Saturday, August 26, 2006

Elsewhere Today (389)



Aljazeera:
Iran launches new nuclear project


Saturday 26 August 2006, 11:41 Makka Time, 8:41 GMT

The Iranian president has inaugurated a new phase in the Arak heavy-water reactor project, part of Iran's atomic programme which the West fears is aimed at producing bombs.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inaugurated the project and toured the site at Khondab, which is near Arak, 190km southwest of the capital Tehran.

The plant's plutonium by-product could be used to make atomic warheads.

The move comes days before a UN deadline for Iran to halt uranium enrichment, the part of the programme which is the biggest worry to the West, and is likely to raise further fears in Western capitals.

"Inaugurating the heavy water production plant in Arak is a big step towards using Iran's right, which means reaching peaceful nuclear technology," Hamid Reza Asefi, a foreign ministry spokesman, was quoted by state television as saying.

Not constructive

An Iranian nuclear official said this week that heavy water production itself was not a proliferation risk but a Western diplomat said such a move would not be a constructive step.

Western nations accuse Iran of seeking to master technology to produce nuclear weapons. Iran, the world's fourth largest oil exporter, says its aim is only for electricity and that it has no plans to build atomic weapons.

Iran's highest authority, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a religious decree last year, saying that making, stockpiling or using nuclear weapons was against Islamic beliefs.

The Khondab complex is protected by dozens of anti-aircraft guns and surrounded by a four-metre high barbed wire fence.

The Iranian nuclear official had said Iran would start up heavy-water production but not the reactor. He said the unit had no military use so supervision by the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), was not obligatory.

"The product of this project provides for cooling and depleting systems of the reactor, that can be used in various industries," the official said.

The UN Security Council passed a resolution on July 31 giving Iran 30 days to halt enrichment or face possible sanctions.

The resolution also cited a call by the IAEA for Iran to reconsider construction of its heavy water reactor project.

Mohammad Reza Bahonar, Iran's deputy parliament speaker, warned the West in comments published by Iran's Sharq newspaper on Saturday that putting pressure on the country could prompt public calls for Iran to pursue a weapons programme.

"Be afraid of the day that the Iranian nation comes into the streets and stages demonstrations to ask the government to produce nuclear weapons to combat the threats," he said.

Reuters

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D5F8D347-9CE1-46C1-8058-2BBE5F95072C.htm



AlterNet:
The Trouble with Bush's 'Islamofascism'


By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
Posted on August 26, 2006

If you control the language, you control the debate. As the Bush Administration's Middle Eastern policy sinks ever deeper into bloody incoherence, the "war on terror" has been getting a quiet linguistic makeover. It's becoming the "war on Islamic fascism." The term has been around for a while - Nexis takes it back to 1990, when the writer and historian Malise Ruthven used "Islamo-fascism" in the London Independent to describe the authoritarian governments of the Muslim world; after 9/11 it was picked up by neocons and prowar pundits, including Stephen Schwartz in the Spectator and Christopher Hitchens in this magazine, to describe a broad swath of Muslim bad guys from Osama to the mullahs of Iran.

But the term moved into the mainstream this August when Bush referred to the recently thwarted Britain-based suicide attack plot on airplanes as "a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists." Joe Lieberman compares Iraq to "the Spanish Civil War, which was the harbinger of what was to come." The move away from "war on terrorism" arrives not a moment too soon for language fussbudgets who had problems with the idea of making war on a tactic. To say nothing of those who wondered why, if terrorism was the problem, invading Iraq was the solution. (From the President's August 21 press conference: Q: "But what did Iraq have to do with September 11?" A: "Nothing." Now he tells us!)

What's wrong with "Islamo-fascism"? For starters, it's a terrible historical analogy. Italian Fascism, German Nazism and other European fascist movements of the 1920s and '30s were nationalist and secular, closely allied with international capital and aimed at creating powerful, up-to-date, all-encompassing states. Some of the trappings might have been anti-modernist - Mussolini looked back to ancient Rome, the Nazis were fascinated by Nordic mythology and other Wagnerian folderol - but the basic thrust was modern, bureaucratic and rational. You wouldn't find a fascist leader consulting the Bible to figure out how to organize the banking system or the penal code or the women's fashion industry. Even its anti-Semitism was "scientific": The problem was the Jews' genetic inferiority and otherness, which countless biologists, anthropologists and medical researchers were called upon to prove - not that the Jews killed Christ and refused to accept the true faith.

Call me pedantic, but if only to remind us that the worst barbarities of the modern era were committed by the most modern people, I think it is worth preserving "fascism" as a term with specific historical content.

Second, and more important, "Islamo-fascism" conflates a wide variety of disparate states, movements and organizations as if, like the fascists, they all want similar things and are working together to achieve them. Neocons have called Saddam Hussein and the Baathists of Syria Islamo-fascists, but these relatively secular nationalist tyrants have nothing in common with shadowy, stateless, fundamentalist Al Qaeda - as even Bush now acknowledges - or with the Taliban, who want to return Afghanistan to the seventh century; and the Taliban aren't much like Iran, which is different from (and somewhat less repressive than) Saudi Arabia - whoops, our big ally in the Middle East! Who are the "Islamo-fascists" in Saudi Arabia - the current regime or its religious-fanatical opponents? It was under the actually existing US-supported government that female students were forced back into their burning school rather than be allowed to escape unveiled. Under that government people are lashed and beheaded, women can't vote or drive, non-Muslim worship is forbidden, a religious dress code is enforced by the state through violence and Wahhabism - the "Islamo-fascist" denomination-is exported around the globe.

"Islamo-fascism" looks like an analytic term, but really it's an emotional one, intended to get us to think less and fear more. It presents the bewildering politics of the Muslim world as a simple matter of Us versus Them, with war to the end the only answer, as with Hitler. If you doubt that every other British Muslim under the age of 30 is ready to blow himself up for Allah, or that shredding the Constitution is the way to protect ourselves from suicide bombers, if you think that Hamas might be less popular if Palestinians were less miserable, you get cast as Neville Chamberlain, while Bush plays FDR. "Islamo-fascism" rescues the neocons from harsh verdicts on the invasion of Iraq ("cakewalk... roses... sweetmeats... Chalabi") by reframing that ongoing debacle as a minor chapter in a much larger story of evil madmen who want to fly the green flag of Islam over the capitals of the West. Suddenly it's just a detail that Saddam wasn't connected with 9/11, had no WMDs, was not poised to attack the United States or Israel - he hated freedom, and that was enough. It doesn't matter, either, that Iraqi Sunnis and Shiites seem less interested in uniting the umma than in murdering one another. With luck we'll be so scared we won't ask why anyone should listen to another word from people who were spectacularly wrong about the biggest politico-military initiative of the past thirty years, and their balding heads will continue to glow on our TV screens for many nights to come. On to Tehran!

It remains to be seen if "Islamo-fascism" will win back the socially liberal "security moms" who voted for Bush in 2004 but have recently been moving toward the Democrats. But the word is already getting a big reaction in the Muslim world. As I write the New York Times is carrying a full page "open letter" to Bush from the Al Kharafi Group, the mammoth Kuwaiti construction company, featuring photos of dead and wounded Lebanese civilians. "We think there is a misunderstanding in determining: "'Who deserves to be accused of being a fascist'!!!!"

"Islamo-fascism" enrages to no purpose the dwindling number of Muslims who don't already hate us. At the same time, it clouds with ideology a range of situations - Lebanon, Palestine, airplane and subway bombings, Afghanistan, Iraq - we need to see clearly and distinctly and deal with in a focused way. No wonder the people who brought us the disaster in Iraq are so fond of it.

Katha Pollitt is a columnist for The Nation.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/40850/



Arab News:
‘You Are Guilty of Looking Asian While Flying’

Lubna Hussain, lubna@arabnews.com

Friday, 25, August, 2006 (01, Sha`ban, 1427)

“Is it true that two men had to leave a plane because they looked Asian?” asked my 11-year-old daughter.

“Yes,” I replied matter-of-factly.

“But that’s racist!” she declared with the sort of outdated idealism that is the exclusive ideological territory of children these days.

I tried explaining to her the reasons as to why this had happened without much success. Not because I myself was totally unconvinced by this latest round of blatant hypocrisy, but more due to the fact that she could see through the pathos of the so-called “justification” that has brought about such discrimination.

“You can’t judge a person because of the way they look,” was her closing remark. What she didn’t realize was that in the Western Hemisphere you can. And what’s more is you do.

The incident happened at Malaga airport where two men were not allowed to fly back to England because of their appearance (a euphemism for skin-color) and the fact that they were speaking a “strange language that could have been Arabic” (it could have been Urdu, Hindi, Punjabi, Guatemalan as far as their fellow complainants were concerned because they were obviously too ignorant to even tell the difference. And besides, how on earth can parlance in a foreign language be deemed as a breach of security?).

If anything, the poor passengers who were off-loaded seemed to have been found guilty as charged. They weren’t white and spoke a funny language. They were fully clothed (decency of attire may also be counted as a future criminal offense) as opposed to wearing shorts and flip-flops like their fellow travelers. They were also probably brazen enough to have names that were not Tom, Dick or Harry. Naturally they were seen as “suspicious” by some “tabloid-reading” elements (if the accusers had any literacy skills it would surprise me) who would not have had the common sense to understand that not everyone who wears trousers, is brown and speaks a plethora of other languages is necessarily inclined to blow up a plane.

The world really has become a sad place if you happen to have been cursed by being born into the wrong ethnic group. Had this taken place pre-Sept. 11, 2001, there would have been a public outcry, widespread condemnation and a declaration of a violation of human rights. But in the current climate of global paranoia it was seen as a perfectly measured response to an amorphous ill-defined and ubiquitous threat.

What amazed me was that the airline, in order to assuage the unfounded nonsensical fears of a couple of media junkies, ordered the gentlemen off the plane and marched them straight into the custody of Spanish police. It sounds more like a sketch from Monty Python than a scene from reality. I wonder what they would have been accused of.

“Is it true that you are guilty of looking Asian while flying?”

“Have you eaten chapattis and chicken curry within the past 24 hours?”

“Do you know anyone called Muhammad?”

“Are you guilty of watching Bollywood movies?”

Absolutely absurd! Completely ludicrous!

What’s worse is that none of the other passengers complained about the total unfairness, downright humiliation and thorough embarrassment caused to these poor guys. I wonder why it was that in spite of holding up the flight for three hours, those who had been complaining were allowed to travel? Would it not have made more sense to put these individuals on another flight considering they were the ones refusing to cooperate with the crew? How is it that they didn’t face charges for false accusations or causing a delay of a scheduled flight? Probably because they were white, wore string vests and had English names. So much for equal opportunities and cultural sensitivity!

I read of another incident recently of a Continental Airlines pilot who, traveling as a passenger, was also asked to leave an aircraft after the doors had been sealed. (I wonder if he would have been given the shove had he been manning the cockpit?) And yet another of a European MP who was asked if he was seeking political asylum when a passport official failed to check his documents and relied solely on the color of his skin as a qualification for entry into the UK. Muslim women have been asked to remove their hijabs in order to fly. I can’t imagine nuns being asked to remove their habits somehow, but hey! What right do I have to ask such questions when I am as brown as brown can be?

I don’t remember witnessing the same sort of discrimination being meted out to people with an Irish accent at the height of the IRA’s terrorist activities or Catholics being forced to remove their crucifixes on planes. If anything this policy of stripping Asians and Muslims literally and figuratively of their basic dignity will serve to increase their already growing resentment and further alienate them from societies where they are an important factor in counteracting terrorism. Playing into the hands of the lynch mob and organizing and legitimizing witch-hunts does not bode well for countries that had erstwhile prided themselves in espousing values of racial equality and multiculturalism.

* * *

(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=9§ion=0&article=76828&d=25&m=8&y=2006



Arab News:
Thinking of Flying? Be Prepared for Racial Profiling

Barbara Ferguson, Arab News

Friday, 25, August, 2006 (01, Sha`ban, 1427)

WASHINGTON, 25 August 2006 — These are tough times to be flying on airlines — especially if you’re an Arab or a Muslim.

Think that’s an exaggeration? Take a look at a few examples of what’s happened this month: In a script from a Hollywood thriller, two Dutch F-16s were diverted to escort a Northwest Airlines flight back to Schiphol, Netherlands on Wednesday, while two US sky marshals took control of the Mumbai-bound DC-10, ordering passengers to remain in their seats and not look round.

The high drama occurred two weeks after British intelligence uncovered an alleged plot to blow up 10 aircraft in mid-air.

According to Northwest, the flight captain spoke of ‘suspicious behavior’ when contacting ground control over Germany. The destination — Mumbai — also raised suspicions.

The Indian metropolis has seen repeated terrorist attacks in recent years, culminating in a string of blasts on commuter trains in mid-July that claimed some 180 lives. Dutch authorities added to the mystery by refusing to provide details, beyond saying they were holding 12 passengers. Earlier this month, a British Muslim airline pilot said it was “humiliating” when he was hauled off a transatlantic flight just before take-off. Amar Ashraf, 28, born in Wrexham, North Wales, said he felt “demoralized and humiliated” after being told to leave the flight from Manchester to Newark, New Jersey, by a stewardess, and was then questioned by armed police. He believes his removal was down to having a “Muslim-sounding name.”

Ashraf, 28, a British Pakistani who was returning to his job as a pilot for one of Continental’s partner airlines in the US, told journalists he plans to file a formal complaint with Continental Airlines, as well as with the US authorities. He is convinced that his racial profile prevented him from flying on Aug. 10, the first day of the heightened security alert at British airports. “I guess I just meet the profile. I was the only person asked to get off and I can’t believe there weren’t others on standby tickets. I think as a Muslim I was an easy target. I understand the reason for the delays but I feel this was discrimination,” he said.

The airline he works for is a partner airline of Continental, which allows him access to standby flights. In a statement, Continental Airlines said it could not comment on a specific case.

Since Sept. 11 2001, every British flight bound for the US provides a “ manifest” list in which the name of all passengers traveling on a plane is provided to US security 15 minutes after take-off. Authorities said Ashraf’s name was not on the list of passengers leaving for Newark that day. The incidents have been condemned by Muslim leaders and some security experts, who warned that judging people by their appearance would be counter productive. Another example occurred last Thursday, when Azar Iqbal, from England, traveled to Atlanta, Georgia, with his family on Delta airlines, only to be separated from his wife and children, held for questioning by US immigration officials, and deported to the UK.

A website used by commercial airline pilots has highlighted an incident where two British women on a flight from Spain to the UK complained about flying with a bearded Muslim, even though the man had been security checked twice.

Last week, an airport terminal at Tri-state airport in West Virginia was evacuated and the FBI questioned a Pakistani woman after security checks wrongly identified explosive liquids in her hand luggage. Dr Ahmed Farooq, a Muslim radiologist from Winnipeg, Canada, was escorted off a United Airlines flight in Denver last week after reciting prayers that were regarded as suspicious by passengers.

He said the incident was tantamount to “institutionalized discrimination.” Their complaints follow growing concerns between European and American Muslims over incidents in which Asians and Arabs have been removed from flights.

Rather than condemn such actions, certain Congressmen want to enforce racial profiling.

A congressional candidate in Florida has become the third Republican office-seeker to call for heightened screening of Muslim airline passengers since preventing an alleged airline bombing plot in Britain. “It is a fact that over the past 34 years, starting with the Munich Olympics, the majority of terrorist attacks have been carried out by Muslims,” said Mark Flanagan, a candidate in the 13th District of Florida, in a statement released Thursday morning.

Paul Nelson, a Republican running in the third district of Wisconsin, endorsed the idea last week on a local radio show. Asked on the show how screeners would spot a Muslim male, Nelson said, “If he comes in wearing a turban and his name is Muhammad, that’s a good start,” according to the Associated Press. New York gubernatorial candidate John Faso also has supported profiling, saying, “If a 25-year-old Muslim man who has been traveling frequently to Yemen or Pakistan tries to board a plane, then not only statistical analysis but also common sense tells us that he is more of a potential threat than the grandmother from Queens.” David Johnson, Flanagan’s political consultant, said that under the proposal, passengers who appear to be Arab or Muslim would be pulled out of security lines for additional screening.

In an interview, Flanagan declined to say how screeners would determine which passengers met that description, or whether Black Muslim and Christian Arab passengers also should be subject to heightened security measures. “Those questions are premature, albeit very important,” he said.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=78320&d=25&m=8&y=2006



Arab News:
Netherlands Regrets Arrests

Nilofar Suhrawardy, Arab News

Saturday, 26, August, 2006 (02, Sha`ban, 1427)

NEW DELHI, 26 August 2006 — The Netherlands yesterday expressed regret over the detention of 12 Indians for suspicious behavior aboard a Northwest Airlines flight on Wednesday. Dutch Ambassador Eric Niehe, who was summoned by the Indian government to lodge a formal protest, however, said the detention was not a case of racial discrimination.

“The Dutch ambassador was told that we take this matter, the handling of the incident, very seriously, and that it was not in conformity with the friendly relations between the Netherlands and India,” said Navtej Sarna, India’s External Affairs Ministry spokesman.

Dutch authorities detained the 12 for more than a day, then released them after finding no evidence of a terrorist threat. The men had aroused suspicions because they had a large number of cell phones, laptops and computer hard drives on the Bombay-bound flight. Prosecutors said they had refused to follow the crew’s instructions. The flight was escorted by two Dutch fighter planes back to Amsterdam just after takeoff.

Sarna described the incident as “regrettable” and said India hoped the detention did not indicate a racial bias.

Dismissing criticism of the government’s handling of the issue, Minister of State for External Affairs Anand Sharma said government officials had worked fast to get the 12 out of detention in 30 hours. Consular access was provided to Indians much ahead of the 48 hours stipulated in the Vienna Convention in such a situation, he said.

The ministry’s statement came after relatives of the 12 and Muslim leaders said the incident reflected growing international bias against Muslims. “Because of this global war on terror, Muslims today feel the same way as Jews in the 1930s,” said Shabnam Hashmi, a spokeswoman for the New Delhi-based human rights movement Act Now for Harmony and Democracy. “This calculated, systematic demonization of Muslims is going to get worse in the coming days.”

Others said all South Asians, and not just Muslims, were increasingly under the scanner. “Earlier it was just the US, but now it’s Europe too. Anyone who is not white is a suspect,” said Zafarul Islam Khan, editor of The Milli Gazette, an English-language newspaper.

In Bombay, where the 12 men were born, there was anger among their families over their treatment. The relatives of 32-year-old Ayub Kolsawala said the incident showed religious bias. “This is happening to us only because we are Muslims,” said Kolsawala’s sister-in-law Lubna.

Indian media reported the men were in the export trade and knew each other.

According to one passenger, quoted by the De Telegraaf newspaper in the Netherlands, the plane turned around because “the men began telephoning, searching in plastic bags and moving about the plane when it wasn’t allowed.”

Dutch prosecution spokesman Ed Hartjes said the police inquiry focused on the passengers’ cell phone conversations and fears that their baggage contained explosives, but no evidence of wrongdoing was found.

— Additional input from agencies

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=78421&d=26&m=8&y=2006



Arab News:
Hysteria Rules the Skies

Iman Kurdi, Arab News

Saturday, 26, August, 2006 (02, Sha`ban, 1427)

This weekend I am taking a flight from the south of France back to London. Since I do not want to be taken off the flight — or even worse “removed” from the flight as the current terminology goes as if the passengers were some kind of stain or obstruction — for the new crime of traveling while Asian, or the related crimes of traveling while Arab or Muslim, I am wondering what precautions I should take.

British Airways has kindly sent me an e-mail detailing what I am and what I am not allowed to carry in my carry-on luggage. I shall follow their instructions to the letter. My handbag will be free of the new weapons of mass destruction: Bottles of water, tubs of hand cream or tubes of toothpaste for me. And I shall diligently present myself at the security points where no doubt I shall be picked for a “random” check, with both my physical self and my earthly goods thoroughly checked and cleared.

But obeying the law is not enough, for all it takes is to appear foreign to be guilty of this new crime. I must appear to be a regular holidaymaker, I must not stand out as different. So I think I may wear flip-flops on my feet, though given the weather conditions in London I fear for my health.

And perhaps I shall buy myself some shorts for the occasion. And I must not at any cost wear a jumper or a jacket: It may be sensible attire for the rather cool and wet weather in London but it is not what the typical British holidaymaker wears. Oh what the heck, perhaps I should get myself a copy of the Daily Mail and sit in the sun at noon on the day of my departure; perhaps then I can convince my fellow passengers that I am one of them.

I almost forgot, I must make sure I don’t look at my watch whilst I am waiting for my flight — apparently that is part of “behaving suspiciously” — nor must I speak Arabic or any other non-European language. Maybe I’ll leave my watch at home, save myself from the temptation of checking the time, and whilst I’m at it, maybe I’ll leave my mobile phone at home too, in case I should be tempted to fiddle with it during the flight and alarm my fellow passengers. Maybe that will be enough. Or will it?

We have recently witnessed a series of incidents where passengers have been asked to leave a flight or where flights have been diverted with fighter jets escorting them simply because Asian-looking passengers aroused suspicion. What is more, the grounds for this suspicion have been at best flimsy and at worse purely racial without even the pretence of anything more substantial. What is of even more concern is that the suspicions of fellow passengers have been enough to warrant airlines ordering passengers off a flight.

On Aug. 10, Amar Ashraf, a British citizen, was asked to leave a Continental Airlines flight from Manchester to Newark. An airline pilot with one of Continental’s partner airlines, Ashraf was traveling as a standby passenger.

He was issued with a boarding pass, had taken his seat in business class and the aircraft doors had closed when lo and behold, he was tapped on the shoulder and asked to leave.

The doors were reopened and he took the lonely walk of humiliation down the steps and onto the tarmac to be greeted by armed police. What was his crime? His Muslim name aroused suspicion. Continental told him that no stand-by passengers were allowed to fly that day and yet no other standby passengers were taken off the flight. Two days later Ashraf bought a ticket on Virgin Atlantic and flew back to the US without any trouble.

On Aug. 16, two Muslim men of Asian appearance were taken off a Monarch Airlines flight from Malaga to Manchester because other passengers were convinced the men were terrorists and refused to fly with them.

What was their crime? They wore heavy clothing when all the other passengers were dressed in flip-flops and shorts. They also looked at their watches a little too often and spoke a language that other passengers took to be Arabic. That was enough for Monarch Airlines to take them off the flight. They were questioning by police, released and traveled home a few days later.

Exactly a week later, a North-West airlines flight from Amsterdam bound for Bombay was diverted mid-flight and escorted back by two Dutch fighter jets because a group of passengers of Asian appearance had aroused the suspicion of the air marshal. What was their crime? They fiddled with their mobile phones. Twelve passengers were arrested on arrival. They have all been released without charge.

What strikes me the most about these incidents is the muted tone of the condemnation. The Monarch incident is disgraceful. The two Muslim passengers were subjected to an ordeal purely because they appeared different to the rest of the passengers. That is the textbook definition of discrimination. If other passengers didn’t feel safe to travel with them, they were free to make other arrangements.

By giving in to mob rule, Monarch Airlines has set a dangerous precedent.

If we let hysteria rule the skies, it is only a matter of time before we are segregated, with special lines and security checks for people who fit our racial profile, before we are seated separately on planes, grouped together where air marshals and crew can keep us under strict surveillance and out of sight of white-skinned passengers so that they may feel protected from our threat, before we are so traumatized by our criminalization that we avoid traveling altogether — for there is no doubt about it, that is where we are heading unless people come to their senses.

The terrorists are winning. They are meeting their goals one by one: They have created fear and hysteria, they have succeeded in creating a chasm between Muslims and non-Muslims and they are slowly but surely chipping away at the values of liberty, fairness and equality which underpin Western culture.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=76907&d=26&m=8&y=2006



Arab News:
The Death of Lies

Reem Al Faisal, Arab News

Saturday, 26, August, 2006 (02, Sha`ban, 1427)

Now that the guns have fallen silent and the carnage has stopped, our writhing, aching hearts for the dead, the dying and the injured of Lebanon can rest. Now that the destruction and mayhem have ceased, we can look around and begin to assess the damage, weigh the facts, analyze the causes and deduct conclusions. It is a strange war, a war like no other — directed against a small nation. But a war that will affect the fate of the greatest nations of today. A war to topple a local faction has resulted in the undoing of an entire region.

It is surprising that Lebanon, a small country on the edge of the Arab world, should become the stage where a world play is staged. It was not Palestine suffering under the most savage siege in history while the Arabs watched and waited.

Neither was it Iraq with its daily spectacle of carnage that finally unhinged the Arab world. It was little Lebanon and history will record it as the moment when all things changed and everyone realized that nothing could be the same again.

There in Lebanon the seeds of a new Arab world have been sown — not the one predicted by President Bush and his Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice but one free of all the lies it has labored under for decades.

It is said that the first casualty of a war is truth. However, the Lebanese war has been an exception to this rule. In this war the first casualty was the “lie” or the myriad of lies which the world in general and the Arab world in particular has lived by for decades. The lies spun by Israel and the West for the Arab world or the lies garnered by some Arab leaders and intellectuals for their people and finally the lies the Arab people told themselves to escape from their own responsibilities.

As for the lie of a West posing as the victim of Israeli manipulation, coercion and influence, the barbarous attack on Lebanon has revealed it to be exactly the opposite. Israel is a Western mercenary outpost implanted in the heart of the Arab world to keep us well behaved and obedient to Western dictates. It is a new form of colonialism, franchise colonialism. Instead of demanding that Israel cease its savage attack on Lebanon forthwith, the West was encouraging and facilitating its aggression leaving it as much time as it felt necessary to make an example of the uppity Hezbollah to the rest of the Arab world in case it entertained any thought of freeing itself from Western dominance.

The lie that Israel seeks peaceful coexistence with its neighbors if only given a chance and is able to feel safe from Arab aggression has been exposed for what it is. On the contrary the past month has shown to the entire world that Israel’s definition of peace is to turn all its neighbors’ lands into a wasteland.

One of the biggest lies to be exposed was the invincibility of the Israeli Army, a lie believed by the entire world including the perpetrators of this particular lie, the Israelis themselves. A small band of honest men faithful to their cause stood up to one of the strongest armies of the world and defied it. It wasn’t a miracle and they were not mythical creatures but a few men who planned and sacrificed and eventually won.

The lie some Arab leaders have been telling their people for decades that they could never defeat Israel and that the only way was to accept any proposal the West and its lackey Israel threw our way regardless of how egregious or humiliating it was. This, we were told, will eventually enable us to channel our misdirected talents toward economic prosperity and technological advancement. However, all we received in return was a galloping rise in poverty, degradation and more humiliation while we lagged behind in all fields of technology and education.

The lies our intellectuals sold us were of dreams of glory through empty ideologies like Arab nationalism, Nasserism, Baathism, socialism and every other “ism”. Then when all their isms ended in utter failure they threw all their ideals away and began to vaunt the many benefits of pragmatism. For pragmatism, read totally abandoning any form of resistance or independence of will or action and submitting without any question to those who hold the keys to technological advancement and prosperity — the West. We were basically told that beggars can’t be choosers and every attempt at resistance or demand for justice was mocked as childish dreams. It was time for the Arabs to wake up to the reality of their situation and work toward self-improvement by following the path that the West set out before them. We were to turn into cheap copies of the West and abandon our silly nostalgia for Arab culture and identity that, they told us, belonged to a bygone era incompatible with the modern world.

Then came along the little Lebanon to shatter every lie and lift the veils of deceit and treachery. We watched as a party, not a country, stood up to the strongest army in the Middle East and made a mockery of the vanguard of Western culture and values. What is more, it was accomplished by the Lebanese who still hold on to Arab identity and Muslim ideals — those very same archaic beliefs the Arab world was encouraged to abandon. So, came crashing down the lie proliferated by Arab intellectuals of defeatism and collusion.

Finally, the lie the Arab people uttered to themselves declaring their inability to help their brethren in Palestine, Iraq and now Lebanon and yet feeling their pain as though it was their own. Huge demonstrations took place all over the world asking for an immediate halt to the aggression and condemning Israel. Venezuela pulled its ambassador out of Israel. But popular support for the Lebanese in the Arab world never went beyond silent sympathy.

A few demonstrations here and there without any concrete results like pressuring those governments which have relations with Israel to sever them or pulling our ambassadors from both America and UK to protest their open support to Israel in its savaging of Lebanon. We saw no Arab civil action independent of their governments like, for example, Arab businessmen suspending any business activity they have with those who connived at Israeli crimes.

We wake up today, in the aftermath of the war to realize that we the Arabs get the leaders and intellectuals we deserve. We sold out on our ideals, our history, culture and worst of all we sold it on the cheap creating a wasteland from the Atlantic to the Gulf believing we were so smart and realizing we’ve outsmarted just ourselves.

The only thing which frees me from utter despair is the presence in the Arab world still of people and groups who are prepared to resist and suffer for it. They are our only hope, if we are to get out ever of the levels we have sunk into, pointing us to a more dignified future. They have exposed the ultimate lie that there can be progress or prosperity without achieving independence for our lands and freedom of action for us. They are the future while the rest of the Arabs who prefer to skulk in the shadows of the West belong in the past.

— Reem Al Faisal is a Saudi photographer. She is based in Jeddah.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=76906&d=26&m=8&y=2006



Asia Times:
Syria draws a line at the border


By Sami Moubayed
Aug 26, 2006

DAMASCUS - When United Nations Resolution 1701 was passed on August 11, it was seen as a diplomatic breakthrough to end 33 days of war between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Many today, however, are having serious doubts whether this ceasefire will last and whether 1701 is actually a diplomatic victory - or failure - for the UN. In addition to a ceasefire, the resolution demands the deployment of the Lebanese army, and eventually multinational troops, on the border to prevent any future war between the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and Hezbollah. It gives Israel the right to self-defense, however, while denying this right to Hezbollah, explaining why the party's secretary general, Hassan Nasrallah, accepted the resolution "with reservations".

If implemented to the word, the resolution would deprive Hezbollah of the territory it has used to wage war against Israel since the 1980s. A Hezbollah that is deprived of southern Lebanon would be a Hezbollah that cannot fire rockets against northern Israel. The resolution also asked for implementation of Resolution 1559, which calls for the complete disarming of Hezbollah, and strongly says that no arms should be transferred to the Lebanese military group.

The first loophole in 1701 is that it does not give any mechanism for the disarming of Hezbollah, something that neither the United Nations Interim Force In Lebanon (UNIFIL) nor the Lebanese army - nor Israel - has been able to do. The expanded UN troop presence on the border will not be able to disarm Hezbollah. If the troops try to do that, they will certainly be attacked.

This was something made clear by French Major-General Alain Pelligrini, the UNIFIL commander in Lebanon, who said: "The Israelis cannot ask UNIFIL to disarm Hezbollah. This is not written in our mandate." He added that the ceasefire "is tense, very fragile, very volatile. Any provocation or misunderstanding could escalate very, very rapidly."

Speaking to the Financial Times on August 3, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert related what he saw as the perfect objective of UNIFIL in Lebanon. He said it should aim at "stopping violence against innocent Israelis from Lebanon and disarming this murderous organization, the Hezbollah, which is the long arm of Iran".

Olmert's distorted version of UNIFIL, however, seems to be very different from the one that is likely to emerge in Lebanon in the coming weeks. French newspaper Le Monde leaked a 21-page document distributed at the UN last week showing what the new expanded UNIFIL troops would look like.

First, very clearly, they would not be authorized to disarm Hezbollah. They would also lack the authority to search Hezbollah strongholds or bunkers. Second, they are authorized "to use force, up to and including deadly force", to implement peace on the Lebanese-Israeli border and to defend themselves against attack by either the IDF or Hezbollah. Third, they have to protect civilians, and fourth, they will have to provide backup to the Lebanese army.

Actually, bringing 15,000 troops from the Lebanese army to the border is easy. It has even been accepted by Nasrallah, who previously had rejected deployment of the Lebanese army to the south. Deploying an equal number of multinational troops is more difficult - but doable.

The history of multinational troops in Lebanon during the Israeli invasion of 1982 showed that these troops are vulnerable and could be driven out of Lebanon with ease. In October 1983, an attack on US marines in Lebanon led to the killing of 241 US and 58 French troops and the exodus of about 5,000 multinational troops from Lebanon.

No Arab country today, except Morocco, is willing to take part in such a force, since it would be viewed by the Arab street as a multinational force used to protect Israel from Hezbollah. Given Hezbollah's popularity in the Arab world, such a step would be political suicide - even for moderate Arab regimes such as Egypt and Jordan.

Turkey showed willingness to send troops to Lebanon, but this proposal was vetoed by the Lebanese-Armenians, who cannot forget Turkish massacres against the Armenians under the Ottoman Empire during World War I. Germany at first showed similar willingness to comply, but then backed down and said it would send advisers rather than troops. As one German journalist told this correspondent, this U-turn was because German troops on the border with Israel would be entitled to shoot - and use - "deadly force" to prevent any confrontation between the IDF and Hezbollah. Because of the historical luggage carried by the Germans from World War II, a German soldier today simply cannot fire against an Israeli.

Yet despite these obstacles, Greece, France and Italy, which alone will contribute 2,000-3,000 troops to UNIFIL, have all agreed to send troops. On Thursday, French President Jacques Chirac agreed to increase the number of French troops to 2,000.

Olmert made things more difficult for the UN by saying he would not accept troops at UNIFIL whose countries didn't have diplomatic relations with Israel. He was referring to Indonesia, Malaysia and Bangladesh. The Israeli premier does not have the luxury of hand-picking what countries will join the multinational troops in Lebanon, since not many countries have shown great enthusiasm to get involved in a new war in the Middle East.

French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy said on Wednesday that UNIFIL forces in Lebanon would have two missions. One would be to let the Lebanese army deploy in the south. The second would be "to guarantee the embargo on arms delivery across all borders - I repeat - across all borders".

The Syrian factor
The minister was referring to the Syria-Lebanon border, which is considered by many in Lebanon and the international community to be the only source from which Syria can channel arms to Hezbollah.

According to Resolution 1701, this supply of arms must end, to bring Hezbollah to a gradual military end. Syria immediately snapped back by turning down the request to station troops on Lebanon's side of the Syrian-Lebanese border, with authority to administer checkpoints searching for arms coming in from Syria.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Dubai TV that UNIFIL troops on Lebanon's border with Syria "is an infringement on Lebanese sovereignty and a hostile position" toward Syria. He added, "First, this means creating hostile conditions between Syria and Lebanon. Second, it is a hostile move toward Syria, and naturally it will create problems."

Assad's Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualim threatened from a state visit to Finland that if multinational troops were stationed on the Syrian-Lebanese border, Syria would close its border with Lebanon. The White House immediately responded to Syria's stance through its spokeswoman Dana Perino, who said, "If the president of Syria were not supplying Hezbollah, this wouldn't have been a problem in the first place."

Closing the border with Lebanon is an old trick practiced by the Syrians ever since prime minister Khalid al-Azm did it in 1950 to prevent the influx of Lebanese goods into Syria. President Adib al-Shishakli did it again in 1954 when he accused Lebanon of supporting a Druze uprising against his regime in Damascus. President Shukri al-Quwatli did it in 1957 when Lebanon retaliated to a series of overt Syrian intelligence operations on its territory by funding anti-regime activities in Damascus to obstruct Syria's honeymoon with Egypt.

It was semi-repeated by Assad last summer when Lebanese cargo trucks were held up for weeks at the Syrian border, causing some goods to rot, and forcing Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora to go to Syria to solve the crisis.

This was at the apex of strained Syrian-Lebanese relations over the murder of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafiq al-Hariri. If Syria does carry out its threats and shut the border with Lebanon, it would cause a severe economic crisis in its neighbor, since Syria is the only land route for Lebanon.

The other country bordering Lebanon is Israel, with which diplomatic relations and passage routes are impossible at this stage. Currently, all sea routes to Lebanon are sealed by the Israelis, and so is landing at Lebanese airports.

With Israel controlling the skies and waters, and Syria controlling the ground routes, Lebanon would be stranded, with no connection to the outside world. Syria believes that only through such a harsh measure can it force the Lebanese government to say no to international troops on the Syrian border.

After all, it cannot say no to the troops itself, since they would not be stationed on its territory, but Damascus can use its leverage in Lebanon to force Siniora to say no. It does not mind UN troops on the Lebanese-Israeli border, nor does it mind the deployment of the Lebanese army, but it is categorically opposed to troops on the border with Syria.

Olmert has that he had no immediate plans of ending the air and sea blockade on Lebanon until an international peacekeeping force was deployed on Lebanon's borders, to prevent the arming of Hezbollah and their attacks on north Israel.

As things stand, multinational troops will be placed on the Syrian-Lebanese border in addition to the Lebanese-Israeli border. Otherwise, they would be useless. But if that happens, Syria could strangle Lebanon by closing down the border. Yet Olmert's rules say that only when Syria's border is monitored - meaning when Syria's ground route is closed - will Lebanon regain its air and sea routes.

To understand Syria's position one must understand how the Syrian regime is thinking in relation to the Israeli war in Lebanon. Assad claimed victory in this war, for his unconditional backing of Hezbollah, just as Syria claimed co-victory with Hezbollah when it liberated south Lebanon from the Israelis in May 2000.

The Syrians will not let Resolution 1701 destroy these victories by ruining or disarming Hezbollah. Not only is patrolling the Syrian border offensive to the Syrians, but if this is done, it would actually mean that no arms would in fact arrive in Lebanon to be used by Hezbollah. It would mean the military end to the Lebanese group - something Syria will not permit.

Hezbollah is the last-standing Syrian card in Lebanon. It is the card that will launch a political coup in Lebanon against the coalition government of Saad al-Hariri - the group that launched its own putsch against Syria in 2005 and drove the Syrian army out of Lebanon.

Syria will do all that is in its power to preserve Hezbollah. The Syrians believe that if this means obstructing UNIFIL on Lebanon's border with Syria, ruining Resolution 1701 or shutting Syria's border with Lebanon - then so be it. All is fair in love and war for Damascus, especially when it comes to Lebanon.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HH26Ak03.html



Countercurrents.org: TheTwisted Language of War
That is Used to Justify the Unjustifiable


By Robert Fisk

Why do we aid and abet the lies and propaganda of this filthy war? How come, for example, it's now BBC "style" to describe the Anglo-American invaders as the "coalition". This is a lie. The "coalition" that we're obviously supposed to remember is the one forged to drive Iraqi occupation troops from Kuwait in 1991, an alliance involving dozens of countries – almost all of whom now condemn President Bush Junior's adventure in Iraq. There are a few Australian special forces swanning about in the desert, courtesy of the country's eccentric Prime Minister, John Howard, but that's it.

So, who at the BBC decreed this dishonest word "coalition"? True, there's a "coalition of the willing", to use Mr Bush's weird phrase, but this is a reference to those nations that have given overflying rights to the United States or have given political but not military support. So the phrase "coalition forces" remains a lie.

Then there's the historical slippage to justify the unjustifiable. When Jonathan Charles, an "embedded" journalist, reported in the early days of the invasion that the British army outside Basra was keeping a watchful eye on the Iranian border because the Iranians had "stirred up" an insurrection in the city in 1991, his dispatch was based on a falsehood. The Iranians never stirred up an insurrection in Basra. President Bush Senior did that by calling for just such a rebellion – and then betraying the Shia Muslims who followed his appeal. The Iranians did everything they could to avoid involvement in the uprising.

Then there's the disinformation about the "securing" of Basra. This was followed by an admission that though the British had "secured" Basra they hadn't actually captured it – and, indeed, have still not captured it. The same goes for the US Marines who were said to have "secured" Nasiriyah, but didn't capture it until last week when, given the anarchy that broke out in the city, they appear to have captured it without making it secure. The US forces bravely rescued a captured American female soldier; what didn't make it into the same story was that they also "rescued" 12 Americans, all of whom were already dead.

The Iraqis try to imitate the US Central Command (CentCom) propaganda operations, though with less subtlety. An attempt to present an American cruise missile attack on a secret police office in the Mansour district last week as the attempted destruction of a maternity hospital – it was just across the street but only sustained broken windows – was straight out of the "Huns crucify nuns" routine. Iraqi military communiqués inevitably claim a number of American and British tanks and personnel carriers destroyed that is way beyond credibility. At Najaf, the Iraqi Armed Forces General Command (communiqué number 16) stated on Friday that Iraqi forces had destroyed 17 tanks, 13 armoured personnel carriers and a Black Hawk helicopter. Whoops.

Yesterday, according to the Information Minister, Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, Iraqi troops destroyed four US personnel carriers and an American warplane.

Sometimes the communiqués are verifiable. An Apache actually was shot down by a farmer and CentCom admitted an F-18 bomber was shot down over Iraq last week. However, the sheer military detail put out by the Iraqi authorities, grotesquely exaggerated though it often is, far outstrips the old bones chucked by the Americans at the correspondents in their air-conditioned high-security headquarters in Qatar.

Another enjoyable lie was the American assertion that the anti-chemical weapons suits issued to Iraqi soldiers "proved" that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. The Iraqis neatly replied that the equipment was standard issue but that since US and British forces carried the same equipment, they too must be in possession of forbidden weapons. The Iraqi lie – that the country remains united under a beloved leader – is hardly questioned in press conferences held by Taha Yassin Ramadan, the Iraqi Vice-President. Unity may be the one element Iraq will never possess under US occupiers. But its existence under Saddam Hussein has been imposed through terror.

Then there's the famous "war in Iraq" slogan which the British and American media like to promote. But this is an invasion, not a mere war.

And isn't it turning into an occupation rather than a "liberation"? Shouldn't we be remembering in our reports that this whole invasion lacks legitimacy? Sure, the Americans claim they needed no more than the original UN resolution 1441 to go to war. But if that's the case, why did Britain and the US vainly seek a second resolution? I can't help thinking readers and viewers realise the mendacity of all this sleight of hand, and that we journalists go on insulting these same readers and viewers by thinking we can con them.

Thus, we go on talking about an "air campaign" as if the Luftwaffe was taking off from Cap Gris Nez to bomb London, when not a single Iraqi aircraft has left the ground. So, it's "coalition forces", a war not an invasion, liberation rather than occupation, and the taking of cities that are "secured" rather than "captured", and when captured, are insecure.

And all this for the dead of 11 September.

This article originally appeared in The Independent

http://www.robert-fisk.com/



Guardian:
We shall not be moved

Some joined the US military as a patriotic duty, some to better themselves, but the horrors of serving in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib, changed everything. Deserters tell Gary Younge why they had to quit

Gary Younge

Saturday August 26, 2006

For Camilo Mejia there was no epiphany. In fact, his refusal to rejoin his regiment in Iraq barely represented a decision at all. It was more a weary submission to months of anxiety that had gnawed at his sense of duty until there was nothing left but his conscience. "I didn't wake up thinking I wouldn't go," he says. "I just went to bed and didn't get up in time to catch the plane. But I kept thinking maybe I would go back sometime."

Mejia, 30, never did go back. He went on the run for five months, staying with friends and relatives, using only cash, travelling by bus and not calling his mother or daughter, before he turned himself in as a conscientious objector. A military tribunal sentenced him to one year in prison.

Like Mejia, 24-year-old Darrell Anderson went on the run just a few days before he was due to redeploy. "I was supposed to leave for Iraq on January 8th. On the 3rd I started to talk to people about the war. By the 6th I woke up and had hit a brick wall. I just knew I wasn't going to be able to live a normal life if I went back."

He told his mother, Anita, who said she "had been hoping for that". "I packed up the car and took him to Canada. It was the first time I slept through the night in two years," she says. Anderson is now essentially a fugitive seeking asylum in Canada.

And then there was Joshua Casteel, an interrogator at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. His turning point came when a 22-year-old Saudi who came to Iraq for jihad was brought before him for questioning. "He admitted it," says Casteel, 26, a deeply religious Catholic convert from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I asked him why he had come to Iraq to kill. Then he asked me why I had come to Iraq to kill. He said I wasn't following the teachings of Jesus, which was pretty ironic. But I thought he sounded just like me. He was not a maniacal kind of killer. He had never fired a weapon in his life ... I know what it's like to proselytise. At one time I had been a pretty nationalistic kid. I understood where he was coming from but in order to do my job I couldn't look at him as a human being. I had to look at him as an object of exploitation."

Two days later Casteel went to Qatar on leave. When he came back he told his commander that he would be applying for conscientious objector status. "I said I wouldn't turn in my weapon while I was there or talk to the media but would carry on doing my job and when I got back home I would ask to leave the military." He filed his application on February 16 and was granted an honourable discharge on May 31.

Whether you call them deserters, conscientious objectors or resisters, every story of American soldiers who left the army prematurely because of the Iraq war shares the same emotional trajectory. They begin with doubt and end with determination. And somewhere along the way comes that ill-defined but crucial moment when the psychological struggle and moral angst overwhelm their military commitment.

The number applying for conscientious objector status has quadrupled since 2000 but remains small, though many more simply go awol. In 2004, 110 soldiers filed, of whom around half were successful. The rest went back to war, refused to serve, were jailed or are still in hiding. Yet there has been a huge increase in enquiries, according to JE McNeil, director of the Centre on Conscience and War. Before 9/11, she says, its GI hotline received roughly one phone call a month from those seeking information about how to get out of the military. In the year after, it went up to one or two a week. Currently it stands at more than one a day.

Which could explain the army's increasingly hardline attitude towards deserters. In the past the overwhelming majority of deserters (94%) were released - if not with an honourable discharge, at least with little fuss. But as the war on terror started, the military had to get tough on those who went missing. Shortly after 9/11 it issued new rules that deserters should be returned to their military units for evaluation. In May 2004, Major General Claude Williams of the Army National Guard issued an internal memo saying: "Effective immediately, I am holding commanders at all levels accountable for controlling manageable losses." He ordered commanders to retain 85% of the soldiers who were scheduled to end their active duty and "execute the awol recovery procedures for every awol soldier".

In one instance, one of those in command had a change of heart. In June Ehren Watada became the first commissioned officer to refuse to deploy. "This war is not only morally wrong but illegal under international and American law," he said. "I took an oath to defend the laws and constitution. My participation would make me party to war crimes." When we spoke, Watada's unit was due to ship out in a matter of days and he was getting ready to do time.

In July he was charged with conduct unbecoming an officer, "missing movement" and contempt toward officials. "I will probably go to jail but I think it's my duty to say it's not a lawful order," says Watada, who plans to challenge the legality of the war at any trial that may ensue. If convicted he could face nearly eight years in prison and a dishonourable discharge.

There are at least 50 ways to leave your regiment. Many simply go absent without leave and hope they are never found, others flee to Canada or apply for release as a conscientious objector. Some pursue less confrontational avenues. "People try for medical discharges, or discharge on grounds of hardship," says McNeil. "They take drugs and hope they get caught. They come out as gay."

A few resort to truly desperate measures. In December 2004, Marquise Roberts, 24, got his cousin, Roland Fuller, to shoot him in the leg , then told the police he'd been struck by a stray bullet. "I was scared," he told police after they found no blood or casings in the area and the cousins couldn't keep their story straight. "I didn't want to go back to Iraq and leave my family. I felt that my chain of command didn't care about the safety of the troops. I just know that I wasn't going to make it back." Fuller was sentenced to up to 30 months in prison; Roberts got a year in military prison; his wife, Donna, who helped them, got four years' probation.

The process for becoming a conscientious objector is both involved and tough. Soldiers have to show that they are opposed to all wars, not just a particular war. They must also inform their commanding officer, who then appoints an investigating officer. The investigating officer arranges for the soldier to be interviewed by both a chaplain and a psychiatrist, both of whom write reports. Then the investigating officer writes a report and, finally, the commanding officer delivers his verdict in his own report. This usually takes between 12 and 18 months, during which time the soldier must remain with his or her unit. "The standard is pretty high and the military can be capricious about following its own standards," says McNeil. "Basically it's a crap shoot. And you're still in the military until they decide. The only thing they can't make you do during that time is pick up a weapon. The response of your colleagues can vary. Some soldiers have been raped; others were told, 'I don't agree with you but I'll support you any way I can.' "

Desertions - those who leave without permission - rose steeply from 1,509 in 1995 to 4,719 in 2001, only to drop again last year to 2,500. For soldiers to be classified as deserters, they must be awol for 30 days. At that point they are dropped from the military rolls and a federal warrant is issued for their arrest, although for many years they were rarely pursued for lack of resources.

Jeffry House, a Toronto-based lawyer fighting through the Canadian courts for political asylum for soldiers escaping the military, says he has seen a "steady trickle" of soldiers make it across the border. House made the same journey himself in 1970 after he came up number 16 on the draft lottery for Vietnam. He has 12 clients and knows of around 25 more being represented by others and another 200 "in other situations" in Canada. His bid to gain the deserters political asylum now sits with the Canadian federal court of appeal, having been rejected by lower courts, but he is convinced they won't get sent back. "I'd be very surprised," he says. "It would run contrary to everything Canadians think about themselves."

These figures do not represent an exodus in terms of the overall size of the US military, which stands at roughly 2.3 million (including reservists), or compared with historical rates of desertion and conscientious objection during other wars. During the Korean war 4,300 soldiers were granted conscientious objector status; during Vietnam between 50,000 and 90,000 came to Canada, mostly as draft dodgers rather than deserters.

None the less, in an army that is overextended and where recruitment is proving increasingly difficult, every soldier counts. More than 2,600 US soldiers have been killed in the Iraq war and around 19,500 have been injured. They have to be replaced. Since 2001 the military has taken extraordinary steps to bolster its depleted ranks. There is currently a push to attract non-citizens to the service and to lift the upper age limit for new recruits. And, over the past few years, the military has raised by half the rate at which it grants "moral waivers" to potential recruits who have committed misdemeanours and lowered the educational level required. Steven Green, the former soldier accused of raping a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdering her family in Mahmudiya, entered the military on one such waiver.

Reservists, for whom the military was a part-time commitment, are seeing their tours of duty in Iraq extended and the defence department has once again imposed "stop loss" orders - refusing to allow a military member to leave or retire once their required term of service is complete.

The political rhetoric from the Bush administration and Congress maintains that the nation must stay the course in Iraq. "It's time for this House of Representatives to tell the world that we know our cause is right and that we are proud of it," Republican Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert said during a debate on withdrawal in June. The next day the House rejected setting a timetable by 256 to 153. Hastert and his colleagues, however, have yet to convince the people fighting the war. A Zogby International/Le Moyne College survey earlier this year revealed that 72% of troops said the US should withdraw within 12 months, while 29% said they should pull out immediately.

To grasp fully why some troops go awol, one must look beyond the polls to what made them join in the first place. All have their own reasons but Darrell Anderson's story is the one you hear most often. "I was trying to get into college," he says. "I was living in a trailer with my grandmother. I was broke and I needed education and healthcare, and if I had to go to war for it then that was just what I had to do. Going to the military was my last chance. My last option." He describes the circumstances that shaped his choice with a resigned smile and the choice itself with candour - as though going to war were a necessary, if unfortunate, stepping stone to his own American dream.

One of the central differences between this generation of deserters and those of the Vietnam era is class, says Lee Zaslofsky, coordinator of the War Resisters Support Campaign in Canada. "Back then we went to university to get deferments from the draft. Now they go into the military to go to university," he says. Troops in the Vietnam war were conscripted; now they are volunteers. Zaslofsky himself went north of the border in 1969.

Poverty is one of two defining factors in recruitment to the military. Not the abject penury of the underclass but the borderline desperation of the aspirant working poor. America's servicemen are better educated than the population at large, with blacks and Hispanics - the two ethnic groups least likely to support the war - the most over-represented in its ranks.

The other factor is patriotism. Not tub-thumping nationalism but the latent, yet strongly-held, belief that the US is a force for good in the world and that its military exists to impose that good when other means have failed. Such views are both so pervasive and dominant in the American psyche that they don't need evidence to sustain them. Support for the troops, regardless of their mission, is an indisputable fact of public discourse. Liberals sport bumper stickers stating: "Support the troops, oppose the war." Flight attendants regularly announce the presence of a serviceman on board to rousing applause.

So when Anderson signed up, he knew there would be a war and, as much as he thought about it at all, he supported it. "I thought I was going to free Iraqi people. I thought I was going to do a good thing. I didn't know anything about the politics of it."

For nearly all of them, the first time this patriotism was put to the test was also the first time they went abroad - to Iraq. Anderson recalls his initial thoughts while on patrol in Baghdad. "I just thought, what are we doing here? Are we looking for weapons of mass destruction? No. Are we helping the people? No, they hate us. What are we working towards, apart from just staying alive? If this was my neighbourhood and foreign soldiers were doing this, then what would I be doing?"

Initially appalled by what he describes as the racism and hatred of some of his fellow soldiers, he said within a few months he was "cocking my weapon at innocent civilians without any sympathy or humanity".

Like Anderson, Camilo Mejia was able to conform for only so long. Mejia worked in a prisoner of war camp in Al Assad. "The prisoners were barefoot, hooded, their hands tied with concertina wire, and we had to soften them up for interrogation," he says. "We had to keep them awake for 48 to 72 hours. They were so tired and occasionally they just couldn't stay awake. Then we would get a sledgehammer and hit the wall so it sounded like an explosion to scare the shit out of them. Sometimes we would put a 9mm pistol to their heads to make them think they were going to be executed. I didn't say anything because I was afraid and everybody else was doing it. Maybe they felt the same as I did, although some of them didn't really mind doing it. But I knew the prisoners were not all terrorists. One man had a rifle to protect his sheep. I said to myself, this guy's innocent. I thought, this is not a prisoner of war camp - this is a torture camp."

Casteel was similarly outraged by events in Abu Ghraib. While training, he would be presented with mock scenarios: "We were told that whatever was written on the file was true," he says. "If it says this person is a genocidal terrorist, then that would be what he was. So you felt justified in what you were doing. But the intelligence we were working with in Iraq was terrible. I interrogated 40 people. I could count on one hand the people who had participated in systematic violence. The rest knew nothing about it. They were taxi drivers or young fathers. Some were involved in tribal defence but that's not systematic violence."

There is a difference between knowing what is wrong, working out what needs to be done and then taking action. To take the fateful step requires maturity and resolve. Anyone who has stayed in an abusive relationship or a demoralising job too long knows what it is to be paralysed by indecision and false hope. It is no different for deserters. Each one now feels certain they made the right choice; but the process by which they made that choice was marked by crippling uncertainty.

"There was a lot of conflict in me," says Mejia. "On the one hand I knew it was brutality. On the other hand I had been preparing to be an infantryman for eight years. I signed a contract. I felt I was not entitled to my opinions. I was worried that I would be perceived as a coward and a traitor. So I thought I would just do it and keep quiet. The sense of community in the military is very strong. You rely on these people in really difficult situations. I didn't want to disappoint them. But these were all justifications you give yourself to avoid the bigger issues. You keep coming back to the bigger picture. What are we doing there? What about the people we are oppressing? In the end I decided there was no way I could justify participating in this war."

Casteel also found himself wavering between extremes. "I was torn," he says. "On the one hand I had my conscience. On the other hand I felt I'm trained for something but I'm watching it from a place of comfort. One week I would feel, this is all absurd, I'm a pacifist and I need to get out. The next week I would think I need to join Special Forces."

And having spoken their own truth, they must then face the consequences. Jail, disparagement, exclusion, ridicule. "Some people called me a traitor," says Anderson. "But I thought, 'You're supposed to support the troops and you're not listening to a word I'm saying.' "

For Ivan Brobeck, 21, joining the marines was his childhood ambition. "As a kid I always wanted to join the military. I was patriotic and I wanted to fight for my country. I thought we had been doing the right thing all along but I didn't really keep up with the news, so I didn't know much about what was going on in Iraq." When he decided he could not return, his mother told him to see a therapist. As he was leaving for Canada with his most important stuff - "My electronics basically" - his mother came to find him to take him back to the base and he had to hide from her.

It's at this point it becomes apparent how young most of these men are. Brobeck may be 21, but with his boyish features he would struggle to get served in a British pub. Most confided not in colleagues or superiors but in their mothers, who in more than one case assisted them in their esape plans.

When Anita Anderson went on talk radio to defend her son, one caller said he should be publicly executed. At the doctor's office in the small conservative town in Kentucky where she lives, her boss called a meeting at which her colleagues, who had previously congratulated her on Darrell's service, said she was not allowed to talk about her son's desertion. "My boss made me sign a paper saying I would resign if the patients started to complain." She got another job. "People say 'Support the troops' but whenever you talk about supporting one individual soldier, they are not interested."

At a picnic for resisters in Fort Erie, Canada, Anderson lies with his head in his wife's lap and his mother sitting alongside him. He is wearing a T-shirt saying AWOL and a broad smile, even though he joined the military in the first place to give himself more options and now he finds himself more trapped than he ever was. His claim for refugee status was denied and he thinks it will be just a few months before he gets his deportation papers. His wife is Canadian, so that might help. The US border is just five minutes' drive away but he can't go back. He says that doesn't bother him. "All those rich people in my country sent me to die for oil and my education," he says. "I don't feel like I want to go back right now. Maybe if things change."

Casteel, meanwhile, has been studying playwriting and non-fiction in Iowa, as well as teaching rhetoric. He recently came to England and performed a monologue entitled Interrogation Room from his play, Returns, about his time at Abu Ghraib and post-traumatic stress disorder. And whatever happened to the young Saudi jihadist who stiffened Casteel's resolve by so reminding him of himself? "I have no clue," says Casteel. "I'm sure that guy's still in prison."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1857415,00.html



Guardian:
Chávez says China deal 'great wall' against US

· Venezuela to supply a million barrels of oil a day
· Beijing scrambling to feed energy-hungry economy

Jonathan Watts
in Beijing
Saturday August 26, 2006

China and Venezuela, two of the biggest nations on Washington's worry list, drew closer together yesterday with the signing of trade agreements that the Venezuelan president called a "Great Wall" against American hegemonism.

A million-barrel a day oil deal and a promise by China to back Venezuela's bid to join the United Nations security council were the main fruits of a week of meetings in Beijing, ending with talks between Hugo Chávez and the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, yesterday.

The warming of relations reflects a shift in global diplomacy as China seeks energy resources to fuel its economy and Mr Chávez attempts to build alliances with nations threatened by US power, including Iran, Syria and North Korea.

China agreed to increase its imports of Venezuelan oil, refined fuels and a hydrocarbon called Orimulsion from the current 160,000 barrels a day to 500,000 by 2009 and a million by 2016.

This is crucial for China, which is the world's second largest oil user after the US. From being a net exporter of oil little more than a decade ago, the world's most populous and fastest growing economy is increasingly dependent on overseas supplies. It uses about 7.4m barrels a day, up half a million from last year.

It has strengthened ties with suppliers Iran and Sudan, and made deals with Canada. Venezuela looks set to become an increasingly important partner. Mr Chávez underlined the trend with a chart forecasting a sharp increase in the share of Venezuelan oil produced and refined by joint ventures with China in coming years.

As well as a joint refinery project, Venezuela's state-run oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela, has announced in the past week that China will build 13 oil drilling platforms, supply 18 oil tankers and collaborate in the exploration of a new heavy oil field in the Orinoco Belt.

According to the Venezuelan media, China has also agreed to build houses for 20,000 people as a contribution towards Mr Chávez's policy of reducing homelessness. Chinese state-controlled news agencies say Beijing will also help the South American nation build a fibre optic network, modernise a gold mine and develop railways and farm irrigation systems.

Mr Chávez visited the headquarters of China's space programme, where a communications satellite for Venezuela is being built. "We are creating a strategic alliance with the strength of the Great Wall," Mr Chávez told the Chinese president, Hu Jintao, on Thursday.

Aside from energy deals, the biggest success for Mr Chávez was a promise from China to support Venezuela's bid to join the 15-member security council as South America's representative. Washington prefers Ecuador, saying Mr Chávez would be disruptive. "The US government has employed every means to block my country from joining the security council," Mr Chávez told reporters. "The American imperialists are trying to stop us."

Mr Chávez sparked controversy during the visit when he weighed in on the war in Lebanon, saying Israeli leaders should be prosecuted for genocide. "Israel is doing the same thing as Hitler today," he said. "We give our sympathy to the Arab people and condemn Israel."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/venezuela/story/0,,1858768,00.html



il manifesto:
Indagato il capitano della Minerva

Alfredo Pecoraro

Lampedusa (Agrigento)

Il comandante della nave Minerva è indagato per disastro colposo nella strage dimigranti al largo di Lampedusa, costata la vita a dieci persone,mentre altre quaranta risultano ufficialmente disperse. Il fascicolo è stato aperto dalla procura di Agrigento, dopo che alcuni dei settanta superstiti avevano raccontato che a provocare il ribaltamento del barcone, sul quale erano ammassati oltre 120migranti, era stato l'urto con la corvetta della marinamilitare, che si era avvicinata per soccorrere i naufraghi. L'iscrizione nel registro degli indagati, fanno notare gli inquirenti, sarebbe un atto dovuto per consentire lo svolgimento di tutti gli adempimenti necessari all'inchiesta, come i rilievi fotografici e le perizie tecniche sulla nave condotti dalla polizia scientifica della squadramobile di Agrigento e dalla guardia di finanza. L'inchiesta infatti è destinata a essere archiviata come un incidente. E' stato il procuratore di Agrigento, Ignazio De Francisci, a farlo intendere nel corso delle indagini. Il rapporto investigativo inviato alla procura conferma sì il contatto tra l'unità della Marina e la carretta,ma gli investigatori sono convinti che sarebbe stata quest'ultima a urtare contro la poppa della corvetta. Dopo gli accertamenti che si sono svolti a Porto Empedocle la Minerva è ripartita per la base navale di Augusta, dove si trova attualmente in attesa di riprendere la normale attività di pattugliamento nel Canale di Sicilia. Intanto proseguono senza sosta gli arrivi a Lampedusa: ieri sono giunti nell'isola 175 migranti in cinque diversi sbarchi. La prima imbarcazione con 28 migranti, tra cui 3 donne, è stata intercettata a una trentina dimiglia a sud dell'isola da una motovedetta della guardia costiera. Gli immigrati sono già stati accompagnati sull'isola e stanno per essere trasferiti nel centro di prima accoglienza. Poco dopo un gommone, con circa 40 migranti a bordo, è stato soccorso da una motovedetta, altre 42 persone due ore dopo sono state intercettate a 39miglia dalla guardia di finanza. Gli altri due avvistamenti nel tardo pomeriggio: 30migranti si trovavano su un gommone avvistato a 23miglia dalla nave Spica della Marina, 35 su una barca segnalata a 56 miglia dal peschereccio «Maria Pinà». A Lampedusa intanto ieri si è tenuto un vertice della guardia di finanza e della polizia per fare il punto dopo il summit di tre giorni fa al Viminale. Duplice l'obiettivo: prendere contatti con i reparti sull'isola e il pool investigativo della questura di Agrigento che seguono da vicino l'immigrazione e visionare i mezzi aerei e navali impegnati nelle attività di ricerca e soccorso.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/25-Agosto-2006/art37.html



il manifesto:
Ferrero versus Grillo

Cinzia Gubbini


Gli aveva dato dell'«irresponsabile» e lui ha risposto, «con immutata stima». Faccia a faccia virtuale tra il comico genovese Beppe Grillo e il ministro per la solidarietà sociale Paolo Ferrero sul tema dell'immigrazione. Teatro della polemica il visitatissimo blog dell'umorista (www.beppegrillo.it). Grillo aveva lanciato il sasso qualche giorno fa, in un post in cui se la prendeva con il ministro che teorizza la facilitazione degli ingressi legali. Nel mirino l'affermazione di Ferrero sui 30 milioni di giovani africani pronti a «lasciare casa e affetti». Ma anche il presunto «tabù» sull'immigrazione, di cui si deve sempre parlare - argomenta Grillo - in modo «politically correct». Lo vada a spiegare ai Calderoli e alle Bertolini, verrebbe da dire. Ma anche alle duemila persone che hanno risposto alla sua lezione di libero pensiero condividendo le accuse lanciate contro chi non si preoccuperebbe della nostra emigrazione (quella dei cervelli) e in modo irresponsabile favorirebbe l'abbassamento delle garanzie sul lavoro e gli interessi dei «padroncini del nord». Insieme a comprensibili denunce sul funzionamento del mercato del lavoro italiano, giù le solite polemiche sulla criminalità, sulle città invivibili per colpa degli immigrati, sui nostri bambini da difendere da questa massa informe e compatta che sarebbero gli immigrati. Il «politically correct» non è di casa, questo è sicuro. Il ministro ha comunque deciso di rispondere e in duemila caratteri cerca di spiegare perché le leggi vigenti sono proprio quelle che portano al rischio di dumping sociale che Grillo imputa agli immigrati (insieme a qualche altra baggianata, tipo che i cpt sono posti dove si accolgono gli stranieri). Il ministro si ricorda anche di citare i morti in mare, su cui Grillo non spende neanche una parola - si sa, lui è lontano anni luce dal «buonismo». Un po' di populismo però non si nega a nessuno, e quindi il comico genovese propone di dedicare una parte del nostro Pil ai paesi poveri. Basta che se ne stiano a casa loro. «I poveri sono come al solito usati per fare la guerra ai più poveri», risponde in una lettera pubblica al comico genovese il responsabile immigrazione dell'Arci Filippo Miraglia, che accusa Grillo di «diffondere tesi razziste». E azzarda «Forse vuole riproporre lo sketch di Giobbe Covatta: 'non siamo noi che siamo razzisti: sono loro che sono napoletani'».

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/25-Agosto-2006/art35.html



New Statesman:
Bloggers for hire

Cover story
Stephen Armstrong

Monday 28th August 2006

The days of genuine "citizen-generated" media may be numbered. Suddenly big business is all over the blogosphere, paying armies of willing recruits to praise products. By Stephen Armstrong

Towards the end of last month a posting appeared on a website called "Blog Republic - By the Bloggers. For the Bloggers". "Blog Republic is looking for bloggers who are interested in being paid per post," it said. "We're looking for motivated bloggers in the following areas: cellphones, broadband, travel, gadgets, health, stocks and blogging. We're looking for quality bloggers who can make insightful posts. The more you post, the more you earn."

This plea caused quite a flurry in the online world. After all, if blog culture has been about anything, it has been about sticking it to large corporations rather than taking their advertising dollars. Last year, for instance, Dell would not replace a faulty computer owned by the influential blogger Jeff Jarvis. He started chronicling the company's poor service on his blog buzz machine.com under the heading "Dell Hell". His postings hit such a nerve that Jarvis was soon receiving 10,000 visits a day.

Sites attacking McDonald's, Starbucks, Nestlé, Nike and just about every oil company proliferate around the net. With a successful legal action against these vociferous individuals costing more in legal fees and bad publicity than the victory would be worth, blogs have been seen as an extension of consumer activism. A poll conducted by NOP World Consumer in March last year found that 50 per cent of bloggers express opinions about a company or product at least once a week, while another survey, for Hostway, showed that 77 per cent of online consumers viewed blogs as a useful way to get insights into the products they were looking to buy. With all these opinions reaching their customers, companies felt like a boxer attacked by thousands of children - staggering from tiny blow to tiny blow, unable to hit back but sure that, at some point, damage was being done.

This summer, however, something changed. In June, a disgruntled Land-Rover customer called Adrian Melrose set up a site called have yoursay.com to track the company's lack of progress in dealing with a complaint about his new Discovery. Melrose was soon attracting 700 visitors a day, which placed him at the top of a Google search if you typed in "Land-Rover Discovery". In July, the company caved in and sorted out his problem but then struck a deal to turn haveyoursay.com into a Land-Rover customer feedback forum.

Suddenly corporations are all over the blogo sphere. Last year, Business Week ran a feature, "Six tips for corporate bloggers", which highlighted a deal between the web services company Marqui and 20 bloggers who were offered $2,400 each to write about the company once a week for three months. At the end of June this year, the idea went pro with payperpost.com, a site set up by Ted Murphy, chief executive of the advertising firm MindComet. PayPerPost's home page shows a youthful adman in a smart suit and with a cheeky grin - "He wants to create a buzz for his new product" - alongside a glamorous girl kicking back at a cool party - "She wants to make money". "You tell the blogger what you want him/her to post about," the advice for advertisers reads. "You can require the blogger to add photos to their post, write about experiences with your product; the possibilities are up to your imagination."

Old-school bloggers predicted a riot. When the online guru Marshall Kirkpatrick complained about PayPerPost's idea on his own blog, TechCrunch, the reaction from his older readers was outrage. "I hope this is some sort of cruel joke," wrote Simran in Kirkpatrick's comments section. Many called Murphy the devil. Some younger users, however, couldn't see what the fuss was about.

"Why not get paid to write about something you believe in?" wrote skyblue. "It's up to the blogger if they want to do paid posts, then it's up to the reader if they want to continue reading," argued Paul Short." "I'm just some college student who started a blog over two years ago and has had approximately 150 hits," Ben Belden posted. "I hadn't even written anything in months on my site before I found out about PayPerPost. Since then, I've written six posts and hopefully in 30 days I will have made $137.75 for just writing what I think."

Until now, the founders of the blogosphere have jealously protected their online world. This was easy when blogging was a difficult and complicated business, requiring at least some working knowledge of computer code. Early blogs tended to be written by the highly motivated and technologically literate. They often argued that this was a new paradigm - "citizen-generated media", free from the restrictions of top-down "old media".

With the expansion in open-source software over the past 18 months, however, anyone can get involved. Many new bloggers are school or college kids just trying to get laid. For them, the purity of the blogosphere is irrelevant. The idea of getting paid to chat about a soft drink seems absolutely fine. Nicole Discon, a high-school senior from New Orleans, was paid by 7-Up to plug a new milk drink called Raging Cow on her blog Sparkley.net. She said the commercial connection didn't bother her and "now that I've delved into the whole advertising thing, it's something I really love doing". For youth brands, this teenage ambivalence is great news. After all, online is where their customers are.

Steve Henry, executive creative director at TBWA and the adman behind the "You've been Tangoed" and Pot Noodle campaigns, believes that in the next four to five years the accepted model of advertising will change completely. "You're only going to be able to sell in an opt-in environment like a shop or website, somewhere people choose to be," he believes. "To get a customer there, you need to surround them - PR, stunts, ambient media, the works. Blogs allow your brand to become part of the culture, to become something that's talked about."

Opinion sponsorship

One of the big advantages the blogosphere offers adland is, ironically, a function of its birth as an unregulated samizdat medium. It is admirable that editorial content can't be controlled, but the absence of any oversight means the same is true for commercial deals. The kind of opinion sponsorship PayPerPost and Bloggers Republic are offering would be illegal in the UK if practised by any of the conventional media. And the ramifications are not just in the soft drinks sector. The US marine corps is already using the networking site myspace.com for recruitment and brand-building - and has form in paying for positive editorial in Iraqi newspapers. Who's to say that the marines aren't already slipping teen bloggers a few dollars for a bit of positive spin? Who's to say? No one. Because the blogosphere is completely unregulated.

And once an idea exists in the online world, it exists in the real one, in effect. The music industry uses chatroom ambassadors to develop band reputations and recruits kids to rave about an artist at school. In June, the ad agency Starcom MediaVest recommended that its clients use conversation as an advertising medium. "Traditional advertising is not as effective as it used to be," says Starcom's research director, Jim Kite. "Word of mouth becomes more important, but we didn't realise how important it is. We are telling our clients that they should make word of mouth the focus of their ad campaigns."

Companies such as Procter & Gamble have started recruiting "brand ambassadors" - key social figures in a neighbourhood or community who will get paid to drop brand references into conversations or hold barbecues where they pepper the talk with praise for dusters or aftershave. Steve Henry is stunned to report that some brand ambassadors forget to pick up their cheque - "They just like to have something to talk about," he says. This month, the fledgling industry created its own trade body - the Word of Mouth Marketing Association. Now the hidden persuaders could be anywhere. You may not want to read ILikeCokeBlogger's views on soft drinks, but it's hard to turn away if your best friend recommends a soap powder. What's the price of free speech when opinions are suddenly for sale?

Becky Hogge, Reboot, page 42


Five ways companies can use the internet to target your wallet
Research by Daniel Trilling

Use a social networking site The model Christine Dolce (aka ForBiddeN, left) launched her career on MySpace, where she also promotes a Unilever-owned brand of deodorant. [http://www.myspace.com/ForBiddeN]

Pay a blogger PayPerPost is one of several services that introduces companies to bloggers willing to write nice things about their products - for a fee. [http://payperpost.com]

Mount a counter-attack Dell launched a customer-care blog in response to sites complaining about its products. [http://www.direct2dell.com]

Hire a "street team" The PR company M80 recruits enthusiasts to promote bands, films and TV programmes in return for exclusive downloads, videos and competitions. [http://www.fanboost.com]

Create a viral e-mail A marketing campaign for the Hollywood film Snakes on a Plane offers fans the chance to e-mail a personalised message from the Snakes star, Samuel Jackson, to their friends. [http://snakesonaplane.varitalk.com]

This article first appeared in the New Statesman.

http://www.newstatesman.com/200608280034



Página/12:
La frontera siria, al rojo vivo

DAMASCO CORTO LA LUZ EN ESTE ENCLAVE DE NARCOS Y CONTRABANDISTAS

Los habitantes del valle de Bekaa viven como una maldición su proximidad con Siria, pero también sufren la devastación causada por el ejército israelí. Ante el posible despliegue de tropas internacionales, Damasco cerró parcialmente la frontera.

Por Eduardo Febbro
Desde Baalbek, Sábado, 26 de Agosto de 2006

Lejos del frente y en el centro de la guerra. Baalbek está desierta, vaciada por el éxodo de los habitantes de esta columna vertebral del Hezbolá bombardeada indiscriminadamente por la aviación y los helicópteros israelíes. Baalbek y su región, la planicie de la Bekaa, es lo que los libaneses llaman la segunda maldición del Líbano. La primera está en el sur, a lo largo de la frontera con Israel, hasta la meseta del Golán. La segunda está aquí, en la frontera con Siria. Baalbek es un punto de fractura mundial. Israel ejerce su presión sobre en el sur, Siria lo hace desde esta región de 125 mil habitantes situada al nordeste de Beirut.

Los servicios de inteligencia occidentales aseguran que la planicie de la Bekaa es el lugar por donde Siria suministra las armas del Hezbolá. Los habitantes conocen el rumor, y hasta la realidad del tráfico. Pero los labios están cosidos por el miedo. Haj Ahmed Raya, uno de los responsables del Hezbolá en Baalbek, sostiene que esas acusaciones son puras mentiras. “Es una versión elaborada por el Mossad y la CIA”, dice el hombre. Pero cuando se le pregunta cuál es su versión, Ahmed Raya no responde y cambia de tema, habla de la Argentina, de la calidad humana de Buenos Aires que fue uno de los primeros países en enviar ayuda humanitaria al Líbano. Baalbek es la fundación mítica del Hezbolá. De esta región es oriundo el sheik Tufayli, el líder del movimiento chiíta a quien el ex presidente Carlos Menem acusó de haber planeado y cometido el atentado contra la sede de la AMIA.

Un vistazo a la geografía montañosa de la región basta para medir en silencio la polifonía problemática del conflicto. Fronteras, fundamentalismo, invasiones, armas, cultivos de opio, todo converge en la planicie de la Bekaa. La principal atracción turística de Baalbek son sus templos, un conjunto arquitectónico único construido por los romanos seis siglos antes de Jesucristo y que está ubicado al lado de la principal mezquita chiíta de la ciudad. En el centro del valle, la cúpula y las dos torres azules de la mezquita se superponen a las contracciones romanas. Por eso Baalbek está lejos de la frontera armada pero en el ojo del ciclón del conflicto de Medio Oriente. Israel invadió el Líbano por el sur, Siria lo hizo por el noroeste. La capital de la invasión siria no fue Beirut sino Baalbek.

La ciudad ofrece una imagen de éxodo porque la gente huyó durante los 34 días de bombardeos israelíes y aún no se anima a regresar. En este lugar donde reina una serenidad inspirada, el doctor Abu Kadara no logra olvidar lo que pasó, los bombardeos intensos, las víctimas civiles, las piedras de los templos romanos cayendo bajo la presión de las explosiones. “La guerra es una cosa sucia. La gente se fue y ahora el terror no la deja regresar. Como usted puede verlo, la mayoría de los negocios permanecen cerrados y hay barrios enteros que están vacíos.” Abu Kadara es lúcido y hace un retrato del Líbano sin concesiones. “El Líbano tiene dos problemas y una salvación. Tenemos la frontera sur con Israel, la del nordeste con Siria y el mar Mediterráneo. En el sur tenemos problemas con Israel, y acá con Siria. Lo único que nos queda es el mar para partir.”

Hoy, los problemas son presentes. Siria, que se opone al despliegue de la fuerza internacional, dejó al Líbano sin luz. Invocando un problema técnico, Damasco cortó el suministro de electricidad. Enemigo acérrimo de la presencia de tropas extranjeras a lo largo de las fronteras, el poder sirio amenazó incluso con cerrar totalmente su frontera con el Líbano. El cierre ya es parcial. Los camiones libaneses se quedaron sin atravesar la frontera y Damasco advirtió incluso a los choferes libaneses que recorrenel eje Beirut-Damasco que si salían de su país era probable que no pudieran entrar.

Khalil Dbab escucha las noticias provenientes de Siria con ojos preocupados. Este ingeniero de Baalbek, sin trabajo desde hace casi dos meses por falta de luz debido a la guerra, se acuerda de los años de la ocupación siria con cierto horror. “Era como una dictadura. Nada se podía decir en voz alta porque enseguida había represalias. Si a uno se le ocurría hablar mal de Hafez al Assad (ex presidente sirio, padre del actual), enseguida lo ponían preso. Sin los sirios vivimos mejor. Hay más libertad. Esta es una ciudad atravesada por todas las corrientes, políticas y religiosas. Hay cristianos maronitas, sunnitas, chiítas. Antes nunca tuvimos problemas. No se puede negar que éste es un bastión del Hezbolá, pero eso no significa nada propiamente malo. Yo soy sunnita pero mis dos hermanas se casaron con chiítas. La guerra con Israel ha sido una maldición que atrajo otras maldiciones, entre ellas Siria.”

En los tiempos de la dominación siria, de las mafias que controlaban los cultivos de opio y de los primeros rugidos del Hezbolá, Baalbek era distinta. Un valle agitado por otras sombras. Hoy parece más serena, más estratégica. La frontera próxima suscita las pesadillas de antaño. Pero el Hezbolá escruta los valles, los caminos secretos por donde, quizá, transiten sus armas y el dinero.

© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72008-2006-08-26.html



Página/12:
Espías que no saben espiar

EN WASHINGTON NADIE SABE BIEN EN QUE ANDA IRAN


Por Yolanda Monge*
Desde Washington, Sábado, 26 de Agosto de 2006

Las voces contra los servicios de espionaje de Estados Unidos vuelven a sonar. Según un informe del Comité de Inteligencia de la Cámara de Representantes hecho público esta semana por la prensa, los servicios de espionaje de la nación no están capacitados para “obtener la información esencial necesaria para evaluar” la capacidad nuclear de Irán y sus intenciones de desarrollar armas de destrucción masiva.

El informe, de 29 páginas, ha sido elaborado en su mayor parte por un miembro republicano del comité, que mantiene una “línea dura” respecto de Irán y respalda en un ciento por ciento la teoría de la Casa Blanca de que Teherán está desarrollando un programa de armas nucleares, lo que amenaza seriamente la seguridad de Estados Unidos. Frederick Fleitz, ex agente de la CIA que fue colaborador de John Bolton –antiguo hombre de la Administración Bush en el Departamento de Estado para los asuntos con Irán, actual embajador ante la ONU–, es el hombre señalado como artífice del informe.

Fleitz reprende con contundencia a la comunidad de inteligencia por la existencia de “significativas lagunas en nuestro conocimiento”, lo que no permite corroborar su tesis del peligro que representa Irán para EE.UU. “Hay muchas cosas sobre Irán que desconocemos”, dice el texto. De especial preocupación es el desconocimiento “sobre los programas nucleares, biológicos o químicos iraníes”.

El informe se dio a conocer un día después de que Teherán anunciase oficialmente su respuesta a la oferta de incentivos que le presentaron las principales potencias occidentales para que abandonase sus ambiciones nucleares. En su respuesta a la oferta internacional, Irán reiteró que no piensa suspender su programa de enriquecimiento de uranio, aunque ofreció una “nueva fórmula” para resolver la crisis mediante el diálogo.

* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.

© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72009-2006-08-26.html



Página/12:
Dos vergüenzas

Por Juan Gelman
Sábado, 26 de Agosto de 2006

Se asiste en Israel a un incipiente movimiento de protesta en torno de la guerra que Tel Aviv desatara contra Hezbolá –y Líbano– en represalia por la irrupción en su territorio y la captura de dos soldados israelíes que llevó a cabo la guerrilla libanesa: exige el establecimiento de una comisión que investigue por qué las Fuerzas de Defensa de Israel no lograron sus objetivos de destruir a Hezbolá, detener sus ataques con misiles y liberar a los efectivos capturados. Para el columnista israelí Meron Benvenisti, en esa demanda confluyen dos pujos contrarios: uno “se opone a la guerra y quiere castigar a sus ejecutores, con la esperanza de que sacar a luz su fracaso político y moral frenará a los autores de guerra en el futuro”. El otro “aspira a escrutar los problemas de la maquinaria bélica y a preparar al ejército para una nueva lid que borraría la vergüenza del fracaso” (Ha’aretz, 24/8/06). No es el único tipo de vergüenza que existe en Israel.

Dani Broitman es un argentino de 38 años y hace 18 que vive y trabaja en el kibutz Magal. Es israelí por elección y no se arrepiente de haberlo decidido. “Precisamente por eso –dice en una carta estremecedora–, a la par del orgullo de vivir en un país envidiable en muchos aspectos, llevo la vergüenza encima como un lastre, siempre. Está ahí, agachada, esperando que la mire cuando recuerdo cómo tratamos cotidianamente a los palestinos, o emboscándome, cuando veo lo que hacemos con toda persona que por su origen o religión no pertenezca a la casta de los privilegiados.” La carta está fechada el 31 de julio, día en que un bombardeo israelí segó en Qana la vida de 60 civiles libaneses, 37 de ellos niños: “Hay momentos –agrega–, como en las últimas semanas en las que nos dedicamos sistemáticamente a destruir un país indefenso (sin importarnos, por supuesto, el precio que ellos pagan, e importándonos muy poco el que nosotros mismos pagamos), en que la vergüenza pasa a ser algo cotidiano y palpable, con la que me levanto y me acuesto todos los días. Y hay días como hoy... en que la vergüenza me pesa en los hombros y no me deja caminar”.

Dani Broitman se ha negado a servir como reservista en los territorios palestinos ocupados y eso lo convirtió en “refuznik” y le costó sanciones. Señala: “Los terroristas palestinos nos obligaron a vivir con temor durante largos meses, en el punto más álgido de la ola de atentados suicidas. Los aplastamos brutalmente, reproduciendo todas las condiciones para que una nueva generación de condenados nos odie tanto como para inmolarse junto a nosotros”. Recuerda los 18 años de ocupación militar israelí del sur de Líbano y concluye: “Los milicianos de Hezbolá que combaten hoy a nuestro ejército son los hijos de quienes la sufrieron”. Su crítica no se detiene: “En nuestra zona, democracia es el gobierno que le agrada a Israel... Si los palestinos se atreven a elegir al partido incorrecto, los sometemos a bloqueo y los hambreamos, ya que no entienden lo que significa la bendita palabra. En Líbano... la población chiíta no comprende que para ser democrático hay que elegir un representante blanco que sepa hablar inglés y ame a McDonald’s y Chevron... Por suerte estamos nosotros, quienes por medio de tanques, aviones, y buena voluntad, tratamos de explicarles cómo se hace para entrar en el mundo libre”.

La ironía de Dani Broitman roza luego el sarcasmo: “A tres kilómetros de mi casa hay una base de misiles. A diez kilómetros hay una base de entrenamiento de reclutas, pegada a Pardes Hana, una ciudad mediana. Al lado de Safed (una de las ciudades más bombardeadas por Hezbolá) está la base central del comando norte del ejército. Los cañones del ejército israelí disparan desde posiciones ubicadas entre poblaciones del norte del país. El estado mayor conjunto está ubicado en pleno centro de Tel Aviv. Pero son los milicianos de Hezbolá los únicos cínicos que cobardemente se escudan entre civiles para perpetrar sus atropellos”. Condena el fanatismo religioso de Hezbolá y Hamas, “movimientos sociales y políticos contrarios a cualquier valor que se me ocurriría esgrimir”. Pero apunta que nunca autorizó al liderazgo político-militar de Israel a “arrasar un país vecino sólo para demostrar nuestra virilidad. Les grito en cada manifestación contra esta guerra criminal que no lo hagan en mi nombre”.

Dani Broitman termina su carta de manera contundente: “A mis representantes (el primer ministro Ehud Olmert, el ministro de Defensa Amir Peretz, el jefe de estado mayor Dan Halutz) tengo que pedirles cuentas. Son ellos los que mantienen a un millón de ciudadanos israelíes en los refugios durante semanas. Son ellos los que destrozan al Líbano día a día en una furia macho-militarista sin límites. Son ellos los que al fin de la guerra van a liberar a miles de prisioneros en canje por nuestros tres soldados, cuando lo podrían haber hecho el primer día sin derramar ríos de sangre. Son ellos los que espero, como ciudadano israelí preocupado por su futuro y por el de sus hijos, que sean juzgados un día en el tribunal internacional para crímenes de guerra de La Haya”. “Cuando deje de indignarme –decía André Gide–, comenzará mi vejez.”

© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-72015-2006-08-26.html



The Independent:
EU nations pledge 7,000 Lebanon troops


By John Lichfield in Paris
Published: 26 August 2006

European countries yesterday offered at least 7,000 troops for a stronger UN force in Lebanon, but differences remained on how large the force should be. President Jacques Chirac suggested a force of "up to 15,000" as mentioned in the UN ceasefire resolution, was "completely excessive".

After a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels, the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan, said Europe had agreed to provide 7,000 soldiers - almost half of the number required by the UN resolution. He said he hoped the stronger force would be able to deploy within days, not weeks. After pledges of 3,000 troops from Italy and 2,000 from France, Spain said it could send 1,200, Poland about 1,000, Belgium 400 and Finland 200.

"Europe is providing the backbone," Mr Annan said. "We can now begin to put together a credible force." He said that he also had "firm commitments" from Malaysia, Indonesia and Bangladesh, and was consulting with Turkey.

Asked if he expected to assemble the full force mentioned in UN resolution 1701, he said: "Not today, but I will get the 15,000." A United Nations meeting to finalise the force is expected on Monday. An agreement is also emerging to split the leadership of the force between the overall command of an Italian official, based in New York, and the operational command of a French general, based in Lebanon. This is regarded by Paris and Rome as a simpler and more workable chain of command than in many previous UN peace-keeping operations.

EU nations have been reluctant to commit troops without guarantees that they will be able to defend themselves. France, in particular, demanded clearer rules of engagement.

Having received those rules, President Chirac announced on Thursday night that France would expand its forces by 1,600 men to a total of 2,000. At a joint press conference in Paris yesterday with the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, he said he would have been accused of being a "mad dog" if he sent a large number of troops without a clear right to self-defence.

The plan is for UN troops to help 15,000 Lebanese troops take control of southern Lebanon from Hizbollah, as Israeli troops withdraw. President Chirac said so many troops in a small area would get in one another's way. "It doesn't really make sense. So what is the right number, 4,000, 5,000 or 6,000? I don't know," he said.

Belgium will send almost 400 troops, including anti-mine experts, medical units and engineers, the Prime Minister, Guy Verhofstadt, said yesterday. The country's Foreign Minister, Karel de Gucht, said European countries must step in to the breach because "the United States is not able to openly play an active role in controlling and solving the conflict because it has no credibility whatsoever for Arab and Muslim nations as a negotiator or as a provider of neutral peacekeeping troops."

France's decision to send 2,000 troops, after days of uncertainty, seems to have helped to overcome the timidity of other EU countries. Ambiguities remain in the UN resolution, but it authorises the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil) "to take all necessary action" to defend itself and prevent hostile activities. The Europeans have bad memories of weak UN mandates for forces in Rwanda and the Balkans. They say that the new Unifil will not disarm Hizbollah, but oversee negotiations to persuade the militia to surrender its weapons to the Lebanese army.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1221936.ece



The New Yorker:
PROCLAMATION


by GEORGE SAUNDERS
Issue of 2006-08-28

TEHRAN, Iran (July 29)—Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has ordered government and cultural bodies to use modified Persian words to replace foreign words that have crept into the language, such as “pizzas,” which will now be known as “elastic loaves.” —Associated Press.

O.K., so this is it. I am telling you now. Our jihad declares this: no more English. Wait, I know. I am speaking English, but just this one last time. No more English, once I am done speaking. When done speaking, I will do that zipping thing one does with the lips, and after that: our glorious linguistic jihad begins! It is going to really kick ass. However, hang on. “Kick ass” does not please the Prophet. How do I know? I just do. From now on, we will say, like: Our new linguistic jihad is really going to “put the foot in the old rumpus.” Got it? Or “rumpamundo” is O.K. “Put the foot in the old rumpamundo.” Yes, yes, I like that.

Some of you have asked, “Mahmoud, why are we doing this?” One even asked, “Mahmoud, why the heck are we doing this”—more about “heck” later, but for now . . . Remember, back in the seventies, when we took those American, uh, “visitors who did not intend to stay quite so long as they did, in fact, stay”? At the time everyone was going, “No, no, Mahmoud, bad idea”—but look how great it turned out! Now everyone is futzing over us, because why? Because we asserted our— Oh, right, no, you’re right, absolutely, we must also purge our language of the expressions of the blood-drinkers. So “futz”? No. Thanks for pointing that out. How about “fuss”? “Fussing around”? What do you think? Show of hands? Too similar? O.K., instead of “futz,” let it be, uh . . . let me get back to you on that one.

But you see my point. When we draw a line in the sand with the Western imperialists, they pay attention. When we try to be nice, they treat us badly. I write the guy a sixteen-page letter, and don’t even get a note back! I put a lot of thought into that! I did, like, three drafts! I was trying to be an “egg that is good”! I was trying to offer “the branch of the olive”! But that “one who fucks” treated me like I was some “stupid rectum” from “HoboIntercourse”!

My friends, I am a simple man. That is why you elected me. I have never been anywhere other than our beloved country. I actually haven’t even been to that many places here in our beloved country. I have pretty much been here in my beloved house, non-stop, since the seventies. In my beloved room. With the door locked. Having nightmares in which Hulk Hogan is waiting outside my room—look, as for Hulk Hogan, do not mention his name ever again! He will be referred to, if we even need to refer to him, which I doubt, as “Blond Blondie, Big Blondie!” In this way, we will disrespect him! In this way, he will be driven from my dreams! No more sneaking up behind me, “Blond Blondie, Big Blondie!,” and putting me in a headlock, and I am naked, and have forgotten to study for all my exams!

No. For us, all Western decadence is finished. McDonald’s, chief villain of the American imperialist program, will henceforth be known as “Burger King.” That will really mess with everybody’s head. Some enemy of the revolution here in Tehran goes into a McDon— Do we still even have McDonald’s? I used to really like the cheeseburgers. The “snack that is surprisingly caloric because, you sense, there is even sugar in the bun.” Anyway, some enemy of the revolution goes into a McDonald’s, orders a Big Mac, and—ha ha!—he is really in Burger King. I love it! He is undone.

Similarly, Burger King will be known as “Wendy’s,” KFC will be known as “Home Depot,” Farouq’s Funeral Home will be known as “Blockbuster Video,” and Pamela Anderson will be known as “Mrs. President of Iran.” Joking! I know she is already married! Didn’t she just— Well, in any event, I am. At least, I think I am. Can you get my wife on my cell? Is this going out live? That Pam Anderson thing might have rubbed her the wrong—

Speaking of women, that is another thing: don’t you find that word provocative? Say it a few times, softly, kind of moaning it to yourself, while picturing some slut undulating. See what I mean? Provocative. So that is why we are outlawing that as well. No, just the word. At least for now.

Henceforth, let us call our sisters “that which is too hot to be seen.” Or should it be “that whom are too hot to be seen”? To tell the truth, I am not nuts about the word “hot.” It makes me . . . well, it makes me hot. Say it, kind of stretch it out: hot. No, that won’t do. We shall call them “those who are dangerous to see, due to they are nasty, which is why we shall henceforth hide them under the new immense heavy tents of steel for which I own the patent.”

Have I mentioned that? I am decided. Women are just too hot. Even in chadors, they are too damn hot. Try it, say it, really slowly, kind of prolonging the “ch” sound: chador. Right? See what I mean? So the chadors are off (stop it!) and the “comfort tents” are on. Here is one now. See how weighty, totally opaque (and therefore form-concealing) it is? This way, “those who are dangerous to see, due to they are nasty, which is why we, etc., etc.” will no longer be able to make any sudden sexy moves, or be seen at all, even when a bright light is shining right on them (during, say, an interrogation), or have a free thought, since they are essentially being perpetually crushed by about a quarter ton of steel, like wearing a damn VW bug.

Oops. Sorry. My bad. Did not mean to say “VW.” Meant to say “Volkswagen.” And did not mean to say “damn.” Meant to say “frigging.” Ha ha! Joking.

Let no one say our revolution is without humor. Anyone says that, I will put my foot in his old rumpamundo in a way he will not soon forget. Trust me on this. I will “install, via rippage, an entirely new down-low-nasty-nasty orifice-stinky,” brother, and pronto, please believe me.

Because guess what? I have nukes coming. “Slender death-containing tubes by which righteousness shall be enforced, as per me.”

I shit you not.

http://www.newyorker.com/shouts/content/articles/060828sh_shouts



TIME: Exclusive:
The Pentagon Plans for an African Command

The Pentagon is close to approving a command for Africa, where poverty and corruption make it a vulnerable area for extremists and terrorists


By SALLY B. DONNELLY
Thursday, Aug. 24, 2006

In what may be the most glaring admission that the U.S. military needs to dramatically readjust how it will fight what it calls 'the long war,' the Pentagon is expected to announce soon that it will create an entirely new military command to focus on the globe's most neglected region: Africa.

Pentagon sources say that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is close to approving plans for an African Command, which would establish a military organization to singlehandedly deal with the entire continent of Africa. It would be a sign of a significant strategic shift in administration policy, reflecting the need to put more emphasis on pro-active, preventative measures rather than maintaining a defensive posture designed for the Cold War.

The Pentagon has five geographic Unified Combatant Commands around the world and responsibility for Africa is awkwardly divided among three of those: European Command, Pacific Command and Central Command — which is also responsible for running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Creating an African Command would be an important structural move to coordinate US defense policy for the continent, as well as provide a single military organization for agencies like the State Department and the CIA to work with in the region.

A defense source says the new command, which is part of Rumsfeld's ongoing worldwide reassessment of the military's division of labor, may be headed by Gen. William 'Kip' Ward, a respected officer who is the Army's only four star African-American general. Ward has boots-on-the-ground experience in Africa: he was a commander during the U.S.'s ill-fated mission in Somalia in 1993 and also served as a military representative in Egypt in 1998. Ward is currently the deputy commander at European Command, and as such oversees US military relations with 43 African countries.

But a former military officer who thinks highly of Ward nonetheless says creating an entirely new command compounds an existing problem. " The size and number of headquarters already is skewed too far in favor of 'tail' at the expense of warfighting 'teeth.' Want to increase 'boots on the ground?' Eliminate or downsize some of these staffs, don't create more," says this observer.

Many military experts have long advocated paying more attention to Africa. While Central Command has had a small military contingent based in Djibouti (called Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa or 'CJTF-HOA') for several years, intelligence agencies and military officers have warned that the US should be spending more time and money in Africa.

Gen. John Abizaid, the Centcom commander, laid out a laundry list of concerns to the Senate Armed Services Committee last March. While Abizaid spoke about the Horn of Africa, the threats stretch across much of the continent. "The Horn of Africa is vulnerable to penetration by regional extremist groups, terrorist activity, and ethnic violence. Al Qaeda has a history of planning, training for, and conducting major terrorist attacks in this region, such as the bombings of U.S. Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The volatility of this region is fueled by a daunting list of challenges, to include extreme poverty, corruption, internal conflicts, border disputes, uncontrolled borders and territorial waters, weak internal security capabilities, natural disasters, famine, lack of dependable water sources, and an underdeveloped infrastructure. The combination of these serious challenges creates an environment that is ripe for exploitation by extremists and criminal organizations."

Abizaid did point out that small operation in Djibouti has produced bang for the buck: "Working closely with U.S. Embassy personnel in the region, CJTF-HOA assists partner governments in building indigenous capacity to deny terrorists access to their territory. This not only includes training local security and border forces, but also involves assisting with low-level civic projects throughout HOA such as digging wells, building schools and distributing books, and holding medical and veterinary clinics in remote villages." These efforts, Abizaid said, engender goodwill and help "discredit extremist propaganda and bolster local desires and capabilities to defeat terrorists before they can become entrenched."

Copyright © 2006 Time Inc. All rights reserved.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1328840,00.html

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