Elsewhere today (377)
AlJazeera:
Israeli strike kills 23 farm workers
Friday 04 August 2006, 20:52 Makka Time, 17:52 GMT
At least 23 farm workers have died after Israeli aircraft fired missiles at vehicles in a farm near the Lebanon-Syria border, Lebanese officials said on Friday.
An additional 20 people were wounded in the attack and taken to hospital, while there are reports that some victims remain buried in rubble.
An AlJazeera correspondent in Lebanon said the targeted area is near to where trucks gathered to transport supplies to civilians.
The death toll in the border attack is one of the highest since the Israeli offensive into Lebanon began three weeks ago following the capture of two Israeli soldiers by Hezbollah fighters in a cross border raid.
News of the attack came as two Israelis were also killed in further rocket attacks on northern Israel by Hezbollah fighters.
Hezbollah fighters fired at least 120 rockets on Friday, killing one woman in the Arab village of Mugharm and an Israeli man also died near the town of Kiryat Shmona, Israeli police said.
A third person was killed in the northern Arab village of Majdel Krum, reports said.
Arab television networks also reported on Friday that five Israeli soldiers had been killed in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah fighters said they had destroyed an Israeli tank in the Lebanese village of Aita al-Shaab.
In a speech on Friday, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, leader of Hezbollah, said that his fighters would attack Tel Aviv if Israel targeted central Beirut.
Later, Tel Aviv officials published details of bomb shelters in the city for civilians to use should an attack occur.
Meanwhile, seven civilians were killed and 10 wounded by an Israeli air strike on a house in Taibeh village in south Lebanon.
'Outbreaks' fear
Israeli attacks, too, continued in Lebanon on Friday, with Israeli aircraft bombing bridges and other targets in the north and south of the country.
Warplanes struck four bridges along Lebanon's coastal highway that connects the capital with the north of the country, destroying the main bridge near the "Casino du Liban," in the Christian port of Juniyeh, as well as two others along the same road.
At least five people were killed in the strikes and more than 10 injured, the International Committee for the Red Cross aid agency said.
The bridges were practically the only useable road leading out of the country after Israel's bombardment of roads to border crossing points east of the country and relief agencies warned their destruction would make the distribution of food and medical supplies much harder.
"It's really a major setback because we used this highway to move staff and supplies into the country," said Astrid van Genderen Stort of the United Nations refugee agency UNHCR. "If we don't have new material coming in, we will basically be paralysed."
Meanwhile the UN Children's Fund (Unicef) said that south Lebanon faced dire drinking water and fuel shortages which threatened the outbreak of epidemics if Israel continued bombarding the country.
"The situation is getting desperate. If shortages continue we may be witnessing outbreaks," Paul Sherlock, a Unicef adviser, said on Friday.
Egypt meeting
On the diplomatic front, the US and French ambassadors at the UN remained locked in talks on Friday over the wording of a Security Council resolution on halting the fighting in Lebanon, diplomats said.
The UK government also announced on Friday that Tony Blair, the UK prime minister, had postponed his summer holiday to continue working on a UN resolution calling for a cease-fire to the conflict.
Meanwhile, Arab foreign ministers are planning to hold an emergency meeting in Beirut on Monday to press for a cease-fire between Israel and Hezbollah, the Egyptian foreign ministry said on Friday.
Arab nations have repeatedly called for a cease-fire since hostilities began last month. However, Israel and the US have so far resisted, saying they want a more long-term agreement for the future of Lebanon.
Reuters
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/B67C13FC-A3AD-49C3-9B68-0C7768AF88DB.htm
allAfrica:
More Than 1,000 Rescued After Flooding
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
August 4, 2006
Addis Ababa
More than 1,000 people had been rescued from flooded villages in the southern part of Ethiopia, which had resulted in the death of a 12-year-old boy, according to an official.
Shewangzaw Worku, the spokesman for the Oromia Food Security and Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission, told IRIN on Friday that in the past three days, 1,275 people had been evacuated from three villages and relocated to safe areas after the Awash River flooded.
Worku said that since the operation began on Wednesday, rescuers had used 13 boats and emergency personnel from the Ethiopian defence force to help the stranded villagers.
"The people are being transferred to safe areas of the nearby villages where they are getting food assistance. There are still thousands of people who refused to be transferred because they did not want to leave their houses and properties," Worku said.
People whose houses were in good condition would not be moved out of the area. "There are people whose houses are totally destroyed and they are unable to sleep and undertake their day-to-day activities. We are giving priority to those," Worku added.
The worst-hit areas are in Sabata Awas and Ejere districts where about 2,285 people live. "The operation to evacuate the remaining people from these two districts will continue in the coming days. There are also about 8,800 people in Ilu district who are getting food assistant without the need to transfer them to another area," Worku added.
A number of livestock have also died in the flooding.
The Ethiopian Ministry of Water Resource, Ministry of Defence and Ministry of Health as well as the Oromia regional government are jointly participating in the rescue operation.
[ 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/200608040232.html
Arab News:
Justice Is Dead, If You’re Born an Arab
Lubna Hussain, lubna@arabnews.com
Friday, 4, August, 2006 (10, Rajab, 1427)
I still feel a shudder of deja-vu at the irony with which I wrote last week about the ‘generosity’ of the US government’s gift of 2,000 rolls of plastic sheeting to the Lebanese as it rushed precision guided missiles to its henchmen in Israel. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that my macabre analogy would become a self-fulfilling prophecy. But there it was right before my eyes. A picture of a series of tiny bodies wrapped in plastic sheets so magnanimously donated by Uncle George and Aunti Condi, callously murdered by the very weapons they had so eagerly equipped the Israelis with. The names of little Mehdi aged seven and Abbas aged one were scrawled in black ink on labels identifying the victims of the US-sponsored Israeli genocide of innocent Lebanese civilians. (I wonder if the felt tip pens and labels were included in the humanitarian aid packages as a gesture of thoughtfulness? What a touching detail!)
The obscene slaughter in Qana (and yes, for the hundreds of detractors who accused me of being ‘bias’, ‘obscene slaughter’ is a pathetically gross understatement for this wholesale annihilation that defies definition) of 62 people, 34 of whom were children, made my blood boil with anger. I read in absolute horror how the Israelis had, with ‘surgical precision’, bombed the house where these terrified souls had been hiding in the basement. Some of the children were awake playing when their lives were so cruelly cut short. Children. Babies. Murdered in cold blood.
But according to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert they had time to make a quick getaway. It was one o’clock in the morning for God’s sake! Who would have warned them and where would they have gone considering his air force had already bombed the roads and gas stations in the vicinity? In whose footsteps were they expected to follow? All those others who had foolishly heeded Israeli warnings to evacuate and then were deliberately murdered as they fled? Perhaps they should have been more considerate and departed in an ambulance so that the big red cross on top would have made it easier for the Israeli fighter pilots to spot and hit?
And how absolutely awful that Fuad Siniora, the spoilsport prime minister of Lebanon, ordered Aunti Condi to call off her peace-making trip even though she had just been to the hairdresser’s and ordered a new black suit especially for the occasion. And to add insult to injury he even insisted that she call a cease-fire! What on earth could he have been thinking? But that is of course yesterday’s news. It seems that no massacre of civilians in Lebanon is worthy enough to secure a lull in the vicious and illegal Israeli onslaught that continues unabated with the full blessings of its American and British consorts. (Uncle George and Aunti Condi were enjoying a quiet dinner together as Tony Blair schmoozed with the rich and the beautiful in California and embarked on the more pressing campaign of sympathizing with Chelsea football players on the ‘pressures of taking penalties’.) Even Israel’s promise to halt the bombing for 48 hours after the Qana tragedy was yet another lie.
Within a few days the repeated cycle of shellings, killings and destruction will bore the already-jaded TV viewers and this tragedy will all too quickly be forgotten like its Iraqi, Palestinian and Afghani predecessors.
But we will never forget. Even though the so-called ‘civilized world’ may have its selective bouts of amnesia we will remember the people of Qana, like we remember the 106 refugees who were killed there by the Israelis as they sheltered in a UN base a decade ago. And what’s more is we will recall with clarity what started this all in the first place.
The media circus would like us all to believe that this crisis has proliferated solely because of Hezbollah’s irresponsible capture of Israeli soldiers. There is some truth to this. But I wonder how it is that statements by the Israeli government about threatening to take Lebanon back 20 years and putting the whole population of Gaza ‘on a diet’ are mysteriously seen as pacifist, uninflammatory and unprovocative? Does it not strike the intelligent reader as a bit strange that the kidnapping is considered such a heinous crime and an outrage whereas the illegal occupation of the Shebaa Farms and Tela Kafr Shooba in the South of Lebanon as well as the entire West Bank and the continuous build-up of illegal Israeli settlements is not?
But who talks of the Israeli abduction of a Palestinian doctor and his brother from Gaza that led to the eventual capture of these soldiers? Who even bothers to mention the fact that 10,000 Palestinian prisoners languish in Israeli jails? What about the Israeli bombing of a power station that condemns the already wretched Palestinians to a life without water or sewage? Or the wall of apartheid that has been constructed to strangle the Palestinians of their basic human rights?
Does anyone remember the failed illegal assassination attempt by Israel that not only missed its target, but left three Palestinian children dead and 15 civilians wounded on June 20? Or how about on June 13 when in a similar feat, the Israelis missed again (pinpoint accuracy, remember?) and killed nine? Or June 9 (perhaps that’s pushing history a bit too far) when Israel shelled a beach in Beit Lahiya killing eight and injuring several others?
Oops! Silly me! I forgot that the dead I mentioned are Palestinians, the new millennium equivalent of the World War I term ‘cannon fodder’. Am I mistaken or was it not the same Uncle George who warmly welcomed Prime Minister Siniora in the White House three months ago (now we’re getting into pre-historic times!) praising the ‘hundreds of thousands of people who took to the streets to express their desire to be free’? And now Uncle George leaves them ‘free’ to hang by allowing the Israelis a little bit more rope?
And, pardon me for asking, but if there was just such a huge threat to Israeli security by the crude missiles and rockets fired into it by Hezbollah why is it that the massive evacuation of foreigners that was so urgently carried out from Lebanon has not been deemed necessary from Israel?
The world is a sick place afflicted with a malaise of hypocrisy, deceit and treachery that has made it rotten to its core. The United Nations, perhaps one of the only bastions of remaining hope, was left neutered by the Israeli attack on its observation post leaving four of its personnel dead. How utterly bizarre that there was no expression of remorse or regret from either the US or British governments? A confirmation perhaps of the UN’s increasing impotence on the global stage and yet another superfluous green light that Israel hardly needed to continue to run amok. It comes as no surprise that Aunti Condi is flogging the dead UN horse to pretend to seek a new resolution and international force to stall for time so that the carnage can continue giving Israel the all-clear to inflict more civilian casualties and obliterate the infrastructure of an entire country.
And if the EU was our last realistic hope for a diplomatic push, then here too we have been bitterly disappointed. Britain’s and Germany’s block of a call for an immediate cease-fire has taught us in the uncivilized world that the only lesson that is valuable to note is that justice is dead. At least if you’re born an Arab.
If Bush, Blair and Olmert truly believe that their war crimes in Lebanon are going to crush the influence of Hezbollah they not only suffer from all of the aforementioned ailments but are, in addition to those, utterly delusional. The terrorists of tomorrow are being created by the failed politicians of today. And for those of you who are about to fill up my inbox with justification for these atrocities, just remember: you wouldn’t try so hard to convince me if you didn’t think I was right.
* * *
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=77354&d=4&m=8&y=2006
Asia Times:
It's about annexation, stupid!
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Aug 5, 2006
Officially, Israel's ground invasion of Lebanon is an act of self-defense against Hezbollah's threat, aimed at creating a security buffer zone until the arrival of a "multinational force with an enforcement capability". But increasingly, as the initial goal of a narrow strip of only a few kilometers has now been extended up to the Litani River deep in Lebanon, the real motives behind Israel's invasion are becoming crystal-clear.
It's about (de facto) annexation, stupid. This is a war to annex a major chunk of Lebanese territory without necessarily saying so, under the pretext of security buffer and deterrence against future attacks on Israel.
Already, since the Six Day War, Israel has annexed the Sheba Farms, considered part of the Syrian Golan Heights, although the government of Lebanon has long complained that the 25-square-kilometer area was a part of Lebanon. Now the Israeli army is sweeping the area south of the Litani River as a temporary occupation.
"We have no intention of extending our operation more than 70 kilometers north of our borders with Lebanon," stated Lieutenant-Colonel Hemi Lini on the Lebanese border on July 17, one week after the war's outbreak.
This would put Israel, assuming for a moment that the Israel Defense Forces' operations prove ultimately successful, in control of the Litani River, thus fulfilling Israel's founding fathers' dream, stretching back to Chaim Weizmann, head of the World Zionist Organization, who in 1919 declared the river "essential to the future of the Jewish national home".
Consequently, contrary to the pro-Israel pundits' reassurances that this war is not about occupation, all the tangible signs indicate the exact opposite, ie, the distinct possibility of a "war of acreage" whereby Israel would expand its territory, acquire a new strategic depth, and simultaneously address its chronic water shortage by exploiting the Litani.
Access to the Litani would translate into an annual increase of water supply by 800 million cubic meters. This in turn might allow Israel to bargain with Syria over the Golan Heights, source of a full one-third of Israel's fresh water. However, a more likely scenario is Israel's continued unwillingness to abide by United Nations Resolutions 242 and 338 calling for its withdrawal from the Syrian territories.
The entire Western media have settled on a naive perspective of the reasons for Israel's invasion of Lebanon, namely as a defensive measure against Hezbollah. Conspicuously absent is any serious consideration of a viable, alternative explanation while focusing on, in essence, the same ingredients as in the 1982 invasion: "deceit and misleading statements" by leaders, "inaccurate announcements" by the military spokesmen, and "gross exaggeration" of threats, to paraphrase a candid reflection of an Israeli general, Yehoshafat Harkabi.
Following this scenario, Israel has dropped leaflets throughout southern Lebanon warning the civilians to leave or risk their lives, as they would be considered "Hezbollah sympathizers" if they refused to leave. Reminiscent of Israel's annexation of Palestinian lands in 1948 and beyond, the present war is causing mass refugees, who in all likelihood will not return to their homes any time soon.
The geostrategic and water dimensions of Israel's quest to possess southern Lebanon notwithstanding, the question is, of course, whether or not the world community will tolerate such a development that would remake the map of the Middle East.
There are plenty of reasons to think that in light of the United States' complicit silence on Israel's violation of the territorial integrity of Lebanon, Israel will somehow manage to ride out the international criticisms and stick to its undeclared plan to annex southern Lebanon. However, what is less certain is that the combined efforts of Hezbollah and the rest of Lebanese society, not to mention other Arab contributions, will prevail over Israel's appetite for a decent part of Lebanon.
With the military balance disproportionately in Israel's favor, we can safely assume that the new Operation Litani will succeed and thus create a "new Middle East" with a "greater" and geographically expanded Israel and a shrunken or diminished Lebanon.
If so, then the chronology of events narrated by future historians will closely follow this line of thought: that Israel deliberately provoked Hezbollah into action, after a six-year hiatus, by pressuring Hezbollah's ally, Hamas, which was subjected to a campaign of terror, financial squeeze and intimidation.
The laying of such a trap by Israel would not have happened in a vacuum of strategic thinking on Israel's part. The fact that Hezbollah fell into the trap is a result of several factors, including an adventurist element lending itself to the "reckless" action of Hezbollah on July 11 with respect to crossing the Blue Line and attacking an Israeli patrol.
Since then, the Israelis have put on the mask of being reluctant warriors, delaying their troops' entry into south Lebanon and thus perpetuating Israel's self-image as disinterested in any imperial grand objectives. Yet the facts on the ground speak louder than words and, indeed, what fact is more important than Israeli leaders' announced intention to occupy up to the Litani River?
Again, what is understandably omitted in those announcements, adopted as the real reasons by CNN and other US networks, is Israel's predatory lust after Litani's water sources, as well as for new geographical and strategic depth. This in turn might explain the otherwise inexplicably blatant overreaction of Israel to a border incident with Hezbollah.
Instead of searching for answers in the Israeli collective psyche or in the context of action, we must probe the answer in the writings of Israel's founding fathers, including Theodor Herzl and David Ben-Gurion, commonly yearning for Israel's control of the Litani River. As a timely addition to their old wish, Israel today has a security-related explanation, justifying the territorial takeover in the near future in terms of the lessons of the present war, the main lesson being Israel's dire need to gain strategic depth to avoid rocket attacks.
Indeed, the verdict will soon be out in Israel about the precious lesson of Lebanon War II, that is, how to prevent future rocket attacks in the only feasible way, that is, direct control of southern Lebanon.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review. He is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH05Ak01.html
Asia Times:
Israel takes aim at Lebanon's soft underbelly
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
DAHIEH/BEIRUT, Lebanon - While Israeli forces fight their way into southern Lebanon against the tough Hezbollah resistance that is barring them from the strategic Litani River, a nerve-shattering psychological war is also being waged.
The Israelis are trying to force Hezbollah to show itself in other parts of the country, prior to finalizing their plans for a large-scale war. Ongoing strikes against Dahieh, a Shi'ite Muslim suburb of Beirut, are part of this strategy, aimed at gauging Hezbollah's strength in Lebanon's north.
Dahieh has been shelled repeatedly since the outbreak of the fighting, and on Thursday four missiles hit the area. The day before, Israeli warships in the Mediterranean Sea shelled Hezbollah's base in Dahieh. Part of the complex, a nine-story building, was hit again and again, even though it had been reduced to rubble five days previously. The building used to be the gym where Hezbollah members underwent physical training.
Almost all Dahieh's population has evacuated and all Hezbollah facilities in the neighborhood have already been destroyed. Tactically, of course, Israel aims to destroy all Hezbollah's assets and deprive it of bases and supplies. However, these Israeli strikes near the heart of Beirut have another significance.
"This neighborhood is the stronghold of Hezbollah and all the people living here are Hezbollah sympathizers," said a man who was acting as a guide for the media in Dahieh. "Israel expects that with such raids, Hezbollah will react, or at least its leadership would visit the neighborhood, and that's how Israel would get a picture of Hezbollah's presence in the heartland of Lebanon." The man did not identify himself, saying he was just "a neighbor".
Israel's desire to expand the war in Lebanon is apparent from other instances as well.
The flights of Israeli drones over Beirut had been irregular over the past two weeks. However, that changed on Wednesday as the drones flew for most of that day and into Thursday night. Sources close to the Lebanese intelligence services maintained that this new development had resulted in all Lebanese security forces being put on high alert as a large-scale conflict was now expected.
In this psychological war, neither Israel nor Hezbollah is proving to be foolish. Despite the repeated strikes on Dahieh, Hezbollah's stronghold, the organization has refused to react in the north, as any such reaction would justify Israeli attacks on Beirut. If that were to occur, the people of Beirut who support Hezbollah could turn against the organization as their city became the target of Israeli bombs, missiles and shells.
At the same time, Israel is also cautious not to overplay its hand until Hezbollah's strength in the north can be gauged. Israel also clearly understands that many European countries, especially France, have large investments in northern Lebanon and any unjustified military strikes on Beirut would be very bad international public relations. So far, all Israeli attacks have targeted southern Lebanon or suburbs like Dahieh, where the international community is not a stakeholder.
Hezbollah, too, has turned out to be smarter than expected. Despite its popularity among the masses, it has not shown itself outside the south, even in the refugee camps, despite the good PR opportunities there.
On Wednesday night, Lebanese intelligence grilled a young woman from the Quyneh neighborhood. The 22-year-old had been spotted in a cultural center in Beirut that is now a big camp for refugees from the south. She posed as a journalist from the Lebanon Broadcasting Corp and was looking to interview any Hezbollah volunteers who had come to tend to refugees. Her identity turned out to be fake and she confessed to be working for Israeli intelligence, trying to trace Hezbollah members in the refugee camps.
The Hezbollah fighters dug into the rugged and difficult southern fronts are not about to give up. Israel wants to win the war by attacking the soft underbelly of Lebanon - Beirut.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Pakistan Bureau Chief, Asia Times Online. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH05Ak02.html
Asia Times:
'The US is the kiss of death' in the Arab world
By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON - After almost four weeks of fighting between Lebanon's Hezbollah militia and Israel, the US administration's ambitions to transform the Arab Middle East into a pro-Western, more democratic region are fading fast.
Not only is Washington's thus far staunch support for Israel losing Arab "hearts and minds" at an astonishing pace, but the "moderate" governments and non-governmental forces the administration had hoped would act as catalysts for reform are increasingly isolated across the region, according to Middle East specialists.
"I have never seen the United States being so demonized or savaged by Arab commentators, by Arab politicians," Hisham Melham, veteran Washington correspondent for Lebanon's An-Nahar newspaper, told a conference this week at the Brookings Institution, an influential think-tank.
"People are clinging to Hezbollah, clinging to Hamas, because they see them as the remaining voices or forces in the Arab world that are resisting what they see as an ongoing hegemonic American-Israeli plan to control the region," he said.
Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the University of Maryland, observed at the same meeting, "Right now, the United States is the kiss of death.
"If you really are trying to empower the ruling elites and nudge them to reform and be more representative, you have to deliver policies that are going to empower," he said. "What we see in Lebanon is a policy that is not empowering them. It is widening the gap [between the moderate elites and the people], and people are moving toward the militants."
That point was echoed by none other than King Abdullah of Jordan, who, in the early days of the current round of fighting, had joined the Egyptian and Saudi governments in denouncing Hezbollah for "adventurism" in attacking across the Lebanese border, thus provoking Israel's devastating military campaign.
"A fact America and Israel must understand is that as long as there is aggression and occupation, there will be resistance and popular support for the resistance," Abdullah, arguably Washington's closest Arab ally, said on Thursday. "People cannot sleep and wake up to pictures of the dead and images of destruction in Lebanon and Gaza and ... say 'we want moderation'. Moderation needs deeds.
"Unfortunately, Israeli policy ... has contributed to the rise in the wave of extremism in the Arab world, and this war has come to weaken the voices of moderation," he went on, warning that even if Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon - an increasingly unlikely prospect - "a new Hezbollah would emerge, maybe in Jordan, Syria or Egypt" unless a comprehensive peace settlement were reached.
Even before the outbreak of this latest war between Israel and Hezbollah, Washington's hopes of regional transformation appeared to be dimming fast.
Besides Lebanon, whose "Cedar Revolution" last year was repeatedly cited by the administration US President George W Bush as vindication of its domino theory of democratic change, the two other Arab polities in which it has invested most of its hopes for transformation - Iraq and the Palestinian Authority (PA) - were already in deep trouble.
In the PA, not only had Hamas, the Islamist party on the State Department's terrorism list, won last January's parliamentary elections, but a subsequent US-led aid and diplomatic embargo against its government only strengthened its popularity at home, partly at the expense of Washington's preferred interlocutor, the Fatah Party's Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA.
Moreover, Israel's US-backed military campaign against Hamas, now in its sixth week, does not appear to have reduced its hold on public opinion.
In Iraq, where Washington is currently spending nearly US$7 billion a month, a series of US-organized elections appears only to have hastened the country's descent into a brutal sectarian civil war, a scenario conceded by two of Washington's top generals on Thursday as having become increasingly possible.
"Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," General John Abizaid, the head of Central Command, told a Senate hearing in Washington. "If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war." His remarks were echoed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Peter Pace.
Meanwhile, another leaked memo, this time from Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq, warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that "the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy".
Now, Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah, which has included the destruction of key infrastructure throughout the country, as well as Shi'ite strongholds in southern Lebanon and south Beirut, has quite possibly dealt a lethal blow to the government of the moderate, pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, even as it has boosted the popularity of Hezbollah - contrary to the initial expectations in both Washington and Jerusalem.
Even Hezbollah's fiercest Lebanese foe, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who during the Cedar Revolution praised Bush's transformation strategy as "the start of a new Arab world" comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, told the Financial Times this week that he was forced to support the Shi'ite militia against "brutal Israeli aggression" that would result in the weakening of the central government and the strengthening of Hezbollah and, through it, Syria and Iran.
"All American policy in the Middle East is at stake because their failure in Palestine, then failure in Iraq and now this failure in Lebanon will lead to a new Arab world where the so-called radical Arabs will profit," he said, adding that "this is ... not the new Middle East of Ms [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice".
Moreover, the situation in Lebanon - particularly the devastation wrought by Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah and Washington's support for it - increasingly threatens the US position in Iraq by further alienating its majority Shi'ite population and its leadership, many of whom have close ties to their Lebanese co-religionists.
While faction leader Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, which battled US forces in 2004, has been holding big anti-American demonstrations in Baghdad since the Israeli offensive began in mid-July, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the single strongest and most influential voice for moderation in Iraq's Shi'ite community, warned last Sunday after a particularly deadly Israeli air strike in which dozens of civilians were killed in Qana that "dire consequences will befall the region ... if an immediate ceasefire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed".
According to Juan Cole, a Middle East expert at the University of Michigan and president of the US Middle East Studies Association, Sisanti's warning was aimed directly at the United States. "Sistani could call massive anti-US and anti-Israel demonstrations," noted Cole.
"Given Iraq's profound political instability, this development could be extremely dangerous," he wrote on his weblog, www.juancole.com. "The US is already not winning against a Sunni Arab insurgency ... If 16 million Shi'ites turned on the US because of its wholehearted support for Israel's actions in Lebanon, the US military mission in Iraq could quickly become completely and urgently untenable."
Meanwhile, Washington's most loyal Sunni-led allies, as noted by King Abdullah, also feel under growing threat by popular support for Hezbollah and the radicalization among their subjects provoked by the current Israeli campaign.
"Arab leaders are seen by the public as American puppets who have no standing of their own," said Hassan Barari, a senior researcher at Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies, writing for Bitterlemons-international.org.
"The Americans and Israelis are once again giving victory to extremists, thus critically emasculating moderate forces and their allies," he wrote, noting that Hezbollah "has managed to expose the weakness and docility of Arab leaders".
At the same time, however, the very weakness of these regimes, combined with the fact that the gap between the rulers and the ruled has now widened to such a dangerous extent, means that the Bush administration's pressure on Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and other authoritarian states to implement political reform has come to abrupt halt.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH05Ak03.html
Clarín: La salud de Fidel: Cuba dice que
"reina la calma" y descarta cambios en el régimen
El diario oficial Granma afirmó en su edición de hoy que "la mal llamada transición es una palabra que no forma parte del vocabulario cubano". Ayer, Bush pidió un "cambio democrático" en la isla. Se mantiene el hermetismo sobre el estado de Fidel Castro.
Clarín.com, 04.08.2006
El gobierno cubano volvió a tratar de demostrar que la vida en el país sigue su curso a pesar de la enfermedad que aqueja a su presidente Fidel Castro. El diario oficial "Granma" afirmó hoy que en la isla "reina la calma, aunque allá en Estados Unidos, y en particular en Miami, le duela a un pequeño grupito de trasnochados de la extrema derecha".
El líder cubano, Fidel Castro, que el próximo día 13 cumplirá 80 años, delegó el lunes provisionalmente el poder en su hermano y ministro de Defensa, Raúl, sobre quien "Granma" aseguró que está "firme al timón de la nación" mientras el presidente se recupera de una compleja intervención intestinal.
"La mal llamada transición es una palabra que no forma parte del vocabulario de los cubanos de acá. Para nosotros las noticias hoy hablan de trabajar más y mejor por cumplir el compromiso con Fidel", indica la publicación, vocero oficial del Gobierno cubano
Asimismo, recordó que ayer, jueves, el presidente norteamericano, George W. Bush hizo "inadmisibles declaraciones" en las que demostró "su ignorancia sempiterna".
Bush dijo que estos son momentos de incertidumbre aquí, y que Estados Unidos está absolutamente comprometido con el apoyo a los deseos de una Cuba democrática. "¿De qué incertidumbre estará hablando el mandatario?", cuestionó el diario.
Apuntó también que la Fundación Nacional Cuba no Americana (FNCA), "ha conminado a alzamientos civiles y militares en la Isla e invitan al Ejército cubano a dar un golpe de Estado. Esta es la evidencia más grande de que no conocen nada".
Reacciones
El régimen comunista chino afirmó hoy que "siempre abogó por el respeto mutuo entre las naciones y la no injerencia en los asuntos de los otros países", declaró el portavoz del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Qin Gang.
Y agregó: "Pensamos que los asuntos de Cuba deben ser decididos por el pueblo cubano", en reacción lo dicho por Bush ayer.
Sin tanta empatía desde lo ideológico, aunque con gran importancia por la cantidad de exiliados cubanos en su país, la vicejefa del gobierno español, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega, afirmó hoy que los cubanos deben ser quienes decidan sobre su futuro.
"Deseamos que las cubanas y los cubanos, que en definitiva son los que tienen que decidir sobre su futuro, tengan la tranquilidad y el apoyo de todos", afirmó De la Vega en declaraciones a una radio de su país.
Ayer, en su primera declaración oficial tras la delegación provisional del poder en Cuba, Bush instó a los habitantes de la isla a "actuar por un cambio democrático en su isla".
"Insto a los cubanos a actuar por un cambio democrático en su isla", afirmó el presidente estadounidense en una declaración tras un discurso sobre temas migratorios en Misión, Texas, y justo antes de iniciar sus vacaciones en su rancho de Crawford.
Unas pocas horas antes, se conoció que Cuba reforzó sus medios de defensa, combate y movilización popular a la espera de una eventual ofensiva de EE.UU. y el exilio anticastrista de Miami. Mientras, sigue siendo inexistente la información sobre la evolución del estado de salud de Fidel Castro —operado de urgencia el lunes por sangrados intestinales— y su hermano Raúl, heredero del poder, continúa sin aparecer en público.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/08/04/um/m-01246168.htm
Clarín: Israel intensifica los bombardeos
en todo el Líbano y refuerza la seguridad en Tel Aviv
Destruyó cuatro puentes que conectan a Beirut con las principales rutas y con el único paso fronterizo abierto con Siria. En el sur, se reanudaron los combates tras el establecimiento de una zona de seguridad que el ejército israelí logró desplegar en la frontera.
Clarín.com, 04.08.2006
Israel aisló hoy Beirut por el norte tras atacar y destruir cuatro puentes que conectaban la capital con las carreteras septentrionales del país y con el único paso fronterizo abierto con Siria. En el sur del Río Litani, se reanudaron los fuertes combates, tras el establecimiento de la zona de seguridad que logró el ejército israelí logró desplegar en la frontera.
El ataque más grave afectó al puente de Halep, cercano a la localidad de Biblos, ya que es paso obligado en la autopista que conduce desde la capital a la ciudad septentrional de Trípoli. Esta era, además, la única vía que quedaba practicable entre el Líbano y Siria, y casi la única forma de abandonar el país por tierra. Otro de los puentes destruidos se encuentra cerca de "Casino du Liban", en la ciudad portuaria de Yunieh, en la que habitan mayoritariamente cristianos, una zona que Israel no tenía como blanco militar.
También quedó destrozado el puente de Madfun, que une el norte del Líbano con el resto del país y una de las últimas vas de comunicación con Siria. La destrucción de la principal carretera costera que conecta a Beirut con Siria contribuyó a aislar aún más al Líbano del mundo externo, mientras el bloqueo naval y ataques anteriores a la infraestructura de carreteras y al aeropuerto, han clausurado otros puntos de acceso.
Al menos 22 personas murieron y otras 30 resultaron heridas en un bombardeo israelí contra el recinto que alberga el edificio de las aduanas libanesas en Qaa, una localidad de la frontera líbano-siria, según un nuevo balance de la Defensa Civil libanesa. Mientras, el ejército israelí reportó la muerte de dos de sus soldados y otros dos heridos en un enfrentamiento en la ciudad de Taibe, en el sur del Líbano, con lo que el número de víctimas israelíes asciende a 43 desde que comenzó el conflicto el 12 de julio.
La expansión de los bombardeos a zonas cristianas tuvo lugar un día después de que una ola masiva de cohetes del grupo guerrillero alcanzó el norte de Israel, matando a ocho personas. En tanto, Tel Aviv se aprestaba hoy ante la posibilidad de recibir un ataque de la milicia libanesa, reforzando todas las tares de prevención y de seguridad tras la amenaza lanzada ayer por el jefe de Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, informaron fuentes oficiales.
Nasrallah anunció ayer que lanzará misiles contra Tel Aviv si Israel ataca el centro de Beirut.
Las autoridades municipales de la ciudad verificaban esta mañana el estado de los refugios y su personal realizaba ejercicios de simulación para la atención de situaciones de alarma, no obstante lo cual la población estaba en calma y los bares y playas contaban con la concurrencia habitual para la época.
Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/08/04/um/m-01246155.htm
Guardian:
Bridge bombings cut Lebanese lifeline
· 'Major setback' for aid effort
· 33 workers killed in attack
Staff and agencies
Friday August 4, 2006
Israel today extended its assault on Lebanon, making its first major attack on the Christian heartland north of Beirut and destroying four key bridges providing a vital aid supply route.
The Israeli air force strikes severed Lebanon's last significant road link to Syria, stopped a convoy carrying 150 tonnes of relief and cut what the UN called its "umbilical cord" for aid supplies.
Five Lebanese civilians were killed and 19 wounded in the bombing raids, which hit Christian areas in which Hizbollah has little support or presence.
More than two dozen farm workers died in a separate air strike near the Lebanon-Syria border.
The Israeli army said three of its soldiers were killed by an anti-tank missile during fighting in southern Lebanon, and an army spokesman said at least seven Hizbollah fighters had been killed during fighting in the Lebanese town of Markaba.
Israel said it had destroyed the bridges along Lebanon's main north-south coastal road to prevent Syria from rearming Hizbollah, which is also backed by Iran.
However, the European commission said the bombing had made it harder to deliver humanitarian relief.
"We will need guarantees for the safety of our people on the ground if we are to successfully continue the provision of aid," Louis Michel, the European commissioner for humanitarian aid, said.
"The bombing of roads that have been previously cleared as safe for evacuation and humanitarian aid could have a major impact on the delivery of our aid."
Christiane Berthiaume, of the UN World Food Programme, said: "This [road] is Lebanon's umbilical cord. This has been the only way for us to bring in aid."
The bridge at Maameltein, just north of Beirut, was split down its centre. Further north, the ruins of another bridge lay in the valley it once spanned.
"The whole road is gone," Astrid van Genderen Stort, a senior information officer for the UNHCR refugee agency, said. "It's really a major setback, because we used this highway to move staff and supplies into the country."
The World Food Programme said a convoy carrying supplies and emergency personnel to Beirut today was stuck. Although UN trucks may be able to take secondary roads, this would slow down aid shipments.
UN teams have so far been refused permission to assess the damage caused by the bombing, Ms Berthiaume said.
Security officials and witnesses said a Lebanese soldier and four civilians were killed in separate Israeli air raids near Beirut's airport and southern suburbs.
The UN called off planned convoys to the southern port city of Tyre after air raids on a Beirut suburb prevented drivers from reaching the assembly point.
The broadened bombing campaign came as Hizbullah guerrillas unleashed another day of rocket attacks on Israel. Hizbullah fighters fired 45 rockets in less than a half hour, killing four Israelis, three of them Arabs.
Farm workers killed
Four Israeli missiles hit a refrigerated warehouse where farm workers were loading vegetables near the Lebanon-Syria border, killing at least 33 people and wounding 20, local officials said.
The attack happened at a farm near the town of al-Qaa, a Hizbullah stronghold around six miles from Hermel that has been hit by Israeli air strikes at least three times.
An Israeli army spokesman said air strikes in the area had targeted two buildings that military intelligence had shown were being used by Hizbollah to store weapons.
However, television footage showed the bodies of what appeared to be farm workers near the ruins of a small structure in fruit groves. Fruit baskets were strewn nearby.
It was the second deadliest strike in Lebanon after the air raid that killed up to 54 civilians in the village of Qana on Sunday.
At least 720 people in Lebanon and 74 Israelis have been killed in the conflict so far.
Israel has put more than 10,000 troops into Lebanon, and says it has carved out a zone containing 20 villages up to 7km from its border. The army has been ordered to prepare for a possible push further north.
The US and France today continued negotiations on a UN resolution aimed at securing a ceasefire backed by an international force more robust than the UN peacekeepers already in south Lebanon.
Once they reach agreement - which officials said could happen over the weekend - a UN security council vote could take place within 24 hours.
The US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton - speaking after several hours of talks with the French UN ambassador, Jean-Marc de la Sabliere - said progress had been made and a text was being sent back to Washington and Paris for review.
Washington wants an international force in southern Lebanon immediately after a truce, while France - a likely leader of the force - wants the troops to move in only after a permanent ceasefire.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1837196,00.html
Guardian:
Qana bombing: Israeli military accused of whitewash
Rory McCarthy at Hazor air force base
Friday August 4, 2006
An Israeli military investigation into the Qana bombing, which killed at least 28 people, yesterday found that the air force did not know there were civilians in the building and blamed Hizbullah for using "human shields."
The air force would not have hit the building, which is close to the border in southern Lebanon, had it known there were civilians present, the military said.
Human rights groups have criticised Israeli targeting in the air campaign. Amnesty International described the investigation as "clearly inadequate" and a "whitewash". In a report into Israeli air strikes on Lebanon, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the Israelis had "systematically failed to distinguish between combatants and civilians".
The Lebanese government said at least 54 civilians sheltering in the basement of the building were killed in the bombing. Human Rights Watch said the latest evidence showed that 28 people, including 16 children, were confirmed dead and another 13 were still missing. Others may be buried under the rubble of the house, where rescue work has been halted.
The house was attacked at 00:52am on Sunday morning with two aerial missiles, acording to the Israeli military. One exploded, the second apparently did not detonate.
Qana had been the launching base of more than 150 rockets in the two weeks before the attack and civilians had been warned to leave the area, the military said.
"The Israeli Defence Forces operated according to information that the building was not inhabited by civilians and was being used as a hiding place for terrorists," it said. "Had the information indicated civilians were present in the building the attack would not have been carried out."
"The Hizbullah organisation places Lebanese civilians as a defensive shield between itself and us while the IDF places itself as a defensive shield between the citizens of Israel and Hizbullah's terror. That is the principal difference between us," the Israeli chief of staff, Lieutenant General Dan Halutz, wrote in the report.
Amnesty International called for an international fact-finding mission and said its interviews showed the civilians had been sheltering in the basement for two weeks before the raid. "Their presence must have been known to Israeli forces whose surveillance drones frequently flew over the village," Amnesty said.
One Israeli air force base commander and F-16 pilot, named only as Colonel A, called the Qana bombing a "mistake" but defended the air campaign.
Pilots are given targets by air force headquarters, but they have the right to cancel a bombing mission while in the air if they see civilians nearby. "The question is whether the targets can be directly connected to an action against our civilians and soldiers," said the colonel, who runs Hazor air force base. "What do you do if you see hundreds of rockets and they are against your family? For me, I hit the target. Once these civilians are letting people use their houses, they are involved."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1837069,00.html
Guardian:
Arab despots, not Israel, are now under a greater threat
Hizbullah's resistance to the region's military superpower will cause tremors in Egypt and Jordan - and even Syria
Jonathan Steele in Tyre
Friday August 4, 2006
Unlike good children, Israel's drones are heard but not seen. Officially called unmanned aerial vehicles, these "eyes in the sky" circle south Lebanon day and night. Between six and 12 feet long, they are little more than cameras and a motor.
They usually fly too high to be spotted, but they make a noise so loud you cannot forget it, like a swarm of wasps on a summer afternoon. Their engines give the impression of being souped up, both as a warning to any Hizbullah rocket-launcher that Big Brother has you in his sights but also as a device to intimidate and madden an entire population - what torturers call "white noise".
Glued to the monitors that display live pictures from these irritating machines, Israel's targeteers behold a fearsome picture. Whether it touches their consciences I do not know, but what unfolds before them is a tableau of massive devastation. Forget, for a moment, the columns of cars with refugees streaming north. Ignore, if you will, the corpses rotting in the open. Just concentrate on the physical inventory - roads disfigured by bomb craters, towns made uninhabitable, shopping parades gutted, houses collapsed like souffles gone horribly wrong.
For two days this week Israel offered a "humanitarian" pause. Anyone foolish enough not to have heeded earlier warnings to leave the area would have a last chance to do so. Taking advantage of this kind truce, reporters poured into the villages as shellshocked people emerged from basements to search frantically for transport out of the area.
South Lebanon is classic diaspora country. Its economy no longer depends on local agriculture. Many of its houses are designed to impress, with ornate curved balconies and Grecian pillars. A large number were still half-built when the Israeli onslaught struck. They speak of money sent back by emigrants who started to make fortunes in business in west Africa almost a hundred years ago.
Lebanon's 14-year civil war, which began in 1976, sent new waves of people to Australia, western Europe and North America, and they invested in these homes that advertised success. No wonder so many Lebanese were here this summer, as parents brought children to get to know cousins and grandparents. They truly had holidays from hell - not the tabloid version, cruise ships with blocked toilets or shoddy Costa villas adjacent to construction sites. Families from Montreal, Malmo or Melbourne suddenly found themselves under a relentless rain of bombs, quaking in terror in underground shelters and wondering if their sanity would last as long as their food.
Now these people are dead or fled. The area has been emptied. The nearer to the Israeli border, the heavier the damage. In towns and villages such as Bint Jbeil, Ainata and Aitaroun scarcely any building is intact. In the West Bank and Gaza, Israel has been regularly criticised for demolishing the houses of suicide bombers to punish their families. In south Lebanon it has been conducting house demolition and collective punishment on a gargantuan scale.
Whether or not Israeli forces seek to occupy a strip of this territory north of the Israeli border over the coming days, they have already made it impossible for Lebanese to live in it for years to come. That much is certain, even though other consequences of this invasion are still shrouded in the fog of peace.
Hizbullah will emerge stronger in the Lebanese balance of political force, but not overwhelmingly so, and perhaps only for a short time. Tyre, for example, is run by Hizbullah's forerunner, the Amal party. In the 2004 election Hizbullah took 15% of the vote compared to Amal's 75%. Its military success in getting Israel to end its previous occupation in 2000 did not transfer to the ballot box. In the Tyre region 39 villages are Amal and 17 Hizbullah.
Hizbullah's fierce resistance to Israeli ground troops has won it new admirers across the Lebanese spectrum, but in the villages civilians saw little evidence of Hizbullah helping the displaced. As families with children and old people struggled across rubble to flee this week, Hizbullah's able-bodied young cadres did not assist the evacuation, though they could be seen standing about in wary groups in the less ruined towns.
In the wider Arab world this is irrelevant detail. Hizbullah is already the hero, a desperately longed-for proof of success. However this war ends, Israel's image of invincibility has gone. Of course, the same was said in October 1973 in the hours after Egyptian troops crossed the Suez canal, surprising the Israeli army. Days later, Israel regained the upper hand.
No such tide-turning will happen this time. Even if Israel were to kill or capture Hizbullah's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah, and destroy every Hizbullah rocket store, Hizbullah has won by holding out for three weeks and inflicting serious disruption and pain on Israel.
Can Hizbullah's victory in Lebanon be the harbinger of other Arab victories to come? Unlikely. South Lebanon is rolling guerrilla country, primed for ambushes. The cramped urban slums of Gaza are no match. The West Bank is more like Lebanon, but Israel's control over the import of weaponry as well as the presence of hundreds of thousands of determined settler-occupiers give Palestinians only one military option, a slow and costly war of attrition. Negotiations are a better way.
Hizbullah's victory may do less damage to Israel than to other Arab regimes. The success of a Shia insurgency will encourage other Shias around the region, including those in Saudi Arabia. To the consternation of his American protectors, Iraq's Shia prime minister, Nuri al- Maliki, did not condemn Hizbullah. But the Sunni/Shia issue should not be exaggerated. Hizbullah's appeal across the Arab world is a wider matter of Islamism and the struggle against corrupt despotism. Egypt and, to a lesser extent, Jordan - and even in the medium term Syria, which has backed and armed Hizbullah - will feel the shockwaves running through the Arab street.
Those who argue from their pulpits in the mosques that secular modernity inevitably means decadence and selfishness will have gained new followers. Those who say that only Islam can provide the pride and backbone needed to confront the west's cultural and military interventions will be stronger.
Israel's Lebanese adventure, and the Bush/Blair folly in supporting it, have done the west damage that will last for many, many years.
j.steele@guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1837078,00.html
Jeune Afrique: Le Ciat fustige les pseudo-résultats
"bombardés tous azimuts"
RD CONGO - 3 août 2006 – AFP
Le Comité international d'accompagnement de la transition (Ciat) en République démocratique du Congo (RDC) s'est déclaré jeudi "consterné" par la circulation "tous azimuts" de pseudo-résultats des élections de dimanche, qui "sèment le trouble et menacent l'ordre public".
Le Ciat, qui regroupe notamment les ambassadeurs des cinq pays membres permanents du Conseil de sécurité de l'Onu, se déclare "consterné d'assister à un exercice de politisation à outrance par les acteurs politiques congolais du processus de compilation des résultats du vote".
Le Comité fait allusion à l'utilisation par les acteurs politiques de résultats partiels recueillis dans des bureaux de vote et présentés comme représentatifs de tendances nationales.
"Les medias relaient et amplifient ce phénomène en bombardant la population avec des chiffres tous azimuts. Cette politisation et guerre des chiffres sèment le trouble dans l'esprit de la population, menacent l'ordre public et la sécurité des citoyens et de leurs biens", poursuit le communiqué du Ciat.
Le Ciat rappelle que seule la Commission électorale indépendante (CEI) est habilitée à publier des résultats et que "par conséquent personne, absolument personne, ne dispose à ce stade de résultats complets et fiables du premier tour".
"Exposer la population à des chiffres tendancieux et des prophéties relève de l'intoxication et non pas de l'information", affirme le Ciat.
En conséquence, le Comité "exhorte les acteurs politiques congolais" à attendre l'annonce par la CEI des résultats provisoires de la présidentielle "dans la patience et le calme".
La CEI annoncera le 20 août les résultats des élections présidentielle et législatives du 30 juillet. Pour l'heure, elle compile les procès-verbaux émis par chacun des quelque 50.000 bureaux de vote.
Plusieurs chaînes de télévision privées acquises au vice-président Jean-Pierre Bemba et au président sortant Joseph Kabila, les deux favoris du premier tour de la présidentielle, ont proclamé la victoire de leurs candidats.
Jeudi à Kinshasa, des jeunes gens vendaient pour 50 francs congolais (0,11 dollar) des feuilles volantes présentant des "résultats provisoires" du premier tour de la présidentielle, donnant M. Bemba largement en tête, ont constaté des journalistes de l'AFP.
"Ces manipulations sont extrêmement dangereuses. Les gens croient ce qu'ils lisent. Les manipulations des partis ou de leurs militants tendent à mettre en doute sur les vrais résultats que publiera la CEI", a déclaré à l'AFP un expert politique des Nations unies en poste à Kinshasa.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP72626leciastumiz0
Jeune Afrique: Préparation d'un coup d'Etat:
les personnes arrêtées "battues"
BURUNDI - 4 août 2006 – AFP
Les personnes arrêtées pour avoir préparé un prétendu coup d'Etat au Burundi "ont été battues", a affirmé jeudi la ministre burundaise chargée des Droits humains, Françoise Ngendahayo, après leur avoir rendu visite.
"Je suis allée voir les personnes arrêtées dans le cadre d'une enquête ce matin (jeudi), elles m'ont dit et j'ai constaté qu'elles avaient été battues. J'ai demandé au chef de la documentation nationale (police présidentielle) que cela cesse", a expliqué Mme Ngendahayo.
"Je n'ai pas vu de gens défigurés, mais j'ai vu l'une ou l'autre séquelle, et j'ai demandé qu'on leur permette de voir un médecin, mais aussi qu'on donne un matelas à ceux qui dorment par terre", a-t-elle ajouté.
Mme Ngendahayo est membre d'un petit parti tutsi, Inkizo, qui participe au gouvernement.
L'Opération des Nations unies au Burundi (Onub) avait demandé plus tôt jeudi que des organisations des droits de l'Homme puissent avoir accès aux personnes détenues dans le cadre de l'enquête sur ce présumé coup d'Etat.
Cette demande avait été formulée après que l'épouse de l'ancien vice-président Alphonse-Marie Kadege, interpellé dans cette affaire, eut accusé la police présidentielle d'avoir torturé son mari.
Au moins sept personnes --dont au moins trois hommes politiques et un officier de l'armée-- ont été arrêtées depuis lundi au Burundi, selon un bilan encore provisoire. Elles sont accusées d'avoir préparé un coup d'Etat, selon le ministère burundais de l'Intérieur.
Le Burundi tente de sortir de 13 ans de guerre civile entre les rebelles hutus et l'armée, jusqu'à récemment dominée par la minorité tutsie. Ce pays est aujourd'hui dirigé par un pouvoir élu, issu de la majorité hutue.
Le Burundi a connu plusieurs coups d'Etat ou tentatives de putsch depuis son indépendance en 1962.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP43316prparseutta0
Mail & Guardian:
DRC's colonial-era statues wait in graveyard
Edward Harris | Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo
04 August 2006
Up a hill, inside the heavily guarded compound of a former Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) dictator, lies a graveyard of Belgian colonial-era statuary. A horse-mounted King Leopold II is stashed under a tree and explorer Henry Morton Stanley lies on his back in the dust, knocked off his pedestal by Africans seeking to remove symbols of brutal European rule from their cities.
Statues of Leopold and Stanley and other colonial-era monuments dotted the capital, Kinshasa, even after independence in 1960. In the early 1970s, then-dictator Mobutu Sese Seko ordered them removed.
"We didn't want colonial status, but our own nation," says 49-year-old Jose Batekele, who works in the Mobutu compound, guarded by heavily armed soldiers.
Mobutu is now gone -- dead in 1997 after being driven from power -- and the statues rust behind the gates of his private offices, awaiting funds for a final restoration and installation in a local museum.
"They're a piece of Congo, we can't deny that," says Batekele, who is seeking funds to salvage the statues. "The problem is: How can we restore them? That will take money."
Batekele doesn't know how much that may be.
The oversized Leopold, who sits on a horse and stares off the hill toward Kinshasa, appears mostly unharmed, even after a member of DRC's post-war, transitional administration put the statue in a Kinshasa square in recent years.
Angry Congolese stoned the statue and demanded it be taken down. It quickly was.
The long-bearded Leopold, who treated the Congo as his personal fiefdom for years until the early 1900s, is particularly despised here for his forces' use of the chicotte -- a short, hide-covered whip that tore skin from the backs of African workers on the king's rubber plantations.
Stanley, the famed explorer who helped build a railroad here in the late 1800s, is in worse shape.
He was pushed from his pedestal, though his feet were still attached. The rest of his lower extremities were propped against a rusting engine block, and the torso lies on its back a few metres away in the dirt.
The collection includes the boat Stanley used to explore the mighty Congo River, just down the hill. It's in pieces, rusted from exposure to the elements. It still bears the letters "AIA", for his African International Association.
The only colonial-era monuments in the small collection that depicts Africans shows them either picking pineapples or being inspected by a European doctor.
Still, even without the colonial-era statuary, the capital that was called Leopoldville before independence isn't bereft of monuments. A Buddha-like depiction of the rebel leader who deposed Mobutu, Laurent Kabila, sits in a roadside display.
Bouquets of flowers lay at the feet of a statue of Patrice Lumumba, independent DRC's first leader.
Unseen are the iconic depictions of the widely reviled and deeply corrupt Mobutu -- with black glasses, leopard-skin pillbox hat and scepter -- that were once ubiquitous in Kinshasa. They were pulled down after his ouster and death.
Sapa-AP
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=279845&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/
Mother Jones:
The Kids Are All Right
Commentary: What do the immigration rallies and the French youth strikes have in common? Hint: It’s not your daddy’s labor movement.
By James K. Galbraith
July/August 2006 Issue
The immigration rallies that swept the country this spring were a movement of working people. But they were expressed and represented in good part by their children, many of them student-citizens who enjoy the political rights their parents, uncles, aunts, and neighbors are denied. Here in Austin on April 10, the marchers were mostly in college and high school. But the signs they carried often expressed the experiences of the parents. Their message: We came to work. We pay taxes. We appreciate what we have here. We want to be left alone.
Signs and speakers declared that many immigrants didn’t want to come to America. They were forced to, by the Latin American debt crisis, by NAFTA and the liberalization of trade in corn, which threw millions of poor Mexican farmers off their land. (Now the same will happen in Central America, with CAFTA.) It was predictable. Food goes south, people come north; the migrants are the victims, not the architects, of globalization.
These are people of the shadows. They distrust and avoid government—not just our government but all government, and in their position who would not? Despite all the talk of the burden that immigrants put on social services, it’s worth noting that, according to our own government, three-fourths of all undocumented workers pay payroll taxes, contributing, along with their employers, about $7 billion per year into Social Security and Medicare, all for benefits that they will never draw.
What brought these quiet people into the streets? It was not demands for more but the threat of less: a bill, passed in the House of Representatives, that would have criminalized them by the millions, imprisoned them by the hundreds of thousands, and deported them by the truckload. Was there ever something so mean-spirited, so gratuitous, so ungrateful?
The Republican leadership knows that immigration is a permanent fact. In a growing economy, jobs once filled usually do not disappear. And with the pay differentials that exist between the United States and Mexico, let alone China, who would go back? Migrants come here for their working lives. There are practically no “guests,” and the concept of a “temporary worker” is largely a myth. Border enforcement compounds this: As Princeton’s Douglas Massey has shown, the effect is to keep them here. If you make it hard to get across, guess what? People who manage to cross just stay; they don’t run the risk of getting caught a second time. So they bring their families if they can, or start new ones—and stay put over here.
What were the House Republicans thinking? They were thinking about votes. Immigrant criminalization is of a piece with felony disenfranchisement, voter roll purges, voting machine shortages, phony terror alerts, and Bush v. Gore: every rotten trick that keeps in power a party of old white plutocrats. (All the sweet talk about Latino “values voters” was, in the end, just talk, and for good reason: Republicans may get 30 percent of the Hispanic vote that way, but 7-to-3 is still a losing proposition.) On one side, it’s about work and dignity and human independence. On the other, it’s about who rules America—not right now, but in a decade or two when the immigrants’ children grow up.
Meanwhile in the Senate, “tough but fair” is the watchword of those who seek a “middle way.” In a proposed compromise, migrants here for more than five years would be legalized; those here two years or less would have to go home. The trouble is, there are some issues you can’t divide down the middle. Under South African apartheid, the analogous idea would have been giving legal rights to the “colored” while keeping blacks strictly segregated.
One problem is, you can’t tell who has been here for two years, who more, and who less. (When workers are undocumented, there are no documents, you see.) But even if you could, it’s a bad idea. We need the workers! If you send some away, others must come in. Who thinks a pool of short-timers is better than a growing population of aspiring citizens? Only politicos, who fear how the citizens will vote.
What is the solution? For us: solidarity. We must stand with the immigrants. Their fate is our fate. We were them; they are us. We can be one country, with one people, citizens and voters. Or we can be a police state, ruled without hindrance by people who do not work and for whom politics is the business of controlling people who do. Either our immigrants will come, in time and with a certain reasonable effort, to enjoy full political and labor rights, or those rights will disappear for all, including the right to a meaningful vote. Most Americans seem to understand this, at some level. And this accounts, I think, for the great sympathy with which the marchers were met this spring.
Could there be anything more different from the migrant marchers than that other great youth uprising of 2006: the case of France? Through the prism of our media, that one seemed like an event from another planet—a revolt of the coddled rich, of dreamy ideologues, socialists stuck in the pre-global economy, unwilling to face the world of tough love and hard work.
That anyway was the line of the American commentariat, such as the bobbleheaded threesome of Krauthammer, Kondracke, and Barnes on Fox. For them, of course, it’s partly just character assassination for fun. But, in part, the bafflement was real. Couldn’t the French kids see that the privileges of the old, all those job protections they were defending, were causing their own unemployment? Well, no, they couldn’t, because they could see that it isn’t true.
To an American pundit, the French kids look like his own: white, well dressed, apparently middle class. The pundit assumes that they occupy the same social space: rich and spoiled. But it’s not so. France has many more kids age 20 to 24 in college, and except for the superelite, the future isn’t bright for most of them. The French kids aren’t looking forward to decent jobs in teaching or good ones in business or the professions. Crammed in decaying universities, they are struggling for survival even now. Once out, they face unemployment over 9 percent—twice as high as their American counterparts. On average, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin claimed, 8 to 11 years will pass before they obtain stable jobs.
De Villepin thought this factoid would help sell his plan, but the French students saw through it. The new law gave employers the right to fire, without cause, anyone under 26 during his or her first two years on the job. Would this have created new jobs? Sure, it would have generated new offers—as existing jobs changed from being stable slots for older workers to 729-day wonders for young people. Where would these offers lead? Nowhere except back to the jobless rolls. The whole thing bears a chilling likeness to a bracero program—temp work with no rights, high turnover, and no prospects.
Would French employers have so abused the system? Of course! The whole idea was to give them that chance. The kids reacted to this not as students but as workers. Their analysis wasn’t ideological, it was economic. They said, Let’s have a solution that really creates new jobs. Remarkably, they won a round—though no real solutions to France’s jobless crisis have emerged, and the battle will go on.
And so the American story and the French story begin to look a bit more alike. Both countries have working populations on the margin of struggle. In the United States, with a decent record of job creation, it’s our immigrants. In France, where the overall employment record is worse, the marginal population is larger. And it’s much closer to the social center of the country.
In both countries, we have young people as the emerging voices of workers’ rights. In both, they are opposed by old men who cling to power, enacting cynical laws. None of our present immigration plans will “solve” the “problem,” just as de Villepin’s gimmick would not have created jobs for France. In both countries, the marchers have won, from the people who know and understand them best, a large measure of solidarity, sympathy, and support.
In some ways, it’s an optimistic picture. Martin Luther King Jr. said it: The arc of history bends toward justice. And the tides of demography cannot be turned back. Once you know in which direction they flow, you know more or less where the future lies.
James K. Galbraith teaches economics at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas-Austin. He previously served in several positions on the staff of the U.S. Congress, including executive director of the Joint Economic Committee.
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/07/the_kids_are_all_right.html
Página/12:
El terror se acerca a Tel Aviv
DECENAS DE MUERTES EN LA FRONTERA, EL NORTE DE ISRAEL Y TODO EL LIBANO
El líder de la guerrilla chiíta amenazó con bombardear la capital de Israel si éste golpea el centro de Beirut. La respuesta no se hizo esperar: entonces vendrá la destrucción del Líbano. Ya no quedan refugios seguros para los miles de desplazados de la guerra.
Viernes, 04 de Agosto de 2006
La guerra podría llegar a Tel Aviv. Esa fue la amenaza que lanzó ayer Hassan Nasralá. El líder del grupo chiíta libanés Hezbolá dijo que atacará la capital si Israel ataca el centro de Beirut. En la práctica, sus palabras extendieron el campo de batalla a todo el territorio israelí y dejaron a sus habitantes sin un refugio seguro. Israel contestó que si caen bombas sobre Tel Aviv destruirá toda la infraestructura del Líbano. Las declaraciones llegaron en uno de los días más sangrientos desde el comienzo de la guerra. Al menos ocho civiles israelíes murieron tras ser alcanzados por cohetes de Hezbolá en la región de Galilea, en el norte de Israel, mientras cuatro soldados israelíes perdieron la vida en combates en el sur del Líbano. También hubo bajas entre los civiles libaneses, ya que murieron cuatro personas en distintos bombardeos. Israel anunció que treinta guerrilleros de Hezbolá también murieron en combate.
Los milicianos de Hezbolá lanzaron al menos 160 cohetes contra el norte de Israel, lo que eleva a 2300 el número total de proyectiles que ha disparado desde el comienzo de las hostilidades, el pasado 12 de julio. Cinco israelíes fallecieron en la localidad de San Juan de Acre, cuando salían de un refugio después de una andanada de cohetes, mientras tres agricultores israelíes murieron cerca de la localidad de Maalot, cuando un proyectil hizo blanco al lado de su automóvil. Otras veintisiete personas resultaron heridas, diez de ellas de gravedad, por el impacto de los cohetes que cayeron en las ciudades de San Juan de Acre, Tiberias, Kiriat Shimona y cerca de Maalot. Asimismo, combatientes de Hezbolá dispararon un proyectil antitanque contra un vehículo de combate en la aldea de Raymin, matando a cuatro soldados israelíes e hiriendo gravemente a otro.
En tanto, se intensificaron los combates entre los milicianos de Hezbolá y los soldados israelíes en el sur del Líbano. Israel reforzó sus tropas en la zona con el envío de dos brigadas adicionales, llevando el número de efectivos a alrededor de diez mil. Según fuentes militares, la misión de las tropas es empujar hacia el norte a las milicias de Hezbolá y establecer una “zona tapón” en la frontera entre Líbano e Israel con el objetivo de impedir los disparos de cohetes. En este sentido, el ejército israelí habría recibido la orden del ministro de Defensa, Amir Peretz, de avanzar el río Litani. “El ejército israelí recibió la orden de prepararse para la próxima etapa de la ofensiva, cuya meta es tomar rápidamente el control del sur del Líbano desde la frontera internacional hasta la línea del río Litani”, indicó un vocero del Ministerio de Defensa, quien agregó que “se trata de preparativos y no de una orden operacional”.
Los ataques de la aviación israelí tuvieron lugar sobre un importante puente en el este del Líbano y en pueblos cercanos a la localidad de Tiro. El ejército israelí indicó que atacó más de 120 objetivos, entre los que se contaron 35 edificios y campamentos utilizados por las milicias de Hezbolá. La cadena televisiva Al Arabiya precisó que las localidades bombardeadas fueron las de Zautar al Gharbya y Zautar al Sharkiya, a unos 30 kilómetros al nordeste de Tiro y cerca del Litani. Fuentes de seguridad libanesas informaron por su parte que Israel destruyó un puente en Hermel, bastión de la milicia chiíta. “Los israelíes destruyen todo puente sobre el que Hezbolá pueda transportar armas o combatientes”, dijo un portavoz.
Como si fuera poco, las fuerzas israelíes bombardearon los suburbios del sur de Beirut, feudo de Hezbolá, tras varios días de calma en la zona. Israel amenazó con extender sus bombardeos cerca del aeropuerto de la capital libanesa, incluidos los sectores que hasta la fecha no fueron atacados, y pidió a la población que abandone la zona. “El ejército israelí planea ampliar sus operaciones en Beirut”, indicaba uno de los volantes lanzados por la aviación israelí en el principal suburbio chiíta del sur de la capital libanesa. Los panfletos, dirigidos a “los ciudadanos de Beirut”, invitaban a los habitantes de los barrios de Haret Hreik, Bir Abed, Hay Madi y Rueiss a “huir por su seguridad”. Los dos últimos barrios no fueron atacados por el momento por Israel, que se concentró en el perímetro de seguridad de los suburbios del sur de Beirut, donde se encuentra el cuartel general de Hezbolá.
Los panfletos israelíes llegaron al parecer a manos de milicianos del grupo chiíta, y del propio Hassan Nasralá, quien advirtió que Hezbolá atacará Tel Aviv si Israel bombardea el centro de Beirut. “Si ustedes atacan Beirut, nuestros combatientes atacarán Tel Aviv, ya que tenemos los medios para hacer eso”, amenazó el líder del grupo radical, provocando inquietud entre los israelíes. Estos últimos no tardaron en responder a las amenazas, asegurando que destruirán todas las infraestructuras del Líbano si Hezbolá ataca la ciudad central de Tel Aviv, a 140 kilómetros de la frontera, adonde se trasladaron muchos de los habitantes del norte de Israel para escapar del lanzamiento de proyectiles, que hasta ahora alcanzaron la distancia máxima de 70 kilómetros.
Las amenazas de Nasralá llegaron en un mensaje de 45 minutos, el más largo de los cuatro discursos pronunciados hasta la fecha por el líder del grupo chiíta, transmitido en la noche de ayer por la televisión libanesa. Nasralá incluso responsabilizó a Estados Unidos de todo el conflicto de la región. El presidente norteamericano, George W. Bush, “es responsable de todo lo que sucede desde el inicio de la ofensiva israelí. El primer ministro Ehud Olmert y su ejército sólo son los instrumentos de la política de Bush”, explicó Nasralá, quien agregó que “si los israelíes dejan de atacar áreas civiles en el Líbano, Hezbolá dejará de lanzar cohetes al norte de Israel”.
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“¿Por qué nosotros?”
Por Georgina Higueras*
Desde Nazaret, Viernes, 04 de Agosto de 2006
Las casas parecen superponerse unas a otras, pero entre ellas discurren unas callejas empinadas y estrechas, fileteadas del verde de los jazmines, parras y olivos que se escapan de los patios. El barrio de Nazaret, donde el pasado 19 de julio un cohete Katyusha mató a los hermanos Rabía, de siete años, y Mohamed, de cuatro años, está poblado sólo por árabes, en su mayoría obreros o campesinos. Son familias con muchos hijos, pero desde que cayó el cohete los pequeños, que están de vacaciones escolares, no quieren salir a llenar las calles con sus risas y sus juegos.
“Con las armas no se consigue nada. Está claro que Israel y Hezbolá tendrán que negociar, pero ¿por qué no negociaron antes de matar a mis hijos? ¿Quién me los devolverá ahora?”, se pregunta Abdelrahim. A sus 47 años, el padre de los pequeños, pintor de brocha gorda, hace siete años que cobra una modesta pensión del gobierno israelí porque su mala salud no lo deja trabajar. Abdelrahim dice que se ha encomendado a Alá para “apagar su rabia contra el gobierno por haberse metido en una guerra injusta” en la que los únicos que sufren son los civiles. “Si en lugar de responder con las armas hubieran recurrido a los canales diplomáticos, tal vez habrían vuelto los dos soldados secuestrados por Hezbolá”, se queja.
Nazaret, una ciudad dominada por la enorme basílica de la Anunciación, es una ciudad de 60.000 habitantes, de los que 40.000 son árabes musulmanes y 20.000 cristianos. En pleno corazón de Galilea, en los últimos años unos cientos de cristianos se han instalado en el llamado Nazaret Ilit (colina), el barrio en el que viven los judíos, situado en la colina más alta. Eran las 4.45 de la tarde, cuando Rabía y Mohamed emprendieron el descenso de la calle que conduce a la casa de su tía. El cohete les dio de lleno, hizo un pequeño cráter en el asfalto y tiró una pared del edificio de tres plantas vecino. Este barrio nunca había sufrido un ataque. Su gente, que en 1948 optó por quedarse a vivir en donde había nacido, dice que sólo quiere la paz. Visto de lejos parece un barrio internacional porque sobre las casas ondean banderas de Alemania, Italia, Francia, Argentina y Brasil. Es lo que queda de la resaca del Mundial de Fútbol.
El guardián de la iglesia de la Anunciación, el franciscano Ricardo Bustos, de origen argentino, lamenta la escalada del conflicto que ha vaciado de peregrinos los Santos Lugares, en un año que había comenzado en marzo con cifras record. “En menos de 15 días, 70 grupos cancelaron su visita. Es una catástrofe económica, no sólo para Nazaret sino para todo el país, que favorece la radicalización y la inestabilidad”, afirma. Bustos, que llegó a Jerusalén en 1983, dice que en los últimos tiempos había señales del agotamiento israelí con Hezbolá. “El vacío de poder en Líbano permitía el inadmisible lanzamiento de cohetes y el secuestro de los soldados dio a Israel la razón que buscaban para entrar en ese país”, indica el franciscano. “Hasta que no se resuelva el problema de Palestina no habrá paz y la paz no se consigue con las armas”, sentencia mientras el ulular de las sirenas advierte del vuelo de nuevos Katyushas, instantes antes de que se escuchen dos explosiones.
* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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Página/12: Olmert causó un revuelo en Israel
al hablar del plan de Cisjordania
Fue criticado por derecha, ya que los sectores duros no creen que sea tiempo de negociar, y también por izquierda, ya que no consultó con los palestinos. El debate muestra lo difícil que es articular soluciones políticas en un clima de guerra.
Por Sergio Rotbart
Desde Tel Aviv, Viernes, 04 de Agosto de 2006
Los sectores de derecha reaccionaron en forma unánime y airada ante la declaración del premier israelí, Ehud Olmert, referida a las condiciones propicias que los resultados de la guerra en el Líbano crearían para promover el “realineamiento” (la retirada parcial de Cisjordania). “Es importante que empecemos algunas evacuaciones lo antes posible para la fortaleza y seguridad de Israel”, había dicho el primer ministro. “Toda persona razonable entiende que la guerra venció al Programa de Realineamiento”, dijo ayer el diputado Zevulun Orlav, titular del Partido Religioso Nacional (Mafdal). Orlav, cuyo partido constituye la principal expresión política de los colonos judíos en los territorios palestinos ocupados, agregó: “Es una ceguera política y defensiva ignorar el hecho de que una nueva huida de Judea y Samaria fomentará el ataque con katyushas a Petaj Tikvah y al aeropuerto de Ben Gurión”.
La protesta de la derecha se manifestó también a través de actitudes de soldados, que condicionaron su enrolamiento. Una decena de reservistas residentes en los asentamientos de Cisjordania se dirigieron a sus respectivos superiores, advirtiéndoles que no ingresarán al Líbano “si el objetivo es expulsarnos de nuestras casas”.
Ante la ola de críticas, Olmert dialogó con el dirigente de la derecha ultranacionalista Ephraim (Efi) Eitam. “Estoy ocupado exclusivamente en la dirección del combate de Israel en el norte y en el sur”, le aclaró. “La guerra provocada por el Hezbolá no tiene ninguna relación con futuros pasos políticos”, agregó. Al premier israelí le tomó algunas horas darse cuenta de que, en tiempos de guerra, cualquier fisura en el consenso interno generada por la sola mención de temas controversiales puede tener un alto precio político.
Por otro lado, las críticas de la izquierda son mucho más escasas, esporádicas y marginales al consenso probélico. Zeava Galon, la titular de la bancada parlamentaria del partido Meretz, también cuestionó la declaración de Olmert en favor del “realineamiento”, aunque desde un punto de vista distinto: “La lección de la guerra del Líbano, en la que aparentemente no se obtendrán los objetivos grandiosos que declaró el primer ministro, es que en lugar de hablar de realineamiento y de pasos unilaterales, hay que emprender negociaciones con los palestinos, con el respaldo internacional, sobre la salida de los territorios”. Contrastando con la reacción de la derecha, ningún vocero gubernamental creyó necesario contestarle a Galon.
Según el sociólogo Adrián Gruszniewski, prevalece en Israel la sensación de que el único camino posible es el de la fuerza militar. “El consenso que se viene creando bajo los ataques de los katyushas y los Qassam (la muerte masiva de libaneses y palestinos no es percibida aquí como parte del horror y la tragedia de esta guerra) es que ellos son el resultado de las retiradas de Gaza y del sur del Líbano”, señala Gruszniewski, un argentino radicado en Jerusalén desde 1992 y dedicado a la investigación del sistema político israelí. “Contrariamente a la lógica que condujo a los acuerdos de Oslo, luego de que Israel fuera atacado por los misiles de Saddam Hussein en 1991, y llegado a la conclusión de que la política de la fuerza no es suficiente para lograr su seguridad, ahora predomina una lectura inversa: estamos pagando el precio de la derrota de la paz y el diálogo, y ese precio se expresa a través de esta guerra, a la cual nos condujeron los débiles. De acuerdo con esta interpretación, no hay más remedio que retomar el camino de la fuerza militar”, explica.
Hace un año, ante la evacuación de los asentamientos judíos de Gaza y del norte de Cisjordania, la oposición de los colonos aparecía como una amenaza a la cohesión social, mientras que en las fronteras reinaba la calma y el cese del fuego en los territorios palestinos. Un año después,luego de un cambio de dirigencia dramático, la situación estratégica se ha invertido: el público judío está cohesionado, pero en las fronteras truenan los obuses y los cohetes y el ejército actúa en tres frentes. Aluf Benn, analista político del diario Haaretz, sostiene que la inversión de la agenda nacional plantea dos preguntas: “¿Los seguidores de Ariel Sharon, que juraron continuar su camino, están cumpliendo con su promesa? ¿Y qué quedó del legado de Sharon un año después del acontecimiento decisivo de su mandato?”.
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Página/12:
Un silencio que hace ruido en la isla
EL GOBIERNO INTERINO DE RAUL CASTRO MANTIENE EL HERMETISMO EN CUBA
En la actual coyuntura de traspaso de mando en Cuba, la atmósfera es de calma. Están latentes los temores a una reacción de los sectores opositores, dentro y fuera del país. Según su hermana que reside en Miami, Fidel Castro salió de terapia intensiva.
Viernes, 04 de Agosto de 2006
Cuba mantiene la calma. Las manifestaciones en los centros de trabajo a favor del régimen continuaron, siempre convocadas por el Partido Comunista de Cuba (PCC) y organizaciones sindicales y sociales. Los cubanos recibieron ayer nuevas noticias del estado de salud de Fidel Castro de parte de su hermana. Desde Miami, donde reside hace casi 40 años, Juanita aseguró que el veterano dirigente salió de terapia intensiva y adelantó que ahora sólo queda esperar a ver cómo evoluciona. Mientras esperan, el hermetismo que rodea la salud de Fidel y el silencio del gobierno provisional, con Raúl Castro a la cabeza, se hacen sentir cada vez con más fuerza en la isla. Los Comités de Defensa de la Revolución (CDR) están en alerta ante una posible acción interna o externa.
En la isla insisten en que el traspaso de mando no ha provocado grandes cambios ni en el gobierno ni en la sociedad. Sin embargo, la tapa de ayer del diario oficial Granma se hacía eco de los temores, que desde el lunes acosan a los más de once millones de cubanos. “Los medios de combate están listos para defendernos”, tituló el matutino, haciendo referencia a las posibles amenazas “del imperio” y de la disidencia interna. Confirmando al diario oficial, el coordinador nacional de los CDR, Juan José Rabilero, anunció que están fortaleciendo la “vigilancia popular”. “Hemos convocado a los destacamentos ‘Mirando al mar’ para evitar las salidas ilegales, que son un pretexto que siempre han tenido para provocar una agresión a nuestro país”, afirmó en diálogo con la emisora cubana Radio Rebelde, haciendo referencia a la disidencia en la isla. Los CDR son la mayor organización de masas de la isla y una de las más antiguas. Se creó a principios de los sesenta y tiene más de ocho millones de miembros.
Con el traspaso de mando, las calles cubanas –especialmente las de La Habana– comenzaron a ser custodiadas por un mayor número de policías. El objetivo es proteger edificios importantes, como escuelas y fábricas, ante una posible reacción de los grupos de oposición. Por el momento, sin embargo, estos sectores más duros del anticastrismo no salieron a la calle ni se pronunciaron. Los que sí están intentando aprovechar esta nueva coyuntura política son los movimientos opositores, que aunque no comparten la política del régimen comunista, abogan por mantener un clima de paz. “Estamos ante una experiencia nueva para los cubanos. Lo más prudente y justo es mantener la serenidad y la paz social, y que los actores, que somos todos los cubanos, incluyendo a quienes están en el gobierno, reflexionen y contribuyan a que se abra una etapa de diálogo y tolerancia”, aseguró el dirigente del Movimiento Cristiano de Liberación (MCL), Oswaldo Payá.
El dirigente cristiano no sólo advirtió sobre una posible reacción violenta dentro de la isla, sino que destacó la promoción de estas actitudes violentas desde el otro lado de la orilla. “Cualquier represión, cualquier indisciplina o aliento hacia actitudes violentas no es responsable ni es bueno para Cuba”, señaló Payá y agregó, “no nos parece responsable ni realista, que desde otras latitudes algunos alienten acciones de la sociedad que pueden traer confrontación”.
Las advertencias de Payá no son gratuitas. Desde el traspaso de mando, el lunes pasado, en la isla se escuchan ecos lejanos de bocinas, celebraciones y reuniones secretas. El mudismo del gobierno de Raúl Castro contrasta con los gritos cada vez más fuertes y más radicales de la comunidad cubana en la Pequeña Cuba de Miami. Lejos de la cautela que ha mantenido la Casa Blanca, la mayor organización anticastrista residente en Estados Unidos, la Fundación Nacional Cubano Americana (FNCA), llamó el miércoles a un golpe cívico-militar contra el régimen comunista.
Pero ésta no es la única contradicción entre las directivas de Washington y las ansias incontrolables de gran parte de los ciudadanos cubanoestadounidenses del sur de Florida. Un grupo anticastrista denominado Movimiento Democracia ya anunció que tiene preparada una pequeña flota debarcos para cruzar a Cuba cuando “el régimen comience a resquebrajarse”, a pesar de las advertencias de Washington. Es sólo una pequeña movilización, ya que cuentan con tres barcos y algunas lanchas de pesca. No obstante, es una señal de los ánimos que imperan actualmente en Miami y la dificultad que está teniendo la Casa Blanca para contenerlos. El presidente George W. Bush no fue tan directo como estos grupos anticastristas, pero también quiso sumarse a las apelaciones a los cubanos disidentes. “Urjo al pueblo cubano a trabajar por un cambio democrático en la isla. Nosotros los apoyaremos en sus esfuerzos para construir un gobierno de transición en Cuba comprometido con la democracia”, aseguró. El clima de tranquilidad en la isla es, por ahora, innegable. Pero también lo son los temores a una reacción de los sectores opositores, dentro y fuera de la isla. La acefalía visual por la que hace cuatro días atraviesa la sociedad cubana –acostumbrada por Fidel Castro a un fuerte liderazgo público– no permite todavía imaginar una salida a este débil equilibrio.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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La última batalla de Fidel
Por Maurizio Matteuzzi*
Viernes, 04 de Agosto de 2006
Nosotros esperamos que no sea así, pero quizá comenzó la última batalla de Fidel Castro. Desde hace por lo menos un año habían comenzado los movimientos dentro de la dirigencia cubana para evitar que el post-Fidel coincidiese, de un modo u otro, con el apocalipsis y para dar un mínimo de garantía de que la Revolución sobreviviría a la salida de escena del líder máximo. Todo hacía creer que la última batalla de Fidel coincidiría con su octogésimo cumpleaños, para el cual se preparaban los festejos el 13 de agosto. Nadie, comenzando por él, que una vez dijo que “un revolucionario no se jubila”, podía pensar en un retiro.
Después de la noche del lunes, las cosas se precipitaron y esa batalla parece acelerarse y mirar, ya no el mañana sino el hoy. Fidel, dice el comunicado que su secretario personal leyó en la televisión cubana, no resistió el “gran estrés” del viaje a la Argentina para la cumbre del Mercosur y luego las celebraciones por el aniversario del ataque a la Moncada del 26 de julio de 1953. Fue sometido a una operación de la que no se sabe mucho, sólo que debe haber sido bastante seria y que, como dice en su carta, lo obligará a quedar fuera del juego “durante varias semanas”. Jamás había sucedido en 47 años de poder total, que hubiese decidido delegar su poder a otros, a su hermano Raúl, el eterno número dos que envejeció antes de convertirse en “grande”.
En esta hora las preguntas y las incógnitas se multiplican. ¿Qué será de Cuba? ¿Qué será, para bien o para mal, de la Revolución? ¿Qué hará Raúl y sobre todo, quién es Raúl? ¿Qué hará Bush, que el 10 de julio pasado había anunciado su nuevo plan (de 80 millones de dólares) para favorecer “la transición a la democracia” en Cuba? Esa Cuba, que no lo tiene a Fidel en el timón, ¿será una sucesión o una transición? ¿Y hacia dónde? Las variantes son muchas y las tramas posibles todavía más. Más indescifrable es la fuerte personalidad de Fidel, que aun según aquellos que lo juzgan, fue uno de los últimos gigantes de la política mundial de la segunda mitad del siglo pasado. Una personalidad única. Como dijo una vez su amigo García Márquez: “Fidel es la principal fuerza de la Revolución, pero también su principal debilidad”. Porque él “es” –o “era”– la Revolución. Y la gran incógnita de este momento es saber si logró su esfuerzo mayor: darles a sus criaturas la fuerza y las piernas para poder caminar después y sin él. Casi medio siglo de poder es un tiempo demasiado largo para cualquier líder, aun para un gran líder.
Quizá por la forma en que debió moverse en la tempestuosa segunda mitad del siglo. Quizá porque osó desafiar, hace medio siglo, a la superpotencia arrogante y global que queda a sólo 90 millas de Cuba. Y que jamás le perdonaron haberle quitado a la isla esa condición de casino y burdel barato para los estadounidenses, mafiosos y no, que existía desde su “liberación” de España.
De Eisenhower en adelante, cada presidente que puso los pies en la Casa Blanca prometió que “liberaría” a Cuba de sus libertadores y que llevaría la democracia genuina. Desde entonces Fidel vio desfilar diez presidentes. Esperamos que el horrendo de Bush no sea el último.
* De Il Manifesto de Italia. Especial para Página/12.
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-70959-2006-08-04.html
Página/12:
Miedo a no volar
Por Rodrigo Fresán
Desde Barcelona,Viernes, 04 de Agosto de 2006
UNO La cita pertenece a Cesare Pavese, pero yo la leí por primera vez en una novela de Ian McEwan titulada El placer del viajero y cada tanto voy y busco ese libro no para leerlo otra vez sino para reencontrarme con su epígrafe que dice así: “Los viajes son una brutalidad. Lo obligan a uno a confiar en extraños y a perder de vista toda la comodidad familiar de la casa y de los amigos. Se está en continuo desequilibrio. Nada le pertenece a uno salvo las cosas esenciales: el aire, el descanso, el sueño, el mar, el cielo, y todo tiende hacia lo eterno o a lo que imaginamos de la eternidad”. Queda claro que Pavese se refiere aquí a los horrores metafísicos del viaje ya en proceso, del viaje viajando. Pero hay algo a lo que Pavese –por desconocimiento, por piedad o quizá porque todo tiempo pasado sí fue mejor en algunas cosas– no se refiere. Y eso que omite Pavese –o acerca de lo que prefiere guardar el más piadoso de los silencios– es el momento terrible en que el viaje se inicia, la indefensión de confiarse a lo poco confiable, esa ruleta rusa internacional, en esa dimensión crepuscular. Un lugar que está en todas partes y en ninguna donde rige la Ley de Murphy y –entre tanto altavoz y pantalla– alguien debería haber guardado un lugarcito para poner un cartel con aquello que leyó otro italiano viajero a las puertas del infierno. Eso de Abandonad toda esperanza y dirigíos al mostrador de reclamaciones.
DOS Hubo un tiempo –yo me acuerdo, yo estuve allí– en que los aeropuertos eran un trámite corto, un breve limbo, un sitio de pura expectativa, los dos puntos antes del acto en cuestión. Ya no. Los aeropuertos –la llegada o la salida, el check-in, la espera rezando porque sean nuestras maletas las que aparezcan girando en esa sádica cinta-loop y las de otro las que se hayan volatilizado hacia otra dimensión del espacio-tiempo– son ahora terremotos quietos, catedrales del espanto. Ahora en el aeropuerto –sitios alguna vez inocurrentes– suceden cosas todo el tiempo y, por lo general, cosas espantosas.
Lo que me lleva a lo sucedido el pasado viernes –cuando comenzó algo cuya onda expansiva aún se siente y se padece– en el aeropuerto de El Prat de Barcelona. Y digámoslo así: lo mismo que experimenta Frodo cuando oye el nombre de Saurón es lo mismo que siente cualquier persona de bien cuando oye la palabra “Iberia”. Iberia –para los que no lo saben– es una compañía aérea que tiene como uno de sus slogans la frase: “Nuestro objetivo es la puntualidad”. La frase, claro, omite el pequeño detalle de que, hasta ahora, es un objetivo no conseguido. Iberia es también esa compañía que ha logrado aniquilar aquel lugar común de la azafata como ente erótico para erigir en su sitio el de la azafata como carcelera en película de prisiones femeninas o enfermera de psiquiátrico de malos modales. Iberia suele estar también sujeta a sorpresivas huelgas de su personal aéreo y terrestre por lo que acostumbra ocupar seguido segmentos importantes de noticieros españoles donde, siempre, se recogen testimonios de pasajeros (por algún extraño motivo siempre hay algún argentino/a exageradamente argentina/o) no al borde de un ataque de nervios sino en el fondo del acantilado de un ataque de nervios. Esta constante alcanzó vértigo e intensidad operística el pasado fin de semana cuando unos 200 trabajadores terráqueos de la aerolínea tomaron por asalto las pistas del aeropuerto, se sentaron en ellas e impidieron el aterrizaje y salida de toda aeronave afectando a 500 vuelos y cien mil pasajeros justo el día en que arrancaban las vacaciones. Los operarios protestaban contra la adjudicación a otra empresa del servicio que hasta ahora era de Iberia o algo así y, frente a los micrófonos, argumentaban, decididamente ibéricos, que entendían las complicaciones que todo esto traía a los viajeros pero qué eran dos o tres días perdidos de las vacaciones si se los compara a la pérdida del puesto laboral de toda una vida. Lo que suena romántico y épico pero introduce un dato perturbador: hasta ahora, el pasajero tenía que hacerse cargo de retrasos y extravíos por cuestiones o torpezas “de rutina”. Ahora, parece, también tendrá que asumir los problemas entre patronal, empleados, el ente regularizador del aire español. Y dentro de poco, seguro, como en aquellas películas de los ’70, ocuparse del aterrizaje de la nave, no porque el piloto se haya intoxicado con pollo o pescado, sino porque el piloto ha decidido declararse en huelga a miles de kilómetros de altura así que arréglenselas como puedan y diríjase al mostrador de reclamaciones pero ahora cállese la boquita y ajústese el cinturón.
TRES Varios días después de postales de pasajeros amontonándose en el aeropuerto como en esas fotografías apocalípticas de Sebastiao Salgado, el horror permanece, los diarios siguen dedicándole páginas enteras al incidente: se habla de multas millonarias, de miles de maletas flotando en algún sitio, de true stories como la del pobre tipo que hizo cinco horas de cola hasta llegar al mostrador donde le informaron que su vuelo había partido, la de los rusos que atacaron a un policía porque su equipaje había desaparecido, la de la boda y luna de miel frustrada... Y yo me quedé esperando en vano la de la mujer que dio a luz ahí mismo, o la del que se enamoró de una chica en la cola, o la del viajero que decidió quedarse a vivir en el aeropuerto no por cuestiones políticas sino porque le gusta, o la del científico que alumbró in situ fórmula o cura decisiva. No importa: no será raro verlas en próxima campaña publicitaria de Iberia del tipo “emotivo” con el slogan de “No hay mal que por bien no vuele” o “Hay otras formas de volar: imagine que vuela” o “Nuestro objetivo no lo vamos a cumplir: así que decida cuál es el suyo y, si tiene ganas, cúmplalo usted que puede”.
CUATRO Y está claro que todo esto no es nada si se lo compara con los sufrimientos de subsaharianos en balsas o de libaneses en camionetas. Pero, lo siento, hay algo que me intriga: ¿cómo es posible que los teléfonos y televisores hayan evolucionado tanto y los aeropuertos y aviones tan poco? Tal vez, ahora que lo pienso, lo que ha evolucionado es el temor: uno ya no tiene miedo a los aviones y sí tiene miedo a los aeropuertos. Uno –acostumbrado ya al paisaje de lo microscópico desde las nubes, donde lo peor que te puede llegar a pasar dura apenas unos minutos– descubre que inquieta mucho más el cielo vacío desde la tierra tan colmada y tan lenta. Una ya no tiene nada de miedo a volar y sí mucho miedo a no volar.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-70893-2006-08-04.html
The Independent: France's nuclear tests
in Pacific 'gave islanders cancer'
By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 04 August 2006
For the first time, the French government has been confronted with scientific evidence that its nuclear tests in the Pacific caused an increase in cancer on the nearest inhabited islands.
A survey by an official French medical research body has found a "small but clear" increase in thyroid cancer among people living within 1,000 miles of nuclear tests on French-owned Polynesian atolls between 1969 and 1996. The results, yet to be officially published, are likely to bring a flurry of compensation claims from civilians and former French military personnel who were involved in the tests.
They will also reopen the controversy in the Pacific - and in Australia and New Zealand - surrounding President Jacques Chirac's decision to resume the tests soon after he became president in 1995.
France has since abandoned all experimental nuclear explosions. Florent de Vathaire, an expert on cancer epidemics at the French medical research body Inserm, said: "We have established a link between the fall-out from French nuclear tests and an increased risk of cancer of the thyroid."
A study was made on 239 thyroid cancer cases in the region up to 1999, three years after the last French test. Only 10 cancer cases over 30 years can be attributed directly to the tests, M. de Vathaire said, but this was "significant" and enough to justify further research.
He called on the French defence ministry to finance more studies, including the examination of military personnel who worked on the nuclear programme in the Pacific.
The detailed results of M. de Vathaire's study will be published shortly in a scientific journal but the main findings have been released in advance to fulfil a promise that the people of the French-owned Polynesian islands would be the first to be informed.
Officially, France has never recognised that its Pacific nuclear tests could endanger the health of its own Polynesian citizens, and that of other populations. The brief resumption of nuclear tests at Mururoa atoll in 1996 was justified on the ground that there was no possible threat to human health.
A pressure group for military personnel involved in the tests said the team's findings should force a change in French official attitudes. The Association des Vétérans des Essais Nucléaires said: "France is one of the last countries in the world to admit that nuclear tests were dangerous to health. The United States has recognised by law since 1988 that 31 kinds of illness, including 25 kinds of cancer, can be provoked among people living within 700 kilometres (435 miles) of point zero (the explosion site)."
The ministry of defence in Paris refused to comment on the findings until they were officially published.
France conducted 210 nuclear tests between 13 February 1960 and 27 July 1996. The first 17 explosions, in the period up to 1966, were detonated in North Africa, four in the atmosphere and 13 underground.
Between 1966 and 1996, France conducted 193 tests at Mururoa and Fangataufa atolls in the Pacific (46 in the atmosphere and 147 underground). France has had to admit that some of these explosions caused dangerous levels of radiation in the nearest inhabited islands.
After two tests within 17 days in 1966, radiation at five times the permitted annual dose was measured on the Gambier islands. After three tests in 1974, radiation equivalent to the entire permitted annual dose was measured in Tahiti.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article1212778.ece
posted by attilav at 22:02
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