Elsewhere Today (398)
Aljazeera:
Islamists deny advance on Somali port
Wednesday 13 September 2006, 18:26 Makka Time, 15:26 GMT
The Islamic Courts Union, a militia controlling much of Somalia, has rejected claims from the government that it is advancing on a strategic port.
The denial came after the Somali government's ambassador to Ethiopia said on Wednesday that the Islamist union was planning to capture Kismayo in the south of the East African country.
Abdikarim Farah, told Reuters on the sidelines of an African Union meeting in Addis Ababa: "The Islamic Courts' forces are marching to occupy Kismayo.
"This is a challenge to the TFG [Transitional Federal Government]... The Islamic Courts are not going to succeed by choosing military means, it has to renounce this option."
Kismayo is the largest port in the south. It is controlled by an independent militia, the Juba Valley Alliance - led by Colonel Abdikadir Adan Shire, who is also known as Barre Hiraale. Shire is the present defence minister.
Islamists deny advance
Members of the union, speaking from their stronghold in the capital, Mogadishu, said they knew of no plan to take Kismayo.
Kismayo is the largest Somali port south of Mogadishu
Bedri Hashi, the group's information officer, said: "I am not aware of any such militia movements. We have no plans to attack Kismayo or any other place.
"That man [Farah] is speaking on behalf of Ethiopia."
However, some sources said the movement had approached Shire in the past month and urged him to hand over Kismayo, pointing out that many of the militias protecting it are members of clans that have worked closely with the Islamists.
Clan rivalry
The Juba Valley Alliance said the militia reported to be moving towards Kismayo was associated with its forces but were also working with the Islamic Courts Union.
Bile Abdulle, the spokesman for the Juba Valley Alliance, said: "The troops said to be advancing towards Kismayo are led by our deputy chairman and the head of security.
"We have a working relationship with the Islamic courts."
The Somali government, known as the Transitional Federation Government (TFG), is internationally recognised but is weak and its control of Somalia barely extends further than the inland town of Baidoa where it is based.
Ethiopia backs the TFG and has accused the Islamic Courts Union of sheltering "terrorists".
Since taking control of Mogadishu earlier this year, the union has steadily expanded its control over other parts of the country.
In August, it took Hobya, another key port.
Aljazeera + Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E044852A-4459-408C-89F1-11059E5F68DC.htm
allAfrica:
Health Fallout From Toxic Dumping Worsens
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
September 13, 2006
Abidjan
As the foul, eggy smell from toxic waste dumped last month in Cote d'Ivoire's main city dissipates, thousands of people are still falling sick, and the United Nations has warned the pollution could seep into the food chain.
The fallout from 400 tonnes of gasoline residue dumped at a number of sites across Abidjan during the night of 19 August has so far killed six people, including four children, according to the Ministry of Health.
A team of French experts confirmed on Tuesday that the toxic waste contains hydrogen sulphide, a foul-smelling and highly toxic chemical.
Nearly 9,000 people have flooded into the city's public hospitals seeking treatment for nausea, headaches, and respiratory problems, and 19 have been hospitalised, said Jean Denoman, a spokesman for the Health Ministry.
Medical staff at the public Cocody Hospital, which has set up an emergency centre on the hospital grounds for toxic waste victims, said the facility received nearly 800 patients on Tuesday, and the number of people seeking treatment is increasing daily.
Treatments including X-ray scans and medicines are being offered free of charge at nearly all hospitals in Abidjan. But doctors warn they are already pushed beyond capacity.
"All our hospital staff has been mobilised to deal with this problem," said Elise Kouadio, a doctor at the facility. "We don't have time to do anything else."
Hundreds of residents near the city's garbage disposal site Akuedo said they were still waiting to see a doctor as their local clinic was not able to cope with the daily influx of patients.
"I have a bloated stomach, headaches, and irregular heartbeats," resident Didier Kone told IRIN. "Most of the people here suffer from the same symptoms."
Doctors say even if people like Kone can get to a hospital, they are fighting a losing battle so long as the waste is not cleaned up. "People get treated, but they fall sick again when they return home because they have nowhere else to go," Kouadio said.
Officials are warning that this might just be the beginning of Abidjan's problems.
The waste has so far been found at 11 open-air sites including the main garbage dump, most of which have not been sealed off and lack warning signs. Government and UN officials said on Tuesday they expected more sites to be discovered.
"Reliable sources indicate that a significant amount of waste was dumped in the sea and the lagoon as well as near the market gardening zones," acting UN humanitarian coordinator Youssouf Oomar said in a statement released on Tuesday.
French scientists from the French Office of Geological and Mineral Research have conducted an assessment of Abidjan and said drinking water wells are not contaminated, but UN officials have warned the pollution could spread to the food chain if it is allowed to stay in the environment.
According to the UN's coordination office OCHA, some of the substance was dumped in the Abidjan lagoon and sewage system, and other suspected dumping sites may be close to water sources.
Cleaning the toxic waste already discovered will take between 10 and 15 days, according to the French scientists.
The toxic waste scare had sparked another health concern.
To stop tanker trucks from discharging potentially hazardous material, residents blocked access to the main garbage dump with makeshift roadblocks and hastily built brick walls, causing fast-growing heaps of uncollected household garbage across the city.
Mounting public anger over the dumping of the so-called "chemical slops" resulted in the resignation of Cote d'Ivoire's power-sharing government last week. Prime Minister Charles Konan Banny, who remains in office, is expected to announce a new cabinet by the end of this week.
But the main opposition parties have warned they will not participate in the new government until those responsible for the dumping have been detained.
Authorities have arrested seven people in connection with the dumping, including three customs officials and a high-ranking official at the Transport Ministry, according to local news reports.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200609130314.html
Asia Times:
Osama's on the move again
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Sep 14, 2006
"Osama bin Laden and other terrorists are still in hiding. Our message to them is clear: no matter how long it takes, America will find you, and we will bring you to justice."
- President George W Bush, September 11, 2006
"On the anniversary of 9/11, the trail [of bin Laden] is stone-cold."- US intelligence official
KARACHI - Osama bin Laden is on the move, and Tuesday's terror attack on the US Embassy in the Syrian capital, Damascus, could be a tangible result of this.
Exclusive information obtained by Asia Times Online shows that the al-Qaeda leader recently traveled from the South Waziristan tribal area in Pakistan to somewhere in the eastern Afghan provinces of Kunar and Nooristan, or possibly Bajour, a s mall tribal agency in the Federally Administered Tribal Area of Pakistan in North-West Frontier Province.
According to a witness, bin Laden traveled in a double-cabin truck with a few armed guards - not in a convoy. Apparently, this is how he now prefers to move around.
Bin Laden, with a US$25 million bounty on his head, has not been sighted for some time, and he has not been seen on any new videotape since late 2004, although audio tapes purporting to be him speaking surfaced this year.
At the same time, a close aide responsible for bin Laden's logistics and media relations told Asia Times Online that bin Laden had recovered from serious kidney-related ailments.
In Tuesday's attack in Damascus, four men tried to drive two explosives-laden cars into the US Embassy compound. Four of them and a security official were killed. One of the cars exploded outside the compound.
The incident not only carries al-Qaeda hallmarks, it is also very much in line with the al-Qaeda leadership's focus, agreed on during the Israel-Hezbollah war, to extend the flames of conflict across the region.
In this vein, bin Laden's No 2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, warned on Monday that the Persian Gulf region and Israel would be the next targets of al-Qaeda. He was speaking in a video message released to coincide with the fifth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.
In addition to bin Laden's improved health, al-Qaeda has in the past few months gained some breathing room to regroup and solidify its logistics as a result of the situation in the semi-autonomous North and South Waziristan tribal areas.
This area has long been home to al-Qaeda elements, but until recently they had been under intense pressure from Pakistan's security forces. However, as the tribals gained more strength - some Taliban-affiliated districts have even been declared independent of Islamabad - the authorities realized they were fighting a losing battle.
This culminated last week in security officials and the "Pakistani Taliban" agreeing to a temporary ceasefire. Previously choked channels between the Waziristans and other parts of Pakistan were now fully opened, allowing al-Qaeda to start moving money again.
The bigger playing field
A new dynamic among militant groups has emerged in Egypt to complement al-Qaeda's designs in the Middle East. Tuesday's Damascus attack could also be an illustration of this.
Many youths previously associated with the militant Gamaa Islamiya of Egypt have formed independent cells, while some Egyptian youths of Palestinian origin have created underground organizations to target the pro-Israeli Egyptian government and US interests.
Credit goes to al-Qaeda that in the past six months it established inroads into these organizations, to the extent that they are now directly under the command of the al-Qaeda leadership.
This was confirmed by Zawahiri last month in a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera news network: "We announce to the Islamic nation the good news of the unification of a great faction of the knights of the Gamaa Islamiya ... with the al-Qaeda group."
Al-Qaeda has evolved into more of an ideological inspiration to sharpen Muslim reaction against the West and create a backlash than a militant group. Five years of the US-led "war on terror" damaged its structure and it was forced to melt into the local resistance movements of Iraq and Afghanistan. Already, the Taliban and Iraqi resistances complement each other, sharing experience, skills and even logistics.
From this position, al-Qaeda will work to bind all local resistance movements into one coordinated unit against the US and its allies, with the ultimate aim of creating a universal Muslim backlash against the West.
The Israel-Hezbollah war proved the ideal starting point for this plan. The successful defense of Lebanon by Hezbollah was largely taken in the Arab world as the first Arab victory against Israel. Sentiment on the streets of the Middle East turned noticeably against the US, Israel and pro-West Muslim rulers.
Al-Qaeda wants to keep this mood, and inflame it even further. Attacks like the one in Damascus could be such pot-boilers. More, and bigger, ones are most likely being plotted by the masterminds sitting in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI14Df03.html
Asia Times:
Taliban romp in the poppy fields
By Sanjay Suri
LONDON - Coalition forces in Afghanistan could find it easier to fly in than fly out of what is emerging as a trap for them.
The forces, led by the United States and increasingly Britain, have been facing mounting attacks. In the most audacious of these, US troops and others were killed last week in an attack near the US Embassy in Kabul, considered about the safest area in Afghanistan.
British troops have been taking more and more casualties over recent weeks through their deployment in southern Afghanistan, after an agreement under which the United States insisted that Britain share some of the hottest front lines with US forces.
International forces are present in Afghanistan as part of Operation Enduring Freedom, which is supported by 27 countries. This force has 19,000 soldiers, mostly from the US, supported by special forces from Canada, Denmark, France and Britain. Forces from 36 countries have also been gathered under the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which has now been asked to control southern Afghanistan. Its troop strength is soon to be raised to 17,000.
In southern Iraq, British troops, who form a sizable part of ISAF, have had a far easier run than embattled US forces in Baghdad and Fallujah. Now it is the southern part of Afghanistan that is seeing the highest levels of violence, particularly in Helmand and Kandahar provinces.
The Senlis Council, an independent think-tank studying the impact of drug policies, particularly in Afghanistan, reported last week that the Taliban in effect now control the southern half of Afghanistan (see 'Taliban taking over', September 8). The report blamed poppy eradication for creating a situation that has deprived people of their livelihood and driven many people into the arms of the Taliban.
The report also said that faulty development policies were strengthening the Taliban. These policies have meant very little development outside of Kabul and very large spending on defense and security measures.
The increased volatility has posed great difficulties for the coalition troops and for the governments who have decided to send them there. At the obvious security level, the question is whether these troops can stand their ground in the face of rising attacks.
"The answer to that question is really based on whether or not the international community has the stamina, the commitment to go on supporting the Afghan government in its efforts to bring about security and reconstruction," said Colonel Christopher Langton, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.
"If it has the stamina - and we hope it does - then there is every chance that the insurgency will die down as the benefits of newfound prosperity are seen among the Afghan population."
Newfound prosperity? What large numbers of Afghans are seeing is newfound poverty.
Emmanual Reinert, executive director of the Senlis Council, said that in Kandahar in the south "kids are dying almost every day" from malnutrition in refugee camps.
And the Taliban have pounced on this situation, Reinert said. "All this is being used by the Taliban to say ... 'When we were there we were maybe hard and cruel, but you could feed the family. Now look what's going on.' They are more and more providing support, social services to the local population."
And so the coalition forces are stuck with military options to deal with what is primarily a problem of development, or the lack of it.
The strong tactics have failed to reduce opium cultivation - it has in fact risen alarmingly. Several reports suggest that the Taliban could be promoting opium cultivation while poor farmers suffer.
The militaristic approach to combat cultivation has not worked. A United Nations study documents a 59% increase in opium cultivation to 165,000 hectares of poppy fields this year.
"Blood money is funding the salary of the Taliban's weapons and role of active insurgents actively participating in the trade," United Nations drugs chief Antonio Maria Costa told a news conference in Brussels on Tuesday. The UN is concerned that the bumper crop is helping fuel the deadly Taliban-led insurgency in the south.
Costa said: "I call on NATO [the North Atlantic Treaty Organization] forces to destroy heroin labs, disband the open opium bazaars, attack the opium convoys and bring to justice the big traders. I invite coalition countries to give NATO the mandate and resources required."
The poppy-eradication program imposed on farmers is intended to cut the source of heroin supply to the West. The Senlis Council argues that this action is far too drastic; poppy cultivation could be continued instead under controls, and the crop used for production of morphine and codeine, both in short supply around the world.
This crisis translates directly into both a security threat for the coalition forces and a rise in the strength of the Taliban.
"What the Taliban are using this for is to say to farmers that, on the one hand, we can protect you if you will come on to our side and thereby protect the livelihood of the farmers," Langton said.
"And this is the issue. How do you have a replacement livelihood? Is it a replacement crop, which is very hard to develop, or is it a replacement livelihood of another type, maybe diversify the activities of the farming communities in Afghanistan?"
The coalition forces and the government in Afghanistan need to develop a new livelihood for dispossessed farmers if they are to succeed. "The Taliban rely on the support of the individuals in the population, individual villagers, individual village elders and the like, and if they move away, there won't be support for the Taliban," Langton said.
But there is almost no alternative on offer to the affected farmers, nor is that a priority. The coalition troops that removed the Taliban from power in Afghanistan more than four years back may only have encouraged the revival of the Taliban.
"I think the word 'revival' isn't quite the right word, in that the Taliban have never gone away since 2001," Langton said. "They withdrew into their recruiting areas on the Durrand Line inside Afghanistan and Pakistan [the line drawn under British occupation through Pashtun areas]. So they haven't revived. But I'd say it's resurgence in certain tactical areas."
It has always been the intention of the Taliban to do this, Langton said. "And now they foresee - either correctly or incorrectly, we don't know yet - the opportunity for a changeover from the American-dominated military posture in the south to the NATO-dominated military posture."
This is seen by the Taliban "as a possible opportunity, maybe a possible weakening in the coalition posture", Langton said. "That is probably an erroneous calculation, but nevertheless it is easy to see how they might see this as an opportunity, a changeover where less experienced troops arrive on the ground, troops from countries where the internal debate at home is difficult for the government when it comes to sustaining these operations, unlike with Washington."
The troops are now on a front line where their government's policies mean that the enemy is getting stronger. And the stronger they get and the more they attack the coalition forces, the more vulnerable their position could become. Afghanistan now confronts a situation where it might see neither development nor security.
(Inter Press Service)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/HI14Df02.html
Guardian:
Blair tells Nato: send more troops to Afghanistan
David Fickling
Wednesday September 13, 2006
Tony Blair today called on Nato members to contribute more troops to Afghanistan.
The prime minister's appeal came as a difficult campaign to take control of two insurgent-held districts approached its second week.
"Nato is looking at what further requirements there are and ... Nato countries have got a duty to respond to that," Mr Blair said. "It is important that the whole of Nato regards this as their responsibility."
The prime minister was speaking after Washington's ambassador to Nato today urged other members of the military alliance to send forces to help stabilise the country.
"What we are looking to do is to put more forces in so that we can turn the tide faster," Victoria Nuland told BBC radio. "The issue here ... is the fighting capability and the fighting willingness of all allies.
"The US, the UK, Canada, the Dutch, have been in the tough, pointy end of this fight, and more allies need to be willing to be ... in the fighting."
The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, underlined the importance of tackling the insurgency, saying "we owe it to the people of Afghanistan to help them finish the job".
"An Afghanistan that does not complete its democratic evolution and become a stable, terror-fighting state is going to come back to haunt us," she said at a news conference with the Canadian foreign minister, Peter MacKay.
"It will come back to haunt our successors and their successors."
Nato governments are meeting in Belgium today to address shortfalls in troop levels in Afghanistan.
The force is currently running at 85% of capacity, and military chiefs have called for more soldiers to tackle an insurgency in the southern provinces of Helmand and Kandahar.
However, member governments with few or no troops in the troubled provinces argue they are already over-committed in other peacekeeping operations and do not want to be drawn into the bloody battle.
Italy and France are both sending troops to the Unifil peacekeeping force in Lebanon, while Germany already has 2,600 troops stationed in the relatively calm north of Afghanistan.
Twenty-six troops, including 14 British soldiers killed when their Nimrod reconnaissance plane crashed in Kandahar province earlier this month, have died in southern Afghanistan over the past month.
In total, more than 2,000 people have died in fighting in the country in the past year.
Around 20,000 troops from the Afghan army and the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force are currently in the country. Some 8,000 of those are Isaf soldiers, and Britain is currently contributing just over 4,000 soldiers to the force.
Over the past fortnight, Isaf troops have been waging a bitter battle in Kandahar in which hundreds of Taliban guerrillas are reported to have been killed.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/afghanistan/story/0,,1871539,00.html
Guardian:
Police crush protests in Harare
Bonnie Malkin and agencies
Wednesday September 13, 2006
Police with riot helmets, batons and teargas canisters have quelled an anti-government march and demonstrations in Zimbabwe's capital today. At least 15 demonstrators, including leaders of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions, were arrested in clashes between the authorities and protesters in Harare, according to Reuters.
Earlier today, a planned national strike to coincide with the march appeared to have been called off, as banks, shops and factories in Harare opened as normal.
Many workers showed little enthusiasm for the walkout amid uncertainty over whether they could lose their jobs, after the government declared the strike and protest marches illegal, according to managers in the capital.
Speaking from the TUC conference in Brighton, deputy vice-president of the congress, Tabitha Khumalo, said she had not been able to contact her colleagues in Harare today.
Ms Khumalo said Zimbabweans were protesting against low wages and lack of access to anti-viral HIV drugs.
"We are losing 3,000 people on a weekly basis to Aids, we are trying to save lives but how can we when we can't afford to pay for the drugs?"
Workers in Zimbabwe were paid so little many could not afford to eat breakfast or lunch and were forced to rely on a small supper to survive, she said.
"The average minimum wage is Z$12m (£27) per month, cooking oil and millemeal, not even beef, costs Z$10m."
Police on Tuesday said the proposed marches were banned under the nation's sweeping security laws that require clearance for political meetings and gatherings.
Police spokesman, Wayne Bvudzijena, said the protests were "most likely not going to be peaceful judging from previous experience."
Last week, security minister, Didymus Mutasa, said the nation's security forces were on alert to quell any form of demonstrations.
The opposition-allied labour federation is demanding pay increases, minimum wages linked to the official poverty line, tax breaks for low income earners and price regulation to cushion the effects of record inflation of nearly 1,000 %.
It also is demanding a halt to police harassment of street vendors that has continued since a brutal government slum clearance operation last year, that UN officials said deprived at least 700,000 people of their homes and livelihoods and affected another 2.4 million Harare residents.
Civic organizations have urged employers to at least give workers time off to join marches scheduled between noon and 2:00 p.m. (10:00 and 12:00 GMT) or encourage staff in their work place to debate the causes of the nation's economic crisis, the worst since independence in 1980.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/zimbabwe/article/0,,1871532,00.html
Jeune Afrique: Déchets toxiques d'Abidjan:
10.000 consultations, lagune et mer polluées
CÔTE D'IVOIRE - 12 septembre 2006 – AFP
Les autorités ivoiriennes tentaient mardi de répondre à la crise sanitaire des déchets toxiques d'Abidjan, qui ont provoqué six décès et suscité plus de 10.000 consultations médicales, alors que l'Onu s'inquiétait d'une possible contamination de la chaîne alimentaire.
"Nous allons passer aujourd'hui le cap des 10.000 consultations" médicales, a déclaré mardi à l'AFP une source gouvernementale ivoirienne.
Le nombre de personnes intoxiquées est toutefois inférieur à ce total "car les mêmes patients viennent parfois se faire examiner plusieurs fois", a-t-elle précisé. Le gouvernement avait fait état lundi de près de 9.000 consultations.
Le nombre des consultations est le seul (avec le nombre de morts, toujours de six mardi) donné jusqu'ici pour évaluer les conséquences sanitaires de la pollution. Sur les milliers de cas d'intoxications recensés, seule une dizaine ont entraîné une hospitalisation, selon le ministère de la Santé.
Le nombre de consultations va "aller en augmentant, car nous recevons entre 1.000 et 1.500 personnes par jour", avait déclaré lundi le directeur général adjoint de la branche santé publique du ministère de la Santé, Jean Denoman.
Le ministère de la Santé continuait mardi de conseiller à la population de se tenir à l'écart des sites pollués, en soulignant que ces déchets, déversés à partir du 19 août, "peuvent provoquer des conséquences graves sur la santé".
Les autorités ont recensé jusqu'ici onze sites de pollution, mais l'ampleur de cette dernière reste encore à évaluer.
"D'autres sites risquent d'être découverts", a ainsi prévenu le coordonnateur humanitaire des Nations unies en Côte d'Ivoire, Youssouf Omar, dans un communiqué publié mardi.
M. Omar a surtout annoncé qu'"un nombre important de déchets (toxiques) ont été déversés dans la mer et dans la lagune ainsi qu'à proximité des zones maraîchères". Cette situation "redouble les inquiétudes quant à de possibles effets polluants sur la chaîne alimentaire", a-t-il ajouté.
Les premières conclusions des experts français en déchets toxiques, arrivés vendredi et qui achevaient mardi leur mission d'évaluation de la pollution, évoquent aussi cette incertitude, selon une source diplomatique française.
"Ils n'écartent pas la possibilité que des camions chargés de déchets toxiques continuent encore aujourd'hui de chercher à déverser leur cargaison", a précisé cette source.
Alors que le présidence ivoirienne a évoqué l'idée de construire un bunker pour enfouir et isoler les déchets, les experts français "estiment plutôt qu'il faudrait qu'une entreprise internationale vienne récupérer le produit toxique et l'emporte ailleurs pour le décontaminer", a-t-elle ajouté.
"Cela coûte plus cher, mais c'est une solution définitive" dont le coût pourrait être assumé par les responsables de la pollution, a conclu cette source diplomatique.
Montrée du doigt par certaines associations écologiques, le négociant international Trafigura, affréteur du Probo Koala, le navire grec qui a apporté ces déchets toxiques à Abidjan, a de nouveau clamé mardi son innoncence.
La société a réaffirmé dans un communiqué qu'elle a agi dans le respect de "toutes les conventions internationales" et avec l'autorisation des autorités locales, ce que ces dernières ont confirmé.
Elle continue de rejeter la responsabilité sur la société ivoirienne Tommy, qui a déchargé des centaines de tonnes de solution toxique du Probo Koala le 19 août avant de les déverser dans une dizaine de décharges publiques d'Abidjan.
Trafigura ne précise en revanche pas pourquoi la solution toxique, un mélange de résidus pétroliers et de soude caustique, a été déchargée en tant qu'"eaux usées".
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP04746dchetseullo0
New Statesman:
The revolution will not be televised
The Back Half
John Pilger
Monday 11th September 2006
As he launches a season of his films, John Pilger argues that, in the age of Big Brother, television is no longer nurturing challenging documentary-makers
My first documentary for television was The Quiet Mutiny, made in 1970 for Granada. It was an unusual film, laced with irony and farce, rather like a factual Catch-22, and shot in a gentle, almost lyrical style by George Jesse Turner. The story was something of a scoop: America's huge army in Vietnam was disintegrating as angry conscripts brought their rebellion at home to the battlefields of Vietnam. The film's evidence of soldiers shooting their officers and refusing to fight caused a furore among the guardians of official truth. The American ambassador to Britain, Walter Annenberg, a crony of President Richard Nixon, phoned Sir Robert Fraser, director of the Independent Television Authority (ITA). Although he had not seen the film, Sir Robert was apoplectic. Summoning Granada executives, he banged his desk and described me as "a bloody dangerous subversive" who was "anti-American". This puzzled Lord Bernstein, Granada's liber tarian founder, who protested that The Quiet Mutiny had received high praise from the public and, far from being anti-American, had shown only sympathy for the despair of young GIs caught up in a hopeless war. When I flew to New York and showed it to Mike Wallace, the star reporter of CBS's 60 Minutes, he agreed. "Real shame we can't show it here," he said.
This fear and loathing came as a surprise to me. I was a newspaper journalist naive in the ways of television, especially the lengths to which established power went to control it. The long list of banned, censored and delayed programmes on Ireland is testament to this, as are the de classified files on the real reason why The War Game, Peter Watkins's brilliant construction of a nuclear attack on Britain in 1965, was banned. (At the time, the BBC had lied that the "faint-hearted" would not be able to bear watching The War Game. In fact, the BBC had secretly surrendered editorial control to the government, with a note from Lord Normanbrook, chairman of the board of governors, explaining that although the film was "based on careful research into official material . . . and produced with considerable restraint", its broadcast "might have a significant effect on public attitudes towards the policy of the nuclear deterrent".)
Almost all of the more than 50 films I made for ITV (and a series for Channel 4) have had to navigate a system that rarely declares its in tention to create and shape public opinion. The BBC exemplifies this, with its specious neutrality, mythically balancing contending extremes while turning out a flow of official assumptions and deceptions as "news". In its youth, British commercial television was different. Unlike its equivalents anywhere in the world, it retained a nucleus of people who, like Lord Bernstein, would defend those who challenged the received wisdom. Certainly, my collaborators have included some of the best and boldest, not least the three young BBC renegades who first suggested television to me at a Soho restaurant in 1969. The directors Paul Watson, Charles Denton and Richard Marquand were the products of the brief, enlightened Hugh Greene years at the BBC. Brought together by the distinguished actor David Swift, our aim, in Watson's words, was "to take documentaries beyond the limits laid down for BBC staff and to get on television subjects unpalatable to hierarchies". We believed that journalism informed by no opinion, no irony, no humour, no compassion and no commitment lacked a very serious dimension. Our inspirations were James Cameron's One Pair of Eyes and Edward R Murrow's See It Now.
The idea was picked up by World in Action, the Granada documentary strand that pioneered so much powerful journalism. I was one of the first World in Action reporters to appear in front of the camera, encouraged by Charles Denton not to speak in "BBC code" and to say clearly "what you yourself have found out". From an American fire-base near the Cambodian border, we set out on patrol with a platoon of "grunts" (drafted men), in what they called "Indian country" (Indian = Vietcong). We did not see any Vietcong. What we did see was a chicken, which the sergeant presumed to be a Vietcong chicken and therefore worthy of mention in his log as an "enemy sighted". When I wrote this into my commentary, a Granada executive wanted to know the source of my statement that the chicken had communist affiliations. After some enjoyable conversation along these lines it dawned on me he was serious. "The ITA need to know these things," he said. "They won't be happy unless we reassure them." I proposed that the chicken remain in the film as a fellow-traveller, if not an all-out card carrier, and this was accepted.
Sir Robert and Lord Normanbrook were right: the political documentary is indeed dangerous, because it can circumvent the club that unites and dominates establishment politics and journalism. Moreover, the documentary as a television "event" can send ripples far and wide. Year Zero: the silent death of Cambodia, which I made with David Munro in 1979, did that. Year Zero not only revealed the horror of the Pol Pot years, it showed how Nixon's and Kissinger's "secret" bombing of that country had provided a critical catalyst for the rise of the Khmer Rouge. It also exposed how the west, led by the United States and Britain, was imposing an embargo, like a medieval siege, on the most stricken country on earth. This was a reaction to the fact that Cambodia's liberator was Vietnam - a country that had come from the wrong side of the cold war and that had recently defeated the US. Cambodia's suffering was a wilful revenge. Britain and the US even backed Pol Pot's demand that his man continue to occupy Cambodia's seat at the UN, while Margaret Thatcher stopped children's milk going to the survivors of his nightmare regime. Little of this was reported.
Had Year Zero simply described the monster that Pol Pot was, it would have been quickly forgotten. By reporting the collusion of "our" governments, it told a wider truth about how the world was run. Until George W Bush and Tony Blair pushed their luck in Iraq and Lebanon, this remained a taboo.
"A solidarity and compassion surged across our nation," wrote Brian Walker, director of Oxfam. Within two days of Year Zero going to air, 40 sacks of post arrived at ATV (later Central Television) in Birmingham - 26,000 first-class letters in the first post alone. The station quickly amassed £1m, almost all of it in small amounts. "This is for Cambodia," wrote a Bristol bus driver, enclosing his week's wage. Entire pensions were sent, along with entire savings. Petitions arrived at Downing Street, one after the other, for weeks. MPs received hundreds of thousands of letters, demanding that British policy change (which it did, eventually). And none of it was asked for.
For me, the public response to Year Zero gave the lie to clichés about "compassion fatigue", an excuse that some broadcasters and television executives use to justify the current descent into the cynicism and passivity of Big Brotherland. Above all, I learned that a documentary could reclaim shared historical and political memories, and present their hidden truths. The reward then was a compassionate and an informed public; and it still is.
The "John Pilger Film Festival" is at the Barbican Centre, London EC1, from 14-21 September. On the opening night, John Pilger will present a clip from his new film, "The War on Democracy", and will be in conversation with Ken Loach. Call the box office on 0845 120 7500 or book online: [http://www.barbican.org.uk]
This article first appeared in the New Statesman.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200609110031
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El futuro de México es cosa de brujas
ANTE EL FRACASO DE LA POLITICA, RECURREN A LA NIGROMANCIA
Ante la falta de diálogo entre las fuerzas políticas enfrentadas desde las elecciones del 2 de julio, los mexicanos recurren a los brujos y adivinos para saber qué pasará en el escenario político. Un poco de humor en medio de tanta tensión e incertidumbre.
Por Gerardo Albarrán de Alba
Desde México, D. F., Miércoles, 13 de Septiembre de 2006
“Felipe Calderón sufrirá un atentado durante el ejercicio de su presidencia; Andrés Manuel López Obrador marchará al exilio y Vicente Fox y su esposa padecerán la traición.” No, no es prospectiva política, son meras predicciones surrealistas, como la política mexicana. Y es que, cuando la negociación ya no alcanza, ¿por qué no recurrir a la nigromancia? Al menos, ésa fue la intención de Brozo, el payaso tenebroso, al reunir en su programa de televisión a un astrólogo, una lectora de tarot y un vidente, para que aclararan el panorama futuro para México.
Para ellos, la crisis que vive el país es perfectamente explicable. Lo que pasa es que tanto López Obrador como Calderón son personajes que tienen los astros de su lado, son hombres de poder destinados a marcar la historia, ambos con ascendente ni más ni menos que en Plutón, que no se ha enterado de que fue degradado de su condición de planeta y lo mismo influye. ¿Cómo no iba a terminar en crisis la elección presidencial, si lo que vivimos fue un verdadero choque de destinos? Y bueno, pues ni modo, astrológicamente le tocaba perder al líder de izquierda, a quien las cartas ubican trabajando muy pronto desde el extranjero, intelectualizando la política nacional, aunque tendrá serios problemas de salud que deberá atender. En compensación, su arrastre con las chicas no tendrá medida.
Calderón, con Marte y Venus cruzados en su carta astral, no será tan mal presidente, pero se las va a cobrar a todos los que se la hicieron: así es esto de la buena memoria. En cualquier caso, no la va a tener nada fácil como presidente. Le va a costar mucho trabajo salir adelante en lo que será un gobierno lleno de peripecias. De hecho, mucha gente se arrepentirá del voto que hizo. “Ojalá me equivoque, pero veo un atentado en su contra, sin mayores consecuencias”, dice el vidente, al que se le aclaran las visiones si se cubre los ojos con cintas adhesivas y lo refuerza con una máscara sobre el rostro. Las cartas, por su parte, no dejan de arrojar oros y, al menos en lo económico, al país no le irá tan mal, según la cartomancia. Lástima que no le va a tocar a Chiapas, territorio de la guerrilla indígena-zapatista, para el que anuncian más pobreza, y que Oaxaca seguirá en ebullición, contagiando de crisis a otros estados.
Vicente Fox se irá al rancho con su esposa, dicen los adivinos, pero para anticipar eso no hace falta derrochar poderes extrasensoriales, menos aún cuando el presidente anunció que su gobierno “ya bajó la cortina”, una expresión para decir que ya se terminó el trabajo, aunque a él todavía le falten tres meses al frente del país y deje varias crisis en marcha. A lo mejor por eso la traición aparece en su futuro, y en el de su esposa... Ellos sabrán qué otros pendientes dejan.
Bajo la carpa del circo televisado, la única buena noticia de la noche es para el PRI, que recuperará la posibilidad de reconstituirse como partido político, porque Roberto Madrazo –que como dirigente nacional, primero, y candidato presidencial, después, lo condujo a su más estrepitoso fracaso electoral– se retirará de la política y se dedicará a acrecentar su fortuna personal.
Por si las predicciones fallan, ya habrá otras elecciones. Tal vez antes de lo que nadie prevé hoy.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72908-2006-09-13.html
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Un “Eje del Mal” muy engordado
LA CUMBRE DE LOS NO ALINEADOS EN CUBA
Miércoles, 13 de Septiembre de 2006
El clima de La Habana ayer estaba más caliente que de costumbre: el gobierno se preparaba para recibir a algunos de los principales invitados de la Cumbre de los Países No Alineados (NOAL). La llegada del presidente sirio, Bachar Al Assad, y de su par venezolano, Hugo Chávez, inauguró el plantel de los “enemigos” de Washington que desfilarán en la isla y, seguramente, acapararán gran parte de la atención. El equipo quedará completo cuando los mandatarios de Irán, del Líbano y de Bolivia hagan su aparición entre hoy y mañana. “No me queda más remedio que imaginarme que está creciendo el grupo del ‘Eje del Mal’ y si vamos a guiarnos por algunos despachos de prensa pronto va a estar integrado por 118 naciones, o sea las 118 naciones que integran el Movimiento de Países No Alineados”, ironizó el vicecanciller cubano Abelardo Moreno.
Desde Caracas, antes de partir hacia la isla, Chávez anunció que hoy desayunaría con sus dos principales aliados de la región, Fidel Castro y Evo Morales. Esta sería la primera reunión del veterano dirigente cubano en esta cumbre. Desde el 31 de agosto pasado, Fidel se encuentra recluido en una clínica, recuperándose de una operación intestinal. La aparición del líder cubano es todavía la mayor incógnita de la NOAL.
En la jornada de ayer, los cancilleres y mandatarios presentes discutieron los últimos puntos de las declaraciones finales, antes de que las comitivas comiencen a firmarlas entre hoy y mañana. Como ya se venía rumoreando, el eje estará en los cuestionamientos a la política exterior estadounidense. Según el borrador que circulaba ayer, los países de la NOAL condenarán la actuación de la Casa Blanca en la situación en Medio Oriente, además de criticarla por sus ataques a Cuba y Venezuela. “Expresamos nuestra preocupación por el aumento de las acciones de los Estados Unidos encaminadas a afectar la estabilidad de Venezuela, incluido el reciente establecimiento de una oficina para intensificar el espionaje y la recopilación de material de inteligencia contra Venezuela y Cuba”, se afirma en el borrador.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72906-2006-09-13.html
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Libertad para los líderes de Hamas
UN JUEZ ISRAELI ORDENO LA EXCARCELACION DE MINISTROS Y DIPUTADOS
Por Donald Macintyre *
Desde Jerusalén, Miércoles, 13 de Septiembre de 2006
Un juez militar israelí ordenó la libertad de 21 ministros y parlamentarios de Hamas detenidos después del secuestro de un soldado israelí por los militantes de Gaza en junio. Mientras tanto, los funcionarios israelíes insistían en que el fallo no tenía relación con sus esfuerzos por liberar al soldado secuestrado, Gilad Shalit. Pero un importante asesor del primer ministro palestino, Ismail Haniyeh, dijo que la decisión del juez representaba “un progreso significativo” para su liberación.
Tras padecer durante seis meses sanciones internacionales que lo dejaron al borde del colapso financiero, Hamas dijo ayer que formará una coalición de gobierno con el opositor partido Fatah de Mahmud Abbas, visto como más moderado.
Hamas, considerado un grupo “terrorista” por Israel y gran parte de Occidente, también acordó dar a Abbas autoridad para negociar con Israel.
Abbas sostiene desde hace tiempo la necesidad de reanudar las conversaciones de paz con Israel y Hamas dijo ayer que el mandatario tendrá toda la autoridad para hacerlo. El llamado “documento de unidad nacional” llama a la creación de un Estado palestino en los territorios ocupados por Israel en la guerra de 1967 y abandona la meta histórica de Hamas de destruir al Estado judío. Más de 220 palestinos, incluyendo civiles, han muerto en operaciones militares israelíes en Gaza, que comenzaron después de la captura del soldado Shalit. Un soldado israelí fue muerto ayer en Gaza central, cuando los militantes emboscaron a tropas que estaban conduciendo un ataque. En un incidente no conectado, las tropas israelíes mataron a un muchacho palestino de 13 años durante una protesta contra un asalto de tropas israelíes a la ciudad de Bethlehem de Cisjordania. La libertad de los importantes funcionarios de Hamas, con una fianza de casi 6 mil dólares cada uno, fue postergada hasta mañana pendiente de una apelación de los fiscales militares. Los líderes de Hamas estaban entre los 60 arrestados después de la captura del soldado Shalit. Los detenidos elegidos para ser liberados incluyen al presidente del Parlamento palestino, Aziz Dweik, y el alto líder de Hamas en Jerusalén, el miembro del Parlamento Mohammed Abu Tir.
En contraste con los avances diplomáticos para destrabar la situación en Palestina, la situación en el Líbano sigue generando desencuentros. El jefe de Hezbolá, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallá, dijo ayer que Tony Blair había participado en la matanza de libaneses en la guerra de Israel.
* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12.
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72916-2006-09-13.html
Página/12:
Casi explota la embajada de EE.UU. en Siria
TRES ATACANTES Y UN GUARDIA MURIERON EN EL ASALTO A LA SEDE DIPLOMATICA
El fallido ataque con un vehículo lleno de explosivos y latas de gas no fue reivindicado, pero Damasco sospecha de un grupo que se desprendió de Al Qaida, llamado Jun al Shan. Washington aprovechó para pedirle a Siria que se se sume a la lucha antiterrorista.
Por Patrick Cockburn*
Desde Amman, Miércoles, 13 de Septiembre de 2006
Cuatro hombres gritando cánticos islámicos lanzaron un ataque ayer sobre la fuertemente protegida embajada de EE.UU. en Damasco. Tres hombres murieron y uno fue capturado después de ser herido seriamente. Un guardia de seguridad murió, pero ningún estadounidense resultó lastimado. Un vehículo lleno de explosivos y de latas de gas falló y no explotó. Era improbable que los atacantes, armados con rifles automáticos y granadas, tuvieran éxito contra las paredes de dos metros y medio de alto de la embajada. Por lo menos otras once personas resultaron heridas en la contienda que tuvo lugar en el barrio de la embajada.
“Vi a dos hombres de civil armados con granadas y armas automáticas”, dijo Ayman Abdel-Nour, un comentador político sirio que estaba en el área. “Corrían hacia el complejo gritando cánticos religiosos mientras disparaban sus rifles automáticos.” Los terroristas tenía escasas posibilidades de huir, ya que la embajada se encuentra en el muy defendido distrito de Rawsa, donde viven muchos funcionarios del gobierno. El hecho de que el ataque tuviera lugar es otra señal de la tensión creciente en Medio Oriente por las guerras en Irak, Afganistán y el Líbano y las numerosas pérdidas de vidas en Gaza. El ataque parecía algo amateur y no tenía el sello de una operación bien organizada con cantidades masivas de explosivos. Nadie se adjudicó la autoría del ataque, pero se sospechaba de un grupo desprendido de Al Qaida , Jund al Shan, según el embajador sirio en Estados Unidos, Imad Moustapha. El grupo radical fundamentalista ha sido culpado de varios ataques en Siria en los últimos años, declaró.
Estados Unidos, que ha estado confrontado con Siria sobre Irak y el Líbano, expresó su gratitud a Damasco por la rápida respuesta y sugirió que los dos países podrían dar vuelta la página en su problemática relación. “Los funcionarios sirios fueron en ayuda de los estadounidenses. El gobierno de Estados Unidos está agradecido por la ayuda brindada por los sirios al perseguir a los atacantes”, dijo el vocero de la Casa Blanca, Tony Snow. “Esperamos que se conviertan en un aliado y elijan luchar contra los terroristas.” Estados Unidos tiene a Siria en la lista de los patrocinantes del terrorismo.
Hace varios años Washington parecía que estaba estrujando con éxito al gobierno sirio desde el este y el oeste, pero la crisis que empeora en Irak y el fracaso de Israel en derrotar a Hezbolá en el Líbano significa que la posición de Estados Unidos es ahora mucho más débil.
La ministra de Interior siria, Bassam Abdel Majid, dijo que era una “operación terrorista”. La secretaria de Estado de Estados Unidos, Condoleezza Rice, declaró que era demasiado pronto para saber quién estaba detrás del ataque. También elogió las acciones sirias y expresó sus condolencias por la muerte del guardia. “Creo que los sirios reaccionaron a su ataque en una forma que ayudó a nuestra gente y apreciamos eso mucho”, dijo en una conferencia de prensa en Canadá.
A fines de los setenta, Siria estuvo bajo un permanente ataque de grupos islámicos que usaron terroristas suicidas y que fueron ferozmente reprimidos. En los últimos meses hubo unos pocos choques esporádicos entre las fuerzas de seguridad y los grupos islámicos. Estados Unidos y las secciones del gobierno iraquí ven a Siria como el pasaje de hombres y armas a la resistencia antiestadounidense en Irak. El asalto en Damasco, a pesar de lo inútil, será utilizado por la Casa Blanca para mostrar que están bajo amenaza del terrorismo y que cada señal del sentimiento antiestadounidense es una prueba de la conspiración en su contra.
En su discurso altamente partidario en conmemoración de los ataques del 11 de septiembre, el presidente George W. Bush justificó la guerra contra Irak convirtiéndola en el centro de la guerra contra el terrorismo. “Si no derrotamos a estos enemigos ahora, dejaremos que nuestros hijos se enfrenten a un Medio Oriente dirigido por estados terroristas y dictadores radicales armados con armas nucleares”, dijo. “Estamos en una guerra que establecerá el curso para este nuevo siglo y determinará el destino de millones en el mundo.”
* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12.
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-72918-2006-09-13.html
Página/12:
Desaire de los sindicatos a Blair
Los sindicatos despidieron con frialdad al primer ministro británico en su último discurso en el congreso.
Por Walter Oppenheimer*
Desde Londres, Miércoles, 13 de Septiembre de 2006
Gordon Brown anunció su inminente mudanza al número 10 de Downing Street. Aunque se trata de la residencia oficial del primer ministro, el cambio no significa que sea –ya– el jefe del gobierno británico. Brown, que entonces era soltero, intercambió con los Blair las residencias que a ambos les correspondían al llegar al gobierno hace casi diez años porque la suya, en el número 11, era más amplia y el primer ministro tiene una familia numerosa.
El cambio de residencia de Brown ha llegado en el peor momento, cuando sus aspiraciones de ocupar no ya el departamento, sino el despacho del primer ministro y las reticencias de éste a darle paso han provocado una profunda crisis en el Partido Laborista. El polémico canciller del Exchequer quería anunciar la mudanza más adelante, pero todo ha saltado por los aires porque Cherie Blair recibió un día un paquete de cortinas nuevas que ella no había encargado. En realidad eran para los Brown y la noticia acabó filtrándose a la prensa.
La explicación oficial de la mudanza es que el canciller del Exchequer, que ahora está casado y tiene dos niños de corta edad, necesita más espacio para su familia y los servicios de seguridad –que protegen 24 horas al canciller y su familia desde los atentados del 7 de julio del año pasado en Londres– prefieren que vivan de forma definitiva en el piso oficial de Downing Street.
Cuando los laboristas llegaron al gobierno, en 1997, Brown no tuvo inconveniente en quedarse con el departamento privado del número 10 y ceder el del número 11 a Tony y Cherie Blair. Los Blair tenían entonces tres hijos adolescentes y aún tendrían un cuarto hijo poco después. Brown ha utilizado desde entonces el piso del número 10 como despacho de día y en las cenas y tertulias de sobremesa, pero seguía durmiendo en su cercano piso de soltero, a tiro de piedra de su despacho como responsable del Tesoro y cerca también de Downing Street. La llegada de los Brown no ha sido recibida con mucho entusiasmo por Cherie Blair, al decir de la prensa británica. La combativa esposa del primer ministro no tiene muchas ganas de encontrarse constantemente a los vecinos por los pasillos que comunican las residencias privadas y los despachos oficiales que conforman las laberínticas dependencias de Downing Street.
Mientras Cherie aclaraba de quién eran las cortinas, su esposo lidiaba con uno de los momentos menos gratos del año: su habitual discurso en el congreso de los sindicatos. Blair fue recibido con un pequeño desaire cuando una treintena de delegados de tres sindicatos abandonaron la sala en protesta por su presencia.
Luego fue silbado en varias ocasiones, sobre todo cuando lanzó una encendida defensa de la invasión de Irak, mientras numerosos delegados le reprochaban sus decisiones en materia de política exterior y le pedían con pancartas que dejara el cargo de inmediato.
El primer ministro, molesto, pidió a los congresistas que al menos escucharan sus argumentos y reservaran sus comentarios para la posterior sesión de preguntas y respuestas. Blair hizo una defensa de las mejoras conseguidas por el laborismo en sus casi diez años de gobierno y advirtió a los activistas sindicales que “la cruda realidad es que no hay ningún gobierno perfecto” y que nunca habrá ninguno que satisfaga plenamente sus posiciones. “Pero es mucho mejor hacer remiendos aquí que estar en la oposición aprobando resoluciones que nadie escucha o que son imposibles de aplicar”, los espetó. Los congresistas lo despidieron con un cortés pero frío aplauso final. El último, porque en el próximo congreso del TUC, Blair ya no será primer ministro.
* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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Página/12:
600 soldados, el general y la Teoría de Juegos
Por Adrián Paenza
Miércoles, 13 de Septiembre de 2006
En el libro Judgement under Uncertainty (Juicio ante la Incertidumbre) de Tversky y Kahneman aparece un problema que requiere tomar una decisión en una situación crítica. De hecho, los dos autores, ambos psicólogos, plantean una disyuntiva que, como se va a ver, depende de su presentación. En realidad, hay una rama de la matemática, conocida con el nombre de Teoría de Juegos, que analiza también este tipo de situaciones, aunque desde otro ángulo.
Aquí va el problema.
Suponga que Ud. es un general que lidera un grupo de 600 soldados. De pronto, su gente de inteligencia le advierte que están rodeados por un ejército que viene con la intención de matar a todos sus hombres.
Como el general había estudiado las condiciones del terreno antes de estacionarse en ese lugar, cuando recibe la información que le suministran sus espías, sabe que le quedan dos alternativas, o mejor dicho, dos caminos de escape:
a) Si toma el primer camino, salvará a 200 soldados.
b) Si toma el segundo camino, la probabilidad de salvar a los 600 es de 1/3, mientras que la probabilidad de que ninguno llegue a destino, es de 2/3.
¿Qué hacer? ¿Qué ruta tomar?
Aquí, una pausa. Lo invito a que piense qué haría en una situación semejante. ¿Qué camino elegiría usted? Una vez que haya releído el problema y haya tomado una decisión imaginaria, lea lo que sigue con lo que se sabe estadísticamente que haría la mayor parte de la gente.
Sigo. Se sabe que tres de cada cuatro personas, o sea un 75 por ciento, dice que tomaría el camino uno y el argumento que dan es que si optaran por el dos la probabilidad de que mueran todos es de 2/3.
Ahora bien. Hasta acá, todo es comprensible. Más allá de lo que hubiera decidido Ud. si lo pusieran en esa disyuntiva, esos son los datos que recolectaron los científicos.
Sin embargo, mire cómo las respuestas cambian dramáticamente cuando las opciones están presentadas de diferente forma. Supongamos que ahora se le plantearan estas dos alternativas de escape:
a) Si uno toma el primer camino, sabe que se mueren 400 de los 600 soldados.
b) Si uno toma el segundo camino, uno sabe que la probabilidad de que se salven todos es 1/3, mientras que la probabilidad de que se mueran todos, es de 2/3.
¿Qué ruta tomaría ahora?
Otra vez, vale la pena pensar qué es lo que haría uno y luego confrontar con las respuestas que ofrecerían nuestros semejantes. La mayor parte de la gente (cuatro sobre cinco, o sea un 80 por ciento), cuando le plantearon el problema de esta forma optaron por el segundo camino, y el argumento que daban es que elegir el camino uno, significa condenar a 400 soldados a una muerte segura, mientras que en cambio, si uno elige el segundo camino, al menos tiene 1/3 de posibilidades de que se salven todos.
Las dos preguntas plantean el mismo problema de distinta manera. Las diferentes respuestas obedecen solamente a la forma en la que está planteado el problema. Es decir, dependen de los términos en los que esté puesto, de si se coloca el énfasis en cuántas vidas se salvan o en cuántas personas van a morir seguro. En esencia el problema es el mismo y las alternativas también: sólo cambia el papel con el que viene envuelto. Todo un desafío para la psicología y la condición humana.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-72923-2006-09-13.html
The Independent:
Street prices plummet as use reaches epidemic levels
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
Published: 13 September 2006
The cost of drugs in many parts of Britain has plummeted in the past year, an authoritative study on the country's booming industry in illegal substances has revealed.
Specialists also disclosed that the potentially lethal practice known as " speedballing", in which users inject themselves with a mixture of heroin and cocaine, is reaching epidemic levels.
The low prices of many drugs suggests that they are readily available throughout the country and that police and customs are losing the war on drugs.
A new survey of 20 cities and towns in the UK provides an insight into emerging trends, offering a level of local detail rarely seen before. The report by the charity DrugScope found that dealers have been increasingly offering cut-price drugs, with heroin costing £5 a bag in Middlesbrough, and ecstasy as little as 75p a tablet in Cardiff.
Towns such as Gloucester and Penzance - where the price of heroin has dropped from £60 to £40 a gram during the past year - are being targeted with "special offers" to attract new users.
The survey also found that abuse of muscle-enhancing anabolic steroids is becoming a mainstream problem.
Overall drug prices in the UK continued to remain static - suggesting that police and customs action has had little effect on availability. When drugs supply is restricted, prices rise.
A separate report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime has also claimed that Britain has the highest rate of "problem" drug abuse in Europe. It found that nearly one in every 100 of the working-age population was an addict.
The DrugScope report discovered huge regional variation in the cost and availability of drugs.
The purity of drugs also fluctuates throughout the country. In Liverpool a seemingly cheap 0.3g £15 bag of "heroin" is on average only 25 per cent pure.
The cheapest cocaine, £35 a gram, is available in Birmingham and Liverpool - both cities where drugs are generally cheaper than the rest of the country. Cardiff has the cheapest ecstasy pills at £1 each.
Researchers also found that clubbers were using a wide range of drugs, including CK1, GHB, Viagra and a vast array of obscure designer drugs.
But the most alarming development highlighted by the study for the drug charity's Druglink magazine was the rise in "speedballing" or " snowballing" which specialists fear will result in more overdoses, infections, and crime.
The survey of 80 frontline drug agencies and police forces discovered that injecting the heroin and cocaine cocktail, also called "curry and rice" , had risen sharply during the past year in Newcastle, Sheffield, Manchester, London, Bristol, Nottingham, Ipswich and York.
A second study of 100 drug addicts revealed that speedballing was the main method of drug-taking for 80 per cent of those interviewed, compared with 25 per cent a decade ago.
The research by Dr Russell Newcombe at the Manchester drugs charity Lifeline found that speedballers had three times as many convictions as those only using heroin. It said speedballers spent £500 a week on the drugs - £26,000 a year - compared with £110 for heroin-only addicts.
Speedballers say the combined stimulant-sedative effects in one shot complement each other. "You get the euphoric rush of the crack and then the heroin takes the jagged edge off it," said one user.
In a separate study of injecting drug-users, more than half of 1,000 needle exchange clients questioned in Wigan, Reading, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Bristol and Devon had injected a speedball.
Drug agencies are concerned about speedballing because it increases the risk of overdose. People who speedball also inject up to five times more often than heroin-only injectors, which means they are more likely to inject directly into an artery, block veins and get deep vein thrombosis and abscesses.
High-profile deaths attributed to speedballing include the American actors John Belushi, 33, who died in 1982 at a hotel in Los Angeles, and River Phoenix, 23, who died in 1993 outside a nightclub in Hollywood.
A speedball is usually made by crumbling a crack rock into a preheated spoon of heroin and a form of citric acid in water - which makes a soluble cocktail. It is then drawn into a syringe and injected. The average speedball costs £20, £10 each of crack and heroin.
More dealers are selling heroin in £10 bags rather than by the gram, and some parts of the country continue to report dealers offering "discount offers" on combined bags of heroin and crack cocaine, fuelling the speedballing craze. In Liverpool, dealers are offering a free rock of crack for every two £10 bags of heroin bought, while in Ipswich buying a bag of "brown" and "white" together yields a £10 discount on a £30 purchase. In Gloucester, the price of the two drugs has halved since last year and in Penzance an influx of dealers from Liverpool has led to price cuts.
Harry Shapiro, the editor of Druglink, said: "Although speedballing isn't a new phenomenon, it is clearly on the increase and, if this trend continues, it will be bad news for attempts to reduce the spread of injecting-related diseases and the number of drug overdoses."
The survey also found that the popularity of anabolic steroids had rocketed, with significant use in Blackpool, London, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Nottingham, Torquay, Cardiff, Manchester, Portsmouth, Luton and Newcastle. Traditionally used by bodybuilders, the drugs are now being taken by other young people simply to improve their physique. They risk side-effects including reduced sperm count, kidney and liver problems, high blood pressure and increased aggression.
Drug nation
BELFAST
Morphine sulphate tablets, stolen from NHS, popular. Most expensive heroin (£100 a gram) and crack (£25 a rock) in UK
GLASGOW
Crystal meth, form of powdered ecstasy, replacing tablets; skunk popular; 111 drug-related deaths last year
NEWCASTLE
Cheapest cannabis resin (£30 an ounce) and second cheapest amphetamine (£8 a gram) although this has risen from £2 the previous year
MIDDLESBROUGH
Cheapest heroin in UK: one fifth of a gram just £5. Low price attributed to town's role as major drugs transit hub for the North-east
YORK
UK's cheapest ketamine, an animal anaesthetic (£10 per gram). Heroin £50 a gram, more expensive than average
BLACKPOOL
Ecstasy pills as cheap as 75p each when bought in bulk. Ketamine £20 a gram. Viagra and GHB popular among clubbers
MANCHESTER
Below-average price for cocaine (£40 a gram) and crack (£10 a rock). Substantial rise in use of steroids among young men
LIVERPOOL
Drug users buying two £10 bags of heroin get a free rock of crack, which encourages 'speedballing'. Heroin purity very low (average 25 per cent)
SHEFFIELD
Crack at £10 a rock is half the price of two years ago. Standard herbal cannabis is cheaper too. Rise of 'speedballing' is a worrying trend
NOTTINGHAM
One of eight cities reporting rise in 'speedballing', in which heroin and crack cocaine are injected using the same syringe
BIRMINGHAM
Khat, a stimulant with effects like amphetamine, is increasingly popular. Misuse of anabolic steroids is becoming mainstream
IPSWICH
Price of heroin dropped by half since 2005 (now £50 a gram). Methadone and Subutex, heroin substitutes, available cheaply
CARDIFF
Most expensive cocaine in UK (£55 per gram), but the cheapest ecstasy (£1 a pill)
BRISTOL
Rising number of people suffering cocaine-related mental health problems. Skunk cannabis most expensive in UK (£140 an ounce)
LONDON
LSD still popular, along with magic mushrooms, crystal meth and MDMA. Home-grown cannabis increasingly available
LUTON
Misuse of anabolic steroids becoming mainstream, with drug services seeing big rise in number of young Asian men seeking help for misuse
GLOUCESTER
Cheapest cannabis, cocaine and crack in UK. Average heroin prices are also among the lowest in the country at £10 per 0.3g bag
PENZANCE
Heroin price fell from £60 to £40 a gram this year, attributed to Liverpool dealers. UK's cheapest herbal cannabis (£90 an ounce)
TORQUAY
Growing presence of steroids. Club bouncers using an opiate painkiller, Nubain, mixed with cocaine, to create improvised 'speedball'
PORTSMOUTH
Most expensive herbal cannabis in the UK. Cocaine among the most expensive with one gram selling for an average price of £47.50
THE NATIONAL PICTURE
HEROIN: Prices down to record low of £25 a gram. Often sold in £5 bags.
CANNABIS: Wide variations in cost - and strength - across Britain. Twice as expensive in some towns.
SPEEDBALLING: Alarming rise in injection of heroin and crack cocaine in liquid form.
ECSTASY: Price fallen to as little as 75p in some parts of country.
STEROIDS: Half of towns now report rise in mainstream misuse.
COCAINE: Price has dropped in many parts of Britain as overall misuse rises.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1523145.ece
The Independent:
Soldiers reveal horror of Afghan campaign
By Kim Sengupta
Published: 13 September 2006
Soldiers deployed in Helmand province five years on from the US-led invasion, and six months after the deployment of a large British force, have told The Independent that the sheer ferocity of the fighting in the Sangin valley, and privations faced by the troops, are far worse than generally known.
"We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming, either locally or from across the border," one said. "We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches [helicopter gunships] ran out of missiles they have fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed. We need an entire battle group to move things. Yet they will not give us the helicopters we have been asking for.
"We have also got problems with the Afghan forces. The army, on the whole, is pretty good, although they are often not paid properly. But many of the police will not fight the Taliban, either because they are scared or they are sympathisers."
British officers in Helmand acknowledge that the next few months will be crucial in this conflict, which they insist can still be won with an additional thousand extra fighting troops.
Last week General James Jones, the Nato military chief, called for 2,500 extra troops, armour and helicopters from member states. But at the Warsaw summit currently under way, the countries with significant forces, Germany, France, Italy and Turkey, say they will have their hands full with Lebanese peacekeeping duties and have no troops to spare.
The anxiety has been deepened by the decision of the Pakistani military to do a deal with militants and withdraw from some of the border areas. The government of President Pervez Musharraf said the Taliban had promised in return not to continue to cross into Afghanistan to mount attacks, a declaration that a senior British officer described as "risible".
British forces in Helmand had not originally planned to go into Sangin. But when the provincial governor, Mohammad Daoud, appealed for help from President Hamid Karzai to counter increasing Taliban activity, the US commander in the country asked British troops to move in. The result has been that overstretched forces have come under constant attack.
Lt Gen Richards, who says British forces have been involved in some of the fiercest fighting since Korea, has now decided to withdraw from outlying positions, which will be taken over by the Afghan forces. It is a decision that some have questioned. An officer who has served in Helmand said: "We have to ask, can we rely on them? Especially the police."
He continued: "We did not expect the ferocity of the engagements. We also expected the Taliban to carry out hit and run raids. Instead we have often been fighting toe to toe, endless close-quarters combat. It has been exhausting. I remember when we had to extract a Danish recce group which was getting attacked on all sides; it was bedlam. We have greater firepower, so we tend to win, but, of course, they can take their losses while our casualties will invariably lead to concern back home.You also have to think that each time we kill one, how many more enemies we are creating. And, of course, the lack of security means hardly any reconstruction is taking place now, so we are not exactly winning hearts and minds."
In the market town of Lashkar Gar, Afghan civilians are increasingly concerned about security. One man said: "We are not safe now; it is more dangerous than it was just a few months ago."
Bodies of Nimrod crash victims return home
The flag-draped coffins carrying the bodies of the 14 British servicemen killed when their reconnaissance plane crashed in Afghanistan were returned home yesterday to a sombre reception in Scotland.
A ceremony for the victims of last week's Nimrod crash, Britain's worst single loss during its current deployment, was held at RAF Kinloss in Moray. Air force chiefs and the Duke of Edinburgh joined the families of the airmen for the repatriation, at which Des Browne, the Defence Secretary, described the 14 as "outstanding, brave and dedicated".
He said: "They were working towards making Afghanistan a safe and secure place as well as protecting our nation and its interests. We owe them an enormous debt of gratitude."
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1523144.ece
ZNet | Israel/Palestine
My Israel Question
by Antony Loewenstein; September 11, 2006
Jamie Glassman is a British Jewish writer on The Ali G show, a comedy program known for intentionally offending deserving establishment figures. Glassman recently attended the Edinburgh Arts Festival and was disturbed. He wrote in the London Times:
“There have always been anti-Semitic jokes. But you know times are changing when you go along to a stand-up show at the Pleasance Courtyard at the Edinburgh Fringe and you hear audience members shouting ‘Throw them in the oven’ when the comic suggests kids should stop playing Cowboys and Indians and replace it with Nazis and Jews.”
His conclusion was perhaps understandable but thoroughly inaccurate. There was, he noted:
“…a growing trend among left-thinking people in this country and around the world to accept as dogma that those on the Left should hate Bush, Blair, American imperialism, Israel and, while we’re at it, the Jews. It is a cultural trend that I’ve found increasingly evident but never before has the Jew-hating element been so overt. This week has confirmed that my Jewish paranoia is not entirely unfounded. As the old saying goes: ‘Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get me.’”
How often do we hear that the Left is infected with a vicious Jew-hatred? And how often do Jews tell each other that every criticism of Israel is driven by a pathological rejection of Israel’s right to exist? I’m here to tell those Jews that it’s time to stop living like it’s 1948. Israeli actions in Palestine and Lebanon are directly contributing to worldwide legitimate criticism of the Zionist state. For a growing number of global citizens, Israel is a pariah. It’s about time we discovered why.
Real anti-Semitism does exist, of course. Sydney’s Daily Telegraph newspaper reported recently that a number of Jewish students at Sydney University had recently suffered verbal and physical abuse and “Kill Jews” had been spray-painted around Sydney. All these acts are unacceptable and patently racist. But none of this means that Jews fear leaving their houses or should remain in ghettos. Many do a pretty good job on their own without needing encouragement.
I wanted my book, My Israel Question, to offer divergent views. I asked the majority of so-called Jewish leaders in Australia for comment, but they either ignored the request or offered verbal abuse. Federal Labor MP Michael Danby announced last August, before the book was finished and without having read any of it, that my publisher, Melbourne University Publishing, should “drop this whole disgusting project” and instructed the Jewish community to not buy the book. The message was clear. The Jewish leadership was petrified of open and honest debate on the Middle East conflict; they simply had too much to lose.
Over two years of writing, researching and spending time in the Middle East and the US – as well as being slammed by simply defending the rights of Palestinian human rights campaigner Hanan Ashrawi after she won the 2003 Sydney Peace Prize – I soon realised that I wasn’t being silenced but the issues of Israeli occupation and the Zionist lobby were routinely avoided by the mainstream media. I wanted my book to readdress that imbalance.
Honest debate about Israel and Palestine is sadly lacking in Australia and much of the Western world. It’s invariably overly emotive, factually challenged, partisan and counter-productive. Arabs, Palestinians, Israelis, Jews, Muslims, atheists and concerned citizens rarely find middle-ground on the most contentious areas, such as Palestinian refugees, the dividing of Jerusalem and the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
Discussing Israel and Palestine is therefore vital in an age of rising fundamentalisms. Labelling critics of Israel as anti-Semitic or anti-Israel merely attempts to silence individuals who passionately believe the current political path of the Jewish state is destined to lead to its disappearance. I share this fear. The simple truth is that Israel’s long-term security lies with the Arab world, not a superpower thousands of miles away. A superpower, it should be noted, that has suffered an inglorious and welcome defeat in Iraq and whose reputation in the Arab and Muslim world has never been worse.
Martin Jacques, a visiting research fellow at the London School of Economics Asia Research Centre, writes in the Guardian:
“Israel was created as a result of one of the worst racial atrocities in modern history. It was in part a sense of guilt and sympathy that persuaded the West that it must help the Jews create their own state. From the outset, two factors were always likely to haunt the project; first, it involved the annexation of land that was Arab; and second, it implied the foundation of an ethnic state, with all the exclusivist and racist attitudes that this potentially involved.”
For too long, Jews have refused to take responsibility for Israeli actions in Palestine. No longer is it acceptable to argue that ethnic strife is worse in Sudan, Congo or Bosnia. Let’s stop changing the subject and face up to some uncomfortable realities. The nearly 40-year occupation has corrupted Israel’s soul. On the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, Israeli writer Tom Segev explained the sickness:
“The hatred of Arabs has become legitimate. A state in which so many of its citizens survived the Holocaust is supposed to be strict in its observance of democracy and human rights…Ironically, the oppression in the territories is encouraging anti-Semitism, and in various places in the world it is even endangering the safety of Jews.”
A true supporter of Israel can both love and loathe the homeland. Automatic support only serves to prove that Israel and Jewish Diasporas everywhere are not sufficiently mature to debate this long-standing conflict.
In the few months, we have seen another war initiated by Israel. After destroying much of Lebanon – and Amnesty International said that attacks on civilian targets by Israeli military forces appeared to be deliberate war crimes – the world community has gained an even greater insight into the Israeli establishment’s mindset. What has been achieved? The country’s first military defeat, over one hundred Israeli soldiers killed, a resurgent Hizbollah and Iran and increased hatred around the world. Some victory. And yet the Australian Jewish community meekly mouths every press release coming from the Israeli Foreign Ministry.
In the occupied territories of West Bank and Gaza, Israeli forces kidnap democratically elected Palestinian leaders. Around 10,000 Palestinians reside in Israeli jails, many never facing trial. Israel does not even respect the international right of these individuals to receive regular family visits. The great Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote recently in Haaretz newspaper how the Jewish state corrupts the legal process when dealing with the Palestinians:
“The Palestinian detainees are led to a military court: The same military establishment that occupies and destroys and suppresses the civilian population is the one that determines that to resist occupation - even by popular demonstrations and waving flags, not only by killing and bearing arms - is a crime. It is the one to prosecute, and it is the one to judge. Its judges are loyal to the interest of defending the occupier and the settler.”
The release of My Israel Question has provided great insight into the inability of the Jewish community to handle robust debate on the Middle East dispute. Simply put, the Zionist leadership isn’t ready and neither is the community newspaper, the Jewish News. They have preferred to highlight personal gripes, character assassinations and gossip. They’ve too much at stake to honesty assess their own responsibility in perpetuating the myth that loyal obedience to the Israeli state is the only noble and acceptable face of Diaspora Jewry. They will start to pay dearly for this misnomer in years to come, as the ghetto-mentality worsens proportionate to Israel’s falling international standing.
I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the vast mainstream media coverage offered to the book across print, TV and radio. After five weeks on the shelves, it’s already in a 2nd re-printing and a best-seller. A book of this nature is bound to generate varying opinions, and I certainly havn’t been disappointed. I’ve been compared to accused anti-Semite Helen Demidenko by Zionist lobbyist Jeremy Jones in the Jewish News. Sydney Morning Herald David Marr was kinder and launched the book in Sydney because he believed in “argument - the need for honest, tough, passionate and fair argument about issues that for 50 years have threatened to bring the world to war.”
I’ve received hundreds of supportive messages from Jews and non-Jews in Australia and overseas, desperate to find an alternative to bellicose and bullying Zionism, but I’ve also copped emails such as the following:
“You might be getting the love and attention from the media now, Antony, but in 5 years time when the world declares war on Jews, and not just Israel as it is now...you'll see where everyone's loyalties (or shall I say prejudices) lie...you'll be going to the concentration camps just like the rest of us...except when you’re gassed to death, you won't be going to heaven, you'll be going straight to hell. So enjoy the limelight now.
From a fellow Jew.”
But the media has deliberately avoided one of the key findings of My Israel Question, namely the ways in which the Zionist lobby intimidates editors, journalists and board members to silence viewpoints that don’t fit their militaristic and pro-Israeli worldview. I spoke a few weeks ago to an editor at one of the country’s leading newspapers who told me that elements of the Jewish community, through their persistent aggressive tactics, are in fact contributing to senior journalists growing more sceptical towards the Israeli perspective. Are Zionists listening?
In a recent edition of the Jewish News, so-called Jewish leader Sam Lipski praised Rupert Murdoch’s Australian newspaper for editorially supporting Israel during the recent war in Lebanon. Lipski virtually acknowledged that Israel had lost the war of ideas, and the Jewish state needed all the friends it could get, so “let the record show that in its war of self-defence in 2006, a series of editorials in an Australian newspaper contributed on both counts.” It was a startling display of intellectual laziness, though revealed the sickness that pervades the Jewish community.
Lipski argued for uncritical reporting. He encouraged a newspaper that shamelessly ignored the rights of Palestinians, Lebanese and Arabs. And he celebrated perspectives that blindly supported the Jewish state, with no questions asked. Lipski must be a very insecure man if he can’t handle criticism of his beloved homeland. Besides, such debate is currently occurring within Israel itself, where a majority of Israelis now realise they lost the recent war against Hizbollah. Lipski’s anti-intellectualism was unsurprising for a Jewish leadership that refuses to recognise that we no longer live in 1943 Poland.
Of course, Lipski probably just received his talking points from Australian editor-in-chief Chris Mitchell, who told this week’s Jewish News that many critics of Israel, including the Fairfax press, “take the view that Israel is sort of an occupying power and that the Palestinians are freedom fighters who should deserve editorial sympathy.” Mitchell said he had spent time in Israel and argued it was difficult to see “how you can pull back without threatening security.” He claimed the lands taken by Israel in 1967 were “essentially defensive in nature,” despite the fact that the Israeli establishment clearly believed in the original Zionist, expansionist dream; namely, greater dispossession for the Palestinian people. Here’s a memo to Mitchell and his cheer-leaders in the Jewish community: Israel is an undisputed occupying power of Palestinian land. “Pulling back”, as he puts, is not simply necessary, it’s both immoral and illegal to do otherwise.
It’s important to acknowledge some realities. There is a Zionist lobby in Australia. It has every right to lobby its position, like every other ethnic group. It certainly does not have the right to bully journalists, editors and politicians. In a recent article in the Australian newspaper, a Jewish rug-seller said that even mentioning the existence of the Zionist lobby is anti-Semitic. The Israelis openly discuss the role of the Zionist lobby in the US.
The mainstream media is largely sympathetic to the Israeli worldview, classing Hizbollah, Hamas and indeed much of the Arab world as “terrorists”, and unjustly resisting imperial occupation. Dissenting opinions occasionally permeate the stuffy, largely Anglo offices of Fairfax, News Limited and the ABC, but we need to encourage more Arab, Palestinian and less militant Jewish voices to be heard. Why, for example, isn’t there one weekly Arab columnist in any Australian newspaper? It’s time to retire the drooling old males that populate opinion pages across the country.
The Jewish community’s apparent universal support for Israel right or wrong is far more fragmented than we are led to believe. Many do love the Zionist state, but many also express profound distaste for Israeli actions in the occupied territories. It is now time for those individuals to stand up in public and challenge the dominant narrative. The sight of the Jewish establishment discovering that their Zionist thinking is as tired and irrelevant as their insistence on Jews giving money to planting trees in Israel will be a day to savour.
I believe in a safe and secure Israel and Palestine and I say this as a proud Jew. Let’s not wait for the day when support for the Jewish state is largely centred in Washington, London and Canberra. The current militaristic path ensures that Israel is destined to disappear if it doesn’t make more friends in the Arab and wider world.
So enough talking about the Holocaust, Jewish suffering, victimhood, hateful Arabs, terrorists and peace-loving Israel.
Jew don’t have a monopoly on suffering. We’re all human beings who deserve far better than our leaders are currently providing.
It’s time for a revolution.
Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based journalist, author and blogger. His websites are: http://myisraelquestion.com/ and http://antonyloewenstein.com/. His email is antony@antonyloewenstein.com
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10939
ZNet | Israel/Palestine
The Coming Collapse of Zionism
by Kathleen Christison; Counterpunch; September 12, 2006
Is it only observers outside the conventional mainstream who have noticed that by its murderous assault on Lebanon and simultaneously on Gaza, Israel finally exposed, for even the most deluded to see, the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea?
Can it be that the deluded are still deluded? Can it truly still be that Israel's bankruptcy is evident only to those who already knew it, those who already recognized Zionism as illegitimate for the racist principle that underlies it?
Can it be therefore that only the already converted can see coming the ultimate collapse of Zionism and, with it, of Israel itself as the exclusivist state of Jews?
Racism has always been the lifeblood of Israel. Zionism rests on the fundamental belief that Jews have superior national, human, and natural rights in the land, an inherently racist foundation that excludes any possibility of true democracy or equality of peoples. Israel's destructive rampage in Lebanon and Gaza is merely the natural next step in the evolution of such a founding ideology. Precisely because that ideology posits the exclusivity and superiority of one people's rights, it can accept no legal or moral restraints on its behavior and no territorial limits, for it needs an ever-expanding geography to accommodate those unlimited rights.
Zionism cannot abide encroachment or even the slightest challenge to its total domination over its own space - not merely of the space within Israel's 1967 borders, but of the surrounding space as well, extending outward to geographical limits that Zionism has not yet seen fit to set for itself. Total domination means no physical threat and no demographic threat: Jews reign, Jews are totally secure, Jews always outnumber, Jews hold all military power, Jews control all natural resources, all neighbors are powerless and totally subservient. This was the message Israel tried to send with its attack on Lebanon: that neither Hizbullah nor anything in Lebanon that nurtures Hizbullah should continue to exist, for the sole reason that Hizbullah challenges Israel's supreme authority in the region and Israel cannot abide this effrontery. Zionism cannot coexist with any other ideology or ethnicity except in the preeminent position, for everyone and every ideology that is not Zionist is a potential threat.
In Lebanon, Israel attempted by its wildly reckless violence to destroy the nation, to make of it a killing zone where only Zionism would reign, where non-Jews would die or flee or prostrate themselves, as they had during the nearly quarter-century of Israel's last occupation, from 1978 to 2000. Observing the war in Beirut after the first week of bombing, describing the murder in an Israeli bombing raid of four Lebanese army logistics techs who had been mending power and water lines "to keep Beirut alive," British correspondent Robert Fisk wrote that it dawned on him that what Israel intended was that "Beirut is to die . . . . No one is to be allowed to keep Beirut alive." Israeli Chief of Staff Dan Halutz (the man who four years ago when he headed the Israeli Air Force said he felt no psychological discomfort after one of his F-16s had dropped a one-ton bomb on an apartment building in Gaza in the middle of the night, killing 14 civilians, mostly children) pledged at the start of the Lebanon assault to take Lebanon back 20 years; 20 years ago Lebanon was not alive, its southern third occupied by Israel, the remainder a decade into a hopelessly destructive civil war.
The cluster bombs are a certain sign of Israel's intent to remake Lebanon, at least southern Lebanon, into a region cleansed of its Arab population and unable to function except at Israel's mercy. Cluster bombs, of which Israel's U.S. provider is the world's leading manufacturer (and user, in places like Yugoslavia and Iraq), explode in mid-flight and scatter hundreds of small bombs over a several-acre area. Up to one-quarter of the bomblets fail to explode on impact and are left to be found by unsuspecting civilians returning to their homes. UN surveyors estimate that there are as many as 100,000 unexploded cluster bomblets strewn around in 400 bomb-strike sites in southern Lebanon. Scores of Lebanese children and adults have been killed and injured by this unexploded ordnance since the cease-fire last month.
Laying anti-personnel munitions in heavily populated civilian areas is not the surgical targeting of a military force in pursuit of military objectives; it is ethnic cleansing. Fully 90 percent of Israel's cluster-bomb strikes were conducted, according to UN humanitarian coordinator Jan Egelund, in the last 72 hours before the cease-fire took effect, when it was apparent that a UN cease-fire resolution was in the works. This can only have been a further effort, no doubt intended to be more or less a coup de grace, to depopulate the area. Added to the preceding month of bombing attacks that destroyed as much as 50 or in some cases 80 percent of the homes in many villages, that did vast damage to the nation's entire civilian infrastructure, that crippled a coastal power plant that continues to spill tons of oil and benzene-laden toxins along the Lebanese and part of the Syrian coastlines, and that killed over 1,000 civilians in residential apartment blocks, being transported in
ambulances, and fleeing in cars flying white flags, Israel's war can only be interpreted as a massiv act of ethnic cleansing, to keep the region safe for Jewish dominion.
In fact, approximately 250,000 people, by UN estimate, are unable to return to their homes because either the homes have been leveled or unexploded cluster bomblets and other ordnance have not yet been cleared by demining teams. This was not a war against Hizbullah, except incidentally. It was not a war against terror, as Israel and its U.S. acolytes would have us believe (indeed, Hizbullah was not conducting terrorist acts, but had been engaged in a sporadic series of military exchanges with Israeli forces along the border, usually initiated by Israel). This was a war for Israeli breathing space, for the absolute certainty that Israel would dominate the neighborhood. It was a war against a population that was not totally subservient, that had the audacity to harbor a force like Hizbullah that does not bow to Israel's will. It was a war on people and their way of thinking, people who are not Jewish and who do not act to promote Zionism and Jewish hegemony.
Israel has been doing this to its neighbors in one form or another since its creation. Palestinians have obviously been Zionism's longest suffering victims, and its most persistent opponents. The Zionists thought they had rid themselves of their most immediate problem, the problem at the very core of Zionism, in 1948 when they forced the flight of nearly two-thirds of the Palestinian population that stood in the way of a establishing Israel as an exclusive Jewish-majority state. You can't have a Jewish state if most of your population is not Jewish. Nineteen years later, when Israel began to expand its borders with the capture of the West Bank and Gaza, those Palestinians who it thought had disappeared turned out to be still around after all, threatening the Zionists' Jewish hegemony.
In the nearly 40 years since then, Israeli policy has been largely directed - with periodic time-outs for attacks on Lebanon - toward making the Palestinians disappear for certain. The methods of ethnic cleansing are myriad: land theft, destruction of agricultural land and resources, economic strangulation, crippling restrictions on commerce, home demolition, residency permit revocation, outright deportation, arrest, assassination, family separation, movement restriction, destruction of census and land ownership records, theft of tax monies, starvation. Israel wants all of the land of Palestine, including all of the West Bank and Gaza, but it cannot have a majority Jewish state in all of this land as long as the Palestinians are there. Hence the slow strangulation. In Gaza, where almost a million and a half people are crammed into an area less than one-tenth the size of Rhode Island, Israel is doing on a continuing basis what it did in Lebanon in a month's time - killing civilians, destroying civilian infrastructure, making the place uninhabitable. Palestinians in Gaza are being murdered at the rate of eight a day. Maimings come at a higher rate. Such is the value of non-Jewish life in the Zionist scheme of things.
Israeli scholar Ilan Pappe calls it a slow genocide (ElectronicIntifada, September 2, 2006). Since 1948, every Palestinian act of resistance to Israeli oppression has been a further excuse for Israel to implement an ethnic cleansing policy, a phenomenon so inevitable and accepted in Israel that Pappe says "the daily business of slaying Palestinians, mainly children, is now reported in the internal pages of the local press, quite often in microscopic fonts." His prediction is that continued killing at this level either will produce a mass eviction or, if the Palestinians remain steadfast and continue to resist, as is far more likely, will result in an increasing level of killing. Pappe recalls that the world absolved Israel of responsibility and any accountability for its 1948 act of ethnic cleansing, allowing Israel to turn this policy "into a legitimate tool for its national security agenda." If the world remains silent again in response to the current round of ethnic cleansing, the policy will only escalate, "even more drastically."
And here is the crux of the situation today. Will anyone notice this horror? Has Israel, as proposed at the beginning, truly exposed by its wild summer campaign of ethnic cleansing in Lebanon and Gaza the total bankruptcy of its very founding idea, the essential illegitimacy of the Zionist principle of Jewish exclusivity? Can even the most deluded see this, or will they continue to be deluded and the world continue to turn away, excusing atrocity because it is committed by Israel in the name of keeping the neighborhood safe for Jews?
Since Israel's crazed run through Lebanon began, numerous clear-eyed observers in the alternative and the European and Arab media have noted the new moral nudity of Israel, and of its U.S. backer, with an unusual degree of bluntness. Also on many tongues is a new awareness of growing Arab and Muslim resistance to the staggering viciousness of Israeli-U.S. actions. Palestinian-British scholar Karma Nabulsi, writing in the Guardian in early August, laments the "indiscriminate wrath of an enemy driven by an existential mania that cannot be assuaged, only stopped." American scholar Virginia Tilley (Counterpunch, August 5, 2006) observes that any kind of normal, peaceful existence is anathema to Israel, for it "must see and treat its neighbors as an existential threat in order to justify . . . its ethnic/racial character." Even before the Lebanon war, but after Gaza had begun to be starved, political economist Edward Herman (Z Magazine, March 2006)condemned Israel's "long-term ethnic cleansing and institutionalized racism" and the hypocritical way in which the West and the western media accept and underwrite these policies "in violation of all purported enlightenment values."
Racism underlies the Israeli-U.S. neocon axis that is currently running amok in the Middle East. The inherent racism of Zionism has found a natural ally in the racist imperial philosophy espoused by the neoconservatives of the Bush administration. The ultimate logic of the Israeli-U.S. global war, writes Israeli activist Michel Warschawski of the Alternative Information Center in Jerusalem (July 30, 2006) is the "full ethnicization" of all conflicts, "in which one is not fighting a policy, a government or specific targets, but a 'threat' identified with a community" - or, in Israel's case, with all non-Jewish communities.
The basically racist notion of a clash of civilizations, being promoted both by the Bush administration and by Israel, provides the rationale for the assaults on Palestine and Lebanon. As Azmi Bishara, a leading Palestinian member of Israel's Knesset, has observed (al-Ahram, August 10-16, 2006), if the Israeli-U.S. argument that the world is divided into two distinct and incompatible cultures, us vs. them, is accurate, then the notion that "we" operate by a double standard loses all moral opprobrium, for it becomes the natural order of things. This has always been Israel's natural order of things: in Israel's world and that of its U.S. supporters, the idea that Jews and the Jewish culture are superior to and incompatible with surrounding peoples and cultures is the very basis of the state.
In the wake of Israel's failure in Lebanon, Arabs and Muslims have a sense, for the first time since Israel's implantation in the heart of the Arab Middle East almost 60 years ago, that Israel in its arrogance has badly overreached and that its power and its reach can be limited. The "ethnicization" of the global conflict that Michel Warschawski speaks of - the arrogant colonial approach of old, now in a new high-tech guise backed by F-16s and nuclear weapons, that assumes Western and Israeli superiority and posits a kind of apocalyptic clash between the "civilized" West and a backward, enraged East - has been seen for what it is because of Israel's mad assault on Lebanon. What it is is a crude racist assertion of power by a Zionist regime pursuing absolute, unchallenged regional hegemony and a neoconservative regime in the United States pursuing absolute, unchallenged global hegemony. As Palestinian commentator Rami Khouri observed in an interview with Charlie Rose a week
into the Lebanon war, Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, having both grown out of earlier Israeli wars of hegemony, are the political response of populations "that have been degraded and occupied and bombed and killed and humiliated repeatedly by the Israelis, and often with the direct or indirect acquiescence, or, as we see now, the direct support of the United States."
Those oppressed populations are now fighting back. No matter how much Arab leaders in Egypt, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia may bow to the U.S. and Israel, the Arab people now recognize the fundamental weakness of Israel's race-based culture and polity and have a growing confidence that they can ultimately defeat it. The Palestinians in particular have been at this for 60 years, never disappearing despite Israel's best designs, never failing to remind Israel and the world of their existence. They will not succumb now, and the rest of the Arab world is taking heart from their endurance and Hizbullah's.
Something in the way Israel operates, and in the way the United States supports Israel's method of operating, must change. More and more commentators, inside the Arab world and outside, have begun to notice this, and a striking number are audacious enough to predict some sort of end to Zionism in the racist, exclusivist form in which it now exists and functions. This does not mean throwing the Jews into the sea. Israel will not be defeated militarily. But it can be defeated psychologically, which means putting limits on its hegemony, stopping its marauding advance through its neighborhood, ending Jewish racial/religious domination over other peoples.
Rami Khouri contends that the much greater public support throughout the Arab world for Hizbullah and Hamas is "a catastrophe" both for Israel and for the United States because it means resistance to their imperial designs. Khouri does not go further in his predictions, but others do, seeing at least in vague outline the vision of a future in which Israel no longer enjoys ultimate dominion. Gilad Atzmon, an ex-Israeli living in Britain, a jazz musician and thinker, sees Hizbullah's victory in Lebanon as signaling the defeat of what he calls global Zionism, by which he means the Israeli/U.S. neocon axis. It is the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghani, and Iranian people, he says, who are "at the vanguard of the war for humanity and humanism," while Israel and the U.S. spread destruction and death, and more and more Europeans and Americans, recognizing this, are falling off the Zionist/neocon bandwagon. Atzmon talks about Israel as, ultimately, "an historic event" and a "dead entity."
Many others see similar visions. Commentators increasingly discuss the possibility of Israel, its myth of invincibility having been deflated, going through a South Africa-like epiphany, in which its leadership somehow recognizes the error of its racist ways and in a surge of humanitarian feeling renounces Zionism's inequities and agrees that Jews and Palestinians should live in equality in a unitary state. British MP George Galloway (Guardian, August 31, 2006) foresees the possibility of "an FW de Klerk moment" emerging in Israel and among its international backers when, as occurred in South Africa, a "critical mass of opposition" overwhelms the position of the previously invincible minority and the leadership is able to justify transferring power on the basis that doing so later under duress will be far less favorable. Short of such peaceful transition, along with a move to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, Galloway along with many others - sees only "war, war and more war, until one day it is Tel Aviv which is on fire and the Israeli leaders' intransigence brings the whole state down on their heads."
This increasingly appears to be the shape of the future: either Israel and its neocon supporters in the United States can dismantle Zionism's most egregious aspects by agreeing to establish a unitary state in Palestine inhabited by the Palestinians and Jews whose land this is, or the world will face a conflagration of a scale not fully imaginable now.
Just as Hizbullah is an integral part of Lebanon, not to be destroyed by the bombing of bridges and power plants, the Palestinians before their expulsion in 1948 were Palestine and still are Palestine. By hitting the Palestinians where they lived, in the literal and the colloquial sense, Israel left them with only a goal and a vision. That vision is justice and redress in some form, whether redress means ultimately defeating Zionism and taking back Palestine, or reconciling with Israel on the condition that it act like a decent neighbor and not a conqueror, or finally joining with Israeli Jews to form a single state in which no people has superior rights . In Lebanon, Israel again seemed bent on imposing its will, its dominion, its culture and ethnicity on another Arab country. It never worked in Palestine, it has not worked in Lebanon, and it will not work anywhere in the Arab world.
We have reached a moral crossroads. In the "new Middle East" defined by Israel, Bush, and the neocons, only Israel and the U.S. may dominate, only they may be strong, only they may be secure. But in the just world that lies on the other side of that crossroads, this is unacceptable. Justice can ultimately prevail.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 30 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=107&ItemID=10948
posted by attilav at 19:51
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