Elsewhere today (375)
Aljazeera:
Israel extends Lebanese offensive
Tuesday 01 August 2006, 11:24 Makka Time, 8:24 GMT
Israel has continued its offensive in Lebanon with attacks in the south, north and east of the country, while the Hezbollah said it has beaten back some.
The Israeli air force launched further air strikes against Lebanese border villages on Tuesday. Lebanese security sources said Israeli aircraft hit Bayyada and Mansoureh.
Israeli jets also struck roads leading to Syria and eastern Lebanon.
Resitance
Hezbollah fighters said in a statement that they had beaten back some of the advances in southern Lebanon.
"The Israeli forces started from Monday night until the early hours of Tuesday morning to try to take control of the triangle of Aita al-Chaab/al-Qaozah/Ramie villages but Hezbollah fighters confronted them... forcing them to retreat."
Aita al-Chaab is near the Lebanese border from where Hezbollah fighters entered Israel on July 12 and kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight others, sparking the ongoing war.
The movement said Israeli troops were trying to take control of a hill overlooking all three villages.
Hezbollah has also said it has destroyed an Israeli warship off the coast of Tyre.
Israel has denied the claim.
The Israeli army said it had killed 20 Hezbollah fighters in southern Lebanon over the past 48 hours.
An army spokeswoman said: "We have killed 20 Hezbollah terrorists during the past two days in the sectors of Taibe and Al-Adeissa."
Hezbollah said it had lost three men during the fighting.
Further advance
A senior Israeli official has said the Israeli army will move deeper into southern Lebanon and hold on to that territory for several weeks, until a multinational force can deploy there.
Israel Radio, Israel Army Radio and a Israeli goverment official said ground forces would reach the Litani River, about 30km north of the Israeli-Lebanese border.
Ephraim Sneh, a senior Labour Party politician, indirectly confirmed the planned push to Litani in an interview.
Asked by Israel Radio how long troops would hold on to territory up to the Litani, Sneh said: "We are not talking about days we are talking about longer, but not about months."
Sneh, a former deputy defence minister, spoke hours after Israel's security cabinet approved a broader ground offensive into southern Lebanon.
However, two other government officials said the cabinet only approved taking a smaller area of land, a strip about seven kilometres from the border.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C3BDAAF7-0748-4D61-8E7B-69954EFAE531.htm
allAfrica:
Two Elections Held, Four More to Go
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
July 31, 2006
Kinshasa
The Democratic Republic of Congo's first democratic elections since 1960 were held on Sunday for the presidency and parliament but the Independent Electoral Commission (IEC) must now prepare for four more elections between October and January 2007.
"We still have a lot of work to do from now till the beginning of next year," Apollinaire Malumalu, the head of the commission, said on Sunday when he announced the election calendar.
Should no clear winner emerge from Sunday's poll, round two of the presidential election is scheduled for 29 October. Voting for the 11 provincial legislative elections will take place at the same time. On 29 December, another election will be held for a new Senate. Finally, on 16 January 2007, voting will take place for provincial governors and their deputies.
The second round of presidential elections would involve only the two leading candidates from Sunday's first round. Definitive results for that election could still take weeks, Malumalu said.
Some polling stations in the capital, Kinshasa, started posting results for the presidency, with Vice-President and former rebel leader Jean Pierre Bemba ahead of incumbent President Joseph Kabila. In the northeastern town of Bunia and the eastern town of Goma, the top two places seemed to go to Kabila and Azarias Ruberwa, another former rebel leader and vice-president in the transitional government. In Bukavu, capital of the South Kivu Province, the top two candidates appeared to be Kabila and Pierre Pay-Pay, a former governor of the Central Bank. In the town of Mbuji-Mayi, the provincial capital of Kasai Oriental, the top two appeared to be Bemba and Oscar Kashala, a medical doctor who joined politics recently.
Malumalu said Sunday's election would be repeated on Monday in villages and towns in the provinces of Kasia Occidental and Kasai Oriental where angry supporters of long-time opposition leader Étienne Tshisekedi burned down voting stations. Tshisekedi, along with his party, the Union pour la démocratie et le progrès social (UDPS), did not participate in the elections.
Sunday's election had some organisational problems. There was confusion over index numbers created, with election staff often misreading the numbers, telling voters they had already voted when they had not.
Some voters in Kinshasa alleged they had witnessed fraud. People were trying to bribe them to reveal their index numbers, they said.
On Sunday evening, vote counters had not received food and water in the polling stations visited by IRIN in Kinshasa and some protested. International observers said that at one station, vote counters were so exhausted they gave up and went home, leaving ballot papers strewn all over the floor.
Malumalu said the IEC had started inquiries into the allegations and would make the findings public in a week.
A representative of the committee of observers for the European Union said on Monday that it would not give a final verdict on the elections until Wednesday.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200607310496.html
Arab News:
Editorial: A War Crime
Tuesday, 1, August, 2006 (07, Rajab, 1427)
What can ordinary people in Saudi Arabia or in any other Arab country do in response to the massacre at Qana? What can we do to express our anger and revulsion at what has happened to innocent fellow Arabs? We need to know that those responsible for the atrocity will be punished. We demand justice for those who can no longer demand it. We demand retribution. These were ordinary people, frightened people, doing nothing more militant than seeking shelter from Israel’s bombs. We demand justice, not only from those who launched the missile attacks but from Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Israel’s military leadership. Because of their criminal policy of destroying every village from which Hezbollah rockets were allegedly launched, they created a vision of hell in southern Lebanon. Group punishment is totally illegal under the Geneva Conventions. Qana is as much a war crime as any in Bosnia or Rwanda.
We demand an account from Olmert and his generals — but an account too from the Bush administration which so arrogantly spurned international calls for an immediate cease-fire. Washington has now changed its diplomacy, playing up the possibility of a UN cease-fire resolution this week although no one is sure that an immediate cease-fire call will be the result. It is sickeningly stomach-churning that it took the slaughter of 60, mostly women and children, to make Washington change its tune. Is the Bush administration so willfully blind or so incompetent that it did not see what the rest of us did — that without a cease-fire the Israeli killing machine would continue to sow savagery and death across southern Lebanon? Or is this just a manipulative response to international outrage? Either way, President Bush has no more right to express regret at the Qana massacre than have the Israelis. Qana is a war crime for which Washington is as responsible as the Israelis. This atrocity might have been avoided had Washington listened to the world and forced the Israelis to stop their bombardment. So what can we do to vent and assuage our anger? What can we do to bring an end to the killing and to help Lebanon? What can we do when the US, far less than the Israelis, does not listen to Arab voices?
To all who listen, we can repeat the truth of Israel’s cold, calculating brutality, of its raining down death on ordinary Lebanese in the hope of turning them against Hezbollah, of these being terrorism, pure and simple. We can tell the world that Israel’s policy is no different from Al-Qaeda’s masterminding attacks on innocent civilians in Madrid or London in order to turn the public against their government because of its actions in the Middle East. We have the right to ask people elsewhere to look into their consciences and to ask them, if they ever had doubts about Israel being involved in state terrorism, whether they can still maintain those doubts in the face of the evidence. We have the right to ask people what they think of a Washington that condemns Al-Qaeda terrorism but condones Israeli terrorism. We can pray for peace too. We can refuse to buy US products as an expression of anger at Washington’s hypocrisy. And we can give. The example of the young bride from Jizan who gave her gold and jewelry is inspiring. In giving, we go some way to bear our anger at Israel’s brutality and Washington’s hypocrisy. We will show the world that there is nobility in the Arab heart — and unswerving loyalty to the Arab cause.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=75653&d=1&m=8&y=2006
Arab News:
Israel Turns Lebanon Into Inferno: MWL
Zainy Abbas, Arab News
Tuesday, 1, August, 2006 (07, Rajab, 1427)
MAKKAH, 1 August 2006 — The Muslim World League condemned Israel’s bombardment of Lebanon saying it has indiscriminatingly killed, maimed and wounded civilians, including women and children, in a statement yesterday. The MWL secretariat specifically decried Sunday’s Qana massacre in which at least 60 civilians were killed.
“The MWL, which is closely following the developments in Lebanon, demands on behalf of the Muslim states and organizations the world over the immediate stop of Israel’s war in Lebanon’s territory, which has turned the land into an inferno and a vast killing field,” said MWL Secretary-General Abdullah Al-Turki said in his statement in Makkah yesterday.
“Markets and residential districts have been have been bombed. Israel continued its savage attacks, discarding international demand for a ceasefire and consideration for the relief work for the afflicted people.” Turki asked the Islamic governments and their people to offer immediate assistance such as food and medicine to the Lebanese people. Turki also commended the efforts of the Kingdom to bring immediate assistance of $1.5 billion apart from organizing countrywide donation campaign.
Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Arab capitals yesterday, some burning Israeli flags, others carrying tiny coffins and seeking revenge for children killed in an air raid on the Lebanese village of Qana. In Amman, around 1,000 students rallied at the University of Jordan, torching the Israeli flag in protest against Sunday’s carnage.
The protesters, who were called out by the Islamist students’ union, clashed with university guards when they tried to unlock campus gates to take their march to the streets but were pushed back. The deaths in Qana have further enraged a region boiling after Israel’s repeated strikes against the Palestinians in Gaza and then Lebanon.
The Qana attack was the deadliest since Israel launched its offensive against Lebanon 20 days ago, and was a chilling repeat of another strike on the same village 10 years ago. Israel is trying to crush Hezbollah after it launched a deadly raid and captured two Israeli soldiers on July 12 and then continued to pound Israeli communities with rockets. The protesters chanted words of praise and encouragement in Hezbollah’s fight against Israel which they described as the “nation of black hatred.”
In Syria, hundreds of women protested in Damascus, some carrying tiny coffins symbolizing the dead children. They also vented their anger at the United States, a staunch Israeli ally.
“Bush, you coward,” and “down with the United States,” chanted the crowds, most of them clad in black, referring to US President George W. Bush. Syrian President Bashar Assad had branded the attack on Qana as “state terrorism.”
In Cairo, a group of around 100 protesters had gathered outside the journalist’s union Sunday evening, shouting slogans against Israel and holding aloft news pictures of children killed or wounded in the raid.
In a separate demonstration, a group of around 120 members of Parliament marched to the Arab League headquarters to campaign for the recall of the Israeli and US ambassadors in Cairo. Some of them were carrying banners voicing their support for Hezbollah while others chanted slogans urging it to strike Tel Aviv.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose country is one of Israel’s few Muslim friends, condemned the killing of civilians in Lebanon as “a new culture of violence” that would fuel more hatred and terrorism in the region. “There can never be a justification for a mentality which massacres innocent people, destroys cities and justifies violence,” Erdogan said in a monthly address to the nation.
Iran stepped up verbal attacks on Israel, declaring after the deadly raid on Qana that Israeli officials would suffer a fate worse than that of Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler. Iranian state television quoted Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar saying that a “fate worse than those of Hitler and Saddam awaits Zionist criminals and their supporters.” Egypt demanded an international investigation into the massacre.
—Additional input from agencies
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=1§ion=0&article=75581&d=1&m=8&y=2006
Arab News:
Israel Has Lost the War on Every Front
Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, 1, August, 2006 (07, Rajab, 1427)
At this stage in the war with Hezbollah, Israel cannot achieve anything except further international condemnation together with visceral hatred from Arabs and Muslims everywhere.
There are few in the Arab world today who are in the mood for forgiveness and reconciliation after they have gazed in disbelief at tens of tiny corpses being unceremoniously thrown into mass graves, including a one-day-old baby whose parents didn’t even have time to give her a name.
During an emergency summit held in Rome, Lebanese Prime Minister Fouad Siniora was driven to ask delegates “Are we children of a lesser God? Is an Israeli teardrop worth more than a drop of Lebanese blood?”
Israel’s Defense Minister Amir Peretz wants America’s blessing to continue hostilities for a further ten to fourteen days. He might have got it except for the Israeli bombing of Qana that took the lives of 60 civilians, including 37 children. He may still.
Qana had already entered the Lebanese lexicon as a euphemism for “massacre” following a devastating Israeli strike on that southern Lebanese village in 1996. The resulting carnage was thought to have triggered a close to Israel’s Operation Grapes of Wrath.
It is understandable, therefore, that incensed Lebanese demonstrators sought to trash the United Nations headquarters in Beirut, although such behavior cannot, of course, be condoned.
After all, their government had been begging that body for a cease-fire for weeks to no avail. This is because the US has staunchly refused any condemnation of Israel, leaving the world body open to criticism of being ineffectual, America of extreme pro-Israel bias and Britain of being led by the nose.
As messages of condolences and outrage flooded in from nations around the world on Sunday, Lebanese officials told US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to cancel a scheduled visit to Beirut unless she came armed with an immediate unconditional cease-fire. The time for toothy smiles, kisses and crocodile tears is over.
The strongly (or perhaps formerly) pro-American Lebanese prime minister told CBS, “The Israelis are committing state-sponsored terrorism”.
In a total departure from the Bush party line, Siniora heaped praise on Hezbollah’s fighters and its leader Hassan Nasrallah “who are sacrificing their lives for the sake of Lebanon.”
It is in the Bush administration’s interests to see Hezbollah pummeled and rendered impotent. Rather than perceive the conflict in the context of feuding neighbors, the US has deliberately subsumed it into its “war on terror”.
To this end, Bush and his British sidekick have branded Hezbollah a terrorist organization that must be stamped out in order to birth “a new Middle East” — one in which feuding states live contentedly under the American/Israeli boot.
Now that Siniora has given Hezbollah legitimacy by publicly patting on the back, Bush will increasingly find this argument a hard sell. Although I should add Fox News viewers and their ilk have already bought into it hook, line and sinker.
A new “terrorist” foe was thought to be just what the doctor ordered for George W. Bush’s dwindling popularity rating. Bin Laden has disappeared into the ether. Saddam Hussein awaits the outcome of his kangaroo trial in an American jail. Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi was duly assassinated and his so-called successor spotted in an Egyptian prison where he’s been languishing for the past six years.
The new foe had to be destroyed and humiliated so that the policies of the self-acclaimed leader of the free world could be seen to be working.
Unfortunately for Bush, Hassan Nasrallah doesn’t exactly fit the bill. He’s too softly spoken for one, doesn’t engage in outlandish rhetoric or speak longingly of Islamic caliphates from Spain to goodness knows where. Instead, he represents over 40 percent of all Lebanese, so if he’s a terrorist they must be too. Moreover his people haven’t been producing snuff videos when corpses are divorced from their heads.
Those pesky Europeans haven’t been much help either. They’ve refused to add Hezbollah to their list of terrorist groups, and so has Russia.
Israel’s inability to crush what its spokesmen inevitably refer to as “Khizbollah” has further ruined Bush’s plan. The Israelis were meant to pull a quick, decisive victory out of their hat. After all, they have had years of experience fighting militant groups in occupied Palestine.
And, most importantly, they are the ones with the big American bombs, the deadly American F16s and Apache helicopters and the impervious American tanks.
Yet almost three weeks into the conflict, Hezbollah is still firing an average of 100 rockets into northern Israel each day and has driven a succession of elite Israeli units out of its southern strongholds. The resistance has further downed an Israeli drone and several helicopters, not to mention achieving a direct hit on an Israeli warship.
The result has opened a can of worms. Israelis commentators are turning on their military, accusing it of being ill prepared and ill trained. Defense officials fret over Israel’s diminished deterrent capability.
The Bush brigade is said to be disappointed at Israel’s military ineptitude and embarrassed by its attacks on civilians. The international community is up in arms over Israel’s brutality and America’s intransigent stance in the face of calls for an immediate cease-fire.
Syria, once considered an irrelevance or even “a low-hanging fruit” has re-established its importance in the region with all roads once again leading to Damascus.
The Palestinians have been reinvigorated by Hezbollah’s military successes and progress toward their state has adopted a renewed sense of urgency.
As for Hezbollah fighters, they have achieved an almost mythical quality throughout the Muslim world due to their stealth, stoicism, self-discipline and courage under fire.
Most importantly, Israel has unwittingly opened up a discussion that was verging on taboo in mainstream Western media. In yesterday’s Guardian, David Clark writes: “How can ‘terrorism’ be condemned while war crimes go without rebuke?” How indeed!However, the outcome of this conflict isn’t ready to be written in stone. With its back against the wall there is a danger that Israel will embark on a scorched earth policy in southern Lebanon. Alternatively, Syria and Iran could get dragged in when Bush’s evangelical support base will merrily prepare themselves for “end times” rapture.
The most favorable outcome for Lebanon would be an unconditional cease-fire followed by a prisoner exchange, a return of Sheba Farms to Lebanon and a non-NATO international force with a UN mandate swiftly brought in to police a cordon sanitaire.
For Israel, there isn’t one. It arrogantly overplayed its hand and lost the game. Unless, of course, it equates winning with how many children’s coffins it can notch up in the shortest time.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=75590&d=1&m=8&y=2006
Clarín: Israel bombardeó territorio libanés
cerca de Siria y ampliará su ofensiva en el sur
La Fuerza Aérea israelí atacó la ruta que une Hermel con la ciudad siria de Homs. Y el Gabinete de Seguridad autorizó la extensión de las operaciones hasta el río Litani, a 20 kilómetros de la frontera. Por su parte, Hezbollah informó que tres soldados israelíes murieron en los combates registrados en la localidad de Aita Shaab.
Clarín.com, 01.08.2006
Las posibilidades de lograr un cese del fuego en Oriente Medio siguen siendo lejanas. Esta madrugada, la Fuerza Aérea israelí bombardeó el noreste del Líbano y el ejército anunció que ampliará la campaña militar terrestre en el sur del país.
Aviones de combate israelíes bombardearon en tres pasadas, la carretera que une Hermel, en el noreste de Líbano, con la ciudad siria de Homs. Asimismo, según informó la cadena de televisión libanesa "Future", atacaron una aldea cercana a Naqura, en el sur del país.
En tanto, las tropas israelíes –que fueron reforzadas con miles de reservistas- recibieron la orden de destruir las infraestructura de Hezbollah, hasta el río Litani, a unos 20 kilómetros de la frontera.
Así lo informaron fuentes del Gobierno israelí, luego de que el Gabinete de Seguridad autorizara anoche la ampliación de las operaciones por tierra.
La extensión de la ofensiva contra objetivos de la milicia chií comenzó esta madrugada con la entrada de nuevos soldados del cuerpo de paracaidistas, de infantería y de ingenieros, acompañados de equipos pesados, en territorio libanés, donde siguen los combates.
Fuentes militares israelíes señalaron que la ofensiva para "limpiar" a Hezbollah del sur del Líbano puede prolongarse "hasta dos semanas". Y agregaron que cuando culmine esa misión, Israel se replegará para que el terreno quede bajo control de una fuerza multinacional o del Ejército libanés.
Además, informaron sobre el bombardeo de depósitos y una plataforma lanza-cohetes de Hezbollah en el sur y, por error, de un vehículo en el que viajaban un oficial y soldados libaneses al norte de Tiro.
En tanto, la cadena de televisión Al Manar -órgano de Hezbollah - dijo que los milicianos frustraron durante la noche intentos de las tropas israelíes de avanzar en las localidades libanesas de Adisa, Kfar Kala y Aita al Shaab, donde "se desarrollaron violentos combates", en los que varios soldados israelíes resultaron "muertos o heridos".
En tanto, según señaló la cadena Al Jazeera, en esos combates murieron tres soldados israelíes. Mientras que los medios libaneses también informaron sobre ataques artilleros israelíes contra localidades sureñas, como Al Mansuri y Al Teibi.
Por su parte, fuentes policiales informaron de un ataque de morteros de Hezbollah contra la aldea israelí de Margaliot, sin consecuencias, después de que ayer los milicianos disparasen sólo dos cohetes.
El Comando de la Defensa Civil reiteró hoy a la población que se mantenga en los refugios de seguridad. Sucede que las fuentes militares creen que Hezbollah aún puede disparar misiles tierra-tierra de largo alcance, hasta 200 kilómetros.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/08/01/um/m-01244288.htm
Clarín: Conmoción mundial
por el estado de salud de Fidel Castro
Tras la operación por una "crisis intestinal con sangramiento" y la delegación del poder en su hermano Raúl, el gobierno de EE.UU. insistió en mostrar cautela. La misma actitud exhibieron exiliados cubanos en Madrid. El presidente venezolano, Hugo Chávez, admitió que la noticia es "preocupante" y deseó una "pronta recuperación".
Clarín.com, 01.08.2006
El estado de salud del líder cubano Fidel Castro puso en alerta a buena parte de sus seguidores y enemigos a escala global. Mientras el gobierno de Estados Unidos muestra cautela y los exiliados cubanos se reparten entre la euforia en Miami y el pedido de serenidad en Madrid, el venezolano Hugo Chávez admitió que la noticia es "preocupante" y le deseó al referente político de la isla una pronta mejoría.
Castro delegó el poder de manera "provisional" por primera vez en 47 años de Revolución en el primer vicepresidente y sucesor designado, su hermano Raúl, tras sufrir una severa crisis intestinal con hemorragia que motivó una operación, anunció ayer el gobierno cubano en un mensaje al país con la firma del mandatario.
La medida, sorpresiva e inédita, fue motivada —según la explicación oficial— por un problema en la salud del líder, a punto de cumplir los 80 años, tras su viaje a Argentina para la Cumbre del Mercosur y los actos por el 26 de julio en el Oriente cubano.
"Delego con carácter provisional mis funciones como presidente del Consejo de Estado y del Gobierno de la República de Cuba en el primer vicepresidente, compañero Raúl Castro Ruz", afirmó el gobernante cubano, según leyó a las 21.15 locales (las 23.15 de Argentina) Carlos Valenciaga, secretario de Despacho presidencial.
En la Casa Blanca reaccionaron con mesura. "Estamos monitoreando la situación. No queremos especular sobre su salud. Continuaremos trabajando para el día que Cuba sea libre", dijo Peter Watking, portavoz del gobierno estadounidense.
En Miami, exiliados cubanos pasaron la noche festejando en las calles, pero la exaltación no fue compartida por otras agrupaciones de opositores al régimen de Castro. Disidentes cubanos pidieron el martes en Madrid "serenidad, cautela y máxima comunicación entre residentes en la isla y exiliados".
La plataforma "Cuba, democracia ya" (CDY) destaca que hay que esperar "el desarrollo de los acontecimientos", al tiempo que teme que se puedan producir acciones represivas.
CDY "no descarta que se produzcan acciones represivas por parte del Gobierno que provisionalmente preside Raúl Castro para contener cualquier manifestación de la población en las calles cubanas", afirmó la plataforma en un comunicado.
Por su parte, la Asociación Española Cuba en Transición (AECT) envió una carta al jefe del gobierno español, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, para que "mande un mensaje a los miembros del Partido Comunista de Cuba y, sobre todo, a los demócratas cubanos que han padecido décadas de represión de que España apoyará un cambio pacífico en la isla".
Por su parte, el presidente de Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, deseó hoy a su amigo y aliado político una pronta recuperación de la cirugía a la que fue sometido, y añadió que espera que el lííder "siempre esté con nosotros".
Durante su visita a Vietnam, Chávez reconoció estar preocupado por la información de que Castro había sido operado y había traspasado el poder temporalmente "a un equipo de compañeros".
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/08/01/um/m-01244293.htm
Harper's Magazine:
Weekly Review
Posted on Tuesday, August 1, 2006. By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
After an Israeli bombing raid killed 54 people, including 37 children, in the Lebanese village of Qana, Beirut residents set fire to a U.N. headquarters.[Daily Star (Lebanon)] Israel agreed to suspend some bombing operations for 48 hours in order to investigate the deaths, though Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert ruled out a ceasefire.[BBC] Israeli bombs struck a U.N. post in southern Lebanon, killing four peacekeepers. U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said the targeting was “apparently deliberate,” and Olmert called Annan's comments “premature and erroneous.”[BBC][Al Jazeera] The United Nations began relief operations.[Reuters] Hezbollah guerillas fired several hundred rockets into towns in northern Israel, hitting a laundry detergent factory and a cemetery, and injuring at least 31 people.[CGGL] Nine Israeli soldiers were killed in an ambush, and Israeli officials claimed to have killed some 200 Hezbollah “operatives” since the outset of hostilities.[AP][AP via Dispatch Online][BBC] Lebanese were receiving late-night phone calls from the Israeli government. “I just wished I could talk back to the voice,” said one woman, “but it was a recorded message.” Hezbollah responded by sending mobile-phone text messages to dozens of Israelis.[SFGate.com][Haaretz][Reuters via thestaronline] The Israeli military deployed llamas in southern Lebanon.[Ynetnews][JTA] Radical Sunni groups usually hostile to Shiites urged support for Hezbollah,[Ynetnews] and Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, condemned Israel's military actions; Howard Dean called al-Maliki an “anti-Semite.”[AP] Thirteen U.S. soldiers died in Iraq, where the U.S. military was planning to deploy 5,000 more troops. [icasualties.org] At least 34 gunshot bodies were found in Baghdad, all showing signs of torture. [local6.com][Reuters] Shiite militia groups in Baghdad were setting up checkpoints, demanding that passersby provide identification, and shooting Sunnis on the spot. “The gangs also raided houses and shouted at the people there, 'You pimps, Sunnis, we will kill you,'” explained an eyewitness. “And they did.”[Reuters][Newsweek] Gunmen in Mosul set fire to government-run food-ration shops. [Reuters] A marine sniper who has killed as many as 60 insurgents in Iraq said of his work, “It's like hearing classical music playing in my head.”[USA Today] It was reported that Private Steven D. Green, who is charged with raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl, then killing her and members of her family, had said that, in Iraq, “killing people is like squashing an ant, I mean, you kill somebody and it's like, 'All right, let's go get some pizza.'” [Washington Post] The coach of the Iraqi national soccer team resigned and fled to Kurdistan. [ABC (Australia)] Saddam Hussein demanded that he be shot—not hanged—if he is found guilty of murdering Shiites in Dujail in 1982. “This case,” said Hussein, “is not worth the urine of an Iraqi child.”[Scotsman.com] In Minnesota people in zombie costumes were arrested for carrying “simulated weapons of mass destruction.”[local6.com]
Hot weather killed 141 people (as well as 25,000 cattle and 700,000 fowl) in California, at least 170 people in France, Italy, and Spain, and dozens of racing dogs in Oregon, and shut down MySpace.[CBS] Two people in England were killed by a giant inflatable sculpture named Dreamscape.[USAgNet.com][AFP via Taipei Times][Cape Times][local6.com][local6.com][BBC] Radiologists announced that many Americans were becoming too fat for X-rays,[Reuters] and a man in Sumatra was squashed by an elephant.[news24.com] Doctors in India removed a 15-year-old dead fetus from a woman's womb,[Times of India] President George W. Bush apologized to British Prime Minister Tony Blair for improperly shipping bombs to Israel via Scotland,[BBC] and Britain considered legislation to establish $1,859 fines for cyber-bullying.[Daily Mail] Baboons were harrassing construction workers in Liverpool,[Washington Post] and a school headmaster in China burned down 10 classrooms when the dog meat he was cooking burst into flames.[The Australian] An American scientist claimed that parrots are as intelligent as five-year-old children,[ABC (Australia)] and Georgian soldiers were injured in a battle in a gorge in Georgia, according to government official Georgy Arveladze.[Reuters via tvnz.co.nz] It was reported that detainees at the Guantanamo Bay prison have attacked their guards with spit, feces, semen, and a bloody lizard tail.[AP via Breitbart.com] Senators Hillary Clinton and John McCain held a vodka-drinking contest,[New York Times] and in Maryland one U.S. Senate candidate said he did not knowingly pay for 20 heroin addicts to come to his campaign rally, while another was arrested for raping his 19-year-old mail-order bride. [Washington Times] Officials in Mississippi claimed to have their beaver problem under control.[wjz.com][Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal]
Geneticists were optimistic about their plans to sequence and compare the genomes of such primate species as the chimpanzee (Pan troglodytes), the rhesus macaque (Macaca mulatta), the orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus), and the gorilla (Gorilla gorilla). [medicalnewstoday.com] A Tennessee elephant named Winkie was found not to have killed her handler on purpose,[AP via Forbes] and a British jockey apologized for headbutting his horse.[Daily Mail] A large praying mantis statue was frightening children in Tokyo,[NDTV.com] poisoned pigeons rained down in Schenectady, New York,[AOL News] and Texas was overrun by butterflies.[New York Times] A man in Prey Veng province, Vietnam, killed a 76-year-old nun by strangling her with a krama, then attempted to assassinate a monk, while the victims slept at a wat.[Phnom Penh Post] An influential Italian banker and member of Opus Dei was found dismembered under a bridge in Parma,[Independent (U.K.)] and Mel Gibson was arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. “Are you a Jew?” Gibson is reported to have asked a sheriff's deputy. “What do you think you're looking at, sugar tits?” he demanded of a female sergeant.[TMZ] Chinese scientists were preparing to test an artificial sun.[UPI] Lubbock, Texas, prayed for rain,[KCBD.com] and fish fell from the sky in Manna, India.[Mail&Guardian]
This is Weekly Review by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, published Tuesday, August 1, 2006. It is part of Weekly Review for 2006, which is part of Weekly Review, which is part of Harpers.org.
Written By
Kroll-Zaidi, Rafil
Permanent URL
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Jeune Afrique: De longues semaines d'attente
avant les résultats des élections
RD CONGO - 31 juillet 2006 – AFP
Les Congolais, qui ont voté massivement et dans le calme dimanche pour leurs premiers scrutins libres en plus de 40 ans, s'armaient lundi de patience avant de découvrir leurs députés et leur président dont le nom sera proclamé dans un mois ou en fin d'année en cas de second tour.
Le président sortant, Joseph Kabila, est le grand favori de la présidentielle en République démocratique du Congo (RDC). Le vice-président, et ex-rebelle, Jean-Pierre Bemba s'est affirmé comme son principal challenger.
Les camps des deux candidats se sont déclarés satisfaits du déroulement des scrutins. 33 candidats s'affrontaient au premier tour de la présidentielle, combiné avec des législatives à un seul tour où 9.707 prétendants se disputaient 500 sièges.
Lambert Mende Omalanga, secrétaire permanent adjoint de l'Alliance de la majorité présidentielle (AMP) qui a soutenu la candidature de M. Kabila, a déploré "quelques agitations et pressions exercées sur la population", qualifiant ces incidents de marginaux "par rapport au comportement général des Congolais, un comportement de responsabilité".
Le secrétaire exécutif national de l'ex-rébellion du Mouvement de libération du Congo (MLC, parti de M. Bemba), Thomas Luhaka a lui aussi déploré "quelques cas de pré-vote et de tentatives de tricherie", tout en ajoutant que globalement, son camp n'avait "pas d'éléments qui poussent à remettre en cause la crédibilité des élections".
Plus de 60% des suffrages au premier tour de la présidentielle et aux législatives (un seul tour) avaient été dépouillés lundi à la mi-journée, a annoncé la Commission électorale indépendante (CEI), qui ne disposait encore d'aucune estimation de la participation.
Les scrutins se sont achevés dimanche comme prévu dans les près de 50.000 bureaux du pays, à l'exception de 226 bureaux dans les Kasaï (centre) où le vote n'a pas pu avoir lieu dimanche, notamment à la suite d'incendies de centres ou d'intimidations de partisans de l'opposant Etienne Tshisekedi. Les opérations de vote ont repris lundi dans ces bureaux, où la sécurité a été renforcée, a annoncé la CEI.
Dès la fin du scrutin, la Belgique, ancienne puissance coloniale au Congo, a jugé ces élections "très encourageantes pour l'avenir, à condition que l'esprit constructif qui a animé leur préparation et leur tenue soit maintenu".
Lundi, l'Union africaine (UA), l'Allemagne et l'Afrique du Sud - grand parrain du processus de paix en RDC -, ont salué la mobilisation massive des Congolais, tout appelant au respect des résultats.
En fin de journée, le président Joseph Kabila a tenu "à remercier et à féliciter le peuple congolais d'avoir fait montre de patriotisme en accomplissant son devoir civique dans la paix, dans le calme et dans la discipline".
La CEI annoncera les résultats du premier tour de la présidentielle d'ici le 20 août et a prévenu qu'elle ne donnerait aucune "tendance" ou résultats partiels.
Les résultats officiels seront proclamés le 31 août au plus tard par la Cour suprême de Justice, en charge de l'examen d'éventuels contentieux électoraux. Les résultats des législatives seront communiqués au fur et à mesure dans les circonscriptions.
Si un second tour s'impose, il aura lieu le 29 octobre, en même temps que l'élection des députés provinciaux (qui éliront les sénateurs et les gouverneurs de province, ndlr). Le nom du chef de l'Etat sera alors officiellement proclamé le 30 novembre, au plus tard.
Ces délais s'expliquent notamment par la taille de la RDC, grande comme l'Europe occidentale, et la vétusté, voire l'absence, des voies de communication.
Ces scrutins ont été placés sous la surveillance de près de 80.000 policiers congolais, de 17.600 Casques bleus et d'un millier de soldats européens, mobilisables en cas de "troubles graves". Leur régularité a été scrutée par 47.000 observateurs nationaux et 1.500 internationaux ainsi que plus de 193.000 témoins de partis politiques et de candidats indépendants.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP95316delonsnoitc0
Jeune Afrique:
300 clandestins débarquent aux Canaries en 48 heures
31 juillet 2006 – XINHUA
Un bateau avec 84 immigrés à bord est arrivé lundi aux îles Canaries, portant à quelque 300 le nombre de clandestins ayant pu atteindre les côtes de l'archipel espagnol en moins de 48 heures, a rapporté lundi l'agence MAP.
L'incident le plus surprenant a eu lieu dimanche après-midi lorsque des baigneurs, médusés, ont vu débarquer sur la plage de La Tejita, au sud de Tenerife, 88 immigrés subsahariens à bord d'une pirogue que les systèmes de surveillance sophistiqués n'ont pu détecter.
Deux autres pirogues étaient arrivées dimanche au même port avec respectivement 82 et 35 personnes à bord, dont quatre mineurs.
Le même jour, les secours maritimes sont parvenus à récupérer les cadavres de deux clandestins restés, depuis vendredi dernier, à bord d'une embarcation à la dérive au sud des Canaries, en raison des mauvaises conditions de la mer.
Selon des chiffres rendus publics cette semaine par le délégué du gouvernement aux îles Canaries, Jose Ségura, quelque 12 400 immigrants d'origine subsaharienne sont parvenus à gagner les côtes de l'Archipel espagnol à bord d'embarcations depuis janvier dernier contre 6 800 arrivées durant toute l'année 2005.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=XIN60026clandserueh0
Los Angeles Times:
'Everybody Was Dead Around Me'
By Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writer
July 31, 2006
QANA, Lebanon — Hour after gruesome hour, the bodies came to light Sunday. Corpses with limbs snapped into unnatural poses. Women with arms frozen upward, as if they died grasping at the sky. Children with blue faces, their mouths packed with dirt.
The two families had moved into a basement of a half-built home because they hoped it would protect them from Israeli attack; but by sunrise, they were dead.
As many as 56 people were suffocated or crushed to death by an Israeli airstrike on the home in this southern Lebanese town. Many of them were children.
The few who survived sat in hospital cots with haunted eyes Sunday. They spoke of the long hours trapped beneath heavy heaps of rubble and recalled the dying groans of their loved ones that faded through the night to silence.
"When I woke up, I started screaming, and I kept screaming for two hours," Heyam Hasham said. Her fingernails were broken and caked with earth. She couldn't remember how they got that way. "I thought I'd die because everybody was dead around me."
Blinking dazedly in her hospital bed, Hasham described the last night in the house: The families tucked into a dinner of potatoes and onions at 4 p.m., then gathered around their portable radio by candlelight and listened to a speech by Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah.
"When we heard him," Hasham said, "we were praying to stop the war."
Israel expressed "deep sorrow" for Sunday's attack but said Hezbollah rockets were being fired from the area. Government officials also pointed out that civilians had been warned to leave southern Lebanon.
"Liars! Liars!" cried Zeinab Ahmed Shalhoub from her hospital bed. "Every time there is a massacre they lie and make up an excuse."
Across the hospital room, her sister, Hala Ahmed Shalhoub, nodded silently. The woman's face was wan, her skin papery and eyes hollow. She gripped her bedsheet tight to her chin and told her story in the flat voice of a person shocked beyond emotion.
Bombs had rattled the valleys when she stretched out on a mattress with her two girls. She had to sleep, she decided, missiles or no missiles. As she drifted off, the 24-year-old mother rolled away from 18-month-old Rokaya and 3 1/2 -year-old Fatima. She felt their warm breath on her neck.
When the bomb crashed into the house, she thought it had hit a neighbor's place. Then she realized her mouth was full of dust, and she couldn't move under a heavy crush of rubble. Her daughters whimpered in her ear, but she couldn't reach back to touch them.
Shalhoub doesn't know how much time went by as she lay facedown in the dirt, listening as death overtook her only children.
"I heard my baby girl moaning in my ear," she said, holding one listless hand alongside her ear to show where the child had lain.
"They were all covered with the dust, and they died," Shalhoub said. "I couldn't scream."
It was her sister who finally saved her. The younger woman extricated herself from the broken house, hauled herself over to her sister and pulled her to safety.
By that time, Shalhoub had convinced herself that her 18-month-old baby was still alive. The child was still warm; she was sure of it.
"Get my baby," she urged her sister.
She was hallucinating. The tiny corpse was stone cold.
Shalhoub said that she had been excited — her older daughter would soon begin school. Her eyes filled with tears at the thought. But a few beats later, she insisted that her children were martyrs and said she was glad for their deaths.
"These children, they are going to heaven," she said. "The people who did this massacre are going to hell."
Aside from her children, Shalhoub lost both her parents, two brothers and a sister in the attack. Her husband, along with some of the other men in the family, was in a neighboring basement at the time of the attack, she said.
A pale, bespectacled nurse named Chadi Hassan stood listening from the door in his white coat.
"Every day is a disaster here," he muttered as he turned back to the corridor. "America is sending the best of its bombs to Israel."
The families had come to live here on the outskirts of Qana because they were afraid to stay in their one-story houses, survivors and neighbors said. Like many families, they did not want to leave, despite the warnings to flee; they thought the war would not last long.
They got by in the basement without electricity. The mattresses were packed so tightly they had to stack them to make room to heat food on their butane cooker.
The house, owned by two grown brothers, was a dream home that hadn't been finished. Every time one of the brothers earned a little extra money, he would put it toward the house. The pair had been working on it for four years.
Despite the Israeli bombing campaign, the children had been whiling away the summer days playing on the rocky hillsides, neighbors and parents said. They rode bicycles down the slopes and played make-believe with their dolls. They scrambled around playing hide-and-seek and soccer.
"For sure, the drones must have recognized that there were children playing in the area," said Mohsen Hashem, a 30-year-old relative.
"They couldn't fight the resistance on the borderline, so they came here to fight civilians with their planes."
When the bombing let up Sunday morning, Mohammed Ismael was one of the first to arrive. When the 38-year-old scrambled up the hill and saw what remained of the house, the silence filled him with dread. Everybody must have died, he thought.
"I shouted and screamed," he said. "I started calling names, 'Are you all right?' And nobody answered…. I knew they were all dead."
He saw a 7-year-old girl sprawled on the wreckage. He thought she was asleep — then he noticed that her eyes were open, and still. He scooped her body up in his arms and carried her out. That was the beginning of a daylong hunt for bodies.
"Let America know," Ismael said, "that from now on, if a kid is 1 year old, we'll teach him how to fight America and fight Israel."
Hours after the explosion, dust clung to Ismael's mustache and coated his ears. His skinny arms were wrapped across his chest; he looked small and sad.
Rescuers said they believed many of the victims had died slowly through the long night of bombs, their faces pinned to the dirt. The bombs had kept ambulances away until daybreak. Even then, a bomb fell a soccer-field's length from the first vehicle to arrive.
An empty silence clasped the hills Sunday. The orchards were full of hard green olives. Summer-swollen pomegranates bent the branches of trees. White flowers spangled the tobacco plants, and harvested leaves had been hung to dry on wires around the shattered house.
But everything was broken. It looked as if some enormous beast had taken a swipe out of the hillside, leaving a tumble-down structure leaking chunks of cement and twisted rebar. Rescue workers disappeared into the darkness of the rubble and emerged carrying small bodies. They lined the corpses up on a dirt path and covered them with a sheet.
"This is the most horrible thing I've seen," said Red Cross volunteer Mohammed Zaatar. "It's small babies.
"You scratch in the earth — nothing, nothing, nothing," Zaatar added. "You follow your senses. When you feel a body underground, something shakes you. It's a life, it's a man, it's a woman."
A page torn from a child's coloring book lay tattered on the ground, scrawled over with strokes of sunny yellow and bright blue. A diaper was discarded. Ambulances were crammed with dead children.
The groan of passing jets echoed over the valley as men dug for bodies. Sometimes the rescuers paused and turned anxious faces to the sky. Most of the time, they paid no attention — too busy or too traumatized to care.
A lieutenant colonel in the Lebanese army huddled over a list of names trying to piece together a tally of the dead. Everybody was doing that — soldiers, neighbors, surviving family members and Red Cross volunteers. He shook his head and pulled slowly on his cigar.
"As a soldier, I know there are laws for war," he said. "This is a mass execution."
An old woman with a deeply furrowed face and a head scarf pinned beneath her chin stepped along a rocky path toward the gutted house. The grief came in pulses over her features, and as she neared the house the sorrow erupted.
"I want to see how they were killed," she said. "I want to see for the memories."
*
Times photographer Carolyn Cole contributed to this report.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-qana31jul31,1,6146899.story?
track=rss&ctrack=1&cset=true
Página/12:
Israel falta a su promesa de tregua
LOS ATAQUES SE CONCENTRARON EN LA FRONTERA CON SIRIA
El gobierno de Ehud Olmert había decidido un alto el fuego por 48 horas tras el mortal ataque en Qana. Ayer continuó con la ofensiva contra Hezbolá en el Líbano y advirtió que reforzará la operación terrestre y seguirán los bombardeos si se ven amenazados sus soldados o civiles.
Por Georgina Higueras*
Desde Jerusalén, Martes, 01 de Agosto de 2006
Presionado por los militares, el gobierno israelí dio ayer marcha atrás sobre la tregua de 48 horas anunciada el domingo para facilitar una investigación de la matanza de 57 civiles –37 de ellos niños– en Qana, al sur del Líbano. Amparándose en que, “si se declarase un alto el fuego inmediato, los extremistas volverían a levantar la cabeza”, el ministro de Defensa, Amir Peretz, aseguró en el Parlamento que Israel ha reforzado su ofensiva terrestre contra Hezbolá y que en estos días recurrirá a los bombardeos aéreos cuando considere que sus tropas o sus civiles estén amenazados. Los ataques de Israel de ayer se concentraron en la zona fronteriza con Siria, en la ciudad de Hermel y la ruta que comunica los dos países. No hubo víctimas.
Después de la declaración de Peretz, el primer ministro Ehud Olmert rompía el compromiso de alto el fuego temporal y declaraba: “La lucha continúa. No hay tregua, ni la habrá en los próximos días. Detendremos la guerra cuando sea eliminada la amenaza de cohetes, nuestros soldados secuestrados regresen a casa y los israelíes puedan vivir tranquilos”. Añadió que las fuerzas armadas de Israel siguen luchando “por aire, mar y tierra y en estos momentos brigadas del ejército avanzan en el sur del Líbano para eliminar las infraestructuras del terror”. La medida, solicitada por toda la comunidad internacional, había sido anunciada tras la reunión de la secretaria norteamericana de Estado, Condoleezza Rice, con Olmert, en la que se trató ampliamente el bombardeo en Qana. La tragedia llevó a Rice a pronunciarse, por primera vez, a favor de un alto el fuego. Sin embargo, la tregua duró poco. “No podemos aceptar un alto el fuego inmediato en el Líbano, porque en unos meses volveríamos a encontrarnos en la misma situación”, dijo Peretz.
La sesión parlamentaria estuvo dominada por la polarización política. Los cuatro diputados árabes fueron expulsados por insultar al gobierno (uno de ellos llegó a llamar “criminal” a Peretz), mientras la oposición, encabezada por el líder del Likud, Benjamín Netanyahu, cerró filas con los uniformados y exigió continuar la guerra hasta el exterminio de Hezbolá. Los militares israelíes, sin embargo, aceleran la maquinaria de guerra, empeñados en retirar a los guerrilleros de Alá al menos a dos kilómetros de la frontera israelí. Los militares son partidarios de incrementar la ofensiva para garantizar, antes de que llegue la fuerza multinacional, una zona tapón lo más extensa posible, en la que se desplegaría ésta junto con efectivos del ejército libanés. Recortado el uso de la fuerza aérea, el ejército quiere multiplicar el peso de la ofensiva terrestre, para lo que pretende que entre en acción al menos una división de reservistas. Aviones israelíes bombardearon ayer posiciones de Hezbolá en el sur del Líbano, para facilitar las operaciones en tierra, ya que encontraron una fuerte resistencia. Los pueblos libaneses de Kila, Taibe y Adasia fueron los más atacados. Hezbolá respondió lanzando más misiles.
El ejército israelí atacó también un vehículo militar libanés cerca de un puesto de control libanés próximo a la frontera con Siria y mató a un soldado cerca de Tiro. Posteriormente se disculpó e indicó que había confundido a los ocupantes con milicianos islámicos. Según la encuesta publicada por el diario Ma’ariv una semana después de iniciarse la ofensiva –el pasado 12 de julio, tras el secuestro por Hezbolá de dos soldados–, el 95 por ciento de los israelíes estaba a favor de la decisión de Olmert. Ayer, sin embargo, el periódico Haaretz daba cuenta del creciente nerviosismo que se está instalando tanto en el pueblo cuanto en la clase política y en la militar, al constatar que hasta ahora no se ha conseguido ninguno de los objetivos.
La matanza de Qana también llevó a Israel a adelantar la reunión del gabinete de crisis, convencido de que se termina el tiempo concedido porWashington. El gobierno considera que sólo cuenta con una semana más para completar su misión en el Líbano e insiste en que continuará los ataques hasta que llegue la fuerza multinacional. Todo apunta a que el Consejo de Seguridad se reunirá mañana con una propuesta que, tras condenar la acción israelí, impondría un alto el fuego y el envío inmediato de una fuerza internacional de intervención. Ya han comenzado las negociaciones del texto entre los 15 miembros del consejo, y especialmente entre los cinco con derecho a veto, por lo que la propuesta podría aprobarse el viernes y el lunes podrían llegar los primeros efectivos.
* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-70797-2006-08-01.html
Página/12:
Fidel Castro fue internado y debió delegar el poder
A raíz de una “crisis intestinal con sangrado”, el presidente cubano debió delegar por primera vez el poder en forma transitoria en su hermano Raúl y anoche estaba siendo operado.
Martes, 01 de Agosto de 2006
Por primera vez en la historia de la Revolución Cubana, Fidel Castro delegó anoche provisionalmente sus cargos como líder del Partido Comunista (PC) y de la nación. Obligado por un grave problema intestinal, Castro cedió el mando al segundo hombre del régimen, su hermano Raúl, para poder operarse de urgencia. Según el comunicado oficial, la causa del nuevo deterioro médico fue el “enorme esfuerzo” que realizó durante su reciente visita a Argentina, para la Cumbre del Mercosur, y en los actos de la semana pasada en la isla por la conmemoración del asalto al cuartel Moncada, la primera acción militar de la resistencia cubana, que tres años después terminaría con la revolución de 1959. “Días y noches de trabajo continuo sin apenas dormir dieron lugar a que mi salud, que ha resistido todas las pruebas, se sometiera a un estrés extremo y se quebrantara”, explicó el veterano dirigente cubano en el comunicado.
En el comunicado, firmado por el propio Fidel y leído en la televisión pública por su secretario, Carlos Valenciaga, se adelanta que la operación obligará al líder cubano a hacer reposo durante varias semanas, lejos de sus responsabilidades cotidianas. “Una crisis intestinal aguda con sangramientos sostenidos que me obligó a enfrentar una complicada operación quirúrgica”, se explica en el texto leído por el funcionario cubano. No es la primera vez que Fidel tiene problemas de salud, sin embargo, hasta ahora nunca había delegado sus cargos. Desde el triunfo de la revolución, Castro ocupa, entre otras funciones, la de primer secretario del PC cubano, presidente del Consejo de Estado y comandante en jefe de las Fuerzas Armadas. Todos estos cargos recaerán provisionalmente en su hermano. Fidel también se ocupaba personalmente de otras áreas como Salud, Educación y Energía. En estos cargos secundarios, el líder cubano decidió delegar el trabajo en importantes figuras del buró político del PC, entre ellos el canciller Felipe Pérez Roque.
Castro también ordenó que se mantuviera la convocatoria y que continuaran los preparativos para la Cumbre del Movimiento de los Países No Alineados, que se realizará el mes próximo en La Habana. Los festejos para su cumpleaños número 80, previstos para el 13 de agosto, en cambio, fueron pospuestos para el 2 de diciembre.
Desde hace varios años, los grupos anticastristas residentes en Miami y el propio gobierno de los Estados Unidos vienen diseñando planes para cuando se produzca la muerte de Castro. Esos planes son presentados con el eufemismo de “Planes para la Transición Democrática” y consisten en su mayoría en el financiamiento de grupos opositores de la isla y de Miami, y en la intensificación del bloqueo comercial que mantiene la Casa Blanca sobre Cuba desde hace varias décadas. El Congreso estadounidense tiene que aprobar en las próximas semanas la mayor partida presupuestaria destinada a la oposición en la isla.
Al bromear sobre estos planes, en el último acto público en el que participó, el 26 de julio pasado durante la conmemoración del asalto al cuartel Moncada, Fidel Castro dijo que “nuestros pequeños vecinos del Norte no deben temer, no estoy planeando gobernar hasta los cien años”. En una larga entrevista, el periodista Ignacio Ramonet, de Le Monde Diplomatique, le preguntó sobre el futuro de Cuba cuando se haya muerto. El veterano dirigente cubano aseguró que la revolución ya no depende de él y que las nuevas generaciones fueron incorporadas en la primera línea del gobierno revolucionario.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-70798-2006-08-01.html
Página/12:
El montón
Por Eva Giberti
Martes, 01 de Agosto de 2006
La historia de una violación abrió las compuertas de la miseria humana que la indiferencia de muchos y la complicidad de otros pretende naturalizar. En Página/12 del viernes 28 de julio, Mariana Carbajal reprodujo las palabras de una jueza de Menores: “La sociedad está pensando que a esta chica la agarraron en un baldío, que fue violada con violencia, pero no fue así... Fue un abuso intrafamiliar como ocurre en tantos casos. ¿Sabe la cantidad de chicas de 12 o 13 años, incluso de 9, que son abusadas por sus padres y quedan embarazadas? Veo un montón en mi juzgado”. Más adelante aclara que “no ha sido una víctima desamparada. No hubo violencia física”. Carbajal repregunta: “¿Le parece menos grave?”. Y Su Señoría responde: “No, claro, es igual de grave. Pero fue un abuso intrafamiliar”.
Avanzar en el análisis de un texto reproducido puede conducir a error, razón por la cual sólo lo utilizaré como inspiración y en mi propio contexto, para no traicionar el contexto original.
Comenzamos por tener que asumir que en algunos juzgados se encuentra una cantidad significativa de púberes y de niñas violadas por sus padres, tíos y abuelos: esos incestos, denominados por el Código Penal “abuso agravado por vínculo”, que desembocan en embarazos se califican como “algo grave” y al mismo tiempo habitual. Quien así los describe es una funcionaria cuya tarea reside en la protección integral de niños, niñas y adolescentes, en cumplimiento de la Constitución nacional. Entonces, niñas y púberes incestuadas, embarazadas, constituirían un hecho grave, en particular –como el texto lo menciona– porque no pueden abortar, dado que no son idiotas ni débiles mentales y debido a que la violación se produjo en ámbito resguardado por la denominación “intrafamiliar”; razón por la cual la violación de una niña no entrañaría violencia física. Más allá de que la escena describa a un sujeto adulto que penetra genitalmente a una niña de 9 años o a una púber de diez años, eyacula en el interior de su cuerpo y produce un embarazo. Teniendo en cuenta que se trata de un hecho secreto, la niña deberá guardar silencio, el cual se obtiene mediante amenazas contra ella o contra otro miembro de la familia o, en oportunidades, mediante el intento de seducción: “Es un secreto entre vos y yo”, argumenta el sujeto. Mientras la niña o la púber se inicia en la vergüenza y la humillación (por vivencia de suciedad e impotencia) al tener que limpiarse de una sustancia que desconoce o tolerar que sea el familiar quien se ocupe de esa higiene, por razones de su seguridad para evitar rastros. La niña o la adolescente, después de haberlo escuchado resoplar en su oído o de haberlo mirado jadeante y sudoroso sobre ella queda anonadada psíquicamente y lesionada. Esta suele ser la descripción de las víctimas.
Hasta ese momento la niña o la púber no había imaginado que un hombre equivalía a ese ser humano que “le hacía doler”. Pero esa práctica, que como se afirma es habitual, queda al margen de lo que podría constituir violencia física. Aunque se la considera grave. Cuando estas víctimas no son idiotas ni débiles mentales la ley no autoriza el aborto solicitado a partir de un engendramiento de esta índole, en cuyo origen no se supone violencia física por tratarse de procedimientos llevados a cabo en el resguardo del hogar familiar. Esta conclusión parecería desprenderse del texto que analizo.
Descuento que Mariana Carbajal ha reproducido con exactitud el segmento del diálogo en el cual Su Señoría le pregunta “¿Sabe la cantidad de chicas de 12 o 13 años, incluso de 9, que son abusadas por sus padres y quedan embarazadas? Veo un montón en mi juzgado”. Entonces, atendiendo al tono del comentario y a su contenido podríamos responder: “Pero fíjese qué barbaridad... Las cosas que les pasan a las chicas... Habría que educarlas mejor”.
La indignación constituye uno de los motores más eficaces de los cambios sociales. Corresponde cultivarla cuando, asistidas por el ejercicio de los derechos humanos, comprobamos que, desde posiciones impensadas, se viola la dignidad de las víctimas encarnadas en las vidas de niños, niñas y adolescentes. Violación impuesta mediante el discurso que brota en los territorios del poder diseñados para protegerlos.
El escarnio de la ética se transparentó en algunos de los discursos que la historia de la violación de una adolescente dejó al descubierto. Amparándose en la discusión acerca del aborto se lateralizó la figura del victimario, se escamoteó la índole de sentencias que le correspondería y quedaron a la vista quienes naturalizan lo habitual de violaciones intrafamiliares y los embarazos resultantes.
La fragmentación de la conciencia mediante los discursos que intentan ser explicativos es una característica de la época que bloquea la posibilidad de establecer normas constructivas relativas a los derechos morales de las víctimas y a la formación ético/política de quienes tienen la responsabilidad jurídica de representar la voz de las víctimas cuando éstas son niñas y adolescentes. Esa articulación fundamenta el principio de solidaridad que impregna la filosofía de los derechos humanos y que constituye base y marco de su ejercicio. Hablamos de derechos de las niñas y adolescentes arrasados siempre y cuando no se trate de “abuso intrafamiliar”, expresión engañosa y morigeradora de la definición del delito que cometen los familiares. Porque entonces esa violación –al amparo del ámbito familiar y bajo el techo del hogar– puede constituir una práctica que, aunque grave y produzca embarazo, no suscita horror ni decisión de desactivarla. Mientras, la víctima –siempre que no sea internada en algún instituto por “riesgo moral”– queda en espera de la próxima violación. Así sucede en los grupos humanos considerados “pudientes” y también en los que habitan las clases medias y populares. Como si los familiares incestuosos pudiesen anticipar que su delito cuenta con la canchera enunciación de quien enumera a las víctimas como “un montón” donde alternan todas las edades. Esta identidad colectiva es una invención original que, al incluir a las víctimas en el amasijo del montón, las excluye de sus derechos personales que reconocen a cada víctima con su propia filiación, con el apellido y/o la consanguinidad del violador que la palabra de la niña denuncia.
¿De este modo –agraviante y banal– serán pensadas las niñas víctimas de violación? No, tan solo por algunas personas. Pero sepamos que existen.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-70780-2006-08-01.html
The Independent:
Israel rules out a ceasefire as Syria puts troops on alert
By Donald Macintyre, in Metulla, northern Israel
Published: 01 August 2006
Israel plans to "expand and strengthen" its military operations in Lebanon, despite the growing international calls for a ceasefire and its own agreement to a 48-hour halt to bombing after killing 56 civilians, including many children, in Qana.
Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, indicated in a televised address last night that there would be no ceasefire in the coming days and said the 20-day military offensive in Lebanon would end when the rockets fired by Hizbollah on northern Israel had ceased and the two soldiers seized on 12 July were freed. And last night it was reported that Israel's security cabinet had approved widening the ground offensive in Lebanon.
Defending a military campaign that has been supported so far by an overwhelming majority of the Israeli public, but which has also drawn criticism from military analysts for not realising its main objectives, Mr Olmert insisted the campaign had dealt Hizbollah "a heavy blow" from which it "may never recover".
He added: "We could not let the terror organisation on our border get stronger ... If we had held off, the day would have arrived soon when they would have caused unprecedented damage."
Meanwhile Syrian President Bashar al-Assad told his military to raise its readiness, pledging not to abandon support for Lebanese resistance against Israel. In an annual address on the anniversary of the foundation of the Syria Arab Army, Mr Assad called on the military to "work on more preparedness and raise readiness of all units".
Thousands of Lebanese civilians took advantage of the bombing pause to flee north. But, explaining that the halt was "partial" and did not apply to Hizbollah targets threatening Israeli troops or civilians, the Israeli air force hit a truck close to a Lebanese border post at a crossing into Syria. The Israel Defence Forces (IDF) said it was carrying weapons; Lebanese police officials said it was carrying relief supplies.
Another air strike killed a Lebanese soldier near Tyre. The IDF said it mistakenly thought the vehicle had contained a senior Hizbollah official.
Close to the border near Metulla, the northernmost village in Israel, jutting into Lebanon and surrounded by its hills on three sides, there was artillery and tank fire throughout the day. Israeli tanks, heavy artillery and troops continued to fire at targets in the eastern sector of its northern border, and aircraft also fired into open areas near Taibein support of ground troops, after Hizbollah guerrillas fired a missile at a tank close to the border, wounding three soldiers.
Hizbollah also fired at least two rockets at the town of Kyriat Shimona, but, by nightfall, had otherwise refrained from rocket launches °© which reached a peak of more than 140 attacks on Sunday.
The IDF emphatically denied a claim by Hizbollah on its Al Manar TV network that it had hit an Israeli ship off the southern Lebanon coast.
Amir Peretz, the Israeli Defence Minister, told a heated session of the Knesset, that "it is forbidden to agree to an immediate ceasefire" . In a session in which four Arab Knesset members were ordered out of the chamber for heckling angrily in protest at the bombing of Qana, Mr Peretz said that agreeing to an immediate ceasefire would mean that "we will find ourselves in a few months in a similar situation".
He added: "We have to finish the operation, and I will do it. The army will expand and deepen its actions against Hizbollah."
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article1207625.ece
The Independent: A Nato-led force would be
in Israel's interests, but not Lebanon's
By Robert Fisk,
Published: 01 August 2006
Every foreign army - including the Israelis - comes to grief in Lebanon.
So, how come George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara - after their inevitable disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq - believe that a Nato-led force is going to survive on the south Lebanese border? The Israelis would obviously enjoy watching its deployment - it will be time for the West to take the casualties - but Hizbollah is likely to view its arrival as a proxy Israeli army. It is, after all, supposed to be a "buffer" force to protect Israel - not, as the Lebanese have quickly noted, to protect Lebanon - and the last Nato army that came to this country was literally blasted out of its mission by suicide bombers.
How blithely the US and British governments have erased the narrative of the old Multinational Force - the MNF - which arrived in Beirut to escort Palestinian guerrillas out of Lebanon in August of 1982 and then, after the massacre of up to 1,700 Palestinian guerrillas at the Sabra and Chatila camps by Israel's proxy Lebanese militia, returned to protect the survivors and extend the sovereignty of the Lebanese government.
Does that sound familiar? And they also came to train the Lebanese army - one of the missions being foisted on the new Bush-Blair army - and they failed. Blown up by suicide bombers at their Beirut headquarters with the loss of 241 American lives, the US Marines retreated into the ground, digging earthworks beneath Beirut airport.
And there they lived until the newly-trained Lebanese army broke apart in February 1984 - at which point, President Ronald Reagan decided to "redeploy" his troops offshore. Like other famous historical redeployments - Napoleon's redeployment from Moscow, for example, or Custer's last redeployment - it represented a national disaster, a colossal blow to US prestige in the region and a warning that such Lebanese adventures always end in tears. The French left shortly afterwards. So did the Italians. A company of British troops had been the first to scuttle out.
So, how come anyone believes that the next foreign army to arrive in the Lebanese meat-grinder is going to be any more successful? True, the MNF was not backed by a UN Security Council resolution. But since when were Hizbollah susceptible to the UN? They have already failed to disarm - as they were required to under UN resolution 1559 - and one of the world's toughest guerrilla armies is not going to hand over its guns to Nato generals. But most of the force will be Muslim, we are told. This may be true, and the Turks are already unwisely agreeing to participate. But are the Lebanese going to accept the descendants of the hated Ottoman empire? Will the the Shia south of Lebanon accept Sunni Muslim soldiers?
Indeed, how come the people of southern Lebanon have not been consulted about the army which is supposed to live in their lands? Because, of course, it is not coming for them. It will come because the Israelis and the Americans want it there to help reshape the Middle East. This no doubt makes sense in Washington - where self-delusion rules diplomacy almost as much as it does in Israel - but America's dreams usually become the Middle East's nightmares.
And this time, we will watch a Nato-led army's disintegration at close quarters. South-west Afghan-istan and Iraq are now so dangerous that no reporters can witness the carnage being perpetrated as a result of our hopeless projects. But, in Lebanon, it's going to be live-time coverage of a disaster that can only be avoided by the one diplomatic step Messrs Bush and Blair refuse to take: by talking to Damascus.
So when this latest foreign army arrives, count the days - or hours - to the first attack upon it. Then we'll hear all over again that we are fighting evil, that "they" - Hizbollah or Palestinian guerrillas, or anyone else planning to destroy "our" army - hate our values; and then, of course, we'll be told that this is all part of the "War on Terror" - the nonsense which Israel has been peddling. And then perhaps we'll remember what George Bush senior said after Hizbollah's allies suicide-bombed the Marines in 1982, that American policy would not be swayed by a bunch of "insidious terrorist cowards".
And we all know what happened then. Or have we forgotten?
Day 20
* Lebanese dead - at least 577 confirmed, could be up to 750. Israeli dead - 51.
* Israel bombs and shells southern Lebanon despite announced halt in air raids.
* Rescue workers find 28 bodies buried for days in destroyed buildings in three Lebanese villages.
* UN postpones a meeting on Lebanon peacekeeping force indefinitely.
* Bush says he will seek UN action this week to end the fighting.
* Clashes near Aita Al-Shaab leave four Hizbollah fighters dead and three Israelis wounded.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1207612.ece
TomDispatch:
Frida Berrigan on the Weapons Trade as Entertainment
Recently, we had a small, curious reminder of the fact that the United States government regularly ships weaponry all over the world. Two US-chartered A310 Airbuses, evidently carrying a shipment of 600-pound bunker-busting, laser-guided bombs the Bush administration was rushing to Israel for its air campaign in Lebanon, were denied refueling stop-over rights at the Shannon airport by the Irish government. Instead, they landed at Prestwick airport in Scotland, without, it seems, proper notification to the British government. This set off a small uproar of criticism in Britain, resulting in Prime Minister Tony Blair requesting an "apology" while in Washington last week.
On Friday, according to Alan Cowell of the New York Times ("After Rift, Britain Allows Cargo Flights for Israel"), "a British government spokesman said President Bush had apologized ‘for the fact that proper procedures were not followed.'" But wait! This is the Bush administration which never apologizes - certainly not to Tony Blair. A "senior Bush administration official" put matters in the correct light: "The president acknowledged that while the shipment was proper, there could have been better notification and coordination." And with that non-apology apology, all's well that ends well and the weapons flights to Israel will now continue to land at British airports.
As Frida Berrigan, Senior Research Associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center, would certainly point out, such flights are but a drop in the Pentagon's arms aid-and-trade bucket - a subject about which Americans are generally blissfully ignorant. So take a moment and consider the export for which we are at least second-best known all around the world. Tom
Seeing (Pentagon) Stars
By Frida Berrigan
Oh, the stars! We're riveted by their clothes, their suntans, what they do (and don't) eat for breakfast. We're titillated when they appear too fat, disheveled, or lumpy. We're envious when they're expectably sleek, well muscled, and well coiffed. Christie Brinkley's heartbreak is front page news. Britney's baby gaffes are carefully dissected. The trials and tribulations of Jessica and Nick and Jennifer and Brad provided the tabloids and entertainment mags with months of fodder.
America exported $10.48 billion worth of film and television in 2004. The world's favorite TV show is the soap opera The Bold and the Beautiful. Every day, in almost every corner of the globe, people stream to movies made in the United States. They watch Halle Berry conjure up a storm with her eyes, Johnny Depp swashbuckle his way through the Caribbean, and Keanu Reeves swoon and mope in the company of Sandra Bullock. (Sorry about that last one, world!). But, in Uzbekistan, those same movie fans are denied the rights of free speech and assembly, while President Islam Karimov tightens his grip on power with an array of arms made in the USA. In the Philippines, they watch the country's debt skyrocket as President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo gobbles up American weaponry at startling prices and an alarming rate.
Like American entertainment, American arms are a multibillion-dollar industry that leans heavily on foreign sales. In fact, the United States exported $18.55 billion in fighter planes, attack helicopters, tanks, battleships, and other weaponry in 2005. All signs point to 2006 being another banner export year. Just as in the movie, TV, and music businesses, we dwarf the competition. Russia is the next largest arms exporter with a measly $4 billion in yearly sales. In fact, U.S. arms exports accounted for more than half of total global arms deliveries - $34.8 billion - in 2004, and we export more of them ourselves than the next six largest exporters combined.
Given the huge payoffs and even larger payloads delivered, isn't it strange how little attention the American arms industry gets? Maybe, in some small part, that's because the industry's magazines all have the word "Defense," or some equivalent, prominently displayed on the cover - Defense Week, Defense News - instead of Glamour or Allure. Maybe it's because of the Pentagon's predilection for less than magnetic PowerPoint presentations, unbearably unexpressive acronyms, and slightly paunchy, very pasty, older white men in business suits. Maybe the arms trade just doesn't seek the plush of the red carpet or the jittery pulse of flashing paparazzi cameras. Or maybe, it's a business that just loves to revel in profitable anonymity.
But don't be fooled. Like Hollywood, the arms industry has sex to spare. After all, the weapons themselves are all gleaming golden curves and massive thrusting spikes; they move at breath-robbing speed, make ear-splitting noise, and are capable of performing with awesome lethality. Just ask the Bush administration if you can't fall in love with weapons this sexy and the military that wields them. And then there are the glittery galas and trade shows like the Paris Air Show - at Le Bourget airport north of the French capital - where generals and corporate bigwigs with power, prestige, and incomparable sums of money rub against each other amid the scandalous whispers of corporate breakups and new mergers.
"A! Today in the Arms Trade"
It's common to say that "you are what you eat"; but, at the level of nation-states, "you are what you export" may be no less true. We think of ourselves as trendsetters and style arbiters because of our best-known export - mass culture. But weapons are our most deadly and potent export; they help determine who controls key regions of the world and shape how those regions are governed; they create jobs, extinguish lives, and sometimes obliterate whole neighborhoods.
In the mountains of Turkey, Kurdish kids may not have a chance to drink Coke, listen to American rap, or play Street Fighter, but they do know two words of English, "Cobra" and "Black Hawk," the names of the U.S.-made attack helicopters the Turks have used to strafe their villages. We should at least know as much about the weapons our country sells as they do, and more about the arms industry as whole than we do about Lindsay Lohan's brush with anorexia and addiction.
What if we did? What if American girls grew up reading Jane's Defence Weekly instead of (or in addition to) JANE? What if Vince Vaughn and Colin Farrell labored on their craft in virtual obscurity, while Cameron Diaz and Scarlett Johansson did their own laundry after a hard shift on the film set? What if the attention these stars now get went to the arms trade? Then, Jeffrey Kohler and Robert Joseph would be household names, their every move tracked by a voracious media.
Perhaps then we would watch A! (as in "A! Today in the Arms Trade") instead of E! Of course, I wouldn't even have to write this next sentence, because everyone would already know that Jeffery Kohler is the Director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) within the Defense Department and Robert Joseph is Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security - and that the arms business wouldn't be its sexy self without them.
Under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, these are the men who help promote U.S. weapons and military technology - as well as the companies that make them - to the world, assemble financing packages, and facilitate weapons buys. Their decisions help to determine who our friends and foes are (and will be) and what kind of weapons they will have.
A! might start with early morning chatter about Jeff's tie choice and what that signals for future fighter-plane sales to Chile. Later, a panel would cheerily consider the excitement of Rob's recent trip to Taiwan, and how Beijing views our new technology-sharing agreements with Taipei. Any announcement from the DSCA about a major arms transfer would be headline news and the particulars of an arms deal would be the froth of early-morning talk shows, happy-talk chatter on the news channels, not to speak of the wit of late night comedy and Dave's or Jay's monologue.
The Power Treatment
Even though we know that A! will never replace E!, nor will a magazine named Power replace People in those supermarket racks, there's still plenty to talk about. It's just that you have to read Aviation Week or SeaPower (or the Business pages of major newspapers) to know about it.
Take but one relatively modest example: In March 2003, the United States and Poland inked a Pentagon-brokered agreement worth $3.5 billion with U.S. arms companies. The emerging power and new member of the European Union bought a whole new military in a box: including 48 Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes, Raytheon Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles, Sidewinder Short- Range Air-to-Air Missiles and Maverick Air-to-Ground Missiles.
Putting aside what Poland actually needed all this firepower for, how about a Power magazine in-depth investigation on how the big U.S. arms makers tempted Poland with $6.3 billion in investments. As one of Lockheed Martin's directors explained, the deal wasn't really about selling weapons to Poland. Nope, they were interested in "enhancing Poland competitively in the global economy, creating jobs and enhancing local labor market skills." Kinda sweet, right?
So, to put this in a simple way, in order to sell Warsaw $3.5 billion in military hardware, we gave them $6.3 billion in goodies. Think about that for a moment. Isn't it just a little too much of a good thing - like the $100,000 gift-bags movie stars get at parties after their $100 million movie premieres? Poland gets a GM plant (wait, didn't one just close in Muncie, Indiana?) and a Motorola communications system in addition to a Lockheed Martin factory and billions more in U.S. investment. As the American ambassador to Poland said, "It's the deal of the century." For Poland yes, for American workers - like the ones who don't make Pontiacs and Caddies in Detroit and Muncie anymore - maybe not.
Saudi Bling and Pentagon Rhetoric
In South Asia, the situation is different, but no less gossip-worthy for some future Power cover story. There, the desire to sell weapons has cast President George W. Bush in the role of a man trying to woo a new lover and placate his wife at the same time.
When the United States announced the sale of as many as 36 F-16 fighters to Pakistan, the Indian government was outraged. Though Prime Minister Manmohan Singh told President Bush that he was "greatly disappointed," apoplectic might better describe the strength of the reaction; and you can see Singh's point. India views itself as a stalwart and democratic ally, one with a growing economy and a growing appetite for U.S. goods.
So, when the Bush administration inked that arms deal with arch-rival Pakistan and agreed to send Islamabad F-16 fighter planes whose only likely use would be against India, you can hardly blame the Indians for being heartbroken. Pakistan - which would get the fighter planes with all the fixins for about $3 billion - is more the love-'em-and-leave-'em type anyway, an impetuous, impulsive dictatorship that has, in the past, harbored al-Qaeda elements and whose intelligence services helped create (and probably still supports) the Taliban; a country which, in the past, let its nuclear "secrets" slip off to states that our President loathes like Iran and North Korea, and that refuses to crackdown on Islamic fundamentalist schools and fundamentalist training camps within its borders. India and Pakistan are, of course, the bitterest of rivals, having fought three wars and suffered countless smaller flare-ups; both have tested nuclear weapons and continue to menace each other with them.
So, given India's indignation, what did Bush do? He offered New Delhi similar fighter planes to those being given to Islamabad (twice the profits for American weapons makers, twice the power on each side to fight the next war). He then re-pledged his fidelity to India and guaranteed that country's nuclear fuel supply, while opening talks about what fighter planes would be most suitable for India's special needs. The U.S. offered the possibility of purchasing 126 of either Lockheed Martin's F-16 or Boeing's F-18 Hornet. And all of a sudden, everybody was remarkably satisfied - except perhaps the people of India and Pakistan who might have wondered where in the world their countries were going to get the dough for these advanced weapons systems, while so many of them stand on line at the village pump, or walk three miles to the closest school, or labor long hours bent over crops, or answer requests at customer-service call centers.
If, for a while, India played the spurned spouse, Saudi Arabia has taken on the role of a diva of hip-hop proportions. When it comes to weapons systems, the oil-rich oligarchy demands the best and always pays in cash - which is why the arms industry is just delighted with its brand new $6 billion deal with Riyadh (pending the normal Congressional rubber-stamp). Included will be a mélange of lethal toys: 24 UH-60L Black Hawk helicopters, armored vehicles, and other military equipment. Among the companies involved are Sikorsky, General Electric, General Dynamics, and Raytheon.
The DSCA claims this weapons package will help strengthen Saudi Arabia's military and its ability to help the United States fight global terrorism, not to speak of giving that country's armed forces the means to defend "stability" in a destabilizing region without perhaps having to call on an overstressed American military in a pinch. But beneath Riyadh's bling and the Pentagon's hopeful rhetoric lies another reality, worthy of one of those supermarket tabloids - the rulers of Saudi Arabia are fickle and not at all sure whether they want to cozy up to the West or to those who have the urge to bring the West down. Most of the 9/11 hijackers, of course, were Saudis; the royal family continues to support terrorist organizations and right-wing religious schools; and the kingdom rests on a sea of oil without access to which the global economy might sink in a nanosecond.
Weapons-maker to a Grim World
While foreign arms sales are regularly edged in scandal, here in the United States weapons deals are evidently worth going to prison over! You want sex, lies, and videotape? Okay, maybe not the sex part - and it was email, not video-tape that provided the incriminating evidence - but there were plenty of lies in a 2003 domestic arms scandal that bilked taxpayers of millions. Boeing - the bomber behemoth - tried to sucker the Air Force into leasing one hundred KC-135 tanker planes for in-air refueling at a cost of perhaps $6 billion dollars, more than it would have cost the government to buy the (unnecessary) planes outright.
The scheme landed Darleen Druyun, a former Air Force weapons buyer, in a Florida prison after she pled guilty to giving Boeing special treatment on a $23.5 billion government contract in exchange for a post as Senior Vice President at the company and perks for her family members. Talk about a cheap date! As a Boeing veep, Druyun pulled in a mere $250,000 a year, while the company would have taken in billions in revenue.
Of course, to the extent that the U.S. arms industry wants attention at all, it would prefer that we focus on the good news - all those benefits to be derived from arms sales abroad, which make for humming assembly lines at home. According to the DSCA, the United States sells weapons abroad mainly to foster relationships that promote specified U.S. interests, while building allied and friendly nation capabilities for self-defense and coalition operations. They may also mention what we get in return, especially secure access to military facilities around the world, but these alleged benefits can come at a high price.
Any PR flak could warn you about how a reputation for late-night carousing can sully a star's squeaky-clean on-screen reputation. You can't act like Paris Hilton at night and land roles for Mandy Moore the next morning. The same goes for arms sales. But the U.S. keeps trying. While boasting about democracy, security, and peace, we sell weapons to dictators, human rights abusers, and countries at war or at the edge of war (sometimes with each other).
In fact, twenty of our top twenty-five arms clients in the developing world in 2003 - a full 80% of them - were undemocratic regimes and/or governments with records as major human-rights abusers. All too often, U.S. arms transfers only fuel conflict, weaponize human-rights abusers, or fall into the hands of our adversaries. Far from serving as a force for security and stability, these sales frequently serve to empower unstable, undemocratic regimes to the detriment of global security.
The ways and means of America's arms trade are not going to be spoon-fed to us the way model Naomi Campbell's run-ins with the law are. Unfortunately, it takes work on our part to discover how our arms trade functions. But knowing where our weapons are going and what sort of havoc they are wreaking in our name seems worth the minor effort and inconvenience – even if it doesn't offer the promise of the perfect tan or six-pack abs!
Frida Berrigan (berrigaf@newschool.edu) is a Senior Research Associate at the World Policy Institute's Arms Trade Resource Center. Her primary research areas with the project include nuclear-weapons policy, war profiteering and corporate crimes, weapons sales to areas of conflict, and military-training programs. She is the author of a number of Institute reports, most recently Weapons at War 2005: Promoting Freedom or Fueling Conflict.
Copyright 2006 Frida Berrigan
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=106939
posted by attilav at 18:16
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