Elsewhere Today (393)
Aljazeera:
Gazans killed in multiple Israeli strikes
Wednesday 06 September 2006, 11:50 Makka Time, 8:50 GMT
Five Palestinians, believed to be members of Hamas, have been killed in three airstrikes in southern Gaza.
The Israeli military said its first attack early on Wednesday in the village of Khuvaa, near Khan Yunus, had hit two armed men who were close to the border fence with Israel.
Witnesses said the explosion rocked the courtyard of a nearby house. Aljzaeera reported that one Hamas activist was killed in the strike. Two other people were wounded.
Residents said Israeli troops had taken their raid further into the village on Wednesday and had detained 10 people. It was unclear if they were fighters.
An Israeli military source said a force was in the area as part of ongoing operations there, and that some people in the village had been detained.
Rafah attacks
Hours earlier, four Palestinians were killed in two late-night airstrikes on cars in the Rafah refugee camp in Gaza.
Helicopter gunships fired on a vehicle carrying two members of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades. The bridage is the armed wing of the ruling Hamas faction.
The men were killed and residents said the blast caused a huge fire. Dozens of bystanders were hurt.
One witness, Salim Abu Jazer, said the initial blast was followed by two smaller explosions in the car.
An Israeli military spokeswoman said the secondary explosions indicated that there were explosives in the car.
Two people were later killed in a separate car explosion nearby, also an apparent airstrike, but the Israeli military made no immediate comment.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/D69B738B-39DD-4D17-A4D0-218F6A4E249B.htm
allAfrica: Photographer And Human Rights Activist
Tomo Kriznar Gets Presidential Pardon
Reporters sans Frontières (Paris) PRESS RELEASE
September 5, 2006
Reporters Without Borders has hailed the news that Slovenian photographer and human rights activist Tomo Kriznar was given a presidential pardon on 2 September 2006 but the organisation stressed the need to obtain the release of three other foreign media workers still being held in Sudan's western Darfur region.
Kriznar was sentenced to two years in prison on charges of spying and publishing false information on 14 August after entering Sudan without a visa. He had been held in Shala prison in Al-Fashir, the capital of North Darfur, since 20 July.
"Kriznar's release from prison is good news, but the imperative now is to obtain the release of Paul Salopek and his two assistants, who are being held in the same city for the same reasons, and to force the Sudanese government to keep its promises to respect press freedom and the right to be informed," Reporters Without Borders said.
The presidential pardon came after negotiations between the Sudanese government and Hamdija Blekic, a special envoy of the Slovenian president. Kriznar had himself also been acting as a special adviser to his country's president.
A correspondent of the "Chicago Tribune" daily newspaper, Salopek has been held in Al Fashir since 6 August along with his driver, Suleiman Abakar Moussa and his interpreter, Abdulraman Anu, who are both Chadian. They are also charged with spying and entering Sudan illegally and their trial has been set for 10 September.
Copyright © 2006 Reporters sans Frontières. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609050915.html
allAfrica: Vice President Resigns,
Attacking Ruling Party Chairman
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
September 5, 2006
Bujumbura
Burundi's second vice president, Alice Nzomukunda, resigned on Tuesday in protest at interference by the chairman of the ruling party.
"The government's hands are tied by [the chairman] Hussein Radjabu," Nzomukunda said at a news conference in the capital, Bujumbura.
Alice Nzomukunda was Burundi's second highest ranking official in the ruling party. Burundi recently emerged from 12 years of brutal civil war, but Nzomukunda said Radjabu was not respecting the country's institutions and was obstructing efforts to create a functional peace-time government.
Nzomukunda's accusations come when several organisations are accusing the government of human-rights abuses.
The spokesman for the ruling Conseil national pour la defense de la democratie - Forces de defense pour la democratie (CNDD-FDD), Evariste Nsabiyumva, denied that Radjabu was an obstacle to good governance.
"We are in a democracy in which everyone is free to express their views and in which government leaders are free to resign," he said. "However, what Nzomukunda says about the party chairman are big lies."
Nzomukunda said the catalyst for her decision to resign was a public statement Radjabu made on Sunday at a CNDD-FDD rally in Bujumbura. Nzomukunda said Radjabu wrongly claimed that the World Bank agreed to donate US $35 million to Burundi.
"What he called a donation is nothing but a loan." Nzomukunda said. "He contradicted what I told parliamentarians on Thursday. I was disgraced in Sunday's rally, a celebration in which I was taking part."
Nzomukunda is a top official of the CNDD-FDD and was a fighter with the former rebel movement before it signed a ceasefire agreement with the government at the time in December 2002.
She also said Radjabu did not say that the World Bank would only disburse the money following an audit of the sale of the presidential jet.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609051446.html
Arab News:
Editorial: Weekends
Wednesday, 6, September, 2006 (13, Sha`ban, 1427)
Bahrain has decided to follow the UAE in changing its weekend to Friday and Saturday. It is thus abandoning a decades-old tradition of a half or full day off on Thursday. Will other Gulf states, including the Kingdom, now follow suit?
There is a sound argument for doing so. Given the Saturday-Sunday weekend in most of the rest of the world, the Thursday break has effectively meant that there were only three days in the week when international business could be carried out. Foreign embassies, including many in the Kingdom also stuck to the Saturday-Sunday break. It could be reasonably argued that it need not be the Muslim and Arab world that makes the adjustment. However, between Muslim and Christian holy days, there is Saturday and no one is yet proposing a three-day weekend.
Besides, the treatment of Thursday as part of our weekend is very recent. The only day off was normally a Friday. Thursday rather crept in as time off. Initially, people left the office early, then went home at midday and finally the whole working day was abandoned. Governments eventually formalized these arrangements for their own civil servants. Many private businesses, however, did not give their employees more than the extra half-day off and a few no extra time at all. Thus such people continued to work a six-day week. There would seem to be a good chance that those states which follow the example of the UAE and Bahrain will have private sector workers who finally find themselves enjoying a five-day week just as state-sector employees. There seems far less chance of businesses asking their employees to continue to work the sixth day if that is a Saturday when most of the rest of the world is enjoying a break.
In making the change, the Bahraini authorities are in fact going against the findings of a consultation exercise they undertook, the result of which was that many people wanted things to stay the same. Among the concerns expressed was that the change would have an impact on Friday mosque attendance. It seems there is little evidence to suggest that before Thursday sneaked in to become a part of our weekend, attendance at Friday prayers was in the least affected because it was preceded by a working day. There is also a concern that if employers decide to embrace Saturday as part of the weekend, they will expect their staff to take a proportionate drop in pay. While this may on the face of it be reasonable, it is perhaps both unfair and shortsighted. Workers who have decent amounts of time off are likely to be more dedicated and productive. Cutting their salaries would be mean and also counterproductive. Hopefully this is a cost that Bahraini and UAE employers are themselves prepared to bear, even though the total cost may make a significant difference to their corporate bottom lines.
The big question of course must now be whether Saudi Arabia will also switch. In a world shrunk by the Internet, the pressure to do so will be considerable but the issue clearly deserves wide initial consultation.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=78837&d=6&m=9&y=2006
Counterpunch:
Rupert Murdoch's Victims
The Life and Crimes of a Global Goebbels
By RICHARD NEVILLE
September 1, 2006
The first death known to me, that was precipitated by a Rupert Murdoch headline, occurred in Sydney in March,1964, when a schoolboy committed suicide. More of that later. These days, the casualties resulting from military invasions championed by Murdoch are numbered in the thousands, though he is not the sole agent of destruction. One of his former TV producers in the Middle East, Serene Sabbagh, resigned from Fox recently because of its "bias and racism".
What tipped Sabbagh over the edge was the bombing of Qana. "As a mother of three, watching the images, the raw images of children being pulled out of the rubble and then I switched to Fox News to hear some of their anchors claiming that these little kids that were killed, these innocent victims that were killed, were human shields used by Hezbollah. And one of the anchors went as far as saying they were planted there by Hezbollah to win support in this war. And it was unbelievable. For me, that was the breaking point"
On August 6, Serene Sabbagh and a colleague sent a joint letter of resignation to Fox News: "Not only are you an instrument of the Bush White House, and Israeli propaganda, you are war mongers with no sense of decency, nor professionalism." A verdict which is widely echoed. "Fox News has had reporters running around northern Israel chronicling every rocket attack and every Israeli mobilization, but has shown little or no interest in anything happening on the other side of the border", noted Andrew Gumbel in the UK's Independent.
News Corp had "walked away from professional journalism and crossed over into dutiful propaganda", wrote another analyst," a dangerous new chapter even for Fox News". The whole organization had shifted beyond warmongering into deep censorship, where it "purposely cordoned off topics of discussion In fact, I could not find a single, authentic, independent expert on Arab politics and history who appeared on Fox News to discuss the roots of the escalating violence. Not one."
In the editorial pages of Murdoch's antipodean flagship, The Australian, the bombing of Beirut is presented as "Israel doing Lebanon a favour" and restive Arabs are described as "Nazis". None of this should be surprising, as Murdoch revealed to the Hollywood Reporter that his media ventures are "not as important to me as spreading my personal political beliefs" (November 23, 2005). And these beliefs are dangerous. Murdoch's influential Weekly Standard advocates the pursuit of "regime change in Syria . and a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait?"
It does not seem to figure in Murdoch's personal accounting that over half a million civilians are now dead or disfigured as a result of the wars he has already promoted. Instead of reconsidering his politics, like other lapsed neocons, Murdoch is still blazing away with his tools of the trade: hate, lies, fear and censorship.
So here's the nub. In a world facing a series of crises, should an unelected billionaire with a militant agenda and key politicians in the palm of his hand be allowed to preside over a global empire of propaganda? An empire continually expanding, one that gobbles up competitors and is now even blocking free speech on the internet. (See MySpace Is The Trojan Horse Of Internet Censorship)
On top of this, Murdoch's minions reject the inconvenient facts of climate chaos and attack the greens as "a threat to the prosperity and well-being" of the world (The Australian September 2, 2004). Whereas a real threat to the well-being of the world and its people is Rupert Murdoch, as I first discovered long ago.
These days, Murdoch's war-mongering is compulsive and his disregard for human wreckage is both calculated and global; but in the beginning, what marked his output was a casual (and sometimes fatal) disregard for the frailties of humans.
Murdoch's rise to power took off in Sydney in 1964, when he acquired an afternoon tabloid, the Daily Mirror. On March 12, the Mirror front paged a report on "promiscuity" among the pupils of a city high school, which was based on the contents of a young girl's diary. The resulting uproar led to the diarist and a fellow student being expelled from school. A job well done.
That's where the story ended as far the Mirror was concerned, though not for those involved. The 13 year old schoolboy named in the diary, Digby Bamford, was found hanging from his backyard clothesline, having committed suicide. This news was "cordoned off" from public consumption. Even rival papers kept the secret, until a disgruntled Murdoch journalist tipped off an independent magazine. The author of the "school sex" diary was examined by a doctor from the Child Welfare Department and found to be a virgin. During an interview years later, I reminded Murdoch of this event and his reaction was sharp: "Don't you ever make mistakes?" Of course I do. Many. After acquiring the News of the World in London in 1971, Rupert discovered another diary, while he was campaigning against a popular BBC TV show, Top of the Pops. His paper accused its stars of "promiscuity" with young dancers in the audience. One of these was Samantha MacAlpine, aged 15, whose "leatherette bound book", according Murdoch's news desk, "could well blow wide open the scandal at the BBC". The day after this report, Samantha MacAlpine committed suicide.
The News of the World tried to cover itself with the headline, THIS GIRL WAS A VICTIM NOW SHE IS DEAD, but the coroner stated that Samantha's diary was "pure fantasy. unconnected with reality", (like much Murdoch journalism). A Scotland Yard officer accused the paper of being "ludicrous and irresponsible". As is the Murdoch style, the evidence from the inquest was kept from the readers. Also suppressed was the statement of the forensic pathologist, that in his opinion, Samantha had died a virgin.
Two weeks ago, when young Australian Jack Thomas appealed his conviction for receiving funds from Al Qaeda and holding a false passport, he was acquitted by the Victorian Court of Appeal.
FURY AFTER JIHAD JACK WALKS FREE, headlined The Australian, although the fury was largely confined to Murdoch's newsroom. A jury had previously acquitted Jack Thomas of two more substantial matters. The Victorian Court quashed his conviction on the lesser charges, because police statements had been taken from the defendant while he was incarcerated in Pakistan without access to a lawyer and subjected to assaults. (A US interrogator told Thomas he would crush his testicles, rape his wife and put her breasts in a vice). When the Appeal judges freed Thomas, as they were obliged to do under Australian law, the Murdoch media called for public outrage and demanded "rapid amendments to ensure that no judge can make the same mistake". One of the first steps in the Third Reich's campaign to win over the hearts and minds of the German people was to attack the judges. Another step was to consolidate the media. A third step was to fan the flames of fear.
In response to criticism of its assault on the judiciary, The Australian hit back: 'what will it take to get Mr Thomas's apologists to take the terror threat seriously? Suicide bombers detonating aboard Melbourne's trams? A USS Cole-style strike on the Manly ferry?" And sure enough, as I write, another Murdoch missile hits the front page. SYDNEY WILL BE ATTACKED.
After interviewing 572 citizens, the Daily Telegraph has decided that "most Australians believe we are locked in a losing war against Islamic terrorists and an attack on our home soil is inevitable". The number who cite Murdoch's compulsive belligerence as a factor in the escalation of terror is not revealed. On the same day, Jack "Jihad" Thomas is arrested on the beach, slapped with a newly introduced "control order" and ordered home, where his movements are to be restricted. Questioning voices are merely a "civil libertarian lobby that believes John Howard is a greater threat to our way of life than bin Laden", according to MurdochWorld. No, the greatest threat is the control of information from the top. "Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism", said Mussolini, "since it is the merger of state and corporate power." Beware the global Goebbels.
Richard Neville has been around a while. He lives in Australia, the land that formed him. In the Sixties he raised hell in London and published Oz. He can be reached through his very bracing website, http://www.richardneville.com.au/
http://www.counterpunch.org/neville09012006.html
Guardian:
Global alert over deadly new TB strains
· Disease untreatable with currently available drugs
· South African cases raise fears for Aids programme
Sarah Boseley, health editor
Wednesday September 6, 2006
World health officials last night put out an unprecedented warning that deadly new strains of tuberculosis, virtually untreatable using the drugs currently available, appear to be spreading across the globe.
The new strains are known as extreme drug-resistant TB, or XDR-TB. They have been identified and have killed people in several countries, including the United States and eastern Europe, and they have recently been found in Africa, where they could swiftly put an end to all hope of containing the Aids pandemic through treatment.
Yesterday Paul Nunn, who heads the World Health Organisation's TB resistance team, said the situation was very serious. There are 9m cases of TB in the world and the WHO estimates that 2% of them - or 180,000 - could be XDR-TB.
"This is raising the spectre of something that we have been worried might happen for a decade - the possibility of virtually untreatable TB," said Dr Nunn.
Even in the United States, which has the best medicines available, a third of those who have been diagnosed with XDR-TB have died. In March, the Centres for Disease Control in the US registered that there had been 64 cases of XDR-TB; 21 of those ended in death.
Significant numbers of cases have been confirmed in Latvia and Russia, but in many parts of the world, XDR-TB could be rife but unrecognised. One of the reasons the WHO is concerned is that tuberculosis spreads easily in confined places, such as aircraft. Multi-drug resistant TB strains - those that are resistant to the two basic, first-line drugs used to treat the disease - have spread everywhere, including to the UK. Multi-drug resistant TB is increasingly common and is difficult and expensive to treat. The patient must be given four out of the six existing second-line drugs.
But the XDR-TB strains now appearing are a medical nightmare because at least three out of those six second-line drugs have no effect. There are no third-line drugs.
The spectre of a new untreatable plague has concentrated minds because of the identification of a cluster of cases in KwaZulu Natal, in South Africa. Scientists ran tests on people with tuberculosis in a rural part of the region. They studied 544 patients and found that 221 had TB strains against which the two common drugs, rifampicin and isoniazid, had no effect.
Finding such a high rate of multi-drug resistant TB was serious enough. But they also discovered that 53 of the patients had XDR-TB - and 52 of them died within an average of 25 days.
All the XDR-TB patients who could be tested were found to be HIV positive. Anybody with the virus becomes very susceptible to all types of infection. Tuberculosis is a major killer of people with Aids.
But the swift deaths of all but one of the study group in KwaZulu Natal has huge implications for the antiretroviral (ARV) drug treatment programme being rolled out across Africa in the hope of keeping millions of people with HIV alive and well, pending a cure.
"There is no point in investing hugely in ARV programmes if patients are going to die a few weeks later from extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis," said Dr Nunn.
The XDR-TB cases in South Africa were discovered only because Harvard scientists embarked on a study to gauge the extent of drug resistance. In other parts of Africa, there are no researchers or facilities to make the diagnosis, let alone monitor the numbers. "In most of the countries to the north of South Africa, they wouldn't be able to tell you what is going on," said Dr Nunn.
Most African countries either do not have a national reference laboratory for TB or they do not have enough. Kenya has one, he said; it should have four or five.
Tomorrow, WHO officials and international TB experts will take part in an emergency two-day meeting in Johannesburg, South Africa, to decide what action must be taken to address the crisis. They are expected to make recommendations that will include the importance of ensuring all TB patients take their full six-month course of drugs, to try to prevent resistance developing. In much of the world, that has proved difficult.
Tuberculosis drugs are old drugs. The white death or consumption, as TB used to be known, was thought to have been conquered more than 50 years ago. Drug companies have not invested in tuberculosis because it has been considered a disease of impoverished developing countries.
More recently, as the Aids pandemic has alerted the world to the inadequacies of medical treatment for a number of diseases in Africa, public-private partnerships have been been set up to attempt to find and develop new drugs, but there are none on the horizon yet.
Explainer: Tuberculosis
TB's origins can be traced back to antiquity, from the spinal cord fragments of Egyptian mummies to the writings of Hippocrates who identified phthisis, the Greek term for consumption, as the most widespread disease of the period.
Its symptoms - red swollen eyes, pale skin, coughing blood - led to it being labelled as vampirism during the Industrial Revolution. It was identified as a disease in the 1820s but was not named tuberculosis until 1839. Robert Koch's discovery of the microbe responsible, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, in 1882, earned him the Nobel prize in medicine.
In the early 19th century TB was rampant, responsible for up to one in four of all deaths in England. It spread through tiny particles released when an infected patient coughed or sneezed. Public health improvements cut the number of cases in the early 20th century, but not until the discovery of the antibiotic streptomycin in 1946 was the disease treatable.
Hopes of eradicating TB faded when drug-resistant strains emerged in the 1980s, followed by strains resistant to multiple drugs.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/medicine/story/0,,1865718,00.html
Guardian:
A new revolution
Roger Burbach
September 6, 2006 12:41 PM
Mexico moved one step closer to a social explosion with the Federal Election Tribunal's decision to crown conservative Felipe Calderon as the victor in the hotly contested presidential elections of July 2. The tribunal acknowledged Calderon's campaign had "violated the norms of public order," particularly with the role played by the business associations in airing rabid TV ads attacking leftist candidate Andres Miguel Lopez Obrador. But it refused to question the fundamental legitimacy of the elections or to recount all the votes as demanded by the leftist opposition.
Lopez Obrador immediately rejected the tribunal's ruling, declaring that a "privileged minority" has seized control of Mexico's institutions, "keeping the country in ruins and the majority in poverty". He called for the convening on September 16 of a National Democratic Convention "to form a government that has the legitimacy to reestablish the Republic and constitutional order".
As he spoke tens of thousands of his supporters retained control for the 37th consecutive day of the centre of Mexico City around the Zocalo, the country's main historic plaza. The rest of Mexico is also gripped with unrest, particularly the city of Oaxaca to the south. There some 350 popular organizations have staged a virtual insurrection, taking control of the city and demanding the ouster of the state's governor. While not directly tied to the presidential election, the movement reflects the profound discontent in recent years that has led to similar uprisings in Chiapas, Mexico's southern most state, and in San Salvador Atenco, a city that borders on the capital.
Some political observers, like Denise Dresser of Mexico's Autonomous Technical Institute, recognize the legitimacy of much of the political and economic platform of the left, but lament the "refusal of Lopez Obrador to move to the centre, to modify his demands. He says 'to hell with the institutions' and this could tear the country apart".
But the real problem of Mexico runs much deeper. The entrenched political classes along with the Electoral Tribunal, and the Federal Electoral Institute before it, will not make any concessions to Lopez Obrador because they are afraid the entire system of privileges will collapse if they make even modest concessions.
The campaign slogan of Lopez Obrador was straightforward: "For the good of all, the poor first." His program during the campaign was actually quite reformist. In a country where half the population lives below the poverty line Lopez Obrador pledged to provide a stipend to the elderly and healthcare for the poor. Millions of jobs would also be created, particularly by undertaking large construction projects to modernize Mexico's dilapidated transportation system. He also promised to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with the United States, particularly the clauses that allow the importation of cheap subsidized grains that undermine Mexico's peasant producers.
More importantly Lopez Obrador pledged to break up the corrupt economic relationship that exists between the business class and government bureaucrats. Everyone in Mexico knows that bribes and kickbacks are commonplace throughout Mexico as much of the country's wealth is skimmed off at the expense of the workers and the poor. This system existed under the previous governments of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI). It became particularly insidious under the incumbent President Vincente Fox and his National Action party (PAN) because it more than the PRI, is the party of an entrenched business elite. And not only is Lopez Obrador threatening to break up the system of inside favours and corruption, he is also proclaiming that the rich will have to pay the income and business taxes that they routinely avoid.
All this is too much for the dominant classes. They cannot countenance a thorough review of the election process or the opening of the ballot boxes to recount all the votes in an election that was fraught with innumerable irregularities. It is this privileged minority that has radicalized Lopez Obrador and the Mexican masses.
Mexico has had two major social upheavals in its history. One came with the independence movement in 1810, and the other with the revolution that began in 1910 with a fraudulent election staged by a dictator. On September 16, the same day on which a military parade will take place in Mexico City, a massive popular assembly will be held to discuss the creation of an authentic democracy and the possible formation of a parallel government. This could very well be Mexico's next revolution, four years before the century mark.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/roger_burbach/2006/09/a_new_revolution.html
Harper's Magazine:
Weekly Review
Posted on Tuesday, September 5, 2006. By Rafil Kroll-Zaidi
The Pentagon announced that civilian casualties in Iraq had increased recently by more than fifty percent, and death squads were said to be torturing and killing as many as 1,800 people per month.[New York Times] At least 200 Iraqis were killed in bombings, rocket attacks, and shootings, as were 19 American and British soldiers.[CNN][NPR] U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales visited Iraq to encourage “the rule of law,” and[icasualties.org][NPR][Reuters][Reuters][Reuters][Sapa-AP via Independent Online][Reuters][Reuters][AP via Houston Chronicle] U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld quoted Georges Clemenceau, who said, “War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.”[Washington Post] Iran ignored a U.N. Security Council deadline for suspending its uranium-enrichment activities,[UPI] and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad challenged U.S. President George Bush to a televised debate.[Reuters] U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan denounced Israel's use of cluster bombs,[International Herald Tribune] Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert refused to lift a seven-week-old blockade on Lebanon,[New York Times] and Israeli troops were being attacked by Lebanese wildlife.[UPI] Plans were underway to save the Dead Sea.[UPI] President Bush, visiting hurricane-damaged New Orleans, spoke optimistically of the rebuilding effort. “There will be a momentum, momentum will be gathered,” said Bush. “Houses will begat jobs, jobs will begat houses.”[New York Times] Marine biologists said that manatees are not stupid so much as unmotivated.[New York Times]
Forty-nine people died when a commercial jet attempted to take off from the wrong runway at an airport in Lexington, Kentucky.[AP via Boston Herald] Tropical Storm Ernesto killed at least six people and four seals in the United States,[Washington Post] and around 125 people in Ethiopia died from an outbreak of acute watery diarrhea.[Seacoast Online][Reuters] American heavy-metal band Fecal Corpse were denied entry to Canada,[Toronto Sun] and children in Dublin saw a clown crushed to death.[AP] Warren Steed Jeffs, who reportedly has 80 wives and 250 children and serves as the leader of a polygamist Mormon sect, was arrested in Nevada on suspicion of arranging marriages between underage girls and older men. [AP via New York Times] Researchers warned that countries with unnaturally high male-to-female population ratios, such as China and India, could foster violence, organized crime, and terrorism.[Reuters] Montana Senator Conrad Burns said that terrorists “drive taxi cabs in the daytime and kill by night,”[AP via Breitbart] and Miss England, an Uzbek-born Muslim, declared that stereotyping leads to terror. [Daily Mail] Tony Blair was seen sporting a new tea mug. “You're a man who's in charge,” reads the mug. “Others follow your lead.” [BBC] It was reported that the average British woman spends two and a half years on her hair during her lifetime.[Daily Mail] A British professor announced that five-year-old girls were worried about their weight,[AFP via Breitbart] and a study revealed that the brains of nuns “flicker” in the presence of God. [Daily Mail] Swiss hikers were warned not to hug cows.[Independent Online] A woman in Hohhot, China, crashed her car into another vehicle while allowing her dog to drive,[Guardian] and Danish researchers reported that pollutants may shrink the genitals of polar bears, foxes, and whales.[local6.com] Forty Australian seals were killed in a drive-by shooting.[The Australian] Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, died after a stingray stabbed him in the heart.[NEWS.co.au]
Police broke up a ring of badger-baiting gangs in Scotland.[Sundaymail.co.uk] Afghanistan's opium production was expected to increase by 59 percent this year, making the country the source of 92 percent of the world's supply,[BBC] and Taiwanese apartment-dwellers were upset to discover that their water supply contained the corpse of a 27-year-old drug addict named Kuo.[China Post] In a courtroom in Duluth, Minnesota, a cocaine trafficker ate his own feces;[Duluth News Tribune] a vigilante mob in North Carolina beat and killed the wrong man;[AP via CNN] and SAT scores in the United States showed the largest decline in 31 years.[New York Times] Female condoms were becoming more popular in South Africa,[Mail & Guardian] Australian brothels were offering clients discounts based on their gasoline bills,[Reuters via Yahoo!] and in Russia a participant in a sex-doll river-rafting race was disqualified for sexually abusing his rafting apparatus. “I think,” said the man's friend, “it was an expression of his great desire to win.”[MOSNEWS.COM] In the Indian state of Bihar, high-caste landowners were raping and gouging out the eyes of low-caste residents.[India eNews] A 10-pound, 20-inch-tall, 14-year-old Nepalese boy claimed to be the world's smallest adult.[Hindustan Times][AP via Boston Globe] Japanese physicists were preparing to create a “baby universe,” with its own laws of physics, by cutting off a piece of our own.[Sentido.tv] Indian doctors were attempting to treat a girl who weeps tears of stone.[Times of India]
This is Weekly Review by Rafil Kroll-Zaidi, published Tuesday, September 5, 2006. It is part of Weekly Review for 2006, which is part of Weekly Review, which is part of Harpers.org.
Written By
Kroll-Zaidi, Rafil
Permanent URL
http://harpers.org/WeeklyReview2006-09-05.html
il manifesto:
La strategia della tartaruga saggia
La conoscenza, come l'acqua, è biologicamente essenziale. E' lo spirito della vita. Ma la sua mercificazione è a una fase molto avanzata: cacciamo i mercanti dal tempio. La strategia della lepre tecnologica porta in un vicolo cieco
Riccardo Petrella
E'ora che l'equipe Prodi, che non é l'equipe Berlusconi, «cacci i mercanti dal tempio» della conoscenza e dell'educazione. Come l'acqua, la conoscenza é biologicamente essenziale ed insostituibile per la vita. In più, essa ne rappresenta «l'anima». La conoscenza é lo spirito della vita, non solo delle singole persone ma soprattutto della comunità umana. L'educazione é lo strumento attraverso il quale le comunità umane cercano di comunicare questo spirito collettivo, facendone una memoria sociale non da conservare come fosse un oggetto in un museo all'antica, ma come forza creatrice per pensare e progettare il divenire comune.
La mercificazione della conoscenza e dell'educazione é in una fase molto avanzata. I mercanti si sono impossessati del potere di controllo sulla conoscenza in maniera cosi forte da fare di essa il paradigma narrativo sia dell'economia che della società. Allorché, per secoli, in tutte le civiltà, la conoscenza é stata identificata alla divinità, a Dio come espressione massima della conoscenza, oggi il capitalismo non esita ad autodefinirsi il sistema di economia della conoscenza e di società della conoscenza. Il passaggio é considerevole. Bisogna riconoscere che mai finora «il potere» ha avuto siffatto «coraggio».
Una matrice manageriale
Si fa risalire ai lavori di Peter Drucker, il più noto e rispettato «padre» delle teorie manageriali dell'impresa capitalista di mercato americana, il concetto di «economia della conoscenza». La matrice culturale é strettamente manageriale. La tesi sull'economia della conoscenza afferma che nell'economia dei paesi «sviluppati» la principale fonte di creazione di ricchezza sarebbe diventata la conoscenza, la sua produzione (attività di ricerca ed esperienze sul terreno imprenditoriale...), la sua sistemazione scientifica e il suo utilizzo/applicazione (knowledge management), il suo trasferimento, valorizzazione e diffusione. La gestione efficace ed efficiente dell'insieme dei saperi interni ed esterni all'impresa, strettamente relazionata ai processi di informazione e di comunicazione, sarebbe il principale fattore di produttività. La conoscenza sarebbe dunque diventata il capitale di base dell'economia sviluppata. Da lì a fare della conoscenza anche la base di una «nuova» società che il sistema capitalista avrebbe generato, il passo é stato piuttosto rapido.
Il modello americano
In questo senso, le università e i media americani hanno teorizzato e diffuso nel mondo l'idea della nascita nella seconda metà del XX secolo di un nuovo capitalismo - e quindi nel loro sentire di una nuova società - in relazione alla «rivoluzione scientifica e tecnologica» rappresentata dalle nuove tecnologie di automazione, informazione e comunicazione. Non a caso le scuole di business e di management americane hanno propagandato in simultanea il paradigma narrativo dell'economia dell'informazione e della società dell'informazione.
Ci sono riusciti, visto che i loro paradigmi narrativi fanno parte integrante della «vulgata» scientifica mondiale. Si pensi che l'Unione europea ha incentrato la sua strategia per il XXI secolo (la famosa strategia di Lisbona del 2000) sull'obiettivo di fare dei paesi dell'Unione «l'economia della conoscenza la più competitiva al mondo al 2010»! Le tesi sull'economia della conoscenza sono state anche fatte proprie in molti ambienti culturali di sinistra. Non ci sarebbe nulla di male in ciò, se esse non fossero la narrazione proposta dai dominanti per legittimare i cambiamenti di società in corso nella logica dell'economia capitalista di mercato globale.
Il capitale ha avuto gioco facile
A partire dall'accettazione, da parte dei poteri politici e del mondo della scienza e dell'educazione, della tesi sul ruolo fondamentale della conoscenza per la creazione della ricchezza, é stato facile per il capitale privato fare accettare altre tesi, presentate come «verità», quali:
- l'impresa, specie privata, é il soggetto principale, chiave, della produzione e dell'uso delle conoscenze che contano per produrre ricchezza. In effetti, per «conoscenza», i promotori della società della conoscenza intendono i saperi teorici, pratici e manageriali di natura tecnica, scientifica, finanziaria ed imprenditoriale «prodotti» nei paesi «sviluppati». E'raro trovare nei milioni di articoli e libri apparsi sull'economia e la società della conoscenza il principio che studiare la letteratura bizantina del XIII secolo farebbe parte dell'economia della conoscenza;
- la conoscenza é un capitale strategicamente decisivo per la competitività delle imprese e per la sicurezza dell'economia di un paese. Essa é un bene economico di cui l'impresa, specie privata, deve assicurarsi il potere di accesso e di uso, nell'interesse della competitivtà dell'economia nazionale. Ciò, sia direttamente tramite l'appropriazione privata (vedi la centralità del brevetto/proprietà intellettuale), sia attraverso il controllo dell'uso ( vedi norme, standards Iso, accordi tra imprese in materia di R&S...), sia attraverso il finanziamento (il capitale privato é riuscito ad imporre in seno all'Unione europea l'idea che la ricerca europea deve essere finanziata a due/terzi dal capitale privato);
- il sistema educativo di ogni paese, in particolare quello delle università e degli istituti superiori, deve esssere principalmente orientato a formare le «risorse umane» altamente qualificate nelle conoscenze che contano per l'imprese, al servizio del miglioramento delle capacità competitive delle imprese nazionali;
- c'é poco da fare contro l'inevitabile knowledge divide che sempre più separerà nel mondo le persone, i gruppi sociali, le città, le regioni, i paesi tra coloro che «sanno» perché posseggono la proprietà e/o il controollo delle conoscenze tecnico-scientifiche-manageriali e quelli che «non sanno». Gli sviluppi odierni e futuri nei settori della matematica, della fisica, dell'ingegneria genetica, dei materiali,della ricerca spaziale, sono considerati come fattori «naturali» aggravanti del fossato sociale tra «poveri» e «ricchi».
Per un'altra Italia
Il geverno di cui Fabio Mussi é ministro dell'università e Patrizia Sentinelli è vice-ministro agli Affari esteri responsabile per la cooperazione, non può restare su queste posizioni.E' imperativo che tutte le forze che si battono «per un'altra Italia», per un'«Italia con futuro», riescano a far compiere al governo Prodi un atto di rottura nel campo della conoscenza consistente nella redazione di un Libro bianco governativo dal titolo La rivoluzione della conoscenza in Italia. Vie e mezzi per mettere la scienza, la tecnologia e l'educazione al servizio di un migliore vivere insieme, solidale e sostenibile. Oltreché precisare in modo netto, al momento della decisione di procedere all'elaborazione del Libro bianco, che il nuovo governo considera la conoscenza come un bene comune pubblico e che si impegna a rivedere la legislazione in materia di diritto di proprietà intellettuale, si tratterà di affidare al Segretariato di coordinamento per i Beni comuni il compito di redigere la prosposta di Libro bianco.
Le nuove risorse
Il compito dell'esercizio consisterà nell'analizzare in maniera sitematica e rigorosa, in stretta cooperazione anche con i rappresentanti del mondo delle imprese desiderosi di associarsi all'iniziativa, quali risorse nuove e quali processi innovativi possono e debbono essere pensati, inventati, sperimentati secondo una visione nazionale coerente a medio e lungo termine per risolvere i problemi cronici italiani del vivere quotidiano. A tal fine, si potrebbe pensare ad una decina di «Ateliers della conoscenza».
L'urgenza riguarda la messa in opera di una ingegneria sociale della conoscenza, cioè l'identificazione dei mutamenti profondi da portare, grazie anche ad una conoscenza poliedrica e non esclusivamente tecnico-reddditizia, al sistema energetico, alla gestione del territorio, ai trasporti urbani, ferroviari, al rinnovo dei trasporti fluviali e marittimi, alla soluzione dei problemi della casa e dell'abitato urbano, all'organizzazione della salute, ai problemi degli anziani, alle questioni dei bambini, della loro educazione e socializzazione, dei loro media, cosi come degli adolescenti. In molti casi ci si accorgerà che é meno un problema di risorse finanziarie che un problema di cambio nei modi di fare, nei processi di produzione, nei sistemi d'informazione e di comunicazione, nei modi di consumo, di sprecare, di risparmiare, di organizzare le finanze locali, di cooperare.
Altro che conoscenza per la competitività guerriera!
Come la Rivoluzione francese
E' urgente domandare al mondo dell'educazione di rivoltarsi contro l'asservimento distruttore dell'educazione alla sola funzione della formazione delle risorse umane. Come la Rivoluzione francese condusse a far scrivere sui portoni dei municipi e delle scuole i concetti di Libertà, Uguaglianza e Fraternità, propongo che il Governo Prodi adotti una semplice misura simbolica in favore della conoscenza come bene comune mondiale facendo scrivere Vivere insieme sui frontoni di tutte le istituzioni educative italiane. Forse, se ciò fosse stato scritto negli ultimi cinquant'anni sui frontoni di tutte le scuole e università degli Stati uniti, ci sarebbero ora meno guerre nel mondo.
L'esempio di Slow Food
La strategia della lepre tecnologica, seguita finora dalla stragrande maggioranza dei paesi «sviluppati» e fatta propria anche dai partiti del Programma dell'Unione, secondo la quale ogni lepre (Paese) deve utilizzare le conoscenze e sfruttare le risorse naturali ed umane per correre sempre più velocemente con salti tecnologici sempre più grandi al solo scopo di arrivare prima delle altre, non contribuerà alla costruzione della res publica né a livello nazionale, né europeo, né mondiale. Propongo che il governo Prodi adotti la strategia della tartaruga saggia, secondo la quale il Paese decide di non scegliere le vie da seguire nell'urgenza dell'ordine del giorno a corto termine stabilito dai mercati finanziari o dalle guerre commerciali.
Al contrario, prendendo anche spunto dall'esperienza di Slow Food che meriterebbe di essere più sostenuta e conosciuta dal grande pubblico, il Paese decide le scelte secondo la saggezza dell'ordine del giorno a lungo termine stabilito dalla priorità di (ri)imparare a vivere insieme sulla base dei principi di precauzione, prevenzione, gioia, sobrietà, solidarietà, bellezza, partecipazione.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/05-Settembre-2006/art76.html
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El genocida, sin marco legal
OYARBIDE DICTO LA INCONSTITUCIONALIDAD DEL INDULTO A VIDELA
En coincidencia con la medida que habilitó el procesamiento de Martínez de Hoz y Harguindeguy, el juez Oyarbide declaró ayer que el indulto a Videla por el secuestro de los empresarios Gutheim es inconstitucional. Otra causa contra los represores.
Por Eduardo Tagliaferro
Miércoles, 06 de Septiembre de 2006
Era cuestión de horas. Luego de firmar la inconstitucionalidad de los indultos con los que habían sido beneficiados José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz y Albano Harguindeguy, el juez federal Norberto Oyarbide se pronunció ayer del mismo modo en otro indulto firmado por Carlos Menem en diciembre del ’90: el que favoreció a Jorge Rafael Videla. El perdón de Menem llegó cuando la Justicia se aprestaba a dictar sentencia en la causa en la que se investigaba el secuestro extorsivo de los empresarios Federico y Miguel Gutheim. El magistrado tuvo en cuenta los fundamentos de otros fallos en los que distintas instancias judiciales declararon inconstitucionales indultos similares. Oyarbide destacó que no ordenaba ninguna medida sobre el fondo del caso ya que “corresponderá tomarla en otro estado del proceso”. A diferencia de Martínez de Hoz y de Harguindeguy, Videla cumple arresto domiciliario acusado por el robo sistemático de bebés y por el Plan Cóndor, como se denominó a la coordinación represiva de las dictaduras latinoamericanas.
Para Oyarbide “la reapertura de la causa no implica doble juzgamiento para Videla porque no va a haber un proceso distinto o una nueva acusación sino que continuará el mismo proceso con la misma acusación”. En aquel momento la fiscalía del caso había pedido diez años de prisión para el máximo responsable de la dictadura militar.
En su fallo, el magistrado refuta la opinión de los defensores que aseguraban que había cosa juzgada luego de un debido proceso. “Mal puede hablarse de debido proceso cuando la decisión de no continuar con el mismo se debió a un acto nulo que priva de todos sus efectos la decisión posterior”, aseguró Oyarbide.
El caso en el que se investigó el secuestro de los Gutheim se inició el 20 de mayo de 1985 a partir de una investigación realizada por la Fiscalía Nacional de Investigaciones Administrativas, que por ese entonces dirigía el santafesino Ricardo Molinas. Fue él quien acercó a los tribunales una investigación que luego fue caratulada “Secretaría de Agricultura de la Nación sobre presuntas irregularidades en el trámite de exportación de la fibra de algodón”. Los Gutheim fueron detenidos a disposición del PE nacional durante cerca de 5 meses para forzar a cumplir un contrato comercial con Hong Kong. Este contrato le habría facilitado a Martínez de Hoz el acceso a millonarios créditos.
La denuncia de Molinas recayó en el por entonces juez federal Martín Irurzun. El fiscal federal que intervino en el expediente fue Aníbal Ibarra. “El único responsable por la detención de Federico Gutheim y de su hijo es el ex ministro del Interior Albano Harguindeguy, ya que él mismo asumió su total responsabilidad”, había dicho Juan Alemann cuando le tocó pasar por los tribunales. En aquel momento Alemann señaló a Página/12 que “los Gutheim fueron puestos a disposición del PE nacional porque ésos eran los métodos del momento, en que había un accionar del terrorismo”. Cuando este diario le preguntó si se podía acusar a los Gutheim de terroristas, Alemann respondió: “No, pero el incumplimiento de ese contrato perjudicó la imagen de la Argentina en el exterior”. “Trataremos de ver qué se puede hacer”, habría asegurado Martínez de Hoz en una gira a los empresarios de Hong Kong que habían firmado contratos con los Gutheim. Pocos días después de su regreso a Buenos Aires, los empresarios fueron puestos a disposición del PEN. “Previamente se trató de convencerlos para que cumplieran con el contrato”, había asegurado Alemann en la edición de Página/12 del 30 de abril de 1988. A partir de una invitación del Ministerio de Economía de la época, los empresarios de Hong Kong vinieron a negociar con los Gutheim que se encontraban detenidos. En 1988, el entonces fiscal Ibarra, aseguró que en el expediente estaba documentado que los funcionarios que intervinieron lo hicieron “en cumplimiento de instrucciones del ministro de Economía (José Alfredo Martínez de Hoz)”. Todos estos elementos fueron los que llevaron a Molinas a considerar que el hombre mimado por el poder económico fue instigador del secuestro y detención de los Gutheim.
Oyarbide insistió con que los delitos de lesa humanidad no son amnistiables ni prescriptibles. La defensa de los involucrados en el caso cuestionó la competencia del juez federal para decidir sobre la inconstitucionalidad de los indultos. También consideró que el caso estaba lejos de ser enmarcable en los casos de delitos de lesa humanidad. En sus considerandos, Oyarbide puntualizó que “si bien la privación de la libertad con fines extorsivos de por sí no constituye un delito de tales características (lesa humanidad), lo cierto es que en este caso el hecho se enmarca dentro del contexto del sistema clandestino de represión implementado por la dictadura militar”. En su análisis, el juez federal consideró que la detención a disposición del PEN de los dos empresarios estaba lejos de responder a los parámetros constitucionales del estado de sitio.
La supremacía de los tratados internacionales y la imprescriptibilidad de los delitos de lesa humanidad son criterios sobre los que la Cámara Federal ya se pronunció. En una línea similar también falló la Corte Suprema cuando firmó la inconstitucionalidad de las leyes de punto final y obediencia debida. La palabra que se demora es la de un tribunal anterior a la Corte, la Cámara de Casación. Su falta de definición es la que demora una medida definitiva sobre los indultos a los principales impulsores del terrorismo de Estado durante la última dictadura.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-72591-2006-09-06.html
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Prodi se enfrenta al zar mediático
El premier italiano quiere cambiar la ley de conflicto de intereses para obligar a Berlusconi a optar entre la política y su imperio de medios.
Por Peter Popham*
Desde Roma, Miércoles, 06 de Septiembre de 2006
El gobierno italiano se está preparando para la pelea más dura de su corta vida esta semana, contra el poder mediático y político de Silvio Berlusconi. La flagrante anomalía de la política italiana de los últimos 15 años ha sido el hecho de que el líder de su partido más grande, Forza Italia, es también el mayor magnate de los medios. Berlusconi es dueño de los tres canales de televisión Mediaset, además de diarios y una importante revista de noticias semanal, lo que fue considerado decisivo para su aplastante victoria en la elección de 2001. A pesar del tambaleante desempeño de la economía italiana, casi empata con la coalición de centroizquierda de Romano Prodi en abril –gracias, en parte, a su poder en los medios–.
La coalición de Prodi prometió reemplazar la ley del conflicto de intereses, promulgada por Berlusconi en 2004, con algo mucho más riguroso. Probablemente requerirá que Berlusconi coloque sus empresas a cargo de una fundación independiente antes de presentarse a elecciones. La semana que viene, una Comisión de Asuntos Constitucionales parlamentaria comienza a considerar la legislación en detalle. Pero ya vuelan las críticas. Los amigos de Berlusconi declaran (sin ninguna evidencia) que el verdadero propósito de la ley es sacarlo de la política, expropiar Mediaset y entregarla a “amigos de amigos” del gobierno.
Fedele Confalonieri, el jefe de Mediaset, estaba al rojo de ira en una entrevista con el diario La Repubblica. Comparó lo que él cree que está planeando el gobierno con lo que hicieron los partisanos comunistas cuando colgaron al cadáver de Mussolini en la Piazzale Loreto de Milán.
“Estoy en mi automóvil a 300 metros de la Piazzale Loreto y me parece una coincidencia fatal”, dice. “Hace muchos años, los reyes y los dictadores eran colgados de los pies. La Piazzale Loreto de Berlusconi corre el riesgo de ser la que desmantele su red televisiva. Mediaset no es una anomalía. Es una empresa sana que crea bienestar y empleo y representa una importante realidad en la industria de los medios de este país. El centroizquierda quiere barajar todo el mazo de cartas; quieren arreglar el juego a favor de sus amigos. Expropiación capitalista, a eso se llegó.”
Berlusconi mismo utilizó, en gran medida, una retórica igualmente violenta durante su última campaña electoral y el gobierno ya está a la defensiva. Prodi dijo: “La ley sobre el conflicto de intereses no es contra Berlusconi sino por la democracia. Es una ley como la que tienen todos los países modernos decentes. Estamos hablando sobre el hecho de que uno no puede ejercer dos profesiones que chocan entre sí, uno no puede ser referí y jugador”. Refiriéndose al hecho de que cuando fue primer ministro por última vez en 1996, su gobierno no se ocupó del tema, Prodi señaló: “Aprobaremos la ley en forma serena y tan pronto como sea posible. Escarmenté porque no promulgamos esta ley la última vez que estuve en el gobierno. No quiero tener que arrepentirme por ello una segunda vez.” Pero el único ministro del gobierno de Prodi que se interesa con pasión por el tema es Antonio di Pietro, ministro de Infraestructura, que fue uno de los principales magistrados que investigó el enorme escándalo de sobornos que derrotó al sistema político corrupto de Italia hace 14 años. “Es vital que el Parlamento resuelva este asunto tan pronto como sea posible”, dijo.
“Debemos enviar una poderosa señal de discontinuidad con los años Berlusconi. La batalla consiste en llenar una laguna profunda, poner en línea las leyes italianas con las de otras democracias occidentales.” El gobierno de Prodi ya muestra señales de desgastarse con este tema. Clemente Mastella, el ministro de Justicia centrista, le dijo a Il Giornale, uno de los diarios de Berlusconi: “Prodi está cometiendo un gran error al poner el tema sobre el tapete ahora. Vamos al Líbano, estamos buscando la colaboración del centroderecha con el presupuesto, de manera que ¿por qué golpear ahora?”. Insinuando que puede negarse a apoyar la medida, dijo: “No tenemos suficientes bancas para aprobarlo”.
* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12.
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72569-2006-09-06.html
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Bush comparó a Irán con Al Qaida
MIENTRAS BUSCA APOYOS PARA SANCIONAR A TEHERAN, REDOBLA LA OFENSIVA DIALECTICA
Sigue la escalada verbal entre el presidente de Estados Unidos y el régimen de Mahmud Ahmadinejad. Ayer Bush dijo que no permitirá una bomba atómica iraní y presentó un documento que acusa a Irán y Siria de apoyar el terrorismo. Respuesta de los demócratas.
Miércoles, 06 de Septiembre de 2006
George W. Bush comparó ayer a las autoridades de Irán con el grupo terrorista Al Qaida y calificó de tirano al presidente iraní, Mahmud Ahmadinejad. El mandatario estadounidense ya no repara en los calificativos y no duda en subirle el tono a la crisis entre las potencias occidentales –lideradas por Estados Unidos– y Teherán. La campaña mediática de la Casa Blanca llega en medio de arduas negociaciones en el seno del Consejo de Seguridad para consensuar qué tipo de sanciones se le aplicará a Irán, si es que se le aplica alguna, ya que el jueves pasado venció el plazo que le había impuesto la ONU para suspender su programa nuclear. La oposición demócrata, en tanto, cuestionó a las políticas de Bush y aseguró que ahora el país es más inseguro.
En el marco de una serie de discursos sobre la guerra contra el terrorismo, de cara a ganar apoyo para las elecciones legislativas de noviembre próximo, Bush hizo un repaso de las “victorias” en Irak y Afganistán y aprovechó para volver a apuntar sus cañones contra el régimen islámico iraní. “Al igual que Al Qaida y los extremistas sunnitas, el régimen iraní tiene objetivos claros. Quieren sacar a Estados Unidos de Medio Oriente, destruir Israel y dominar un amplio espectro de la región”, aseguró el presidente. Durante el conflicto israelí-libanés, Bush repitió una y otra vez que Irán y Siria eran los principales aliados de la milicia libanesa chiíta Hezbolá y, supuestamente, sus principales provedores de armas.
Bush recordó también cuando el presidente iraní dijo: “Si quieres tener buenas relaciones con la nación iraní en el futuro, sométete a la grandeza de la nación iraní y entrégate”. A partir de esto, el mandatario infirió que Teherán estaría dispuesto a matar a ciudadanos estadounidenses –ya que Washington jamás se someterá al régimen islámico, según el líder republicano–. Por todo esto, aseguró Bush, es muy peligroso para Estados Unidos que Irán adquiera capacidad militar nuclear.
“Las naciones libres del mundo no permitirán que Irán desarrolle armas nucleares”, agregó el mandatario, como recordando que no se trata de una lucha unilateral de su gobierno, sino que cuenta con el apoyo de las principales potencias europeas. Lo que Bush no dijo fue que todavía no ha podido convencer a sus aliados de la Unión Europea para que aprueben la imposición de fuertes sanciones contra el régimen iraní por no haber suspendido sus actividades nucleares, como lo había demandado el Consejo de Seguridad en su resolución de julio pasado. En los últimos días, Francia, uno de los cinco países con poder de veto en el Consejo, se mostró más conciliador que los estadounidenses, incluso dejando abierta la puerta a una vuelta a la mesa de negociación con Teherán, si ésta se muestra dispuesta a ceder su programa nuclear.
Los discursos del presidente sobre el avance en la lucha antiterrorista coinciden con la publicación de un informe de la Casa Blanca titulado “Estrategia nacional para combatir el terrorismo”. En este documento de 23 páginas, el gobierno estadounidense acusó a Irán –y en segunda instancia a Siria– de ser el principal patrocinador del terrorismo internacional, destacando su apoyo a grupos como Hezbolá, Hamas y la Jihad Islámica. Washington también destinó un espacio a reafirmar su apoyo a los sectores disidentes dentro de Irán. “Nos mantendremos junto a los pueblos de Irán y Siria, que se oponen a los regímenes que los oprimen en el interior y patrocinan el terrorismo en el exterior”, se afirma en el documento.
Según las conclusiones del informe, Washington está avanzando en la lucha contra el terrorismo, aunque advierte que los grupos como Al Qaida se han ido sofisticando. La oposición demócrata, sin embargo, no está convencida de los triunfos de la administración Bush. Los líderes demócratas del Senado y de la Cámara de Representantes, Larry Reid y Nancy Pelosy, cuestionaron la estrategia del gobierno. “Las políticas de Bush han dejado al país menos capaz de combatir efectivamente al terrorismo”, afirmaron ayer los dirigentes. Para Reid y Pelosy, el principal error del gobierno fue sacar la lucha antiterrorista de la esfera de la Justicia criminal. Esta ha sido, sin dudas, la crítica más fuerte de la comunidad internacional contra la estrategia de Washington. De los organismos de derechos humanos internacionales, pero también de sus aliados europeos.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72566-2006-09-06.html
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Plutón Plutón qué grande sos
Por Leonardo Moledo
Miércoles, 06 de Septiembre de 2006
–Es una infamia, una infamia –la gorda lloraba con un desconsuelo imposible de imitar. A su alrededor se había formado un corro que con el pasar de las horas tendía subrepticiamente a la multitud. Como nada humano me es ajeno, me acerqué y formulé una pregunta interesante.
–¿Qué pasa?
–Expresa una lógica indignación ante la medida arbitraria de la Unión Astronómica Internacional que le ha quitado a Plutón su categoría de planeta –me dijo un jubilado que se cebaba mate con un termo al estilo uruguayo.
–La Unión Astronómica Internacional acaba de parir un nuevo Sistema Solar –dijo una chica del ARI–, adoptando una matriz que no es sino un aborto moral.
Todos nos quedamos meditando sobre la frase y pudimos comprobar que la chica estaba embarazada.
–Si es un planeta, es un planeta, y si no es un planeta, no es un planeta –dijo una mujer que acababa de comprar una balanza de baño y la llevaba en un bolsito decorado con caléndulas azules y estrepitosas.
–Nos despojan de Plutón –dijo la chica del ARI– y ahora vienen por Neptuno.
–Pero es ridículo –arguyó una viejita con sombrero adornado por una consola cuasi microscópica y rematada en un pen-drive como si fuera una peineta. Era una perfecta combinación de lo arcaico con lo futurista–. No pueden quitarle el título de planeta porque es chico –ella misma era chiquitísima.
–Bueno –me creí en la obligación de intervenir–, en realidad no lo desplanetizaron porque es chico.
Un murmullo recorrió la concentración.
–Por radio y televisión se la pasan diciendo que esa fue la causa –dijo un señor–. Miren. Yo soy médico pediatra y sé que, pese al discurso progresista, a los chicos se los deja de lado. Y eso que yo he visto muchas cosas, desde amputaciones de miembros hasta cirrosis infantil y alcoholismo prenatal.
–Yo también –dijo un cura–, imagínese usted las cosas que se oyen en el confesionario.
–Pero no se ven –el médico quiso retener su monopolio del horror y retomar la vieja pugna entre la ciencia y la religión– y créame que no es lo mismo oír una operación a corazón abierto que verla, o... –y empezó a describir enfermedades cada vez más repulsivas y con nombres cada vez más espeluznantes. La viejita se desmayó.
–¿Ve? –dijo el sacerdote, triunfal–, ¿ve que oír es casi lo mismo? Por eso le decía que he oído cosas más graves o casi más graves que este asunto de Plutón. Piense en Hiroshima. Piense en la gente quemada por la Inquisición.
–Piense en el gobierno fascista de Kirchner –dijo la chica del ARI.
–Piense en los genocidas que pretenden elegir un rector de la universidad. Un rector más y un planeta menos –dijo un estudiante que militaba en el PO–. Típica maniobra de Bush. Irak, Plutón, mañana Irán.
–¡Que nos devuelvan a Plutón! –aulló la multitud–. ¡Que nos devuelvan a Plutón! –faltaba un millonésimo de segundo para que todos se dieran vuelta hacia mí...
–¿Y por qué los desplanetizaron? –me encaró un camionero con una barra de hierro en la mano. Miré todos esos rostros agresivos y me di cuenta de que unánimemente se habían puesto en mi contra.
–Cerdo fascista –murmuró la chica del ARI.
–En realidad hay tres condiciones para ser un planeta –dije con cautela y absoluta conciencia de mi pedantería– y Plutón no cumple con las tres.En primer lugar, debe ser un cuerpo que gira directamente alrededor del Sol.
–Y Plutón lo hace –dijo la viejita–. O por lo menos lo hacía.
–Esa condición la cumple –dije yo, paciente, mirando de reojo al camionero que se ponía cada vez más rojo de furia.
–En segundo lugar, debe ser esférico –dije.
–¡Y Plutón era esférico! –dijo el cura. Todos hablaban en pasado, como si Plutón en vez de cambiar de categoría planetaria se hubiera muerto.
–Esférico como mi panza –dijo la chica embarazadísima del ARI. A esta altura, yo estaba completamente rodeado.
–Pero, además, tiene que haber barrido a todos los cuerpos a su alrededor, como ocurre con la Tierra; en cambio, Plutón tiene un satélite, Caronte, casi de su mismo tamaño muy pero muy cerca. Esto es, no cumple la tercera condición.
–¿Y por semejante estupidez le quitaron su planeticidad? –la gente se me aproximaba peligrosa, amenazadoramente. Pensé en linchamientos. Pensé que iba a ser un mártir de la astronomía, o mejor dicho, de la Unión Astronómica Internacional.
–¿Por necedad y corrupción tenían que parir un nuevo sistema? –aulló, casi en mi cara la chica del ARI–. ¿Tenían que parir ese nombre de “planeta enano”, tenían que parir.... pero... pero –gritó de repente–, ¡estoy pariendo! –efectivamente, una cabecita asomaba por debajo de su vestido. Se armó un revuelo enorme: el pediatra se apresuró a realizar su tarea, la señora de la balanza la apoyó en el suelo para pesar al bebé, el jubilado aportó el agua caliente de su mate, el cura salió disparado a buscar agua apta para un bautismo...
Aproveché el tumulto para escabullirme discretamente. “Si es un varón –pensé– seguro que le ponen Plutón. Pobrecito.”
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-72564-2006-09-06.html
The Daily Star:
Senior security officer survives bomb attack
Roadside blasts kill 4 bodyguards near sidon
By Rym Ghazal and Mohammed Zaatari
Daily Star staff
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
BEIRUT/SIDON: Two roadside bombs went off outside the Southern city of Sidon Tuesday, killing four bodyguards of a senior Lebanese intelligence officer and wounding four others, including the officer.
Lieutenant Colonel Samir Shehade holds a senior post in the Interior Ministry's intelligence branch and played a leading role in Lebanon's investigation into the February 14, 2005, assassination of former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.
The incident came on the eve of the arrival of UN chief Kofi Annan's legal adviser, Nicolas Michel, who will discuss with Lebanese officials the formation of an international court to try Hariri's killers.
Tuesday's attack was the first bombing since May 26, when a leader of the Palestinian faction Islamic Jihad and his brother were killed in Sidon by a bomb planted in their car.
According to police reports, two bombs exploded simultaneously at around 10 a.m. Tuesday as two cars carrying Shehade and his companions passed through the coastal village of Rmeileh, near the Southern port town of Sidon, on their way to intelligence headquarters in Beirut.
Witnesses told The Daily Star that despite the fact that Shehade had been pulled out of the car with shrapnel wounds all over his body, he was "conscious and seemed in control." Shehade was taken to the Hammoud Hospital in Sidon and is currently under the protection of security officers.
Acting Interior Minister Ahmad Fatfat told The Daily Star that Shehade was in a "stable and good condition."
"There were two bombs placed 4 meters from each other that appear to have been triggered simultaneously by remote control," the minister said.
Sergeant Wissam Harb, one of the intelligence officer's bodyguards, was killed instantly in the blast. Three other bodyguards, Sergeant Chehab Hassan Aoun, First Sergeant Namir Yassin and First Sergeant Omar Hajj Shehade, were seriously wounded and later died in hospital.
The wounded, in addition to Shehade, were identified as First Sergeant Zaher Qadeh, army soldier Jihad al-Dabit and Ahmad Rabeeh, an engineer working on nearby roadworks.
Asked whether the latest bombing could be linked to a series of attacks dating back to October 2004, Fatfat said: "No, this one was different. It was more professional and seems to be an isolated incident." Police reports said Shehade was traveling in a white "decoy" Nissan Pathfinder followed by a black Pathfinder. The black Nissan suffered a direct hit, killing all passengers.
During a news conference held after an emergency meet-ing with his security chiefs, Fatfat said the attack was "a message targeting the security apparatus that has been making great progress in the past year" into Hariri's murder.
Shehade had been coordinating with the UN investigation commission probing Hariri's assassination and was directly involved in the arrests of the four former heads of the country's security apparatus currently awaiting trial in the 2005 murder.
He also interrogated a discredited Syrian witness, Husam Taher Husam.
Fatfat speculated that the attack could be linked to the report due out next Friday from the UN probe's lead investigator, Serge Brammertz.
"We have to be careful not to turn this incident into a political campaign," he said.
"I refuse to make any accusations at this point, especially given the sensitive period Lebanon is going through after the war," Fatfat added.
However, the acting interior minister said preventing "infiltration" during the recent war with Israel had been difficult and spoke of the "difficulty of dealing with arms outside of the Palestinian refugee camps." Fatfat repeatedly said the attack had nothing to do with Hizbullah.
"Security officials, especially those in intelligence, are under constant threat and have been targeted in the past," he added.
Holding up two pieces of shrapnel from the crime scene, Fatfat said the two bombs were filled with "hundreds of pieces of shrapnel" and had been "locally produced and carried out with great precision."
"Luck saved Shehade," the minister added.
Security sources reported a series of arrests of Palestinian and Syrian nationals at the bomb site who had been selling lottery tickets, a claim dismissed by Fatfat.
"No arrests have been made. Only witnesses' testimonies have been taken," he said.
In addition to the Hariri file, security sources said that Shehade had recently been threatened over his handling of a file on Al-Qaeda suspects in Lebanon. The intelligence officer had taped the threats, made by Syrian officials and Al-Qaeda members, they added.
Security sources also dismissed any links to a similar attack on December 12, 2005, that killed prominent journalist and MP Gebran Tueni. Both incidents involved roadside bombs, the sources said, but very different devices.
Copyright (c) 2006 The Daily Star
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=1&categ_id=2&article_id=75271#
The Independent:
Seven MPs resign posts over Blair departure
By Jon Smith, PA
Published: 06 September 2006
The junior defence minister Tom Watson and a string of junior members of the Government today quit their posts in an attempt to force Tony Blair to step down or name a date for his departure.
In what appeared a concerted move, the resignations came within hours of each other today - starting with Mr Watson shortly after 11am.
His resignation brought a ferocious outburst from Mr Blair, who branded him "disloyal, discourteous and wrong" for signing up to a round-robin letter demanding the Prime Minister stand down.
Parliamentary Private Secretaries Khalid Mahmood, Wayne David, Ian Lucas, Mark Tami, David Wright and Chris Mole then also publicly renounced their jobs.
Mr Blair branded Mr Watson "disloyal, discourteous and wrong". Within minutes of Mr Watson announcing his resignation, Mr Blair said he had been planning to fire him anyway.
Mr Blair said in a statement to the Press Association: "I have heard from the media that Tom Watson has resigned. I had been intending to dismiss him but wanted to extend to him the courtesy of speaking to him first. Had he come to me privately and expressed his view about the leadership, that would have been one thing.
"But to sign a round robin letter which was then leaked to the press was disloyal, discourteous and wrong. It would therefore have been impossible for him to remain in Government."
In a reply to Mr Watson's letter of resignation, Mr Blair warned that efforts to force him to name a date for his departure were harming the party and were "divisive... and totally unnecessary".
The best way of securing future election victories was "through setting out the policy agenda for the future combined with a stable and orderly transition that leaves ample time for the next Leader to bed in", he said.
Raising the spectre of Labour's 18 years in opposition - caused in part by the public perception that the party was disunited - Mr Blair warned: "We are three years from the next Election. We have a strong policy platform. There is no fundamental ideological divide in the Labour Party for the first time in 100 years of history. For the first time ever, we have the prospect not just of two but three successive full terms.
"To put all this at risk in this way is simply not a sensible, mature or intelligent way of conducting ourselves if we want to remain a governing party."
Conservative leader David Cameron said the Labour Government was in "meltdown" and Mr Blair was a "lame duck".
Speaking in New Delhi during a week-long trip to India, Mr Cameron told the Press Association: "I'm here in India to face the challenges of the future and increasingly it appears this Government is in meltdown and divided.
"It seems unable to show leadership on the challenges of the future."
In a letter to Mr Blair tendering his resignation this morning, Mr Watson wrote: "It is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country.
"How and why this situation has arisen no longer matters. I share the view of the overwhelming majority of the party and the country that the only way the party and the Government can renew itself in office is urgently to renew its leadership."
About 90 minutes later, Mr Mahmood stood down as Parliamentary Private Secretary to Home Office minister Tony McNulty.
This was followed shortly by a joint statement from Mr David (MP for Caerphilly), Mr Lucas (Wrexham), Mr Tami (Alyn and Deeside) and Mr Wright (Telford), announcing their decision to leave their PPS posts.
The four said that Mr Blair's failure to end the uncertainty over when he would leave office was "damaging the Government and the party".
It was not enough for Mr Blair to indicate, through close allies, that he was planning to quit within 12 months, they wrote, adding: "We have vitally important Scottish Parliament, Welsh Assembly and English local authority elections next year and we must resolve this matter well in advance of these."
Chris Mole, PPS to communities minister Phil Woolas, later added his name to the list of those resigning.
A report in The Sun today claimed that Mr Blair would stand down as Labour leader on May 31 next year and finally leave office on July 26 2007 after an eight-week contest to choose his successor - expected to be Chancellor Gordon Brown.
But a close ally of Mr Brown, former minister Doug Henderson, today said he could not think of a worse date for the transition of power, coming as it does three weeks after the Scottish, Welsh and local elections.
Blair should announce his resignation this autumn, giving the new leader plenty of time to set out his stall ahead of the May polls, said Mr Henderson.
He said on BBC Radio 4's World at One: "I think people, when they vote next May, will want to know what the Labour Party will do in the future, not what it has done in the past.
"I think they will want to see a new leader in place by then, so people can judge the Labour Party in a forward way rather than looking at the legacy of what we have done over the last nine years."
The "sensible" position was for Mr Blair to quit "some time in the autumn, to allow an election to take place to appoint a new leader of the Labour Party either in the very late autumn this year or the very early spring, so that a new leader is in place by March next year, so that leader can set out the stall well in advance of the local elections and Scottish and Welsh elections", he said.
Today's resignations will have all the more impact as all seven of those quitting are known as New Labour loyalists who have previously been ready to support Mr Blair to the hilt.
In particular, Mr Watson previously served as a Government whip and was expected to rise through the ministerial ranks under the Prime Minister.
The West Bromwich East MP said he was warned last night by Chief Whip Jacqui Smith that his position as a Government minister would be "untenable" unless he withdrew his name from the letter signed by him and other MPs elected in 2001.
"I have reflected on this overnight," he wrote. "I cannot withdraw my name, and therefore I accept her judgement.
"I do not believe that statements so far give us the clarity necessary to progress over the next year.
"Nor do I believe that newspaper reports of potential dates which may have appeared since I signed the 2001 intake's letter can provide the clarity the party and the country so desperately need.
"It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must leave the Government."
Mr Blair's official spokesman said of The Sun story: "We are not going to give a running commentary on things. That applied yesterday to The Sun as well. People may contact us with dates but we are not going to comment.
"The suggestion that this was in some way an authorised No 10 operation is wrong."
Mr Mahmood, MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, said in his letter to Mr Blair: "The party and the Labour Government's work is more important than any individual. Sadly, I feel that your remaining in office no longer serves the best interests of the party or the country.
"Given which views, it is with the greatest regret that I must leave the government."
Downing Street said transport minister Derek Twigg would replace Mr Watson as veterans minister, and Tom Harris, MP for Glasgow South and previously PPS to Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt, would become a transport minister.
One of Mr Blair's most vocal critics called today for him to be given "space" to implement his apparent resignation timetable.
Following the report of a May 31 resignation, ex-minister Glenda Jackson said: "This may not have come out in the most ideal way but we have been calling for a timetable, we now have a timetable and it is only fair to give the Prime Minister the space to implement that timetable in consultation with the party and any potential successors."
Mr Blair's closest political friend, his agent John Burton, said he had no knowledge of a timetable, but called for a contest to succeed Mr Blair, rather than a coronation of Chancellor Gordon Brown.
Mr Burton said Mr Blair backed such a contest and the premiership would not simply be handed down to "the heir apparent".
He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he had "no indication whatsoever" if Mr Blair had decided on a timetable.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell said: "This is no longer a matter of the convenience of the Labour Party and the ambitions of its senior members. What is at issue is the national interest, which is not being served by the continuing uncertainty over Mr Blair.
"The Labour Party has created this situation and has the responsibility to solve it. Mr Blair should either resign or state a date."
Following is the full text of the letter from Tom Watson, to Tony Blair:
Dear Tony
The Labour Party has been my life since I was 15 years old. I have served the Party at every conceivable level and your own leadership since 1994 in a dozen different capacities, latterly as MP for West Bromwich East, a Government Whip, and as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Ministry of Defence. My loyalty to you personally, as well as to the Party and the values we stand for, has been absolute and unswerving. The struggle to fashion the kind of credible, convincing, effective Labour Party you now lead has been the preoccupation of my adult years.
My pride in what our government has achieved under your leadership is beyond expression. We have revolutionised the lives and expectations of millions of our citizens, combining social justice with prosperity in a way which is unprecedented in the history of our country. Your leadership has been visionary and remarkable. The party and the nation owes you an incalculable debt.
So it is with the greatest sadness that I have to say that I no longer believe that your remaining in office is in the interest of either the party or the country. How and why this situation has arisen no longer matters. I share the view of the overwhelming majority of the party and the country that the only way the Party and the Government can renew itself in office is urgently to renew its leadership.
For the sake of the legacy you have long said is the only one that matters - a renewed Labour party re-elected at the next general election - I urge you to reconsider your determination to remain in office.
As you know, I had a conversation with the Chief Whip last night, in which she asked me to withdraw my support from the 2001 intake's letter calling on you to stand down, or my position would be untenable as a government minister. I have reflected on this overnight. I cannot withdraw my name, and therefore I accept her judgement.
I do not believe that statements so far give us the clarity necessary to progress over the next year. Nor do I believe that newspaper reports of potential dates which may have appeared since I signed the 2001 intake's letter can provide the clarity the party and the country so desperately need.
It is with the greatest regret, therefore, that I must leave the Government.
Yours ever,
Tom Watson MP
West Bromwich East
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1367578.ece
The Independent: Afghanistan:
Campaign against Taliban 'causes misery and hunger'
By Kim Sengupta
Published: 06 September 2006
Two international think-tanks published reports yesterday highlighting failures of US and UK policy in Afghanistan, and warned the security situation in the country was deteriorating.
The Senlis Council claimed that the campaign by British forces against the Taliban had inflicted lawlessness, misery and starvation on the Afghan people.
Thousands of villagers fleeing the fighting and a continuing drought, as well as farmers who have lost their livelihood with the eradication of the opium crop, were suffering dreadful conditions in refugee camps.
In a separate intervention, the influential International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) said that a vital opportunity was lost when the West failed to carry out adequate reconstruction work after the 2001 war.
Christopher Langton, the head of the IISS defence analysis department, also said that attempts to impose secular laws on a tribal Pashtun society, without the establishment of security, had not worked. At the same time, the war against the Taliban was being hampered because caveats imposed by some Nato countries on the mission have led to a lack of combat flexibility.
Dr John Chipman, chief executive of the IISS, said British tactics of moving into remote areas in Helmand had "acted as a catalyst for intensifying insurgency by drawing the Taliban into open combat. However, it is also true the insurgency has a new energy and the Taliban see ... troops from the European member states - which they regard as militarily weaker than the US - as an opportunity target.
"The counter-narcotics policy and eradication of the poppy crop have caused tensions between local people, the government and the [Nato] coalition. The removal of the farmers' livelihood programme runs counter to winning 'hearts and minds' in many areas. The Taliban capitalise on this ... by championing the cause of the farmers, at the same time protecting those (including themselves) who profit from the heroin trade."
In its report, Afghanistan Five Years Later: The Return of the Taliban, the Senlis Council said swaths of the country were falling back into the hands of the Taliban.
And the organisation has charted between 10 and 15 refugee camps, with up to 10,000 people in each, in the provinces of Helmand and Kandahar, with little or no help from relief agencies.
The council's executive director, Emmanuel Reinert, said: "Huge amounts of money have been spent on large and costly military operations, but after five years southern Afghanistan is once more a battlefield for the control of the country.
"At the same time, the Afghans are starving. The US has lost control in Afghanistan and has in many ways undercut the new democracy ... I think we can call that a failure. The US policies in Afghanistan have re-created the safe haven for terrorism that the 2001 invasion aimed to destroy."
Mr Reinert said the Senlis Council supported the Nato presence in Afghanistan but he said the mission needed to be reassessed.
The Foreign Office challenged the Senlis Council report. A spokesman said: "It is quite clear that real progress has been made."
Meanwhile, it was reported that Pakistan's government and pro-Taliban militants had signed a peace agreement. Under the deal, it was claimed the militants were to halt attacks on Pakistani forces in the semi- autonomous North Waziristan, and stop crossing into eastern Afghanistan to attack US and Afghan forces. Pakistani troops were to stop their unpopular military campaign in the region.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1367185.ece
The New Yorker:
The World After 9/11
Amy Davidson talks to Seymour M. Hersh, Jon Lee Anderson, and George Packer about Iraq, Afghanistan, the war on terror, and whether America is stronger now.
Issue of 2006-09-11
AMY DAVIDSON: Sy, in your first article after 9/11—just a few weeks after—you quoted a senior C.I.A. official who, you wrote, “confirmed that the intelligence community had not yet developed a significant amount of solid information about the terrorists’ organization, financing, and planning.” He said, “One day, we’ll know, but at the moment we don’t know.” Has that day arrived?
SEYMOUR M. HERSH: No, not in my view. He also said at the time that there was a debate about whether the attacks were a long-planned, deep-cell operation, and we were going to be looking at cell operations like this throughout the country—major embedded groups of Al Qaeda, what you will. The other possibility was that the nineteen hijackers were the equivalent of a pickup basketball team that made it to the Final Four. His guess was the latter. I think that’s true. I think the nineteen guys, however skilled, were more lucky than anything else, because of our lack of preparation. But we really know very little about how that operation worked, even now.
DAVIDSON: Why is that?
HERSH: Because the nineteen guys are dead. Despite all the arrests we’ve made—of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others—I’m very skeptical of the information we’ve got from interrogations, basically because, once people get into the interrogation process, even today, the torture is such that they invent stories to make us happy. So we’ve got an awful lot of bad information, along with some good. But certainly a lot of bad stuff. So we don’t have a good picture of what happened.
DAVIDSON: Let me ask all three of you: how good was Al Qaeda five years ago? Were the hijackers a pickup basketball team? And how good is Al Qaeda now—has it got better since 9/11, or is it much weaker?
GEORGE PACKER: I think that it’s been franchised since 9/11, and now we’ve got small groups in many parts of the world claiming varying degrees of association with Al Qaeda but, essentially, acting operationally on their own—pursuing their own regional and local goals but aligning themselves with the more global ambitions of Al Qaeda. If you consider Al Qaeda just in terms of its main base of operations, which were formerly in Afghanistan, that Al Qaeda, as far as I know, is not achieving very much in the way of operations. But what it’s become is an enormous public-relations boon to any group that wants to wear its colors and go off into its own Final Four tournament, and act essentially on its own. What our colleague Lawrence Wright’s book “The Looming Tower” suggests is that Al Qaeda is mainly the unbelievably ambitious and persistent vision of one man, and he has outlasted all kinds of other people in his willingness to stick with it, certainly through the nineties.
DAVIDSON: Osama bin Laden.
PACKER: Yes.
JON LEE ANDERSON: I agree with what George says and what Sy says. I think that Al Qaeda achieved in the attacks of 9/11 a blow so dramatic that it seemed to the Islamists to strip away the defenses and the perceived invincibility of the world’s greatest superpower, and it became possible, in a psychological and even tactical way, for others to try to emulate it. So whether or not Al Qaeda is operationally as potent as it was around 9/11 doesn’t matter. The mere fact that the United States absorbed that blow, unaware, sent a huge message around the world, and not only to non-state actors, like jihadis who follow Osama bin Laden or Zarqawi or others, but also to regimes that were held in check, prior to 9/11, by the sense of our overwhelming military capabilities. They no longer feel so threatened. And I think the Iraq war has done a lot to enhance that view—in other words, our inability to make headway against insurgents in a place like Iraq has stripped away the aura of American invincibility and might.
DAVIDSON: Let’s talk about Iraq, and let’s start with the question of whether we should be talking about Iraq when we’re looking back at the legacy of 9/11. What does Iraq have to do with 9/11?
PACKER: Iraq has turned out to be an enormous wrong turn in the five years since 9/11. The war was justified by the Administration, at some moments directly, by connections between Saddam and Al Qaeda, which were grossly overstated if not absolutely false, and at times indirectly, by a suggestion that if we eliminated this gross dictatorship in the middle of the Arab world we would begin to drain the swamps that were breeding terrorists. That was a more abstract, theoretical strategy that became the justification when the weapons of mass destruction didn’t show up. So now, even as we speak, the President, the Vice-President, and the Secretary of Defense are all trying to rally the country back to the war in Iraq by associating it with Islamic extremism. At this point, I think that argument has largely run out of juice, because there have been too many deceptions and too many rosy scenarios that failed to materialize in Iraq, and because the connection is simply too tenuous or too cosmic for Americans to accept it. The Administration cried wolf, and I don’t think this time around the electorate is going to buy that success in the war on terror and success in Iraq are one and the same thing.
DAVIDSON: Jon Lee, can you talk about that? You’ve spent a lot of time in Iraq.
ANDERSON: I agree with George’s appraisal of how the war came about, and the deceit that was involved, and the notion that, of course, Iraq and Saddam had nothing, or very little, to do with Al Qaeda—certainly there’s no evidence that Saddam had anything at all to do with 9/11. But build it and they will come. Iraq has become a central theatre in the war on terror because the Administration continues to say it is. And, therefore, having staked America’s reputation, prestige, military prowess, and all of that on the war in Iraq, the Administration—certainly this Administration, and, I suspect, future Administrations—will find it extremely difficult to extricate itself gracefully from Iraq without some electorally acceptable semblance of victory or, at least, a job accomplished. And therein lies the great disaster that is Iraq, because it didn’t have to be a disaster, but it has become so. You now have General George Casey, the top commander in Iraq, saying that American forces hope to be able to withdraw to superbases within a year to eighteen months. Read the subtext here: the country is, by any measure, in a state of civil war, and the conclusion is that the Administration intends to let the civil war fight itself out, probably by ultimately choosing a side and then withdrawing to these bases. By then, there will be a new spin operation, which is already in motion, to explain away the fact that America’s arrival in Iraq opened this Pandora’s box. The onus will be left on the Iraqis. It’s a very messy scenario, but I do think that even if it wasn’t initially part of the larger war on terror it is so now, and will remain so for some time in the future.
DAVIDSON: Sy, what do you think about that?
HERSH: In the fall of 2001, I was learning a lot about a great debate inside the Administration about what to do in Afghanistan. There were a lot of people who argued very bitterly against the air war—I’m talking about people on the inside, tough guys—arguing against what we all assumed to be the one just aspect of this whole post-9/11 process, which was the invasion and bombing of Afghanistan and the Special Forces operation. That was the beginning of the whole torture issue with Guantánamo, and the buying of prisoners. All of that stuff was debated before late October, when the President authorized the bombing. There was a huge debate about even whom to support in Afghanistan—whether or not we should do more real counterinsurgency, and take up the Taliban and consider them more seriously as people you could actually talk to, and the decision was that we ought to go with the warlords. Like a lot of people, I accepted the premise of the Afghan war; I accepted the premise that it wasn’t that irrational, that we had to do something. I didn’t accept it the second time, in Iraq. If the Administration wants a role model for how to respond to grave abuses in terms of international terrorism, look at the Indian government and Mumbai, the train bombing there. The government treated it like a criminal activity. By going to war, instead of criminalizing what Osama bin Laden and his minions did—there’s no question that, in terms of military operations, this is the worst government in the history of America.
DAVIDSON: George, this is something you’ve written about. Do you think that we’ve learned something since 9/11 about the limits of what military action can accomplish?
PACKER: Some of us have, including some people in the government and in the military, but they’re not in the key positions. Sy’s most recent article, on the Lebanon war, suggests that the people who are in the key positions continue to learn the wrong lessons, which is that air power can destroy deeply entrenched groups that are as much political as they are military. Which is very worrying, because it shows that what one hears—that no unwelcome information reaches the President, that it is generally stopped at his door by people from the Vice-President’s office or by his immediate staff—is true. It’s something I hear over and over again. So I don’t think anyone in a position to make decisions has learned. I think what those people have done is protected themselves from learning by counterpunching every time anyone lands a blow and turning what should be very difficult strategic policy questions into, essentially, part of a permanent campaign at home to win a political argument. I think they’ve taken that more seriously, they’ve given it more energy, and they consider it more important, in a way, than they do the actual conflict outside of our borders. But I also want to say, there’s a huge ideological battle that is not of our making, but which is now the world we live in. That’s where I think the real key questions are. I think Sy’s absolutely right that war is far too blunt an instrument, that crime and intelligence work are where we—and the Brits, and other countries—have had our few successes. But, beyond that, there is this ideological problem, which anyone who travels in that part of the world gets a heavy dose of. And we don’t know what to do about it. And that is a failure of leadership.
ANDERSON: I’d like to leap in here and add something that has become dear to my heart in the course of observing on the ground the conflicts engendered since 9/11: first Afghanistan, then Iraq, and, most recently, Lebanon. I’ll begin with an anecdote. Immediately following the ceasefire, after four weeks of bombing, Hezbollah announced that it would pay for the reconstruction of homes for the tens of thousands of people whose homes had been destroyed in the Israeli bombardment—for the homes, a year’s worth of rent, and new furniture—and would itself rebuild, with funds from Iran, no doubt. Hezbollah effectively captured people’s loyalties and took away that role of the state from the Lebanese government, and, for that matter, from the larger actors in the conflict—including America. This was just the latest example; it goes back to Iraq and it goes back to Afghanistan. Following the American police action in Afghanistan, to chase the Taliban into the hills, almost nothing was done to rebuild the country. It took—I forget, exactly—a year and a half or two years before the first efforts were made to pave the Kabul-Kandahar road, which was passable for about a year but no longer is today, because the Taliban have returned and are likely to attack if you are a Westerner. Very little was done in the political arena. This problem of Islamic extremism, which George was referring to and which is very real, is a problem of perception. America is seen to act with all of its might and resources when it comes to military adventurism or military involvement. In Iraq, the amount of money expended there on nothing very visible, for the sake of pursuing the war, is astronomical. But what have we done to rebuild? I believe this sort of military action has to go hand in hand with a radical political decision to actually reform these countries. For Afghanistan, that could have meant a kind of mini-Marshall plan, which could have shown both the Afghans and the Muslim world that we had no vested interest in controlling that country but bore some responsibility for what had happened there. It would have been a very cost-effective investment. Once again, we do not truly compete for hearts and minds, because we’re not willing to pony up to invest, to show that America isn’t only about war, or being crusading Christians, or whatever it is.
DAVIDSON: One thing that we have built since 9/11 is a detention center at Guantánamo, which is as much a legacy of 9/11 as Iraq, and is the sort of blunt instrument that you mentioned, George. What has America gained from Guantánamo, and what has it lost?
HERSH: The evidence is, we’ve gained much less than people think we have, or at least than the Administration tells us, in terms of actionable intelligence. George made a point about how we have to change and deal seriously with people who want to fly airplanes into our buildings, and we really have to improve our ability to learn who they are and how to track them. I do think there’s been maybe the beginning of some idea that simple force doesn’t work. We’ll see. There is some new thinking going on. Even in Iraq, some of the military units seem to be operating more sensibly in terms of dealing with the population, but it’s far too late. The whole world was on our side after 9/11—most of the Muslim world, too, was shocked by the crazy activity—and, essentially, we’ve lost the moral authority, the moral edge we had. It’s the same thing Jon Lee was saying about the inability to really do reconstruction, in as serious a way as we do deconstruction. I grew up thinking that in America we always wore the white hat. It’s no longer so. Although I will still say that the average Muslim, if he got into business and made a pretty good living and got to the middle class, his ambition would be to send his kid to Yale. That still exists. But we’re not capitalizing on it.
DAVIDSON: George, you wrote a little about that this week—the question of moderate Islam.
PACKER: One thing we lose sight of, because we’re focussed, rightly, on the use of American power, is the battle within Muslim countries, which is acute and getting hotter all the time. It’s been going on for half a century now. What we’re experiencing is the sharp end of a battle that has been rising within Muslim countries since independence, and that’s a battle over modernity and what kind of society Muslims want to live in. For the article in this week’s issue, I went looking for some sign of intellectual moderation in places like Sudan and Morocco. I can’t say I was enormously encouraged, but there are things that are going on that we miss with the headlines coming from the Middle East. A Sudanese scholar told me, “I expect nothing good from the Arab world”—by which I think he meant the Middle East—“for a long time.” The place where there’s hope is the periphery, the Muslim periphery, from Senegal to Indonesia, countries that aren’t often in the headlines but where this internal battle to define their own societies is less explosive—and is less caught up with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the Iraq war, American military power, and so on. It is being waged in the way it can be when people aren’t being held at gunpoint, which is through ideas, through political parties, and even through democratic politics in some of these countries. So it isn’t entirely about war and destruction; it’s also about ideas and about the direction these societies are going in. What I heard over and over, though, is that the pictures on Al Jazeera coming from the Middle East make it very difficult for reformers in these peripheral Muslim countries to gain an audience, because they’re increasingly seen as being apologists for the West. The more this is defined as Islam versus the West, the worse it is for us and, I would argue, for Muslims themselves. The more it can become a battle of ideas within Muslim countries over modernity rather than the West, then the more hope there is, because I think most people don’t want to live in a totalitarian society in which seventh-century customs are imposed on them by force. I think most people want to live normal, modern lives.
DAVIDSON: I want to go back five years, to the moment right after 9/11 when we talked a lot about justice, about bringing the perpetrators to justice, and to the question of whether there has been justice for 9/11. Sy, you mentioned Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is described as the mastermind behind 9/11. He’s actually in U.S. custody. Why hasn’t he been brought to trial?
HERSH: Because the Administration has chosen not to do so. I think that one of the reasons is that at trial he would talk about how he was treated. If somebody would come into a courtroom describing the kind of treatment he’s reportedly had at the hands of the United States, a conviction might be very hard to get. We simply decided very early on that it was acceptable for us to be goons, and we’ve been goons. It still goes on. It is beyond stupidity.
DAVIDSON: We’ve talked about Afghanistan as the first place where we went to “get the bad guys.” Jon Lee, you were in Afghanistan when the bombing began, in October, 2001; you also went back there last year. Did you get a sense, when you were there, that somehow justice had been done, for the victims of 9/11—or, for that matter, for the Afghans?
ANDERSON: There’s no question that the American action—the coalition action—in Afghanistan achieved one thing: removing Al Qaeda from the almost aboveground role it had, pretty much steering the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. This isn’t political rhetoric—it had a preëminent role in the country, it funded the Taliban regime, and it provided an open base of operations for terrorists seeking to do harm to any number of regimes, including the United States. That was achieved, but it was not a total victory. The Taliban fled into the hills; Osama bin Laden escaped. And then, really, I think, the West—the United States and its coalition partners—sat on their hands. The Afghans were putty, so to speak. They had no expectations—other than every expectation of the West. We were the dreamland. We were that shimmering United States of the Kennedy era, still, in their imaginations. We were capable of doing anything for them. They were in our thrall. We could have done so much in Afghanistan to send an important message around the world; we could have done the right thing in that country. But we didn’t. We had our Special Forces guys doing what they needed to do, which was mop up and try to pursue the remnants of Al Qaeda and some of the Taliban. But what did the Afghans see on the ground? There was no effort to engage them truly in the battle of ideas, other than the amiable Western-handpicked figure of Hamid Karzai, who was soon seen as a puppet President; there was no visible or muscular empowerment of his government or, for that matter, of the international aid agencies in transforming a country that had been destroyed through three decades of war.
DAVIDSON: Sy, you’ve written a lot about the intelligence failures that led to 9/11. Again, right after 9/11 there was a lot of talk about how the way that the intelligence community dealt with and found information had to change. Has it changed? If so, is it for the better or for the worse?
HERSH: I actually think things are much worse, in that a lot of very capable people have got disgusted and discouraged and have left, and I think that the new system set up by the 9/11 Commission is going to be a disaster, too. So I’m skeptical. As I said earlier, in the field there are some people trying to be more progressive and use networking and more sophisticated means of going after the real hard-core jihadis’ terrorist cells, and we’ve done well that way, but it was such a blunderbuss approach in the beginning. Look, the bottom line is, you have a White House that, as George said early in this conversation, doesn’t want any information that it doesn’t want. There’s nothing new about it, and nothing has changed. We’re still in, I think, very dire shape.
DAVIDSON: The White House would say we have to give up some expectations about, say, the privacy of telephone calls, to make sure that 9/11 doesn’t happen again.
HERSH: There are ways to deal with that within the confines of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and this Administration chose not to do that, for whatever reason—for security, or because it didn’t want people to know what was going on. They’ve demonstrated a contempt for the Constitution. We really have a constitutional crisis. We’ve got a crisis in terms of what’s going on in Iraq: as Jon Lee said, a civil war is going on there; we just don’t want to use those words.
DAVIDSON: Is America stronger now than it was five years ago?
HERSH: Oh, my God—nobody would argue that. Nobody would say that. You’ve just heard thirty minutes of conversation about how we are perceived. We haven’t done the right thing in terms of reconstruction; we haven’t done the right thing in Iraq. There’s no conceivable way we’re in better shape. Why there hasn’t been an attack in the United States—I don’t have an answer for that, but I don’t believe that’s going to be a political vehicle for George W. Bush. We’re not stronger, in any sense, because we’re not nearly as respected, and the invincibility shield is gone.
DAVIDSON: Jon Lee, going back to September 10, 2001—you were about to leave for Sri Lanka. That trip got put off, and you never ended up going. Do you think that there are parts of the world that America has neglected since 9/11?
ANDERSON: Absolutely. Just as it had, in fact, before 9/11. What I was doing then for The New Yorker was going around to parts of the world that I felt had been neglected since the Cold War, and that particularly interested me. In fact, Afghanistan was one of my target countries, but I didn’t get to it until after 9/11. Sri Lanka was a more obscure one—because there wasn’t a direct American angle there. As an American who’s lived much of my life abroad, I have often felt the disjointedness between our perceptions at home and people’s perceptions of us abroad. As an American, the perpetual stranger in the strange land, I’ve often taken it on the nose as the representative of my country. I was very keenly, acutely, and poignantly aware, in the late nineties and very early two-thousands, of a sense of abandonment of past responsibility, of a huge and, in some cases, quite destructive legacy that we had left during our many years of efforts to combat the Soviet expansion in Third World countries. We had left a huge hole; we had ceased to be the good Americans there. People were still waiting for us. The Clinton years have to be looked back on as almost golden years, despite the many mistakes in foreign policy Clinton made. The United States had somehow achieved, once again, this sense of promise in the world. Maybe it was the afterglow of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But it all changed, as Sy and George were pointing out, as a result of the language chosen and the political decisions taken, about how America would respond to the new threat against it. We’ve had many opportunities since then to right the course, to alter those perceptions which have deepened and deepened—perceptions of bitterness and enmity toward America for not shouldering its true responsibilities.
DAVIDSON: But, even if we’re not loved, are we stronger?
ANDERSON: No. No. Because we have lost the respect of our enemies. Why was it that in Iraq there was an interregnum between the time Baghdad fell and the time the so-called insurgents began attacking us? Because they finally saw us on the ground. First, it was an air war, and a sort of blitzkrieg infantry campaign to the capital. Then our troops began fanning out and becoming custodians of law and order. It was then that the defeated enemy—or, rather, an enemy that had vanished or melted away but had not felt itself defeated—waiting and watching in the shadows, decided to strike, decided that we were killable. Why were we killable? Because they were able to observe us at close hand and see that we operated without the logic of a superpower that knew what it wanted to do. We did not have mastery of the terrain, the language, the culture; there was an open debate about what we wanted. We were attackable. And so our enemies lost their respect for all of our billions of dollars’ worth of hardware. And we now have one of the most vicious insurgencies in the world there. A year ago, we were also under the illusion, the rosy illusion, that Afghanistan had largely been resolved, that the Taliban were in the hills, Karzai’s government was getting stronger, we were building a great new American Embassy—but no other building in Kabul—and now the Taliban have come back. They no longer fear us, either. We are not stronger, because our enemies do not believe we are strong, and until the United States understands this and figures out how to reconfigure its position in the world and make people respect it for itself as well as for its military might, properly applied, we are fighting an uphill battle.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/articles/060911on_onlineonly02
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