WEEKLY REVIEW

WR for the week of 07/29 to 08/03...

WEEKLY REVIEW
By Dru Oja Jay

Ariel Sharon ordered the Israeli army to ease curfews, roadblocks and other
restriction in response to signs of increasing popular resistance to
occupying forces in Palestinian areas. Thousands of Palestinians resisted
round-the-clock curfews in the west bank city of Nablus by going about daily
business. The curfews have been in effect for 40 days; Israeli troops did
not enter the city. The Israeli government is scheduled to turn over $15
million of estimated $600 million in tax revenues that it has been holding
to the Palestinian Authority. The money has been held for the past 22
months. Israeli settlers rioted during a funeral for an Israeli soldier and
clashed with Palestinians in Hebron. A 13-year-old girl was killed and 21
other Palestinians were injured; 15 Israeli policemen were injured. A
17-year-old suicide bomber set off an explosion on Jerusalem, killing
himself and wounding seven others. 6 were killed and 70 wounded when a bomb
exploded in a cafeteria at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. An Irish woman
employed as a press officer at Israel's Dublin embassy was fired after she
published a letter in the Irish Times condemning last week's air strike
against a Gaza apartment building.

With a declaration of "no more easy money for corporate criminals, just hard
time," Bush signed the new Corporate Fraud Law, which will strengthen
penalties for accounting fraud and create a federal oversight board for the
accounting industry. Lawmakers criticized the White House, claiming that an
announcement mere hours after the signing reinterpreted the measures too
narrowly. Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and White House Economist Lawrence
Lindsey appeared on major television networks to say that the US economy is
"fundamentally strong". The Commerce Department released a report that shows
that economic growth was lower, and recovery from the bursting of the tech
bubble was much slower than previously thought. In an address at a South
Carolina high school, George W. Bush said that strong marriages and
educating teenagers to abstain from sex are part of a compassionate
conservative agenda of "helping people help themselves." A little later,
Bush harshly criticized a welfare bill before the Senate for providing not
enough money for programs promoting marriage, and too much funding for child
care programs. "They're saying we got to spend a bunch more money in order
to make us feel better and to make things work better. We don't need that,"
Bush said. Former president Clinton, responding to the Bush Administration's
suggestion that he bears responsibility for some corporate accounting
scandals, said "These people ran on responsibility, but as soon as you
scratch them, they go straight to blame." A Republican Party press secretary
called it "a typical Clinton response: attack and politicize."

Argentinean President Eduardo Duhalde said that the current economic
situation in South America shows that the market economy model "has
collapsed". Argentina's six month old economic meltdown spread to
neighboring countries of Uruguay, Brazil, and Paraguay as investors pulled
out of government bonds en masse; the economies of Bolivia and Venezuela
were also said to be threatened. Uruguayan banks closed on Tuesday in an
effort to allow the economy to recover. British Prime Minister Tony Blair
expressed reservations about the US and Britain taking action alone against
Iraq, saying that a fresh UN mandate was needed to "legitimize" future
action. French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard
Schroeder announced that they would not support an attack on Iraq without a
UN mandate. Secretary of State Colin Powell said that he did not expect any
further progress in continuing efforts to resolve the conflict between
Pakistan and India until elections are held in Kashmir this fall.

In Stourbridge, UK, police used a battering ram to smash the door of the
Ghausia Jamia Mosque, where an Afghan couple had been staying to avoid
deportation. Seeking to prevent similar events in the future, British
immigration minister Beverley Hughes is seeking to keep mosques from being
used as sanctuaries for illegal immigrants. Only one day after 71 people
were killed when a Sukhoi-27 military jet crashed into a crowd, a
Russian-built passenger jet crashed shortly after taking off from Moscow's
main airport. 14 died in the crash. The US Joint Strike Fighter and the EU's
Eurofighter continued their competition for tens of billions of dollars in
defense contracts for more than a dozen countries.

Lisa Leslie dunked during a Los Angeles Sparks game, becoming the first
woman to do so in professional basketball. Amid tepid competition and
accusations of drug use, Lance Armstrong won his fourth straight Tour de
France after recovering from testicular cancer five years ago. "He did not
have any rivals in this Tour," said legendary Belgian rider Eddy Merckx.
1,130 mothers in Berkeley, CA, set a new record for most simultaneous breast
feeding, breaking the record previously held by a group of Australian women.
New Yorks' Whitney Museum received a gift of $200M worth of post-WWII
American art, thought to be the largest such endowment, including works by
Johns, Pollock, Warhold, de Kooning, and others.

Saadeddin Ibrahim, an Egyptin-American human rights activist was sentenced
to seven years in jail on multiple charges in a decision that was condemned
by international human rights groups as politically motivated. French
syndicalist José Bové was released from prison after serving
43 days in prison for dismantling a McDonald's restaurant. The Philosophy
Department at McGill University turned down an offer of over $1.5 million to
endow a chair for the study of Ayn Rand. One professor remarked: "we can't
sell our souls just for the sake of being richer." The Saudi Arabian
government of Prince Abdullah, beset by widespread anti-government
demonstrations since March, was reported to be at risk of an extremist
takeover or an internal coup by members of the ruling party sympathetic to
Al-Quaeda. Videotapes smuggled out of the country show hundreds of women and
men protesting and brutal police repression.

Federal officials arrested two former Worldcom executives, who will face
fraud and conspiracy charges. They were released on $10 million and $2
million bail on Thursday. After being sentenced to eight years in prison for
accepting bribes and kickbacks, former Democratic House Representative James
Traficant is planning to run for re-election as an independent. Pope John
Paul II visited Mexico and Guatemala and announced the first canonization of
an Indian Saint. A California state Judge ordered Internet Corporation for
Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to provide its elected board members with
financial records to which the ICANN executive had previously denied them
access.



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Posted on Monkeyfist at http://monkeyfist.com/articles/823