coluichedubita: Elsewhere Today (395)

Aljazeera:
94 Taliban dead' in Afghan offensive

Sunday 10 September 2006, 13:25 Makka Time, 10:25 GMT

Ninety-four Taliban fighters are reported to have been killed in fierce overnight clashes in southern Afghanistan, as Nato and Afghan troops continued their biggest anti-Taliban offensive yet.

Nato’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said in a statement the Taliban fighters were killed in four different engagements from late Saturday into Sunday in the southern province of Kandahar.

Insurgents also suffered heavy losses when troops used artillery and close air support in a separate strike launched against them as they gathered to counterattack, it said.

"The counterattack was neutralised, inflicting severe losses on the insurgents," the statement said. The number of casualties was still being determined.

The strikes were part of the massive anti-Taliban offensive, Operation Medusa, which was launched on September 2 and has so far involved 2,000 Afghan and ISAF troops.

Danger zone

The latest deaths take the number of rebels announced as killed in the operation to 450.

Medusa is focussed on the Panjwayi district, about 35 km west of Kandahar city.

The district is one of the most entrenched strongholds in Afghanistan and has seen several deadly attacks on foreign troops and civilians.

ISAF said its forces had "also successfully disrupted insurgent re-supply routes around the area".

"By controlling routes and blocking insurgent rat-runs we are denying the insurgents the ability to safely reinforce their positions and bring in more ammunition, food and water," it said.

Elsewhere in Afghanistan on Sunday the governor of the southeastern Paktia province was killed when a bomber blew himself up outside the governor’s office in the provincial capital, Gardez.

Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/DE7878A4-DC40-4500-8ADF-23DC6D0A8893.htm

allAfrica: UN Environmental Arm
Probes Dumping of Deadly Toxic Wastes

UN News Service (New York) NEWS
September 8, 2006

The United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) is investigating reports that toxic waste dumped last month around Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire's biggest city, and already linked to the deaths of at least three people, may have been illegally exported from Europe.

Aside from the three reported deaths, about 3,000 others have sought medical help after inhaling fumes from the hazardous substances, stating they are suffering from intestinal and respiratory problems, as well as vomiting, nausea and nose bleeds, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The exact nature of the substances have not yet been determined, but OCHA quoted "various sources" saying they were dumped at a number of sites around Abidjan - including the city's lagoon and its sewage system - from a vessel, Probo Koala, on 19 August.

Following a formal request from the Ivorian Government, UNEP said it would conduct an investigation through the Secretariat of the Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movement of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal, which it administers.

The Secretariat is probing whether the Basel Convention's trust fund can be used to help pay for the clean-up operation, which could cost more than $13 million. It is also studying where legal responsibility for the crisis may lie.

UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner said "the disaster in Abidjan is a particularly painful illustration of the human suffering caused by the illegal dumping of wastes."

He warned that as global trade flows expand and tough domestic controls raise the costs of hazardous wastes disposal in developed countries, "the opportunities and incentives for illegal trafficking of wastes will continue to grow."

An inter-agency UN taskforce has been established to coordinate the response of UN agencies operating in the West African country.

Under the Basel Convention, any nation exporting hazardous waste must obtain prior written permission from the importing country, as well as a permit detailing the contents and destination of the waste. If the waste has been transferred illegally, the exporter is obliged to take back the waste and pay the costs of any damages and clean-up process.

European Union (EU) laws implementing the Basel Convention also prohibit all exports of toxic wastes from a member State to a developing country.

Copyright © 2006 UN News Service. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

http://allafrica.com/stories/200609080551.html

AlterNet:
911 Plus Five Equals...?

By Will Durst, AlterNet
Posted on September 8, 2006

Monday is the fifth anniversary of IX-XI, and President Bush has apparently decided to prepare us for our national day of mourning by delivering a weeklong series of seminars on fear mongering.

Okay, okay, maybe "fear mongering" is a bit much. Perhaps a better phrase would be "PR campaign of cheap political calculation," or "systematic exploitative pandering" or "a typical sleazy example from the Karl Rove electioneering handbook." Or as we have to come know it during the last six years: "business as usual."

First Dubya played the Nazi card, calling Democratic plans for a phased withdrawal of our forces from Iraq an appeasement similar to Chamberlain's treatment of Hitler in '39. I'm surprised he didn't unveil secret footage of Nancy Pelosi brandishing a rolled-up umbrella.

Then he played the Red Menace card, invoking Lenin and intimating a hammer and cycle tattoo on Howard Dean's forehead invisible only due to a thickly slapped on layer of "Dark Egyptian Number 4" makeup.

And if these two jackbooted images don't do the trick, expect to hear him summon up other more ancient scourges like the Huns and the Mongols and the Visigoths, in his never-ending quest to keep Americans all aquiver so we run and hide behind his urban camouflaged pants right up until the clock strikes 8pm PST, November 7, 2006. Screw Hawaii.

Uncharacteristically, Democrats refused to curl up in their customary flinching fetal position at the sound of the President's big bad rhetoric, and ratcheted up their criticism of his War policies, calling for the institutionalized bitch-slapping of Donald Rumsfeld in a transparently futile attempt to get the Secretary of Defense to join 10,000 Intel workers in next month's unemployment line. Predictable as a papier mache roof in a Category 3 Hurricane? Yes. But as they say about fire, it take politics to fight politics.

White House spokesman Tony Snow knee-slapped and guffawed and scoffed at the Democrats' proposal stating that portraying Rumsfeld as a bogeyman "may make for good politics but makes for lousy strategy." And one can't immediately discount that opine, because if anybody has experience with lousy strategies, it's this White House.

An administration that strategized the best way to stem terrorist activity was to invade a country that had none. An administration that stragetized that applying car battery contacts to a prisoner's nipples was not torture because it wasn't life threatening. An administration that stragetized that causing the death of over 100,000 non-combatant Iraqis was going to win over the hearts and minds of their countrymen. An administration that considers the best strategist to be the one who finds the biggest stick. Do the names Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and John Bolton have any meaning here?

In just one of his series of deep-tissue massages of fear and loathing, Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden by name 18 times, conveniently neglecting to mention it was HE who DISBANDED the CIA division devoted to finding the 6'7" Arabian guy traipsing around the Kyhber Pass, dragging behind him a solar powered kidney dialysis machine from the islamabad Sharper Image Catalogue.

A long long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, the President spoke to the country of bin Laden: "He can run, but he can't hide." You know what, it's been five years. I think they're both hiding - one behind the billowing skirts of the other.

Comic, writer, actor, radio talk show host, burden to his family, Will Durst, after his vacation, doesn't need Dark Egyptian Number 4.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/41439/

Arab News:
Lessons of Lebanon and 9/11 Attacks

Dr. Khaled Batarfi, kbatarfi@al-madina.com
Sunday, 10, September, 2006 (17, Sha`ban, 1427)

What is the difference between a report and an Op-Ed piece? A reporter should cover all sides in his/her news story or analysis. A column, on the other hand, is meant to express a writer’s own opinion. At least this is my understanding. Obviously my American friend does not subscribe to this view or he does not recognize this vital difference. Hence his suggestion that I should be “fairer” in my articles about the Lebanon war. A journalist, he says, should represent all sides of a conflict, regardless of his or her own views.

I explained to him that I am not writing as a journalist, but as an opinion writer. Besides, Israel and company have powerful media forums whereas Arabs have very few. It is not fair to share the little space we have with Israeli apologists. Readers have greater access to the other side, so they won’t have a problem getting the Zionist message.

My friend insisted that at least I be logical, sensible and credible. For my opinion to be heard and respected by all sides, he argued, it has to show restraint, factuality and reason.

I agree. I must not lie or twist facts to support my stand or to convince my readers. Like a lawyer arguing a case, I could highlight certain facts and ignore others, knowing my opponent would focus on them, but abusing the truth is not permissible.

I should also be moral. For example, I must not preach hate, support injustice or advocate violence and terrorism. No moral writer can be anti-Semite, support Israel’s indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Lebanon or Palestine, or apologize for Al-Qaeda targeting civilians.

However, as long as I adhere to standard ethic rules, I am free to take any stand I feel right.

Anger, my friend contented, blurs reason. I should not write when I can’t control my emotions. He noted that my articles after the cease-fire in Lebanon were more like me than the ones I wrote during the war.

I told him that in the heat of conflict, sense and sensibility takes a back seat to anger, obstinacy and revenge. It is just hard for people under fire to think kindly of the shooters, or find excuses for their behavior. Shouts and war cries silence any fair reasoning and logical review. We are but humans.

However, after the battle storm dies down, sanity should rule. Now that Lebanon is on the road to recovery, we could afford to breath easier, think logical, and be fair even to our enemy.

We expected this from the world’s only superpower and leader, USA, soon after 9/11. Wounds were supposed to start healing, and forward, positive, scientific and constructive thinking was expected to take over. Emotional responses were the last thing anyone predicted. Yet, that is exactly what happened and still happening five years after the event.

Adventures like Iraq invasion justified with lies and truth-twisting backfired on the perpetrators. Supporting other criminal adventures like “bombing Lebanon to the Stone Age” and destroying Palestinian towns and villages drained whatever left of world sympathy toward America after 9/11, as international polls show.

In Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon, mostly innocent people and their homes and towns were destroyed. The bad guys are still at large, regrouping and attacking with the support of large portions of their societies. Victims are turned into avengers. Angry fellow brethren all over the Muslim world became a huge pool of potential jihadists against the occupiers. If only half a percentage of some 1.5 billion Muslims went down that road there would be multimillion fighters.

From Spain and UK to Indonesia and the Philippines, and from Morocco and Egypt to Saudi Arabia and Iraq, the terrorist attacks have increased many folds. Against all security preparations, terrorists managed to deal blow after blow to all of us. Evidently, the world is less safe today than it was before the war on terror.

Instead of stopping the bleeding, more blood, American included, was spilled all over, and enormous economic costs slowed the development of a better world. Worse, fear, hate and mistrust ruled a globe that was starting to be interconnected with instant and affordable communication, trade and education — a world that was starting to establish a new order based on the rule of law, justice and human rights.

Within months of 9/11, the dream we nurtured for half a century since the end of World War II evaporated with the first B52 bombing of villages and farms in poor Afghanistan. Instead of healing the wounds and uniting the world against preachers of hate and manufacturers of death, the theories of “The Clash of Civilization” and “The End of History” are now becoming more and more a reality.

In five years, we witnessed how the leaders and builders of the emerging free, peaceful world gradually turned into its jailers and destroyers. We deserved better!

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=86334&d=10&m=9&y=2006

il manifesto:
I maestri dell'11 settembre

Come cominciò la guerra Cinque anni fa l'attacco al World Trade Center

Verità ambigue e oscure, curiose coincidenze che alla Casa bianca non piace siano indagate, intorno a degli strani fatti concomitanti con l'attacco terroristico al cuore di New York

Sergio Finardi

Terrore e «guerra al terrore» si tengono per mano ogniqualvolta la politica si avvicina a certi nodi o la tensione «securitaria» si abbassa. Anche l'ultimo «complotto» di Londra - quello che avrebbe dovuto far esplodere un sacco di aerei, il mese scorso - darà a Bush qualche argomento per cercare di fermare la caduta libera della sua popolarità in vista delle elezioni di mid-term; anche Blair sperava (a quanto pare senza successo) di ricavarne un sostegno contro gli attacchi della società civile e del suo stesso partito - che gli rimproverano, tra l'altro, la sua scelta di trasformare gli aeroporti inglesi in centri di smistamento di voli Cia e di voli civili/militari Usa carichi di armi dirette in Israele. All'indomani della scoperta del complotto, Bush e Blair hanno subito enfatizzato che la loro guerra al terrore è più che giustificata e dovrà essere anzi rafforzata. Che siano state e siano le loro politiche a provocare la deriva terroristica non viene naturalmente menzionato; men che meno il fatto che forse c'è più di un legame tra le due cose.
E' allora forse necessario tornare a riflettere su una delle origini principali della «guerra al terrore»: gli eventi dell'11 settembre 2001. La strada verso la verità si è fatta piu ampia e nuove cose sono emerse, anche grazie ad un determinato «movimento per la verità sull'11 settembre» che ha preso piede proprio negli Stati uniti e che, ad esempio, nel giugno di quest'anno ha organizzato due importanti assise: Los Angeles ha ospitato l'American Scholars Symposium «9/11 + Neo-Con Agenda» e Chicago l'annuale Conferenza del movimento per la verità sul 9/11, con il titolo «9/11: Rivelare la verità, rivendicare il nostro futuro».

Quante esercitazioni...

Si ricorderà che alcune esercitazioni e operazioni relative ad attacchi aerei e biologici sul suolo statunitense erano in corso l'11 settembre 2001, alcune di esse iniziate nei giorni immediatamente precedenti. Ognuna di tali esercitazioni implicherà conseguenze considerevoli sulla risposta agli eventi di quel giorno, non foss'altro per le gravi confusioni tra «esercitazione» e «realtà» che esse provocarono.
L'esistenza di tali esercitazioni è emersa dalle indagini svolte dagli studiosi del «movimento per la verità sull'11 settembre», dalla cosiddetta Commissione sul 9/11 (Final Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, 2004, testimonianze dei vertici militari, di Rudolf Giuliani, sindaco di New York, e altri passaggi), nonché su alcuni fonti di stampa (Toronto Star, 9 dicembre 2001; Associated Press, 21 Agosto 2002; Aviation Week & Space Technology, 3 Giugno 2002; Usa Today, 18 aprile 2004) e nel libro «Against All Enemies» (2004) di Richard Clarke, capo dell'antiterrorismo statunitense al tempo degli eventi e coordinatore con Cheney della «risposta» agli attacchi. In dichiarazioni ufficiali dei comandi militari si è parlato, senza ulteriori specificazioni, di un «maestro» coordinatore di quelle esercitazioni. Vediamone la sequenza temporale.
Il tempo di una di queste esercitazioni/operazioni (Operation Northern Vigilance) non venne deciso negli Stati uniti, poiché il suo scopo era di sperimentare le capacità di controllo dello spazio aereo nordamericano e di risposta militare in relazione ad una contemporanea esercitazione aerea militare russa sull'Artico e Pacifico settentrionale. L'esercitazione, annunciata il 9, venne condotta sotto la direzione del North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad).
Il riflesso più immediato di tale operazione sugli eventi dell'11 fu che una buona parte dei caccia solitamente disponibili nelle basi della costa est a difesa di Washington e New York venne dislocata in basi dell'Alaska e del Canada settentrionale. Al momento dell'emergenza, il Norad aveva solo 8 caccia a disposizione nel settore orientale. Northern Vigilance venne interrotta la mattina dell'11 dopo il primo attacco al World Trade Center, quando i russi annunciarono di aver sospeso la loro per permettere agli statunitensi di focalizzarsi sull'emergenza.
Il tempo delle altre esercitazioni venne invece deciso da qualche entità interna agli Stati uniti: Global Guardian e Vigilant Guardian/Vigilant Warrior erano esercizi routinari effettuati sotto il comando militare, previsti solitamente per l'ottobre. Esse implicavano sia l'immissione sui sistemi della Federal Aviation Administration (che controlla il traffico aereo statunitense e partecipava all'esercitazione), di false informazioni indicanti il dirottamento di aerei civili, sia l'esecuzione di voli effettivi di aerei civili che dovevano agire come aerei dirottati (per testare le capacita di intercettamento). Le esercitazioni coinvolgevano in particolare un settore del Norad, il Neads (North-East Air Defense Sector), responsabile per la costa est. Le esercitazioni erano in corso durante gli attacchi e sono agli atti le frasi di alcuni controllori Faa che si chiedono se la sparizione dai radar di segnali che identificano alcuni aerei sotto il loro controllo fosse parte dell'esercitazione o fosse indicativa di eventi reali.
Nella stessa mattina dell'11 settembre, un'altra esercitazione, questa condotta da Cia e Nro (National Reconaissance Office, responsabile della gestione dei satelliti-spia statunitensi) coinvolgeva lo scenario di un aeroplano che fosse precipitato sul quartiere generale della Nro - situato a circa 6 km dall'aeroporto Washington-Dulles - con prove reali di evacuazione del personale, di cui c'è testimonianza ufficiale.
Infine, per la mattina del 12 settembre, l'Office of Emergency Management (Oem) che aveva sede nella torre Wtc7 fatta evacuare alle 9,30 dell'11, aveva previsto un'esercitazione civile contro un attacco biologico a New York City, in congiunzione con la Fema (Federal Emergency Management Agency) e il Dipartimento della giustizia. L'esercitazione, chiamata Tripod II, o Trial Point of Dispensing, aveva la sua sede operativa al molo 92, sull'Hudson. Quando la Wtc7 verrà evacuata, l'Oem si trasferirà alla sede di Tripod II (testimonianza di Rudolf Giuliani alla National Commission on Terrorist Attacks upon the United States, vedi www.gpoaccess.gov/911).
Né la grande stampa ha mai chiesto, né le commissioni ufficiali sugli avvenimenti dell'11 settembre e i comandi militari hanno mai voluto dire chi fosse il «maestro» di quelle esercitazioni, ovvero il loro punto di pianificazione e coordinamento. Il 16 febbraio 2005, in un'udienza della Camera dedicata alle allocazioni di bilancio per la difesa, la deputata Chinthia McKinney chiese al ministro della difesa Rumsfeld di dare informazioni su quelle esercitazioni. Non ottenne alcuna risposta perché il presidente della sessione non consentì altro che quella domanda fosse messa semplicemente a verbale per future sessioni.
Tuttavia, non tutto è oscuro sul «maestro»: un comunicato stampa della Casa bianca dell'8 maggio 2001, quattro mesi prima degli attentati, recita: «Il presidente Bush ha ordinato al vicepresidente Cheney di coordinare lo sviluppo delle iniziative del governo per combattere attacchi terroristici sul suolo degli Stati uniti». (Office of Press Secretary, the White House). Entro il quadro della preparazione per combattere «attacchi terroristici» ricadeva anche il coordinamento e la supervisione dei cosiddetti war games e di uno speciale ufficio, l'Office of National Preparedness (Onp), istituito con la stessa direttiva dell'8 maggio nell'ambito della Fema, il cui direttore, Joe Allbaugh, da allora risponderà direttamente a Cheney delle attività dell'Onp.

Il nuovo nemico

Molti anni prima, nell'estate del 1993, il politologo statunitense Samuel Huntington pubblicherà su Foreign Affairs, organo del Council for Foreign Relations di rockefelleriana moneta, il suo famoso saggio Clash of Civilizations? I poteri forti che dominano la politica statunitense, troveranno in quel saggio il nuovo Graal, la teoria che avrebbe sostituito quella del nemico totale sovietico: le braci dei conflitti etnici e di religione sarebbero tornate ad ardere, con l'aiuto di fanatici che abbondano in ogni parte del globo, Stati uniti inclusi. Non era, quella di Huntington, un'analisi scientifica sui nuovi pericoli del mondo, ma il suggerimento di un programma di intervento.
Nel 1997, l'ex-consigliere alla Sicurezza nazionale Zbigniew Brzezinski avrebbe scritto nel suo libro La grande schacchiera: l'egemonia americana e i suoi imperativi: «Nel tempo in cui l'America diviene una società sempre più multiculturale, si può trovare sempre maggiore difficoltà a costruire un consenso sui temi della politica estera, eccetto che nella circostanza di una massiccia, universalmente sentita, e diretta minaccia esterna». Come è noto, l'amministrazione Bush si opporrà per più di un anno alla formazione di una commissione d'inchiesta sugli eventi dell'11 settembre, formata solo il 27 novembre 2002 e durata quasi due anni, non ultimo per l'opposizione continua apposta dalla Casa bianca al rilascio dei documenti richiesti dalla commissione, la più parte dei quali non verrà mai desecretata.
Dagli war games alle guerre vere i passi sono stati brevi e le loro ombre lunghe si stendono oggi da Tel Aviv a Beirut, da Baghdad a Kabul, da Washington a Bruxelles.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/09-Settembre-2006/art11.html

il manifesto:
Novecento, il dubbio degli sconfitti

«Volevo la luna», ardenti vicende e tormentati ricordi che intrecciano la storia personale con l'esperienza collettiva del comunismo italiano. L'autobiografia di un protagonista della politica italiana «Noi siamo stati sconfitti, ma abbiamo vissuto un'esperienza straordinaria. Oggi, a volte, l'orizzonte della politica mi sembra diventato più piccolo e angusto»

Gabriele Polo

Guardarsi alle spalle per riflettere su una vita intensamente politica, per raccontare le virtù di un mondo ma soprattutto e impietosamente i suoi «peccati», gli errori. In una confessione pubblica che non cerca assoluzioni ma ragioni. Pietro Ingrao manda in libreria Volevo la luna (Einaudi, pp. 376, euro 18,50) più che un'autobiografia un percorso di ricerca in cui racconta se stesso «come parte di un soggetto che si sentiva protagonista del mondo e del suo cambiamento». Il soggetto è il movimento comunista - meglio, il comunismo italiano - che è il centro di tutta la narrazione. Con i suoi problemi aperti.

Il ripensamento autocritico è il filo conduttore di tutto il libro.
Cosa hai voluto trasmettere con questo tuo lavoro?

La sensazione molto netta di una sconfitta di cui mi convinco alla fine degli anni Settanta, con la necessità di ragionare a fondo sulla nostra storia e sulla realtà, per riaggiornare le nostre categorie e riflettere sul soggetto politico. Dovevamo ridisegnare le nostre «mappe».

Vuoi dire che soltanto nelle sconfitte si può arrivare a scorgere le verità e a poterle dichiarare?

E' un'affermazione troppo secca, anche se forse per alcuni è così. Per me c'era il farsi strada della convinzione netta di una sconfitta concreta e drammatica. Pensa a che colpo fu per noi l'occupazione sovietica di Praga del 1968 che poneva fine a un tentativo di rinnovamento democratico del socialismo che noi in Italia sostenevamo. Tutto il nostro mondo era in subbuglio da tempo e noi eravamo un po' fermi nell'elaborazione. Con il '68-69, soprattutto in Italia, viene messo in discussione il concetto di rappresentanza - per quanto riguarda il sindacato nei metalmeccanici il processo è addirittura travolgente - e da lì sorge in me una domanda che riguarda l'agire politico in generale. Non solo cosa fa il Partito comunista italiano o cos'è l'Unione sovietica, ma proprio che cos'è la politica, più nel profondo la convinzione che il soggetto rivoluzionario sia, come scrivo nel libro, «un farsi del molteplice, l'incontro fluttuante di una pluralità oppressa che costruiva e verificava nella lotta il suo volto». E' qualcosa di più di una critica da sinistra dello stalinismo.

Il '68-69 sembrava essere una grande occasione che non annunciava nessuna sconfitta, anzi. Perché questa «occasione» non è stata colta dal Pci e, per esempio, non ti ha impedito di commettere - le parole sono le tue - un errore grave come la radiazione del gruppo del manifesto? Perché ha prevalso il primato della fedeltà all'organizzazione?

Perché io non credo al minoritarismo. Con i compagni del manifesto c'era e c'è sempre stato un grande rapporto di solidarietà e amicizia, ma mi è parso che non ci fosse da parte loro una proposta valida sul tema del soggetto politico. Mi ricordo le discussioni con loro. Io conoscevo bene il Pci e avevo detto a loro: «Vi mettono fuori». Ma entrando più nel merito non trovavo in quella che facevano una proposta chiara sul soggetto da mettere in campo. Purtroppo, per parte mia, commisi l'errore pesante e assurdo di votare la loro radiazione. Questo limite nella costruzione di un nuovo soggetto poltico l'ho poi ritrovata in voi del manifesto, compresa l'esperienza che ho vissuto nella Rivista degli anni '90. Un minoritarisimo di testimonianza che non mi ha mai persuaso.

Quindi la tua autocritica è essenzialmente etica, come di fronte a un peccato...

No, non faccio valutazioni morali. Fu un doppio errore, il mio. Il primo senza dubbio umano, abbandonavo i miei amici. Soprattutto la radiazione fu una scelta politicamente stupida, non apriva una discussione positiva, non faceva avanzare la coscienza comune valutando e comprendendo le ragioni del dissenso in campo.

Però allora ci fu una grande discussione nel Partito comunista, in tutte le federazioni, gli atti furono pubblicati...

Ma era già tutto stabilito dall'inizio, quella discussione fu solo una formalizzazione di una decisione già presa. Invece bisognava usare quella frattura per misurarsi con la crisi del leninismo. Tale era il nodo da affrontare.

A proposito di leninismo, sempre nel passaggio sul manifesto, tu parli di fare i conti «con il suo doloroso tramonto». Quel «doloroso» sembra quasi un lamento, come a dire che bisogna ammettere quel fallimento ma che si è in presenza di un'assenza di alternative, di fronte a un vuoto.

Dire che non c'era alternativa è troppo povero e alla fine inutile: ma sicuramente il cibo di cui ci eravamo nutriti non era più utilizzabile. Tutti sapevamo che nell'Urss non c'erano più interlocutori. Ma il vuoto di cui tu parli è più forte proprio in assenza di una riflessione sulla necessità di creare un nuovo soggetto che sia frutto della «molteplicità» di cui parlavo prima.
Il «molteplice» prevede un grande senso della democrazia non solo come serie di regole da rispettare, ma soprattutto come pratica, a partire dal rispetto del dissenso. Era proprio così impossibile, prima degli anni '70, permettere la manifestazione del dissenso fuori da ristretti gruppi dirigenti?

Di fatto è stato così. Chi dissentiva la pagava duramente, fino a metodi polizieschi, soprattutto nella vecchia guardia. Come scrivo nel mio libro erano tempi difficili...

Tempi difficili ma molto «pieni». Oggi magari sono più facili ma forse ti appaiono più «vuoti».

La domanda è provocatoria perché si potrebbe accusare un vecchio come me di nostalgia per la sua gioventù. Io però non voglio cancellare un grande fatto che ha segnato l'Italia: noi siamo stati sconfitti, ma abbiamo vissuto una stagione straordinaria, che ha fatto crescere un'esperienza di milioni di persone che hanno fatto politica cambiando il paese, democratizzandolo. E, poi, il nostro orizzonte non guardava solo all'Italia: eravamo parte di un «mondo» e di una pratica collettiva alta e vitale in tante parti del pianeta. Quando sono andato in Vietnam e sono sceso nelle città sotterranee costruite per sfuggire ai bombardamenti americani, io in quei cunicoli bui divisi da muri di fango mi sentivo in uno spazio aperto e illuminato da una lotta creativa. Oggi, a volte, l'orizzonte della politica mi sembra diventato più piccolo e angusto.

Ma allora il tuo dirti comunista ancor oggi, nonostante la sconfitta, gli errori e le autocritiche, è legato più a questo passato che all'oggi?

Noi - quelli della mia generazione - non siamo riusciti a trovare la risposta alla crisi indiscutibile del leninismo-stalinismo. E, prima di tutto per questo, siamo degli sconfitti. Però, da un lato in questo paese ci sono state milioni di persone che sono cresciute anche culturalmente nella lotta politica e che sono state una parte decisiva dell'esperienza democratica italiana; d'altro canto oggi continuo a vedere milioni di oppressi nei drammatici mutamenti della globalizzazione. E, poi, vediamo il riemergere apologetico della guerra come realtà pressante e distruttiva che dilaga nel mondo, mentre è stata cancellata dal vocabolario la parola disarmo: non c'è più nessuno che la pronunci, nemmeno voi sul manifesto. Non ti sembrano buoni motivi per continuare a dirsi comunisti e a lavorare per la costruzione di un soggetto politico su scala necessariamente internazionale?

Scusa la digressione: tu hai ammesso nel tuo libro gli errori che hai fatto rispetto al gruppo del manifesto. Quali errori commette oggi il manifesto nei confronti dei suoi lettori e della sinistra?

Ma perché mi fai questa domanda?

Perché ci interessa l'opinione di un lettore importante che è stato anche direttore di un giornale politico.

Va bene. Allora diciamo che a volte - scusa l'impertinenza - sembrate una setta aristocratica. E lo dico con tutto l'affetto possibile e l'interesse per quello che scrivete.

Torniamo al libro, al suo titolo, «Volevo la luna». La senti più lontana o più vicina di un tempo quella luna, metafora di un mondo diverso?

Ti ripeto che questo è un libro che racconta una sconfitta...

Ma non pensi che questa tua ricerca lunga una vita sia stata in qualche modo utile e fruttuosa?

Per gli altri non spetta a me dire. Per me sicuramente è stata utile e fruttuosa. La passione politica mi ha fatto capire il mondo ed è diventata un pane necessario. La «luna» mi sembra ora un po' più distante: non rispetto all'inizio del mio percorso, ma negli ultimi anni mi pare essersi un pochino allontanata. Io sono arrivato alla politica sotto la spinta di una necessità. Come tanti altri della mia generazione e della mia estrazione sociale avrei voluto fare altre cose - il cinema, per esempio. Poi sono stato spinto dagli eventi, a calci nel sedere; e la guerra civile spagnola è stato il momento di passaggio che mi ha trascinato nella lotta politica. Da lì è cominciato un cammino che mi ha riempito di cose straordinarie, che mi ha fatto uscire dal guscio dell'individualismo entrando in comunicazione con milioni di esseri umani. Questa è stata l'esperienza dei comunisti italiani. Però è andata in crisi la forma che ha storicamente assunto il soggetto politico. Questo oggi mi sembra pesante, persino doloroso, perché non vedo una risposta all'altezza degli eventi che sono maturati. La mia generazione ha pagato il prezzo di una forma restrittiva della molteplicità (ricordi il mio discorso di prima?) dell'attore politico. Qui è l'enorme, straordinario campo dell'innovazione. Il senso del mio libro, alla fine, si riduce tutto nel fornire il mio piccolo ragionamento per questa grande e nuova ricerca.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/09-Settembre-2006/art43.html

Jeune Afrique:
La Corne et le Coran

SOMALIE - 3 septembre 2006 - par CHERIF OUAZANI

Le phénomène islamiste réveille les rancœurs tribales. Dans la sous-région, certains s’en inquiètent. D’autres tentent d’en tirer profit.

Depuis le 26 mai, date à laquelle les fondamentalistes de l’Union des tribunaux islamiques ont fait main basse sur Mogadiscio, la Corne de l’Afrique est entrée dans une zone de fortes turbulences. À leurs conquêtes militaires, les islamistes ont ajouté, en quelques semaines, des performances économiques qui accroissent leur popularité auprès des Somaliens : réouverture de l’aéroport et du port de Mogadiscio fermés depuis plus de dix ans, sécurisation des activités de pêche, recul de la criminalité dans les zones sous leur contrôle, etc. Les intégristes se sont si bien assurés du soutien de la société civile, d’hommes d’affaires et d’une partie de la diaspora que leur influence commence sérieusement à inquiéter. Dans les pays voisins… et au-delà.

La Somalie est un pays sans État depuis la chute, en 1991, du dictateur Mohamed Siyad Barré. La brusque disparition du maître de Mogadiscio avait alors réveillé les rancœurs tribales et les ambitions claniques. Une intervention américaine avait bien tenté de ramener le calme dans le pays, mais la mémorable opération Restore Hope, en 1993, s’était soldée par un fiasco. Depuis, de longues batailles à l’arme lourde entre seigneurs de guerre ont achevé de mettre le pays à genoux, sans que les Nations unies ne parviennent à y rétablir la paix.

En 2004 pourtant, après de multiples médiations infructueuses, le Parlement institué en 2000 choisit l’un des seigneurs de guerre, Abdallah Youssouf Ahmed, l’homme fort du Puntland, comme président. Ahmed Gédi dirige un gouvernement en exil au Kenya. Mais celui-ci ne parvient pas à enrayer la montée de l’islamisme radical qui atteint la Somalie.

Le 15 juin dernier, l’Union des tribunaux islamistes accepte quand même de signer, à Khartoum, un mémorandum de reconnaissance mutuelle avec le gouvernement d’Ahmed Gédi. Mais les négociations ne vont pas plus loin. Les deux parties ne parviennent pas à se mettre d’accord sur les modalités du retour à la paix. Pour les intégristes, il n’est pas question d’accepter la présence en Somalie de militaires étrangers, fussent-ils arabes et musulmans, envoyés dans le cadre d’une mission de maintien de la paix. Le président Abdallah Youssouf campe, lui, sur ses positions : « Cette disposition est inscrite sur les tablettes de l’Union africaine (UA). Refuser sa mise en œuvre équivaut à remettre en cause notre légitimité. » Le différend menaçant de sortir du seul cadre verbal, le président Youssouf et son Premier ministre décident de faire appel à l’Éthiopie, aujourd’hui soupçonnée d’avoir envoyé des troupes en Somalie. Addis-Abeba dément. Mais les témoins soutiennent que près de 25 000 soldats éthiopiens sont entrés sur le territoire somalien pour prêter main forte aux milices progouvernementales à Baidoa.

La nouvelle provoque la colère des islamistes. « Haute trahison ! » s’écrie Hassan Dahir Awess, leur leader, recherché par la justice américaine pour ses accointances avec al-Qaïda. La présence d’un corps expéditionnaire éthiopien, donc chrétien, en terre somalienne est ressentie comme une croisade. L’Union des tribunaux islamiques rédige alors une fatwa appelant au djihad contre l’envahisseur.

L’Union africaine, dont le siège se trouve dans la capitale éthiopienne, reste discrète. Et se cache derrière l’Autorité intergouvernementale pour le développement (Igad), l’organisation sous-régionale en charge du dossier somalien. Le 1er août, un Conseil des ministres de l’Igad se tient à Nairobi, le Kenya assurant la présidence tournante de la structure qui regroupe Djibouti, l’Éthiopie, l’Érythrée, le Kenya, l’Ouganda et le Soudan. L’Igad réitère son soutien aux institutions de transition et appelle à un dialogue entre le gouvernement d’Ahmed Gédi et les fondamentalistes, dans le cadre de la charte fédérale de transition, qui prévoit le déploiement d’une force africaine d’interposition. Mais les discussions piétinent faisant croître l’inquiétude dans la région.

L’Éthiopie, en particulier, est dans l’urgence. Pour elle, il est vital de mettre fin à la percée islamiste en Somalie au plus vite. Le succès des fondamentalistes somaliens risque d’être contagieux et pourrait apporter des soutiens mal venus aux insurgés du Front de libération oromo, proche des islamistes. En outre, une Somalie stable avec, à sa tête, un pouvoir hostile à Addis-Abeba est la porte ouverte au retour d’une vieille revendication : la Somalie doit regrouper toutes les régions où l’on parle somali. Soit de Djibouti au nord du Kenya, en passant par le plateau de l’Ogaden et une partie de l’Éthiopie orientale...

Quant à l’Érythrée, toujours en conflit larvé avec Addis-Abeba malgré l’accord de paix d’Alger de 2000, elle ne rate jamais l’occasion de mettre des bâtons dans les roues de son puissant voisin. Selon différentes sources, c’est elle qui alimente les combattants islamistes somaliens en armes et en munitions. Certaines évoquent même la présence de 1 500 militaires érythréens, venus par la mer, aux côtés des miliciens de l’Union des tribunaux islamiques. Difficile à croire quand on sait que les côtes somaliennes sont étroitement surveillées par une coalition sous commandement américain, installée au camp Lemonier de Djibouti. Toujours est-il que l’intrusion de l’Érythrée dans le dossier ajoute à la confusion. D’autant que pour les Nations unies, la question somalienne relève exclusivement de l’UA, qui, elle-même, la sous-traite à l’Igad. Une situation complexe qui profite, pour l’instant, aux intégristes de Hassan Dahir Awess. Après avoir consolidé leur assise militaire, ces derniers réhabilitent actuellement les infrastructures du pays. Le risque ? Voir une Somalie en jachère se transformer en un Afghanistan taliban...

© Jeuneafrique.com 2006

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_jeune_afrique.asp?
art_cle=LIN03096lacornaroce0

Página/12:
Ground Zero, imposible de olvidar

MAÑANA SE CUMPLEN CINCO AÑOS DE LOS ATAQUES A LAS TORRES

Cinco años después, la huella del 11-S se observa en peleas políticas, en nuevas investigaciones y en grabaciones de rescate de emergencias recientemente dadas a conocer. Pero sobre todo se siente al pie de donde alguna vez se alzaron dos torres.

Por David Osborne*
Desde Nueva York, Domingo, 10 de Septiembre de 2006

Habrá más movimiento esta semana en Ground Zero, donde alguna vez estuvieron las Torres Gemelas. Con motivo del quinto aniversario de los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre, está llegando más gente que la habitual al pozo gris y estudia las fotografías del horror que están pegadas al cerco. Hoy en día es un lugar estéril. Nueva York se tomó todo este tiempo para dilucidar los conflictos de intereses que rodean a los planes para la nueva Torre de la Libertad, el Museo de la Memoria y diversas oficinas, negocios minoristas y edificios culturales. Las peleas sobre el dinero del seguro, las normas de seguridad para las nuevas estructuras y sobre lo que las familias de las víctimas consideran apropiado para su suelo sagrado, casi han terminado, y finalmente se están excavando algunos cimientos. Pero Ground Zero sigue provocando fuertes emociones.

Apártense de esta herida y rápidamente llegarán a la conclusión de que Nueva York se corrió de la masacre que sufrió con indecorosa rapidez. De vuelta está la antigua ciudad arrogante, alimentada por un nuevo boom económico. Unos amigos acaban de comprar un departamento frente a la Bolsa de Comercio, uniéndose a la corrida, que está ocurriendo en todo Manhattan, por nuevas moradas lujosas en edificios de oficinas reciclados. Que vayan a estar durmiendo a unas cuadras de Ground Zero no es ya un problema. Es un área de onda para vivir, o lo será.

Querer olvidar es normal, aun si uno es alguien que sufrió personalmente por los ataques –quizás especialmente para ellos–. Cuando comenzamos el trabajo de entrevistar a los familiares de las víctimas para este informe del aniversario, para lograr una mirada sobre cómo habían reparado sus vidas, nos encontramos que muchos ya no estaban dispuestos a participar. Una mujer que había perdido a su padre acababa de dar a luz a su primer bebé. Un trabajador de rescate acababa de comenzar una nueva vida en Oklahoma. Ninguno estaba listo para revivir el dolor.

Sin embargo, olvidar no siempre es fácil, ni tampoco lo es desviar la mirada. Los recordatorios están por todos lados, a veces ocultos debajo de una carpa blanca del FDR Drive al lado del East River o detrás del lienzo negro que tapa la fachada de un viejo edificio bancario. Cinco años después, la confusión provocada por el 11-S está lejos de estar terminada, ya sea que se exprese en peleas políticas o en nuevas investigaciones o en grabaciones de rescate de emergencias recientemente dadas a conocer. Si no es por esto, estamos atacados por cosas del 11-S en el arte, incluyendo películas de Hollywood, o historias de los medios acerca de las viudas de los bomberos que encuentran el amor con otros bomberos.

Hasta yo prefiero no ver, aun cuando mi dolor fue meramente el de ver personalmente cómo se hundían las torres. Vi una película este verano, United 93. Peor, fui a una première en un cine lleno de parientes de pasajeros muertos. No fue una noche fácil. Las grabaciones dadas a conocer recién el mes pasado de despachantes hablando desesperados con personal de rescate y de oficinistas atrapados también eran demasiado duras de oír. Aquí hay un operador telefónico de emergencia tratando de tranquilizar a Melisssa Doi, una gerenta financiera, después de que su torre fuera impactada. Ella estaba en el piso 83. Operador: “Melissa... ¿no? Voy a llamar a tu mamá cuando salgas, que venga y vea cómo estás... Ey, ¿Melissa? Oh, mi Dios... Melissa, no te rindas. Por favor, por favor, no te rindas, Melissa. No te rindas. Oh, mi Dios. Melissa, Melissa, Melissa. ¿Querés que llame a tu mamá por vos y le diga que aguante? (Comienza el tono de discado.) “Oh, Melissa.”

Recién hoy nos estamos dando cuenta del alcance del daño hecho a la salud, física y mental, de los neoyorquinos. Un estudio conocido hace dos semanas sugiere que uno de cada seis de aquellos equipos de limpieza tiene ahora una depresión. El número de llamadas a la línea de salud mental de la ciudad se duplicó en la semana posterior a los ataques y todavía mantiene ese elevado número. El jueves pasado, la ciudad publicó por primera vez guías para diagnosticar las enfermedades físicas relacionadas directamente con el 11-S. “Cinco años después de los ataques al World Trade Center, muchos neoyorquinos tienen condiciones de salud físicas y mentales asociadas al desastre”, reconoció el comisionado de salud de la ciudad, Thomas Frieden.

Aun nuestras actitudes hacia aquellos directamente afectados por el dolor –las mujeres, maridos y niños de las víctimas– son fluctuantes. Anne Coulter, la escritora de opinión de derecha, hizo nuevos amigos este año cuando evaluó que algunas viudas del 11-S estaban “obsesionadas” y “disfrutando de las muertes de sus maridos”. Un pequeño núcleo de los parientes de las víctimas tomaron la delantera para hacer lobby ante el gobierno sobre una serie de temas posataques, incluyendo enmendar y demorar los proyectos para el nuevo World Trade Center. Pero puede ser que Coulter estuviera canalizando los celos públicos ocultos sobre el dinero que habían recibido –hasta 1,5 millón de dólares por viuda de bombero de los fondos de la compensación federal–.

La envidia por el dinero seguramente también está detrás de las historias que aparecen ocasionalmente en los periódicos sobre los bomberos que abandonan a sus mujeres por las viudas de sus ex colegas. Y está el caso de la estrella de rock Bruce Springsteen, que la semana pasada se encontró negando informes de que se separaba de su mujer Patti para unirse a una viuda de un bombero del 11 de septiembre.

Pero para entender totalmente por qué no se llegó al cierre cinco años después, uno necesita no sólo mirar el edificio tapizado de negro y la carpa. El primero es la ex torre del Deutsche Bank, un edificio de 43 pisos al lado de Ground Zero que todavía está esperando ser demolido. Aún está en pie por lo que hay adentro: pedazos de avión y, lamentablemente, de restos humanos. Este año, trabajadores con buzos antiflama y con máscaras para respirar han recuperado no menos de 750 restos individuales de víctimas del ataque, lanzadas al banco por el impacto de los aviones. Es a la carpa en la calle 30 y la Primera Avenida a donde se llevan estas nuevas evidencias de atrocidad.

Llamada Memorial Park, la carpa protege tres camiones contenedores controlados climáticamente, dentro de los cuales hay 13.790 restos de las víctimas de las Torres Gemelas. Están esperando la nueva tecnología de ADN que un día pueda permitir que los científicos unan definitivamente cada uno de ellos a los nombres de las víctimas que murieron. Eso puede llevar un largo tiempo, y antes de eso serán transferidas al Memoria en el mismo Ground Zero cuando finalmente sea construido. Estos restos son el testimonio de –quizá– la parte más triste y más frustrante del tema inconcluso del 11-S. Hasta ahora, los médicos examinadores han identificado sólo a 1598 víctimas, dejando a 1151 personas todavía sin reconocer en Ground Zero. Y eso ha dejado a 1151 familias sin restos para honrar y enterrar.

* 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/4-72795-2006-09-10.html

Página/12:
Nein al antiterrorismo de Bush

MERKEL CRITICO LAS CARCELES SECRETAS DE LA CIA

Domingo, 10 de Septiembre de 2006

“El fin no justifica los medios en la lucha contra el terrorismo”, afirmó ayer la canciller alemana Angela Merkel, al condenar las cárceles secretas de la CIA. La existencia de esos establecimientos fue admitida esta semana por el presidente estadounidense, George W. Bush, en un discurso en la Casa Blanca. Merkel se sumó así a las críticas europeas contra las cárceles. “El empleo de esas prisiones no está en acuerdo con mi idea de estado de derecho”, agregó la canciller alemana.

Bush reconoció el miércoles, por primera vez, la existencia de prisiones secretas de la CIA en varias partes del mundo, donde fueron interrogados presuntos responsables de los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001, y pidió al Congreso que autorice a los agentes a interrogar a terroristas sin las ataduras de la Convención de Ginebra. El presidente norteamericano dijo que tras los atentados contra las Torres Gemelas y el Pentágono, un pequeño número de presos de la red Al Qaida fueron detenidos e interrogados fuera de Estados Unidos en un programa separado operado por la CIA. “Ha sido necesario trasladar a estas personas a un lugar donde fueran mantenidas en secreto, y pudieran ser interrogadas por expertos”, dijo Bush.

La admisión del presidente estadounidense generó inmediatamente una ola de críticas por parte de la Unión Europea (UE). “Ser aliado de Washington no significa automáticamente estar alineado”, dijo Nicolás Sarkozy, ministro del Interior francés, en una entrevista que publicó ayer el diario Le Monde. “En ningún caso y por ninguna razón Europa debe estar sujeta por Estados Unidos”, agregó el ministro. Las críticas de París se suman a las del presidente del gobierno español, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. “La lucha contra el terrorismo sólo puede hacerse desde los principios del estado de derecho y de la democracia. Eso no es compatible con la existencia de prisiones secretas o de métodos que no están dentro de lo que representan los elementos clásicos del estado de derecho y garantías para todos, incluso para presuntos terroristas”, indicó Zapatero.

Otros funcionarios también criticaron las cárceles secretas. “La lucha contra el terrorismo no puede hacerse con ataques al respeto de los derechos humanos y la protección de las libertades civiles”, dijo el secretario general de la ONU, Kofi Annan. El presidente de la Asamblea Parlamentaria del Consejo de Europa, René van der Linden, denunció por su parte que “la guerra sucia contra el terrorismo está fuera de la legalidad” y precisó que los métodos utilizados “a largo plazo, hacen el mundo más inseguro, no más seguro”.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72796-2006-09-10.html

Página/12: Furor en Israel contra Olmert
por el levantamiento del bloqueo de Líbano

Los familiares de los dos soldados secuestrados se sumaron al ejército israelí en criticar la decisión del primer ministro. Le objetan que haya perdido una herramienta de presión contra Hezbolá.

Por Sergio Rotbart
Desde Tel Aviv, Domingo, 10 de Septiembre de 2006

Israel levantó el bloqueo aéreo y marítimo sobre el Líbano que había impuesto desde el pasado 12 de julio, cuando comenzó la guerra librada en ese país entre el ejército israelí y la milicia armada del Hezbolá. A través de esta medida, destinada a aliviar la presión ejercida sobre el gobierno libanés de Fouad Siniora, el premier Ehud Olmert accedió al reclamo de la administración norteamericana y del titular de la ONU, Kofi Annan. Pero, por otro lado, el desmantelamiento del control militar israelí sobre los accesos por aire y por mar al Líbano despertó no pocos cuestionamientos en Israel. En primer lugar, reaccionaron airadamente los familiares de Ehud Goldwaser y Eldad Regev, los soldados secuestrados por el Hezbolá en la frontera norte, quienes expresaron su disgusto al saber que la “concesión” del gobierno no estuvo condicionada por la aceptación de algún indicio positivo respecto del destino de los dos israelíes capturados. Su secuestro, que –según la versión oficial israelí– fue la causa de la ofensiva militar desplegada en el territorio libanés, sigue siendo un asunto irresuelto luego del cese de fuego y la parcial retirada del ejército.

“No creo que el objetivo de esta guerra haya sido conseguir la liberación de nuestros hijos”, dijo Mo-shé Goldwaser, padre de Ehud, uno de los soldados secuestrados por el Hezbolá. En un encuentro con el primer ministro Olmert, los familiares de los dos israelíes que –según se estima– aún se encuentran cautivos en manos de la organización chiíta, le expresaron su decepción ante la decisión de aceptar levantar el bloqueo al Líbano antes de haber obtenido algún avance orientado hacia la liberación de sus seres queridos. Tras la reunión, Goldwaser aclaró su posición: “No es posible que esta medida se cumpla solamente en una dirección. Nosotros exigimos del gobierno que actúe con rapidez para hallar un mediador que inicie negociaciones directas con la organización Hezbolá. Ello exigirá un pago, y nosotros reclamamos que, en el marco de un acuerdo, el gobierno acepte liberar prisioneros libaneses”.

El gobierno aprobó el levantamiento del bloqueo aéreo y marítimo sobre el Líbano, pese a las recomendaciones del ejército que, en cambio, sostenía que hubiese sido preferible mantenerlo como instrumento de presión ante el Líbano y la comunidad internacional destinado a mejorar los términos de un posible acuerdo sobre el intercambio de prisioneros y un control más riguroso del contrabando de armas desde Siria al territorio libanés. En ese sentido se pronunció días atrás Dan Halutz, el jefe del ejército, quien afirmó que el desmantelamiento del bloqueo “es una carta que hay que saber cuando poner sobre la mesa”. Una vez usada por el gobierno de Olmert, tal vez la retirada total de los efectivos militares del sur del Líbano sea la carta que le queda para conseguir un avance en dirección a la devolución de los soldados secuestrados y la disposición de las fuerzas internacionales a controlar la frontera entre el Líbano y Siria, el enorme acceso terrestre para el abastecimiento de armas al Hezbolá.

El gobierno ha desmentido, hasta ahora, las versiones sobre la existencia de negociaciones paralelas en torno de la liberación de los dos israelíes secuestrados por el Hezbolá y de Gilad Shalit, el soldado capturado por un grupo palestino en la frontera sur, lindante con la Franja de Gaza. En cambio, Olmert ha declarado que Israel exige su devolución previa a cualquier discusión acerca de la liberación de prisioneros libaneses y palestinos. De hecho, una vez que el principio de la reciprocidad ha sido reclamado por los propios familiares de los soldados cautivos, ningún vocero oficial puede asegurar que el declamado retorno se conseguirá sin la simultánea liberación de prisioneros que Israel retiene en sus cárceles. Quizá, para intentar restaurar algo de su dañada imagen pública, el gobierno ceda a las demandas de las contrapartes libanesa y palestina devolviéndoles a sus compatriotas detenidos en forma gradual.

Esa mínima muestra de reciprocidad, por cierto, bastaría para darle curso a alguna iniciativa negociadora en el plano más amplio del conflicto regional. La semana pasada, y no por primera vez, veintidós cancilleres de la Liga Arabe convinieron en la necesidad de convocar a una nueva conferencia internacional de paz como la celebrada en Madrid en 1991, la cual le dio impulso a las conversaciones entre israelíes y palestinos que condujeron al Acuerdo de Oslo.

Un decisión similar adoptó cuatro años atrás la cumbre árabe que tuvo lugar en Beirut, basada en una iniciativa de Arabia Saudita. Ella contemplaba la normalización de las relaciones entre los países árabes y el Estado de Israel a cambio de una retirada israelí de Cisjordania y Gaza, de acuerdo con los límites de 1967, donde se crearía un Estado palestino independiente. Israel, entonces, se desentendió de la propuesta, argumentando que la inclusión del tema del retorno de los refugiados palestinos y la partición de Jerusalén no daban espacio a ninguna respuesta positiva. El actual pedido de tratar el tema del proceso de paz será presentado por el bloque de países árabes con respresentación en la ONU, en la reunión que el Consejo de Seguridad del organismo realizará el próximo 23 de septiembre.

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Página/12:
La segunda vida de Jack

COMO CONSTRUIR UN FUTURO DESPUES DE AUSCHWITZ.
MEMORIAS DE UN SOBREVIVIENTE

“No soy ningún héroe, lo único es que no tenía el coraje de matarme.” Jack Fuchs habla de sí mismo sin concesiones. Durante cuarenta años prefirió callar sobre el infierno que había debido atravesar: el gueto, Auschwitz, el exterminio de toda su familia. Viajó por el mundo con una inquietud que le impedía afincarse. Hasta que un día pudo asentarse y también contar.

Por Andrea Ferrari
Domingo, 10 de Septiembre de 2006

La segunda vida de Jack Fuchs empezó en un galpón. Hasta allí había llegado con sus últimas fuerzas, luego de que el vagón donde los alemanes lo trasladaban junto con otros sobrevivientes de Dachau quedara abandonado en la huida. En los años siguientes, Fuchs eligió no hablar sobre el infierno que había atravesado: el gueto, Auschwitz, el exterminio de toda su familia. Tuvieron que pasar cuatro décadas y un viaje conmovedor para que empezara a contar esa historia públicamente y también a escribir. Muchas de esas reflexiones conforman ahora el libro Dilemas de la memoria. En esta conversación con Página/12, Fuchs habla de los años que siguieron a su llegada a ese galpón, de la posibilidad de construir un futuro después de Auschwitz. De su segunda vida.

Era mayo de 1945 y en Baviera caía aguanieve. Intentando escapar del avance de los aliados, los alemanes habían sacado a quienes aún sobrevivían en Dachau –gente desnutrida y enferma– y los habían subido a vagones que se usaban para trasladar ganado. El viaje, lento, se detenía con cada incursión aliada. Los alemanes se retiraban cuando se acercaban los aviones y reaparecían horas más tarde. Hasta que la locomotora fue bombardeada y ya no volvieron.

Fuchs bajó del vagón junto con los demás. Tenía 21 años y sólo pesaba 38 kilos. Padecía tifus y tuberculosis; sus pies hinchados casi no le permitían caminar. Se arrastró como pudo unos quinientos metros, hasta una granja habitada por alemanes. Entró en un galpón y vio una parva de heno. Allí se tendió y se quedó dormido. En ese lugar, pensaría después, fue donde renació, en la más absoluta soledad.

Al día siguiente lo encontraron los habitantes de la granja. No le dijeron ni le preguntaron nada. Le dieron comida y una cama ubicada en lo que eran dependencias para los trabajadores. Fuchs no sabe cuántos días pasó allí: quizás dos o tres. Luego lo subieron a una carreta y lo llevaron hasta Saint Ottilien, un antiguo monasterio transformado en hospital. Recién ahí las enfermeras le sacaron la ropa, lo lavaron, rasuraron y desinfectaron. Le dieron un pijama limpio y una cama en una enorme habitación. Fue entonces cuando dijo una frase que rondaría por su cabeza años después.

–Ahora ya me puedo morir tranquilo.

¿Por qué esa frase cuando lo peor había terminado? Quizá, supone, porque en los últimos días del campo había convivido con montañas de cuerpos y tenía pánico de morir en esas terribles condiciones.

–Me salió así. A veces en Dachau uno se despertaba y decía “ojalá estuviera muerto”. Mucha gente me pregunta cómo me salvé y yo digo que mis padres fueron condenados a morir y yo fui condenado a vivir. Simplemente no podía morir.

Pero el instinto de supervivencia funcionó y ya en esos primeros días en el hospital se empezaron a tejer lazos.

–Los nazis nos habían sacado todo: la familia, el cuerpo, pero no podían sacarnos lo poco de humano que quedó. Eso no lo pudieron eliminar. Enseguida en el sanatorio se organizaron diferentes grupos: los religiosos, los socialistas, los comunistas. En poco tiempo ya había un diario en idish.

A través de su partido, el socialista Bund, Fuchs consiguió una visa para viajar a Estados Unidos. En el tiempo que estuvo en Alemania antes de partir hizo algunas averiguaciones sobre el final de su familia. No es que tuviese expectativas de encontrar a alguno con vida: en Auschwitz, dice, las cosas eran claras. Pero necesitaba saber, así como después necesitó callar.

Lodz, Auschwitz, Dachau

Antes de la guerra, en la ciudad polaca de Lodz había 250 mil judíos, sobre una población de 750 mil personas. Un tercio de los habitantes que, prácticamente, desapareció. La transformación fue paulatina tras la invasión alemana. Primero los obligaron a usar la estrella amarilla, luego se decretó que un sector de la ciudad se convertiría en gueto para los judíos. En principio fue semiabierto, pero más tarde se cerró con alambre de púas y garitas con guardias y ya nadie pudo entrar ni salir.

Los Fuchs estuvieron en el gueto cuatro años. Pese a las privaciones que pasaron –el hambre, el frío, las enfermedades, el aislamiento–, esa época sería recordada como un paraíso en comparación con lo que vino después.

En 1944 los alemanes decidieron “liquidar” el gueto. Junto con sus padres y sus dos hermanas menores (al hermano mayor lo habían llevado a trabajar a un campo), Jack se escondió en una pequeña habitación tapada con un armario, pero alguien los delató y los encontraron. La deportación tuvo lugar a principios de agosto de 1944. El recuerda que llevaron hasta el tren unas pocas cosas, entre ellas su álbum de estampillas. En Auschwitz los separaron: mujeres por un lado, hombres por otro.

–A esa altura, ya no había secretos. Lo decían directamente: la gente iba al horno. Ni siquiera hablaban de gas. Esa fue la primera vez en mi vida que yo me desmayé. Un amigo me dio una patada. “Levantate, Yankele –me dijo–, si no vas al horno.”

Jack fue “seleccionado” para trabajar y esquivó la muerte. Mucho después supo que también su madre había sido “seleccionada”, pero no quiso separarse de sus hijas de 8 y 13 años y falleció con ellas. El estuvo en Auschwitz un tiempo que hoy se le hace confuso –seis días, quizá diez– hasta que fue trasladado a Dachau.

–Yo siempre me sentí mal porque cuando íbamos a los vagones escuché que decían “qué suerte, salen”. Sentí algo, no podría decir alegría, pero era algo agradable. Y me molestaba: ¿cómo puedo sentir esto, pensaba, si acabo de perder a toda mi familia? Muchos años después un psicoanalista me dijo que no sentía alegría: que era como si alguien me hubiera estado apretando el dedo con una tenaza y de pronto me soltara. Eso era.

Pero aún sufriría ocho meses en Dachau, donde las condiciones fueron deteriorándose día a día. Pronto la comida empezó a ser insignificante, se desataron las epidemias y ya nadie creía en la posibilidad de sobrevivir. Era, dice Fuchs, como estar enterrados vivos.

Así estaba cuando los alemanes los abandonaron en un vagón de carga en Baviera, cerca de ese galpón donde empezó su segunda vida.

Vivir con la valija

En Alemania Fuchs superó milagrosamente el examen médico que le hicieron los norteamericanos antes de embarcarse, algo que quizá sucedió porque no tenían equipo para hacer radiografías. Pero no estaba curado de la tuberculosis y dos semanas después de llegar a Nueva York lo llevaron a un médico. En la sala de espera conversó en idish con la secretaria, que a poco de hacerle las primeras preguntas se puso a llorar.

–No sé por qué, yo sólo le dije que había venido de Alemania en barco.

El médico le hizo placas, le mostró las cicatrices en sus pulmones y le aconsejó internarse en un sanatorio en las afueras de la ciudad.

–Creo que eso fue lo peor que me podían hacer: otra vez encerrado. Estuve ahí seis meses. No había ningún medicamento en ese momento, sólo descansar y tomar aire. En lugar de enviarme a ese lugar, tendrían que haberme mandado a hacer terapia: eso me hubiera ayudado.

La organización que lo recibió en Nueva York le había preguntado antes que nada si tenía a alguien en alguna parte del mundo. Jack mencionó a un par de tíos en Argentina y a una tía en Santiago de Chile. Al cabo de un tiempo fueron localizados, pero aunque lo invitaron a venir, él prefirió quedarse en Estados Unidos.

–Me demoró mucho tiempo saber cuál fue el motivo. Creo que yo pensaba que iba a venir y mis tíos me iban a preguntar qué había pasado con mis padres, con mis hermanos. Que me iban a decir “¿cómo están todos muertos y vos vivís?” Tenía miedo. Pero eso lo supe más tarde.

Una vez que salió del sanatorio empezó a trabajar en un taller de confección y por la noche completó el secundario. También hizo cursos y fue especializándose en sistemas de producción. En esa etapa Fuchs vivió siempre con una valija en las manos: saltando de un lugar a otro. Dice que no se mostraba afectado por su pasado.

–Es algo que veo ahora, después de muchos años de terapia en Argentina. Yo me mandaba la parte de que estaba bien. Decía “yo recuerdo, sí, a veces lloro, pero no me afecta”. Tenía novias, amigos... Pero algo había quedado: una inquietud de la que yo mismo no me daba cuenta. Antes yo creía que si alguien se reía a carcajadas significaba que era feliz. Ahora que tengo 82 años reconozco cuando una persona ríe, no porque es feliz, sino porque es histérica, cuando corre, no por curiosidad, sino porque no puede estar sentado. Yo corría, viajaba por Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Israel... Todos me admiraban por lo que hacía, pero todo era falso. Aparentemente no podía hacer una vida normal. Debía ser el miedo.

Después de diez años en Estados Unidos, vino a la Argentina de visita. Su viaje coincidió con la caída de Perón y recuerda el tumulto en las calles.

–Mis tíos no me preguntaron qué pasó con mi familia ni yo se los conté.

Regresó a Nueva York y siguió con su vida trashumante. Recién en 1963, después de vivir un tiempo en Venezuela, decidió volver a la Argentina. Era una época en la que no estaba muy bien. Algo le faltaba, dice.

–No sé, me sentía incómodo. Estaba siempre corriendo, tenía casi cuarenta años y pensaba que estaba solo y ya no iba a tener hijos.

Una serie de circunstancias en esa visita lo decidieron a quedarse, pero sobre todo una: conocer a quien sería su mujer, Ivonne, una francesa que había pasado la guerra en Suiza y cuya familia había fallecido. Jack consiguió trabajo aquí y empezó a hacer terapia. Pero la inquietud aún persistía: cuando se casaron, le sugirió a Ivonne que se fueran a Nueva York. Ella lo disuadió.

–Vos ya viajaste mucho –me dijo–. Mejor quedémonos.

Jack se ha preguntado a sí mismo por qué se casó con Ivonne, mientras que en sus relaciones previas había evitado ese compromiso.

–Aparentemente yo tenía miedo de entrar en una familia, porque soy un bicho raro, que trae una desgracia. Creo que me casé con Ivonne porque, como yo, ella no tenía a nadie. Era muy inteligente –sonríe– y podía aguantar todas mis locuras.

Entre esas locuras estaba su dificultad para afincarse en un sitio. Cuenta que vivían en un departamento alquilado y que luego del nacimiento de Marianne, su hija, Ivonne sugirió comprar una propiedad en cuotas. Pero él se resistía.

–Al final cuando lo compramos lo eligió ella. Me pidió que al menos fuera a verlo, pero le dije que no. Estaba seguro de que había elegido muy bien.

Jack montó una pequeña fábrica de confección de lencería e Ivonne daba clases de francés. Se arreglaban bien. Pero ella enfermó y murió en 1989: demasiado pronto. Fue la primera vez que Jack asistió a un entierro.

Hablar y callar

Dice Fuchs que ni siquiera con su esposa hablaba sobre su pasado: con ella era algo sobreentendido. Tampoco con Marianne.

–Es un caso interesante para un psicólogo. Cuando mi hija tenía dos o tres años, vio algo de la guerra por televisión y me dijo “papi, vos no mires”. Yo jamás había hablado con ella. Aparentemente hay una transmisión por ósmosis.

Ha discutido con quienes creen en la necesidad de insistir sobre lo sucedido con los hijos, para que recuerden. El lo rechaza: dice que ya bastante tienen con ser hijos de sobrevivientes. Ni siquiera sus tres nietas –la mayor de las cuales hoy tiene quince años– lo interrogan sobre la historia. Saben, dice, perciben, pero no preguntan. ¿Será que temen dañarlo haciéndole recordar momentos de dolor? El duda.

–Es raro. Un chico de ocho o nueve años no piensa que me puede lastimar.

La decisión de contar la historia que había silenciado durante cuarenta años se dio después de un viaje a Washington en 1983. Ese año muchos sobrevivientes se reunieron en torno del proyecto del Museo del Holocausto. Dice Fuchs que la ceremonia fue muy conmovedora.

–Se puso la piedra fundamental para el museo. Para mí fue como una lápida: nadie en nuestras familias tiene lápidas, ni sabemos dónde están. Ahora había una lápida, aunque fuera colectiva. Cuando regresé del viaje estaba lleno de emociones y tenía ganas de compartir. Supongo que se mezcló con muchos años de psicoanálisis.

La primera vez que contó la historia en un medio fue en una entrevista concedida a Página/12, hace ya quince años. Dice que después de que se publicara los amigos con los que jugaba al tenis cada semana en el club Hacoaj lo llamaron anonadados: no podían creer que nunca les hubiera dicho nada de todo ese horror.

–A veces uno no sabe qué decir, cómo explicar. Primo Levi escribió lo que una persona dijo en Auschwitz: que si alguien se salvaba y contaba, nadie lo iba a poder creer. Por eso, yo nunca quise contar atrocidades.

Durante los años que siguieron habló cada vez que se lo pidieron: en escuelas, conferencias, entrevistas. Pero últimamente, dice, se siente alejado de lo que pensaba antes sobre la importancia de trasmitir lo vivido. Desencantado.

–Creo que no tiene ningún valor entrevistar a la víctima: habría que entrevistar al victimario. Una persona en una hora se convierte en víctima. Y no tiene nada para decir, no hay nada que aprender de ella. El victimario tiene un plan: cómo eliminar a la gente, cómo torturarla...

Reconoce, sí, la importancia de contar para el registro histórico, para que se conozca lo que pasó, pero ya no piensa que sirva hacia el futuro.

–La gente no aprende nada del pasado: el hombre no tiene herramientas para evitar una próxima guerra.

A veces se sorprende por la insistencia con que lo buscan, como si fuera dueño de algún misterio, de un secreto de la supervivencia.

–La gente deposita cosas en mí. Piensan que es una ironía cuando yo digo que sobreviví porque sobreviví. Pero yo no hice nada. No soy ningún héroe, lo único es que no tenía el coraje de matarme.

De regreso

Fuchs volvió dos veces a la ciudad donde nació. La primera fue con Ivonne, a mediados de los ochenta. Había pensado quedarse a pasar la noche, pero a poco de llegar se quiso ir. Dice que estaba como anestesiado. Recorrió la zona donde había estado el gueto y vio que nada lo recordaba: ni un museo, ni una placa: como si allí nunca hubieran vivido miles de judíos. El único lugar donde había huellas de su presencia era el cementerio. Se fue enseguida. El segundo viaje fue con Marianne, hace cuatro años. Esta vez pudo caminar horas con ella, mostrándole cada lugar.

–Dónde vivían mis amigos, dónde estaba la escuela, dónde comenzó el gueto. Hasta estuve sentado con ella en la peatonal, comiendo pizza. Jamás hubiera podido pensar unos años antes que era posible. Marianne dice que su vida se divide en antes y después de ese viaje.

Luego tomaron un tren hacia Cracovia, que está junto a Auschwitz. El mismo recorrido que Jack hizo con su familia cuando fueron deportados. En ese viaje, su hija le tomó una foto. La cara de Jack se ve crispada, tristísima.

–Yo no sabía que tenía esa cara.

Junto a esa foto, en su biblioteca, hay otra, que se reproduce en estas páginas. La única foto que tiene de su familia: ahí está él con sus padres, su hermano mayor y una de sus hermanas. La menor aún no había nacido. Pudo tener esa foto gracias a sus tíos, a quienes sus padres se la enviaron antes de la guerra. En la misma biblioteca hay más fotos: de Marianne y sus nietas.

Jack recorre la casa mostrando otras imágenes de las chicas. Y sus dibujos, que ha pegado en las paredes. Señala un retrato de él que hizo la mayor de sus nietas, con un notable parecido al original. Dice que lo muestra con orgullo de abuelo. Un orgullo que se percibe cada vez que habla de todas ellas, de esas mujeres que iluminaron ésta, su segunda vida.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/sociedad/3-72766-2006-09-10.html

The Independent:
9/11 - A bloody legacy

The 'war on terror', which began with the attacks on the US, is five years old. It has killed tens of thousands and drawn British troops into conflicts around the world - but in Afghanistan, where the first victory was won, all the gains are in danger of slipping away

By Raymond Whitaker in London and Tom Coghlan in Kabul
Published: 10 September 2006

The West is fighting a crucial battle in the "war on terror", and British troops are in the front line.

British-led Nato forces are engaged in a make-or-break struggle in southern Afghanistan, where the biggest ground offensive in the history of the alliance was launched in Panjwayi district, near Kandahar, just over a week ago. The aim is to throw back a resurgent Taliban.

Yesterday, Nato said Operation Medusa had killed 40 Taliban fighters in the previous 24 hours, and several hundred more were surrounded. If the offensive succeeds, it will be a first step towards reversing the tide of instability that has engulfed an increasing area of the country and led to the deaths of 19 British military personnel this month (14 of them in an air crash).

But commanders admit it is an extremely close-run thing: if the offensive fails, the position of British forces in neighbouring Helmand province - where they were deployed this year with the then Defence Secretary, John Reid, expressing the blithe hope that they could complete their three-year mission "without firing a shot" - could become untenable.

Afghanistan was where the first victory in the "war on terror" was won. Less than three months after the 9/11 horror, al-Qa'ida's Taliban sponsors had been overthrown and Osama bin Laden was on the run. Yet tomorrow, when the fifth anniversary of the attacks on New York and Washington are commemorated, the world will reflect that Bin Laden remains at large somewhere along the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Mullah Omar, the Taliban's one-eyed leader, has also evaded capture, and his movement is regaining strength. What has gone wrong?

For General Sir Michael Rose, who led the SAS and commanded British forces in Bosnia, it is simple. "Having defeated the Taliban in 2001, the West then mistakenly shifted its effort and resources to Iraq, leaving most of Afghanistan insecure," he said. "This has allowed the Taliban to return." In other words, not only have gains in the real "war on terror" been dangerously eroded, the reckless detour into Iraq has made things worse. Far from hunting Bin Laden down, the West has been forced to prevent his allies re-establishing a foothold in Afghanistan.

After months of public denials by commanders and politicians, they are finally admitting that military forces in southern Afghanistan are stretched. Yesterday, as security forces in Kabul cleared the debris of the worst suicide bombing in the Afghan capital for two years - in which at least 16 people, including two US soldiers, died - senior military commanders from all 26 Nato nations were meeting in Warsaw to answer an appeal from Nato's supreme commander, US General James Jones, for up to 2,500 more troops at what he called "this decisive moment".

The Taliban cannot hope to win a head-on clash against Western forces, though General Jones admitted last week that the alliance has been surprised by the ferocity of the movement's response. The tactical initiative has been with the insurgents, who have kept Nato forces off-balance with hit-and-run attacks, suicide bombings and frontal assaults on isolated outposts in northern Helmand, where small British detachments have sustained a steady trickle of casualties as they fight off attackers.

"The fighting is extraordinarily intense. The intensity and ferocity ... [are] far greater than in Iraq on a daily basis," the commander of British forces in Helmand, Brigadier Ed Butler, said this month. Instead of calming an area by their mere presence, British soldiers have become a magnet for insurgents. Afghan forces remain unreliable, while the local population is equivocal, at best. The only secure point is the main British base, Camp Bastion, isolated in the desert north-west of the provincial capital, Lashkargar. One senior Western diplomat in Kabul called the situation "dire".

British and Irish aid agencies working in Afghanistan have been producing monthly reports on the state of the country since well before 2001, and the latest one makes grim reading. "The underlying security situation affecting the day-to-day mobility of the population, as well as the operations of the government and of the aid and reconstruction communities, is deteriorating in many areas," it says. "The Taliban have an increasing presence at the local level in large areas of the south and are in a strong position to threaten security, intimidate and also build a support base."

The big push in Kandahar province, where Canadian forces are doing most of the fighting, is aimed at regaining the advantage. The Canadians have chased the Taliban away in Panjwayi district many times before, only for the insurgents to seep back once Nato forces have gone. This time, officers say, the aim is to hold the ground once it has been captured. That, however, requires boots on the ground - and they are desperately short.

At the end of this month, Nato's commander in Afghanistan, Britain's Lieutenant-General David Richards, takes responsibility for all foreign forces in the country apart from a handful of Americans engaged in the hunt for al-Qa'ida leaders. General Richards has already indicated that he aims to take a more subtle approach than the gung-ho Americans, whose aerial bombardments are thought to have caused high civilian casualties.

In what is known as an "ink-spot" strategy, the intention is to start developing "Afghan development zones" in the south. Where the security situation has been stabilised, there will be a deluge of aid - first in the form of "quick impact" projects, and later of more sustainable development assistance. Nato and special forces will range around these zones, harrying the Taliban and preventing them upsetting the security balance within the safe areas. In the next stage, the roads between these zones will be gradually secured and the influence of the government extended around them. Like ink spots on a piece of blotting paper, the zones will grow until they merge together.

That, at least, was the theory when British forces deployed in Helmand this year. Amid relative calm, they would support development and drugs eradication in a province that contributes the largest share of the booming Afghan opium crop. It has not worked out that way. British commanders quickly dissociated themselves from efforts to destroy poppy fields when it would leave farmers no other source of income, but it was too late to prevent an alliance between the opium trade and the Taliban, which has destabilised Helmand and made aid work all but impossible. Particularly worrying is the apparent decision of a number of the province's powerful tribes to side with the Taliban.

In many areas, Nato has found the populace incensed by what General Rose called "American search-and-destroy tactics", but the danger is that troop shortages will force Nato, like the Americans, to make up in firepower what they lack in numbers.

The mission, in short, has changed drastically from the one outlined by Mr Reid in January. Hence Operation Medusa, which is merely the largest engagement in the second of a series of offensives against the Taliban. Backed with artillery and large-scale aerial bombing, they aim to weaken the Taliban decisively in battle and then prevent it reorganising and regenerating itself during the traditional winter break in the Afghan fighting season. That would theoretically mean a weakened insurgency next year and create permissible conditions for the "ink spots" to begin spreading in the south.

"In the relatively near future, certainly before the winter, we will see this decisive moment in the region turn in favour of the troops that represent the government," said General Jones. Commanders believe that a majority of the populace in the south is still waiting to see who will gain the decisive advantage. Once that becomes clear, the situation will change dramatically and quickly.

According to General Jones, it is a matter of a few hundred extra troops, though those are proving difficult to find. Many nations that have forces in Afghanistan, notably Germany, refuse to allow them to engage in all-out fighting, while Britain is already at full stretch. Even if everything goes according to the Nato chief's projections, that is just the beginning of the struggle to get back to where we were at the moment of victory in 2001.

Despite the weakness and unpopularity of the central government, Afghan security forces are an integral part of the strategy to reclaim the south. The Afghan army, which has so far trained 42,000 men, is better regarded than the police, but is of very uneven quality. One report from British trainers with a unit in Musa Qala claimed Afghan soldiers refused to fight, extorted money from local people, spent much of their time high on drugs and even threatened to shoot their British allies.

Nato will have no choice but to rely on them. The alternative is committing the sort of troop numbers the Russians put into Afghanistan. "It would require 40,000 or 50,000 troops to garrison Helmand," said one Western diplomat in Kabul. "We can't do that, and we don't want to."

For General Rose it is already too late. "Given the level of resources Nato has at the moment, and the strategy we are pursuing, we simply cannot win. The forces there can't achieve the objectives they have been given."

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1433402.ece

The Independent:
62,006 - the number killed in the 'war on terror'

By David Randall and Emily Gosden
Published: 10 September 2006

The "war on terror" - and by terrorists - has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.

If estimates of other, unquantified, deaths - of insurgents, the Iraq military during the 2003 invasion, those not recorded individually by Western media, and those dying from wounds - are included, then the toll could reach as high as 180,000.

The extraordinary scale of the conflict's impact, claiming lives from New York to Bali and London to Lahore, and the extent of the death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan, has emerged from an Independent on Sunday survey to mark the fifth anniversary of 11 September. It used new, unpublished data supplied by academics and organisations such as Iraq Body Count and Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire, plus estimates given by other official studies.

The result is the first attempt to gauge the full cost in blood and money of the worldwide atrocities and military conflicts that began in September 2001. As of yesterday, the numbers of lives confirmed lost are: 4,541 to 5,308 civilians and 385 military in Afghanistan; 50,100 civilians and 2,899 military in Iraq; and 4,081 in acts of terrorism in the rest of the world.

The new figure on civilian deaths from Iraq Body Count, a group of British and US academics, is especially telling. Just two and a half years ago, its estimate of the number of civilian dead in Iraq passed 10,000. Today, it says, that figure has gone beyond the 50,000 mark - a huge leap largely attributable to terrorist acts and the breakdown of civil authority.

Iraq Body Count's careful methodology - of recording a death only when it appears in two independent media reports - almost certainly produces a substantial underestimate. Even the Iraqi Health Ministry reports a slightly higher figure, and President Bush's much-quoted figure of 30,000 civilian dead dates from December 2005, when it tallied with the then IBC figure. Insurgent deaths are not included in the IBC figures, and neither are those of Iraqi police when engaged in combat-style operations.

Estimates of the former are, together with the number of Iraqi military killed in the battle phase of the Iraq occupation, the biggest unknown of the conflict. One US news report guessed the insurgent dead in Iraq at 36,000 since 2003, while the number of Iraqi military killed during the invasion phase remains unknown and unknowable.

Neither category is included in our figure of 62,006 confirmed directly killed. Nor does it include any figures for people later dying from wounds received, or the increased mortality owing to lack of health care. Estimates for one or the other ranging up to 130,000 have been produced, but are based on little more than educated (and uneducated) guesswork or, as with the controversial Lancet estimate of 98,000 deaths due to extra mortality, by amplifying a survey of 988 households into a nation-wide conclusion.

What is certain is the wretched state of health care in Iraq. In March 2006 the campaign group Medact reported that 18,000 physicians have left since 2003; an estimated 250 of those that remained have been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed. Medact also said that "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths", and that "of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed and none has been opened". In May, a survey by the Iraq government and Unicef reported that a quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition.

In Afghanistan, the most reliable recorder of civilian deaths is Professor Marc Herold, whose latest figures range from 4,541 to 5,308. He does not include those who die subsequently from their injuries or in refugee camps.These "indirect" deaths have been put at anything from 8,000 to 20,000. More accurate are estimates of refugee numbers. In July, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said there were 2.2 million Afghans who had fled abroad and at least 153,200 displaced internally. For Iraq, there were 888,700 external refugees, and 1.3 million people displaced inside the country. An estimated 40 per cent of the Iraqi middle class have left Iraq.

Beyond the blood price, there is a dollar and sterling cost. In July it was reported that the US Congress had approved $437bn (£254bn) for costs related to the "war on terror". This, a sum greater than those spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars, compares to the $375bn that Make Poverty History says is needed to clear the debts of the world's poorest nations. The British Government has spent £4.5bn on Iraq and Afghanistan.

IRAQ: Orphaned and badly burned at 12

The image of a despairing 12-year-old orphan lying on a filthy Iraqi hospital bed, his arms burnt off above the elbow, symbolised the "collateral damage" of the second Gulf war. Ali Abbas had 60 per cent burns after an American bombing raid on the Baghdad suburbs hit his home and killed 15 of his relatives, including his parents and his brother.

Three years later the young Iraqi, now a teenager living in Britain, enjoys cycling around London's Richmond Park on a special bicycle and playing games on his PlayStation with his feet. He will be taking his GCSEs next year, at a private school whose headmaster has waived the usual £8,000 annual fees. According to his teachers Ali, 15, is fluent in English and is particularly good at geography.

He is not a typical teenager, his therapist, Grania Hyde-Smith, said; Ali cannot brush his teeth, bathe or use the lavatory unaided. "He is a well-adjusted teenager. And when you consider what he's been through, that is a brilliant, inspirational and remarkable achievement."

Although he spends school holidays in Iraq, Ali is not sure that he will end up there. "I found my house on Google Earth the other day, where it had been. I found a white spot from the sky. When I went there last summer it seemed a dangerous place," he said.

JORDAN: Shot by a lone extremist

Christopher Stokes was with a tour group visiting the Roman amphitheatre in Jordan's capital, Amman, when he was shot by a lone extremist last week. The 30-year-old had given up his accountancy job to tour the Middle East. "Christopher lived his dreams," his father Rod, 59, said. "He travelled because he wanted to meet people."

SPAIN: Bombed on way to work

Maria Moyano did not drive to work on the morning of the Madrid bombings in March 2004; she was awaiting delivery of her new car. The 30-year-old economics student had just returned from studying in America and was planning a July wedding. Her body was so badly mutilated in the blast that it took several days to identify her.

USA: Passenger on United 93

Deora Bodley was a first-year student at a Catholic university in California. The 20-year old San Diegan was the youngest of 44 passengers killed when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field on 11 September 2001. She was supposed to take the flight an hour later, but wanted to get home sooner to her family and boyfriend.

AFGHANISTAN: Killed at a checkpoint

Nasrat Ali Hassan was shot as he passed a Canadian military checkpoint outside Kandahar in March. The 45-year-old father of six was a passenger in a rickshaw taxi, and was allegedly shot four times. The price of compensating his family should start with Canadian citizenship, according to the victim's eldest brother.

BALI

Although the Australian and British victims of the Bali bombings in October 2002 were widely reported, many of the dead killed in the Bali attack were Indonesian. Made Wijaya, 39, was a taxi driver waiting for fares outside the Sari Club. He left behind a wife and three children. Seven people from his village died, all of them taxi drivers.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article1433404.ece

The Nation:
A Just Response

by KATRINA VANDEN HEUVEL
[posted online on September 9, 2006]

"On Tuesday morning, a piece was torn out of our world. A patch of blue sky that should not have been there opened up in the New York skyline.... the heavens were raining human beings. Our city was changed forever. Our country was changed forever. Our world was changed forever." So wrote Jonathan Schell in the first issue of The Nation following September 11, 2001.

At The Nation's office, in the aftermath of the attacks on the World Trade Center towers, like everyone else in America we watched television-horrified, saddened, angry. People wept, and at the same time took notes and got on the phones. For we had an issue closing the next day. We quickly learned that our communications links to the outer world were severed-our phone lines had run under World Trade Center 7. So, in those first days, we had no incoming calls and the office computer links to the Internet were down. The facts were sketchy and causes of the attack shrouded in a pall of uncertainty thick as the smog rising from the demolished World Trade Center.

The issue that we assembled and put to bed the next day struck a tone and purpose that the magazine has striven to maintain in the past five years. Paying respect to the human reactions of anger, hurt and grief, our editorials in that first week, and in the ones that followed, have made the case for an effective and just response to the horrific terrorist acts. We argued that such a response may include discriminate use of military force but that the most promising and effective way to halt terrorism lies in bringing those responsible to justice through nonmilitary actions in cooperation with the global community and within a framework of domestic and international law. As Richard Falk warned in his indispensable "A Just Response," the "justice of the cause" would be "negated by the injustice of improper means and excessive ends."

As the US military response unfolded in the ensuing days, there seemed to be more questions than answers. Who is Osama bin Laden? What is the involvement of the Taliban? What are we doing in Afghanistan anyway? Did US foreign policy create historic resentments and injustices abroad that spawned the terrible attacks? What is the best way for this country to address the root causes of terrorism? What are the aims of the war on it? What are its limits? What is the potential political and human fallout? Who are our allies? What role should the United Nations play? How to limit civilian casualties and provide humanitarian relief? As autumn in New York merged into Ramadan and Afghanistan's winter, these questions only deepened. It is striking how the essential themes laid out in The Nation in those initial weeks, far from being outrun by events, have gained in resonance.

One of my roles as editor has been to figure out the bridge from personal to political. How do you balance individual grief and anger at the attacks with proportionality, justice and wisdom in response? How do we reconcile legitimate fear of future attacks with protection of civil liberties, and carry on a political debate that doesn't ignore concerns of economic and social justice?

To deal with those complex issues, I was fortunate in being able to call on some of the most respected figures on the progressive left. They responded with a series of thoughtful, informed and provocative essays that have appeared in our pages. Among them: the late scholar-philosopher-activist Edward Said demolishing the clash of civilizations argument; Mary Kaldor on the new wars and civil society's role in halting terrorism; Michael T. Klare on Saudi-US relations and the geopolitics of oil; Ellen Willis on homefront conformity; Chalmers Johnson on blowback and the role of US foreign policy; William Greider on war profiteering; Bill Moyers on Americans' restored faith in government; John le Carré on why this war can't be won. Our regular columnists weighed in with their independent takes. And peace and disarmament editor Jonathan Schell filed a weekly "Letter From Ground Zero"-lucid, illuminating, frightening, humane essays that advanced the case for sensible and moral nonmilitary actions.

The Nation has a long tradition of providing a forum for a broad spectrum of left/progressive views, which sometimes erupted in spirited debates in those weeks after 9/11. Christopher Hitchens's column, "Against Rationalization," which castigated those on the left who drew a causal relationship between US foreign policy in the Middle East and the terrorist acts, provoked a heated exchange with Noam Chomsky. This exchange ran on our website and drew a raft of comments, with readers almost equally divided. Richard Falk's article "Defining a Just War" also provoked numerous letters pro and con.

As a fog of national security enveloped official Washington and the war front and the mainstream media enlisted in the Administration's war-flag logos flying-the need for an independent, critical press seemed never more urgent. The speedy passage of the repressive PATRIOT Act, with scarcely a murmur of dissent in Congress, the secret detentions of more than 1,000 people and the establishment of military tribunals were troubling signs that a wartime crackdown on civil liberties was under way and called for vigorous opposition. Criticizing government policy in wartime is not a path to popularity. Our independent stand on the war and criticism of what we called "policy profiteering" by conservative Republicans in Congress (who sought to use the war as a pretext to push through their own agenda) drew virulent attacks by the pundits and publications of the right, who questioned our patriotism and trotted out the old chestnut of the left's "anti-Americanism."

Such attacks are nothing new. The Nation has always marched to a different drummer, opposing US involvement in the Spanish-American War and World War I and the Vietnam War, while giving all-out support to the US effort in World War II. Former Nation editor Ernest Gruening of Alaska was one of only two senators to vote against the Gulf of Tonkin resolution that led to the Vietnam morass. As Eric Foner wrote in the days after the attacks, "At times of crisis the most patriotic act of all is the unyielding defense of civil liberties, the right to dissent." Also in times of crisis, the enduring concerns of this magazine and progressives take on new relevance: the dangers of American unilateralism, corrosion of civil liberties, authoritarianism in any nation, dependence on Big Oil, military quagmire and the urgent necessity of international law and institutions.

The commentary this magazine has published in the five years since the 9/11 attacks was designed to inform honest debate in this country on key questions that confront us and to enable us to ask hard questions of policy-makers and the media. It is my hope that the ideas expressed here will guide and enrich the policies that will-and must-come.

Copyright © 2006 The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/just_response

The Nation:
Cashing In on Catastrophe

by WAYNE BARRETT & DAN COLLINS
[from the September 25, 2006 issue]

Even before he left office as New York City's mayor at the end of 2001, Rudolph Giuliani was telling reporters about Giuliani Partners, the management consulting firm he intended to open up with his old City Hall team. The partners were more of a Giuliani posse than a group of peers. Michael Hess, the former city corporation counsel, was named managing partner. Fire Commissioner Tom Von Essen became a senior partner, as did Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik, whose later nomination as head of Homeland Security would go down in flames after revelations that his concern for following the rules and avoiding ethical conflicts appeared close to nonexistent. The only partner who came from outside the City Hall crowd was Roy Bailey, former finance chair of the Republican Party of Texas, who'd gotten to know Giuliani when he helped raise money for Giuliani's abortive 2000 Senate campaign against Hillary Clinton. Bailey helped finance the new company, whose reported start-up payroll was $10 million a year.

The most valuable commodity the new company had to sell was not management expertise but the aura of America's Mayor-the man whose cool-headed 9/11 leadership had taken on mythic proportions. While Giuliani's first term as mayor brought him renown as a crime fighter who made New York livable again, his second term was a slowly escalating disaster before 9/11. The city, which admired his feisty stubbornness when the enemies were drug dealers and cop killers, had grown tired of a seemingly endless series of political catfights with school chancellors, black neighborhoods, museums, rival politicians and even hot-dog vendors. And, as would become clear later, Giuliani had allowed the city to meet the disaster unprepared in myriad ways, ignoring the well-noted lessons of the first attack on the towers, which occurred less than a year before he became mayor.

Now, with Giuliani traveling the country as a 2008 Republican presidential hopeful, his record both as mayor and afterward is coming under increasing scrutiny. In no area is there more to examine than in the story of Giuliani Partners.

Giuliani Partners' initial press releases religiously avoided any mention of the attacks-Rudy is described as the man who "returned accountability to city government and improved the quality of life for all New Yorkers." But when their clients, who were very frequently companies in trouble, told the world they had just hired a renowned team of "crisis managers," no one pretended their critical expertise came from handling snowstorms or subway fires.

Before long, Giuliani Partners was all over the map, consulting on security for nuclear power plants one day, on efficient bulk purchasing for New York-area hospitals another. It signed on to help the troubled, scandal-plagued WorldCom establish a "model form of corporate governance" and to help Delta Airlines with its bankruptcy. It agreed to review the National Thoroughbred Racing Association's electronic betting systems after a race-fixing scandal. It formed a series of investment alliances that purchased interests in everything from a Tokyo wind-power company to a California firm, CamelBak, which made backpacks with sipping tubes for people like long-distance bikers and soldiers in desert postings. (Kerik was enthusiastic; it was "a perfect mechanism to stay hydrated," he told the Daily News, envisioning every New York City firefighter equipped with a CamelBak as a matter of course. "If I was a fireman I'd want one.")

The Partners also rekindled relationships with some old friends who played central roles in some of the biggest city failures on 9/11. Among them was a "strategic partnership" with CB Richard Ellis, the successor of the firm that had found the city the perfect location for a command center-high above lower Manhattan in one of the World Trade Center towers. The announcement of the deal, in which Giuliani Partners would be advising Ellis on "location and site assessment" as well as on emergency preparedness and fire safety, was made without any discernible sense of irony.

Cashing in on 9/11 took many forms. In 2004 Giuliani Partners signed up Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which was concerned about the popularity of drug re-importation. American pharmaceutical companies sold their product at much lower prices in Canada and Europe, where national price controls were in effect. The big profits came in the United States, where Congress had vigilantly guarded the drug manufacturers' right to charge what the market would bear. But American senior citizens had begun taking bus trips to Canada to buy their medication, and, in a far more ominous development for the drug companies, members of Congress were talking about making it legal to import cheaper prescription drugs from across the border. PhRMA wanted Giuliani Partners to prepare a report on the safety of these practices.

The report found re-importation to be a bad and dangerous thing. "As the nation tightens its borders against possible future terrorist attacks, it risks undermining security and safety by opening them to non-FDA approved prescription drugs," the Giuliani study concluded. Giuliani himself testified before two Senate committees. When the public was invited to take its turn to testify before a federal task force studying drug importation, one of the first speakers was Kerik, who raised the possibility that terrorists could send weapons of biological warfare across the border disguised as prescription drugs.

Entergy Nuclear Northeast hired Giuliani Partners to evaluate emergency planning and security systems around its five nuclear plants in the Northeast, including Indian Point, north of New York City, which were always under the sharp and hostile glare of the communities in which they were located. Then, when Hurricane Katrina struck, Entergy was happy to announce that Giuliani Partners was going "to counsel the company in coping with the aftermath," which included trying to get its New Orleans electric utility back in operation. In making the announcement, J. Wayne Leonard, the chief executive officer, said, "Rudy Giuliani is a proven leader and his team of experts are probably the most acclaimed crisis managers in the world." Not only was New Orleans getting the attention of Rudy himself, the press release noted, but also that of a team of experts in this sort of catastrophe. All this consulting firepower was not enough, however, to keep Entergy New Orleans from declaring bankruptcy right after the hurricane, or to get power back to large swaths of the city, which were still without electricity months after the hurricane struck.

While such deals may have raised a few eyebrows, they don't compare with Nextel. Indeed, if there was any doubt that Giuliani Partners was all about 9/11, it was erased by the Nextel deal. Nextel was one of the firm's first and most lucrative customers, forming what the Partners called a "strategic alliance to significantly improve public safety communications across the United States."

The theme was consistent and clear: "On September 11th, we learned the true importance of interoperable communications. It was a chaotic scene at Ground Zero, but if it weren't for Nextel providing us with interoperable communications tools, it might have been worse." This pitch was so much the core of the Giuliani Partners message that partner Richie Sheirer was quoted as repeating it word for word at Nextel-sponsored public safety conferences in Washington, DC, and St. Louis in the spring of 2003. Tom Von Essen made the identical statement at yet another Nextel-sponsored event, at the Hilton hotel in New York City. Nextel echoed the point, describing how it had distributed thousands of cell phones at both Ground Zero and the Pentagon (along with mobile cellphone masts to get them working) and how "with local phones jamming and telephone and power main stations down, Nextel's Direct Connect service and two-way messaging remained working throughout the entire crisis, recovery and clean-up."

But Nextel's role in emergency service communications in New York was far from universally positive. It was, in fact, so problematic you'd have thought Giuliani would have left office with a bad taste in his mouth for the entire product line. The city was a big Nextel client when Rudy was mayor, leasing its phones for agencies from the Police Department to the Board of Education to the Office of Emergency Management. But as Nextel phones and equipment became omnipresent, the system developed a stunning, even life-threatening, glitch. The engineering tricks that allowed co-founder Morgan O'Brien to brag that Nextel had managed to stuff 8 million subscribers on a spectrum that was supposed to have a ceiling of 1 million also had a troubling side effect: The infrastructure created interference. In communities across the country, including New York City, Nextel signals were causing those in adjacent frequencies to drop or become garbled to the point of incomprehensibility.

While no one can establish that Nextel caused interference on 9/11, there is good reason to wonder. Five days after the attack, a lawyer representing the city e-mailed the FCC about the deployment of all the Nextel equipment at Ground Zero-particularly mobile cell masts-and observed that if Nextel and the city didn't coordinate closely, "it is highly probable that Nextel will disrupt these other critical communications." Another city attorney testified at a subsequent Senate hearing that the city and others in a communications coalition held teleconferences twice a day right after 9/11 to "monitor and, if necessary, remedy any interference," focusing especially on Nextel. Even the company acknowledges that interference with public safety communications increased with the kind of explosion of cellular use that occurred on 9/11. There are also indications that the World Trade Center might have been a particular source of Nextel interference. John Paleski, president of Subcarrier Communications, which managed sites atop the WTC, said Nextel had several pieces of interference-generating equipment there, including digital and analog antennas. While those antennas were probably knocked out from the moment the planes hit, Nextel apparently had a lot of similar equipment nearby.

In fact, the company had so much disruptive equipment in the area that a year after 9/11 it was still a public safety headache. Giuliani led the commemorative services at Ground Zero on September 11, 2002, even while his largest client, Nextel, made the city's interagency communications at the site so "inoperable" during the ceremony that the Bloomberg administration filed a complaint against the company that used precisely that word.

Giuliani Partners was not hired to defend Nextel's performance, however. It was retained instead to stress how important it was to protect the public from Nextel interference, and to promote the company's own self-serving solution. Only a few weeks after the attack, Nextel filed a proposal with the FCC, beating its own chest about the need to end its interfering ways. It offered to surrender some of its 800-megahertz frequencies to public safety, cutting the interference. In exchange, it wanted new, continuous spectrum from the FCC estimated to be worth a minimum of $4.9 billion. On May 2, 2002, when Giuliani announced his company's partnership with Nextel, the former mayor talked about the interference problem: "Giuliani Partners is committed to helping resolve these concerns and improving the ability of public safety authorities to speak with one another during both day-to-day operations and crisis situations." He also told the New York Daily News that he had reviewed the varied plans for fixing the problem and had decided that Nextel's was the best-"without any doubt."

As part of his Nextel duties, Giuliani appeared at conventions of public safety officials to talk about 9/11 and the need for antiterrorism preparedness. In his keynote speech at the convention of the Association of Public-Safety Communications Officials International in Nashville in 2002, for instance, he delivered his standard talk on 9/11 and his five principles for leadership, one of which was communication. Communication reminded Giuliani of the importance of being able to get through on the telephone in a time of crisis. "I am in favor of your support for the consensus proposal before the FCC that would allow public safety to have more frequencies and better communications," he said. "Thanks to you and Nextel who agreed on that. It can be positive for the future." A trade journal covering the convention called Giuliani "engaging, funny, seemingly honest and informative," but noted that "he never mentioned his consulting company's link to Nextel."

After forcing some changes in the Nextel plan, APCO and other public safety organizations rallied behind it, and it was artfully redubbed the Consensus Plan. But Giuliani and the Partners were also making friends at the FCC, doing volunteer jobs that had been brokered by Nextel's counsel. The Partners spent more than a year helping the FCC prepare a report about how local government can best communicate with the public. Sheirer, Von Essen and another Giuliani partner, Tony Carbonetti, attended a meeting of the FCC's Media Security and Reliability Council just as Nextel hired their firm in May 2002, and another partner, Tom Fitzpatrick, who spearheaded the New York Fire Department's disastrous radio contracting process, moderated an FCC panel. Finally, Giuliani himself was named to a prestigious FCC advisory council two months before the Nextel deal was approved.

"Everybody knows what we're doing, so there's nothing hidden," Giuliani told the New York Times, in explaining why he had not registered as a lobbyist for Nextel or anyone else. Actually, few did know what he was doing. Giuliani, for example, pushed his bandwidth crusade before the 9/11 Commission and in television interviews without ever acknowledging his interest. Two months before the FCC vote on the spectrum deal in July 2004, Giuliani called for "a dedicated bandwidth for emergency services" on Larry King Live and CBS as the solution to the 9/11 communications breakdown. He didn't specifically refer to the Nextel deal, saying only that the bandwidth was "doable but the FCC has to approve it."

By the time Giuliani made these appearances, his consulting deal with Nextel had come to an end, but the Partners still may have had the stock options, then valued at $15 million, that they received as part of their compensation. Shortly after the company got its new spectrum without the public auction usually required for such FCC largesse, Sprint merged with it in a $36 billion deal. Between 2002 and 2004, Nextel's stock rose nearly tenfold, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Giuliani Partners is a private company, and one that keeps its dealings very close to the vest. Conventional wisdom, encouraged by Giuliani Partners insiders, holds that the firm made around $100 million a year, or more than $2 million per employee. Giuliani had never seemed particularly concerned about money-he wouldn't have been scheming so desperately for a third $195,000-a-year term as mayor if wealth had been his top priority. But his sudden riches came in handy. His settlement with his former wife, Donna Hanover, in the summer of 2002 called for him to pay her $6.8 million over three years as well as child support. Hanover's lawyers estimated that Giuliani's income in 2002 was $20 million, a little more than half from speaking fees and book advances. And he quickly adapted to his new lifestyle, demanding first-class flights and accommodations for himself and his posse when he traveled and purchasing a $4 million summer house in the Hamptons for himself and Judy Nathan, whom he married in 2003. The couple also have an apartment on Manhattan's East Side worth more than $5 million, complete with Rudy's Yankee diamond rings displayed in wooden boxes, a lithograph of Winston Churchill above the fireplace, two white Churchill porcelain figures and a Joe DiMaggio shirt encased in glass.

Giuliani Partners attempts to present itself as just another vehicle for Rudy Giuliani's fight for justice. "We take these things on if there's good to be done," said Michael Hess. But most of the deals it has made were like the Nextel one-patently about a client's hope to cash in on Giuliani's fame, to borrow a little of his crime-fighting aura or to make use of the Partners' many connections in the increasingly profitable business of homeland security. Rick Perkal, a senior managing director at Bear Stearns Merchant Banking, told Newsday that his company had been impressed by Bernard Kerik's membership on a federal panel that was supposed to give the Department of Homeland Security advice on, among other things, what it ought to be purchasing. Bear Stearns had agreed to invest up to $300 million in new security-related ventures identified by Giuliani Partners, and Perkal said, "Being an adviser in Homeland Security, what has been helpful to us is that he understands the needs of the country. When we look at opportunities, companies that come up for sale, he can say: 'This is a good company. I think it has good growth prospects.'"

But the American public seems indifferent to such conflicts of interest. A June Quinnipiac University poll showed that Giuliani had the highest rating among nineteen national leaders and potential 2008 presidential candidates, ahead of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Copyright © 2006 The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/barrett

The Nation:
Knock on Wood

by DAVID COLE
[from the September 25, 2006 issue]

Underlying George W. Bush's remarkable "torture works" speech on September 6 were two trademark themes: The American people are still vulnerable to a terrorist attack, and the Administration has succeeded in protecting us.

The President has it half right-we are still vulnerable to a terrorist attack. In fact, we may be more vulnerable than ever. But that is in large part because of-not in spite of-the Administration's so-called "war on terror." By employing illegitimate means-from renditions to disappearances to torture to a war against a country that did not attack or threaten us-in the name of protecting us from terrorist attacks, the Administration has played into Al Qaeda's hands. It has given the enemy the best recruiting propaganda it could ever have hoped for, created a state-of-the-art terrorist training camp in the streets of Iraq and fostered the growth of a loose-knit global band of fanatic criminals who are willing to do unspeakable violence to teach the United States a lesson.

But there hasn't been a terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. Surely the Administration deserves credit for that? When former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge noted this absence of terrorist attacks at a press conference upon stepping down from his post, he knocked on wood. It was a fitting gesture, because the Administration is hard-pressed to point to its initiatives as a cause for that fortuitous fact.

More than 5,000 foreign nationals within the United States were locked up in anti-terrorism initiatives in the first two years after 9/11-yet as I have noted before, not a single one has been convicted of a terrorist crime. The Special Registration program also came up short. It required 80,000 immigrants from countries with predominantly Arab and Muslim populations to come into immigration offices for interviews, fingerprinting and photographing. Yet it failed to identify and convict a single terrorist.

The Administration boasts of indicting more than 400 people in terror-related cases since 9/11, and of obtaining more than 200 convictions. But the vast majority of these cases feature no charges of terrorism at all-only routine charges of credit card fraud or false statements on a federal form. Virtually all of those who actually faced a "terrorism" charge are accused not of any terrorist act, nor even of conspiracy to engage in terrorism, but of "material support" for a group labeled as terrorist, under a law so overbroad that it requires no proof of intent to support terrorist activity. The Justice Department recently invoked this law to arrest a Staten Island man for selling satellite broadcasts from Al Manar, a television station owned by Lebanon's Hezbollah.

The President claimed in his speech that the CIA's harsh interrogations of disappeared Al Qaeda suspects have foiled terrorist attacks and saved American lives, but he gave no details that could confirm those claims. And the fact remains that the President has not pointed to any terrorist convictions obtained as a result of such "intelligence."

Zacarias Moussaoui and shoe bomber Richard Reid remain the two most dangerous terrorists brought to justice in the United States since 9/11, and neither man's conviction can be attributed to post-9/11 initiatives-Moussaoui was arrested before 9/11, and Reid was identified by a British airline attendant.

Meanwhile, the Justice Department is left focusing its efforts on such "terror suspects" as a ragtag group in Florida arrested in June for allegedly plotting to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. None of the defendants had ever been to Chicago, and the FBI's deputy director admitted that the group was "more aspirational than operational." The principal items they purchased toward achieving their alleged goal were combat boots.

In the President's eyes, the threat of terrorism has justified warrantless spying on Americans, detention without charges of thousands around the world and at home, unprecedented intrusions on privacy, close monitoring of Quakers and other antiwar dissenters, and the torture of suspects at Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere-all in the name of making us safe. But fulfilling Ben Franklin's warning, it appears we have sacrificed liberty for security, and obtained neither.

Recent polls suggest that Americans are beginning to get it. In August the Associated Press reported that 43 percent were embarrassed by the US image abroad, and that 60 percent thought the war in Iraq made a terrorist attack within the United States more likely. A Quinnipiac University poll found that more than half of Americans disapprove of how the President has pursued the "war on terror," both overseas and at home, suggesting that the Republicans are losing their trump card.

The President still doesn't get it. He has brought the disappeared into the open in order to bring them to justice, while retaining the option to disappear and torture again. But convicting those we have so harshly abused will be next to impossible. And we will not achieve justice until we learn that we must pursue the goal of protecting ourselves from terrorism without sacrificing fundamental commitments to equal respect and dignity for all.

Copyright © 2006 The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/cole

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Sunday, September 10, 2006

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