Stories earlier in the summer focused on a new fund to be paid by Germany to labor camp victims and reparations to be paid by Swiss banks to former account holders, In a follow-up here, there is a piece in The Guardian of Great Britain on financial institutions in Israel that are holding on to the assets of Holocaust survivors and their relatives. Included as a sidebar is an interview in the BBC with Norman Finkelstein, an American Jewish historian, who finds the current preoccupation with the Holocaust exploitive, blatantly greedy and disrespectful of the memory of Holocaust survivors, amongst whom he includes his parents.

In what might be considered a prequel to a later development is a story on the the U.S. anger over the visit of Venezuelan President Chaves to Iraq several weeks ago. The story is interesting in light of the fact that both Venezuela and Iraq are oil producing countries that would like to break free of the Anglo-American dominance of the oil market. It is made more interesting by the fact that this week the U.S. sent their contribution to Plan Colombia to "fight drugs" in that country. Colombia just happens to be next to Venezuela, with its very large oil deposits.

NATO comes under attack in a piece in LeMonde Diplomatique for their conduct in the bombing of Kosovo as well as the use of cluster bombs, which are the topic of several other stories included. Another piece in the Guardian details the photographic evidence of Israel's nuclear capability. Iraq's alleged attempts to develop nuclear missile capability is once again the subject of a Washington Post article which somehow fails to subject Israel to the same scrutiny. Concern over "possible threat from Iraq" is the reason for the deploymnt of of an Army Patriot antimissile battery to Israel. Details, of course, cannot be released.

Britain snubs the U.S. on the subject of the world court, and the rich continue to get richer. One article sent in by a reader explains just how Carlos Slim, does that in Mexico.

This week's issue wraps it up with a few articles on human cloning. A year or less ago we were all assured that, of course, cloning of humans was unthinkable and, at any rate, not yet scientifically feasible. What a difference a year makes!

The last story entitled Nuclar Nightmare Revealed tells of nuclear horrors contained within the former Soviet Union as it desparately sought parity with the U.S. in the Cold War.

I have several questions regarding cloning. The first regards its availability. Will cloning be an option for we drones or only for the super class. That is will clones be us or just them? Can we vote on which of our very favorit celebs will be duplicated? Will we be able to have sex on the Net with the clone closest to our heart? ( Seems only fair now that everybody is "doin it, doin it" on the Net. Is that what Bell meant by "Reach outreach out and touch someone"?)

Will future lifestyle options include the possibility of cloning yourself before being melted down in a nuclear holocaust? Or perhaps you should just settle for sticking yourself in the fridge before the next -very hot -couple of centuries. But not, I would hope, before being genetically modified.

GM, gee whiz, I'm perfect. And one last question, will all the future victims of nuclear tests, accidents, and mini-wars be given the option of cloning themselves before being terminated?