Elsewhere today (366)
Aljazeera:
Air strike kills Lebanese villagers
Saturday 15 July 2006, 14:24 Makka Time, 11:24 GMT
At least 12 Lebanese villagers, including women and children, were killed on Saturday in an Israeli air strike on vehicles fleeing a village in southern Lebanon, a witness said.
The convoy was leaving the border village of Marwahin when it was attacked.
An Associated Press photographer said he counted 12 bodies in two cars that were destroyed by the attack shortly after midday (0900GMT).
An adviser to Lebanon's health minister put the toll at about 15. Hasan Hutait told Aljazeera that two cars had been directly hit by Israeli fire.
The deaths brought the toll in Israel's offensive in Lebanon to 79, Hutait said, adding that a total of 250 have been wounded.
Warning
Hours earlier, Israeli forces across the border told villagers by loudspeaker to leave the area or else the village would be destroyed. They did not give a reason for the ultimatum.
"Israeli forces threatened us on Saturday at 8 am to destroy our town if we do not evacuate it," Akram Ghannam, a resident of Marwahin, told Aljazeera on Saturday.
Residents seeking refuge were turned away from a UN peacekeepers position, he said.
"People, including women and children, have gathered in the streets. They do not know where to go," Ghannam said.
The convoy was hit near the border fence about 1 kilometer (0.62 miles) from the village.
There was no immediate confirmation from UN peacekeepers, who have a force in southern Lebanon.
Ghannam said there were no Hezbollah forces in Marwahin.
Attacks across Lebanon
Also on Saturday, four civilians were killed in Israeli strikes across Lebanon.
Police said three people were killed when missiles struck near a bridge on the Assi river on the outskirts of the northeastern town of Hermel on the border with Syria.
Aljazeera reported an Iraqi worker was killed after an explosion at a fuel station near the southern coastal city of Sidon close to the Palestinian refugee camp of Ain Al-Helweh.
Israel is attacking Lebanon's infrastructure and fuel stations, and about 30 bridges have been at least partly damaged.
Four more stikes destroyed a bridge linking al-Nabatiya to the town of al-Saksakiya.
Israeli warplanes also struck an abandoned shooting range in the suburbs of the northern Lebanese coastal city of Tripoli on Saturday, the most northern strike by Israel so far.
Increase in casualties
Nine members of two families, including three children, were wounded when two missiles destroyed a house where they had sought refuge in Jbal al-Botm, southeast of the southern port of Tyre.
Farther south, Israeli warplanes staged two raids on hills in Msaylih, near the residence of the Shia parliament speaker, police said. The area has been hit three times since Wednesday.
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/84B207D4-8012-41CC-89A2-B0A8CE8C01FD.htm
allAfrica:
Ceasefire First On Kony Agenda
By Frank Nyakairu, Juba
The Monitor (Kampala) NEWS
July 15, 2006
Internal Affairs Minister Dr Ruhakana Rugunda arrived in Juba on Friday at the head of an eight man delegation that will will face Joseph Kony's 15 person delegation in the highly billed peace talks between the rebels and the government.
Rugunda's plane touched down at Juba International Airport at ten minutes to one, and he proceeded to give a press conference at the airport.
Rugunda said that the first item on the agenda of the talks is to seek an immediate ceasefire between the UPDF and the LRA, and then the rest will follow.
Rugunda expresses optimism over the talks. "We would not have come if we were not satisfied with the LRA peace delegation," he said.
The talks were scheduled to kick of at 3.30 local time at the Juba Parliament Buildings.
Rugunda cautioned against speculation. "The progress of the talks will depend on the amount of work, let us not speculate," the minister said.
Meanwhile, Angelo Izama, Agness Nandutu & Hussein Bogere report that on Wednesday, the UN Secretary General Koffi Anan added his voice to those calling for the talks to go ahead as the most pragmatic way forward even if he reminded the governments of Southern Sudan and Uganda of the status of LRA leaders as indictees of the global court.
"The fact that five leaders of LRA, including Joseph Kony and Vincent Otti have been indicted by the International Criminal Court, was believed to have made them less approachable for negotiations. Nevertheless, recent contacts between the Government of Southern Sudan and Messrs.
Kony and Otti, with the apparent knowledge of the Government of Uganda, suggest the possibility of a negotiated solution with LRA" Annan said in a statement. However he said he had left it to the UN Security Council to create a mechanism, including a Panel of Experts, to look into LRA sources of funding as suggested by some members states of the United Nations.
The Secretary General noted that Uganda was reluctant to accept the idea of a Special UN Envoy to deal with the LRA problem if his or her mandate would extend to " domestic issues". The Uganda government has refused calls to declare the 20-year conflict a national disaster and has prioritized a military solution to the rebellion, a fact critics said is behind the failure of several attempts at a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
The Juba talks, the first significant talks to be held outside of Uganda with the LRA are a watershed moment in the history of the conflict. They also come at a time when LRA have shifted operations into the DRC, widening the regional implications of a failure of the talks to succeed.
One of the key anticipated demands of the Lords Resistance Army, that arrest warrants for its top leaders by the International Criminal Court be withdrawn may not be met even as the rebel and government delegation roll up their sleeves to begin landmark talks intended to end the 20 year Northern Uganda conflict. The talks kick off this weekend and sources say may last up to one week.
After meeting Uganda's Security Minister and former Attorney General Amama Mbabazi at the Hague on Wednesday, ICC Prosecutor Moreno Ocampo said the "warrants remain in effect". Ocampo in a statement said the " Government of Uganda did not ask for any withdrawal of the warrants of arrest".
This contradicts press reports attributed to government sources which said Mbabazi's trip to the Hague was meant to convince the court to lift the warrants against LRA leaders in order to give the talks a chance to succeed.
"It is the view of the Office of the Prosecutor and the Government of Uganda that justice and peace have worked together thus far and can continue to work together" Moreno said inspite of the clash in purposes between the court and the negotiators meeting in Juba.
The position of the international justice system has been at odds with that of the Ugandan government ever since the Kampala government accepted peace talks with the rebels sposored by the new Government of Southern Sudan.
The ICC and international NGO's have protested an amnesty offered to the rebels as part of the talks and have disapproved of any efforts to lift the arrest warrants, even if it was Uganda which initiated the investigation into LRA for possible crimes against humanity.
The head of the governnent negotiating team, Internal Affairs Minister Ruhakana Rugunda left for Juba yesterday. Speaking to Daily Monitor before his departure, Rugunda said the Ugandan team would approach the talks with an open mind.
" We still don't have a specific programme but we will work everything out when we get to Juba" Rugunda said.
The peace talks will aim at a ceasefire agreement in the short term. However the Ugandan delegation will not meet LRA leader Joseph Kony or his deputy face to face.
Southern Sudanese Vice President Riek Machar on Thursday returned from the DR Congo-Sudan border where he had gone to meet LRA leadership with news that the top leaders, both indicted by the ICC will not be attending the talks.
Copyright © 2006 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200607140756.html
allAfrica:
Mogadishu International Airport Reopens After 11 Years
Shabelle Media Network (Mogadishu) NEWS
July 14, 2006
An airplane crying Arab League delegates who arrived in Mogadishu this morning left Somalia using Mogadishu international airport for the first time in 11 years.
The plane landed at 2:30pm local time after taking off from Esiley airfield in northern Mogadishu after Islamists and Arab delegates decided to use the international Airport in southern part of the capital to show that Mogadishu is under Islamists control after 11 years of warlord dominance.
Hundreds of people including officers from the Islamists have gathered at the airport to participate the historic event by which Islamists achieved after 11 years.
The Airport, as well as the main seaport have been closed for the feuds in Capital after the united nations left Somalia in 1995.
Chairman of the Islamic Courts Sheik Sharif Sheik Ahmed has addressed briefly the people saying the International Airport is open from now on.
"We are very happy to witness unforgettable moments like today, we tell everybody that Mogadishu international Airport is open for international planes". Sheik Sharif said.
"This is what we have been looking forward after people's Islamic uprising in the capital which achieved to defeat warmongers, we tell the international community the capital is safe after years long", he added.
The plane has taken off crying eleven Arab League delegates led by Abdalla MubaraK, Special Representative for Somalia and other fifteen delegate members from the Islamic Courts which will represent Islamists at the planed Khartoum Peace accord.
"We are very much appreciated today we are taking off from Somalia International Airport which closed for a period of 11 years", Abdalla Mubarak said.
Prof. Ibrahim hassan Adow led the Islamic Courts delegates who flew to Khartoum to participate a meeting which previously planed to be held on July 15th.
Somalia Government is dragging foot on participating the meeting though Arab states are persuading to attend.
Copyright © 2006 Shabelle Media Network. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200607140660.html
allAfrica:
Gacaca Trials Start En Masse Tomorrow
By James Munyaneza
The New Times (Kigali) NEWS
July 14, 2006
No more speculation; Rwandans of all walks of life will on Saturday morning throng designated locations to witness their respective Gacaca Tribunals kick-start the task of dispensing justice in connection to the crimes committed during the 1994 Rwanda Genocide.
It is a day when all the 1,545 Gacaca courts countrywide will embark on the trial phase after over about two years of pre-trial stages. Of those, only 118 Tribunals have conducted trials before, in what was largely a pilot exercise.
Officials say there will not be any official inaugural ceremony, but Justice Minister Edda Mukabagwiza will deliver a public speech to be broadcast on both state radio and television.
"It is an important day. We expect all Rwandans to participate dedicatedly to ensure that justice is delivered," Mukabagwiza told The New Times on Thursday.
"Nobody should fear; witnesses should give their testimonies freely and the suspects should be able to co-operate and not intimidate or cause harm to witnesses," she said.
Mukabagwiza also urged people to maintain the security of witnesses and genocide survivors, saying that the government was unable to provide police or an LDU guard for every household.
The Minister revealed that thousands of released suspects, especially those who confessed and apologised, will be tried first. A January 1, 2003 President Paul Kagame's decree has granted a provisional release to over 50,000 genocide suspects.
Leon Nkusi, the Information Officer of the National Service for Gacaca Jurisdictions, said sufficient awareness campaigns had been carried out, and all the Tribunals but a few in Kigali city, were set for the trials tommorrow.
"Through the local leaders, we have sensitized the masses and I think they are well prepared. Except for a few courts in Kigali City, which will start the trials at a later date," Nkusi said on Thursday.
Nkusi urged the population to remain calm, to tell the truth and desist from activities that sabotage Gacaca activities. He also discouraged people from fleeing the country, and appealed for solidarity.
Last year thousands of Rwandans fled to neighboring countries, especially Burundi after a few courts started conducting trials. Some attributed their fleeing to rumors that Gacaca had been introduced as a way of revenge, while others were suspects.
Meanwhile, Nkusi told The New Times that the government dropped the proposal of creating over 500 Gacaca trials to try the suspects that are under the Category I of genocide suspects. The category covers those who are accused of planning the atrocities, rape, and other extremely brutal murder cases.
He said the idea was dropped at the consultation stages, adding that it became unpopular by most politicians. "Many people fought it and we had to leave it," said the senior Gacaca official.
Asked about the issue, Minister Mukabagwiza was rather not clear in her response. "Those (suspects in Category I) may well be prosecuted in the classical courts," she said. Estimates had put suspects in Category I to about 10 per cent of those accused. Over 200,000 people are suspected to have participated in the 1994 genocide, which claimed an estimated one million Rwandans. A total of 152,000 genocide suspects have confessed, mostly through the Gacaca courts.
Re-introduced after the 1994 genocide, Gacaca is a traditional mode of grassroots justice in which the elders arbitrate in low-profile disputes. The system was re-established to help reduce a backlog of genocide cases in classical courts, and as a means of fostering unity and reconciliation in the country.
It is scheduled that Gacaca trials will end by December, 2007.
Meanwhile, there are emerging concerns over the continued harassment and mysterious killings of witnesses and, unconfirmed reports indicated yesterday that at least three witnesses had been murdered in Cyangugu in Western province.
Copyright © 2006 The New Times. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200607140018.html
Clarín /Revista Ñ:
Estados Unidos: el fracaso propio y ajeno
Según una clasificación ya canónica en los Estados Unidos para justificar el uso de la fuerza en el plano mundial, los estados fracasados no pueden lidiar con su seguridad, su economía y la democratización de sus instituciones. Chomsky refuta este concepto.
NOAM CHOMSKY, 15.07.2006
La selección de temas que deberían ocupar los primeros lugares en la agenda de preocupaciones por el bienestar humano y por sus derechos es, naturalmente, un asunto subjetivo. Pero hay unas pocas opciones que parecen inevitables, ya que se ligan con las expectativas de una supervivencia decente. Entre ellas se encuentran al menos estas tres: la guerra nuclear, un desastre ambiental y el hecho de que el gobierno del principal poder mundial actúa de tal modo que aumenta la probabilidad de estas catástrofes.
Es importante enfatizar el "gobierno", porque la población está en desacuerdo. Esto lleva a mencionar un cuarto tema que debería preocupar profundamente a los estadounidenses, y al mundo: la marcada división entre la opinión pública y la política pública, una de las razones del temor, que no puede dejarse de lado, de que "el ''sistema'' estadounidense en su totalidad sufre un problema real que augura "el fin de sus históricos valores de igualdad, libertad y democracia con sentido", como observa Gar Alperovitz en America Beyond Capitalism.
El "sistema" está comenzando a tener algunos de los rasgos de los estados malogrados, para adoptar una noción actualmente de moda, aplicada por lo general a los estados considerados una amenaza potencial a nuestra seguridad (como Irak) o necesitados de nuestra intervención para rescatar a la población de una amenaza interna grave (como Haití). La definicion de estados malogrados es mínimamente científica. Pero todos estos estados comparten ciertos atributos primarios. Son incapaces o no quieren proteger a sus ciudadanos de la violencia y tal vez aun de la destrucción. Se consideran a sí mismos más allá del alcance de la ley nacional o internacional, por lo tanto libres de concretar actos de agresión y de violencia. Y si tienen formas democráticas, sufren de un serio "déficit democrático" que priva a sus instituciones de sustancia real.
Una de las tareas más arduas que cualquiera puede emprender, y una de las más importantes, es mirarse honestamente al espejo. Si nosotros lo hiciéramos, tendríamos muy poca dificultad en encontrar los rasgos de los estados malogrados directamente en nuestro país. Ese reconocimiento de la realidad debería ser causa de gran preocupación para quienes se desvelan por sus países y por las generaciones futuras —"países" en plural—, primero a raíz del enorme alcance del poder de los Estados Unidos, pero también porque los problemas no están localizados en el espacio y el tiempo, aun cuando haya importantes variaciones, de particular relevancia para los ciudadanos de los Estados Unidos.
El "déficit democrático" estuvo claramente ilustrado en las elecciones del 2004. Los resultados llevaron a la exaltación en ciertos círculos, a la desesperación en otros y a una gran preocupación sobre una "nación dividida". Colin Powell informó a la prensa que el "presidente George W. Bush ha ganado un mandato del pueblo estadounidense para continuar su ''agresiva'' política exterior". Esto está muy alejado de la verdad. Está también muy alejado de lo que la población cree. Después de las elecciones, Gallup preguntó si Bush "debía enfatizar los programas que apoyan los dos partidos" o si "tiene un mandato para avanzar con la agenda del partido republicano", como Powell y otros sostuvieron. El 63 por ciento eligió la primera opción, el 29 por ciento la última. Las elecciones no confirieron un mandato para nada. De hecho, prácticamente no tuvieron lugar, en el verdadero sentido del termino "elección".
La historia ha dado muchas pruebas de la falta de atención de Washington a las leyes y normas internacionales, que alcanza hoy nuevas alturas. Concedámoslo: siempre hubo pretextos, pero eso vale para cualquier estado que recurre a la fuerza a voluntad.
Durante los años de la Guerra Fría estuvo disponible el marco de referencia de la "defensa contra la agresión comunista" para movilizar el apoyo nacional e incontables intervenciones en el exterior. Al final, el recurso a la amenaza comunista se empezó a desgastar. Alrededor de 1979 "los soviéticos estaban influyendo" más allá de sus fronteras, "solamente al 6% de la población mundial y al 5% del GNP mundial", según el Center for Defense Information. La imagen central se estaba haciendo más difícil de evadir. El gobierno también enfrentaba problemas a nivel nacional: especialmente el efecto civilizador del activismo de la década del 60, que tuvo muchas consecuencias, entre ellas menor voluntad para tolerar el recurso a la violencia. Bajo la presidencia de Ronald Reagan, la administración buscó manejar los problemas con fervientes pronunciamientos sobre el "imperio del mal" y sus tentáculos, a punto de estrangularnos.
Pero se necesitaban nuevos recursos. Los partidarios de Reagan declararon su campaña mundial para destruir el terrorismo internacional apoyado por un estado que el secretario de Estado de Reagan, George Shultz, denominó una "plaga diseminada por los depravados opositores a la civilización misma" que intentan "un retorno de la barbarie en la epoca moderna". La lista oficial de los estados que patrocinaban el terrorismo, iniciada en el Congreso en 1977, fue elevada a un lugar prominente en la politica y en la propaganda.
En 1994, el presidente Clinton amplió la categoría de "estados terroristas" para incluir los "estados delincuentes". Unos pocos años más tarde se agregó al repertorio otro concepto: los estados malogrados, frente a los cuales nosotros debemos protegernos, y a los que debemos proteger, a veces destruyéndolos.
Más tarde llego el "eje del mal" del presidente George W. Bush, al que, para defendernos, debemos destruir, siguiendo la voluntad del Señor tal como es transmitida a este humilde servidor, escalando mientras tanto la amenaza del terror y de la proliferación nuclear.
Pero la retórica siempre genera dificultades. El problema básico es que bajo razonables interpretaciones del término, aun bajo definiciones oficiales las categorías son demasiado amplias.
Hace falta disciplina para no reconocer los elementos de verdad en la observación del historiador Arno Mayer, inmediatamente después de los ataques terroristas del 11 de setiembre, de que, desde 1947, "Estados Unidos ha sido el principal autor del estado terrorista que ataca primero", y de innumerables otras acciones ''delictivas'' que han causado un inmenso daño "siempre en nombre de la democracia, la libertad y la justicia".
Después de que Bush asumió la presidencia, la corriente dominante entre los expertos comenzó a afirmar como un hecho que Estados Unidos "ha asumido muchos de los propios rasgos de las ''naciones delincuentes'' contra las cuales ha batallado" (David C. Hendrickson y Robert W. Tucker, Foreign Affairs, 2004).
La categoría estado malogrado fue invocada de manera reiterada por los autodenominados "estados iluministas" en la década del 90. Eso los autorizaba a recurrir a la fuerza con el supuesto objetivo de proteger a las poblaciones de los estados malogrados, delincuentes y terroristas de un modo que podía ser "ilegal pero legítimo", frase usada por la Comisión Independiente sobre Kosovo.
Cuando los temas principales del discurso político cambiaron de la "intervención humanitaria" a la "guerra al terrorismo", tras el 11 de setiembre, se le dio al concepto estado malogrado un alcance más amplio a fin de incluir a países como Irak, que amenazaban supuestamente a los Estados Unidos con armas de destrucción masiva y con el terrorismo internacional.
Con este uso más amplio, los estados malogrados no necesitaban ser débiles, cosa que tiene mucho sentido. La Alemania nazi y la Rusia estalinista eran escasamente débiles, pero con estándares razonables merecían la designación de estados malogrados como ninguno en la historia. El concepto gana muchas dimensiones, incluyendo el fracaso en proveer seguridad para la población, para garantizar los derechos en el país y en el exterior, o para mantener en funcionamiento (no simplemente de manera formal) las instituciones democráticas. El concepto debe con seguridad incluir "estados proscriptos", que desechan con desprecio las reglas del orden internacional y de sus instituciones, cuidadosamente construidas a lo largo de los años, inicialmente por iniciativa de los Estados Unidos.
El gobierno está eligiendo políticas que tipifican a los estados bandoleros, que ponen seriamente en peligro a la población dentro del país y en el exterior y socavan una democracia sustantiva. En aspectos cruciales, la adopción de Washington de los atributos de los estados malogrados y bandoleros se proclama con orgullo. No hay esfuerzo alguno por ocultar "la tensión entre un mundo que todavía quiere un sistema legal internacional justo y sostenible, y una superpotencia única que apenas parece preocuparse de que se halla al nivel de Birmania, China, Irak y Corea del Norte en términos de su adhesion a una concepción absolutista de la soberanía" por sí misma, mientras desecha como anticuada la soberanía de otros, señala Michael Byers en War Law: Understanding International Law and Armed Conflict.
Estados Unidos es muy parecido a otros países poderosos. Persigue los intereses económicos y estratégicos de los sectores dominantes de la población local, con una impresionante retórica sobre su excepcional dedicación a los más altos valores. Esto es casi un universal histórico, y es la razón por la cual la gente sensata presta poca atención a las declaraciones de las nobles intenciones de los líderes, o a los elogios de sus seguidores.
Uno escucha comúnmente decir que los criticones se quejan por lo que está mal, pero no presentan soluciones. Hay una traducción certera para esta acusación: "Ellos presentan soluciones, pero a mí no me gustan". Aquí hay unas pocas simples sugerencias para los Estados Unidos:
(1) aceptar la jurisdicción del Tribunal Internacional de Justicia y de la Corte Internacional;
(2) firmar y cumplir los protocolos de Kyoto;
(3) dejar que las Naciones Unidas lideren las crisis internacionales;
(4) apelar a medidas diplomáticas y económicas antes que a las militares cuando se confronten amenazas graves de terror;
(5) mantenerse dentro de la interpretación tradicional de la Carta de las Naciones Unidas: el uso de la fuerza es legítimo solamente cuando es ordenado por el Consejo de Seguridad o cuando el país está bajo la amenaza de un ataque inminente, de acuerdo con el Artículo 51;
(6) renunciar al poder de veto en el Consejo de Seguridad, y tener "un respeto decente por la opinión de la humanidad", tal como aconseja la Declaración de la Independencia, incluso cuando los centros del poder no están de acuerdo;
(7) reducir drásticamente los gastos militares y aumentar los gastos en salud, educación, energía renovable y cosas similares.
Para la gente que cree en la democracia, éstas son sugerencias muy conservadoras: parecen ser la opinión de la mayoría de la población de los Estados Unidos, en muchos casos de la abrumadora mayoría, que se opone radicalmente a la política pública; en la mayoría de los casos, en ambos partidos.
Otra sugerencia cautelosa y útil es que los hechos, la lógica y los principios elementales de la moral deben ser importantes. Los que se tomen el trabajo de adherir a esta sugerencia se verán rapidamente conducidos a abandonar una buena parte de la doctrina oficial, aunque seguramente es mas fácil repetir invocaciones que sirven a nuestros exclusivos intereses.
Y hay otras simples verdades. De ningún modo dan respuesta a todos los problemas. Pero nos hacen tomar cierta distancia para desarrollar respuestas mas específicas y detalladas. Aun más importante, ellas abren la puerta para implementarlas, pues son oportunidades que están a nuestro alcance si podemos liberarnos de las ataduras de la doctrina y las ilusiones impuestas.
Aunque es natural que los sistemas doctrinarios intenten inducir el pesimismo y la desesperación, la realidad es diferente. Ha habido un progreso sustancial en los últimos años en la interminable cuestión de justicia y libertad, dejando un legado que fácilmente puede ser llevado a un plano más alto que antes.
Las oportunidades para educación y organización abundan. Como en el pasado, no es probable que autoridades benevolentes garanticen los derechos, o que éstos provengan de acciones intermitentes, por participar de alguna manifestación o por el hecho de apretar una palanca a la hora de las elecciones, como si en eso consistiera exclusivamente la "política democrática".
Como siempre en el pasado, las tareas requieren un compromiso diario para crear y recrear las bases destinadas al funcionamiento de una cultura democrática. Hay muchos medios para promover la democracia en el país, llevándola a nuevas dimensiones. Las oportunidades son muchas, y es probable que el fracaso en captarlas tenga repercusiones ominosas: para el país, para el mundo y para las generaciones futuras.
(c) Noam Chomsky y Clarín.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2006/07/15/u-01233857.htm
Guardian: Hizbullah leader:
'You wanted open war. We are ready for an open war'
Rory McCarthy in Nahariya
Saturday July 15, 2006
Hizbullah threatened "open war" last night as Israel ramped up its attacks on Lebanon, bombing roads and bridges in the centre of Beirut and warning that its fight would last until the militant group was destroyed.
Israeli politicians and army officers brushed aside international criticism and said their goal was to force Hizbullah's disarmament. So far at least 73 people, nearly all civilians, have been killed in Lebanon since the bombing began three days ago.
In response, Hizbullah's chief, Hassan Nasrallah, threatened "open war" against Israel, hinting at rocket attacks deep inside the country. He made his threat shortly after he survived an air raid on his home that appeared to be an assassination attempt. "You wanted an open war and we are ready for an open war," he said in a taped statement.
Last night an Israeli naval vessel, 10 miles off the coast of Beirut, was badly damaged when it was hit by an unmanned Hizbullah aircraft packed with explosives. Four sailors were reported missing after a blaze on board. The vessel was last night being towed back to Israel .
Hizbullah's al-Manar TV reported that guerrillas had targeted the warship after it fired missiles into south Beirut. "Now in the middle of the sea, facing Beirut, the Israeli warship that has attacked the infrastructure, people's homes and civilians - look at it burning," Mr Nasrallah said.
Hizbullah, which triggered the latest crisis by capturing two Israeli soldiers and killing eight on Wednesday, fired 60 rockets into northern Israel yesterday. An Israeli woman and a child were killed in the Mount Meron area when a rocket hit a house, bringing the total of Israeli dead to at least 12.
Brigadier General Ido Nehushtan said: "We know that it's going to be a long and continuous operation, but it's very clear: we need to put Hizbullah out of business. Our aim is to change the situation in which a terrorist organisation operates from within a sovereign territory."
Israel's prime minister, Ehud Olmert, said his country would not halt its attacks until Hizbullah was disarmed. He gave the warning in a telephone conversation with the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. Mr Olmert also agreed to let a UN team try to mediate a ceasefire. The UN security council met last night to discuss the crisis and Lebanon demanded that Israel agree to a ceasefire.
Hizbullah wants a prisoner exchange for the captured soldiers. Israel refuses to negotiate directly with Hizbullah or with the Palestinian group, Hamas, which is also holding an Israeli soldier.
For the first time Israel struck residential targets in Beirut yesterday, bombing the capital's southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold. Hizbullah's previous leader, Abbas Musawi, was killed in 1992.
Ronnie Bar-On, Israel's interior minister, said Mr Nasrallah had "issued his own sentence. I doubt if he would be able to find a life insurance agent these days," he told Yediot Ahronot newspaper.
The violence came despite international condemnation. Jacques Chirac, the French president, said Israeli retaliation was "completely disproportionate" and Hizbullah was "irresponsible". George Bush, in St Petersburg for the G8 summit, promised Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Siniora, he would press Israel to spare innocent lives. Syria last night offered its "full support to the Lebanese people and their heroic resistance ...".
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1821149,00.html
Guardian:
A new war, but both sides recall old ones
Exodus from Beirut as Israel tightens vice and vows to disarm Hizbullah
Brian Whitaker in Beirut, Rory McCarthy in Nahariya, Conal Urquhart in Jerusalem, Wendell Steavenson in Beirut and Oliver Burkeman in New York
Saturday July 15, 2006
The three Syrian guest-workers arrived before dawn yesterday, as they did every morning, to set up their coffee stall beneath the flyover, hoping to catch the breakfast trade from early risers in the southern suburbs of Beirut. That was when the bomb blew them away, along with a large section of the road above their heads. Nobody seemed to remember their names: they were just Syrians.
Kaseem Moqdad, who lives nearby, had woken in darkness to the sound of jets overhead. By the time the overpass was bombed he was out in the street in a crowd of people, looking up at the sky. In addition to those killed, he said, 20 people were injured by flying glass and rubble.
A former corporal in the Royal Fusiliers, Mr Moqdad had been back in his native Lebanon for only a year and a half, and Israel's assault on its capital left him with a sense of torn loyalties. "I don't like Hizbullah and I don't hate Hizbullah," he said, in an accent that was half Lebanese, half north London. "We have to fix why people get mad, and we're not treating the cause." He was proud to be British, he said. "But you do get angry with the west. The Israelis don't see that they kill children and women and innocent people."
The Israeli rockets and bombs that struck southern Beirut yesterday appear to have hit their intended targets, mainly roads. One landed in the middle of a crossroads, blasting a huge crater and thrusting twisted underground pipework up into the air. Most of the roads in question, though, are yards away from shops and homes. In the Shia neighbourhoods where the damage was worst some residents sought to salvage what they could, while others just gaped, looking shellshocked.
"I thought they might hit [the Hizbullah TV station] al-Manar," said Ahmad, a barber, standing amid broken glass and torn metal in his shop. "I didn't think they would hit people's homes."
Late in the day al-Manar reported that Israeli warplanes had destroyed the building housing the headquarters of Hizbullah guerrillas in south Beirut.
A mass exodus from the capital, mainly of young families, was gathering pace, but the options for escape from Lebanon were evaporating. Three days of Israeli attacks have left the capital's airport bombed and shut down, its sea routes blockaded by warships, and the main highway into Syria impassable. Air attacks have left 53 people dead so far, as part of an Israeli campaign to win the release of two soldiers captured by Hizbullah militants in cross-border raids on Wednesday. Hizbullah's counter-assault continued yesterday, with dozens of rockets reaching into northern Israel, and deep into the Israeli psyche.
Civil war reminder
On both sides of the border the crisis that has engulfed the region in recent days has fuelled a powerful sense of deja vu. For the Beirut residents who spent the day frantically hoarding food, candles, batteries and petrol, the atmosphere recalled the nation's 15-year civil war, and the 18-year Israeli occupation they thought had ended forever in 2000. For some in Israel the closer historical parallel was with the run-up to the war of 1967, and the prospect of direct military conflict between Israel and neighbouring states - although some diplomats have voiced the view that the current actions are restrained compared with some Israeli military operations, for example in the 1982 war.
For most of the day roads across northern Israel were empty, most people apparently obeying official instructions to stay inside. Many of the houses and apartment blocks have underground bunkers used in past conflicts.
In mid-afternoon, in the almost-deserted centre of Nahariya in northern Israel, a Hizbullah rocket landed in the middle of a normally busy avenue, shattering windows in a shopping centre.
"We will continue suffering like this until the military makes them stop," said David Shevli, 32, who had closed his grocery store on Thursday and spent yesterday fielding calls on his mobile from worried friends. "We hope they will terminate them. People who criticise our attacks on Lebanon should come and live here themselves at a time like this. Then they will see." He added: "There will be no peace as long as Hizbullah is there on the border. They say they want Jerusalem. Then they will take Haifa. Give them a finger and they'll take your whole body. Let's erase Hizbullah and everything connected to them."
Israel is still reeling from the double assault on its military prestige by separate attacks from Hizbullah and Hamas, which captured an Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit, a month ago. Not only was the strongest army in the Middle East taken by surprise, but its assailants managed, through capturing soldiers, to prolong the pain.
Most Israelis could ignore the rocket attacks on Sderot and the farming communities that surround the Gaza strip. The bombardment of northern Israel, home to around 300,000 people, is physically much further from Tel Aviv than is Sderot, but psychologically much closer. Most Israelis have visited Haifa, or holidayed in Galilee.
While there is little criticism in the media or on the street of Israel's attacks across the border, under the surface there are fears that Lebanon, which dominated Israeli politics from 1982 to 2000, could again become a graveyard for its soldiers.
"This reminds me of a period before the 1967 war that was also characterised by mutual humiliations," said the Israeli historian Tom Segev. "From a military point of view the abduction of the soldiers should not have happened, but instead of admitting this the army uses it as a pretext to destroy the delicate political balance that exists in Lebanon ... [Hizbullah leader Hassan] Nasrallah is a nasty guy. He's a bit like Saddam. So it's similar to the Iraq situation. We find it easier to relate to war in Lebanon than in Gaza."
Condemnation
The international response to the situation in Lebanon has been broadly condemnatory of Israel, but the US has given cautious backing to the attacks, and the issue seems likely to dominate the G8 summit in St Petersburg, starting today. In New York the UN security council was also expected to discuss the emergency, following an appeal from Lebanon's prime minister, Fouad Sinoria, for the world body to intervene. Kofi Annan, the secretary general, has dispatched a three-person delegation to the region, and the EU's foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, was expected to follow soon.
But the immediate and longer term impact of the crisis will be measured inside Lebanon. As President George Bush cautioned on Thursday, the military attacks could destabilise the Beirut government and tear apart a fragile society made up of Shia and Sunni Muslims, Christians, and Druze. Just as problematically, it could also unite the population behind Hizbullah.
In Lebanon, unlike Israel, Hizbullah cannot be dismissed simply as a terrorist organisation. It is part of the national political fabric. It holds two seats in the coalition government, and essentially controls a swath of the south of the country.
If Israel's aim is to drive a wedge between Hizbullah and the rest of Lebanon there are signs it may not be succeeding. The patriotic music now playing on some of the Christian channels is one indication of the way the wind is blowing. Initial anger at Hizbullah's behaviour has become more muted as attention focuses on the severity of the Israeli bombardment.
Israel's attempt to hold the Lebanese government responsible has also caused resentment. In remarks quoted by the Beirut Daily Star yesterday, the Druze leader, Walid Jumblatt, condemned "the use of violence against a state that did not wage war and does not assume the responsibility for it".
In Beirut on Friday Amal, a woman seeing off relatives on a specially chartered coach to Syria, said she was not a Hizbullah supporter, but did not blame them for the current tragic turn of events. "They've been killing people in Gaza without anybody even raising a voice," she said. "That's why I don't see that Hizbullah is doing something wrong."
Asked if the Lebanese government should hand Mr Nasrallah to Israel, her nephew Salah chipped in: "Nasrallah is like your annoying little brother. It is right to punish him, but he's still part of the household."
Israel says its air and sea blockade of the country is, in part, an attempt to stop the captured soldiers being moved to Iran, a plan for which the Israeli government had "concrete evidence", according to a spokesman, Gideon Meir. The prime minister, Ehud Olmert, stepped up his rhetoric against Hizbullah yesterday, vowing not to end the offensive until Hizbullah was disarmed. Roni Bar-on, the interior minister, said Mr Nasrallah had "issued his own sentence. I doubt if he would be able to find a life insurance agent these days".
The scale of the operation may also be an attempt by Mr Olmert and his defence minister, Amir Peretz, to establish military credibility in the eyes of the Palestinians and other states in the region: neither man has a long track record of military experience, and neither has been in power for more than a few months.
"I believe the current [Israeli] government will see this through, not because they are strong but because they are weak," said Israel Harel, a settler leader. "Neither the prime minister nor the defence minister has a security background, and the army has made tactical mistakes. Therefore, they all have to prove that they can do what previous governments, who were led by stronger personalities such as Ariel Sharon and Ehud Barak, can do ... on the surface this is all about freeing captured soldiers. But underneath it is about the prime minister ensuring that he can carry out the next phase of disengagement."
Whatever the logic of the attack, it was playing itself out with painful repercussions yesterday in, among other places, the now inaccessible Lebanese coastal village of Doueir. Israeli planes had been dropping leaflets in Hizbullah strongholds warning residents to evacuate.
"There are air raids all over," said Ahmed Ali, Doueir's supervisor of civil defence. A family with 10 children died just outside the village when missiles hit their home on Thursday night, he said. "Now, in Yater village, there has been a similar attack," Mr Ali said. "We don't know the casualties, because the bodies are still under the rubble."
Not many miles away, at an agricultural community in northern Israel, Amit Bar-on, a computer systems engineer, stood watching smoke from Hizbullah rockets rise into the sky. "It is a very bad situation that Israel has got into," he said. "We don't have a problem with Lebanese society, most of the Lebanese are good Christian people. We have a problem with Hizbullah. We got out of Lebanon six years ago and that was a good strategy. We thought there might be peace, not immediately but perhaps in 20 or 30 years. Now we don't see peace at all."
Latest developments:
· The Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, yesterday warned that Israel would not halt its attacks until the Hizbullah militia was destroyed
· The death toll in Lebanon reached 66, nearly all of them civilians
· Sixty rockets were fired into northern Israel. An Israeli woman and a child were killed in the Mount Meron area when a rocket slammed into a house
· Israeli jets last night attacked the home and headquarters of Hizbullah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah in what appeared to be a direct assassination attempt. A statement from the group said he had escaped unharmed
· For the first time Israel struck targets in residential areas of Beirut, bombing the capital's overcrowded southern suburbs, a Hizbullah stronghold
· The UN security council met last night to discuss the crisis and a three-strong team was sent to the area to try to mediate
· There was a wave of international condemnation for Israel's actions. George Bush said he would press Israel to spare innocent lives but said he supported its right of self-defence
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1820988,00.html
Guardian:
The framing of Hizbullah
Israel's response to its soldiers' capture is part of a hamfisted attempt to redraw the region's map
Amal Saad-Ghorayeb in Beirut
Saturday July 15, 2006
The capture of three Israeli soldiers by the Lebanese resistance movement, Hizbullah, to bargain for prisoner exchange should come as no surprise - least of all to Israel, which must bear its own responsibility for the abductions and is using this conflict to pursue its wider strategic aims.
The prisoners Hizbullah wants released are hostages who were taken on Lebanese soil. In the successful prisoner exchange in 2004, Israel held on to three Lebanese detainees as bargaining chips and to keep the battle front with Hizbullah open. These detentions have become a cause celebre in Lebanon. In a recent poll, efforts to effect their release attracted majority support, much more even than the liberation of Shebaa Farms, the disputed corridor of land between Syria and Lebanon still occupied by Israel.
The domestic significance of these hostages is ignored by those who choose to reduce the abductions to an act of solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza. Indeed Israel's media are aware of recent attempts to capture soldiers, including a botched attempt a few months ago in which three Hizbullah fighters were killed. Hizbullah's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, confirmed the attack took five months to plan. Its timing was probably a coincidence. It would seem, though, Hizbullah exerts some influence over the fighters in Gaza - those who captured Corporal Shalit were at the very least inspired by Hizbullah.
The regional significance of the abductions has also been misconstrued. To suggest Hizbullah attacked on the orders of Tehran and Damascus is to grossly oversimplify a strong strategic and ideological relationship. Historically there has been an overlap of interests between Syria, Iran, Hizbullah and Hamas. Together they form a strategic axis - the "axis of terror" to Israel - that confronts US-Israeli designs to redraw the map of the region.
But the nature of that relationship has changed much over the years. Since Syrian forces left Lebanon, Hizbullah has become the stronger party. It has never allowed any foreign power to dictate its military strategy.
It is ironic, given Israel's bombing of civilian targets in Beirut, that Hizbullah is often dismissed in the west as a terrorist organisation. In fact its military record is overwhelmingly one of conflict with Israeli forces inside Lebanese territory. This is just an example of the way that the west employs an entirely different definition of terrorism to the one used in the Arab world and elsewhere, where there is a recognition that terrorism can come in many forms.
The attempt to frame Hizbullah as a terrorist organisation is very far from political reality in Lebanon, from public opinion across the Arab and Islamic world, and from international law.
Israel's disproportionate response to the soldiers' capture will have an impact on Lebanese domestic policy. Hizbullah has recently proposed a comprehensive national defence strategy; the Lebanese government has yet to come up with anything similarly convincing. If demands for a prisoner exchange are successful then it shows that what Hizbullah would term the logic of resistance is the most effective defence strategy. Israel's escalation has been a poor PR exercise. Even if it succeeds in showing the Lebanese people that Hizbullah can be a liability, this may well be cancelled out by Israel's own aggression, which will only confirm Hizbullah's repeated warnings of the constant threat posed by Israel.
· Amal Saad-Ghorayeb is assistant professor of political science at the Lebanese-America University.
a.sghorayeb@gmail.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/comment/0,,1821036,00.html
il manifesto:
Roulette libanese
Zvi Schuldiner
Dopo le cruente settimane di violenza contro la popolazione palestinese di Gaza, in Medio Oriente si apre un secondo fronte. L'azione iniziata dagli hezbollah rischia di trascinare tutta la regione in una guerra dalle conseguenze imprevedibili. Mentre a Gaza la guerra è il risultato «naturale» della politica annessionista del governo di tel Aviv, nel nord di Israele i falchi israeliani si vedono rafforzati dalla politica criminale e irresponsabile degli hezbollah. Lo sceicco Nasrallah e il fondamentalismo islamico che incarna giocano una carta che sarà pagata con il sangue, molto sangue, da libanesi, palestinesi e israeliani. Gli hezbollah, alleati e succubi di Siria e Iran, hanno aperto un gioco diretto a garantire la loro sopravvivenza politica in un Libano cambiato dall'assassinio del premier Hariri, all'inizio del 2005. Quel crimine ha innescato un processo che ha portato i siriani e gli hezbollah a perdere molte delle posizioni di forza di cui fruivano in Libano. A cominciare dalla quasi-fine dell'occupazione siriana con l'indebolimento degli interessi iraniani nella regione. Nasrallah e gli hezbollah non potevano non sapere che la reazione israeliana sarebbe stata inevitabile. Non solo lo sapevano, ma con buona probabilità era proprio quello che auspicavano per evitare il disarmo dei vari gruppi politico-confessionali richiesto da più parti in Libano, nonché per evitare che i siriani si vedessero completamente sfuggire dimanoil paese dei cedri. Mentre glihezbollah e i loro alleatipensano di potersi rafforzare con le sofferenze della popolazione libanese e il peggioramento della sua economia, i falchi israeliani hanno colto al volo l'opportunità per lanciare un'offensiva i cui effetti possono colpire l'intera regione. Gli americani sono statimolto dubbiosi finora se aprire un altro fronte dopo quello iracheno e attaccare la Siria. Ora tutte le possibilità sono aperte. Il governo israeliano politicamente indebolito all'interno dal fallimento a Gaza, ha adesso la grande opportunità di cercare di cambiare manu militari i rapporti di forza interni al Libano. Dopo il ritiro dalla «fascia di sicurezza» nel 2000 è rimasta aperta la questione della presenza degli hezbollah lungo i confini nord di Israele. Al contrario di quanto stabilito dal Consiglio di sicurezza e sperato dagli israelianimanonsolo, l'esercito libanese non si è dislocato sulla frontiera. Per quel che riguarda Libano e Israele, questo significava lasciare acceso un piccolo fuoco che però poteva incendiare tutta la regione. Per quel che riguarda i rapporti di forza interni al Libano, questo significava che gli hezbollah uscivano rafforzati da un processo che indeboliva altri settori e, soprattutto, perpetuare l'occupazione siriana in un paese convertito in una colonia di Damasco senza indipendenza reale. Nella situazione attuale, in assenza di un reale processo di pace nell'area, il governo israeliano non poteva permettersi di non reagire. Il nord bombardato, 7 soldati uccisi e 2 sequestrati, erano un bilancio che «obbligava» a un'azione militare attesa da molti negli ultimi due anni. Morte e distruzione stanno colpendo il Libano. Ma, vista l'ambivalenza dell'occidente, basterà un solo errore da parte di qualunque esercito o una mossa sbagliata di Assad perché gli israeliani abbiano una buona scusa per quell'attacco alla Siria che i falchi di Israele auspicano da molto tempo. Lo sceicco Nasrallah ha giocato alla roulette. Non è sicuro che la sua scommessa aiuti i suoi alleati. Al contrario è sicuro che molti pagheranno con la vita la sua avventura criminale. E mentre i cannoni sparano in Libano, pochissimi ricorderanno che a Gaza i palestinesi stanno pagando il prezzo di una repressione crudele. Come tante altre volte, un cinico gioco di potere, anche di settori «radicali islamici », permetterà di dimenticarsene.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/14-Luglio-2006/art1.html
L'Unità:
Guerra in Libano, morti a decine
Missile su un convoglio di profughi,
nove bambini tra i 18 arsi vivi
Via gli occidentali dal Libano. Almeno 420 persone, di cui 300 italiani, sono state evacuate con nove pullman dalla capitale libanese. La partenza è avvenuta davanti all'ambasciata di Italia a Babda, sulle colline ad est di Beirut. Gli Usa invitano tutti i cittadini a lasciare il Paese. Segnali di guerra.
Arriva nella serata di venerdì 14 luglio, la notizia che un missile libanese è arrivato a colpire una nave israeliana a largo di Beirut. Poco dopo la conferma: la vedetta in fiamme e seriamente danneggiata torna a casa, trainata da un rimorchiatore. Mancano all´appello 4 marinai, ufficialmente dispersi.
Villaggio evacuato, strage di profughi in viaggio
All'alba di sabato missili hezbollah raggiungono il territorio israeliano, toccando per la prima volta l'area del lago di Tiberiade. Prima e dopo ci sono gli ininterrotti raid dell'aviazione israeliana, con gli aerei che bombardano decine di obiettivi libanesi. L'edificio di nove piani che ospitava il quartier generale del capo di Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, nel sud di Beirut, è stato completamente distrutto in un bombardamento aereo israeliano. Difficile, ormai, tenere il conto delle vittime, molte delle quali civili. Di sicuro si contano a decine.
L'episodio più grave nella mattina di sabato, quando un missile colpisce un minibus di profughi evacuati dal villaggio di Marwaheen dopo che Israele aveva invitato i civili a lasciare le loro abitazioni e diretti verso un campo dell'Onu. Le vittime, secondo al Jazira, sarebbero almeno 23, 18 secondo il bilancio fornito da un ufficiale della Forza di interposizione delle Nazioni Unite (Unifil), tra cui donne e nove bambini.
Bombe, nella tarda serata di venerdì, contro il ponte di Darmour, lungo l'autostrada che collega Birut al sud del paese, già colpito una prima volta mercoledì dall'aviazione israeliana, e poi parzialmente ricostruito dai militari libanesi. Bombe sabato, per il terzo giorno consecutivo, contro l´aeroporto internazionale di Beirut. Missili sull'area del valico di Masnaa, al confine tra Libano e Siria e sulla strada che collega direttamente Beirut a Damasco, che già era stata già bombardata in altri punti. Almeno quindici persone, secondo fonti libanesi, sarebbero morte nel bombardamenti di un convoglio di civili in fuga.
Nella mattina di sabato arrivano anche notizie, non confermate, di un attacco aereo contro il campo di profughi palestinese di Badawi, a nord di Tripoli, nel Libano settentrionale.
Nuovi raid anche sulla striscia di Gaza. Nella notte fra venerdì e sabato, missili contro un´abitazione a Gaza City, hanno ucciso almeno due persone e provocato numerosi feriti. Un altro ragazzo sarebbe stato ucciso da colpi sparati da un elicottero.
Le tre condizioni di Israele
Nel pomeriggio di venerdì il premier israeliano Ehud Olmert ha dettato le sue condizioni per fermare l'attacco al Libano. Israele, ha fatto sapere tramite il suo portavoce Miri Eisin, è pronto a terminare le nostre operazioni in Libano se Hezbollah rilascia i nostri due soldati, se cessa gli attacchi con i razzi e se il governo libanese decide di dare attuazione alla risoluzione 1559 (.pdf). Si tratta della risoluzione del settembre 2004 che prevede, tra l'altro, il disarmo di Hezbollah.
Hassan Nasrallah, leader di Hezbollah, ha promesso «guerra totale» allo Stato ebraico.
Pubblicato il 15.07.06
© l'Unità.
http://www.unita.it/view.asp?IDcontent=58103
Mail & Guardian:
The power of love
Binyavanga Wainaina: COMMENT
14 July 2006
I was 14 years old when We Are the World filled our television screens - and I discovered that we are loved.
That was an amazing kind of love: a giant chorus of exotic-looking people coming together as one, and they pouted and gurgled and they agreed. Yeah, yeah. Once in a while one of them would bend forward as if they were retching their love for Ethiopia from a really deep place in their belly, a personal testimony, and I knew it was true the world would be a better place, for you-uu-uu, and for me-ii-ii.
And there was this guy, who looked pale and thin and bruised, with wispy brown English hair, like Jesus had, who suffered for us, abandoning Boomtown Rats and Stray Cats to reach out and touch. And he is now the king of Ethiopia.
Then Canada did the same in a weepy song called Tears Are Not Enough. Vowels wobbled, words stretched out. Tears, tears, are not Enou-ou-ou-gh.
And the French gurgled, L’Ethiopieeeeeeeeee....ohhh! L’Ethiopeeeeee.
In the years since then, much love has poured into my city, Nairobi. For The Girl Child, for many hundreds of Awarenesses, for Poverty Eradi-cation, for the Angelina Jolification and Anti-Desertification of Semi-Arid Regions in Sahelian Countries.
The resources poured in have been incredible: tens of thousands of 4x4s are tearing the country apart looking for a project to love. It used to be that big expensive cars were needed by the Fathers of Our Nations, so they could Develop Our Nations. Now, the Lovers of Our Nations are here to Develop Our Nations, and of course, they need cars to be efficient. Standards must be maintained. Things need to be run with International Standards.
Rents in Nairobi are now on a par with Europe, to service the tens of thousands of Kenya-loving people who run Kenya-loving projects to save Kenyans and Sudanese and others from Misery. Restaurants with names like Casablanca and Java and Lord Erroll feed these people at a very high standard, and many parts of Nairobi look like New York City. And we are very excited about this! We have a German school, a French school, a Swedish school and an international school. This means Nairobi is developing very fast. You can get cappuccino in Loki - a giant refugee camp in northern Kenya.
I have learnt that I, we, are a dollar-a-day people (which is terrible, they say, because a cow in Japan is worth $9 a day). This means that a Japanese cow would be a middle-class Kenyan. Now, a dollar-a-day person cannot know what is good for him - which means that a $9-a-day cow from Japan could very well head a humanitarian NGO in Kenya. Massages are very cheap in Nairobi, so the cow will be comfortable.
Nairobi is crawling with $5-a-day, 25-year-old backpackers who came and loved and compassioned and are now the beneficiaries of $5 000 a month consulting for the United Nations (CV: After working in bars in London, I was involved in a tobacco-harvesting project near the gorilla sanctuary in Uganda when the overland truck was stranded for five days, and I taught schoolchildren to sing Born in the USA), while master’s students from Kenya are selling fruit by the side of the road for a dollar a day, and live in Kibera slum, the only place where rent is cheap, but this may change since Ralph Fiennes went and loved Kibera.
(Am I the only person who thought Fiennes’s wife in the film was sleeping with the black doctor, only to discover that the black doctor was gay? The doctor was a placebo to political correctness, to authenticate the movie, just like an ineffectual Steve Biko authenticated Cry Freedom, showing how Donald Woods rescued South Africa from apartheid. The doctor cannot affect the narrative - the true saviours of his country are Fiennes and Rachel Weisz. But they love him. They really really love the good gay doctor. They would never sleep with him on screen, though.)
Last year I met a lovely young woman from England, all of 19, who came all the way to Naivasha, to a specific location very near a lovely lake, next to several beautiful game sanctuaries and a lodge run by her boyfriend’s father. But these were not her concern. She was in Kenya to teach the people of some peri-urban location how to use a condom. She told me that she talks to groups of men and shows them how a condom can save their lives. I asked her whether there were no nurses or teachers who could do this at maybe a tenth or one hundred-thousandth of the cost it would take to keep her in this lovely and rather expensive location, and her eyes melted and she said, “But I care about people. Can’t you see people are dying? Something must be done.”
“In my gap year.”
She did not add.
I was very moved.
Various royal princes have been here in their gap years, and we have seen them cutting a tree or hugging a baby. One famous actress will adopt all the babies of Africa. And the Strategic Development Goal of that is that in 15 years, the Hollywood Bratpack will be Ethiopian and they will sing a song to save Ethiopia in a more authentic manner.
Many of our schoolchildren have been raised to Awareness, and this is thrilling news, that they are now aware. And every so often, on tele-vision, we are treated to schools’ music festival poems by six-year olds, which go something like this:
The Girl Child! Let us all educate,
The Girl Child!
The Girl Child!
For our Millennium Development
Goals
The Girl Child! The Girl Child!
In 1995, I got a part-time job with a cotton ginnery in Mwea district that my father had invested in. My job was to meet with farmers in the dry areas and encourage them to grow cotton. It was not difficult to do - farmers wanted to grow cotton, but lacked a market. Throughout those few months I heard talk of a legendary African king called PlanInternationo. People said that PlanInternationo gave them water and tanks and school fees, and every chief and government official I met went all moist talking about this king.
One day we went to Thika district agricultural office to talk to the extension officers, whose paid job it is to advise farmers on their options. They asked us if we had been to see the people at PlanInternationo. We said no. They looked rather sad. We asked them if they could give us a person to take us around to meet farmers. They said yes, for some unaffordable number of dollars a day, many more than nine, or 90, they would. We can’t afford that, I said. Oh, but that’s what PlanInternationo pays, they said. They love us very much!
Then I met a senior guy at one of the big Humanitarian Agencies in Kenya, who said he wants to bring Bono to perform a concert in Mogadishu. To raise awareness.
Late last year we heard that people were starving to death in many places all over Kenya. Immediately, the government urged the donor community to help. And the donor community urged the world community to help. And we saw large sad eyes of many nameless people on the very verge of death; and caring spokespeople, all white and tanned, told the world: people are dying!
Meanwhile, our government had broken all tax collection records, and in other parts of Kenya, we were having huge bumper harvests. People died.
The most-loved people in Africa are the tall, thin noble people who were once or are still nomads and who live near Wild Animals. The Pokot, the Samburu, the Maasai have received more love than anybody in the world.
I met a woman at a dinner in New York who resembles and speaks like Scarlett O’Hara (My dadee this, my dadee that), who said she was a friend of Rafe (Fiennes). Scarlett is about to start producing handbags from the tails of Mongolian horses and she Just Luuurves Kenya and she is building a clinic for the Maasai people and sending a group to London to sing about manhood ceremonies to raise money. Nobody, really, has seen how the Maasai have become wealthy or even healthy out of all the thousands and thousands of Projects. But the Maasai, they can be certain that they are loved.
What you can be sure about in all these love projects is that it is easier for a thirtysomething Scarlett O’Hara - or a Boomtown Rat - than it is for a PhD-wielding, Maasai-speaking, Maasai person, to decide who the Maasai will be to the world.
Because that is the Power of Love.
Binyavanga Wainaina is a writer based in Nairobi. He is the founding editor of Kwani, a leading Kenyan literary magazine (www.kwani.org)
All material copyright Mail&Guardian
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=277510&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/#
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Nada frena la guerra del Líbano e Israel
HEZBOLA LE DECLARO LA “GUERRA ABIERTA” A TEL AVIV Y HUBO MUERTOS DE LOS DOS LADOS
Pese a un creciente clamor internacional por un alto al fuego, Israel profundizó su ofensiva y bombardeó suburbios de Beirut, destruyendo puentes, rutas y el aeropuerto, una central eléctrica y la casa del líder de Hezbolá. Los milicianos contestaron con una salva de cohetes sobre ciudades limítrofes y averiaron una nave enemiga.
Sábado, 15 de Julio de 2006
Ya no hay vuelta atrás. Mientras los israelíes bombardearon por tercer día consecutivo al Líbano, el grupo fundamentalista Hezbolá atacó el norte israelí con una lluvia de proyectiles y, por si hiciera falta, le declaró la guerra a Israel. Los cohetes de los milicianos mataron a dos personas y causaron al menos 60 heridos. Al mismo tiempo, cuatro personas morían y 55 resultaban heridas en el Líbano a causa de la ofensiva israelí, con lo que trepó a 61 la cifra de libaneses muertos y a unos 200 los heridos desde que Hezbolá mató a ocho soldados israelíes y capturó a otros dos el 12 de julio. Ayer, después de que los israelíes destruyeran el cuartel de Hezbolá en Beirut y atacaran la casa del líder Hassan Nasralá, quien resultó ileso, el grupo islamista declaró la “guerra abierta” al Estado hebreo. “Esta será una guerra a todos los niveles (...) a partir de Haifa y más allá”, dijo Nasralá. “Son ustedes los que han querido cambiar las reglas del juego”.
El ejército israelí dijo que sus ataques dentro de Beirut y en sus alrededores alcanzaron un depósito de combustible, dos puentes, una autopista que une Beirut con Damasco y los barrios del sur de la capital libanesa, donde Hezbolá tiene sus oficinas políticas. Además, la marina israelí bombardeó la ciudad portuaria de Tiro, al sur de Líbano, y el campo de refugiados palestinos de Rashidiya, a 80 kilómetros de la capital del país. Por otra parte, cazas israelíes atacaron el poblado de Msayleh, sur de Líbano, en cercanías de la residencia de verano del presidente del Parlamento, Nabih Berri, jefe del grupo chiíta Amal, quien no se hallaba en la casa.
Hezbolá respondió con el lanzamiento de al menos 50 cohetes contra ciudades del norte de Israel, que produjeron dos civiles muertos y once heridos. Los ataques del movimiento chiíta involucraron a unas 15 localidades a lo largo de la frontera con el Líbano, entre ellas algunos kibbutz (cooperativas agrícolas). Diez de los cohetes cayeron sobre Safed y otros dos sobre Nahariya, donde el jueves murió Mónica Lerer de Saidman, una residente argentina de 47 años (ver aparte). El diario israelí Haaretz informó que una mujer y su nieto, de cinco años, murieron en Alta Galilea, cuando un misil destruyó su casa.
Después de lanzar el mensaje de “guerra total” contra Israel, Hezbolá dijo que atacó un barco de guerra israelí en aguas libanesas. “Les prometí sorpresas. Comenzarán a verlas pronto. Una de las naves israelíes que bombardearon Beirut se está incendiando en medio del mar y se hundirá con sus armas”, dijo Nasralá, líder de Hezbolá, en una conversación telefónica con la emisora Al Manar. “Miren frente a Beirut, verán que una nave israelí está en llamas, son nuestros combatientes los que la atacaron”, dijo. Un portavoz militar israelí admitió que la nave fue alcanzada por fuego enemigo y que sufrió daños ligeros. La cadena árabe Al Jazeera anunció la desaparición de cuatro soldados israelíes después de la destrucción del buque, a pesar que las autoridades militares israelíes habían afirmado que no hubo bajas ni heridos.
El primer ministro israelí, Ehud Olmert, advirtió ayer al secretario general de la ONU, Kofi Annan, que mantendrá la ofensiva sobre el Líbano mientras Hezbolá no sea desarmado, informó el diario israelí Haaretz en su sitio de Internet. Olmert reclamó el cumplimiento de la resolución 1559 del Consejo de Seguridad de la ONU, que dispone el desarme del grupo libanés. Israel tiene dos flancos de batalla abiertos, ya que además de la del Líbano, lleva adelante de forma paralela otra gran operación militar en la Franja de Gaza para rescatar a otro soldado, capturado por militantes palestinos a fines de junio. Ayer los tanques se retiraron de la Franja para desplazarse a la frontera norte, pero siguieron los ataques aéreos.
Ante la grave situación, los principales líderes mundiales urgieron a las partes en conflicto a detener la violencia, mientras que el gobierno libanés –que quedó en medio de Hezbolá y el gobierno israelí– afirmó que el presidente estadounidense, George W. Bush, prometió a Beirut presionara Israel para que limite su ataque. Sin embargo, el vocero de la Casa Blanca, Tony Snow, desmintió esas declaraciones al informar que Bush “no va a interferir en las decisiones militares israelíes”. El Papa pidió paz, los países islámicos repudiaron a Israel y el Consejo de Seguridad evitó pronunciarse o tomar medidas en una sesión urgente solicitada por el gobierno de Beirut.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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Brasil, México y los más ricos
LULA Y FOX ESTARAN PRESENTES EN LA CUMBRE DEL G-8
Los mandatarios representan a los países emergentes y pedirán a los poderosos una reducción en los subsidios agrícolas.
Sábado, 15 de Julio de 2006
Los presidentes de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, y México, Vicente Fox, alzarán la voz de América latina y del G-20 ante los países más ricos del mundo, en la Cumbre que el Grupo de los Ocho (G-8) celebrará el fin de semana en Rusia. Lula y Fox han sido invitados en representación de los países menos desarrollados, junto con los jefes de Estado de China, India y Sudáfrica, y se sentarán a la misma mesa que los líderes de Estados Unidos, Canadá, Reino Unido, Francia, Alemania, Italia, Japón y Rusia. China, Brasil, México, India y Sudáfrica forman parte del Grupo de los 20 (G-20), que presiona en la Ronda de Doha por una reducción de los subsidios agrícolas que otorgan los países más desarrollados y que, según los más pobres, distorsionan el comercio mundial.
Lula, como principal impulsor del G-20, ha dicho que pretende aprovechar el encuentro con los líderes de los siete países más ricos del mundo y Rusia para intentar salvar las negociaciones en la Organización Mundial de Comercio (OMC), que para muchos parecen condenadas al fracaso.
“Será la última oportunidad”, ha dicho Lula sobre esta Cumbre del G-8, que si bien no tiene las discusiones de la Ronda de Doha en su agenda formal reunirá a los jefes de Estado más influyentes en las decisiones. Según el presidente brasileño, las discusiones técnicas están agotadas y los negociadores no tienen más margen de maniobra, por lo que salvar la Ronda de Doha depende sólo de decisiones políticas que deben ser tomadas por los líderes.
Fox ha coincidido con ese enfoque y declarado que las trabas en las negociaciones tienen “nombre y apellido”, en alusión a EE.UU. y la Unión Europea (UE), “que tienen subsidios enormes que impiden el acceso al desarrollo de pequeños países que sólo viven de la agricultura”, apuntó.
Para Lula, la OMC ha sido asunto recurrente y sus esfuerzos la han llevado a telefonear reiteradas veces a los jefes de Estado de EE.UU., George Bush, del Reino Unido, Tony Blair, y de Francia, Jacques Chirac, e intentar convencerlos de que el asunto debe ser abordado en San Petersburgo.
“Ha llegado el momento de que los líderes políticos digamos si queremos o no queremos un mundo más justo, un mundo más solidario, si queremos o no combatir el terrorismo, si queremos o no un mundo con menos mortalidad infantil, con menos enfermedades y menos hambre”, declaró Lula esta semana. Según el presidente brasileño, la Cumbre del G-8 no puede pasar de puntillas sobre el estancamiento de las negociaciones en la OMC, y supone la “última oportunidad” para resolver el entuerto. “No es posible que los presidentes de los países más importantes del mundo se reúnan y no debatan uno de los objetivos primordiales”, insistió Lula.
Otro asunto fuera de agenda y que puede entrar en las discusiones del G-8 es la posible ampliación de este “club de países ricos”, con la incorporación de los cinco invitados en esta ocasión y la conformación de lo que sería un Grupo de los Trece.
En la última asamblea del Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), el subsecretario del Tesoro de Estados Unidos, Tim Adams, opinó que el G-8 debería abrir las puertas a algunos de los países “emergentes”, pues considera que tienen “mucho que aportar” en términos de “ideas y potencial”.
Esa opinión la reforzó el primer ministro británico, Tony Blair, quien anunció esta semana que tiene previsto plantear el asunto en la ciudad rusa de San Petersburgo.
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Un duro golpe a la corrupción del fútbol
FUTBOL CLUBES, ARBITROS Y DIRIGENTES ITALIANOS FUERON CASTIGADOS POR MANIPULAR PARTIDOS EN EL CALCIO
Juventus, Lazio y Fiorentina deberán jugar la próxima temporada en la segunda división y purgar, además, una importante quita de puntos. Milan, en cambio, pierde puntos pero mantiene la categoría.
Sábado, 15 de Julio de 2006
Los clubes Juventus, Lazio y Fiorentina fueron condenados ayer a jugar la próxima temporada en la segunda división del fútbol italiano, según la sentencia emitida por la Comisión de Arbitraje Deportivo en el escándalo de corrupción en la liga de ese país. Juventus, que sufrirá la quita de 30 puntos para el próximo campeonato, perderá también el título obtenido en la temporada anterior y no recibirá el que ganó en ésta, y jugará en segunda división junto con Lazio y Fiorentina, que además recibieron siete y 12 puntos de penalización en la próxima temporada, respectivamente. Milan, en cambio, seguirá jugando en la máxima categoría y perderá 15 puntos en el próximo torneo y otros 15 en el siguiente (en total serán 44 considerando los del pasado certamen), con lo que perderá su lugar en la próxima Liga de Campeones de Europa.
La Comisión de Arbitraje Deportivo, además, dispuso cinco años de inhabilitación y un pedido de expulsión para Luciano Moggi, ex director general de Juventus, y otros cinco para Antonio Giraudo, director deportivo del mismo club. El ex titular de la Federación Italiana de Fútbol Franco Carraro fue condenado en primera instancia a cuatro años y medio de suspensión, en tanto que su ex vicepresidente Innocenzo Mazzini fue sentenciado a cinco años.
Cuatro años de inhibición y 30 mil euros de multa le aplicaron a Diego Della Valle, accionista mayoritario de Fiorentina, y tres años y medio a Andrea Della Valle, titular del club. Un año de inhabilitación, en tanto, dispuso el tribunal deportivo para Adriano Galliani, ex presidente de la Liga Italiana de Fútbol y vicepresidente de Milan. Mientras que Leonardo Meani, dirigente de Milan encargado de las relaciones con los árbitros, fue condenado a tres años y medio de inhibición.
El titular de Lazio, Claudio Lotito, fue sentenciado a tres años y medio de suspensión y 40 mil euros de multa, en tanto que el árbitro Massimo De Santis, que había sido designado para dirigir en el Mundial de Alemania y luego quedó relegado, fue sancionado con cuatro años y medio de inhabilitación.
El ex designador arbitral Luigi Pairetto y el ex titular de la Asociación Italiana de Arbitros, Tulio Lanese, fueron sancionados con dos años y medio de inhabilitación, en tanto que para el también designador Paolo Bergamo se estableció que no puede ser juzgado por este tribunal por problemas de jurisdicción. El árbitro Paolo Dondarini recibió tres años y medio de suspensión, Gianluca Paparesta tres meses, y resultaron absueltos sus colegas Paolo Bertini, Pasquale Rodomonti, Paolo Tagliavento, Gianluca Rocchi y Domenico Messina.
Las sentencias en primera instancia pueden ser apeladas en un plazo de tres días ante la Corte Federal, que en un breve lapso deberá dar a conocer su decisión definitiva. El presidente de la Comisión de Apelaciones Federal (CAF), Cesare Ruperto, destacó ayer que el organismo alcanzó un veredicto en el escándalo de corrupción en el calcio “sin condicionamientos, ni interferencias”. “Hice mi deber. No estoy satisfecho, ni insatisfecho”, afirmó Ruperto.
Por su parte, la ministra de Deportes de Italia, Giovanna Melandri, una de las más firmes opositoras a una eventual amnistía en el escándalo de corrupción en el calcio, afirmó que “las sentencias no se comentan, se respetan”, tras conocerse las sanciones para los implicados. “El gobierno nunca interfirió en la autonomía del proceso de la justicia deportiva y no lo hará ahora, cuando se completó el procedimiento en primera instancia”, dijo Melandri, quien apostó por una limpieza en el fútbol y había rechazado una amnistía tras la obtención de la Copa del Mundo en Alemania. “Estamos comprometidos a nivel nacional y continental en la necesidad de escribir nuevas reglas que ayuden al sistema del fútbol a salir de una situación que es, al mismo tiempo, causa y efecto de los problemas actuales”, completó Melandri. Cientos de simpatizantes de Lazio se congregaron ayer para protestar contra el titular del club, Lotito y contra la Federación Italiana de Fútbol. Con la obtención del título en la Copa del Mundo de Alemania, crecieron las sospechas acerca de que la justicia no daría a conocer el fallo antes del comienzo de la liga, y de esa manera no perjudicaría a ninguna institución. Finalmente, sucedió todo lo contrario y, para algunos italianos, los festejos por el Mundial duraron menos de una semana.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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Volver a buscar la verdad
Por Osvaldo Bayer
Sábado, 15 de Julio de 2006
Pese a los reveses constantes de la humanidad, hay seres que no se rinden y siguen la búsqueda. El espanto vivo en los acontecimientos de Palestina y Líbano, el anuncio de Estados Unidos de que votó 80 millones de dólares para ayudar a los anticastristas para voltear a Castro, el aislacionismo de los mellizos Kaczynski en Polonia, gobernantes ultracatólicos y nacionalistas, la continuación indefinida del drama diario de Irak y Afganistán... para hablar apenas de los grandes titulares de los diarios. Pero... siempre ese pero que nos hace sonreír. Sí, el documento profundo y sabio de la Iglesia Evangélica Alemana donde se dicen las cosas por su nombre: “El hambre es un escándalo”. Por fin una iglesia toma el camino que le corresponde. En vez de hablarnos de cielos e infiernos y de otras vidas, ese documento nos habla del hambre, de la pobreza en este mundo. Y toma como referencia a su propio país, Alemania, una de las naciones mejor organizadas del mundo y sin embargo con eso tan típico del capitalismo: desocupación y pobreza que significan falta de igualdad de posibilidades.
La iglesia protestante, la más grande de Alemania, llama nada menos que “escándalo” a la pobreza en la “rica Alemania”. Pero no se quedan con la acusación, promueven soluciones, que por lo menos sirvan para la búsqueda de una sociedad con justicia y con dignidad. Es necesario transferir, y no mirar como producto de una nación libre que los poderosos tengan cada vez más poder económico –y como consecuencia, poder político– y los que tienen menos cada vez más se debatan entre los marginados. Eso no es democracia. La fórmula racional se llama seguridad material básica. Pero se remarca que el apoyo material solidario y un mercado de trabajo asegurado por el Estado no alcanzan para proteger a una sociedad de la pobreza. Más que nunca es determinante una ayuda activa y en especial posibilidades educativas útiles para incorporar a las personas que lo necesiten. Justicia en la participación, es el lema clave.
Y el documento repite con fuerza y autoridad: “Sin la justa repartición de los bienes materiales no existe la igualdad de posibilidades”. Con esto se entierra el fácil principio de: “una sociedad es justa cuando todos tienen las mismas posibilidades”. No, además de las mismas posibilidades la sociedad debe aplicar los principios de la justa repartición. O regulación.
La sociedad es democrática cuando todos tienen la posibilidad de vivir en dignidad. El nivel de transferencia del rendimiento tiene que ser constantemente examinado y ajustado al desarrollo general. Y asegurar los sistemas de seguridad social mediante los impuestos.
La desocupación es para este documento de los cristianos luteranos la causa principal de la pobreza y de la marginación social. Y el mejor método de llevar adelante una sociedad es mediante la educación y el perfeccionamiento. Hay que eliminar de todo sistema educativo las estructuras selectivas que hacen que el éxito en la vida de un niño y de un estudiante dependan de su origen social y no de sus propias capacidades. Por eso son primordiales para el futuro de una sociedad los jardines infantiles gratuitos, a partir del segundo año de vida. Además, la meta de toda democracia debe ser tratar de reducir en todo lo posible, al máximo, al sector de los jornales bajos.
Toda sociedad activa debe ser capaz de superar la pobreza. Y para ello debe asegurar en su constitución y en su vida diaria “el deber social de la propiedad”. Y a continuación se señala algo para pensar con toda profundidad: “no puede ser separado el tema pobreza del tema riqueza”. Si hay pobres es porque en la sociedad una parte goza de riquezas desmedidas y fuera de toda ética.
Sociedad que tiene una parte de conciudadanos que no llegan a satisfacer sus necesidades mínimas es una sociedad inmoral. El mismo calificativorecibe el gobernante que nada hace por igualar las posibilidades. El documento que analizamos dice claramente: “con el estómago vacío no se aprende”. Es decir, que la sociedad misma está implementando un régimen que lleva a la violencia. Pobreza significa además no participación, aislamiento. Y una sociedad, con parte de su población que se aísla y no participa no puede autotitularse democrática. Hay que educar principalmente para que no haya pobreza. Y si hay pobreza hay que implementar la sociedad para terminar con ese estado. Claro, todo eso puede lograrse con dos principios fundamentales de una verdadera sociedad democrática: Solidaridad y Libertad, con mayúscula. Tienen que ser las dos caras de una misma medalla. Los dos principios fundamentales de un desarrollo económico, social y también cultural. La capacidad de un ser humano para crear riqueza no debe ir en beneficio propio más allá de su bienestar, sino que debe utilizar esa capacidad también para los demás, es decir, para la felicidad general. Lo demás es delinquir contra su propia sociedad. En la educación debe estar contenido el principio de compartir, ayudar, terminar con las violencias. Nuestros héroes tienen que ser no los que marcaron fronteras sino los que terminaron con las fronteras, no los que quitaron la tierra sino aquellos que lucharon para que la tierra sirviera a la comunidad, los que dieron su vida para mejorar las condiciones de trabajo. Participar, es la palabra de la democracia, dar la posibilidad de participar. Por eso, no rotundo a la desocupación. No regirse por la oferta y la demanda sino por las necesidades de la dignidad y del cuidado de la naturaleza.
Todas estas son palabras del vocabulario humano, es decir, existen: solidaridad, ética, diálogo, responsabilidad propia. No pertenecen ni a la ilusión ni al concepto de utopía. La educación debe significar integración. No a las diferencias religiosas, no al racismo, no a la violencia. El No a la violencia tiene que empezar por la familia. La familia debe ser la semilla de la sociedad futura. Por eso, atender al niño. Es decir, ir formando un nuevo mundo. No hay otra manera.
Además, el programa político del futuro en toda democracia debe estar basado en una línea de engranaje entre las políticas social, educativa y de mercado de trabajo. Sólo un engranaje integrativo así puede ir traduciendo la complejidad de los déficit de justicia, con la meta de la participación total en la sociedad. Principalmente hay que salir al encuentro de la integración de todos aquellos trabajadores desocupados desde hace mucho tiempo. Señala el documento que no hay otro camino que pensar sobre la base del principio de justicia para todos, en lo social y en lo económico.
Finaliza el documento señalando que los cristianos así como la Iglesia y la Diaconía –como instituciones– tienen el especial deber de luchar contra la pobreza. Allí tienen que concentrarse. Una Iglesia sin sentido de justicia no es la iglesia de Cristo. La aceptación de la pobreza en la sociedad significa un fracaso tanto social como individual a los mandamientos de la religión. Nuestra sociedad dispone de una magnitud de resortes –como nunca en la historia de la humanidad– y por eso no hay lugar para disculpas de no participar y superar la realidad de la pobreza. Ha llegado el tiempo de abrir los brazos. Es el único futuro.
Llama la atención este decidido lenguaje, principalmente enfocado al sistema que ha creado en el mundo la pobreza. Y con la pobreza, la violencia. El documento, que pronto va a salir en forma de libro, no está firmado por pastores o autoridades internas de la iglesia sino por conocidos políticos, economistas y sindicalistas así como juristas y estudiosos de la ética social que conforman la Cámara para el Orden Social. Su presidente es el economista Gert G. Wagner, del Instituto Alemán para la Investigacion Económica (DIW). Este documento nos hace pensar que, pese a la violencia que domina al mundo, el ser humano no se rinde. Busca una salida. En momentos en que se bombardean ciudades o se destruyen a cañonazos puentes y aeropuertos, sale este documento que establece que la única salida es el pensamiento de solidaridad entre los habitantes del planeta.
Este manifiesto es una búsqueda más, pero en la que está comprometida una de las iglesias cristianas que se independizó hace muchos siglos de Roma. Mientras el papa Ratzinger, en Valencia, se dedicaba a proclamar su negación contra el matrimonio de los homosexuales, los luteranos toman la sartén por el mango y reanudan una vez más el problema básico de la humanidad: la búsqueda del sistema que termine con la injusticia y la violencia social.
Lo que más ha sorprendido es el lenguaje casi cándido que emplearon los científicos que lo produjeron. Es que la solución no está en los términos academicistas ni en las engoladas interpretaciones economicistas o filosóficas. Está en esto: al pan, pan; y al vino, vino. Ni promesas caudillescas ni candidaturas que siembran el miedo para aparecer como protectores.
Este documento en Alemania, justo en el momento en que se encuentran Bush y la primera ministra Angela Merkel a comer un asado de chancho salvaje, ha causado mucho interés en círculos políticos y gremiales. Es que ni las bombas ni los cañonazos no van a llenar jamás los estómagos vacíos de los niños que padecen hambre.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-69940-2006-07-15.html
The Independent:
Is Damascus the key to Beirut?
By Robert Fisk
13 July, 2006
It's about Syria. That was the frightening message delivered by Damascus yesterday when it allowed its Hizbullah allies to cross the U.N. Blue Line in southern Lebanon, kill three Israeli soldiers, capture two others and demand the release of Lebanese prisoners in Israeli jails.
Within hours, a country that had begun to believe in peace - without a single Syrian soldier left on its soil - found itself once more at war.
Israel held the powerless Lebanese government responsible - as if the sectarian and divided cabinet in Beirut can control Hizbullah. That is Syria's message. Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's affable Prime Minister, may have thought he was running the country but it is President Bashar Assad in Damascus who can still bring life or death to a land that lost 150,000 lives in 15 years of civil conflict.
And there is one certain bet that Syria will rely on; that despite all Israel's threats of inflicting "pain" on Lebanon, this war will run out of control until - as has so often happened in the past - Israel itself calls for a ceasefire and releases prisoners. Then the international big-hitters will arrive and make their way to the real Lebanese capital Damascus, not Beirut - and appeal for help.
That is probably the plan. But will it work? Israel has threatened Lebanon's newly installed infrastructure and Hizbullah has threatened Israel with further conflict. And therein lies the problem; to get at Hizbullah, Israel must send its soldiers into Lebanon - and then it will lose more soldiers.
Indeed when a single Merkava tank crossed the border into Lebanon yesterday morning, it struck a Hizbullah mine, which killed three more Israelis.
Certainly Hizbullah's attack broke the United Nations rules in southern Lebanon - a "violent breach" of the Blue Line, it was called by Geir Pedersen, the senior U.N. official in the country - and was bound to unleash the air force, tanks and gunboats of Israel on to this frail, dangerous country. Many Lebanese in Beirut were outraged when gangs of Hizbullah supporters drove through the streets of the capital with party flags to "celebrate" the attack on the border.
Christian members of the Lebanese government were voicing increasing frustration at the Shia Muslim militia's actions - which only proved how powerless the Beirut administration is.
By nightfall, Israel's air raids had begun to spread across the country - the first civilians to die were killed when an aircraft bombed a small road bridge at Qasmiyeh - but would they go even further and include a target in Syria? This would be the gravest escalation so far and would have US as well as UN diplomats appealing for that familiar, tired quality - "restraint."
And prisoner swaps is probably all that will come of this. In January 2004, for example, Israel freed 436 Arab prisoners and released the bodies of 59 Lebanese for burial, in return for an Israeli spy and the bodies of three Israeli soldiers.
As long ago as 1985, three Israeli soldiers captured in 1982 were traded for 1,150 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners. So Hizbullah knows - and the Israelis know - how this cruel game is played. How many have to die before the swaps begin is a more important question.
What is also clear is that for the first time Israel is facing two Islamist enemies - in southern Lebanon and in Gaza - rather than nationalist guerrillas. The Palestinian Hamas movement's spokesmen in Lebanon yesterday denied that there was any co-ordination with Hizbullah. This may be literally true but Hizbullah timed its attack when Arab feelings are embittered by the international sanctions placed on the democratically elected Hamas government and then the war in Gaza. Hizbullah will ride the anger over Gaza in the hope of escaping condemnation for its capture and killing of Israelis yesterday.
And there is one more little, sinister question. In past violence of this kind, Syria's power was controlled by the Hafez Assad, one of the shrewdest Arabs in modern history. But there are those - including Lebanese politicians - who believe that Bashar, the son, lacks his late father's wisdom and understanding of power. This is a country, remember, whose own Minister of Interior allegedly committed suicide last year and whose soldiers had to leave Lebanon amid suspicion that Syria had set up the murder of Rafik Hariri, Lebanon's former prime minister, last year. All this may now seem academic. But Damascus remains, as always, the key.
Robert Fisk is a reporter for "The Independent" and author of "Pity the Nation." He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's collection, "The Politics of Anti-Semitism." Fisk's new book is "The Conquest of the Middle East."
http://www.robert-fisk.com/
The Nation:
Too High a Price
[posted online on July 14, 2006]
With the spreading violence in Lebanon and Gaza, the Israeli doctrine of absolute security and massive retaliation-the notion that any attack or threat of attack on Israel will be met with a disproportionate response-is again proving counterproductive to Israel's own security as well as to the larger stability of the region. It makes no sense for Israel to destroy the civil infrastructure of the Palestinians and of Lebanon in response to the kidnapping of its soldiers, or to further weaken the capacity of the governments of Lebanon and the Palestinian Authority while at the same trying to hold them accountable for the actions of groups and militias they cannot reasonably control. This collective punishment of the Palestinian and Lebanese people is not only inhumane and should be condemned but also leads to more radicalization and to more chaos.
That was the lesson of the Israeli siege of the Palestinian Authority in 2002, which severely weakened its ability to govern, helping to pave the way for the political success of Hamas. And it will be the lesson of the increasing destruction of Lebanon. Indeed, the most likely casualty of the latest case of Israel's massive retaliation will be the fragile social peace and the democratically elected government in Lebanon. Ironically, the much-trumpeted Cedar Revolution, the only example of the success of the Bush doctrine that neoconservatives can still point to, could be brought down by the Likudnik policies of Israel that the neo-cons so champion. It took Lebanon more than 20 years to recover a degree of stability and civil peace after the last major incursion. How long will it take to recover from the unraveling of the stability that American and Israelis policies are helping to bring about?
It is now clear that the American and Israeli strategy of trying to isolate Hamas and Hezbollah, on the one hand, and Syria and Iran on the other, have backfired. Would the situation in Gaza have gotten so out of hand if Israel, the United States, and the European Union had tried to work with the democratically elected Hamas government from the outset? And would Hezbollah have felt the freedom to take the reckless action it took-the deplorable firing of rockets on Israeli civilians As Juan Cole points out today on Informed Comment, "A Lebanon with no Syrian troops and Hizbullah in the government was inherently unstable. With Syria gone, Hizbullah filled a security vacuum and also was less restrained."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has said that Syria has a special responsibility to resolve this crisis. But the whole thrust of American policy of the last two years has been to reduce unconditionally Syria's influence in Lebanon so as to leave Lebanon to the Lebanese. By what logic does the Administration now seek to hold Syria accountable for the reckless action of Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon? As Cole suggests, the hasty unplanned departure of Syrian forces may have ironically given Hezbollah more freedom to act than before. A dialogue with Syria together with an effort to have a more careful planned disengagement of Syrian forces would have given the Lebanese government a better chance of establishing control over its sovereignty in southern Lebanon.
The big beneficiaries of American policy have been the more radical wings of Hamas and Hezbollah and the Iranians, who more and more look like the champions of the Palestinian people. The big losers are the so-called moderate Arab regimes, which again look helpless in the face of what is seen as Israeli aggression, and the moderate Israelis, Palestinians, and Lebanese who hoped for some normalcy of life with the prospect of peace, especially when the Hamas leadership appeared to be moving toward recognition of Israel. The United States and the larger world, too, are losers, for no one benefits from this mindless escalation of violence, particularly at a time of growing sectarian violence in Iraq and rising oil prices.
The events of the past two weeks should remind us that the peace and stability of the region is too important to be left to Israel and to Washington. There is a need for much greater and more forceful UN and European Union involvement and for the kind of diplomacy that the Europeans and the UN conducted in the late 1980s and the early 1990s that led to the mutual release of prisoners and eventually to the Oslo peace process. The UN Quartet-consisting of the UN, the United States, Russia and the EU- has been far too deferential to the Bush Administration's failed road map strategy and it is time for more active and comprehensive G-8 and UN-led diplomacy. Secretary General Kofi Annan's dispatch of two representatives to the region is a start but it must be followed up by G-8 and UN Security Council action to rein in forces on all sides. This diplomacy should be aimed first at establishing a ceasefire and a mutual prisoner exchange and second at recognizing Hamas in Palestine and establishing talks with Syria and Iran. The United States must urgently back this diplomacy as well as make clear to Israel that it cannot support its current military action. The price it will pay in Iraq and in the region as a whole for doing so is just too large.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060731/editors4
The Nation:
The G-8's Risky Nuclear Embrace
by MARK HERTSGAARD
[posted online on July 14, 2006]
At their summit in St. Petersburg this weekend, leaders of the G-8-the world's richest economies-are poised to endorse a major expansion of nuclear power as part of the "energy security" agenda proposed by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Leaked drafts of the summit's final communique mirror a statement released by energy ministers of the eight nations, which read, "For those countries that wish, wide-scale development of safe and secure nuclear energy is crucial."
Nuclear power is often perceived as a potential counter to climate change because nuclear plants release much less carbon dioxide than coal or natural gas plants do. But aside from the safety and security risks of nuclear power, the fact is that the atom's unfavorable economic performance means that going nuclear would actually make climate change worse.
During the lead-up to the summit, Russia and the United States have been the strongest pro-nuclear voices. France, which generates nearly 80 percent of its electricity in nuclear reactors, is a strong supporter as well. Germany and Italy remain opposed, both having passed laws prohibiting additional nuclear power plant construction.
But the country to watch is Britain. The pro-nuclear argument got a strong push earlier this week when Prime Minister Tony Blair's government endorsed nukes as a crucial weapon in the fight against climate change. The endorsement came as part of the government's new energy policy. While that policy includes increased reliance on wind and other forms of renewable energy, nuclear power is expected to make, in the words of Alistair Darling, the trade and industry secretary, a "significant contribution" to cutting carbon emissions.
The Blair government's announcement triggered a political firestorm in Britain. The embrace of nuclear power, which had been rejected by a government White Paper on energy in 2003, was widely attacked both by environmentalists to Blair's left and the two opposition parties to his right.
But there is a big catch in Blair's nuclear plan-one that could settle the question once and for all of whether nuclear power makes sense as a response to global warming.
The catch is that Britain will not publicly subsidize nuclear power. According to Secretary Darling, private investors alone must pay to finance, construct, operate and eventually dismantle any new nuclear plants. They also must help pay to dispose of the plants' radioactive waste-an activity whose cost is unknown, since scientists remain uncertain about how to store the waste safely.
This no-subsidy pledge amounts to a revolution in nuclear economics. There are 440 nuclear plants now operating around the world. Not one of them was built without sizable public subsidies.
Governments have subsidized nukes both directly-through R&D funding, cheap loans and guaranteed insurance-and indirectly, by allowing electric companies to pass billion-dollar cost overruns onto consumers. The US government has historically spent ten times more on nuclear subsidies than it has for solar, wind and other renewable energy sources, according to studies by the Renewable Energy Policy Project and the energy policy analyst Charles Komanoff. Perhaps the most critical subsidy is the Price- Anderson Act, which shifts most of the liability for a major accident at a US reactor to the federal government-in other words, the taxpayers. Without Price-Anderson's protections, no nuclear plant would remain in operation, as pro-nuclear legislators point out every time the act comes up for renewal by Congress.
Despite these ongoing subsidies, nuclear power remains forbiddingly expensive. A recent MIT study calculated that in the United States, nuclear power costs 6.7 cents per kilowatt hour. That's nearly 50 percent higher than natural gas, coal or wind, and it is vastly higher than energy efficiency, the least polluting form of electricity.
None of this stops nuclear industry flaks from regularly claiming, as one did not long ago on public radio, that nuclear power is the cheapest electricity around-a statement so deliberately misleading, it qualifies as a lie. It's true that nuclear's operating costs-for fuel, labor and personnel-are low. But its capital costs-for buying the reactor, concrete and other materials and, above all, for borrowing the money needed to finance years of construction and permitting-are astronomical.
In short, saying nuclear power is cheap is like saying a Rolls-Royce is cheap. It's true, but only if you count just the money you spend on gas and repairs, not the price of buying the car in the first place.
Investors know all this. That's why nuclear power survives today only in countries like Russia, China and France, where state-controlled electricity systems can ignore market forces.
"The financial outlook of nuclear power has always been, and remains today, poor," says Brice Smith, an analyst at the Institute for Energy and Environment Research and author of Insurmountable Risks: The Dangers of Using Nuclear Power to Combat Global Climate Change. "Nuclear is seen as such a risk that Standard & Poor's issued a report in January saying that despite all the new nuclear subsidies the Bush Administration inserted in the 2005 Energy Act, S&P still might downgrade the bond rating of any utility company that ordered a nuke."
If G-8 leaders want to honor last year's pledge to fight climate change, they need to understand that going nuclear would actually represent a big step backward. Because nuclear power is so expensive, it delivers seven times fewer greenhouse reductions per dollar invested than boosting energy efficiency does.
Tony Blair-like George W. Bush, for that matter-says it's not an either/or question; we need energy efficiency and nuclear power and lots of other energy sources in the future. But in the real world, capital is scarce. To divert capital to nuclear when efficiency can work so much faster would delay our transition to a low-carbon economy when in fact we need to accelerate it.
It's hard to believe Blair doesn't know this. In any case, he's in for a big surprise if he truly expects any nuclear plants will be built anywhere, without continued subsidies from the public purse.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060731/hertsgaard2
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