Elsewhere today (385)
Aljazeera:
UN: Israeli raid violates ceasefire
Sunday 20 August 2006, 8:46 Makka Time, 5:46 GMT
The UN has said that Israel's commando raid in eastern Lebanon on Saturday violated the UN-brokered truce that halted the war between Israel and Hezbollah.
Kofi Annan, the UN secretary-general, said that he was "deeply concerned" by the violation of the ceasefire.
A spokesman for Annan said in a statement: "The secretary-general is deeply concerned about a violation by the Israeli side of the cessation of hostilities as laid out in Security Council resolution 1701."
The statement from the UN comes after the Lebanese threatened to halt the deployment of troops to the south of Lebanon if the violation was not recognised.
Elias Murr, the Lebanese defence minister, said after a meeting with UN representatives on Saturday: "If there are no clear answers forthcoming on this issue, I might be forced to recommend to the cabinet early next week the halt of the army deployment in the south."
French arrival
Meanwhile, the first small contingent of reinforcements for the peacekeeping force - 49 French soldiers - landed on Saturday at the southern Lebanese coastal town of Naqura, with 200 more expected next week.
However, Mark Malloch Brown, the UN deputy secretary-general, said more countries need to step forward to fill out a vanguard of 3,500 troops that the UN wants on the ground by August 28 to help ensure that the truce between Israel and Lebanon holds.
Murr said the Israeli raid could spark Hezbollah retaliation, which in turn could lead to Israeli reprisals. He suggested that Israel might be trying to provoke a response so that it could have an excuse to attack the Lebanese army.
He said: "We will not send the army to be prey in an Israeli trap."
Under the ceasefire terms, Israel has said it will conduct defensive operations if its troops are threatened.
But the raid took place far from the positions of Israeli troops in southern Lebanon.
The ceasefire resolution talks about an end to weapons shipments to Hezbollah as part of a long-term end to the conflict - but does not require it under the immediate truce.
Israel's explanation
According to Israel, the raid that was carried out in the early hours of Saturday morning was defensive and designed to disrupt weapons supplies from Syria and Iran to Hezbollah.
The Israeli military said such operations would continue until "an effective monitoring unit" was in place to prevent Hezbollah from rebuilding its arsenal.
Mark Regev, the Israeli foreign ministry spokesman, said: "If the Syrians and Iran continue to arm Hezbollah in violation of the [UN ceasefire] resolution, Israel is entitled to act to defend the principle of the arms embargo.
"Once the Lebanese army and the international forces are active ... then such Israeli activity will become superfluous."
Another Israeli minister said Israel will continue to carry out raids in Lebanon aimed at halting alleged weapons smuggling to Hezbollah from Syria.
"As long as the Lebanese army and the international forces are not deployed (in south Lebanon), the Israeli army will not stop its flights in the region to stop the transfers of arms from Syria," Gideon Ezra, the environment minister who is considered close to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told public radio.
Saturday's operation, risking the ceasefire, suggested Israel was going after a major target near Baalbek - perhaps to rescue two Israeli soldiers snatched by Hezbollah on July 12, or to try to capture a senior Hezbollah official to trade for the soldiers.
An Israeli soldier was killed in the operation.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C5632E21-E5FE-42E3-BE22-50B933DB8925.htm
allAfrica:
Residents Flee Gunfire in Casamance
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
August 18, 2006
Ziguinchor
Insecurity in Senegal's southern Casamance region in recent days has forced some 300 people from their homes into neighbouring villages and an undetermined number of others across the border into The Gambia, aid workers said on Friday.
It was not immediately clear whether the gunfire and explosions heard in the region stemmed from clashes between factions of the secessionist Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), from efforts by the Senegalese military to flush out rebel forces, or from both.
"There are a few hundred people displaced on the western side of Casamance in the area of the village of Samboulandiang," said Henry Fournier, regional delegate of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Dakar.
Fournier said the health condition of the displaced was "not worrying for the instant".
He said in eastern Casamance an undetermined number of people living north of the village of Sindian, 60 km north of Ziguinchor, have fled to The Gambia, 22 km away.
"I'm dispatching a rapid assessment team this afternoon" to the border region to investigate the reports, said Willy Jammeh, secretary general of the Gambia Red Cross Society, on Friday.
He said one or two casualties had been attended to in The Gambia. It was not immediately clear whether they were MFDC fighters, members of the Senegalese military or civilians. Military sources in Ziguinchor on Friday said two Senegalese soldiers were wounded and brought to the city. A military spokesman could not confirm the report.
Six weeks ago, the Gambia Red Cross and the ICRC assisted 264 displaced people in the towns of Kusamai and Gifanga and other villages along the border, Jammeh said.
The MFDC emerged as a separatist movement in Casamance in 1982. Casamance is separated from the rest of Senegal by the sliver of land that makes up The Gambia. Although a peace deal was signed between the Senegal government and MFDC leaders in December 2004, some hardliners have refused to give up the fight.
Residents on the Senegalese side of the border, in the area of Djibidione, told IRIN that the Senegalese army had launched an operation to flush out rebels in the region of northern Casamance.
"The Senegalese army is not carrying out a clean-up operation in the north of Casamance," said Colonel Antoine Wardini, an army spokesman. "It concerns a simple operation of securing populations. Our mission is to protect the population and assure territorial integrity."
He said the rebel threat had been at the Casamance border with Guinea-Bissau, but then moved to the Gambian border after the more militant faction of the MFDC, led by Salif Sadio, fled north.
"The army has descended into all of the north of Sindian. They have alerted me of clashes but I don't know if it's clashes between our soldiers with the rebels or if it is clashes between rebels because you know that the rebels have been fighting each other in the area for several days," said Wardini.
Fournier of ICRC said gunfire as well as rumour had helped spark the recent population movement.
"The army's there, everybody is there," he said. "The people don't have any point of reference. They don't know what is going on so they are little bit afraid."
Meanwhile, Roman Catholic Father Diamacoune Senghor, leader of the moderate MFDC faction, has written a letter to Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade asking for clarifications on the status of the peace process.
"I was shocked to see in the territory of Casamance a redeployment of your military forces on all fronts, the north as well as the south," he said in the letter last week. "It is for this reason that I am obliged to write you this letter to receive from you clarification on the deployment of the army in Casamance."
He said the MFDC as well as the general population were worried about the future of peace in the region.
[ 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/200608180829.html
allAfrica:
Rebels, Opposition Slam Gbagbo
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
August 18, 2006
Bouake
Leaders of Cote d'Ivoire's main opposition parties and the rebel New Forces movement have issued a joint statement slamming President Laurent Gbagbo for hindering efforts to keep the war-divided country's peace process on track.
The groups met in the central town of Daoukro to discuss a speech by Gbagbo earlier this month in which he said he would remain in office beyond his mandate if peace-sealing elections failed to take place as scheduled on 31 October. Cote d'Ivoire has been divided between a rebel north and government-controlled south for almost four years.
The groups said at the meeting that they "reject all idea of an extension of President Laurent Gbagbo's mandate beyond 30 October 2006".
Under United Nations resolution 1633, Gbagbo's original five-year mandate was prolonged for 12 months last year until the 2006 polls could be held. But there is little chance of the election taking place on schedule due to hiccups in disarmament efforts as well as problems in a countrywide scheme to hand out ID cards to millions of people ahead of the polls.
New Forces leader Guillaume Soro and ex-prime minister Alassane Outtara were among those at the meeting held at the home of ex-president Henri Konan Bedie.
The participants also rejected a new set of rules issued by the authorities on how to issue ID papers to some three million undocumented residents. The issue of nationality is at the heart of the Ivorian conflict and will determine who among the population of 16 million has the right to vote. The opposition claims Gbagbo is changing the rules midway through the process.
"Difficulties are being created to recreate a problem where there should be none," Alphonse Djedje Mady, president of the opposition Rally of Houphouetists for Democracy and Peace, told Radio France Internationale. Felix Houphouet-Boigny was Cote d'Ivoire's post-colonial founding president.
"I do not understand how a head of state can launch a process which is ongoing and which has been under way after tests approved by himself," Mady said. "And then, during the process, he suddenly remembers that we cannot proceed like this, we have to change things. And he changes things just like that."
"We find that his desire not to go to the elections is very clear," he said. "His main concern is to remain in power, with or without elections."
[ 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/200608180767.html
AlterNet:
In the Heart of America's Love Affair with Firepower
By David Holthouse, Intelligence Report
Posted on August 19, 2006
Wearing orange foam earplugs to muffle the nearby thunder of relentless automatic weapons fire, a grizzled man with SS lightning bolt tattoos on his forearms pulls a little red wagon loaded with rifle ammunition. Carefully picking his way through the teeming crowd, he passes table after table laden with machine guns, gas masks, combat knives, war memorabilia and bomb-making guides. The man sheds his camouflage tactical vest to reveal a worn black T-shirt emblazoned with a Totenkopf, the Death's Head symbol of the Waffen SS. Then he parks his wagon to join a huddle of shoppers surrounding a hard-faced spokeswoman from Valkyrie Arms who's extolling the virtues of the Olympia, Wash.-based arms maker's new product, the Valkyrior 556 Rotary Gun.
"It's .223-caliber, six barrels, basically you're looking at a hand-cranked mini-gun," she says.
The man asks, "What's the rate of fire?"
"Just as fast as you can crank it," she replies. "We just shipped a load of these babies to civilian security contractors in Iraq for convoy protection. When I go to sleep tonight, I'll dream of towel heads splattering all over the place."
"We need to ship a few to the border and start splattering Mexicans," he says.
Then he picks up his wagon handle and continues browsing the wares. Two hundred yards away, around the Knob Creek Gun Range's lower shooting area, hundreds of men, women and children are lined up like kids at Disneyland to rent and shoot M-16s, Uzis, AK-47s, SPAS 12 full-auto shotguns, vintage Tommy Guns and Heckler & Koch MP-5s. A teenaged boy wearing a shirt with a grinning Jane Fonda and the words "Commie Traitor Bitch" pays $25 to rip 20 bullets through a .30-06 caliber BAR (Browning Automatic Rifle). "Man," he says, grinning and shaking the BAR owner's hand. "That's one hell of a rush."
'Go Hot!'
At a former naval proving ground near Fort Knox, the hills are alive with the sound of gunfire, as the semi-annual Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot gets under way. Billed as "the nation's largest machine gun shoot and military gun show," the Knob Creek festival, which takes place every April and October, is a frenzied exhibition of firepower to rival a bad day in Mogadishu. On the upper range, which is reserved for heavy weaponry, the rental guns include a belt-fed M-60 ($40 for 50 rounds, $75 for 100), a 1917 British-made Vickers Mark 1, and a Civil War-era Gatling gun. The main attraction, though, is a six-barrel M134 Minigun, which is powered by a General Electric motor and sends 4,000 rounds of hot lead per minute downrange. Retail price: roughly $225,000.
Every half hour or so, the upper range master declares a cease-fire. Festival workers remove the smoldering wreckage of junker cars and household appliances and then freshen up the supply of targets. During these breaks, a flamethrower operator suits up rental customers in silver stunt man suits and lets 'em rip for $195 per tank. Nearby, the crew of a privately owned field artillery gun pumps huge shells into a denuded hillside, drawing cheers from the bleachers. The concussive force of the explosions trigger hundreds of car alarms inside the vehicles lining both sides of a rural highway half a mile away, up a muddy hill and across a creek from the Knob Creek Gun Range entrance. The whoops and buzzes of the alarms are nearly drowned out by the dragon's roar of the flamethrower, and then sonically obliterated by dozens of machine guns that erupt when the upper range master announces, "Go hot!"
'R-2'
The Knob Creek shoot started in 1979 as a local event, but now attracts machine gun enthusiasts from across the county. Attendance tops 10,000. Throughout the 1990s, it was a major gathering point and recruiting ground for antigovernment, paramilitary militias. They held meetings in the festival campground and leadership summits at hotels in nearby Shephardsville. In April 1998, a dust-up between leaders of the U.S. Theater Command and the Southeastern States Alliance at a militia unity conference during the Knob Creek shoot caused a lasting split that weakened the movement.
Knob Creek organizers have for years insisted that the majority of people who come to their machine gun festivals are not white supremacists or militia members. While that's probably true, a survey of tattoos, patches, T-shirt symbols, and merchandise at the April 2006 events provided strong evidence of a significant extremist presence. Sonny Landham, the 1980s action movie star who now shills for the white supremacist Council of Conservative Citizens, signed autographs and distributed CCC literature at his booth near a hot-dog stand. Print and CD editions of the racist fantasy novel The Turner Diaries were widely available, along with copies of the U.S. Militiaman's Handbook, a guide to armed insurrection during "R-2," the second American Revolution.
"When municipal, township, county, or local area law enforcement agents attack or seek to confine or control the U.S. Militia or its individual members, those agencies should be totally eliminated in the initial attack," the handbook advises. "Do not allow any law enforcement agents to escape. Kill them all."
While most of the violent extremist materials for sale were scattered amidst more innocuous items, one booth at the April 2006 shoot, housed in gun show stall C-22, offered nothing but hate paraphernalia: hundreds of neo-Nazi, white power, and hate rock T-shirts; Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess and Eva Braun coffee mugs; Hitler youth flags; and Celtic cross "White Pride World Wide" banners.
'This is America'
"I do not think of us as an extremist or militia gathering, but we do not regulate any items sold," Knob Creek Gun Range owner and festival chief Kenny Sumner wrote, responding to E-mailed questions about booth C-22. "If someone wants to sell white supremacist and neo-Nazi crap, that's OK with me. If it offends anyone, they don't have to stop at that vendor's table. It's just like strip clubs. I don't care nothing about them and they can be wherever they want. I have the ability to stop in or drive by. This is America and we do have the right to choose. That's why I do not restrict any of the vendors at our show."
Rob Walker, who describes himself as "the fat, happy guy handing out Shotgun News," has attended the past 15 Knob Creek shoots as part of his job for a New York City magazine publishing house. "I have never perceived an air of hate," Walker says. "In fact, I've seen people of all races having a great time together."
In past years, Walker says, "The militia groups simply used the huge draw of the KCR [Knob Creek Range] shoot to entice a greater amount of attendance at their little meetings, but they were never officially affiliated with KCR. Now, I've never seen anything more disturbing than some truly tasteless T-shirts. While I'd prefer to not even stand next to someone wearing a few of those shirts, it's the First Amendment and I won't argue with that."
Beginning in 2004, Walker has distributed materials on "genocide and gun ownership" produced by the far-right JPFO (Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership) at Knob Creek shoots. "Not only was that well received, it was never scoffed at," he says. "The materials were well marked as being from a Jewish group. Never have I heard a single anti-Semitic utterance."
Saturday night special
The Saturday night climax of every Knob Creek machine gun festival is the famous "night shoot." On the upper range, heavy machine gunners load their weapons with phosphorus tracer rounds and take aim through night vision goggles at glow sticks marking 50-gallon drums filled with gasoline and strapped with sticks of dynamite. The signal for the night shoot to begin is the whirring arrival of a black helicopter, its M-60 door gun spewing chartreuse tracer rounds from the sky.
The fiery explosions illuminate the grinning faces of thousands. The vast majority of them are white. But just as Walker claimed, there are a few blacks and Hispanics. All are unified, at least for the moment, in the taboo joy of mass destruction as spectator sport.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/40344/
Arab News:
Bush Will Never Get It
Khaled Almaeena, almaeena@arabnews.com
Saturday, 19, August, 2006 (25, Rajab, 1427)
An Italian friend of mine recently telephoned to ask whether Islam was a fascist religion. I wondered why he had asked such a question until of course he gave me the explanation that anyone these days could have guessed.
“Well,” he said, “we have all heard US President George W. Bush use the phrase ‘Islamic fascists’ — to say nothing of equally defamatory expressions used by his colleagues and associates. Because of who uttered the phrases, they were naturally given wide circulation.”
Well, I told him not to worry. Because first of all, Bush has no idea about Islam; he is unable to make the imaginative leap that would enable him to understand what Islam means, how it is practiced or why it is of such vital importance to people all over the world.
My Italian friend was in agreement with what I said but he still wanted to know why I thought Bush had used that particular phrase at this particular time.
“Well, let’s start from the beginning,” I said. “Mr. Bush used the word ‘crusade’ in the terrible confusion after Sept. 11, 2001. What Mr. Bush knew about the Crusades and how they are viewed — rightly or wrongly — in the Middle East is another matter but his use of the word was widely criticized in the Western press. Obviously somebody knew something that Mr. Bush did not. And then there was Mr. Ashcroft, Mr. Bush’s born-again Christian attorney general. He made the most ridiculous and absurd statement about Islam — that it was a religion in which God required you to send your son to die for Him. Anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of Islam would have known that statement was completely false. And then we had Lt. Gen. William Boykin of the US Army who, while in uniform, made public statements about Islam, which outraged both Muslims and non-Muslims all over the country. The list goes on so I am not in the least surprised that Mr. Bush should have now got himself a place on it.
“At the same time, let us not lose sight of the fact that the neocons are upset, very upset in fact. Thirty-six days of Israeli attacks in Lebanon failed to produce the desired results, the expected results, the results that Washington had been told would come. Hezbollah was not eliminated — far from it in fact; Hassan Nasrallah was not killed and the two captured Israeli soldiers have still not been released. As the Americans might say, ‘The situation is back to square one.’ Or, as I see it, quite a long way before square one.”
“Why then,” my Roman friend asked, “does Mr. Bush support Israel so blindly and uncritically?”
“Well let me tell you what I read some years ago. In 1998 Mr. Bush as governor of Texas went to Israel. He went with Mathew Brooks, a director of the Republican Jewish Coalition, and three other Republican governors. On the trip, Mr. Bush met Ariel Sharon and Sharon took him on a helicopter tour of the occupied territories. Brooks says, ‘If there’s a starting point for Bush’s attachment to Israel, it’s that day in late 1998 when he stood on a hilltop, eyes brimming with tears and heard his favorite hymn read aloud.’ He brought Israel back home in his heart.
“In a speech in 2005, Mr. Bush recalled his helicopter tour with Sharon. ‘It’s interesting how history works, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘The future president of the US and the future prime minister of Israel were flying across that country, with him describing to me how to keep Israel secure.’
“In addition to undoubtedly being brainwashed on that trip, who knows how many other ideas and plans Sharon planted in Mr. Bush’s head? There is, however, another major problem — those in the Republican Party with ideological and political connections with Israel. For example, the person who coined the oft-used and oft-condemned phrase ‘Axis of Evil’ was a strong supporter of Israel. Many in the US administration share the same beliefs. And this is according to US media reports.”
Personally, I don’t believe that the religious affiliations of those high in government should be a political issue. Unless of course, it interferes with the way they do their job and keeps them from working in what is perceived by the majority to be the national interest. I am certainly not a believer in any of the all-too prevalent conspiracy theories but I do believe a large number of problems are created by certain people who are well entrenched in the administration and whose sole objective seems to be to create misunderstandings and confusion between the good people of America and the world’s Arabs and Muslims. Also, it is worth pointing out here that the Muslim world was always allied with the US in its fight against communism. Despite Russia’s many overtures, Muslims rejected communism.
I was very pleased that at its last meeting, our Saudi Council of Ministers expressed dissatisfaction with the unfortunate phrase, “Islamic fascists,” and its negative and detrimental effects. People here must realize — most of them do — that the Jews rant and rave and go into virtual hysteria if there is even the mildest criticism, not of their religion but of Israeli policies in the occupied lands. No matter what the atrocity or how bloody and savage it is, Israeli actions are not be condemned or rebuked. To do so is to commit what has become one of the worst sins in our modern world — to be guilty of anti-Semitism.
The reasoning is that we must accept whatever Israel does since to question it would be anti-Semitic (we Arabs are just as Semitic as the Jews!) and anti-Semitism inevitably leads immediately and directly to a Second Holocaust!
We should learn from the most avid supporters of Israel and how they react to criticism.
Any insult to us should be met with the highest-profile media backlash, though of course we must take the greatest care to prevent any kind of violent response. We should employ the same tactics as our adversaries since those tactics have served them well. Why should they not serve us just as well?
And our intellectuals, those who are well educated and well informed and who understand social and political nuances, let them reply. Make so much noise and commotion that no one will dare to use such an offensive phrase as “Islamic fascists.”
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=76560&d=19&m=8&y=2006
Arab News: Lebanon: Prelude to a Bigger,
Longer, Costlier, and Deadlier Struggle
Amir Taheri, Arab News
Saturday, 19, August, 2006 (25, Rajab, 1427)
With the miniwar between Israel and the Lebanese branch of the Hezbollah halted, at least temporarily, the usual "who-won-who-lost" debate is raging in the media.
Since, in politics, perceptions are often more important than reality, it would be futile to try to establish a clinical assessment of what happened. Hezbollah and its supporters are confident that they won, and nothing will shake their belief. The same is true of Israel whose Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has had the temerity to claim that he achieved all his objectives.
Thus, what matters are not the conflicting claims of victory that one hears. What is important is the conclusion that the protagonists draw from their rival claims.
Let us start with the immediate protagonists - Israel and Hezbollah.
The initial dispute, over exchanging two captured Israeli soldiers against some 1000 Hezbollah prisoners, that triggered the war, could have been resolved through diplomatic channels as in the past. The fact that Olmert chose to use force meant only one thing: The new Israeli leader wanted to try something different. That "something different" was military action against Hezbollah. If Olmert now believes that he won, we must assume that he will play the military card more often. And that could mean major changes in Israeli policies as developed since 2000.
The truth, however, is that Olmert's "something different" did not work.
He did not get the captured soldiers back, and there is no guarantee that he will see Hezbollah fully disarmed by the so-called "international community."
As for Hezbollah's claim of victory the logical conclusion is that the price paid, in Lebanese lives and the destruction caused, was worth paying. Logically, Hezbollah should reject all talk of laying down its arms. If Hezbollah won the "historic and strategic victory" that Hassan Nasrallah has claimed, this is no time to abandon the struggle. A victorious army does not disarm; it pursues the war until the enemy is forced to surrender. The truth, however, is that the United Nations managed to obtain a cease-fire after the Lebanese government, of which Hezbollah is part, agreed to put southern Lebanon, nearly 10 percent of the national territory, under virtual UN mandate. Hezbollah will also lose most of its arms caches south of the Litani River.
While the miniwar was fought between Israel and Hezbollah, everyone knows that the real clash was between the United States and Iran over their conflicting scenarios for the Middle East.
It is certain that Israel would not have taken military action without at least a nod and a wink from Washington. Thus, President George W. Bush's claim that the war would help his "Grater Middle East" project matters beyond mere diplomatic considerations. The logical conclusion from Bush's assessment of the outcome of the war is that the use of force remains a live option for removing obstacles to the American project for the region.
The truth, however, is that the military option does not enjoy the level of popular support that any US president would need before he sends in "the boys." Worse still, the latest Israel-Hezbollah duel may persuade more Americans that force does not work against enemies who fight asymmetric war and are not impressed by the so-called "shock-and-awe" style of warfare.
Many observers see Iran as the biggest winner from the conflict. That view has been endorsed by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has spoken of a "divine victory" and renewed his promise to wipe Israel off the map. He has also said that the "American dream of the Greater Middle East" has been buried in the rubbles of south Lebanon.
The logical conclusion from that analysis would mean a more aggressive Iranian diplomatic, political and propaganda campaign in support of Ahmadinejad's vision for the region. However, such a campaign would make no headway if Iran were to bow to the pressure over its alleged nuclear weapons' program. If Iran has won such a great victory against the United States in Lebanon, it could not adopt a defeatist posture by accepting the humiliating resolution passed against it by the UN Security Council last month.
Logically, Ahmadinejad should reassert Iran's right to pursue its nuclear program unhampered, and tell the US-led coalition to take a walk. And, that would force the US-led coalition either to push the conflict one notch higher or to eat humble pie, thus emboldening Ahmadinejad further.
Syria's position is also interesting to note. At the start of the Israel-Hezbollah war, Damascus insisted that it was in no way involved and denied any prior knowledge of the Hezbollah plans.
Now, however, Syria is anxious to claim a share of the victory it believes Hezbollah has secured.
In what must be rated as the most important speech of his career so far, President Bashar Assad hailed Hezbollah's victory, claimed a share in it, and forecast the defeat of "American plans" for the Middle East. But he did two things that may prove to be of greater importance in the long-term.
The first was his energetic attack on other Arab regimes, thus emphasizing Syria's alliance with Iran in support of an anti-American vision of the Middle East. By doing so, he ended more than a quarter of a century of ambiguity, generated by President Hafez Assad, about the strategic nature of the Damascus-Tehran axis.
President Bashar's second important move was his re-commitment of Syria to a strategy of armed struggle to liberate the Golan Heights, and other Arab territories occupied by Israel. By doing so, he ended another ambiguity cultivated by his illustrious father who talked of war but never directly fired a bullet against Israel, and kept channels open to Washington at all times.
The upshot of all this is that the idea of wiping Israel off the map, something that no one seriously advocated even a year ago, is now forcefully presented as a realistic and achievable goal. Suddenly all the talk about the "road map", a "two-states formula", and even "unilateral transfer of land to Palestinians" appears out of context. If the whole of Palestine, including the part known as Israel, can be "liberated", there is no reason why those who always saw the creation of the Jewish state as a "nakbah"(catastrophe), should settle for only a small parcel of the "usurped land."
If one takes the conflicting claims of victory seriously, only one conclusion seems possible: The protagonists are in no mood to modify, let alone abandon, their rival projects to remove the threat of war. There will be no place for the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Baathist regime in Syria and the Hezbollah in an American-designed "Greater Middle East". At the same time, there could be no place for Israel, US influence, and pro-American regimes in a Middle East where the Islamic republic and its allies, including non-state players, set the agenda.
The miniwar fought in Lebanon was one battle in what could be a bigger, longer, costlier, and deadlier struggle for setting the agenda for the Middle East that would also affect the global balance of power. Because the prospect of such a war is looming larger than before, it may be too early to draw hasty conclusions from the five-week test of wills that Lebanon had to witness this summer.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=76554&d=19&m=8&y=2006
Arab News: Israel and US:
Why Should Arab Opinion Be Any Different?
Dr. Khaled Batarfi, kbatarfi@al-madina.com
Sunday, 20, August, 2006 (26, Rajab, 1427)
In conflicts, interested people usually take extremely different stands. Writing about such issues usually invites angry responses. To my last article, “The Death of Moderates in Muslim World,” I received lots of steamy messages that I typically put on my e-mail list. Good examples are the comments from two American readers presenting different views about Israel, Zionism and the US stand.
The first, from a dear fellow journalist, said: “I reject your bitter abuse and overuse of the term ‘Zionists’ and the rather distorted twist of facts to support your presumptive and fragile view of the events of the past and of the present.
“As for Jews being in collusion with many fundamentalist Evangelists, guess you are reading something that is secret; as a Jew I know nothing about it. I consider those radicals to be in the same category as other radicals; now you share their company in terms of my list of suspects promoting intolerance and hatred. Let’s get something straight: Zionism was about a homeland for peaceful existence and protection and not about colonialism.
“Israel had no choice but to defend its population; Hezbollah had a choice of returning the two abducted soldiers, fighting in the open and not hiding behind women and children. The many deaths and the destruction will never sit right with me and though I understand the fangs of war, one wonders why we are intense about killing each other. You have given us the answer; lies breed anger and anger breeds hatred.
“My regret is that you are ignoring the whole story and your broad brush is food for those who thrive on bigotry and division.
“This reminds me of the KKK but as they have twisted Christianity, so perhaps are you twisting moderate Islam. -Ed”
Scott read Ed comments and responded: “An old movie, ‘The Hornet’s Nest’, opens with Italian civilians facing Nazis in an impromptu firing squad, repeatedly asking, ‘Where are the partisans? No answer? Murder them all —women, elderly and kids included.
“Here again, Israelis seemed to ask: Where are Hezbollah fighters? No answer? Bomb Lebanon’s airport, harbors, schools, homes, and nurseries!
“This unacceptable use of terror on civilians in Lebanon, the unbelievably excessive use of force and the brutal destruction of a struggling, and fledgling democracy have changed me forever. While I still respect Jews, I no longer respect Israel. I will forever look forward to the end of this failed social experiment.
“Israel has been in violation of UN Resolution 242 for over 35 years now. They refuse to sign the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and appear to have a fleet of nuclear weapons —the WMDs we cannot allow any nation to have in the Middle East. They habitually use US jets and helicopters (which ties regular Americans to these attacks) to assassinate alleged resistance or terror leaders.
“I saw Pat Robertson last week telling his millions of viewers to pray for Israel. I’m not sure if Zionists or Jews are in collusion with fundamentalist Evangelists, but these nuts sure are pulling for the nation of Israel. Regardless of the motive, we do not represent ‘honest-brokers’ any longer.
“In World War II, arguably, the Jewish people suffered the greatest in that dark chapter of human existence. Yet, what they learned appears only to be the methods of brutality. The assault of Lebanon confirms this.
“I now stand with the billions in the world who do not accept this cancer in the midst of Muslims. It was a difficult task to create a Jewish nation, and expect so many to relocate. Rather than exhibit the glorious patience that has characterized Jewish history, we have seen only excessive brutality and a complete lack of compassion for others.
“Israel was created by a UN vote in 1947. It is time to rescind that vote. It is time to end the failed experiment of the nation of Israel. The Palestinians have not been ‘right,’ but the Israelis sure have been wrong.”
Salam and shalom...Scott”
I am frequently asked: Do Arabs endorse the existence of Israel? We had to “accept” but I, for one, would never “endorse” its existence. This is a “certified” terrorist organization by even UN mandate authority. Britain still regards as wanted terrorists the prime ministers of Israel, Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir. Their terrorist organization was made into state, displacing native Palestinians, stealing their homes, farms and lands and denying them the right to return. However, thanks to the superpowers of the world, Israel became a reality. We accepted all UN resolutions, such as 242, and collectively sponsored King Abdullah’s initiative of 2002, assuring Israel normal relations if it returns to pre-1967 borders. Israel refused even the road map sponsored by the US, its protector and benefactor.
Overwhelmingly, the world public opinion, from Britain and Germany to Korea and Japan, regards the US and Israel as the greatest threat to world peace and stability. Why would the Arabs be any different?
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=82480&d=20&m=8&y=2006
Jeune Afrique: La politique de l'Afrique du sud
épinglée devant un parterre mondial
AFRIQUE DU SUD - 19 août 2006 – AFP
L'envoyé spécial de l'Onu pour le sida en Afrique, Stephen Lewis, a épinglé vendredi l'engagement "dilatoire" du gouvernement sud-africain contre l'épidémie, devant des milliers de délégués du monde entier rassemblés à Toronto.
L'Afrique du sud "est le seul pays en Afrique dont le gouvernement continue à proférer des théories plus dignes de marginaux illuminés que d'un Etat préoccupé et capable de compassion", a déclaré M. Lewis lors de son discours de clôture de la conférence internationale sur le sida.
"C'est le seul pays en Afrique, de tous les pays que j'ai traversés depuis cinq ans, dont le gouvernement reste obtus, dilatoire et négligent dans la mise à disposition des traitements", a déclaré l'envoyé spécial du secrétaire général Kofi Annan, usant d'un ton très inhabituel pour les diplomates de l'Onu.
"Entre 600 et 800 personnes meurent chaque jour du sida en Afrique du sud", a-t-il souligné, la voix vibrante de colère.
Un officiel sud-africain a jugé ces déclarations "inacceptables".
"C'est vraiment inacceptable (...). Nous ne comprenons pas le fondement de ses arguments. Nous faisons mieux que n'importe qui" sur le continent pour la "réponse au VIH-sida", a déclaré Sibani Mngadi, porte-parole du ministère de la Santé.
"Pour la réponse au VIH-sida, il (Stephen Lewis) sait très bien qu'aucun pays ne met en oeuvre un programme aussi complet", a-t-il ajouté.
L'Afrique du sud est de loin le pays le plus touché par le sida, avec 5,5 millions de séropositifs, soit 18,8% de sa population adulte. En 2005, contrairement à ce qui s'est passé dans d'autres pays d'Afrique, la progression de l'épidémie s'est poursuivie, selon l'Onusida.
Pretoria affirme qu'un peu plus de 134.000 malades bénéficient d'un programme gouvernemental gratuit de distribution d'antirétroviraux (ARV), lancé en 2004. 80.000 autres sont traités grâce à des ONG ou par le secteur privé, sur quelque 500.000 malades qui en auraient un besoin urgent.
Mais le gouvernement continue d'entretenir un message confus sur les traitements. La ministre de la Santé Manto Tshabalala-Msimang prône toujours le recours à l'ail ou au citron comme "traitement alternatif" antisida.
En mai, la prestigieuse revue médicale britannique The Lancet a publié un éditorial très critique sur l'attitude du gouvernement sud-africain, accusé de "traîner les pieds" dans la distribution des ARV.
Appelant le chef de l'Etat Thabo Mbeki et sa ministre de la Santé à "surmonter leur auto-satisfaction et leurs réactions non-scientifiques" sur la pandémie, The Lancet réclamait des "messages clairs".
"Certains vont dire que je n'ai aucun droit, en tant que responsable des Nations unies, de dire cela d'un Etat membre", a enchaîné M. Lewis, qui doit quitter son poste à la fin de l'année.
"J'ai été nommé envoyé pour le sida en Afrique, et je considère que mon rôle est de défendre ceux qui vivent avec le virus, ceux qui meurent à cause du virus, tous ceux qui dans et hors de la société civile mènent le combat en faveur de la justice sociale", a-t-il ajouté.
Et de s'emporter: "Ce n'est pas dans mon rôle que d'être réduit au silence par un gouvernement, quand je sais que ce qu'il fait est mauvais, immoral, indéfendable... C'est réellement inquiétant lorsque l'appareil répressif de l'Etat est utilisé contre les membres les plus éminents de la societé".
Vendredi, 44 militants d'une coalition antisida sud-africaine ont été arrêtés au Cap pour manifestation illégale, après s'être rassemblés pour dénoncer la politique de la ministre de la Santé.
La critique a été encore alimentée vendredi par Mark Wainberg, co-président de la conférence de Toronto et chercheur canadien respecté.
"Comment cela se fait-il qu'un gouvernement puisse rester au pouvoir dans un pays, malgré toutes les preuves de son incapacité phénoménale à pouvoir assurer l'essentiel pour sa population? C'est quelque chose que je ne comprends pas. C'est quelque chose qui me serre le coeur".
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP32736lapollaidno0
New Statesman:
Cuba: Braced for change
Alice O'Keeffe
Monday 21st August 2006
Can the ailing Castro's revolution survive a handover of power? Alice O'Keeffe, one of the few journalists granted access to the country during the tense interregnum, tests the mood in Havana
Ask anyone on the streets of Havana about the city's current mood and they will tell you the same thing. "Ah, tranquilo", they say - calm. The news that, after 47 years in power, Fidel Castro had ceded control of the country to his brother Raú was greeted euphorically by the rabidly anti-Castrista Cuban exile community in Miami. But back home it has been met with an uncharacteristic display of sober resignation.
Despite some rumours of small-scale anti-government protests, people have not taken to the streets in large numbers. Youths are still hanging out drinking rum on the city's sea wall, hustling tourists, playing baseball. Salsa still blares from every street corner. Even the weather seems calmer and more airless than usual. It's as if no one dares move in case everything crumbles around them.
As so often in Cuba, the appearance of calm belies a turbulent reality. People are tense; you can see it in their faces. They are more reluctant than ever to talk politics with a curious foreigner. Inquiries are met with a fixed smile and a breezy air of false optimism. "Don't you worry - there's much more to come of Fidel," chirps a taxi driver. "He'll live until he's 99!"
"He's recovering well. He'll be back at work in a few months," an acquaintance tells me confidently. "He's been overdoing it, that's all." Another, asked what she thinks of the situation, simply replies, "What situation?" Those who are happy to speak more openly do so on strict condition of anonymity. "Nobody knows what is going to happen now, and you don't want to get caught on the wrong side," says one resident of Havana whom I ask to interview.
I meet Simón Fernández at a run-down café in central Havana. A young, fiercely intelligent writer and journalist, he is happy to talk politics over a couple of lukewarm Tropicolas (Coca-Cola, of course, remains off the menu) but asks that I do not use his real name. "People want to believe that he's going to get better, but of course everyone knows it is very serious," he says. "It's particularly tense now because the government is creating this air of mystery around what's going on. Until Raú makes a public appearance, we're all left hanging."
Raú's silence has served to exacerbate existing suspicions about him. He may be respected as a military man, but he lacks his elder brother's formidable charisma. (And charisma has a particular importance in Cuban politics, as Juan de Marcos González, founder of the Buena Vista Social Club, once explained to me. "People forget that Cubans are like Africans," he said - "we need a tribal chief: the guy who's the bravest, the best-looking, who goes to bed with all the women - a Fidel!") Rumours are flying around about his no-show: he is suffering from depression, he is dying of cancer. "This country has only one leader," says an acquaintance who works for the government. "People may accept Raú for now, but he will never replace Fidel."
In the past, resentment at years of economic hardship has been contained by Fidel Castro's sheer force of personality. In 1994, at the height of the "special period", when the Cuban economy imploded following the collapse of the Soviet Union, rioters took to the streets on Havana's seafront. The situation was contained only when Castro made a personal appearance at the scene. Soon afterwards, the Cuban authorities granted temporary permission to leave for Miami, and up to 30,000 people fled the country on makeshift rafts in the space of three weeks. "Sometimes this place feels like a tinderbox," says Fernández. "You feel that there is so much pent-up resentment and frustration that the smallest thing could make it explode."
Castro's absence is unlikely to trigger another such crisis straight away. Internal dissidence is contained by the fear that any display of anti-government feeling within Cuba will only encourage an intervention from the Miami Cubans or from the United States itself. "People's biggest fear is that if they take to the streets, the Miami Cubans will see it as an invitation to start streaming into Cuba, demanding their old houses back," says one friend.
In any case, the Castro regime has effectively stamped out the potential for organised opposition to Raú's succession. After a period of relative openness in the early 2000s, the small pockets of organised opposition on the island were practically obliterated in March 2003, when 75 members of dissident organisations were arrested on charges including "acts against the independence or territorial integrity of the state". Some were given jail terms of up to 28 years. Amnesty International called the move "an alarming step backwards in terms of respect for human rights".
Osvaldo Payá, the Havana-based leader of one of the best-known movements, the Varela Project, was one of the few who escaped arrest, though he claims to be under constant state surveillance in his home. He has argued forcefully that, given the chance, Cuba could make the transition to democracy without outside help.
"We can keep the many good things which the revolution has given us - the education system, the hospitals - but without denying people their basic human rights," Payá told me in an interview shortly after the arrests. "In Cuba we have a better basis for true democracy than anywhere else in Latin America. We have an educated population, an equitable distribution of income. The problem is that people have always seen it as a choice between Fidel on the one hand and the US on the other. We need to 'de-Americanise' the opposition to the Castro regime."
There is no doubt that any direct US military intervention would be vastly unpopular: through all the years of hardship, Cubans have developed a fiercely independent identity. In Havana, I visited some old friends, a middle-aged couple who live in the respectable Vedado neighbourhood. Alejandro is a civil servant, his wife Gloria a housewife. If they were British, they would live in Middle England, but this is a looking-glass world, and they are fervent revolutionaries.
"There are many differences of opinion here about the regime, and about what our future should be," says Gloria. "But there is one thing on which we are all agreed - neither the Americans nor the Miami exiles are going to have any say over it." And her husband says: "If the Americans intervene, we will fight them off even if it means we destroy Cuba in the process. They know that the war will spread to Miami, too. So they wouldn't dare."
The power of the greenback
However, the reality is that the US invasion is likely to take a more subtle form. Under the "Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba", the US has committed more than $80m to helping "rebuild the Cuban economy". It will be very difficult for the Cubans to resist such financial intervention, in the long term. "People are tired of struggling for their food day by day," says Fernández. "It's not about ideology: people will welcome anything which makes their lives just a little bit easier. The Americans know that all they have to do is come over here selling cheap food and they'll be heroes. We are a very Americanised society anyway - I think one day soon we will turn around and find that there's a McDonald's in the Plaza de la Revolución."
The appetite for economic and political change is strongest among the younger generation of Cubans - a generation with which the Castro regime has failed to engage positively. They may have received an excellent education under the socialist system, but they all spent their formative years living out the "special period", and many experienced prolonged periods of hunger. They are well aware that in any first-world country their talent and education would guarantee them opportunities and a standard of living they can only dream of in Cuba.
Gloria and Alejandro's son Alejo is a typical example. Sporting long hair and a Metallica T-shirt, he plays along with his parents' revolutionary chatter, but as soon as their backs are turned is unable to rein himself in. He tells me he is planning to leave the country for Canada, where some friends have promised to write him letters of invitation - the only means by which ordinary Cubans are permitted to leave the country. "They tell us that Cuban society is the best there is, but if that's true why don't they let us leave so we can see for ourselves?" he asks. "I'll tell you why - because they know that it's a lie. They know that if we leave the country we will never come back."
The limitations on free expression on the island have given young people few legitimate channels through which to air their resentment. One acquaintance, a graduate in journalism, told me about his university course. "There was no real debate, because the state's tentacles reach into every house and every classroom. You were always aware that you didn't know what the repercussions might be for speaking your mind. A few of us tried to form a group of the more critical students, and when we graduated none of us were given jobs."
Instead, this generation has grown up surviving through creatively playing the system: selling boxes of cigars on the black market, stealing this or that commodity from the workplace, extracting a few precious dollars from tourists. "Cubans have a propensity towards illegal activity now, because they have had to learn in order to survive," says a friend. It does not bode well, considering the problems of organised crime in other post-Communist countries.
The night before I leave Cuba, I drop in on the concert that had been planned to celebrate Castro's 80th birthday, for which the whole Malecón - Havana's main harbour drag - has been shut off. The event has been rebranded Concert for the Homeland, because Castro is too sick to attend. Appearing on stage is a procession of musicians of every colour and type: an Afro-Cuban drumming group, a schmaltzy bolero singer, a white rock band. All try to summon the emotion of a historic occasion, exhorting the audience to chant for the speedy recovery of the Comandante. But the crowd feels strangely thin, and I can't help noticing that the loudest cheers are coming from large groups of foreign students. Dozens of Cuban school buses are parked down the street, but where are all the Cubans?
On the way home, I find them. Down a nearby backstreet, reggaetón is booming from a car stereo, and a large crowd has gathered furtively in the gloom. Youngsters swig beer from paper cups, and couples bump and grind furiously on the pavement. They don't want to spend their lives at a political rally; they want to party in peace. And who can blame them? But in their hands is the future of the Cuban revolution.
All the interviewees' names have been changed
The chat at the Castro dinner table
By Seamus Mirodan
It's a family drama like no other: after almost five decades in power, Fidel Castro is believed to have conceded power permanently to his younger brother Raú. But what is life with the Castro clan like behind the scenes?
A typical dinner with Castro's extended family is an elegant affair. The men tend to sport designer polo shirts, brands such as Lacoste and Ralph Lauren. The women are glamorous, perfectly made up, and not shy of showing a fair bit of leg. The cocktail of choice is the Cubata, seven-year-old rum mixed with Coca-Cola and a dash of lemon. The drinks flow freely into the early hours, but it seems that cigars have gone out of fashion since Fidel gave up the habit: few people in the Havana jet set now smoke them.
Conversation over the dinner table often revolves around friends and family living abroad. "Ernesto in Miami is doing great. He's opened up his own clinic and is well on the way to becoming a millionaire," comments one. Raú's grandson is studying economics in Madrid, but his father is somewhat preoccupied that "he seems to be living in the gay quarter, even if it is also one of the city's most affluent areas".
The whole family and their social set share a passion for heavy rock and religiously attend the gigs of a local group called Los Kanes, whose average age of 60 does not stop them sporting hair down to their knees, skin-tight leather trousers and Iron Maiden T-shirts. On 13 August, the family celebrated Fidel's birthday by attending a Los Kanes concert at an exclusive Havana nightspot. The group performed rock classics such as "Sweet Child O' Mine" and "Sweet Home Alabama".
Naturally, the dinner-table conversation at times turns to politics. The clan is optimistic about the future of Fidel's revolution, and insists that Raú's presidency will bring economic liberalisation akin to that seen in China in recent years. "Raú is more of a pragmatist and his administration will focus on internal rather than external politics," said one member of the family. "The Cuban people will be consulted and involved in the future of the economy for the first time."
But the question that dominates the conversation in Cuba's first family is whether the political system will evolve towards a more liberal, western format. The consensus is that the system will open up, but not according to the American model. "As the government decentralises, we will gradually evolve towards an entirely new form of leadership: a 21st-century democracy."
Cuba by numbers
47 number of years Fidel Castro has been in power
11.3 population of Cuba (in millions)
$80m amount the US pledged in July this year towards a "pro-democracy" programme
79 life expectancy for women. For men the age is 75
98,000 barrels of oil received daily from Venezuela at preferential rates
97% adult literacy rate
This article first appeared in the New Statesman.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200608210025
The Independent:
Reid wants to bypass human rights law and intern suspects
By Severin Carrell and Sophie Goodchild
Published: 20 August 2006
Powers to detain terror suspects without trial are being sought by the Home Secretary. John Reid wants much tougher anti-terrorism powers in the wake of the alleged plot to blow up transatlantic flights, and has instructed his officials to draft new measures that would allow him to bypass human rights legislation.
Backed by Tony Blair, Mr Reid is also considering introducing even tougher powers to put suspects under house arrest, known as "control orders", without being charged or convicted of any offence. Detaining terror suspects without trial could, in rare circumstances, also be used against British citizens - a measure that would lead to concerted opposition from lawyers and civil rights campaigners.
The Independent on Sunday has also learnt that police searching premises linked to the alleged terror plot have recovered hydrogen peroxide - alleged to be a key component of the "liquid bombs" involved in the plot, and evidence that at least one suspect planned a "dry run" this weekend to place a bomb on board an aircraft.
The police, who are still holding 23 suspects, are also studying several "martyrdom videos" allegedly found on up to six laptops recovered during the raids.
Ministers believe that suspending key parts of the Human Rights Act would thwart the judiciary and the Lords, which has ruled it illegal to imprison foreign terror suspects without charge and has watered down existing control orders imposed on dozens of suspects.
A senior Whitehall source said: "Is there an appetite for doing whatever we need to keep these people under control? The answer is 'yes'. If we can't do it in a modified way through control orders, then no other option is currently off the agenda."
Earlier this month, the Prime Minister attacked the Court of Appeal after it ruled that it was excessive to keep five Iraqi suspects and one other man under what amounted to house arrest for 18 hours a day, forcing ministers to cut this to 14 hours. Mr Blair accused judges of frustrating the Government's efforts: "It brings home once again to me the urgency of people understanding that this is an active threat and we have to deal with it."
In a speech just a day before the wave of terror arrests 10 days ago, Mr Reid hinted that these new measures would be introduced. "Sometimes we may have to modify some of our own freedoms in the short term in order to prevent their misuse and abuse by those who oppose our fundamental values," he said.
The new powers could be unveiled in this November's Queen's Speech.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1220495.ece
The Independent:
A land reduced to rubble
'These places now look like French villages did after German bombardment during the First World War'
Robert Fisk's Beirut Diary
Published: 20 August 2006
Sunday 13 August
A series of profound explosions from the south of Beirut; the Israelis "jostling the rubble" of the suburbs, as we now say, although who knows how many corpses lie in this pit? An Israeli calls me from Los Angeles. She thinks she has discovered a reason why the Lebanese Red Cross may have been targeted by the Israeli air force. "I will send you a fax proving that they are helping the Hizbollah," she says.
I await the fax, which turns out to be a New York Times report from southern Lebanon, recording how the Red Cross gave medical assistance to wounded members of the Hizbollah. I call Rachel back. The Lebanese Red Cross helped wounded American marines after they were suicide-bombed in Beirut in 1983, I tell her, and they gave help - and were criticised for it by their Lebanese neighbours - to wounded Israelis after a suicide bombing in Tyre the following year. Isn't it the duty of all Red Cross teams to help all those who are suffering? "Perhaps, but they should have detained the Hizbollah," comes the voice from Los Angeles. What? The Red Cross is now supposed to imprison Israel's enemies?
I receive another fax from Rachel. "I am for dialog (sic) but not with the Devil, Nazis et al," she says. "Reality and justice are derived from the ability to discern between good and evil, between truth and lies, and between the fireman and the arsonist. Keep safe."
A ceasefire at 8am tomorrow, or so we are told.
Monday 14 August
The Israelis and the Hizbollah fought to the end, 200 rockets into Israel and a few final bombing runs on the suburbs of Beirut. Among the last to die was a small child in the Beirut Dahiya district whose body was found clutched in her dead mother's arms. A final kick to the civilians of Lebanon, just in time to meet the truce deadline.
Cody and I set off to southern Lebanon over smashed bridges, round vast bomb craters, beating the earth down to allow Hassan's "Death Car" to drive over them, trying to avoid the thousands of unexploded shells lying in the fields. So many bombs on the Litani that the river has partly changed its course and we walk into the water. We drive to Srifa, a village which clearly was - heaven preserve us from these clichés - a Hizbollah "stronghold", but whose ruins now cover dozens of civilian dead. I am photographing the wreckage - using real film because I still feel that digital cameras lose definition - and I find that I see through the lens more pain than I see with my own eyes. I think this is because the sheer extent of the bomb damage is focused in a frame. Later, I look at my developed pictures in Beirut and am appalled by the level of destruction. Some of my pictures look like the photographs of French villages after German bombardment during my dad's First World War. They will find 36 bodies under the Srifa rubble upon which I have walked.
Epic traffic jams on the way back to Beirut as hundreds of thousands of Muslim Shias try to return to homes which in many cases no longer exist. Cody, normally a cool customer, jumps out of the car in rage to remonstrate with a man who refuses to reverse up the road to let our queue of cars through to Beirut. "The arsehole says the reverse in his car doesn't work," he says in fury. I remind Cody that Captain Cook lost his life when, after many years, he lost his temper with a native and got pierced by a spear.
Tuesday 15 August
I am sending my dispatch to The Independent from an internet café when an American nurse whom I have known for years walks up to me. "We have a badly burned woman in emergency and we've just had to tell her that her three children are dead," she says. And how did she take this news? "You can imagine. We found out she'd had her tubes tied so she can't have any more children." And her husband? "Dead," the nurse replies.
The Lebanese papers carry the news of the death in action of David Grossman's son Uri, killed fighting the Hizbollah in southern Lebanon. That Grossman, a brilliant and compassionate writer well known in Lebanon - his books are on sale here and the local newspaper reports are written with dignity - should suffer in this way seems especially cruel. I turn to his work on the Palestinians of Israel, which nestles in the bookcase beside my desk. "Every acrobat knows the secret of walking a tightrope over an abyss; the Arabs in Israel have learnt something even more difficult - to stand still on the wire," Grossman wrote in 1993. "To live a provisional life that eternally suspends and dulls the will... So it has been for decades, for hundreds of thousands of acrobats."
Wednesday 16 August
Sixteen-hour power cuts, worse than before the ceasefire. Plenty of oil tankers in Cyprus but the shipowners - and the insurers - are cravenly waiting for Israeli permission to sail their vessels to Lebanon. Hizbollah says it doesn't want to disarm. The French say they want a clearer mandate before sending troops to join the international force in southern Lebanon. I hear the ceasefire creaking.
Thursday 17 August
All the talk is of a "robust" international force and my journalistic colleagues have become besotted by the word "robust". The BBC talks about a robust mandate for a robust army and robust United Nations peacekeeping. It reminds me of the Nato manoeuvres in Germany that I watched back in the 1980s when the Reuters correspondent expressed his belief that generals loved missiles because they could no longer have erections. In the Arab world, to be arrogant is to "have a big nose", and the problem is that whenever generals in Lebanon become "robust", they tend to get their noses chopped off. We shall see.
Friday 18 August
Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah leader, has appeared on television, talking like a president - though admittedly a more impressive one than the Syrian satrap currently installed in his palace above Beirut - but acting as if the Shias of Lebanon will now define the future of the country.
Through my office window I watch the Shia poor still driving back to the blasted south of Lebanon, mattresses on the roofs of their cars, mothers and babies in the back, interspersed on the roads with Lebanese troop trucks, tanks transporters and armoured vehicles which will soon be joined - or not, as the case may be - by foreign troops to augment the UN army in the south.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article1220400.ece
The Nation:
The Strange Silence of Günter Grass
by NORMAN BIRNBAUM
[posted online on August 18, 2006]
Two friends-one born in 1913 and an exile from the Third Reich, the second born in 1927 and one of its soldiers-set out after the war to change their nation. One was Willy Brandt, who fought the Nazis underground and then returned to lead reforming governments in policies of coexistence that made the emergence of Mikhail Gorbachev possible. His unforgettable genuflection at the Warsaw Ghetto Monument in 1970 expressed the anguish, and the triumph, of that other Germany we had hoped for in the Nazi years. In his campaigns he was joined by Günter Grass, one of Germany's brilliant writers and certainly its most famous one. Grass's portrait of his native Danzig in The Tin Drum (1962) was literary proof that Germany had become a nation able to confront its dreadful past. Grass freely acknowledged that he grew up as an unreflective Nazi until, after he had been wounded in battle with the Soviet army, defeat made him think. He exemplified something else. His family was part German, part Polish (an uncle was executed by the Nazis after defending the Polish Post Office in Danzig at the outbreak of the war, a searing scene in the novel). The Poles thought of Grass in a way as one of their own and made him an honorary citizen of Danzig. A Nobel laureate in 1999, his works bestsellers in every language into which they were translated, Grass insisted that he was both an artist and a citizen. He never tired of attacking German majorities for their complacency and German elites for their cravenness, above all in deliberately turning away from the past.
The visit of Ronald Reagan to the cemetery at Bitburg in 1985 (forty years after Germany's capitulation), where he joined Chancellor Helmut Kohl to celebrate the Atlantic Alliance, infuriated Grass. Kohl was for Grass the incarnation of philistine self-satisfaction and Reagan an ignorant ideologue ready to plunge the world into nuclear war. Grass was especially vexed that Reagan was visiting the site and thus honoring members of the Waffen SS, the militarized units of the SS integrated in the German army and known for their barbaric ferocity.
Kohl, however, may have had the last word. A good deal more educated and subtle than he let on, he more than once responded to moralizing denunciations of those who had been Nazis or collaborators of the Communist regime in the German Democratic Republic by asking a question. He had been spared a choice by the "grace of later birth." Could any person say, however, what he would have done under a dictatorship?
What Grass did is clear. He has just published an autobiography of his youthful years, Peeling the Onion. For years he maintained that he was drafted as an ordinary conscript, that he had been wounded fighting against the advancing Soviet Army and taken prisoner by the United States. (He recalled being in prison camp with another member of his generation, Joseph Ratzinger, who would become Pope Benedict XVI.) Now, Grass identifies the unit into which he was conscripted in 1944 at age 17 as the Tenth SS Armored Division, the "Jorg von Frundsberg" Division. He describes the SS formations as having a European aura: Volunteers from other European nations joined them "in saving the west from the Bolshevik tide." He added, "so it was said"-but at the time he was not skeptical. He was attracted by Nazism's war on bourgeois routine, its own version of permanent revolution. In fact, he had tried unsuccessfully to join the submarine fleet earlier. He described the historic figure after whom the SS division was named as a leader in the sixteenth-century Peasants' War-a freedom fighter. He was actually a mercenary in princely service against the peasants, and it is grotesque that Grass should describe him as if he were a forerunner of Che Guevara. Jens Jessen of Die Zeit, the German weekly, has it right: Grass was a Nazi of the left.
The SS units were used for especially difficult situations-to repress conquered populations (an SS division conducted the massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane in France) and police other parts of the German army as its morale crumbled. They were originally volunteer formations, made up of enthusiastic Nazis. By the time Grass was drafted, however, the shortage of manpower was such that they became units into which conscripts were put without their consent. Grass describes his experiences of battle graphically-including urinating in his pants as he was caught in a Soviet advance. In a separate interview he declared that he had committed no crimes. None of the German researches of the division hastily undertaken in recent days have uncovered any crime the unit committed. The division was supposed to move into Berlin to rescue Hitler from his bunker. It disintegrated instead. Grass's own words follow:
Enough excuses. Still I refused for decades to utter the word SS and admit that I wore that double symbol. After the war, with growing shame, I wanted to keep silent about what I accepted in the stupid pride of my younger years. The burden remains, and no one can lighten it for me.
True, during my training as an anti-tank gunner, which stupified me in the fall and winter, I heard nothing of those crimes of war which later came to light. However, insisting on ignorance cannot veil my awareness that I was made part of a system which planned, organized and carried out the destruction of millions of human beings. Even absolved of active guilt, there remains something that doesn't go away, that all too commonly is called shared responsibility. I will have to live with that for the rest of my years.
If the English words are stilted, it is because the German ones are: Grass's literary panache deserts him when he confronts this part of his past. It is as if he were undergoing a late psychoanalysis and struggling to come to terms with matters still partially repressed. In his account of one of the battles he was in, he describes his memory of it as disappearing like a "film strip suddenly broken off. As many times as I repair it and start it again, it only shows snow." What else may now come out?
Germany isn't waiting to find out. Like the other European nations, it accords extraordinary political importance to its writers-the more so as its politicians are convincingly boring. When The Tin Drum was published, it scandalized many with its sexual frankness-and with the author's systematic disrespect for convention and tradition. Now that many more Germans are willing to accept that the world is divided into at least two sexes, Grass outrages them on other grounds. He declared that Germany did not deserve to be unified, that a larger Germany would be a threat to itself and everyone else. Later, when the former Communist German states fell into sullen impoverishment, Grass made his own their citizens' search for retroactive legitimacy and rebuked the Western citizenry for patronizing self-righteousness. More recently, he has evoked the suffering of much of the population, as when Germany in 1945 became a battle-scarred wasteland full of German refugees. He sees himself as the nation's moral preceptor. He has even moved to the vicinity of Lubeck, the city where Thomas Mann grew up, which Mann immortalized in Buddenbrooks. Mann, especially in exile after 1933, was Grass's predecessor in that role.
The award of a Nobel Prize in 1999 was interpreted by Grass's many detractors and critics as an affront-yet they could do little but grimace. Now, with the Grass confession, their time has come.
Perhaps it is the destruction of historical continuity, perhaps they sense the ultimate irrelevance of thought. Many German intellectuals these days act as if style and restraint, a sense of complexity and a gift for dealing with nuance, the admission that an adversary may have reasons, indeed belong to an older world. Grass has been portrayed as a fraud, hypocrite, poseur. Der Spiegel's cultural commentator, Hellmuth Karasek, suggested that Grass should donate his Nobel Prize earnings to the victims of the Waffen SS and "shut up." The Christian Democratic Union's cultural spokesman has demanded that Grass return his Nobel Prize. However, it is the CDU that claims-not without justification-that it performed a great service in integrating ex-Nazis in the then-new West German republic. Others have declared that the Grass confession was primarily intended to publicize the new autobiography-which exhausted an initial printing of 150,000 in two days.
One of the lines of division is generational. The Grass generation, most of whom served in the war, is decidedly less indignant. Indeed, Grass has had expressions of understanding from some not always on his side. One is the historian Ernst Nolte, whose depiction of Nazism is strikingly comprehending. The other is the writer Martin Walser, who has repeatedly complained that Germans suffer from too much of a sense of guilt. By contrast, younger authors are bothered that the older ones still monopolize attention. In a lengthy article in Der Spiegel, Reinhard Mohr (a veteran of the 1960s) portrayed the octogenarians as perpetually on the bestseller lists and criticized the TV talk shows as being still obsessed with that generation's struggles with Nazism. Mohr bespoke Oedipal envy of these strong fathers-and disappointment in Grass as a failed father figure. The only East German author to speak thus far is Erich Loest, who was jailed by the German Stalinists. He has expressed both sympathy for Grass and perplexity at his long silence.
One agitated set of responses has come from Poland. The Polish right, xenophobic and at war with the Enlightenment, has seized upon the Grass confession as a gift from heaven. Apparently, that the apostle of modernity has also been an engaged partisan of German-Polish reconciliation disturbed their crude picture of the world. Lech Walesa has now threatened to reject his honorary citizenship of Danzig if the one awarded to Grass is not revoked. Walesa's erstwhile intellectual ally in Solidarity, Adam Michnik, has declared that nonsensical. Grass has been defended by the presiding bishop of the Polish Bishop's Conference, who declared that he will emerge "larger" from the confession. Perhaps he recognizes the Catholic soul not entirely buried in Grass's psyche.
Finally, there are the Social Democrats-Grass's own party. One of its more reflective intellectuals is Johano Strasser, who is also president of German PEN. Strasser has declared the entire discussion exaggerated. He joins Wolfgang Thierse, the former president of the Parliament (and someone who worked as a literary historian in Communist Germany) in emphasizing the obvious, that a good many public figures joyously welcomed the opportunity to denigrate Grass. For Strasser and Thierse, Grass's achievements and his contribution to German democracy cannot be diminished. Strasser asked of those now announcing, delightedly or not, that Grass has lost moral authority-wasn't it you who gave it to him?
I know Grass, have had the honor of speaking alongside him in Germany on political occasions, and regard him as a cultural giant and a worthy successor to Thomas Mann. Mann's great political friend was Franklin Roosevelt, who thought of him as the incarnation of Europe's cultural legacy. I also knew Brandt, and I think that I intuited exactly what drew Brandt to Grass-his sense of the precariousness of that legacy, of the necessity to seize our small chances of making human existence better, his rejection of resigned conformity, his bitter humor at human foible. They also shared a great enjoyment of the consolations of life. Nothing in the Grass confession changes that, and it makes Grass's journey from the Hitler Youth to his function as a secular prophet no less admirable.
Still, his near lifetime of silence about the Waffen SS, whatever his friends may think, does diminish his accomplishments in the public sphere-by encouraging that ultimate corrosive of democratic politics, cynical distrust of good intentions. If even anti-Nazism can be portrayed, however wrongly, as part of the repertory of self-promotion, what chance is there of convincing the public that anything is serious? Grass treated himself with the indulgence he did not hesitate to describe as a moral defect in others. He wasted the opportunity presented by the Bitburg controversy to teach the nation a lesson that would have been hard to forget. Another missed occasion was his intervention against those who, eager to denounce the ex-Communists in East Germany, ostentatiously ignored how rapidly and thoroughly West Germany forgave its Nazis-in effect, forgave itself.
Perhaps we should be prepared for more to come, as Grass in his final years confronts his early ones. He has made it too easy for those eager to dismiss him. He is in considerable danger of being depicted as a tiresome old man whose act has become stale-and the fault lies not with his enemies but with himself. In the meantime, Grass's fellow Nobel laureate, the Italian Dario Fo, when asked about Grass, cited Bertolt Brecht: "Pity the land that needs heroes." The German response to Grass's confession shows how needy the Germans remain. We are all the losers.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/birnbaum
The Nation:
White Heat
by BOB MOSER
[from the August 28, 2006 issue]
Nashville
"When I tell you that the area where I grew up now resembles Tijuana more than the US-well, hang on, you're about to see what I mean," says Theresa Harmon. Tennessee's most vociferous anti-immigration organizer has just picked me up, straight from work at a local construction firm, in her red 1986 Mercury Cougar-a "kicker," she calls it fondly, apologizing for the lack of air-conditioning. "Bless your heart-I'm used to the heat," she says, talking her usual mile a minute as she puffs a Misty long and noses into rush-hour traffic, headed for the South Nashville neighborhood where she grew up. "I mean, who would have ever thought Nashville would be an illegal alien magnet?" she says. "Nashville!"
In fact, the country-music capital has rapidly morphed into what one writer dubbed "a new Ellis Island," the unlikely symbol of America's biggest refugee and immigrant resettlement since the Industrial Revolution. For more than a decade now, most immigrants have been bypassing traditional urban destinations in favor of Middle American towns and cities where jobs are abundant and unemployment is scant. Music City has ranked first among US cities since 1990 in immigration growth, and now has the largest community of Kurdish refugees in the United States. Like the rest of Tennessee, Nashville also ranks high as a destination for undocumented Hispanics-and that's the part that rankles Harmon. "The Kurds are the nicest people you'd ever want to meet," she says. "A lot like the Hispanic folk we've had here for a long time."
Not the new ones. "Sadly, I've gotten to where I can look at a row of houses now and say, 'They're legal-they're illegal.' Simply because the ones that are legal tend to have that pride of place. The illegals? They don't give a rat's hind end about fitting in or being a US citizen. They're here because they want money, and that's it. They brought their chickens-in-the-yard culture over here with them. You see ten cars parked in the front yard, where you used to see flower beds."
Harmon has known some of those flower beds for decades. "My neighborhood is gone," she declares, steering down a winding hill through her old haunts. "I can't read the signs because I don't speak Spanish-in my native country!" As we hang a right onto the heavily trafficked business artery of Murfreesboro Road, Harmon starts pointing out evidence right and left. "As you see, everything for blocks is either a check-cashing place, a PayDay Loan or something Mexican. I don't know what the deal is with that one," she says, aiming a burgundy fingernail at a DryCleanersUSA sign, festooned in Stars and Stripes, that has been hung upside down.
"I can tell you what was in every one of these buildings until about five years ago," she says. "Some of them have been here since I was a child. Right there was my dentist's office," she says, pointing to a Western Union sign. "Now if it's not for rent, it's got a Mexican sign on it."
Harmon's culture shock was part of what prompted her to co-found Tennesseans for Responsible Immigration Policies (TRIP), now the state's leading anti-immigration group, in 2001. But even if she sometimes sounds like a walking, talking cultural-backlash cliché, she doesn't exactly fit the mold. Harmon, who as a teenager cruised South Nashville with a big gold marijuana-leaf decal on the back of her Camaro ("it matched," she says), has always had a rebellious streak as wide as Tennessee. "Maybe I read too many mysteries as a child," she says. "I have to think out of the box." She fell in love with activism in 1999 when she partnered with the ACLU in a successful challenge to a new uniform policy at two of her children's public schools. "I don't know about you, but I see kids going to school in uniforms, and I'm seeing little Nazis heiling Hitler."
Harmon sees the same mindless conformity taking hold in America. "We've let George W. Bush do more damage than Bill Clinton and every President before him could have even thought about doing. It's all about corporations. They run this country, and they run this world. That's not a world I want to live in. But everybody just behaves like sheep." Including those who've supported the war in Iraq. "How many kids did we have killed over there today for no good reason?" she asks. "Two? Ten? Twenty? Get. Them. Out. Of. There." It all fits together for Harmon: opposing Bush, opposing corporatism and opposing immigration. "This whole influx happened because big business wants cheap labor," she says. "Just like that war is making corporations a lot of money. And Bush is doing all he can to help them."
As the temperature over immigration keeps rising, Harmon says she worries about the level of frustration she's hearing, more and more, from other nativists in Tennessee and around the country. "The most popular formula is, 'soap box, ballot box, ammo box.' They'll X out the first two, like those options are gone and all you can do is arm yourself and get ready. I'm looking at that going, phew! It's going to get ugly."
Welcome to Tennessee, white-hot nexus of the new American nativism. When Governor Phil Bredesen complained this summer that Tennesseans were being whipped into a "frenzy" over immigration, some took issue with the culprits he cited-opportunistic Republican candidates-but not a soul could challenge the accuracy of his description. From formerly homogenous factory towns in East Tennessee to the formerly biracial city of Memphis in the west, the topic of the day-the debate of the day-is how to handle Tennessee's transformation into a major "destination state" for immigrants.
The transformation commenced in the 1990s, when Tennessee's immigrant population shot up 278 percent. The backlash was muted until April 2001, when the state became the first to grant driver's licenses to undocumented immigrants. The legislative battle over licenses sparked immigrant-rights activism across the state. It also stoked fears among many natives that the already-brisk migration into Tennessee might just keep picking up steam. "If you make yourself a welcome wagon for immigrants, you'll get plenty," says Donna Locke, head of Tennesseans for Immigration Control and Reform. "That's certainly what Tennessee did."
The groundswell of anti-immigrant sentiment first started to crest five months after the driver's license bill was passed, says David Lubell, director of TIRRC (Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition): "After September 11, that's when it all changed here. They started to talk about 'driver's licenses for terrorists.' Opinions really began to harden."
In the state legislature immigration-rights groups still usually have the upper hand. This year, they fended off nineteen of twenty "reform" bills, losing only a minor skirmish. Having a Democratic majority in the state House, which generally sticks together on immigration issues, certainly helps-as does the pro-immigration lobbying muscle of the state's Chambers of Commerce.
But on the campaign trail, especially this year, nativism rules. The big statewide race this year is to replace Bill Frist in the US Senate, and it features three Republican contenders who've spent much of the primary season honing their Wyatt Earp imitations. One of them, former State Representative Ed Bryant, got so carried away in May that he lit out for the Arizona border to help the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps splice together a fence. Not to be outdone, shoo-in Democratic nominee Harold Ford Jr., the whiz-kid Congressman with a generally moderate voting record on immigration issues, hit the airwaves in June with a startling new ad. "Every day over 5,700 miles of border stands unsecured," Ford's voice intones solemnly. "Every day almost 2,000 people enter America illegally. Every day hundreds of employers look the other way, handing out jobs that keep illegals coming. And every day the rest of us pay the price."
While politicians legitimize nativist arguments, the flames of bigotry are fanned in Tennessee by a plethora of sources-not only "mainstream" anti-immigration groups and websites like Harmon's and Locke's but ad hoc "concerned citizens" groups in small towns around the state. Fears of a Ku Klux Klan revival in East Tennessee have been stoked by large turnouts of Tennessee Klansmen at recent rallies of a newly invigorated KKK in nearby northern Alabama-and by two hate crimes that put Tennessee immigrants on notice last year. In one case, a former Klansman named Daniel Shertz was arrested for plotting to blow up buses carrying Hispanic immigrants from Tennessee to Florida. In the other, a Mexican grocery store in Maryville was torn up by five young white supremacists who scrawled swastikas, "SS," and "WP," for white power, on the front of the store as their calling card.
"Tennessee has a uniquely toxified mix when it comes to immigration," says Devin Burghart of the Center for New Community, which monitors the nativist movement and works to counter its message. The toxins don't just come from campaign rhetoric, and anti-immigration and hate groups-they also churn up through the media. In June the big Nashville daily, the Tennessean, rolled out the colorful story of Coopertown Mayor Danny Crosby, a modern-day Boss Hog who-among a stunning array of other alleged offenses-reportedly ordered his officers to target Hispanics for traffic tickets (whether or not they committed any violations). But the Crosby saga didn't stand a chance against the lurid tale of drunk-driving Mexican immigrant Gustavo Garcia Reyes, who after numerous previous convictions ran into and killed a white couple in Mount Juliet, the Nashville suburb where Theresa Harmon lives. For weeks his mug shot made regular appearances on front pages as the story flew around nativist websites nationwide and landed on Fox News. But nobody rode the story harder than Tennessee's most poisonous media personality.
Late this April, in an old factory complex converted into swank suburban shopping digs in the Nashville suburb of Franklin, more than 1,000 Tennesseans came out to cheer their hero, 99.7-FM drive-home-time host Phil Valentine. The son of a former Democratic Congressman in North Carolina, Valentine is a leading voice-and instigator-of Tennessee's nativist backlash. "Wake up and smell the tacos," Valentine likes to say, flaunting his political incorrectness. His website recently featured a full-color image of the Statue of Liberty wearing a sombrero, with a huge black mustache pasted on, a jar of salsa instead of a flame and a bottle of Patron cradled in her lower hand. Liberty rests on a tottering foundation of Chicklets, Tostitos and a Taco Bell sign.
All in all, a lot like the "joke" that slipped out of Valentine's mouth at his rally in Franklin, where three Republican state legislators joined him on stage. Susan Tully, field director of FAIR (the Washington-based Federation for American Immigration Reform), was complaining about the Border Patrol's "catch and release" policy, saying that illegal immigrants were returned the first time they were caught, the second time, the third time...all the way to seven times. And what, Tully asked rhetorically, do we do the eighth time? "Shoot 'em!" Valentine interjected. The surburbanites roared their approval.
Two months later, in his nondescript studio on Music Circle, I ask about his incendiary comment. "I just said that as an ice-breaker and as a joke," he says. "I am not a racist. I'm not advocating seriously that we shoot anybody. It's just the frustration level."
The frustration level among Tennessee nativists began to reach fever pitch this spring. On March 29 more than 10,000 Hispanic immigrants marched in the largest protest in Nashville history; there were smaller but impressive marches in several other towns and cities across the state. Then came the "Day Without Immigrants" boycott on May 1, when an estimated 10,000 Hispanics in Tennessee took part. Valentine organized a counterboycott with Theresa Harmon's group, TRIP, targeting businesses that shut down for the day. "I've talked to people who said that before the protests they were sitting on the sidelines," Valentine says, "but now they are incensed. They see that these people are carrying Mexican flags, they don't speak English-they are in your face. People are more attuned to what the problem is."
Valentine's show dishes up a full menu of problems: immigrant diseases, "terrorist gangs" and, of course, illegal killers. "If these people were to get vetted like everybody else, we would get rid of the Gustavo Garcia Reyeses before they come over the border," he says. "That particular case has really put a face on the immigration debate like nothing else." That's partly because of Valentine's efforts. The murder in Mount Juliet gave him a perfect opportunity to alert his listeners to a purported wave of violent crime committed by illegal immigrants in Tennessee and nationwide. "I have heard that from thirteen to twenty-five people a day are being killed by illegal immigrants," he tells me. (He's a little sketchy on the source.)
But does Valentine believe the biggest nativist myth of all, that there's a reconquista afoot? "Oh, absolutely," he says. "Not with all of them, but with many of them. I think there's a plan to move Hispanics into the Southwest and vote it back to Mexico. I think there's a big plan to do that. They think that the territory was taken illegally from them in the Mexican-American War. That's where this reconquista thing comes from. They are nuts. This is the United States of America. We can't change that!"
Nor should we have to, Valentine says. "A lot of these people who are illegal want to come and plant their culture inside of ours," he says. "We're having to, now, speak Spanish, and try to understand them. We've never had to understand anybody."
Phil Valentine gets on Rick Casares's very last nerve. "I don't like to say this about anybody," Casares says, "but he's just a racist." Casares has been working only six months as outreach coordinator for TIRRC, the statewide immigration-rights group, and he knows he needs to be more politic when talking to reporters. But he feels this in his bones. "For me, it's personal," he says. "My parents were illegal immigrants from Mexico." His father, among other accomplishments, rose to become mayor pro tem in the predominantly white town of Rosemeade, California. Still, Casares says, it was ugly at times. But the discrimination he saw his parents face "pales to what immigrants face today in this climate of poisonous rhetoric."
Casares's job is to detoxify. He's heading a new Welcoming Tennessee Initiative, inspired by a successful effort in Iowa. "We're trying to highlight what we have in common, and get past the myths and stereotypes that diminish immigrants' worth," he says. The myth-busting message will be spread around the state by regional volunteers trained to address civil and community groups, churches, minority and business groups. Welcoming Tennessee has also launched a billboard campaign appealing directly to native Tennesseans' values. The first shows two grinning children and quotes the Book of Matthew: "I was a stranger, and you welcomed me." The second is a collage of images of immigrants throughout US history; the message is, "Welcome the Immigrant You Once Were."
Casares knows that welcoming immigrants is not exactly at the top of most Tennesseans' agendas these days. "Last year we turned back gay marriage," he says. "This year we're turning back the brown horde."
"The facts just bounce off people," says Casares's TIRRC colleague Stephen Fotopulos. "The way people get their news now, there's no way to counter the image of a white, native-born Tennessee family killed by an illegal immigrant. It is so much harder to quantify, to get your mind around, all the benefits that would go away if these same people weren't here."
It's especially hard when people are yelling at you because you're standing up for "illegals." Like Casares, Fotopulos is a military veteran who says his training from hazardous-duty zones now serves him well. "I'm still surprised at the things people will say," he says, reading from a recent e-mail message: "'You are a lying, deceitful, rotten traitor and an enemy to every American for betraying your country.... If you like illegal aliens so much, why don't you go south of the border, live there and stay there? And take all the other turd-lovers and criminal illegal alien lawbreaking filth with you. You belong with the other inferior, substandard scum. You're not good enough to be an American.'"
While there's no doubt 2006 has already been a tumultuous year in Tennessee, Fotopulos says he's "not pessimistic at all. I'm constantly amazed at how we'll go out to a rally where people have these Phil Valentine talking points and are as certain as they can be. We start talking about it, and we usually end up at a reasonable place where we see that we really do want the same things. It's bad to have a system that doesn't work. It is. And there are people here who have very real cultural concerns, who see the life they've known being submerged. We can talk about that. But what truly changes people is human contact. In fifteen years everybody here will know Hispanics personally, and it just won't be so much of an issue."
In the meantime, Fotopulos sees the bright side. "What I really value about being in Tennessee right now," he says, "is that this is Middle America, and there's no winning this immigration debate without understanding what people here think."
It's easy to chalk up the nativist frenzy in Tennessee entirely to the usual suspects: gut-level racism, bigotry, ignorance, NIMBYism, right-wing radio hosts. But what's eating Tennesseans, and hundreds of thousands of other Middle American nativists, is also something deeper, subtler-and likely to outlast the current debates over immigration policy. "This is not just about immigrants and immigration," says Devin Burghart. "It's something much greater-the nexus of race, national identity, who we are and who we want to be."
You can hear it in Theresa Harmon's worries about corporate fascism. You can hear it from Tennessee's other leading anti-immigration activist, Donna Locke, whose quality-of-life concerns are larger than NIMBYism. Locke, who says, "I consider myself a liberal," once agitated for "all the usual late '60s and early '70s causes." The issue that stuck with her into adulthood was overpopulation and what it means for the human environment. "I've always felt that America could set an example for the rest of the world by dealing sensibly with population growth," she says. "The more crowded it gets, the cheaper life becomes, and the easier it becomes to exploit people. Individuality dies, and with it dies a lot of what makes us ethical and moral human beings. I think it will be a disaster for the whole world if America loses that. And we are losing it. You can see it happening in Tennessee."
You can hear those broader anxieties, in very different terms, from Carol Swain. A black conservative who studies white nationalism and teaches at Vanderbilt University, Swain believes that by "not thinking deeply about our immigration policies, we have created the conditions for long-term racial unrest." As the day when white Americans constitute a minority of the population grows nearer, Swain predicts, "white people will increasingly see themselves as under attack. And it makes sense. If I were white, I would be feeling a lot of fear and uncertainty. I'd want to talk about it openly, too. But you can't talk about it. That's a big reason the lure of white nationalism is strong right now. As we dance around the real issues, ordinary people will find answers where they can."
When I ask Swain why she is an immigration restrictionist herself, she ponders a while, then puts a new spin on the deep-seated frustrations that simmer beneath the surface of the new nativism. "I'd feel better about it if I believed in this country," she says. "When I see how poor black and white people are treated-and have been treated-I can't hold out any hope that millions of working-poor Hispanic people are going to receive better treatment. Things are not fluid in America. The system is not fair. Immigrants will learn that after a while. The American Dream promises a lot, but delivers very little."
"Now, you be careful," the director of Tennessee's Minuteman Civil Defense Corps is telling me over the phone. "Don't drive too fast. Take your time. Be safe."
I'm headed toward Jim Carter's home and shooting range, twenty minutes south of Nashville in the booming suburb of Murfreesboro. Telltale signs of breakneck development whoosh by on either side of the highway: long swaths of denuded earth, ragged mounds of orangy dirt, Hispanic workers climbing and hammering. Carter lives out beyond the new subdivisions, on ten woody acres ringed by an electronic security fence. He waves me through the front gate and points me, aircraft carrier-style, to a spot on the front lawn where my rental car can sit in the shade. After introducing one of his Minuteman "coordinators," a hulking young carpenter named Ryan Kerr, Carter leads us into the comfy house he built, "foundation up," after retiring from his job painting commercial aircraft. As we sit down on his glassed-in back porch, Carter fetches me a cold bottle of water. I'm beginning to wonder what such a gentle soul is doing leading a Minuteman group. Until a few minutes later, when Carter leans forward, gazes laserlike through his yellow shooting lenses and declares: "We have some people already who are like kindling. We have to be the spark. We're gonna get the fire roaring. People are gonna have a bonfire."
Carter, a Vietnam vet with a white beard and rosy complexion, started sparking his Minuteman chapter in February. He now has "over eighty" volunteers signed up. It's hard work, though. "I probably get thirty, forty e-mails each and every day with people wanting information," says Carter. "My wife complains because sometimes I have to work from 6 o'clock in the morning until I can't see anymore, have to turn the headlights on the lawn mower."
Why does he do it? When I ask the question, Carter turns to Kerr-as if to say, there's your reason. Until recently, Kerr ran his own framing business. He says he did well until he refused to join his peers in hiring illegal immigrants and slashing wages. "By trying to be legit, I was losing twelve to fifteen hundred a house as I was framing. I had fifteen people working for me, three crews. By being stubborn, I ran my business into the dirt. If I'd hired illegal immigrants, I'd be living high on the hog right now."
Carter says that much of the Minuteman membership, so far, consists of white folks-and two black men-who've had similar struggles. Now they're hatching plans to confront local construction firms that have "gone brown." "We'll pick our places, inform the owners of our intentions, and then we'll start marching on them," Kerr says. "To me, it's a no-brainer. If we show up with eighty or ninety people and the Daily News Journal, we're probably going to stop this. Within a month, we'll get rid of all of them. They're going to know the heat is coming."
The other goal, Carter says, is to recruit enough members "to have a small group on the border, fifty-two weeks out of the year." He and Kerr both plan to be part of the MCDC's next Border Watch month, in October. Carter will surely not lack for ammunition. At the immigrant-rights march in Nashville this spring, when he was accompanied by about twenty-five other counterprotesters, "I had five guns on me. I had over 150 extra rounds of ammo just in case. I didn't know what was going to happen, or who was going to be there."
Kerr is resigning his membership on the county's Republican Party executive committee now that he's a Minuteman leader. "What I'm doing now is going to upset a lot of people who put me forth" in the GOP, he says. "I've been a contractor here for twelve years. I know these people. And they know me, and know that I'm a 250-pound state wrestler. They have that in the back of their heads. My goal is to have twenty contractors up in my face. If I don't have twenty, I'm not making enough noise."
"The only time we will become violent is in self-defense," Carter interjects.
"Yeah, well, they're going to come after me. There's going to be some upset people who are affected by this. My thing is, you make the first move and there's witnesses, and we'll take care of it from there." A five-beat pause. "But let's hope it won't come to that. Calm. Positive attitude. Restraint." Kerr says it like a mantra he's trying to learn-so much so that it makes us all laugh. Until Carter speaks up.
"If it gets too violent, I still got six acres out on Walter Hill," he says, referring to a plot of land he owns in the country. "I'll take my tent out there, take my long guns with me, put up my tent and stay out there."
"If they come to shoot you, they'll have to hit me first."
"Well, if they shoot through you they'll hit me, 'cause I'll be right there with you."
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/moser
The Observer:
Army raid in Bekaa 'breaks' ceasefire
Lebanese Defence Minister threatens to halt deployment of troops in former Hizbollah areas
Inigo Gilmore in Jerusalem and Jason Burke in Paris
Sunday August 20, 2006
The ceasefire in Lebanon was holding by a thread last night after Israel sanctioned a commando raid in the east of the country. Kofi Annan, the United Nations secretary general, said Israel had violated the truce, and he was 'deeply concerned' about it.
But the Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, claimed that the attack was intended to prevent the supply of new weapons and ammunition to Hizbollah.
Meanwhile renewed arguments developed about the composition of the UN peacekeeping force in the south of the country. As the first international troops charged with boosting the UN Interim Force (Unifil) in Lebanon - 50 French soldiers - landed yesterday near Naqoura, three miles from the Israeli border, the Lebanese Defence Minister threatened to halt the deployment of Lebanese national troops into areas previously controlled by Hizbollah.
France, one of the architects of the ceasefire that ended the 33-day conflict between Israel and Hizbollah last week, has disappointed expectations that it would provide the backbone of the 15,000 international reinforcements. Jacques Chirac, the French President, has spoken with leaders from several countries to stress the need for a clearer mandate for an enlarged UN peacekeeping force in Lebanon, his office said.
Envoys sent to the region by Annan have so far sent back positive reports, praising the efforts of both the Lebanese and Israeli armies to uphold their obligations under the recently passed UN resolution 1701.
The Israeli commando raid thus took observers by surprise. The deployment of Lebanese forces and the eventual disarmament of Hizbollah have been a demand of Olmert's government.
Early yesterday, troops from the Matkal, a special forces elite unit, launched a commando raid near the Hizbollah stronghold of Baalbek, in the Beka valley. During the ensuing firefight one officer was killed and two injured. Israeli reports said the commandos were in two vehicles unloaded from helicopters, and were on their way to attack the office of a Hizbollah official in the village of Bodai when they were intercepted. Lebanese security officials said that three Hizbollah guerrillas were killed in the fighting.
Violating the ceasefire yesterday, Israeli aircraft also fired rockets at a target in eastern Lebanon. The Israel Defence Forces said the air raid was aimed at disrupting the shipment of weapons to Hizbollah guerrillas from Syria and Iran.
'Special forces carried out an operation to disrupt terror actions against Israel with an emphasis on the transfer of munitions from Syria and Iran to Hizbollah,' an IDF spokesman said, adding that the operation had achieved its aims.
The Israeli Foreign Ministry said that continued Hizbollah arms shipments and the absence of Lebanese and international troops on the border had made the raid necessary.
'Israel reserves the right to act in order to enforce the spirit of the [UN] resolution,' said spokesman Mark Regev. Resolution 1701 ordered Israel to end 'all offensive military actions' and Hizbollah to end all attacks. It also called for an embargo on unauthorised arms supplies to Lebanon.
Witnesses saw a destroyed bridge 500 yards from the area where the commandos landed. They said they believed it had been destroyed by Israeli missiles.
An Israeli cabinet minister told Israeli radio that Hizbollah was preventing the UN force entering towns in the south.
The minister speculated that, if this did not change, Israelis could be back for a 'second round' of fighting in the south.
At least 1,183 people in Lebanon and 157 Israelis were killed in the war. Israel said it had killed more than 530 Hizbollah fighters - at least five times more than the group has acknowledged.
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/world/story/0,,1854228,00.html
The Observer:
Uri, my dear son
As the Lebanon war raged, David Grossman, the celebrated Israeli writer, publicly urged his government to accept a ceasefire. Just days later, his soldier son was killed by one of Hizbollah's final anti-tank missiles. This is the eulogy he read at the funeral
Sunday August 20, 2006
At 20 to three in the morning, between Saturday and Sunday, the doorbell rang. Over the intercom, they said they were from the army. For three days, every thought begins with: 'He/we won't.'
He won't come. We won't talk. We won't laugh. He won't be that kid with the ironic look in his eyes and the amazing sense of humour. He won't be that young person with understanding deeper than his years. There won't be that warm smile and healthy appetite. There won't be that rare combination of determination and gentleness. There won't be his common sense and wisdom. We won't sit down together to watch The Simpsons and Seinfeld, and we won't listen to Johnny Cash, and we won't feel the strong embrace. We won't see you going to talk to your brother, Yonatan, with excited hand movements and we won't see you hugging your sister, Ruthie, the love of your life.
Uri, my love. All your short life, we have all learned from you, from the strength and determination to go your own way. To go your own way even if there is no way you could succeed. We followed with amazement your struggle to get into the tank commanders' course. How you never compromised with your commanders, because you knew you would be a great commander. You were not satisfied to give less than you thought you could. And when you succeeded, I thought here's a man who knows his own abilities in such a simple and wise way. Here's a man who has no pretensions or arrogance, who isn't influenced by what others say about him, whose source of strength is internal.
From childhood, you were like that. A child who live in harmony with himself and those around him. A child who knew his place, and knew that he was loved, who recognised his limitations and strengths. And truly, from the moment you forced the army to make you a commander, it was clear what kind of commander and person you were. We hear today from your comrades and your subordinates about the commander and friend. About the person who got up before everyone else in order to organise everything and who went to sleep only after everyone else had. And yesterday, at midnight, I looked at our house which was quite a mess after the visits of hundreds of people who came to console us and I said to myself: 'Well, now we need Uri, to help us organise it again.'
You were the leftie of your battalion and you were respected for it, because you stood your ground, without giving up even one of your military assignments ...
You were a son and a friend to me and to Mummy. Our soul is tied to yours. You felt good in yourself and you were a good person to live with. I cannot even say out loud how much you were 'Someone to Run With'. Every furlough you would say: 'Dad, let's talk' and we would go, usually to a restaurant, and talk. You told me so much, Uri, and I felt proud that I was your confidante.
I won't say anything now about the war you were killed in. We, our family, have already lost in this war. The state of Israel will have its own reckoning ...
Uri was such an Israeli child; even his name was very Israeli and Hebrew. He was the essence of Israeli-ness as I would want it to be. An Israeli-ness that has almost been forgotten, that is something of a curiosity. And he was a person so full of values. That word has been so eroded and has become ridiculed in recent years. In our crazy, cruel and cynical world, it's not 'cool' to have values, or to be a humanist, or to be truly sensitive to the suffering of the other, even if that other is your enemy on the battlefield.
However, I learned from Uri that it is both possible and necessary to be all that. We have to guard ourselves, by defending ourselves both physically and morally. We have to guard ourselves from might and simplistic thinking, from the corruption that is in cynicism, from the pollution of the heart and the ill-treatment of humans, which are the biggest curse of those living in a disastrous region like ours. Uri simply had the courage to be himself, always and in all situations - to find his exact voice in every thing he said and did. That's what guarded him from the pollution and corruption and the diminishing of the soul.
'In the night between Saturday and Sunday, at 20 to three in the morning, our doorbell rang. The person said through the intercom that he was from the army, and I went down to open the door, and I thought to myself - that's it, life's over. But five hours later, when Michal and I went into Ruthie's room to wake her and tell her the terrible news, Ruthie, after first crying, said: 'But we will live, right? We will live and trek like before and I want to continue singing in a choir, and we will continue to laugh like always and I want to learn to play guitar.' And we hugged her and told her that we will live.'
We will derive our strength from Uri; he had enough for many years to come. Vitality, warmth and love radiated from him strongly, and that will shine on us even if the star that made it has been extinguished. Our love, we had a great honour to live with you. Thank you for every moment that you were ours.
Father and Mother, Yonatan and Ruthie.
· Translated from the original Hebrew by Joseph Millis, world news editor of the Jewish Chronicle
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,1854239,00.html
posted by attilav at 21:09
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