Elsewhere Today (397)
Aljazeera:
Deadly attack on US embassy in Syria
Tuesday 12 September 2006, 17:56 Makka Time, 14:56 GMT
Three armed men have been killed and one wounded after they attacked the US embassy in Damascus in what Syria has called a terrorist operation.
The men approached the embassy compound on Tuesday morning and then attempted to blow up a car outside, according to Syrian television.
A Syrian official said all US diplomats were safe while Syria's Sana news agency reported that a member of the Syrian anti-terror squad was killed while defending the building.
A Chinese diplomat was also slightly wounded by a stray bullet, according to Chinese state media.
Syrian state television said the attackers had tried to detonate a car bomb in front of the embassy, but had failed.
The men were reportedly chanting religious slogans as they attacked the building.
Television footage of the scene showed a van packed with gas canisters and detonators taped to them, as well as bloodstains on the pavement and a bullet-riddled car.
Syrian security forces sealed off al-Rawda area after heavy gunfire started.
The district also houses security installations and the homes of senior government officials.
There was no word on the identity of the attackers, but Syrian forces clashed with Islamist fighters several times last year, usually in raids to arrest them.
Car bombing foiled
The interior minister described the attack as "a terrorist operation", and told Syrian television that "investigations are under way to find out more details".
The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said: "It's too early to tell who might have been responsible for the attack... We will have to do the forensics."
Rice thanked Syrian security forces and expressed condolences over the death of the security officer.
"I do think that the Syrians reacted to this attack in a way that helped to secure our people, and we very much appreciate that," she said.
Meanwhile, speaking to Aljazeera on Tuesday from the Syrian capital, Mahdi Dakhlallah, the former Syrian information minister, said: "Damascus has witnessed similar incidents before, but this is the first time an embassy has been targeted.
"The authorities have always tried to maintain a balance between the demands of security and citizens' freedom of movement.
"Some say that the embassy area is a security zone, but this is not true. People can freely move around any embassy in Damascus despite the heavy security arrangements in the area."
Terrorism spurt
Dakhlallah continued: "What happened on Tuesday could happen in any other place in the world.
"The whole region is witnessing terrorist attacks. Terrorism level in the region has increased by around 40 per cent over what it was before the war.
"We hope the US will understand that its unjust policies in the region are leading to unrest and giving terrorist groups justification for carrying out attacks against Arab countries.
Nevertheless, Dakhlallah said the security situation in Syria is by and large stable, with a few exceptional cases.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/AD3B4620-1ED9-480B-92B8-8D98188C697C.htm
AllAfrica:
Atiku Links Obasanjo to Controversial Account
By Ademola Adeyemo And Philip Ogunmade
This Day (Lagos) NEWS
September 12, 2006
The Atiku Campaign Orga-nisation yesterday stated that the Marine Float Account, which formed one of the bases of the indictment of Vice President Atiku Abubakar by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and the Federal Government Adm-inistrative Panel of Inquiry, was a 2003 presidential campaign account that was jointly managed by President Olusegun Obasanjo and his deputy.
"The account was maintained to finance campaign activities and was held in trust for Obasanjo/Atiku Campaign Organisation by a mutual friend of Vice President Abubakar and President Obasanjo, Otunba Fasawe," the campaign said in a statement by its Media Consultant, Mallam Garba Shehu.
The campaign office also alleged that two other similar accounts were kept by prominent businessman, Chief Emeka Offor, and the former Chairman of Nigeria Railway Corporation (NRC), Alhaji Waziri Mohammed, now deceased.
Presidency sources, however, told THISDAY yesterday that the Vice President's claim could not be true since the controversial company was registered in 1992 by Atiku with one gentleman called Ahmed Kuru, who was operating the account on behalf of the Vice President.
The EFCC in its efforts to establish a case of abuse of office against the Vice President had drawn a linkage between Atiku and his friend, Otunba Oyewole Fasawe, showing that there were financial transactions between the two, particularly after government funds were lodged with the Equitorial Trust Bank (ETB) and Trans International Bank (TIB).
"To further buttress the long standing business relationship between the V.P. and Otunba Fasawe, the latter paid the V.P. the sum of N61million on 29/01/01 from his Mofas shipping account with TIB, the EFCC said in its report, which was accepted by the panel, adding, "That a further sum of N250 million from Mofas Shipping Company account of Otunba Fasawe in TIB was transferred to V.P.'s Marine Float account in Bank PHB on 18/02/03."
But the campaign said these conclusions were part of the general mischief of the commission and the panel to nail Atiku, contending that the true position was made very clear to the EFCC during its investigations into the account, particularly from the testimonies "of Otunba Fasawe, and Mr. Bodunde Adeyanju, Personal Assi-stant to President Obasanjo."
It said: "However, in its determination to achieve a pre-determined conclusion, EFCC conveniently ignored this fact and tried to link the account to Otunba Fasawe's loan from the TIB.
"It is out of frustration with not finding anything incriminating on Vice President Abubakar after several stone-squeezing exercises, that EFCC and its sponsors decided to assemble unrelated matters to smear the name of the Vice President."
It added: "For the avoidance of doubt, we assert that the account in question was a campaign account jointly managed by the President and the Vice President. Instructions on withdrawals from the account for campaign activities were issued jointly by President Obas-anjo and Vice President Atiku Abubakar.
"The withdrawals for the Vice President's activities were collected by Mr. Umar Pariya while the withdrawals for Mr. President's campaign activities were made by Mr. Bodunde Adeyanju, his Personal Assistant."
Challenging the EFCC to publish the account's bank statement for the public to see the names of those who have drawn from it, the campaign said: "The records will reveal names of politicians who have indeed been used over the years to undermine the Vice President.
"The Vice President definitely could not have been the one funding his adversaries. The list also included names whose familial and communal ties with the Presidency are definitely not with the Vice President".
According to the organisation, the contentious N100Million donation to the Obasanjo/Atiku Campaign Organization by Governor of Plateau State, Chief Joshua Dariye, and many other donations were lodged in the account.
"When the donation became controversial, Pre-sident Obasanjo refunded N50million and literally forced the Vice President to give the other half to the Plateau State Government," it said, adding, "If the President knew nothing about the account, why did he refund
N50million for the lodgment in the account?"
The campaign, however, said the Vice President was not contesting the EFCC report on the ground that the President was equally guilty of the false allegations, but that his contention was that the banking transactions on which the EFCC based its conclusions were a presidential campaign account jointly managed by him and Mr. President and not Fasawe's personal account.
"The payments from that account cannot be a valid basis for the ill-conceived EFCC conclusions," it insisted.
But Presidency sources insisted that the campaign was not telling the truth since the Vice President, and a business associate, Kuru, registered the company while Kuru was operating the account on behalf of Atiku.
Kuru, they said, was an executive director of the old Habib bank where Atiku was a main shareholder having inherited the shares of late Gen. Shehu Musa Yar'Adua.
"How can Obasanjo be a part of an account that was opened in 1992," they asked.
Meanwhile, Vice President Atiku Abubakar has put off his one-week trip to the United States of America, his campaign has said.
According to it Atiku was supposed to have started the leave on Sunday, but had to suspend the trip "out of respect for the National Assembly, in case they require his attention on any issue concerning the false and malicious accusations sent to them by the President".
It added: "The Vice President would have done his annual medical check-up in readiness for the rigours of the impending presidential campaigns."
In a related development, the Campaign for Democracy (CD) yesterday hailed the report of the EFCC that indicted the Vice President and called for quick and exhaustive investigations to establish his innocence or guilt.
The group, in a statement by its president, Dr. (Mrs.) Joe Oke-Odumakin called on the EFCC not to limit its investigations to the allegations against Atiku alone, but to also look into the following allegations:
-Chief Gani Faweh-inmi's petition against President Obasanjo for abusing his office to raise N6b from private and public institutions for his personal library;
-The allegation that the President has 200m shares in Transcorp;
-The corruption charge of a Tokunbo plane being purchased for the price of a new one on the Presidential fleet;
-The charge by the Revenue Allocation Committee that funds running into billions of dollars were withdrawn from the Excess Crude Accounts without the approval of the National Assembly;
-The probe into Bode George led NPA's board where about N53b was reportedly mismanaged;
- The Works Ministry under Chief Tony Anenih where N360 billion was allocated without any motorable road to show for it; and the
-The disappearance of over N500 million from the Maritime Agency. The late Engr. Funso Williams queried this before his death. But the removed DG of the Agency was alleged to have disclosed that the funds were spent for the Southern Leaders Forum held in Enugu last December.
Mrs. Okei-Odumakin urged the EFCC boss, Mallam Nuhu Ribadu to "quickly beam his searchlight into these issues and produce his reports for Nigerians to accept that he is not just a tool of persecution as against an agent of prosecuting anti graft war."
Copyright © 2006 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609120092.html
Guardian:
Bomb attack on US embassy in Syria foiled
Mark Oliver and agencies
Tuesday September 12, 2006
Four armed Islamist militants were foiled in an attempt to blow up the US embassy in Damascus today.
A huge vehicle bomb failed to go off before the attackers were stopped by Syrian security forces, prompting messages of gratitude from the White House and the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice.
The US has a strained relationship with Syria, which it lists as a sponsor of terror, but White House spokesman Tony Snow said after the incident that it was hoped Syria would become an ally.
One Syrian guard was killed during the morning attack and 11 people were injured; no US embassy staff were hurt. Syrian security forces killed three of the attackers and a fourth was wounded and taken into detention.
There were no claims of responsibility for the attack and it was unclear who the militants were. It appears that they had planned to try and blow up the embassy but had not had a chance to detonate their main devices.
Television footage showed a delivery van loaded with pipe bombs strapped to large propane gas canisters outside the embassy. Had the bombs detonated, the explosions would have caused huge damage.
Footage showing the wreckage of the attacker's second vehicle, a smaller car, was also broadcast, though it was unclear how it had been destroyed.
The injured included a local embassy police officer, two Iraqis and seven workers at a nearby technical workshop, Syria's official news agency reported.
The attackers apparently did not breach the high walls surrounding the embassy compound, which is in Rawda, the capital's diplomatic district. Witnesses said the gunmen and security forces exchanged heavy fire before the attackers were overwhelmed.
Peter Ford, Britain's ambassador to Syria, told CNN that the incident did not seem similar to an al-Qaida attack, but appeared to be "an operation by a small group".
However, Imad Moustapha, Syria's ambassador to Washington, blamed the attack on Jund al-Sharm. The group has been linked to a series of attacks in Damascus as well as strikes on a Qatar theatre popular with western expats and two explosions outside the British consulate in New York, all last year.
Details of Jund al-Sharm are sketchy, and sceptics argue that the Syrian government uses the name as an umbrella under which to group together disparate domestic opposition organisations.
Speaking on a trip to Canada, Ms Rice, praised Syrian security officials for foiling the attack, but refused to pass judgement on its source. "I think it's very early to try and speculate why this may have happened," she said.
"Syrian officials came to the aid of the Americans, the US government is grateful for the assistance the Syrians provided in going after the attackers," Mr Snow said. "We are hoping they will become an ally and make the choice of fighting against terrorists."
Syrian security forces have clashed with Islamist militants several times since last year, usually in raids carried out to arrest them. In June, Syrian anti-terrorism police fought Islamist militants near the defence ministry in a gun battle that killed five people and wounded four.
Hugh Macleod, a freelance reporter at the scene, said hundreds of troops and other security personnel were at the embassy following the attack. "This looks to have been a suicide mission by Islamist militants," Macleod told Guardian Unlimited. "This is one of the most heavily-guarded streets in Damascus.
"President Bashar al-Assad has his office on the same street, the EU building is here ... there are a number of embassies, including the Chinese embassy, which is next to the US building."
The US ambassador to Syria was withdrawn after the assassination of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri in February last year. A UN investigation into the killing said evidence implicated Syrian intelligence officials, but Syria has denied involvement.
The withdrawal of the ambassador effectively downgraded US diplomatic representation in Syria to the level of charge d'affaires, but there remains a sizeable number of staff at the embassy.
Local guards are in charge of the security outside the embassy while US marines guard the inside - a set-up which is typical of US embassies around the world.
Macleod said there were typically a dozen guards on the street where the US embassy is located. "With all the security service resources in the area, it would not take long for many more to be quickly deployed," he added.
US relations with Syria have been difficult, partly because of the increasing ties between Damascus and Iran. During the conflict between Hizbullah and Israel this summer, the US president, George Bush, criticised Syria and Iran for backing and arming the fighters.
Mr Bush and his administration have repeatedly accused Syria of aiding militant groups in the region.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/syria/story/0,,1870464,00.html
Guardian:
Jail massacre colonel shot dead
Tom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro
Tuesday September 12, 2006
Brazil's most infamous policeman, blamed for the massacre of 111 prisoners in 1992, has been murdered at his upmarket apartment in Sao Paulo.
Colonel Ubiratan Guimaraes, a former military police commander who oversaw the invasion of the Carandiru prison in 1992, was found wrapped in a towel and with a single bullet wound to his chest at around 10pm on Sunday.
Police said there was no immediate sign of links to the recent wave of "terrorist" attacks in Sao Paulo, which have claimed hundreds of lives, principally policemen, prison guards and "suspects" since May.
The group behind the attacks - the First Command of the Capital faction - has vowed to target high-profile public figures in what it says is a fight to improve prison conditions in Brazil.
Col Ubiratan was widely detested for his role in the Carandiru bloodbath and, in 2001, was sentenced to 632 years in jail for his part in the killings. The ruling was overturned last year.
The colonel's hardline stance on crime also earned him fans. He was part of the "security lobby" in Sao Paulo politics and was running for his third term as a state deputy, receiving 56,000 votes in the last elections. His re-election was seen as a foregone conclusion.
In his campaign he preached a hard line against crime, blaming the recent attacks in Sao Paulo on an excessive respect for human rights.
He even used the number "111" in election propaganda to attract voters angry at high crime and a weak justice system.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/brazil/story/0,,1870295,00.html
Harper's Magazine:
Weekly Review
Posted on Tuesday, September 12, 2006. By Theodore Ross
President George W. Bush confirmed the existence of secret extra-territorial prisons operating beyond the scope of American law.[ABC News] The U.S. Army promised to stop intimidating prisoners by placing hoods over their heads, or by simulating their drowning, or by threatening them with dogs,[New York Times] and President Bush emphasized the fine line between “alternative” interrogation methods and torture.[CNN] The Iraqi government took control of its own army,[Times of London] and the United States increased the number of troops in Iraq by 15,000.[Houston Chronicle] An official at the Baghdad morgue said that last month's death toll was actually triple the number first reported.[Christian Science Monitor] Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compared critics of the Iraq war to Northerners who sought peace with the South during the Civil War. “There were people who thought the Declaration of Independence was a mistake,” she said.[New York Times] A declassified CIA intelligence report concluded that prior to the Iraq war, Saddam Hussein “did not have a relationship, harbor, or even turn a blind eye toward,” Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Al Qaeda, [New York Times] and the White House warned of a “WMD-terrorism nexus” emanating from Iran.[New York Times] Four prisoners in El Salvador's maximum security Zacatecoluca prison were caught coordinating crimes using cell phones hidden in their bowels,[Yahoo News via Nerve.com] and Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter said Palestinians were wrong to think war with Israel would transform them into “some kind of golden child.” Instead, he said, it made them “a shit child.”[The New Yorker] A spokesman for the Republic of Georgia confirmed that a surface-to-air missile had been fired at a helicopter carrying U.S. Senator John McCain,[Azcentral.com via the Drudge Report] and Kenya's Human Rights Commissioner said Kenyans “get a thrill out of seeing a white man in a powerless position.”[New York Times] Prime Minister Tony Blair described a junior defense minister who called for his resignation as “discourteous.”[CNN] In Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai said he was “very happy to hear” Pakistan was not sponsoring terrorist attacks on his country,[New York Times] and “Little America,” a model city built during the Cold War, came under attack by Taliban forces. “Our government is weak,” said one resident. “Anarchy has come.”[New York Times]
Joseph Lieberman returned to the Senate for the first time since losing the Connecticut Democratic primary, and Senator Susan Collins (R., Maine) offered to buy him a dog.[Washington Post] Former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami predicted that “prudence and wisdom” would prevail and that the United States would not attack Iran.[Washington Post] Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney refused to guarantee Mr. Khatami's safety during his trip to his state.[Boston Herald] The U.S. Office of Special Counsel was criticized for advising its female workers that before “choosing a skirt to wear, sit down in it facing a mirror.”[Washington Post] Researchers at the University of Southern California determined that celebrities exhibit higher rates of narcissism than the general population,[Breitbart.com via the Drudge Report] and pop star Prince disputed Justin Timberlake's claim to have “brought sexy back.” [Contactmusic.com via Nerve.com] Actress Lindsay Lohan said she didn't want anyone to know she was in favor of voting. “It's safer that way,” she said.[BBC] A poll found that New Yorkers were more concerned about terrorist attacks than are people living elsewhere,[New York Times] and many Germans were “startled” to learn that they could be terror targets.[Los Angeles times] Britain's Royal Preston Hospital unveiled the “Inter-Faith Gown,” a hospital garment modeled on the Muslim burka,[Breitbart.com via the Drudge Report] and an Orthodox Jewish man was removed from an Air Canada flight because his praying made other passengers nervous.[CBC]
A group of masked men burst into a bar in Michoacan, Mexico, and tossed five human heads into a crowd of dancers.[BBC News] California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger apologized for saying that Cubans and Puerto Ricans were “very hot,” due to their mixed “black blood” and “Latino blood.”[New York Times] Political analysts debated whether Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee's 100-pound weight loss would harm his presidential aspirations in the South,[New York Times] and visitors to the Texas State Fair were enjoying deep-fried Coca-Cola.[Local6.com] English scientists were conducting experiments to determine whether sea horses could be tempted into adultery,[New York Post via Nerve.com] and Scottish researchers learned how chimpanzees safely cross roads. [BBC] Three men in Lancaster, Wisconsin, were arrested after attempting to steal a corpse from a cemetery in order to have sex with it.[WCCO.com] The White House announced plans to name former American Idol runner-up Clay Aiken to the President's Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities.[Breitbart.com via the Drudge Report] Two teens in Cape Girardeau, Missouri, attacked a man and beat him with his own prosthetic leg, [CNN] and Dapoxetine, a pharmaceutical believed to prevent premature ejaculation in men, remained in “regulatory limbo.”[Medpagetoday.com via Google News] Actor William Shatner turned down a free seat on the Virgin Galactic spaceship. “To vomit in space,” he said, “is not my idea of a good time.”[The Daily Mail]
This is Weekly Review by Theodore Ross, published Tuesday, September 12, 2006. It is part of Weekly Review for 2006, which is part of Weekly Review, which is part of Harpers.org.
Written By
Ross, Theodore
Permanent URL
http://harpers.org/WeeklyReview2006-09-12.html
il manifesto:
Quegli aerei che sconvolsero la percezione del mondo
«Siamo senza parole», «Niente sarà più come prima». L'evento che ha cambiato l'agenda e le poste in gioco del presente globale
Cinque anni dopo il crollo delle Torri gemelle il cambiamento non è solo politico e geopolitico ma culturale e antropologico. Le poste in gioco del diritto, della democrazia, della società multiculturale, del rapporto fra i sessi. La maschera dello «scontro di civiltà» per riportare all'ordine del due il disordine del mondo globale
Ida Dominijanni
Il numero di Internazionale in edicola commemora il quinto anniversario dell'11 settembre 2001 ripubblicando le prime pagine dei principali quotidiani del giorno dopo di tutto il mondo. Tornare a sfogliarle fa bene: riporta a quel primo shock della ragione e dell'inconscio, della parola e dell'immaginario, che prese tutto il mondo di fronte al collasso delle Torri gemelle in diretta tv. E aiuta a rispondere alla domanda che tutte le prime pagine del mondo si pongono in questi giorni, tornando a loro volta a quel «più niente sarà come prima» che si disse allora: che cosa è cambiato in realtà in questi cinque anni? tutto, poco, niente? Le risposte, come sempre, dipendono dal metro di misura. Ed è uno strano metro di misura, iperrealistico, quello di chi sostiene, cifre e macrotendenze alla mano (l'autorevole Foreign Affairs, ma anche e altrettanto autorevolmente, nella pagina qui a fianco, Immanuel Wallerstein), che in verità è cambiato poco o nulla - nel sistema-mondo, nella politica estera americana, nei flussi del capitalismo mondiale, nel rapporto fra il colosso americano e il colosso cinese emergente o fra il nord e il sud del mondo -, e che il grande evento con cui tutt'ora ci troviamo a fare i conti non è tanto l'11 settembre quanto il crollo dell'Urss e dell'ordine mondiale bipolare. Altre cifre crude e altri crudi fatti - le guerre fatte in risposta all'11 settembre e i cadaveri relativi, la centralità conquistata dal mondo islamico, l'inasprirsi del conflitto in Medioriente, i nuovi muri in Palestina e alle frontiere più calde dell'immigrazione, i diritti sacrificati sull'altare della sicurezza - basterebbero a replicare che in realtà molto è cambiato eccome. Ma non è solo questo il punto, perché quello che l'11 settembre ha cambiato non si può misurare solo con il metro, sempre discutibile, dell'oggettività. Per quanto poco o molto l'11 settembre abbia cambiato nel mondo, di certo ha cambiato la nostra percezione del mondo. E accanto alle guerre combattute sul campo, altre ne ha aperte - «guerre culturali» le chiamano infatti - nella nostra interpretazione del mondo.
Per questo fa bene rivedere le prime pagine di cinque anni fa, e ripensare quel «siamo senza parole» che ricorreva nei titoli come nella vita quotidiana, a significare che lo sfondamento delle Torri era anche uno sfondamento dei nostri schemi mentali e delle nostre categorie interpretative. In quei quattro aerei-cyborg nel cielo americano non c'era solo l'attacco inaudito alla grande potenza, la volontà di potenza del terrorismo internazionale, la fine della favola bella della «fine della storia», di una globalizzazione senza conflitti e di una democrazia senza resistenze che era spuntata dalle macerie del mondo bipolare. C'era, in quei quattro aerei così alieni e insieme così familiari, un'improvvisa epifania del mondo globale che ci piombava in casa via tv come un mondo interconnesso ma drammaticamente fratturato, secolarizzato nell'uso della tecnologia e teologico nella deriva apocalittica, multiculturale nei suoi flussi reali (di 63 etnie erano le vittime delle Torri) e identitario nei suoi proclami di guerra. Non eravamo attrezzati a interpretarlo, tutto andava ripensato, le geometrie mentali dovevano aprirsi e adeguarsi a quella nuova geometria non euclidea del mondo globale.
Il seguito è, in larga parte, storia del conflitto fra chi ha lottato appunto per aprirle e chi per richiuderle. La «grande narrazione» dello «scontro di civiltà» che, allestita prima dell'11 settembre, ne ha interpretato il dopo, altro non rappresenta che questo tentativo di riportare il «disordine» del mondo globale al rassicurante ordine del due del mondo bipolare perduto: l'Occidente contro l'Islam, la democrazia contro il Nemico ritrovato, l'identità contro la minaccia dell'alterità e delle diversità. Una litania speculare a quella di Bin Laden, che maschera e ingabbia le fratture reali che lacerano da dentro i due campi , e invalida i legami altrettanto reali che possono fluidificarli. Tutto il resto ne consegue, ed è appunto la posta in gioco - politica, geopolitica, culturale, antropologica - del cambiamento in corso, che dentro la grande e la piccola cronaca di questi cinque anni ha riscritto l'agenda del presente.
Dalla concezione della vita e della morte ai criteri della convivenza internazionale, dalla concezione dell'Occidente a quella della democrazia, dal multiculturalismo ai rapporti fra i sessi nulla ne è rimasto esente. Se la pratica sacrificale del terrorismo suicida ha attaccato alla radice il dispositivo primario della deterrenza, cioè la difesa della propria vita, la dottrina e il dispiegamento della guerra preventiva ha fatto fuori a sua volta il tabù primario della guerra su cui la convivenza internazionale si era retta - non senza infrazioni- dopo la seconda guerra mondiale. Con l'11 settembre il costituzionalismo novecentesco è finito sia nelle relazioni internazionali, sia all'interno degli stati democratici: lo stato d'eccezione è diventato la norma, Guantanamo incombe sulla coscienza occidentale. La democrazia, esportata con la forza fuori dall'Occidente, si svuota nelle società occidentali; i diritti sono le sue munizioni, da imporre agli altri e soprattutto alle altre con il nostro linguaggio e i nostri tempi.
L'Occidente universalistico torna così a mostrare la sua faccia più parziale ed etnocentrica. Il dopo-11 settembre ha inciso potentemente su questo punto sempre in bilico della nostra storia, piegando la società multiculturale americana, e due decenni di «lotte per il riconoscimento, su una concezione tradizionalista, e irrigidendo a loro volta le società europee. Al centro dei conflitti culturali, la libertà femminile e i rapporti fra i sessi sono diventati la posta in gioco dei backlash patriarcali, fuori dall'Occidente e dentro, e dell'espansionismo democratico: non si vede solo dai tentativi di legittimare in nome delle donne le guerre in Afghanistan e in Iraq, si vede dagli ordinari episodi di cronaca che affliggono la nostra provincia, e dalle ordinarie leggi come quella francese contro l'uso del velo in nome della laicità, a sua volta diventata, nella guerra contro il fondamentalismo, un valore aggressivo.
Le cose potevano prendere un'altra piega? Potevano e possono. La fine dell'invulnerabilità americana sancita dall'11 settembre poteva esser letta ed elaborata come un memento dell'interdipendenza, dell'esposizione all'altro, della fragilità che ovunque unifica la condizione umana. Poteva, può derivarne non un arroccamento identitario ma un'apertura alla differenza; non un affossamento ma un ripensamento della democrazia. La storia ufficiale di questi cinque anni dice che non è stato così. La memoria sotterranea del trauma, quella che non passa nei media mainstream ma traspare nei romanzi di Safran Foer e nei film di Spike Lee, può restituire altre impronte e altre soluzioni, e attende ancora di essere ascoltata e rappresentata. Dopo l'11 settembre tutto è cambiato, ma tutto è ancora in gioco.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/10-Settembre-2006/art50.html
il manifesto:
Ma guardando il sistema-mondo è cambiato poco
Immanuel Wallerstein: l'11 settembre va inserito all'interno di una transizione cominciata molto prima. Ma le società occidentali non sono più le stesse. E da allora è diventato chiaro che il lessico della politica è tutto da reinventare
Benedetto Vecchi
Immanuel Wallerstein non ha certo bisogno di molte presentazioni. Docente a Yale, è uno studioso che fa dell'interdisciplinarietà il suo marchio, ha nella sua quarantennale attività messo a punto la teoria del sistema-mondo in numerosi libri, dal trittico sulla formazione dell'economia mondiale pubblicato in Italia dal Mulino ai saggi sul capitalismo storico (Alla scoperta del sistema-mondo è edito da manifestolibri, 2003). Non tutti sanno che Wallerstein, animatore del Fernand Braudel Centre assieme a Giovanni Arrighi, ha iniziato la sua attività di studioso come storico dell'Africa. Esperienza che lo ha aiutato, successivamente, a guardare all'economia dal punto di vista delle interdipendenze tra le singole realtà nazionali. Parlare con lui dell'11 settembre costringe appunto ad assumere una prospettiva mondiale. E sull'attacco alle Torri Gemelle ha sempre avuto una posizione fuori dal mainstream . In alcuni saggi ha infatti affermato che il crollo del World Trade Centre non ha cambiato il corso della storia. Ed è da questa affermazione che ha avvio l'intervista.
In passato lei ha invitato spesso a una certa prudenza nel considerare l'attacco alle Torri Gemelle come un evento che ha cambiato il corso della storia. Crede dunque che l'11 settembre non sia stao un evento rilevante per gli assetti del sistema-mondo?
Anno dopo anno, è una domanda, questa, che ritorna sempre con insistenza a ridosso dell'11 settembre. L'attacco alle Torri Gemelle non ha cambiato nulla nel sistema-mondo. Ma subito dopo aggiungo: ha cambiato molto nei rapporti tra gli stati e nella vita all'interno delle società. Può apparire una contraddizione sostenere che il crollo del World Trade Centre non si caratterizza come «evento» con la forza di cambiare un sistema-mondo e poi affermare che invece la vita all'interno di quel sistema è cambiata tantissimo. Eppure contraddizione non c'è. Un sistema-mondo è il risultato di un processo di lunga durata che vede all'opera protagonisti molteplici, dalle realtà economiche a quelle statali, dai conflitti di classe allo sviluppo scientifico. Potremmo dire che si sviluppa secondo logiche evoluzioniste, ma non è sempre così: ci possono essere accelerazioni nella sua formazione, deviazioni, rallentamenti.
L'attuale sistema-mondo sta in una fase che in altre sedi ho definito di transizione. Il centro dell'economia si sta spostando verso il Pacifico, dando vita a conflitti - politici, interstatuali, economici, culturali - che vedono coinvolti gli Stati Uniti, ma anche l'Europa e l'Asia. Stanno inoltre emergendo nuovi stati, come la Cina, che competono per acquisire posizioni di leadership mondiale. In America latina abbiamo assistito a cambiamenti politici quasi impensabili solo venti anni fa. Allo stesso tempo il controllo delle fonti energetiche vede il confronto tra multinazionali e stati spesso in conflitto tra loro. Tutti questi sono processi in atto da ben prima dell'attacco alle Twin Towers. Potremmo dire che l'11 settembre può essere considerato all'interno di questi processi, ma che non li ha significativamente modificati.
Ciò che invece l'11 settembre ha davvero cambiato è la vita all'interno delle nostre società: Basta pensare alle leggi varate per la lotta al terrorismo. E poi la guerra. Gli interventi in Afghanistan prima, in Iraq poi sono stati giustificati a partire del crollo delle Torre Gemelle. Forse ci sarebbero stati anche senza l'11 settembre, ma la loro legittimità è stata costruita a partire da quell'attacco.
Ma questa relazione di causa e effetto tra l'11 settembre e le guerre in Afghanistan e in Iraq si interrompe quando il governo Usa si pone l'obiettivo della costituzione di un nuovo ordine mondiale...
Con la guerra permanente, George W. Bush vuole costruire un nuovo ordine mondiale. Ma gli Stati uniti non la stanno vincendo. La cacciata dei talebani da Kabul non ha infatti significato la loro sconfitta, così come la caduta di Saddam Hussein non ha visto la fine delle ostilità militari in Iraq. Anzi possiamo dire che le attività di guerra si sono intensificate il giorno dopo che i comandi militari statunitensi hanno detto che l'obiettivo era stato raggiunto. Non so se la guerra è diventato l'unico strumento che regola i rapporti tra gli stati. Storicamente la guerra si è sempre alternata alla diplomazia. Quello che è certo è che queste guerre hanno reso visibile al mondo la potenza militare degli Usa, ma anche la loro crisi.
Alcuni studiosi hanno malignamente sostenuto che gli Stati uniti hanno fatto la guerra per rilanciare la loro economia. Lei che ne pensa?
Sarei portato a dire che hanno ragione. Ma anche in questo caso c'è da aggiungere che non è detto che riescano a superare la crisi economica. Le imprese e le merci statunitensi stanno perdendo la loro competività e non basta certo mandare le truppe all'estero per risolvere questo problema. Certo, possono esserci dei effetti benefici nel breve, ma non nel lungo periodo. Inoltre, le scelte di politica economica di questi ultimi anni sono state all'insegna della continuità: ridimensionamento del welfare state e a favore delle multinazionali. Ma il declino economico degli Stati uniti non è stato arrestato. Non dico che assisteremo a un collasso, ma è indubbio che il made in Usa non è più competitivo.
E come è cambiata la società americana? Dopo l'11 settembre sono state introdotte leggi contro il terrorismo che hanno accresciuto il potere della Fbi, della Cia e della Nsa. Questo ha indubbiamente cambiato il rapporto tra i cittadini e lo stato. Inoltre, si pone il problema della crisi del multiculturalismo. Lei che pensa?
Che l'Fbi, la Cia e la Nsa abbiano visto accresciuto il loro potere è indubbio. Che le leggi contro il terrorismo abbiano modificato il rapporto tra i cittadini e lo stato è altresì vero. E questo non vale solo per gli Stati uniti. I cambiamenti introdotti nelle legislazioni sulla sicurezza nazionale, sull'immigrazione, sulla regolazione della mobilità interna e esterna riguardano anche altri paesi. Ma ciò che è rilevante per gli Usa è un altro aspetto. L'immagine di una nazione stretta attorno al suo presidente e unita dietro la bandiera è stata sapientemente costruita all'indomani dell'11 settembre. Ma non coincide molto con la realtà. La società americana si è divisa su come interpretare e rispondere all'attacco da subito. Sicuramente questa divisione è stata nascosta, ma è continuata a permanere nell'opinione pubblica. Il recente discorso di Bush che ammette l'esistenza di prigioni segrete all'estero, che accetta di applicare la convenzione di Ginevra per i prigionieri di Guantanamo sono il sintomo di una difficoltà dell'amministrazione rispetto alle critiche del suo operato da parte dell'opinione pubblica. Il problema per gli americani ora è quale rapporto stabilire con il resto del mondo. George W. Bush ha sostenuto, nel recente passato, che gli Stati uniti avevano una missione: portare, anche con le armi, la democrazia nel mondo. Ora dice che tutto ciò è stato fatto per garantire la sicurezza nazionale. Un cambiamento non da poco. Credo poco all'immagine di un paese stretto attorno al suo presidente. Quello che constato è la sua crescente difficoltà di fronte all'opinione pubblica.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/10-Settembre-2006/art54.html
Jeune Afrique: Pression accrue pour la consigne totale
des troupes de Kabila et Bemba
RD CONGO - 11 septembre 2006 – AFP
La Communauté internationale a demandé lundi le cantonnement total et la réduction des troupes du président de la République démocratique du Congo Joseph Kabila et du vice-président Jean-Pierre Bemba, accentuant sa pression sur les deux ex-belligérants candidats à la présidence.
Le Comité international d'accompagnement de la transition (Ciat) qui regroupe notamment les ambassadeurs à Kinshasa des cinq pays membres permanents du Conseil de sécurité de l'Onu, a requis dans un communiqué "la réduction et le cantonnement des forces des deux candidats"
Les ambassadeurs ont expressément demandé la "substitution" de ces troupes "dans leur fonction de protection" des deux hommes d'Etat par la Mission de l'Onu en RDC (Monuc) et la force européenne Eufor, et ce "jusqu'à la fin du processus de transition" en RDC.
Le 20 août, jour de l'annonce des résultats provisoires du premier tour de la présidentielle du 30 juillet, des affrontements avaient éclaté entre troupes du président Kabila et du vice-président Bemba, arrivés en tête du scrutin.
Ces violences, qui ont duré trois jours et fait au moins 23 morts dans la capitale, avaient conduit à la première intervention militaire de l'Eufor, qui a déployé un millier d'hommes à Kinshasa pour garantir le bon déroulement du processus électoral, en appui aux quelque 17.600 Casques bleus de la Monuc.
Pour la première fois depuis ces violences, les deux hommes ont accepté le principe d'une rencontre "en tête-à-tête", a déclaré à la presse le ministre britannique de la Coopération internationale, Hilary Benn, au terme d'une visite de 24 heures à Kinshasa.
M. Benn a "exhorté les deux parties à amorcer des étapes rapides devant conduire à l'apaisement des tensions à Kinshasa", ce qui "implique la réduction de l'effectif" des gardes des deux hommes.
La garde présidentielle, estimée entre 10.000 et 16.000 hommes selon les sources, et les militaires de M. Bemba, évalués entre 2.000 et 5.000, n'ont pas encore intégré la nouvelle armée de RDC, en cours de restructuration.
La création d'une armée nationale restructurée incluant les anciens combattants de la guerre de 1998 à 2003 est prévue par l'Accord global et inclusif signé en décembre 2002 à Pretoria.
Le parrain de cet accord, le président sud-africain Thabo Mbeki, a enchaîné lundi à Kinshasa les entretiens avec MM. Kabila et Bemba, ainsi que les trois autres vice-présidents de RDC, en vue d'un atterrissage en douceur du processus démocratique.
Le vice-président Azarias Ruberwa a notamment déclaré à la presse qu'il avait évoqué avec le président sud-africain des "pistes de solution" pour relancer le travail des institutions et éviter au pays de replonger dans la guerre.
Le second tour de la présidentielle, combiné avec des élections provinciales, est fixé au 29 octobre et l'investiture du futur président de RDC le 10 décembre, selon un calendrier de la Commission électorale indépendante.
Ces élections, les premiers scrutins libres en pluralistes en plus de 40 ans dans l'ex-Zaïre, doivent mettre un terme à la fragile transition politique entamée en 2003.
La substitution des gardes rapprochées des deux candidats à la présidence "jusqu'à la fin du processus de transition" supposerait un accord des deux hommes d'Etat et la prolongation du mandat de l'Eufor, qui s'achève le 30 novembre.
"Il paraît absurde qu'Eufor lève le camp avant l'investiture du nouveau président", a déclaré à l'AFP un responsable de la Monuc sous couvert d'anonymat, sans préciser si l'Onu avait demandé ou non le maintien de la force européenne, déployée en RDC sous mandat du Conseil de sécurité.
"Afin que la campagne électorale, les scrutins et l'après-scrutin se passent dans un climat de paix", le Ciat a requis lundi, comme il l'avait fait avant les scrutins du 30 juillet, "le cantonnement de toutes les unités des FARDC (forces armées de RDC), sur l'ensemble du territoire national".
Concernant Kinshasa, le Ciat s'est dit "fortement préoccupé par l'abondance et la circulation sans contrôle d'armes et d'hommes en armes" et a requis "la stricte interdiction de la circulation d'hommes en armes (...) à l'exception des agents en mission officielle, des agents de la Police nationale congolaise et des forces multinationales".
Le Ciat a demandé dans ce but "l'établissement d'un mécanisme de vérification et de contrôle du respect du cantonnement, notamment à l'aide d'officiers de liaison".
Ce mécanisme complèterait l'accord de cantonnement conclu le 22 août entre les deux camps, qui n'était toujours pas respecté lundi, de nombreux soldats en arme circulant librement dans la ville comme l'ont constaté des journalistes de l'AFP.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP23206pressabmebt0
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A 33 años del golpe contra Allende
POR PRIMERA VEZ NI EL EJERCITO NI PINOCHET CONMEMORARON LA FECHA
Martes, 12 de Septiembre de 2006
Michelle Bachelet le rindió honores al derrocado presidente Salvador Allende y recordó a las miles de víctimas de la dictadura. “A 33 años del golpe nosotros estamos acá con respeto y recogimiento por aquellas personas que perdieron la vida en esa ocasión y también en la lucha por reconstruir la democracia en nuestro país”, aseguró la mandataria en una misa realizada en el Palacio de la Moneda, refiriéndose, entre otros, a su propio padre. Comandante de la fuerza aérea en 1973, fue detenido por sus propios compañeros y murió un mes después en cautiverio. Esto no fue lo único que diferenció este nuevo aniversario del golpe militar. Por primera vez, ni el Ejército ni Augusto Pinochet conmemoraron la fecha, como en años anteriores.
Lo que no cambió, lamentablemente, fue la violencia. Año tras año los enfrentamientos de pequeños grupos radicales con la policía tiñen las marchas y los actos que convocan los gobiernos de la Concertación y las organizaciones sociales y de derechos humanos. Ayer no fue la excepción. En total, unas 140 personas fueron detenidas desde el domingo a la tarde hasta el cierre de esta edición. De los 72 que habían sido arrestados hasta la madrugada de ayer, sólo una quedaba detenida a la tarde. Sin embargo, nuevos choques con los carabineros en frente de la Universidad de Santiago provocó otros 70 nuevos arrestos. Esta manifestación fue rápidamente disuelta con carros hidrantes y gases lacrimógenos de la policía, que anoche ya se encontraba alerta ante la posibilidad de que surgiera un nuevo foco de violencia. El Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez, un grupo radical que toma el nombre de una importante guerrilla que combatió a la dictadura de Pinochet, inició una protesta no autorizada por el gobierno cerca del teatro Víctor Jara.
Los actos oficiales de ayer estuvieron marcados por el repudio a los ataques de un pequeño grupo de encapuchados contra La Moneda. Mientras unas diez mil personas marchaban por el costado del palacio presidencial hacia el cementerio en donde se encuentran los restos de Allende, unas cien personas comenzaron a lanzar bombas de pintura y una molotov contra el edificio. “Jamás pensé volver a ver una llama en La Moneda. No sé quiénes son estas gentes, no nos representan”, aseguró emocionada la diputada Isabel Allende, la hija del derrocado presidente socialista, que lo acompañó durante horas en La Moneda aquel fatídico martes 11 de septiembre de 1973. Bachelet coincidió. “Nadie tiene derecho a atentar contra La Moneda. La Moneda es el símbolo de la lucha que hicimos muchos para recuperar la democracia”, destacó en su discurso.
Los actos del día de ayer se completaron con las ofrendas florales que los partidos Socialista, Comunista y algunas organizaciones sociales colocaron frente a la estatua de Allende, frente al palacio presidencial. Allí el ex presidente decidió suicidarse con el rifle que le había regalado su amigo, Fidel Castro, antes que entregarse a los militares golpistas que ya planeaban matarlo.
Mientras la mayor parte del país participa de las conmemoraciones, el ejército y los sectores más ligados al pinochetismo prefirieron adoptar un perfil bajo. Por primera vez, las fuerzas armadas decidieron no realizar un acto por el aniversario del golpe que los llevó al poder. Aún más llamativa fue la decisión del propio Pinochet de no recibir a los nostálgicos que en esta fecha lo visitan para recordar mejores tiempos. El ex dictador solía recibir a militares retirados y otros aliados en su casa, para conmemorar su ascenso al poder. Esto ya pertenece al pasado de Chile. Ayer sólo tres mujeres le tocaron la puerta y nadie atendió.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72876-2006-09-12.html
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Luces y sombras de un aniversario
A CINCO AÑOS DE LOS PEORES ATENTADOS OCURRIDOS EN ESTADOS UNIDOS
Silencio, campanadas, voces: todo se entremezcló en la conmemoración de los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001. Los familiares leyeron los nombres de sus víctimas. Desde esa fecha el gobierno republicano comenzó a aplicar una política de miedo, enmarcada en la “guerra antiterrorista”.
Por Claudio Iván Remeseira
Desde Nueva York, Martes, 12 de Septiembre de 2006
A las 8.46 de la mañana, hora local, el instante exacto en el que hace cinco años el primer avión se estrelló contra la Torre Norte, una campanada marcó el comienzo de la ceremonia. La reverberación del humilde tañido se fundió con el silencio. Después, por casi cuatro horas, familiares de las 2749 personas muertas en el World Trade Center subirían de a dos al estrado principal para leer los nombres de las víctimas, de a unos veinte nombres por vez. La lectura sería interrumpida por otros tres minutos de silencio: a las 9.03, el momento en que el segundo avión se incrustó en la Torre Sur, y a las 9.59 y 10.29, cuando los gigantes se desplomaron. Esta ceremonia, realizada por tercer año consecutivo, constituye el núcleo de los recordatorios del 11 de septiembre de 2001 en el epicentro de los atentados: el pozo en el que hasta ese día se levantaron las Torres Gemelas.
Acompañando a los familiares estaban el alcalde Michael Bloomberg, los gobernadores de los estados de Nueva York, George Pataki, y de New Jersey, Jon Corzine, los senadores Charles Schumer y Hillary Clinton, y el ex alcalde Rudolph Giuliani, que leyó un poema. Pero a pesar de la presencia de estos políticos locales –el presidente Bush rindió su homenaje el domingo en la Zona Cero y ayer a la mañana visitó un cuartel de bomberos cercano– se trata esencialmente de un rito privado. Es la dolorosa evocación de los seres queridos, compartida del otro lado de la reja que rodea al predio por el público que cada año se acerca respetuosamente al lugar, y con el resto del país, a través de la televisión.
Como en los aniversarios anteriores, un grupo de música de cámara agregó un discreto telón de fondo a la lectura de los nombres; después del último minuto de silencio, Wynton Marsalis tocó un solo de trompeta. Pero lo verdaderamente conmovedor afloraba de los nombres en sí, de la sinfonía de su diversidad. Los muertos del World Trade Center son un espejo de la pluralidad viviente de Nueva York: apellidos y rostros de origen europeo, latinoamericano, asiático, representantes de todo el espectro social, desde ejecutivos de finanzas hasta trabajadores de limpieza, hombres y mujeres de todas las razas y religiones.
Al igual que cinco años atrás, la mañana fue límpida y soleada, una hermosa mañana de fines de verano. Pero el atentado echó una sombra indeleble sobre la ciudad y sus habitantes. Según una encuesta encargada por el diario Newsday y el canal de noticias local NY1, la mayoría de los neoyorquinos espera que antes de 2010 se produzca un nuevo ataque terrorista, y el 56 por ciento cree que en ese caso ellos o sus parientes podrían ser las víctimas, un porcentaje bastante superior al 36 por ciento que teme lo mismo en el total del país. Para reducir el riesgo de un nuevo atentado, el 61 por ciento está dispuesto a renunciar a algunas de sus libertades personales, aunque esto no implica necesariamente aprobar medidas tales como la grabación indiscriminada de llamadas telefónicas por parte del gobierno. Y en cuanto al aumento de controles de seguridad en los aeropuertos para personas cuyo aspecto indique un posible origen del Medio Oriente, la opinión pública se divide en partes iguales: 45 por ciento está a favor y 45 en contra, mientras que el 10 por ciento restante no tiene una opinión definitiva. Estos porcentajes se verifican en todos los segmentos de la población, aunque los afro-americanos son los que más se oponen al incremento del racial profiling (caracterizar a los sospechosos según su raza), y los votantes republicanos los que más lo apoyan.
Paradójicamente, según revela un artículo publicado el domingo pasado por The New York Times, en los últimos dos años se ha producido una llegada record de inmigrantes musulmanes a los Estados Unidos. Gran parte de los nuevos arribos se concentra en Nueva York, en donde la tolerancia a las diferencias –incluyendo los códigos musulmanes de vestimenta más ortodoxos– sigue siendo la norma; éste, sin duda, es el mayor homenaje de los neoyorquinos a las víctimas del 11 de septiembre, el triunfo de la humanidad sobre el miedo.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72888-2006-09-12.html
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Mal trago para Blair en Beirut
PROTESTA LIBANESA CONTRA LA VISITA DEL PREMIER BRITANICO
Por Andy McSmith*
Desde Beirut, Martes, 12 de Septiembre de 2006
Una joven manifestante logró interrumpir una conferencia de prensa de Tony Blair al final de su viaje al Líbano, donde fue boicoteado por los líderes políticos de la poderosa comunidad chiíta. La llegada de Blair a Beirut provocó una manifestación de dos mil libaneses. Su automóvil pasó en medio de la policía fuertemente armada y de tropas que estaban en la calle para mantener bajo control a los manifestantes. Una gran parte de Beirut fue sellada con alambre de púas y barreras de cemento.
En un intento de escurrirse a través de la red de seguridad para interrumpir la conferencia de prensa conjunta con el primer ministro libanés, Fouad Siniora, una activista de la paz, Caoimhe Butterly, desenrolló una bandera que atacaba a Israel y declaró: “Esto es un insulto para los miles de libaneses que han muerto como resultado de las políticas de Blair”. Siniora recalcó que el Líbano era una democracia que toleraba la libertad de expresión. Y elogió el rol de Blair como mediador y dijo que el daño causado al Líbano durante el conflicto podría haber sido peor si no hubiera sido por su intervención.
Blair defendió su papel en el conflicto al insistir en que la paz podía llegar a Medio Oriente a través de un acuerdo firmado por Israel y Palestina, y que era necesario hablar con ambos lados. Blair debía reunirse con el vocero del Parlamento, Nabih Berri, que actúa como mediador entre Hezbolá y el gobierno. Pero el personal de Downing Street tuvo que admitir que la reunión se había suspendido. Berri, quien estaba en Ginebra durante el fin de semana, había pensado que no valía la pena regresar a Beirut para la cita. Los ministros de trabajo y energía del Líbano que están alineados con Hezbolá también se negaban públicamente a reunirse con Blair. El boicot chiíta sucede a continuación de la advertencia del domingo del clérigo Sayyed Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah de que Blair no es bienvenido.
Blair prometió 22 millones trescientos mil dólares para reparar los daños producidos por la guerra, que están estimados en 4800 millones de dólares, así como 20 millones de dólares para financiar la fuerza de paz de la ONU. El buque “HMS York” ayudará a patrullar la costa.
* 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
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Hamas y Al Fatah formarán un gobierno de unidad
El premier palestino y líder de Hamas, Ismail Haniya, sentó las bases de un nuevo gobierno con el presidente, Mahmud Abbas. Haniya continuará en el cargo. Buscan destrabar la ayuda internacional.
Por Juan Miguel Muñoz*
Desde Gaza, Martes, 12 de Septiembre de 2006
Saltó la sorpresa. Enfrentados en una lucha a menudo cruenta por el poder, el presidente palestino, Mahmud Abbas, y el primer ministro, el islamista Ismail Haniya, acordaron ayer las bases para la formación de un gobierno de unidad nacional cuya composición se conocerá en los próximos días. Sólo se anunció un detalle: Haniya, dirigente de Hamas, continuará ejerciendo como primer ministro.
Pretende Abbas que se levante el embargo económico sobre los territorios palestinos y retomar las negociaciones de paz con Israel. Pero todo apunta a que el Estado sionista no aceptará un gabinete en el que participe Hamas, que se resiste a reconocer explícitamente a Israel. Se impone la prudencia, porque nadie apostaba en Gaza, hace sólo 72 horas, por un acuerdo entre ambas facciones. El 27 de junio, el movimiento fundamentalista y Al Fatah, el partido del presidente, ya habían firmado un pacto para poner fin a las refriegas a balazos que acabaron con la vida de unos 20 policías y milicianos de ambos bandos. No se llevó entonces a la práctica.
Pero la destrucción de las infraestructuras civiles de Gaza tras la captura, el 25 de junio, del soldado Gilad Shalit –aún cautivo en la Franja– y el bloqueo económico a la Autoridad Palestina ejecutado por Israel y la comunidad internacional han conducido a los territorios ocupados a una situación calamitosa. El acuerdo anunciado ahora pretende convencer a los países occidentales de que levanten el embargo. Es imperioso un respiro. “Esperamos en los próximos días constituir un gobierno de unidad nacional”, comentó Abbas tras concluir una reunión, la segunda en 24 horas, con Haniya.
Pocos detalles se conocen del pacto. Algunos políticos y comentaristas apuntan que Abbas ha planteado un ultimátum a Haniya: o aceptaba la dimisión del actual gobierno o el presidente ejercería su potestad de disolver el Ejecutivo. Según informaron fuentes de ambos partidos, la iniciativa de la Liga Arabe aprobada en Beirut en 2002 es la base del acuerdo. Esta propuesta recoge el reconocimiento formal del Estado hebreo a cambio de la retirada completa israelí a las fronteras previas a la guerra de junio de 1967, tal como ordena la resolución 242 de Naciones Unidas. Es Tel Aviv, el que, sin duda, no aceptará devolver la soberanía del eventual Estado palestino Jerusalén Este, ocupada desde hace 39 años junto al resto de Cisjordania, donde la expansión de las colonias es imparable.
Aquí comienzan algunas de las vaguedades no aclaradas ayer. Hamas acepta sólo parcialmente ese plan de la Liga Arabe. Está dispuesto a admitir la creación de un Estado palestino dentro de las fronteras anteriores a la Guerra de los Seis Días, lo que no significa admitir la legitimidad del Estado sionista. Para despejar dudas, el portavoz fundamentalista, Sami Abu Zuhri, enfatizó explícitamente: “Hamas continúa teniendo su agenda política. Nunca reconoceremos la legitimidad de la ocupación”. Y para la organización fundamentalista, no sólo Cisjordania y Gaza son territorios ocupados. Todo el territorio de Israel lo es. Y también está por verse cómo toman el acuerdo en Al Fatah, un partido indisciplinado y segmentado en infinidad de facciones que cuenta con cabecillas que rechazan sin tapujos toda colaboración con Hamas.
La que está muy clara es la actitud invariable de Israel. Para la administración de Ehud Olmert, la iniciativa es totalmente insuficiente. El portavoz del Ministerio de Exteriores, Mark Regev, afirmó que el gobierno de concertación podría crear “un nuevo impulso al proceso de paz” siempre que se cumplieran los requisitos que exige el Cuarteto –Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, Rusia y la ONU– desde que Hamas se hiciera con el triunfo en las elecciones legislativas de enero. A saber: reconocimiento explícito de Israel, desarme de la milicia de Hamas y aceptación de los acuerdos suscritos por la Organización para la Liberación de Palestina (OLP). Una tríada que los fundamentalistas no pueden digerir, so pena de cometer suicidio político.
Sí parece seguro que el actual gobierno, compuesto por varios de los más importantes jefes de Hamas, tiene las horas contadas. El portavoz del presidente, Nabil Abu Rudeina, precisó que antes del jueves Abbas firmará el decreto de disolución del Ejecutivo, nombrado a finales de marzo. Sin embargo, es imposible aventurar si el futuro gabinete tendrá éxito en su pretensión de que el asedio sobre Gaza termine. Primero, porque la comunidad internacional puede considerar que no se han cumplido sus exigencias. Y en segundo lugar, porque la turbulenta política palestina es impredecible. Sin ir más lejos, horas después de conocerse el pacto dos hombres morían a balazos en un choque armado entre miembros de Al Fatah y Hamas en Gaza.
* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72866-2006-09-12.html
Página/12:
Ser deportivo
Por Rodrigo Fresán
Desde Barcelona, Martes, 12 de Septiembre de 2006
UNO ¿Cómo interpretar el súbito interés por los deportes en alguien a quien jamás le interesaron en absoluto? ¿Reblandecimiento cerebral? ¿Iluminación súbita? ¿O tal vez la certeza de ver allí algo que los fanáticos, enceguecidos por una pasión de décadas, no ven ni verán jamás? Quién sabe... Lo cierto es que de un tiempo a esta parte paso demasiadas horas frente al televisión contemplando partidos de disciplinas cuyos reglamentos no conozco alcanzando lo más parecido que jamás estaré de un nirvana. Y –extremista absoluto– lo que más me entusiasma son las carreras de Fórmula-1 porque, claro, nunca tuve auto ni sé manejar. Hay algo ahí que me interesa mucho: el peligro constante (“Una cosa es errar un penal y otra salirte de una curva a 300 km por hora”, reza la inmortal frase de mi héroe absoluto, Fernando Alonso), el odio entre pilotos, las intrigas shakespeareanas de las escuderías, el obvio complot de la Ferrari y aledaños para derrotar al españolito bocazas y regalarle un último título/despedida al blondo Michael “Kaiser” Schumacher. Y todas esas vueltas hipnóticas y las taradeces que dicen los locutores para llenar tiempo y espacio y ruido de motores. No sé, mis lentos domingos son mejores así y...
DOS ...el otro día unos amigos (para preservar sus verdaderos nombres diré aquí que se llaman Laia Salvat y Diego Gándara) me regalaron (por motivos que no vienen al caso) mi primera pelota de fútbol. Hubo pelotones y pelotitas en mi infancia, es cierto. Pero nunca una “de verdad”, “reglamentaria”, “como la del Mundial”, etc. Esa noche tuve un sueño kafkiano. Soñé que empezaba a patear la pelota y “hacer jueguito” y a cabecear y que, sorpresa, de pronto descubría que yo era un crack, un genio absoluto del fútbol. Tan sorprendido como ilusionado, utilizaba mis contactos entre los prohombres y socios vitalicios de la Ciudad Condal e iba a probarme al Barça, donde deslumbraba al director técnico y jugadores, pero el equipo médico dictaminaba que yo ya estaba viejo para jugar, aunque me ofrecían un puesto de “ideólogo místico ilustrado”. Cuando preguntaba qué era eso, Ronaldinho –puro diente, cara de Barón Sardónicus– me alcanzaba un espejo y yo me miraba y mi rostro ya no era mi rostro. Era el rostro de Valdano. Ahí me desperté gritando...
TRES ...y a la mañana siguiente leí un artículo de Enrique Vila-Matas con el magnífico título de “Leves malestares graves” (categoría y definición formidable para englobar todas esas pequeñeces que nos molestan e inquietan mucho) donde el escritor afirmaba: “Me agradaría, por ejemplo, que volvieran los partidos con dos puntos en juego y que se jugaran sólo los domingos a las cinco de la tarde, como antes. Y no me agrada, por ejemplo, toda celebración de un gol que no esté hecha con un sobrio y humilde puño al aire”. Supongo que a lo que se refería Vila-Matas era a que ciertas cuestiones deportivas deberían volver a sus cauces naturales en lugar de cubrirlo y ahogarlo todo y, sí, tal vez mi propensión freak-deportiva tenga que ver o se deba a esta constante polución mediática en donde todo se deportiviza. Ejemplo: el pasado domingo, el canal de televisión español Telecinco insertó en la promoción del gran Premio de Monza fragmentos del film Alatriste (competitivos a muerte, el PSOE en pleno fue al estreno, mientras que nadie del PP se acercó al cine) queriendo relacionar así la gesta histórica best-selleresca del capitán ibérico con el duelo entre Alonso y Schumacher (sin darse cuenta de que, claro, lo único que consiguieron es que al españolito, como a Alatriste, le reventara el motor antes del final). Iguales símiles bélico-fraternos se utilizaron para festejar el triunfo de la selección de basquet o denostar la agonía de la selección de fútbol con un jugador llamado Raúl que, cada vez que lo veo y oigo haciendo declaraciones, me pone casi tan nervioso como Bush II en conferencia de prensa diciendo la palabra terror todas las veces que puede, como si fuera suya, como si cobrara derechos de autor cada vez que la pronuncia.
CUATRO Y completamente enfermo, fanatizado, hundido y eufórico, combato la ausencia de carreras o de magnos eventos de estadio atletizando la realidad. Lo mío es mucho más inofensivo que eso de alquilar un toro para que corra suelto por las calles y atropelle y cornee a diestra y siniestra (el más famoso y mortal de España se llama Ratón y cuesta caro llevarlo a las fiestas de tu pueblo) o –aunque no lo crean, lo vi el otro día en un noticiero– jugar al fútbol con un toro como pelota: el truco está en atraerlo hacia el campo contrario y que se meta en el arco del rival. Lo mío es mucho más inofensivo. Tonterías como pensar que la recientemente liberada prisionera Natascha Kamusch (no sé por qué, pero no termina de cerrarme en su versión de la jugada) tiene cara de gimnasta. O que el cada vez más alucinante y alucinado Andrés Manuel López Obrador sería un más que interesante marino solitario de esos que salen a dar la vuelta al mundo sin que nadie los extrañe. O que Günter Grass (una vez más, foto tamaño acontecimiento histórico en la primera plana de El País del domingo, un perro le olisquea la entrepierna mientras el alemán posa junto a su pipa) es ya el indiscutible campeón en el fino arte de la confesión retrasada. Eso sí: comienza a cansar un poco la repetición de su rutina, y no estaría de más que la embelleciera añadiendo detalles como que entre sus tareas se contaba la de pasear a Blondi, can de Hitler que, dicen, levantaba la patita para saludar.
Y están los que definen el deporte como “la imposición del orden sobre el caos” (Anthony Storr) o “aquello que nada tiene que ver con el juego limpio” (George Orwell) o “algo que puede ser utilizado para el bien o para el mal” (Aldous Huxley) o “el principal motivo para que el mundo corra siempre barranca abajo, algo que supuestamente promueve el entendimiento mundial pero que está en manos de idiotas” (E. M. Forster) y “algo que tan solo pueden alabar las personas que detesten toda noción de sentido común”.
En cualquier caso, espero que se me pase pronto y escribo todo esto –replays constantes en la pantalla del televisor– a cinco años del torneo aquel en que varios aviones dieron en el blanco de varios edificios.
Unos y otros, todos nosotros, seguimos perdiendo, claro.
Hasta la derrota siempre.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-72889-2006-09-12.html
The Independent: As America mourned,
the impact of the 'war on terror' was felt worldwide
By David Usborne in New York
Published: 12 September 2006
It was a day to mark the catastrophe of five years earlier, to remember - as if any could forget - the tragedy that devastated the United States and changed the world. But remembrance had no monopoly, because yesterday - as over the weeks and months stretching back to 11 September 2001 - old suffering in America was being joined by the new across the globe.
In the United States, the calendar demanded reflection and prayer five years after Islamic extremists perpetrated attacks on American landmarks with hi-jacked airliners which killed 2,973 people and catapulted the nation and its allies into a complex and bloody struggle against terror that still has no end.
At a sombre ceremony at Ground Zero, the still-barren hole in Lower Manhattan where the felled Twin Towers once stood, spouses and partners of victims took turns to read out the full roster of names of those who died on 11 September 2001.
Moments of silence were observed at 8.46am and 9.03am, when the two aircraft struck the towers, and again at 9.59am and 10.29am, when they collapsed.
Yet the much larger tally of destruction and death spawned by 9/11 and by the campaign of retribution launched in its name by the US only grows, and yesterday, with more scenes of violence and sorrow in Iraq, in Afghanistan and in Britain, was no different. War makes no concessions to anniversaries.
If some knew instantly that the consequences of 9/11 would be long-lasting and bloody, the future we now inhabit was crystallised with a vow by George Bush six days later to "rid the world of evil-doers". He said: " This crusade, this war on terrorism is gonna take awhile. And the American people must be patient." With one word, "crusade", he seemed to set up a clash of religions and civilisations, a sentiment he echoed last night as he talked of a "struggle for civilisation".
In Britain yesterday the grief was fresh as the families of five of 19 British soldiers killed in Afghanistan in recent days gathered at RAF Brize Norton to receive the bodies of their loved ones. Flag-draped coffins of the five - Pte Craig O'Donnell, L/Cpl Paul Muirhead, L/Cpl Luke McCulloch, Fijian Ranger Anare Draiva and Cpl Mark Wright - were lifted from a C-17 transporter.
In Afghanistan, mourning and violence collided as a suicide bomber attacked the funeral for a provincial governor murdered the previous day. Six cabinet ministers attending the funeral were unhurt, but six other people were killed. The country is experiencing the worst violence since the US coalition forced out the Taliban regime in the weeks after 9/11.
Violence in Iraq continues unabated. Yesterday, 12 people, mostly recruits to the Iraqi army, were killed when a suicide bomber attacked their minibus in Baghdad. Across the city, Saddam Hussein, the former dictator ousted by the US-ledinvasion of March 2003, was again voicing defiance in a courtroom, where he faces charges of genocide against Iraqi Kurds.
"All the witnesses said in the courtroom that they were oppressed because they were Kurds," Saddam shouted. "They're trying to create strife between the people of Iraq. They're trying to create division between Kurds and Arabs, and this is what I want the people of Iraq to know."
Surely also damaged in these five years has been the cause of Middle East peace and the reputation of Mr Bush's first ally, Tony Blair. Lebanon this summer was engulfed in war, and Mr Blair, who was seen to side with Mr Bush in delaying the push for a ceasefire, found himself besieged yesterday by protesters during a visit to Beirut. In an effort to repair a tattered legacy, the Prime Minister vowed again to dedicate his remaining tenure to ending strife in the region.
Yet the spectre of violence looms large still, with al-Qa'ida using the anniversary to issue a new video urging yet more attacks - against the UN for its role in Lebanon, against the US, against its allies in the Persian Gulf and against Israel.
In the video, the deputy al-Qa'ida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned Western leaders: "Do not bother yourselves with defending your forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. These forces are doomed to failure. You have to bolster your defences in two areas ... the first is the Gulf, from which you will be evicted, God willing, after your defeat in Iraq, and then your economic doom will be achieved."
But in America, where in New York the sky was the same clear blue as on the day of the Twin Towers massacre and where tolling church bells ushered in the morning, these and the other consequences of President Bush's " crusade" were set aside. It was a day for mourning its own.
Mr Bush, who on Sunday quietly laid wreaths in two reflecting pools placed on the footprints of the towers at Ground Zero, observed the first two moments of silence with the first lady, Laura Bush, at a historic fire station, known as Fort Pitt, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
Eschewing the low profile he has kept on previous anniversaries, Mr Bush later left New York en route to the field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where United flight 93 crashed, killing 40 passengers and crew, and thereafter to the Pentagon, where 184 people died after American Airlines flight 77 ploughed into the building.
In a televised address from the Oval Office last night, Mr Bush said: " America did not ask for this war, and every American wishes it were over. And so do I. But the war is not over, and it will not be over until either we or the extremists emerge victorious."
"If we do not defeat these enemies now, we will leave our children to face a Middle East overrun by terrorist states and radical dictators armed with nuclear weapons. We are in a war that will set the course for this new century and determine the destiny of millions across the world."
Losing the war
* Most Britons believe the war against terrorism is being lost at home, according to an NOP poll for the BBC. Only 24 per cent think it is being won in the UK, while 53 per cent say it is being lost. Fifty-five per cent of people believe the Government has aligned itself too closely with US foreign policy, compared with 11 per cent who believe the UK should be more closely linked to the US. Equally, a majority, 56 per cent, believes the fight against international terrorism is being lost abroad, while 20 per cent of people believe the fight is being won. The results reflect those in a YouGov poll published yesterday.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1521924.ece
The Nation:
ABC 9/11 Docudrama's Right-Wing Roots
by MAX BLUMENTHAL
[posted online on September 11, 2006]
On Friday, September 8, just forty-eight hours before ABC planned to air its so-called "docudrama," The Path to 9/11, Robert Iger, CEO of ABC's corporate parent, the Walt Disney Company, was presented with incontrovertible evidence outlining the involvement of that film's screenwriter and director in a concerted right-wing effort to blame former President Bill Clinton for allowing the 9/11 attacks to take place. Iger told a source close to ABC that he was "deeply troubled" by the information and claimed he had no previous knowledge of the institutional right-wing ties of The Path to 9/11's creators. He reportedly said that he has commenced an internal investigation to verify the role of the film's creators in deliberately advancing disinformation through ABC.
After stating that she was "looking into" my questions about the production of The Path to 9/11, ABC Vice President of Media Relations Hope Hartman declined to comment on this story.
All week, ABC has withstood withering criticism for The Path to 9/11's imaginative screenwriting that depicts Clinton and members of his administration either ignoring threats from Al Qaeda or botching operations that could have eliminated terror-master Osama bin Laden. Iger conceded in a September 5 press release that key scenes in The Path to 9/11 were indeed fabricated, calling the film "a dramatization, not a documentary." Behind the scenes, Iger reportedly made personal assurances to some of the film's most prominent critics that those scenes would be edited out. But even though some deceptive footage was cut from the original, much of its falsified version of events leading up to 9/11 remains.
Iger now bears ultimate responsibility for authorizing the product of a well-honed propaganda operation--a network of little-known right-wingers working from within Hollywood to counter its supposedly liberal bias. This is the network within the ABC network. Its godfather is far-right activist David Horowitz, who has worked for more than a decade to establish a right-wing presence in Hollywood and to discredit mainstream film and TV production. On this project, a secretive evangelical religious right group long associated with Horowitz, founded by The Path to 9/11's director, David Cunningham, that aims to "transform Hollywood" in line with its messianic vision, has taken the lead.
Before The Path to 9/11 entered the production stage, Disney/ABC signed David Cunningham as the film's director. Cunningham is no ordinary Hollywood journeyman. He is in fact the son of Loren Cunningham, founder of the right-wing evangelical group Youth With A Mission (YWAM). According to Sara Diamond's book Spiritual Warfare, during the 1980's YWAM "sought to gain influence within the Republican party" while assisting authoritarian governments in South Africa and Central America. Cunningham, Diamond noted, was a follower of Christian Reconstructionism, an extreme current of evangelical theology that advocates using stealth political methods to put the United States under the control of Biblical law and jettison the Constitution. Cunningham instilled his radical ideology in young missionaries by sending them to "Discipleship Training School." A former student of Cunningham's school claimed "similarities between cult mind controlling techniques and the [Discipleship Training School] program instituted by YWAM."
When the young Cunningham entered his father's ministry, he helped found an auxiliary group called The Film Institute (TFI). According to its mission statement, TFI is "dedicated to a Godly transformation and revolution TO and THROUGH the Film and Television industry." Cunningham has placed over a dozen interns from Youth With A Mission's Discipleship Training School in film industry jobs "so that they can begin to impact and transform Hollywood from the inside out," according to a YWAM report.
Last June, Cunningham's TFI announced it was producing its first film, mysteriously titled Untitled History Project. "TFI's first project is a doozy," a newsletter to YWAM members read. "Simply being referred to as: The Untitled History Project, it is already being called the television event of the decade and not one second has been put to film yet. Talk about great expectations!" (A web edition of the newsletter was mysteriously deleted last week after its publication by the blogger Digby, but has been cached on Google at the link above).
The following month, on July 28, the New York Post reported that ABC was filming a mini-series "under a shroud of secrecy" about the 9/11 attacks. "At the moment, ABC officials are calling the miniseries 'Untitled Commission Report' and producers refer to it as the 'Untitled History Project,'" the Post noted.
Early on, Cunningham had recruited a young Iranian-American screenwriter named Cyrus Nowrasteh to write the script of his secretive Untitled film. Not only is Nowrasteh an outspoken conservative, he is also a fervent member of the emerging network of right-wing people burrowing into the film industry with ulterior sectarian political and religious agendas, like Cunningham.
Nowrasteh's conservatism was on display when he appeared as a featured speaker at the Liberty Film Festival (LFF), an annual event founded in 2004 to premier and promote conservative-themed films supposedly too "politically incorrect" to gain acceptance at mainstream film festivals. This June, while The Path to 9/11 was being filmed, LFF founders Govindini Murty and Jason Apuzzo--both friends of Nowrasteh-- announced they were "partnering" with Horowitz. Indeed, the 2006 LFF is listed as "A Program of the David Horowitz Freedom Center."
Since the inauguration of Bill Clinton in 1992, Horowitz has labored to create a network of politically active conservatives in Hollywood. His Hollywood nest centers around his Wednesday Morning Club, a weekly meet-and-greet session for Left Coast conservatives that has been graced with speeches by the likes of Newt Gingrich, Victor Davis Hanson and Christopher Hitchens. The group's headquarters are at the offices of Horowitz's Center for the Study of Popular Culture, a "think tank" bankrolled for years with millions by right-wing sugar daddies like billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. (Scaife financed the Arkansas Project, a $2.3 million dirty tricks operation that included paying sources for negative stories about Bill Clinton that turned out to be false.)
In the immediate wake of the 9/11 attacks, Horowitz led the right's campaign to pin the blame for attacks on Clinton. On February 19, 2002, Horowitz's organization mailed 1,500 lengthy pamphlets to major media outlets which claimed to expose how "the left" in general and Clinton in particular had "undermined America's security," thus causing 9/11. Two years later, Horowitz penned a lengthy manifesto for his FrontPageMag blaming Clinton once again for having "accepted defeat" in the fight against Al Qaeda. Horowitz singled out Clinton's National Security Council Director, Samuel "Sandy" Berger, as especially culpable for allowing the terror threat to fester, casting him as "a veteran of the Sixties 'anti-war' movement" who "abetted the Communist victories in Vietnam and Cambodia."
This year, Horowitz's Hollywood hothouse finally spawned his most potent anti-Clinton propaganda device. With the LFF under Horowitz's control, his political machine began drumming up support for Cunningham and Nowrasteh's Untitled project, which finally was revealed last August as The Path to 9/11.
Like Iger, Horowitz has pleaded ignorance about the sectarian agenda of the film's creators. Responding to an article I wrote for the Huffington Post exposing Horowitz's involvement in The Path to 9/11 (on which this article is adapted), he claimed in a blog post, "In fact, I never heard of David Cunningham or his group before reading about them in Max's hilarious column."
However, Horowitz's public relations blitz on behalf of the film began at least a month ago with an August 16 interview with Nowrasteh on his FrontPageMag webzine In the interview, Nowrasteh described how The Path to 9/11 was filmed "under the very able direction of David L. Cunningham." (Doesn't Horowitz read his own magazine?)
Nowrasteh also foreshadowed the film's assault on Clinton's record on fighting terror. "The 9/11 report details the Clinton's administration's response--or lack of response--to Al Qaida and how this emboldened Bin Laden to keep attacking American interests," Nowrasteh told FrontPageMag's Jamie Glazov. "There simply was no response. Nothing."
A week later, ABC hosted LFF co-founder Murty and several other conservative operatives at an advance screening of The Path to 9/11. (While ABC provided 900 DVDs of the film to conservatives, Clinton Administration officials and reviewers from mainstream outlets were denied them.) Murty returned with a glowing review published by FrontPageMag that emphasized the film's partisan nature. "The Path to 9/11 is one of the best, most intelligent, most pro-American miniseries I've ever seen on TV, and conservatives should support it and promote it as vigorously as possible," Murty wrote. As a result of the special access granted by ABC, Murty's article was the first published review of The Path to 9/11, preceding those by the New York Times and Los Angeles Times by more than a week.
Murty followed her review with a blast e-mail to conservative websites such as Liberty Post and Free Republic on September 1 urging their readers to throw their weight behind ABC's mini-series. "Please do everything you can to spread the word about this excellent miniseries," Murty wrote, "so that The Path to 9/11 gets the highest ratings possible when it airs on September 10 & 11! If this show gets huge ratings, then ABC will be more likely to produce pro-American movies and TV shows in the future!"
Murty's efforts were supported by Appuzo, who handles LFF's heavily-trafficked blog, Libertas. Appuzo was instrumental in marketing The Path to 9/11 to conservatives, writing in a blog post on September 2, "Make no mistake about what this film does, among other things: it places the question of the Clinton Administration's culpability for the 9/11 attacks front and center.... Bravo to Cyrus Nowrasteh and David Cunningham for creating this gritty, stylish and gripping piece of entertainment."
When a group of leading Senate Democrats sent a letter to Iger urging him to cancel The Path to 9/11 because of its glaring factual errors and distortions, Apuzzo launched a retaliatory campaign to paint the Democrats as foes of free speech. "Here at LIBERTAS we urge the public to make noise over this, and to demand that Democrats back down," he wrote on September 7. "What is at stake is nothing short of the 1st Amendment."
At FrontPageMag, Horowitz singled out Nowrasteh as the victim of an unconstitutional crime. "The attacks by former president Bill Clinton, former Clinton Administration officials and Democratic US senators on Cyrus Nowrasteh's ABC mini-series The Path to 9/11 "are easily the gravest and most brazen and damaging governmental attacks on the civil liberties of ordinary Americans since 9/11," Horowitz declared. The next day, Horowitz reposted his 2004 manifesto holding Clinton responsible for 9/11, explaining that, "With tonight's premiere of the ABC-TV movie The Path to 9/11, the truth [sic] impact of the Left's policies in bringing about the nation's worst terrorist attack is finally coming to light."
Although Iger and ABC trimmed as much as thirty minutes of deceptive footage from Sunday's episode of The Path to 9/11, it appeared nonetheless as a mostly faithful adaptation of Horowitz's anti-Clinton essay. Indeed, The Path to 9/11 still contained its most egregiously false scene, in which Sandy Berger refuses to authorize a CIA officer's request to capture bin Laden, who is completely surrounded by rival Northern Alliance soldiers. After the halted (and totally fictional) operation, "Kirk," the (completely imaginary) CIA op played by Donny Wahlberg of New Kids on the Block fame, stands on a hilltop beside the Northern Alliance's quixotic warlord, Ahmed Shah Massoud.
"Are there any men left in Washington?" the script has a frustrated Massoud asking "Kirk." "Or just cowards?"
"Cowards?" The question is quietly being raised in the corridors of ABC-TV's headquarters in Burbank, California. Besieged in his lush office, Iger privately agonizes that he was complacent about an attack on his network's reputation by a band of political terrorists. But when faced with his own version of the Taliban, he appeased them.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/path_to_911
The Nation:
Chaos and Fear Stalk Afghanistan on 9/11 Anniversary
by CHRISTIAN PARENTI
[posted online on September 11, 2006]
Kabul
The fifth anniversary of September 11 finds Afghanistan in a deepening crisis. Security is deteriorating in most parts of the country, due to Taliban insurgency and general lawlessness. Economic development is largely stalled in the south and moving very slowly in the north. Kabul is mired in corruption and layer upon layer of dysfunctional bureaucracy. Bribery is so rampant that even sections of the government have to bribe each other to get simple tasks accomplished.
Most disturbing is the deteriorating security environment, which was punctuated by a massive suicide car bomb that ripped into a US convoy on September 8, a mere 300 yards from the US Embassy and just in front of the main monument honoring the Mujahadeen leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, who was killed by al Qaida two days before the attack on the World Trade Center in New York. The suicide attack killed two US soldiers, destroying their vehicle and sixteen Afghan civilians. Dozens more were wounded.
"Now everyone is very sad in Kabul," said a young man who lives near where the suicide bomb struck. "Many people were injured. Even my brother called from Belgium, he was so worried."
Two days later the Taliban killed the governor of the relatively stable, eastern province of Paktia with another suicide bomb. The victim, Governor Abdul Hakim Taniwal, was an Afghan ex-pat, a former sociologist who gave up a comfortable life in Australia to help reconstruct his country. His murder was the forty-eighth suicide bombing this year. Today, at his funeral, another bomb claimed at least five more lives.
In the week leading up to the 9/11 anniversary several rockets hit central Kabul and the airport and one NATO solider was killed by a suicide bomb. At least one other IED was discovered before detonation. And now the US military has announced that they believe a "suicide cell" is operating inside the capital--so sealing Kabul's four main entrance points might not prevent further attacks.
In the south, British-led NATO forces are engaged in an all-out fight against Taliban guerrillas, in the grandly named Operation Medusa. Since early August NATO forces (know locally under the acronym ISAF) have had twenty-three soliders of various nationalities killed and an undisclosed number wounded. Six ISAF troops have died in the last week alone.
Taliban fighters in southern Zabul province interviewed by The Nation in February explained that their war as a jihad against the corruption of the Kabul government and what they see as oppressive foreign troops who do not respect Islam or Pashtun culture.
The British military claims to be super-adroit at handling restive natives, but many accounts portray the British-led counterinsurgency in the south as badly botched. On September 9 and 10, NATO forces used artillery and close air support to kill ninety-four insurgents one day and ninety-two the next, describing the second battle among villages and orchards as a "Taliban counter-attack."
There are reports of civilian casualties filtering from the Operation Medusa battleground, but follow-up investigation by journalists--particularly non-Afghan reporters--is impossible as the Taliban are almost totally hostile to the press.
At a September 10 press briefing, NATO spokesman Mark Laity attempted to assure journalists that there would be a full investigation into civilian deaths, while an officer in the south simply affirmed that the Taliban in the Panjwayi-Zhari area of Kandahar Province "have suffered significant attrition."
"They don't seem to understand that if you kill one person you make an enemy of the whole family," said Omar, an increasingly pessimistic Kabul businessman.
As hostility among the Pashtun tribes of the South grows fiercer, NATO tactics have escalated to ever more lethal levels.
One British officer, Captain Leo Docherty, a former aide de camp to the commander of UK forces in Helmand province, was so disgusted by the war that he quit the British Army last month, calling the campaign in Afghanistan "grotesquely clumsy" and "a textbook case of how to screw up a counterinsurgency." He accused UK and US forces of bombing and strafing villages.
Such high-tech brutality is no doubt partly fueled by NATO's failure to fill its original commitments: ISAF's nearly 20,000 troops are thinly spread, operating across 85 percent of the country.
Just south of Kabul, in Logar province, residents report that the Taliban are in control of whole districts; their power is based in part on local loyalties to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, a warlord who was once backed by the CIA but is now with the Taliban, and partly on their attempts to eradicate corrupt government officials and allow poppy cultivation--both of which are very popular with poor farmers.
Economically the situation in Afghanistan is little better. Kabul has, by some estimates, more that doubled in size since 2001 and is now home to an estimated 4 million people most of whom live in squalid conditions. There are only about four hours of electric power on most days. Water is also in short supply, most slum dwellers have to buy it from tanker trucks; in the countryside drought and lack of infrastructure are withering crops. Many NGOs continue to scale back: during the May 29 Kabul riots international officers were attacked and NGO staff (almost all local Afghans) were getting killed on the roads. These murders rarely make the news.
Several key highway links have been paved and that has improved commerce and communications. But the road from Kabul to Kandahar, which is now good, suffered from very bad security.
In the face of all this, NATO member states meeting in Warsaw acknowledged the need to fulfill their commitments in Afghanistan by sending more troops--but they did not actually promise to do so.
The sad contradiction of Afghanistan is that many of the individuals and NGOs that joined the reconstruction effort here were not supportive of the American-led assault for fear that it would serve as a stepping-stone to Iraq and quickly devolve into a neocolonial occupation. But the fall of the Taliban was also seen as Afghanistan's last, best chance at avoiding several more decades of anarchy, privation and civil war. That hope is now fading.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/afghanistan
The New Yorker:
PRISONERS
by George Packer
Issue of 2006-09-18
If only political jujitsu were a useful weapon in the war on terror, the President’s speech last Wednesday, in the East Room of the White House, would have struck a powerful blow on behalf of what he called “the cause of humanity, against those who seek to impose the darkness of tyranny and terror upon the entire world.” In just thirty-seven minutes, he changed the subject from Iraq to terrorism, flummoxing a newly confident opposition; he basked in the applause of an audience that included September 11th families as he vowed to put Al Qaeda leaders on trial at Guantánamo, where, he announced, they had just been moved from the C.I.A.’s secret overseas prisons; he reassured the world that the United States doesn’t torture prisoners in these “black sites,” while essentially reserving the right to continue to do so. He simultaneously played the good cop and the bad cop, the principled advocate of the Geneva conventions and the hardboiled defender of “an alternative set of procedures” (which went unspecified). And he forced the Democrats into an agonizingly familiar position: the preëlection defensive crouch. A bill that the White House sent to Congress last week presented members with the choice of voting for the President’s military tribunals, which would allow the use of evidence gained by coercion and deprive defendants of the right to hear all the evidence against them, or trying to rebut election-eve commercials that accuse them of wanting to see the likes of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed go unpunished.
It was the kind of performance—part inspirational, part fear-purveying, part bullying—that used to be this President’s signature. Its deftness and its timing were reminiscent of his successful effort in the weeks before the last midterm elections, in 2002, to force his opponents into rushed and politically difficult votes on the Homeland Security bill and the Iraq-war resolution. In Washington last week, the political class shook its head in admiration—you can’t count him out yet! Within hours of the speech, the Republican leadership in Congress, which had been making unhappy noises at the smell of its own potential demise, reverted to its coöperative role and promised to bring the White House bill up for a vote in a matter of weeks, or even days. Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham, whose alternative proposal would ban the tribunals from admitting coerced or secret evidence, will either stand up to their party leaders or find a way to declare technical victory while caving in. After five years, justice for Al Qaeda is suddenly so urgent that it has to be guaranteed before, say, November 7th. The Democrats hit back, but you could hear the quaver—not again!
Whether or not the public mood shifts to the President in time for the midterms, the recovery of his political skills will be of no help in the long struggle against radical Islam. In fact, it will be harmful. Everything about the speech that sparkled with tactical cleverness in terms of domestic politics contributed to an ongoing strategic disaster around the world. “The United States does not torture,” the President said. “I have not authorized it and I will not authorize it.” This was a lie, and most of the world knows it. The lie, and the reality that the phrase “an alternative set of procedures” is meant to conceal—simulated drowning, sleep and sensory deprivation, induced hypothermia, beatings, and other forms of torture that are responsible for some of the dozens of detainee deaths considered to be homicides—have done more to embolden America’s enemies and estrange its friends than anything Osama bin Laden might say or do.
The speech was full of distortions: for example, the President’s statement that the prisoners at Guantánamo are hard-core terrorists and that “we have in place a rigorous process to insure those held at Guantánamo Bay belong at Guantánamo” (innocent men have languished there for years); and his implication that the C.I.A.’s harsh interrogation methods led to the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (he was arrested on the basis of a tip that the C.I.A. received from an Al Qaeda walk-in willing to help the American side). Abu Zubaydah, the terrorist subject of most of the President’s assertions, was described by some C.I.A. sources as a mentally ill Al Qaeda factotum. The President asked the public to accept on faith his assertions that terrorist plots were foiled and other terrorists seized thanks to the harsh methods. Perhaps, in some of these cases, Bush is telling the truth, but there’s no compelling reason to think so.
By now, the President’s relentless exploitation of September 11th has made even non-partisan Americans skeptical of his claims. In the Administration’s current public-relations blitz, Bush has invoked Hitler, Lenin, and wars for civilization, while Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld compared Iraq-war critics to Nazi appeasers circa 1938. The purpose of the rhetoric is not to persuade—if the Administration believed in argument on the merits, Bush would have to defend torture—but to make reasoned debate impossible. With one half of the country whipped into a state of fear and the other half sunk in cynicism, Americans can scarcely think or talk clearly about whether, five years on, we need a profound change in strategy.
At almost exactly the same hour last week that the President was speaking in the East Room, Lieutenant General John (Jeff) Kimmons, the Army’s deputy chief of staff for intelligence, was briefing reporters at the Pentagon on the military’s new field manual for “human intelligence collector operations.” The manual spells out which interrogation techniques will be forbidden. “Interrogators may not force a detainee to be naked, perform sexual acts, or pose in a sexual manner,” General Kimmons said, in exactly the specific language that the President refuses to use. “They cannot beat or electrically shock or burn them or inflict other forms of physical pain, any form of physical pain. They may not use water boarding.” When the General was asked whether he thought it was a mistake not to classify the list of permitted techniques, he showed that some members of the government and the military have learned from the mistakes of the past few years: the need for transparency, for working with allies, he said, is greater than the need for secrecy. And when a reporter asked whether some of the now forbidden forms of torture might have been useful in gaining information, General Kimmons directly contradicted what his Commander-in-Chief was saying at the White House:
No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years, hard years, tells us that. And, moreover, any piece of intelligence which is obtained under duress, through the use of abusive techniques, would be of questionable credibility, and additionally it would do more harm than good when it inevitably became known that abusive practices were used. And we can’t afford to go there. Some of our most significant successes on the battlefield have been—in fact, I would say all of them, almost categorically all of them, have accrued from expert interrogators using mixtures of authorized humane interrogation practices, in clever ways that you would hope Americans would use them, to push the envelope within the bookends of legal, moral, and ethical, now as further refined by this field manual. So we don’t need abusive practices in there.
Last week, in the guise of calling for fair trials, the President demanded that Congress give him the power to go on torturing detainees in secret prisons and use the evidence obtained against them. And last week the Army honorably closed the holes in moral conduct that the President, his counsel, the Vice-President, the Justice Department, and the Secretary of Defense pried open shortly after September 11th. It did so not only to remove the stain on its reputation and to protect its soldiers but because it cares more about the war than about the next election.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/060918ta_talk_packer
ZNet | South Asia
India and the quest for world order
by Siddharth Varadarajan; The Hindu; September 11, 2006
IN INTERNATIONAL affairs, minor details often tell us more about the big picture than ponderous declarations and weighty documents. Next week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will travel to Brasilia and Havana for important meetings aimed at cementing India's trilateral relationship with Brazil and South Africa as well as its role in the Non-Aligned Movement. No doubt the visit will be a huge success. But on the long flight back home, where do you think Dr. Singh's aeroplane will make a fuel halt? Not Africa, which lies bang in the middle and which the Ministry of External Affairs and a large number of Indian companies have assiduously been cultivating, but Frankfurt.
Frankfurt? In the old days, the joke among wags was that Indian politicians liked a Zurich stopover to check up on their numbered accounts. Fortunately, Dr. Singh has no such accounts. Unfortunately, what he also doesn't have are advisors with imagination.
More than a dozen African countries lie on a straight line from Cuba to India and any one of them would have been more than willing to host the Indian Prime Minister for a brief unofficial or even official visit. Some of these countries, like oil-rich Chad, for example, have a lot of fuel and are even looking for new partners after having just thrown out Chevron-Texaco and Petronas. Sudan, too, has oil, some of which India has already invested in. Then there is Senegal, where the Tatas have a major presence and where Indian public sector companies are expected to play a major role in renovating the country's railways.
These are all countries where India is engaged diplomatically and economically. The only element missing is political, which could help to introduce a step change in the relationship. Compare the Indian approach with that of the Chinese. Hu Jintao, the President of China, has been in power for just a year longer than Dr. Singh. But he has already visited Africa twice on extended tours compared to the Indian Prime Minister's score of zero.
As for Latin America, the last time an Indian Prime Minister paid a bilateral visit there was in 1968, when Indira Gandhi travelled to Chile and Argentina. Her planned trip to Peru was cancelled because of General Velasco Alvarado's coup d'etat, and the experience evidently proved so traumatic for South Block that the entire continent remained terra incognita for subsequent Indian heads of government for the next 38 years.
Apart from the inexplicable and baffling absence of a Foreign Minister, Indian diplomacy suffers today from a combination of three ailments. The first is Eurocentrism, which looks at globalisation largely along predictable global axes, the second, a certain arrogance induced by the country's high growth rates and rising international profile, and third, diffidence in dealing with major questions of war and peace. This results in an over-eagerness to "engage" existing centres of global power at the highest levels in locales as distant as Gleneagles or Vladivostok but to avoid political engagements elsewhere.
NAM as restraining factor
Given the emerging crises and conflicts in its extended neighbourhood, however, it is not clear how long India can afford to remain aloof. And the NAM summit in Havana provides an ideal opportunity for India to signal its eagerness to re-engage the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America in a partnership that could restore a sense of balance and proportion in a world under siege from a variety of destabilising influences.
But in order to understand the relevance of NAM today, it is important to recognise the paradoxical truth that the erstwhile bipolar division of the world was only incidental to the project of Non-Alignment. During the Cold War, NAM's utility lay in restraining impulses which its members felt were most negative in the international system, namely the use of military and economic power as an instrument of domination by the former colonial powers, the United States, and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union. The bipolar division helped NAM achieve this goal but was not as central to the Non-Aligned project as many believed it to be at the time. At the same time, it must also be conceded that NAM was not necessarily very successful in playing this restraining role since many of its members ended up being attacked by the superpowers.
In contrast to the certitudes of the Cold War era, the world order today is in a state of flux. While it is difficult neatly to characterise the international system as "unipolar," "multipolar" or something in between, some understanding of the concrete nature of world order can be gleaned by examining the multiple points of disorder that have emerged in recent years. Among these are the crises caused by the Anglo-American invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the continuing Israeli occupation of Palestinian and Arab land, the recent Israeli aggression against Lebanon, the fast-spiralling dispute over Iran's civilian nuclear programme, which could lead to a huge increase in oil prices as well as war, the humanitarian crisis in Darfur in the Sudan, and the nuclear crisis in the Korean peninsula.
There are other points of disorder elsewhere — the conflict in Sri Lanka could easily become one of international proportion — but the ones enumerated above are surely among the most serious. All except Darfur lie in Asia. All of them have the potential of leading to war, with serious consequences for the national security and interests of India. But in each and every case, India — a major Asian power which sits at the very centre of continent — is not involved in efforts to try and find peaceful solutions. For Iran, there is the P5+1, for Korea the six-party talks, and in the Middle East peace process the Quartet. In Afghanistan, NATO is running the show while the U.S. occupation of Iraq shows no signs of ending. In Lebanon, India, which has a major troop contingent deployed as part of UNIFIL, chose not to get involved in the international discussions about the U.N. force's new mandate.
The issue at stake is not Asian pride or Indian delusions of grandeur but the sobering fact that the dominant approach to each of these crises is not only not working but is actually increasing the likelihood of conflict and war and fuelling the growth of terrorism. As such, India has a vital interest in restraining the exercise of U.S. power in the region.
Well before U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, the whole world knew the tragic denouement that would follow. Similarly, if the U.S. insists on getting the United Nations Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran, the crisis will inevitably escalate. Just as surely as night follows day, the level of sanctions will be increased and Iran will eventually announce its withdrawal from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty, as it is its sovereign right to do. At that point, Iran will either bite the bullet and be compelled to develop a nuclear weapon. Or will be subjected to aerial bombardment by the U.S., with disastrous consequences for the region.
Averting Iran endgame
More than the debate over the independent nature of India's foreign policy, it is this inability and unwillingness to involve ourselves in problem-solving that is worrying. The Manmohan Singh Government's foreign policy may or not be independent. But when it comes to being proactive in forestalling the danger of new wars in its neighbourhood, India is neither effective nor imaginative.
For example, whatever view one takes of India's vote against Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency last September, surely the challenge confronting New Delhi today is to find ways of heading off this terrible ending that is all-too-predictable. As a country with vital interests in a peaceful settlement of the dispute, India cannot confine itself to making ritualistic statements about the importance of dialogue and negotiation.
Similarly on Lebanon, while it is laudable that Parliament passed a resolution condemning Israel's aggression, India did not leverage its much-vaunted friendship with Tel Aviv to counsel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert that the path he was taking would only make his country less secure. Mr. Olmert may have rejected any advice proffered by an Indian high-level envoy or even refused to meet the bearer of such tidings but India would have succeeded in sending a powerful signal to the region that there are more players than just the Quartet.
It was precisely this calculation that led the Foreign Ministers of India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) to declare in March 2004 that they intended to insert themselves in the Middle East peace process alongside the Quartet. Sadly, the declaration was never followed up. Prime Minister Singh did well to appoint a special envoy for West Asia last year. But it is also a fact that the government grounded the envoy for several months for fear that a visit to the region would lead to meetings with Hamas and Hizbollah, which in turn would make the legislative passage of the Indo-U.S. nuclear agreement in Washington more difficult.
During the first-ever IBSA summit to be held in Brasilia next week, Dr. Singh must seek to turn the trilateral forum into a ginger group that can energise NAM to once again play the role of a moderating and restraining factor in international politics. And upon his return, he must appoint on a priority basis a full-fledged Minister for External Affairs, the absence of whom severely limits the effectiveness of Indian diplomacy.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=32&ItemID=10941
posted by attilav at 20:27
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