz 28 May 2000

Israel is considering acquiring Russian-made Kamov fighter
helicopters and European-made Airbus transport planes for
reconnaissance purposes rather than U.S.-made aircraft in
reaction to de facto limitations the United States government has
recently imposed on the transfer of military equipment to the
Israel Defense Forces.  Defense officials are also urging Prime
Minister Ehud Barak, who also holds the Defense portfolio, to
strongly reject American demands that the United States receive
prior notification - and therefore a veto right - on every
Israeli arms export deal.

APOSTASY AND ECUMENISM

BISHOP SAYS GAYS EQUAL
By Ruth Gledhill, London Times 5/23/00

One of the most senior bishops in the Church of England has said
that homosexuals are equal to heterosexuals in the eyes of God
and should not be condemned for being gay.  The Bishop of Oxford,
the Right Rev Richard Harries, made his call in a paper in which
he sets out the arguments in support of homosexual relationships.
The issue of homosexual ordination and gay blessing is proving
one of the most divisive to confront the church, even more than
the issue of women priests.  The bishop's intervention, while
intended to bring the two sides together, looks set to intensify
the debate.

In Same Sex Relations - the Unresolved Questions, which he has
also released as a video and CD and published on his diocesan
website, the bishop refers to St Paul's statement that "there is
neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free".  He
argues that to this should be added the phrase: "There is neither
heterosexual nor homosexual."  He adds: "There are people who are
predominantly attracted to members of their own sex in every age
and every culture."

Colin Hart, of the Christian Institute, an evangelical
think-tank, said that the bishop was close to blasphemy, adding:
"He is going as far as he can without actually saying that the
Holy Spirit backs same-sex relationships."

ANGLICAN-CATHOLIC UNIFICATION COMMISSION FORMED
Current News Summary by the Editors of ReligionToday May 23, 2000

Anglicans and Roman Catholics have formed a joint commission to
consider unification.  Bishops from 13 regions around the world,
meeting in Toronto last week, formed a new commission to grapple
with issues that have been at the center of the 400-year-old
split between Anglicans and Catholics.  It is expected to begin
its work by the end of the year, the leaders said, news reports
said.

Local congregations will feel the effects of decisions made by
the commission, said Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, who
led the meeting along with Cardinal Edward Cassidy, president of
the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.
Carey said unification is not likely to take place in his
lifetime, The Associated Press said.  Differences remain over the
role of women, who are not eligible for ordination as Catholic
priests, and distribution of power in a unified Catholic-Anglican
church, bishops from both churches said.

PRESBYTERIANS OK GAY 'HOLY UNIONS'
By Julia Lieblich, AP Religion Writer May 24, 2000

The Presbyterian Church's highest court ruled Wednesday that
local congregations have the right to conduct religious
ceremonies celebrating gay unions that stop short of marriage.
The decision by the 16-member court is binding unless the General
Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) overrides it.

The case, one of three on gay issues argued last week before the
tribunal, stemmed from a same-sex ceremony performed in Dobbs
Ferry,  N. Y.  The Northeast regional church court ruled that
ceremonies of ``holy union'' for same-sex couples may be
conducted if it is made clear they are not marriages.  The high
court agreed, though it instructed regional church bodies to make
a clearer distinction between marriages and ``blessing
services.''

A second case before the high court involved a homosexual
candidate for the ministry who said he did not intend to remain
celibate, even though church rules require clergy to observe
either ``fidelity in marriage'' or ``chastity in singleness.'' In
that case, the Northeast regional court decided that he could
continue as a candidate, and that his ``manner of life'' could be
evaluated prior to ordination.  Again, the high church concurred
Wednesday.  It said the denomination's standards of fidelity and
chastity are to be applied at the point that a person is
considered for ordination, not during candidacy.

ANTI-SEMITISM

NEW DOCUMENTS: PIUS XII HAD DAILY HOLOCAUST BRIEFINGS
By Douglas Davis London (May 25)

Pope Pius XII, head of the Catholic Church during World War II,
was given daily briefings of Nazi atrocities by the British envoy
to the Holy See, according to documents recently found in a Rome
flea market.  Defenders of Pius, who has been accused of
indifference toward the plight of the Jews during the Holocaust,
have always insisted that he had no knowledge about the death
camps.

But the documents show that British envoy to the Vatican Francis
D'Arcy Godolphin Osborne gave the pope a daily typewritten report
of the atrocities as reported by Allied broadcasts at the time.
The reports, which were intended to counter Italian and German
propaganda, provided the pope with a detailed account of Jewish
deportations, mass killings, and "inhuman experiments."  The
documents were discovered by Italian journalist and antiquarian
book collector Fabrizio Coisson, who found bound carbon copies of
the reports at Rome's Porta Portese market.

CHURCHILL'S GOV'T URGED VATICAN TO END SUPPORT FOR HITLER -
PAPERS By Douglas Davis London (May 29) Jerusalem Post

Ministers acting for wartime leader Winston Churchill appealed to
Britain's leading Roman Catholic family to persuade the Vatican
to abandon its support for Hitler, according to previously
unpublished papers.  The 1940 documents, which were found at the
Public Records Office, show that ministers asked Lord Fitzalan,
uncle of the then-duke of Norfolk, to urge the pope to denounce
the Nazis and support the Allied cause.

The documents indicate the frustration of the British government
in the face of the pope's refusal to attack the fascist powers.
They are likely to further embarrass the Vatican, which has
announced plans to beatify Pope Pius XII.

One letter to Lord Fitzalan from Lord Halifax, then British
foreign secretary, contrasts the valuable contribution made by
British Catholics to the war effort with the pope's continued
silence.  Halifax warned Fitzalan that the pope's appeasement was
leaving Catholics outside Britain with the impression that a
Europe dominated by Hitler was the pope's preferred outcome to
the war.  "If the Catholics of, say, Belgium, Holland, and France
could be persuaded that somehow Nazism was reconcilable with
their religious faith and moral outlook," wrote Halifax, "then a
potentially powerful center of resistance to Nazi plans of
domination would be removed."

Halifax appealed to Fitzalan to persuade the pope to denounce
Hitler or to secure a statement praising the Allies from another
influential Catholic body.  "It would be presumptuous in me to
suggest His Holiness should make further pronouncements or when
he should do so," wrote Halifax.  "However, Catholics everywhere
need to be strengthened by authority in their resistance to Nazi
blandishments, and have their conviction of the necessity of an
Allied victory renewed or reinforced."

Fitzalan died in 1947 and it is not know whether or how he
responded to the appeals.

BIG BROTHER SURVEILLANCE

BIG BROTHER SNOOPS: Canadians Citizens tracked by Ottawa
government's massive database By Jon E. Dougherty   2000
WorldNetDaily.com 5/18/00

The Canadian government is maintaining a massive database on over
30 million citizens, tracking personal information such as race
and income levels in possible violation of privacy laws, claim
Ottawa officials.  On Tuesday federal Privacy Commissioner Bruce
Phillips dropped the bombshell on the Canadian Parliament in his
annual report, warning that a newly discovered Human Resources
Department database is "tantamount to a citizen profile" and
vulnerable to misuse.

Characterized by Phillips as "extraordinarily detailed," the
government database was created in 1985 and has been continually
updated ever since, containing information about nearly every
living -- and non-living -- person in Canada, complete with as
much as 2,000 pieces of information about each person's income,
race and ethnicity, marital status, education, mobility,
disabilities, employment and social-assistance history.

Hinting that perhaps the office of the Privacy Commissioner had
been kept in the dark about the creation of the database,
Phillips, in his report, said, "Successive privacy commissioners
have assured Canadians that there was no single federal
government file or profile about them.  We were wrong -- or not
right enough for comfort."

Phillips informed Canadian lawmakers that the government's
database included information on some 33.7 million people, dead
and alive.  The information, he said, was gleaned from tax
returns, child tax benefits, immigration and welfare files, the
National Training Program, Canadian Job Strategy, employment
services, employment insurance, job records and the social
insurance master file -- in short, from the government itself.

SATELLITES TO TRACK DENVER CITY WORKERS
By Jeffrey Leib Denver Post Staff Writer May 23

In the wake of allegations that some Denver employees are loafing
on the job, officials plan to put global-positioning-system
tracking units on city vehicles to keep better tabs on the
workforce.  Some municipal workers also have been disciplined,
including a Denver Water worker who was fired.  The future
installation of GPS units is one of several measures aimed at
making sure Denver employees perform their full day of work,
mayoral spokesman Andrew Hudson said Monday.

The city's $1.5 million plan to install GPS devices on more than
2,000 vehicles in the Public Works Department is a longrange
goal, Hudson said.  More immediately, Denver plans to put bumper
stickers on each city vehicle that offer a telephone hotline for
citizens to call reporting complaints, commendations and
suggestions about the actions of city employees, Hudson said.

The city also will require employees who are working in the field
to call in to a central location when they are taking a break or
going to lunch.  Similarly they must call when they return to
work.  City officials will keep logs that document times and
locations of breaks, Hudson said.

ISRAEL ADMITTED TO U.N. GROUP FOR FIRST TIME

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000527/ts/israel_un_1.html

Saturday May 27
By Anthony Goodman


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - After 40 years of exclusion, Israel was
given temporary membership in a United Nations regional group that
opens the way for its eventual election to key U.N. bodies.

Israel's U.N. envoy, Yehuda Lancry, said he received a letter on
Friday from the current chairman of the West European and Others Group
(WEOG), ambassador Peter van Walsum of the Netherlands, informing him
of the group's decision.

Lancry called it ``an historic turning point'' in the relationship
between Israel and the United Nations, and said his government would
respond formally within a few days.

Many U.N. committee posts as well as 10 rotating seats on the Security
Council are nominated by five regional groups to retain a geographical
balance.

Although some nations never get nominated, only Israel could not
compete at all. Opposition from Arab and other countries has prevented
Israel from joining the Asian group, which corresponds to its
geographical region.

Van Walsum's letter, the result of months of negotiations, said: ``On
behalf of WEOG members I have the pleasure of informing you that, in
the light of Israel's current inability to join the Asian group and
taking into account the understandings set out below, WEOG welcomes
Israel as a full member of WEOG on a temporary basis.''

Israel's membership will be for an initial four years, after which it
will be subject to confirmation by the group.

The ``understandings,'' or conditions, referred to by van Walsum will
prevent Israel from submitting candidates for any contested U.N. posts
for two years and would bar it from a few posts for considerably
longer.

In addition to the 15 members of the European Union, the group
includes Australia, New Zealand, Canada and others. The United States
is a member for some purposes.

Elections to most U.N. bodies, including the Security Council, the
Economic and Social Council, General Assembly committees and the World
Court, are organized on the basis of the five regional groups.

The groups try to avoid intramural squabbles by agreeing in advance
which of their members will be offered as candidates.

Israel, a U.N. member since 1949, is the only U.N. member barred from
any regional group since the system developed in the early 1960s. As a
result, it has waged a long battle, with support from the United
States, to join WEOG.

In recent months President Clinton, Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright and U.S. Ambassador Richard Holbrooke lobbied Europeans on
Israel's candidacy.

The conditions that bar Israel from competing for seats in U.N. bodies
for two years were drawn up by the EU and then endorsed by all WEOG
members.

After two years WEOG would consider Israel's candidature for vacant
posts ``on a case-by-case basis and support them where previously
agreed by the group,'' van Walsum wrote.''

He said that, as Lancry himself indicated in a letter last month
formally requesting WEOG membership, Israel's entry would not affect
existing rotation schedules allocating forthcoming vacancies in four
specific U.N. bodies.

These are the: Economic and Social Council, whose WEOG candidates have
already been designated (until 2021); the governing council of the
U.N. Development Program (until 2007); the executive board of the U.N.
Children's Fund (also until 2007); and the U.N. AIDS program (until
2012).

As part of its drive for WEOG membership, Israel last year requested a
legal opinion from then-World Court President Sir Robert Jennings of
Britain.

Jennings wrote last November that Israel's exclusion from the regional
group system was ``both unlawful and strikes at the root of the
principles on which the United Nations exists.''

``I venture to suggest that Israel's exclusion should no longer be
tolerated; and that it is now an issue of primary importance for the
organization itself to see that it be remedied,'' Jennings said.

``So long as its continues, the organization is itself in breach of
its own charter,'' he said.

BIG BROTHER

http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/04/30/stinwenws01034.ht
ml

MI5 BUILDS NEW CENTRE TO READ E-MAILS ON THE NET
Nicholas Rufford

MI5 is building a new e-mail surveillance centre that will have the
power to monitor all e-mails and internet messages sent and
received in Britain. The government is to require internet service
providers, such as Freeserve and AOL, to have "hardwire" links to
the new computer facility so that messages can be traced across the
internet.

The security service and the police will still need Home Office
permission to search for e-mails and internet traffic, but they can
apply for general warrants that would enable them to intercept
communications for a company or an organisation.

The new computer centre, codenamed GTAC - government technical
assistance centre - which will be up and running by the end of the
year inside  MI5's London headquarters, has provoked concern among
civil liberties groups. "With this facility, the government can track
every website that a person visits, without a warrant, giving rise to
a culture of suspicion by association," said Caspar Bowden, director
of the Foundation for Information Policy Research.

The government already has powers to tap phone lines linking
computers, but the growth of the internet has made it impossible to
read all material. By requiring service providers to install cables
that will download material to MI5, the government will have the
technical capability to read everything that passes over the
internet.

Home Office officials say the centre is needed to tackle the use of
the internet and mobile phone networks by terrorists and international
crime gangs.Charles Clark, the minister in charge of the spy centre
project,  said it would allow police to keep pace with technology.

"Hardly anyone was using the internet or mobile phones 15 years ago,"
a Home Office source said. "Now criminals can communicate with each
other by a huge array of devices and channels and can encrypt their
messages, putting them beyond the reach of conventional
eavesdropping."

There has been an explosion in the use of the internet for crime in
Britain and across the world, leading to fears in western intelligence
agencies that they will soon be left behind as criminals abandon the
telephone and resort to encrypted e-mails to run drug rings and
illegal prostitution and immigration rackets.

The new spy centre will decode messages that have been encrypted.
Under new powers due to come into force this summer, police will be
able to require individuals and companies to hand over computer
"keys", special codes that unlock scrambled messages.

There is controversy over how the costs of intercepting internet
traffic should be shared between government and industry. Experts
estimate that the cost to Britain's 400 service providers will be
A330m in the first year. Internet companies say that this is too
expensive, especially as many are making losses.

About 15m people in Britain have internet access. Legal experts have
warned that many are unguarded in the messages they send or the
material they download, believing that they are safe from prying
eyes.

"The arrival of this spy centre means that Big Brother is finally
here," said Norman Baker, Liberal Democrat MP for Lewes. "The balance
between the state and individual privacy has swung too far in favour
of the state."

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