Elsewhere Today (399)
Aljazeera:
Hezbollah rejects war crimes claims
Thursday 14 September 2006, 17:48 Makka Time, 14:48 GMT
Hezbollah has dismissed a report from human rights group Amnesty International which accuses it of war crimes during the war with Israel.
Hassan Fadlallah, a Hezbollah politician, said on Thursday the group targeted civilians in Israeli cities in response to Israeli attacks that killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians.
"We do not deny that we have bombarded Israeli cities, settlements and infrastructure. But this was always a reaction," he told Aljazeera. "It was a natural reaction. When a state is invaded, it must defend itself."
Nearly 4,000 rockets were fired into northern Israel by Hezbollah during July and August, killing at least 39 civilians.
Firing rockets into urban areas in Israel violated international laws that call for distinction between civilian and military targets, Amnesty International (AI) said.
No grey area
"Targeting civilians is a war crime. There's no grey area," said Larry Cox, AI's executive director in the US.
Fadlallah said that AI had probably come under US and Israeli pressure to criticise Hezbollah's actions during the after issuing a similar report against Israel last month.
The human rights group has called for the UN to begin an inquiry into possible atrocities committed by both sides during the 34 days of fighting.
Hezbollah fired inaccurate rockets packed with thousands of metal ball bearings that sprayed out to maximise harm to civilians, the report said.
Israeli aggression
"The act was begun by Israel," Fadlallah said. "How could we confront the Israeli aggression? With roses? The resistance [Hezbollah] said that the bombardment of Haifa was in response to the bombardment of Dahiya [Beirut's southern suburbs]."
The human rights group had previously called on the Lebanese militia to release two kidnapped Israeli soldiers and abstain from firing at civilians.
The report is Amnesty's most extensive criticism of Hezbollah since the conflict began, and comes after it accused Israel of violating international law with indiscriminate and disproportionate attacks on civilian targets in Lebanon.
The London-based organisation said in a report issued last month that Israel's attacks on civilian infrastructure during the recent war in Lebanon constituted war crimes, and that Israeli assertions that such attacks were lawful were "manifestly wrong".
Cross-border raid
Fighting between Israel and Hezbollah began after fighters seized two Israeli soldiers in a cross-border raid on July 12.
The conflict left more than 1,000 people dead, mostly Lebanese civilians - about a third of them children, Unicef said.
AI is preparing another report studying whether Hezbollah contributed to civilian deaths in Lebanon by hiding among civilians, Nicole Choueiry, a spokesman for AI in Britain, said.
It remains to be seen whether either side will face war crimes charges.
Israel and Lebanon both reject the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, making prosecution there unlikely.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C68DF0B8-23C4-4CC6-9A6C-F724A71F27E3.htm
allAfrica: We Will Sign Peace Deal
But Hide Until Indictments Lifted - Rebel Leader
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
September 14, 2006
Kampala
The Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), the Ugandan rebel group, has promised to sign a final agreement to end fighting in the north once peace talks with the government are concluded, but said its leaders would remain in hiding until arrest warrants are lifted.
"Our delegation will sign an agreement, but we shall stay where we are until the warrants are withdrawn," said Vincent Otti, LRA deputy commander, in a phone-in radio programme on Wednesday by satellite telephone from southern Sudan.
The International Criminal Court (ICC) has indicted Otti, LRA leader Joseph Kony and three other commanders on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity for atrocities allegedly committed by the group against civilians in northern Uganda over the past 20 years.
Otti also said he was willing to personally lead the LRA delegation in the peace talks if the ICC dropped the charges against him and his co-accused. Alternatively, Otti would participate in the talks if the government delegation and mediators met him in one of the assembly sites in southern Sudan where LRA fighters are gathering under a cessation of hostilities pact reached last month. The leader of the southern Sudanese government, Riek Machar, is mediating the talks in the city of Juba.
"If the delegates of Uganda come to where I am, I will lead my delegates to the peace talks myself. I fear kidnapping, but if I'm with my people I will defend myself if someone came to kidnap me," Otti said on KFM radio.
He said that an amnesty offer from Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni meant little as long as the ICC indictment remained in force. "I would be with the president in Kampala, but the pressure would not allow the president to protect me. Even if the African Union agreed with the Ugandan government, the external pressure would be too much for them," he said.
Government spokesman Robert Kabushenga, however, told IRIN that it was not realistic to expect the ICC to lift the indictments before a peace deal is reached and the LRA leadership comes out of the bush.
"We can't go to the ICC to start negotiations until these people sign an agreement and come home. The ICC will not entertain any discussion with us until we assure them that there will be accountability as far as the people who committed atrocities in the LRA are concerned," said Kabushenga.
The LRA stands accused of serious crimes against civilians, including abduction of children, mass murder and mutilations. The conflict has displaced an estimated two million people, who have been forced to live in squalid, disease-prone camps under military protection.
[ 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/200609140300.html
Arab News:
‘Entire Villages Were Cluster-Bombed’
Agence France Presse
Thursday, 14, September, 2006 (21, Sha`ban, 1427)
JERUSALEM, 14 September 2006 — Israel’s Army dropped more than 1.2 million cluster bombs on Lebanon during the monthlong conflict, the Haaretz newspaper reported yesterday, citing an Israeli Army officer.
The unidentified officer described his unit’s use of the controversial bomblets during Israel’s 34-day offensive as “crazy and monstrous.”
“We covered entire villages with cluster bombs,” the newspaper quoted the commander as saying.
The 1.2 million cluster bombs cited by the commander only included those bomblets dropped by a Multiple Launch Rocket System. Additional cluster bombs were fired from 155mm mortars or dropped from the air, he said.
Other soldiers cited in the article said the army fired phosphorous shells to start fires in Lebanon.
The Red Cross says international law prohibits the use of phosphorous against people.
Human rights organizations have long advocated a ban on cluster bombs because a lot of them do not explode on impact and create vast minefields where civilians are at risk of losing lives and limbs decades after a war is over.
A spokeswoman for the Israeli Army denied the army had violated international law. “All the weapons and munitions used by the army are legal under international law and their use conforms with international standards,” she said.
In the first 15 days after the Aug. 14 cease-fire in the Lebanon war, 52 Lebanese civilians were killed by cluster bombs, according to the United Nations.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has condemned Israel’s use of cluster bombs and the world body estimates that as much as 40 percent of the apple-sized bomblets fired into Lebanon failed to explode on impact.
The UN has found that Israel dropped 90 percent of all the cluster bombs it used in Lebanon in the three days immediately preceding the cease-fire.
Annan has criticized Israel for failing to provide UN peacekeepers working to clear away unexploded ordnance with adequately detailed maps of where Israel dropped the cluster bombs.
During a visit to southern Lebanon immediately after the war, Marc Garlasco, a senior military analyst for the New York-based Human Rights Watch, said Israel’s cluster bomb use in Lebanon had “been taken to a new level.” “I’ve never been anywhere where I saw these numbers of duds lying around,” Garlasco, a former Pentagon analyst, said.
The Geneva Conventions ban the use of the weapons that do not pass the proportionality test, under which civilian harm cannot outweigh military advantage.
The Haaretz report came as a top general resigned over the Lebanon war. Maj. Gen. Udi Adam, who led Israel’s Northern Command during the offensive, submitted his resignation to army Chief of Staff Dan Halutz as a storm of criticism over the war looked set to spill over into a second month.
“The chief of staff has accepted Adam’s request and he will be replaced in accordance with military procedures,” the army said.
The war left 162 Israelis dead and failed to achieve its two main objectives: retrieving two soldiers captured by Hezbollah in a raid on July 12 and halting a barrage of rocket attacks by the group.
Israel was heavily criticized by the international community for its devastating use of force in Lebanon, where more than 1,200 people were killed and thousands of homes and infrastructure destroyed.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=86520&d=14&m=9&y=2006
Asia Times:
Syria, US shrouded in the fog of war
By Sami Moubayed
Sep 15, 2006
DAMASCUS - Starting with what is fact, four attackers and one security guard died in the unsuccessful attack on the US Embassy in the Rawda neighborhood of the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday morning. And, contrary to some reports, all of the attackers were Syrian, and not jihadis from neighboring countries.
After this, it all gets a bit murky.
Minutes after the attack, Syrian opposition leader Ali Sadr al-Din al-Baynouni of the banned Muslim Brotherhood spoke from his London exile to Doha-based Al-Jazeera TV, saying the attack was fabricated by Syrian intelligence. The reasons, he said, were to score points with the Americans and prove to Washington that Syria and the US had the same enemy in radical political Islam.
Then a senior Syrian government official accused the United States of being behind the assault on its own embassy. One unidentified Ba'ath Party official was quoted in the media as saying, "Only the Americans can succeed in carrying out an attack just 200 meters from President [Bashar al-]Assad's residence in the most heavily guarded section of Syria."
The official claimed that Washington had masterminded the attack to "prove Syria is filled with terrorists and to put us in a weak position" to extract political concessions - this despite the US praising the Syrians. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the US appreciated the response of the Syrian security forces "to help secure our territory" - and this at a time that relations between the Syrian government and the US are at their lowest point ever.
One would be on safe ground to dismiss the theory of a US plot out of hand. Baynouni's accusation of Syrian complicity, though, bears closer scrutiny.
Baynouni points out that the Rawda district is a heavily guarded neighborhood because it borders the Presidential Palace and the homes of high-level officials in the Ba'ath regime, in addition to several foreign embassies. It would be very difficult for armed terrorists to penetrate a security zone like Rawda, he said, had they not been helped by Syrian security. This argument, popular among some in the Syrian opposition, is difficult to believe for a variety of reasons.
Terrorists can, and have, previously infiltrated heavily guarded compounds not only in Syria but all over the world. In Syria, during the heyday of tight security in the 1970s and 1980s, the Muslim Brotherhood carried out a series of armed attacks in similar heavily guarded neighborhoods of Damascus, assassinating prominent members of the Ba'athist regime. The most famous Brotherhood attack was on army headquarters in Omayyad Square in central Damascus, and another on the Azbakiyye neighborhood, both conducted in the 1980s.
Former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein once famously sent Palestinian militants to seize the Semiramis Hotel in Damascus, in September 1976, and they managed to take many hostages. Nobody said then that the attacks were staged by Syrian security.
More recently, terrorists who had been to Iraq returned to Syria and carried out a failed military operation in Mezzeh, a posh residential neighborhood in Damascus, facing the Ministry of Information. Two people were killed in the gunfire.
In July 2005, terrorists preaching militant Islam were arrested after a shootout with Syrian security in Mount Qasiyoun, overlooking the Syrian capital. Shortly afterward, a terrorist group was apprehended in Mu'arret al-Nu'man village, and another group was caught while preparing to detonate a bomb at peak time inside the Damascus Palace of Justice.
This year, a terrorist group launched a failed attack on the Syrian Television Compound, located in Omayyad Square and surrounded by army headquarters, the Damascus opera house, the General Customs Department and the Assad National Library.
The bottom line is that terrorism can and does happen in Syria. Just because Syria has a reputation for tight security does not mean it can prevent Islamic fundamentalists from striking inside the country.
Any person who saw the blood-stained street in front of the US Embassy on Tuesday, or heard and saw the gunfire, knows that the attack was not a stunt by the Syrians.
The Syrian regime has always boasted of the tight security it imposes on the country, and it would be highly unlikely to jeopardize its iron-fisted reputation by stage-managing a terror attack.
But the reason members of the opposition doubt its authenticity is that in the past, particularly in after 1982, the Syrians exaggerated the Islamic threat in the country to justify tight security. This was to show the world that if the Ba'athists were removed from power, intolerant and radical Islamists would take over Damascus.
Ironically, there is no need now to exaggerate the claims - militant Islam has been on the rise since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US and the subsequent invasion of Iraq.
In Syria, Islamists have been encouraged by these events. They have been at war with the Ba'athist regime since 1963 and have suffered two heavy defeats, in 1964 and 1984. They are not necessarily a part of the Brotherhood, more likely former members or allies. They share a common enemy in the Syrian regime and are equally opposed to the secularism of Syrian society.
One of the people to make headlines in recent years has been Aleppo-based cleric Abu al-Qaqa, an anti-American preacher whose students were accused of staging the Omayyad Square attacks this summer. The assailants were killed in that incident, but they were carrying compact discs with Qaqa's sermons.
In one of the sermons he is seen screaming: "We will teach our enemies a lesson they will never forget. Are you ready?" When the crowds respond affirmatively with thundering voices, he says: "Speak louder so George Bush can hear you!" He then gets so worked up that he starts to weep while preaching and says: "Guests have come to our land ... slaughter them like cattle. Burn them! Yes, they are the Americans!"
Qaqa denied that he had ordered the Omayyad Square attack, but said some of his disgruntled students might have taken matters into their own hands without his blessing or knowledge.
The same scenario might apply to the attack on the US Embassy. Syrians, anti-American and deeply religious, might have wanted to send a message to the Americans on the fifth anniversary of September 11. Or they might have wanted to embarrass the Syrian regime further with the US administration. Or both.
Let us not forget there are thousands of Syrians in the diaspora. They fled the government's dragnet in the 1980s and are affiliated with international political and military Islam. Many of them are members of or linked to al-Qaeda and certainly - no matter how tight security is in Damascus - they still have contacts in Syria.
Imad Yarkas is currently in jail in Spain for providing logistic support to al-Qaeda, training its members and conspiring to commit murder on September 11. He is Syrian. Since September 11, the names of several other Syrians have appeared in the hunt for al-Qaeda in Europe and the Middle East.
Among those accused of al-Qaeda ties are Yarkas, TV journalist Tayseer al-Alouni, businessman Ma'mun al-Darkazanli and the deadly Abu Musab al-Souri, believed to be behind the March 11, 2004, attacks in Madrid and possibly involved in the July 7 attacks in London last year. One of the top al-Qaeda men in Iraq is Sulayman Khalil Darwish, known by his war name Abu al-Ghadia. He, too, is Syrian.
But back to the embassy attack. Syria has nothing to gain by projecting the image that it is swarming with Islamic fundamentalists. Such an attack is devastating for investment and tourism.
It also proves that Syria was not being dishonest when it told the Americans after September 11 that they should work together in preventing the rise of fundamentalist Islam. The Syrians said they had suffered for their secularism from radical Islam long before the Americans did on September 11. They helped track some of the attackers who had been in Aleppo before September 11 and gave many files and documents to US intelligence, leading William Burns, the assistant secretary of state, to say that "Syria has saved American lives".
Relations soured between Syria and the US during the war on Afghanistan in 2001 and slipped further during the Iraq war. They have been on a downward slope since then, heightened by Syria's support for military groups in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon and the assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister, Rafik al-Hariri, last year.
Perhaps this attack will prove to the Americans that the Syrians are genuine partners in the "war on terror". Washington might disagree with Damascus on particular issues related to Palestine, Iraq or Lebanon, but in the "war on terror", Syria and the United States have common interests.
Syria did not protect the US Embassy to score points with Washington. It thwarted the attack because it is in Syria's best national interests to prevent the rise of political or military Islam in the Arab world. Perhaps it will be easier for the Americans now to see Syria as part of the solution, rather than the problem, to fundamentalism in the Middle East.
Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.
Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HI15Ak01.html
Guardian:
UN attacks US nuclear report on Iran
David Fickling
Thursday September 14, 2006
The UN's nuclear watchdog has made a stinging attack on the US Congress over an "outrageous and dishonest" report on Iran's nuclear programme.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said that the congressional report published last month contained "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated information", and that it took "strong exception" to "incorrect and misleading" claims in the report that the IAEA was covering up some of its doubts about Iran's nuclear intentions.
A letter from the IAEA to Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the intelligence select committee in the house of representatives, was leaked to the Washington Post today.
Washington has been keen to ramp up pressure on Iran at a time when Russia, China, the UK, France and Germany - the other main negotiators over Iran's nuclear programme - are favouring a more cautious approach.
Although all six countries want Iran to stop enriching uranium, Russia and China are understood to oppose the imposition of economic sanctions and the European negotiators are opposed to any military action against Tehran.
There have been international concerns about Iran's nuclear programme since it announced success in enriching uranium earlier this year. Uranium must be enriched to be used in nuclear power plants, but further enrichment can produce material suitable for use in atomic bombs.
Iran insists that its nuclear programme is only intended for peaceful power generation purposes, but diplomats suspect that it is being used as cover for atomic weapons development.
The congressional report is said to have been written by a Republican staff member of the house intelligence committee who is known to have hardline views on Iran and who based the report's conclusions on published material, rather than secret intelligence.
The IAEA letter particularly criticised a caption in the report claiming that the Natanz plant in central Iran was enriching uranium to weapons grade. That claim was contradicted by the IAEA's latest report on Iran, released to diplomats at the end of last month and showing that enrichment had so far only reached low levels.
But the strongest response was to the report's retelling of an article in German newspaper Die Welt about the departure of former nuclear inspector Chris Charlier from the IAEA.
The report had claimed that Mr Charlier was removed by the IAEA director, Mohamed El Baradei, at the behest of Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, Ali Larijani, and that there was an "unstated IAEA policy barring IAEA officials from telling the whole truth about the Iranian nuclear programme".
The letter described these statements as "outrageous and dishonest", saying that the IAEA's founding rules stated that inspectors could only be sent to a country with the agreement of the country's government.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1872679,00.html
il manifesto:
Un dialogo ininterrotto con i fantasmi tedeschi
Il biografo di Hitler e di Speer è morto, la sua è stata anzitutto una tecnica per descrivere e circoscrivere le macchie della memoria tedesca. Sempre a distanza di sicurezza dagli estremismi, ha difeso costantemente la propria indipendenza di giudizio tanto dai sovraccarichi ideologici quanto dalle evasioni dal pragmatismo
Stefano Catucci
La vita non è stata avara con Joachim Fest, morto ieri nella sua casa vicino Francoforte all'età di settantanove anni, proprio mentre esce il suo ultimo libro, una sorta di autobiografia degli anni di gioventù intitolata Io no (Ich nicht, ed. Rowohlt, pp. 320, euro 19,90). Giornalista e storico fra i più in vista del dopoguerra, ha acquisito notorietà internazionale con la sua grande biografia di Hitler, apparsa nel 1973, alla quale in anni recenti hanno fatto seguito quella di Albert Speer, l'architetto del Terzo Reich, e La disfatta, una ricostruzione degli ultimi giorni di Hitler da cui il regista Oliver Hirshbiegel ha tratto il film La caduta, con Bruno Ganz nel ruolo del dittatore. Per vent'anni, dal 1973 al 1993, è stato condirettore editoriale della «Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung», prestigioso quotidiano che i tedeschi chiamano familiarmente Faz, con l'incarico principale di curarne il supplemento culturale. Sono state quelle pagine a ospitare, nel 1986, il celebre articolo di Ernst Nolte intitolato Un passato che non passa, atto di nascita del revisionismo storiografico in Germania: non sorprende, allora, che la critica abbia apparentato Fest a questa corrente, nonostante le sue proteste e le sue prese di posizione contro una simile identificazione. Sempre a distanza di sicurezza dagli estremismi, Fest ha voluto difendere costantemente la sua indipendenza di giudizio da ogni tipo di sovraccarico ideologico, così come da ogni forma di evasione dal pragmatismo. Il suo colore preferito è stato il grigio: l'unico, a suo dire, che consenta di cogliere le sfumature delle cose e di evitare i contrasti rigidi del bianco e del nero. E la virtù civica che preferiva è stata il dubbio, fondamentale risorsa della razionalità politica. Da questo punto di vista, il dono più prezioso che Fest ha ricevuto dalla storia è stato lo sfaldamento delle utopie e l'avvento di una politica essenzialmente tecnica, amministrativa, immagine che il «granborghese» - come lo definisce la stampa tedesca - ha auspicato fin dagli anni Sessanta e della quale ha assaporato il trionfo dopo la caduta del Muro di Berlino. In uno dei suoi saggi più noti, Il sogno distrutto (1991), scriveva che «con la fine dei sistemi utopistici» è andato perduto «un retaggio quasi incalcolabile di teorie, di ambiti di pensiero e aspettative inebrianti, di fughe e di consolazioni»: ormai la ricerca di ciò che redime dalle miserie del mondo è diventata una questione privata, terreno fertile per antiche religioni e nuove credenze, mentre sul piano della sfera pubblica «gli uomini si adatteranno a una prassi che non tenta più di rispondere a domande ideali», ma che consiste soprattutto «in lavoro manuale e ingegneria» tralasciando l'assistenza metapolitica»: è questo «il meglio» che ci possiamo aspettare. Gli accademici che dalle cattedre universitarie parlano di una «terza via» fra i sistemi totalitari generati dalle utopie e le moderne democrazie capitalistiche - dice ancora Fest - non fanno che sognare a occhi aperti, o forse li chiudono del tutto per potersi ancora circondare di adepti affascinati dalla loro eloquenza: «la pura e semplice verità è che questa terza via» è rappresentata proprio dai «moderni stati della società aperta, con tutte le loro incongruenze e insufficienze. Altrimenti, volendole senza macchia, queste vie non esistono».
Come cicatrizzare le ferite
Che la Germania uscita dalla guerra fosse un paese pieno di macchie, Fest non ha mai esitato a riconoscerlo, ma la sua unica, ferma convinzione è stata che il lavoro rigoroso dello storico potesse contribuire a cicratizzare le ferite senza negarne l'esistenza e misurando con precisione la distanza che ci separa dal passato. Demonizzare l'avversario equivale a mitizzarlo, dunque a sottrarlo a quell'analisi minuziosa e documentata che sola, invece, può immunizzare dal rischio di una ricaduta. Nessuna altra pratica, oltre quella storica, poteva svolgere ai suoi occhi un simile compito. Non la letteratura, non la poesia, generi che Fest tendeva a svuotare di valore testimoniale perché troppo vicini all'emozione, e dunque troppo esposti agli inganni della retorica. Per definire la propria posizione usava spesso la parola «illuminismo», ma per poter meglio comprendere il suo cammino occorre pensare alle diverse accezioni del termine e scegliere quelle che maggiormente si avvicinano a un'idea tecnica della razionalità, aggiungendo però un fattore determinante: la paura.
L'esercizio storiografico è stato per Joachim Fest anzitutto una tecnica per descrivere e circoscrivere le macchie della memoria tedesca. Al tempo stesso, però, è stato anche una tecnica per combattere contro i fantasmi, tanto del passato come del futuro, per svelarli nella loro natura reale, umana, e per esorcizzarne il ritorno.
La paura è anche ciò che muove l'atteggiamento con il quale Fest ha affrontato uno dei periodi più delicati del dopoguerra tedesco, quello dei movimenti giovanili che tra la fine degli anni Sessanta e la prima metà dei Settanta hanno messo direttamente in questione le basi della Repubblica Federale e hanno trovato il loro esito estremo nelle azioni armate della RAF. Nelle parole di Fest al riguardo non troviamo solo un illuminato distacco, ma autentico terrore per il destino di una generazione che egli riteneva preda di uno spirito totalitario solo rovesciato di segno. Fu lui a coniare nel 1976 il termine «fascisti di sinistra», usato per la prima volta in una stroncatura della pièce teatrale di Rainer Werner Fassbinder Der Müll, die Stadt und der Tod. Ma già prima di giungere a questa formula crudelmente fulminante aveva avuto modo di riconoscere segnali per lui altrettanto inquietanti nelle parole della contestazione tedesca, nei suoi slogan, in tutto ciò che gli appariva come una fuoriuscita dal campo della politica e come una pericolosa discesa nella psicosi di massa.
Il suo rapporto di cordialissima inimicizia con Ulrike Meinhof, raccontato nel più duro e controverso dei ritratti che compongono il volume Incontri da vicino e da lontano (pubblicato nel 1981 tradotto di recente da Garzanti, editore italiano di tutti i suoi libri) è sintomatico dell'atteggiamento insieme paternalistico e panico verso una generazione ribelle, per lui completamente priva di «fantasia costruttrice», e dunque solamente «distruttiva». I richiami alla prudenza e al realismo con i quali costella conversazioni sparse lungo tutto l'arco degli anni Sessanta sono propri di chi, come lui, vedeva in Ulrike Meinhof il simbolo di giovani «alla continua ricerca di un appoggio spirituale e umano», sotto la superficie della rivolta.
Non avrebbe forse dovuto essere sufficiente, anche per loro, l'insegnamento della storia? E cioè che per giungere a una «ordinata libertà» bisognava pur scendere a qualche compromesso con le persone? Quando Meinhof parla di un inestirpabile «Hitler nei tedeschi», sopravvissuto alla guerra per una epurazione troppo morbida e troppo rispettosa del «consenso di base» di cui il nazismo aveva goduto, Fest replica che «troppi si erano limitati a seguire il gregge e che non si sarebbe potuto raddrizzare in qualche modo un paese degradato, distrutto fino alle radici, contro la maggioranza della popolazione». E quando le posizioni della sua interlocutrice si avvicinano alla soglia di rottura contro il sistema della convivenza civile, a Fest sembra chiaro il fatto di trovarsi di fronte a «una rivolta culturale pessimista contro il mondo moderno, la quale si limitava a nascondere la scandalosa vicinanza con il nazionalsocialismo ammantandosi di argomenti di sinistra». Forse era facile, per Meinhof, dire che «basta grattare un po' la superficie di questa straordinaria democrazia per imbattersi nell'antico e familiare stato dei campi di concentramento»; Fest, almeno qui, non ha dubbi e ritiene che il sogno totalitario stia piuttosto alla base dei sogni di rivolta, basta grattare un poco la superficie e tenere in sospetto chi cerca di trarre un «vantaggio morale» dall'ammissione di colpa, si tratti di quella personale o di quella collettiva di un popolo.
La sua predilezione per i mezzi toni
Curiosamente è proprio sul piano di questo «vantaggio morale» che l'esistenza ha offerto a Joachim Fest, nelle scorse settimane, un ultimo dono dal gusto dolceamaro. La pubblicazione della sua autobiografia Io no, infatti, viene a coincidere con quella di Günter Grass, Sbucciando le cipolle, e la stretta relazione fra questi due libri è tanto palese da non sfuggire nemmeno alla logica del commercio on-line: se acquistati insieme, infatti, i due volumi vengono offerti a un prezzo speciale sul sito tedesco della libreria Amazon. Coetaneo di Grass, Joachim Fest aveva già dai primi anni del dopoguerra rivelato di essersi arruolato da volontario nell'esercito e di avere perciò, contrariamente allo scrittore, evitato il servizio nelle SS, anche se al momento di indossare la divisa aveva pur sempre dovuto affrontare la vergogna del padre, secondo il quale «non bisognava concedere nulla al tiranno». Fest, che nella sua autobiografia ora racconta in modo più puntuale quegli accadimenti, ha così avuto buon gioco nel revocare pubblicamente a Grass quella patente morale che ora, paradossalmente, la maggioranza della stampa ha concesso a lui, fornendogli con ciò un'apertura di credito illimitata. Di certo il rapporto con il padre, che accolse male la sua decisione di arruolarsi, e con il quale venne a un chiarimento solo anni dopo, durante un lungo viaggio in Italia, è il punto più dolente e delicato della vita di Joachim Fest; ma è anche il passaggio al quale si può far risalire il suo tratto migliore, quello autenticamente illuminista. È il tratto della disponibilità al dialogo, e di una devozione per la cultura classica tedesca che ci fa leggere, fra le righe dei suoi testi, anche quanto Fest non avrebbe mai ammesso esplicitamente: che la razionalità intesa come argine contro la paura non si risolve in una tecnica, semmai la trasforma a sua volta in un sogno nuovo, e non necessariamente nel migliore che ci è dato attenderci.
Volendo cercare un paragone nel passato lo troveremmo in Brahms, un musicista che non a caso Joachim Fest amava molto e che nella cura della forma trovò, appunto, una disciplina del controllo di sé, una maniera per esorcizzare le sue parole senza farle giungere mai alla soglia del grido. Fest ha sempre temuto chi grida, cercando di tenersi al di sotto delle punte più aspre dettate dalla polemica. Restituirgli la sua predilezione per i mezzitoni, impedire che anche le sue prese di posizione più recenti, per non parlare di quelle lontane, vengano ora impugnate gridando, è il miglior servizio che si possa rendere alle sue pagine di storico, senza farle cadere proprio ora nelle trappole di un uso ideologico.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/13-Settembre-2006/art52.html
il manifesto:
L'adolescente che amò la belva
Si è spenta a 93 anni America Scarfò, fidanzata clandestina di Severino Di Giovanni, leggendario anarchico italiano fucilato a Buenos Aires negli anni '30. Una storia d'amore fra emigranti più forte anche delle passioni politiche
Alberto Prunetti
America Josefina Scarfò, detta Fina, è morta a Buenos Aires il 26 agosto scorso. Aveva 93 anni. Nel suo nome, America, sono raccolte le speranze dei suoi genitori, una famiglia di calabresi emigrati in Argentina. Sono gli anni '20 del secolo scorso e gli italiani si trasferiscono in massa nel paese australe, che ha aperto le porte all'emigrazione: servono inglesi, tedeschi, nordeuropei che stemperino la pelle dei creoli. Invece arrivano italiani e spagnoli. Non portano solo la pelle olivastra e i capelli neri, ma diffondono anche il seme dell'anarchia e del socialismo. Su cin que milioni e mezzo di immigrati arrivati in Argentina entro gli anni '30 del Novecento, la metà sono italiani.
Tra questi c'è un maestro elementare nato a Chieti nel 1901, scappato al fascismo e arrivato nella città rioplatense nel 1923 con moglie e figli: si chiama Severino Di Giovanni.
Amore e rivolta
La polizia si accorge di lui il giorno in cui lancia dagli spalti del teatro Colòn di Buenos Aires un volantino inneggiante a Matteotti. «Abbasso il fascismo!», urla quel giovane di fronte all'ambasciatore italiano. La polizia argentina lo ferma e i miliziani fascisti lo prendono a pugni.
America si accorge di lui uscendo dalla casa dei suoi genitori. Lei ha quattordici anni e due fratelli anarchici, Paulino e Alejandro. Suo padre accetta di affittare a Di Giovanni un appartamento costruito a lato della propria abitazione. Severino esce presto la mattina per andare a lavorare in tipografia, America esce di casa per andare a scuola, e i due si incontrano sulle scale. Così inizia la storia dell'amore tra questa adolescente e un italiano che diventerà presto l'uomo più ricercato dalla polizia argentina.
Severino Di Giovanni diventa in breve la figura di rilievo dell'anarchismo espropriatore argentino. Circondato da esuli antifascisti, fonda il giornale in lingua italiana Il Culmine e inizia una campagna di attentati contro le strutture del fascismo a Buenos Aires. Colpisce con attentati esplosivi il consolato italiano e la sede della National City Bank. Realizza anche una serie di rapine per finanziare i suoi progetti editoriali.
Ma l'uomo che di giorno stampa volantini incendiari in difesa di Sacco e Vanzetti e di notte prepara congegni esplosivi non può fare a meno di arrossire quando incontra quell'adolescente sulle scale. E' imbarazzato, perché sente nascere l'amore; sente il peso della famiglia, lui che è italiano, che ha moglie e figli. Eppure gli anarchici propugnano il libero amore. Così ogni giorno, come un ragazzino alla prima cotta, si mette davanti alle porte del collegio per ragazze frequentato da America. L'aspetta all'uscita della scuola e l'accompagna a casa.
«Lui mi parlava in italiano, e io rispondevo in castigliano...». America ricorderà così quelle passeggiate. Arrivati a pochi passi da casa i due si separano, affinché il padre di America e la moglie di Severino non intuiscano quello che sta accadendo. «Ti voglio bene, si dichiarò così in italiano», ricorderà America. «Yo también, gli rispondevo io in castigliano».
Quest'uomo di quasi trent'anni, che presto la stampa argentina descriverà come una belva sanguinaria, camminerà mano nella mano con una adolescente, lungo i viali dei parchi di Buenos Aires.
Presto Severino sarà costretto alla latitanza, e non potrà più aspettare America. «A volte veniva al collegio, ma altre volte non poteva, perché era pericoloso. Allora mi scriveva, anche tre lettere al giorno». Severino manda le lettere attraverso altri anarchici che fanno da intermediari, convinti che quelle lettere siano parte di importanti progetti politici. «Io gli scrivevo, e lui leggeva le mie lettere e poi le distruggeva, perché diceva che era pericoloso, che la polizia poteva trovarle. E che io dovevo fare lo stesso. Ma io non l'ho fatto. Erano così belle... distruggerle, no, de ninguna manera».
«Mia amica. Ho la febbre in tutto il corpo. Il tuo contatto mi ha riempito di tutte le dolcezze. Mai come in questi lunghissimi giorni, ho tanto centellinato i sorsi della vita». Stentava con lo spagnolo e preferiva scrivere in italiano: «Vorrei potermi esprimere sempre nel tuo idioma per cantarti ogni attimo del tempo la dolce canzone dell'anima mia, farti comprendere i palpiti che percuotono fortemente il cuore ». Per America invece leggere in italiano era più faticoso. Eppure quella fatica doveva risultarle piacevole, se Severino scriveva: «mi contento nel sapere che per comprendere queste linee debbono essere rilette più di una volta da te». E ancora: «Rendimi duplicato il mio bene che ti voglio. Sappi che ti penso sempre, sempre, sempre. Sei l'angelo celestiale che mi accompagna in tutte le ore tristi e liete di questa mia vita refrattaria e ribelle».
Ricercato dalla polizia, Severino Di Giovanni incontra sempre più difficoltà per fissare gli appuntamenti d'amore. Sono anni in cui una adolescente può uscire di casa solo per andarsene a scuola, a meno che non abbia un fidanzato ufficiale, riconosciuto dalla famiglia. Ed è appunto questa l'idea clamorosa di Severino, abile a congegnare piani.
Il «colpo» di America
Il gruppo di espropriatori che si raccoglie intorno a Di Giovanni dovrà fare un «colpo» diverso dal solito. Bisogna portar via America di casa, senza che i suoi genitori e la moglie di Severino possano intuire niente. Si decide di utilizzare Silvio Astolfi, un giovane anarchico italiano, esperto autista della banda. America presenterà Silvio in famiglia come fidanzato. I due potranno passeggiare intorno casa, e Astolfi le porterà le lettere di Severino. Però Astolfi dovrà fingere di avere un lavoro regolare per ottenere l'assenso degli Scarfò, e soprattutto non dovrà prendersi libertà con America.
Il piano funziona. Si farà il fidanzamento ufficiale a breve. I genitori di America non hanno dubbi e neanche Teresa, la moglie di Severino. Si celebrano le nozze civili e America e Silvio partono in luna di miele verso una meta lontana, in treno. Ma alla prima stazione scendono dalla carrozza. Li aspetta Severino Di Giovanni con duecento rose rosse. America e Severino vanno finalmente a vivere assieme.
La loro convivenza è breve. Il gruppo di Severino - che include anche due fratelli di America, Paulino e Alejandro - continua a rapinare banche e a colpire i simboli del fascismo italiano, ma intanto i suoi amici cadono uno a uno.
Il 29 di gennaio del 1931 la tipografia di Severino è circondata dalla polizia. Inizia una fuga rocambolesca sui tetti di Buenos Aires. Loro sparano 500 colpi, lui cinque. Il sesto lo punta contro il proprio petto. Eppure quel colpo non lo ammazza. Lo portano all'ospedale, lo ricuciono e lo sbattono in carcere. Gli fanno un processo sommario e lo condannano a morte.
America è ancora un'adolescente, viene arrestata e poi rimessa in libertà. Le confiscano però le lettere di Severino. Le autorità concedono a Severino di abbracciarla un'ultima volta. Severino le chiede di essere forte e di sposarsi con qualche compagno. Poi al secondino chiede un caffè, molto dolce, come ultimo desiderio. Glielo danno, ma non è dolce abbastanza. «Avevo detto dolce, molto dolce. Pazienza, sarà per la prossima volta». Il plotone d'esecuzione viene allestito rapidamente, e toglierà ad America prima Severino e poi il fratello Paulino.
Le carte e il portacenere
Passano gli anni. America si sposa con un compagno, si laurea in letteratura italiana e inizia a insegnare italiano. Fonda una casa editrice libertaria e nel 1951 fa un viaggio nel paese dei suoi antenati. Raggiunge Chieti, prova a contattare i famigliari di Severino, ma trova solo silenzio e oblio.
Alla fine degli anni '60 uno storico, Osvaldo Bayer, inizia a spulciare archivi e intervistare vecchi protagonisti delle lotte degli anni '20. Il libro di Bayer, Severino Di Giovanni, riscatta la figura di Severino, ma la dittatura militare proibisce la riedizione del testo. Con la fine della dittatura Osvaldo Bayer e America si incontrano. Parlano di quelle lettere d'amore, che lui ricorda di aver visto tra le carte degli archivi. «Le mie lettere», dice America. Siamo nell'era di Menem, e Bayer riesce a ritrovare quelle lettere sequestrate: sono nel Museo della Polizia.
Prima di morire America vuole tornare a leggere le parole di Severino, e non vuole una fotocopia, ma l'originale. Solo il ministro dell'Interno può darle il permesso, secondo la normativa degli archivi argentini. Il ministro riceve Osvaldo e America, dice che farà il possibile. Dopo alcuni giorni i due sono convocati dal capo della polizia, che li ascolta con forzata benevolenza. «Lei mi chiede qualcosa che appartiene alla Policía Federal. Guardi», e prende un portacenere, «qui sopra c'è scritto 'Policía Federal'. Se lei mi chiede questo portacenere, io devo dire di no, perché non appartiene né a me né a nessun altro: appartiene alla polizia». Bayer insiste: «Però non si tratta di un portacenere, ma di lettere d'amore». Il funzionario torna a indicare il posacenere con gesto trionfale: «Sì, ma entrambi appartengono alla Policía Federal». «No, sono lettere d'amore che sono state scritte per me. Sono mie», dice quella donna anziana, con gli occhi neri e i capelli color neve.
America ha riavuto le sue lettere scritte in italiano, la lingua che parlavano i suoi fratelli anarchici fucilati e il suo amante. È sopravvissuta alla loro morte, è sopravvissuta a tante fucilazioni, a dittatura e repressione. L'ironia però non l'ha mai abbandonata. A chi le chiedeva se avesse mai avuto rimpianti, rispondeva che un rimpianto ce l'aveva: «Di esser stata fidanzata con un tal Astolfi, e che in tanti mesi di fidanzamento lui non mi ha mai dato un bacio». Adesso se n'è andata. Le sue ceneri sono state disperse in un piccolo giardino di proprietà della Federación Libertaria di Buenos Aires. Bayer si è impegnato ad andare ogni mese a leggere in quel giardino una lettera di Severino a America.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/13-Settembre-2006/art78.html
Jeune Afrique: Premier tête-à-tête Kabila/Bemba
depuis les violences d'août
RD CONGO - 13 septembre 2006 – AFP
Le président de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC) Joseph Kabila et le vice-président Jean-Pierre Bemba se sont entretenus mercredi soir en tête-à-tête, pour la première fois depuis les affrontements entre leurs troupes fin août à Kinshasa.
Les deux hommes, qui se retrouveront au second tour de la présidentielle en RDC, se sont entretenus pendant près de deux heures à huis clos au palais présidentiel à Kinshasa, a constaté un journaliste de l'AFP
Ils n'ont fait aucune déclaration à l'issue de cette première rencontre depuis que leurs troupes respectives se sont affrontées du 20 au 22 août à Kinshasa, faisant au moins 23 morts.
Ce long tête-à-tête a immédiatement suivi deux réunions successives au sommet de l'Etat, rassemblant les plus hauts responsables politiques et militaires du pays, a indiqué le porte-parole du président Kudura Kasongo.
La première de ces réunions a rassemblé en fin de matinée le président Kabila et les vice-présidents Bemba, Azarias Ruberwa et Arthur Zahidi Ngoma. La seconde s'est élargie aux plus hauts responsables de l'armée, ainsi qu'aux ministres de la Défense, de l'Intérieur et des Affaires étrangères, au sein du "Conseil supérieur de la défense" (CSD).
"La vie de l'Etat a repris (...). Nous sommes en mesure de reprendre l'activité comme il se doit", s'est réjoui le vice-président Zahidi Ngoma.
De son côté, le ministre de la Défense, Adolphe Onusumba, a indiqué qu'avaient notamment été abordées "la question liée à la situation sécuritaire du pays ainsi que celle des relations avec les pays voisins", sans donner plus de détails.
L'ensemble de ces rencontres, vivement encouragées par la communauté internationale, marque une normalisation de la situation politique en RDC après les violences de la fin août qui ont menacé la poursuite du processus électoral dans ce pays qui sort de près de cinq ans de guerre (1998-2003).
Ces rencontres sont un "bon signe", selon une source diplomatique. Mais "il faut maintenant s'atteler à régler les problèmes : cantonner sérieusement les troupes et respecter les règles du jeu démocratique pour terminer ce processus" électoral, selon la même source.
Alors qu'une embellie se dessinait au plan politique avec cette reprise de contact au plus haut niveau de l'Etat, la Cour suprême de justice (CSJ) a annoncé "l'inconstitutionnalité" du calendrier de la Commission électorale indépendante (CEI) fixant le second tour de la présidentielle au 29 octobre.
La Cour estime que la CEI a violé l'article 71 de la Constitution qui prévoit qu'un second tour éventuel soit organisé "dans un délai de 15 jours". Or la CEI avait elle-même fixé la proclamation des résultats définitifs du premier tour au 31 août et la date du second tour au 29 octobre, dépassant le "délai de 15 jours prévu par la Constitution".
Selon les résultats provisoires du premier tour de la présidentielle publiés le 20 août par la CEI, MM. Kabila et Bemba sont arrivés en tête, avec respectivement 44,8 et 20% des suffrages exprimés.
La CSJ a rejeté les huit recours en contestation de ce scrutin mais n'a pas encore proclamé les résultats définitifs de l'élection.
Elle doit encore se prononcer sur une requête introduite le 5 septembre par la CEI, qui justifie le choix de son calendrier.
"Nous avons invoqué un cas de force majeure, qui ne permet pas d'organiser le second tour de la présidentielle avant" la date du 29 octobre, a déclaré à l'AFP Dieudonné Mirimo, le rapporteur de la CEI.
"Nous avons motivé cette requête. les raisons sont connues de tous: nous devons déployer 60.000 kits électoraux (urnes, isoloirs, encre...) dans près de 50.000 bureaux de vote, nous devons imprimer et acheminer les bulletins de vote dans un pays immense. Tout cela est très long", a-t-il expliqué.
Un responsable de la CEI se disait "assez confiant" mercredi soir, dans l'attente de l'examen de cette requête, qui pourrait intervenir dès jeudi, selon une source judiciaire.
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP92806premitoadse0
Jeune Afrique:
"Un jour, ma mère m'a dit: "saute dans la pirogue!"
SÉNÉGAL - 13 septembre 2006 – AFP
Ibrahim, Sénégalais de 25 ans, candidat à l'émigration clandestine: "Un jour, ma mère m'a dit: 'mon fils, tous tes amis sont partis et ils envoient assez d'argent, tu as ma bénédiction, dès que l'occasion se présente, saute dans la pirogue!'"
Depuis cette injonction maternelle, il épargne sou par sou, se nourrit peu et enchaîne les petits boulots dans la capitale sénégalaise Dakar pour réunir les 400.000 FCFA (plus de 600 euros) nécessaires pour financer son voyage vers l'archipel espagnol des Canaries.
"Ici, la vie est trop dure. Les usines ferment les unes après les autres, la crise s'amplifie, il n'y a plus de travail...", explique Ibrahim, originaire de Matam, région déshéritée du nord-est sénégalais.
Pays pauvre d'Afrique de l'Ouest tout en étant très aidé par la communauté internationale, le Sénégal est un grand pourvoyeur de clandestins et un important point de départ et de transit pour les autres ressortissants ouest-africains qui tentent de rejoindre l'"Eldorado" européen.
Après avoir fui son village à cause de la misère, Ibrahim s'est installé à Dakar, pour faire le "bana-bana" (vendeur de rue en langue wolof). "Depuis, je mange peu, dépense très peu et mes vêtements, je les lave la nuit et les porte le lendemain", explique-t-il en montrant son tee-shirt gris et son pantalon délavé.
Après avoir été cordonnier, puis vendeur de pacotilles, il vend aujourd'hui des tableaux pour touristes aux alentours de Sandaga, le plus important marché de Dakar. "Avant, des centaines de jeunes s'agglutinaient ici pour vendre, mais la place se vide progressivement, imaginez où ils sont tous partis", dit-il en faisant référence aux nombreux départs de jeunes Sénégalais. Depuis le début de l'année, plus de 23.000 Africains sont arrivés au Canaries, un chiffre record.
"J'en connaissais qui ne voulaient pas prendre de risques en mer, mais les conditions ici sont tellement hostiles ici qu'ils n'ont pas pu résister", poursuit-il. "C'est vrai aussi qu'on peut monter un commerce avec 400.000 FCFA, mais tous les membres de ta famille voudront que tu les prennes en charge. Un jour, on te demande de payer des ordonnances, un autre jour c'est le sac de riz... C'est infernal!", souligne-t-il.
"J'ai séjourné au Burkina Faso, au Mali où on faisait état de +facilités+ d'obtention de visas, mais j'ai perdu de l'argent et du temps car, entre-temps, de nombreux jeunes ont pris la pirogue", regrette Ibrahim. "La mer est mon ultime recours, rien ne m'arrêtera", jure-t-il avant de chuchoter: "j'ai des contacts avec des passeurs, mon départ est une question de semaines".
© Jeuneafrique.com 2006
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP75826unjoueugori0
New Statesman:
Interview: Tea with the messiah
Michela Wrong
Monday 18th September 2006
Yoweri Museveni was once hailed as a model for African leaders, but they don't say that any more. When Michela Wrong suggested he was clinging to power, he invited her in for a chat
The summons took a roundabout route, sent to a newspaper editor in Kampala, who relayed it to a friend in Nairobi, who forwarded it to me. "Your writing has attracted the president's attention," said the head of Uganda's media centre in the e-mail. "He is anxious to interface with you. When can you come to Kampala?"
I knew, without needing to ask, exactly which article had piqued President Yoweri Museveni. It was a column in which I'd bemoaned African leaders' habit of fiddling their constitutions in order to remain in power. I'd cited M7, as he is known in Kampala, as a prime offender, arguing that the scrapping of Uganda's two-term limit showed how the man hailed in the 1990s as one of Africa's "new breed" of leaders had never grasped the notion that democracy was built on institutions rather than individuals.
Interface? What, in the Ugandan context, did that mean? Twenty years ago, no journalist in her right mind would have scurried to Uganda, where Idi Amin and Milton Obote's bloody excesses took place, to "interface" with a tetchy head of state. Nevertheless, whatever one may think of Museveni's regime, that I never once thought I could be at risk was a telling tribute to his 20 years in power.
No, it was far more likely he would simply blast me with charisma, a technique used to woo the likes of Lynda Chalker, Clare Short, Hilary Benn and all the other representatives of donor countries that each year provide his government with 40-50 per cent of its operating budget.
"He's on a PR offensive," a Ugandan colleague told me. "It looks like you are one of the candidates chosen to buff up his image."
My arrival in Kampala coincided with the opening of the government's media centre. As marabou storks wheeled in languid circles in the sky and his soldiers paced outside, President Museveni slouched grim-faced in his chair, showing no sign of the legendary charm as his staff introduced themselves.
Then he began to talk, and an extraordinary thing happened. His eyes boggled, his hands flew, his face came alive. He cracked jokes in Luganda and dropped the odd proverb. Lecturing "my children, my young friends" on the need to develop "ideological understanding", he talked about how larvae became butterflies, said Africa was undergoing a similar metamorphosis, and cited the 500 years it took Europe to move from feudalism to modernity.
Soon, the staff were chuckling. Then it was my turn. "I understand," he said, "that you need to be cured of pessimism." Turning to his personal assistant, he listed a set of speeches I should be given to read. "She needs medicine."
I was treated to a slightly perfunctory lecture, this time on the failure of the western media to recognise the "strategic bottlenecks" crippling Africa, such as the Balkanisation of the continent into units too small to sustain trade or growth and the unfairness of an international quota system that forced African nations to keep producing low-value raw commodities.
If multi-partyism, term limits and other such "procedural issues" were so essential, how, he asked, did I explain the fact that African countries such as Senegal remained underdeveloped, while countries such as China, which had embraced none of those things, flourished? "You can see that those pro cedural things are like the jam you put on bread," he said. "You don't eat jam on its own. It helps you to eat the bread." Then he was off to take part in a televised press conference focusing on the ongoing peace talks with the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), Uganda's northern rebel movement.
With its juxtaposition of muscularity with humour, peasant wisdom with western scholarship, all delivered in the "don't-worry-your- little-head-about-it" tone of an elderly uncle, it was a typical Museveni performance. For years the man touted as Africa's philosopher king, who seemed to combine military prowess with intellectual sophistication, has relied on his gift of the gab to seduce western allies and Ugandans alike.
But the charm has been wearing thin of late, exposing something that looks very much like the arrogance of tenure. Museveni's decision to stand for a third term, the crude hounding of his opponent Kizza Besigye - charged with treason and rape - the human-rights abuses committed by an ever-visible army, and the accusations of sleaze swirling around the presidential family, have all undermined his stature. A recent report from the United States Agency for International Development decried the rise of presidential authoritarianism, the use of patronage and selective intimidation to maintain political power, the subversion of formal democratic institutions, and the military's role in politics.
When First Lady Janet Museveni, a born-again Christian, last year compared her husband to the Messiah, it did little to reassure. The baby-faced former rebel chief, who once impertinently told Mobutu Sese Seko (the late president of Congo) and Daniel arap Moi (the then Kenyan president) that it was time for them to go, has started to look like something of an African cliché himself.
So Museveni has every reason to savour the PR coup that fate has dealt him. After two decades of terrorising the north, the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, looks likely to come in from the cold. A final deal with the government is being hammered out as dispirited rebels head for two camps in southern Sudan to disarm.
The LRA campaign, and the Ugandan army's response to it - which consisted of herding the villagers on whom Kony preyed into squalid camps - has wrecked the north, excluding it from southern Uganda's economic success. Jan Egeland, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, called it the world's most neglected emergency. With some two million people living in camps for internally displaced people and dependent on food aid, the conflict had become an international scandal, an indictment of Museveni's rule.
In truth, the tentative settlement with the LRA is largely the result of events outside Museveni's control. A historic peace deal between Sudan's southern rebels and the Khartoum government, which supplied Kony with weapons, cut the ground from under the LRA.
But Museveni has undoubtedly been cunning in the use to which he has put the International Criminal Court. In 2003 he asked the ICC to investigate LRA abuses against the civilian pop ulation, including amputations, kidnappings and the snatching of young girls as sex slaves. The court duly issued international arrest warrants for five LRA commanders, providing Museveni, who is offering the same men amnesty, with a stick to wave whenever it looked like they were trying to abandon the peace process.
ICC warrants cannot be rescinded, but Museveni airily told a press conference after our interview that as long as Kony ceased his criminal activities "we will work on ways to remove him from the [ICC] list". ICC investigators may be quietly grinding their teeth at the hijacking of their work, but it's hard to see prosecutions proceeding against a head of state's wishes.
If it all comes together, peace in the north will be arriving in the nick of time. In November 2007 Kampala will host the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting. It's clear Museveni wants no embarrassing conflict distracting delegates' attention from the glory of the event.
No longer a "donors' darling"
On the record, he is increasingly dismissive of western governments that once dubbed him the "donors' darling". "That was an insult in the first place," he told me. "I aspire to be the darling of Africa and of Uganda, not the donors." But the capital's transformation ahead of the Commonwealth meeting - with deluxe hotels springing up on its seven hills - tells a different story.
"If he can sort out the north, he will redeem his image. He could use that to go for a fourth term," a diplomat said.
To critics, however, success in the north cannot make up for his increasingly glaring failings. One journalist, who did not want to be named, spoke for many Ugandans when he acknowledged that his bitterness was a measure of the hopes Museveni first raised when he emerged from the bush and stunned the nation by preaching a message of personal humility, prudent management and the need for institutional checks and balances.
"His failures are bigger than those of other African presidents because of the expectations he created. In his prime, there was no one in his league except for Mandela. His failures set back the whole of Africa because he has denied the continent a role model."
Yet the road from Kampala to the airport in Entebbe illustrates why Ugandans are unlikely to do anything more than rail at M7's refusal to take his final bow. On one hillside sits the new Serena Hotel, replacing the Nile Hotel where Idi Amin tortured his opponents to death. Above the busy roundabouts, billboards advertise insurance, mobile phones, beer and other products, many produced by the Asian families Amin expelled and Museveni invited back. Along the roadside, where banana groves alternate with brightly painted bungalows, piles of red bricks attest to the building work taking place.
Ugandans in their forties and fifties, who lost family and friends under Amin and Obote, know what a rogue state is capable of. They are not about to put what still feels like a relatively short period of stability and prosperity at risk. "It'll take another ten or 20 years," the journalist said, "before anyone seriously challenges the state."
I asked Museveni, who once said that no leader should stay in power longer than ten years, whether he recognised how a country benefited from the injection of ideas that came with al ternation of power. "I totally believe in competition of ideas," he said. "What I don't believe is that competition of ideas is inseparable from a change in political actors."
A short history of Uganda
1894 Uganda becomes a British protectorate
1921 The first legislative council is installed
1962 Prime Minister Milton Obote secures independence
1963 Kabaka Mutesa II is elected president and the country becomes a republic
1971 A coup is launched by the military general Idi Amin, who establishes a dictatorship
1972 Sixty thousand Asians are expelled
1976 Amin declares himself president for life and lays claim to parts of Kenya
1978 Uganda invades Tanzania in an effort to annex the Kagera region
1979 Tanzania invades Uganda. Amin is forced to flee the country. After the short-lived presidency of Yusufu Lule, a new president, Godfrey Binaisa, is elected. The death toll of Amin's dictatorship was 300,000
1980 Amin's old enemy Obote is elected president. During his five-year tenure, 100,000 people die
1986 The National Resistance Army takes the capital, Kampala, and installs Yoweri Museveni as president
1995 A new constitution legalises the hitherto banned political parties
1996 Museveni retains his post in the country's first direct presidential elections
1999 At the International Court of Justice in The Hague, the Democratic Republic of Congo accuses Uganda of invasion and of killing its citizens. ICJ orders Uganda to pay reparations
2000 Multi-party politics rejected in a referendum; reinstated by another in 2005, but Presidential term limits also abolished.
2006 Museveni wins multi-party elections with 59 per cent of the vote. The government and Lord's Resistance Army rebels sign a truce
Research by Matt Kennard
This article first appeared in the New Statesman.
http://www.newstatesman.com/200609180031
Página/12:
Relato de la nueva gran batalla de Fidel
CON LA PASION DE SIEMPRE HABLO DE CHAVEZ, DE LA MEDICINA CUBANA... Y DE SU PROPIA MUERTE
El líder cubano mostró cómo evoluciona su recuperación en el encuentro con el diputado argentino. También elogió a Hugo Chávez por su lucha para ingresar al Consejo Permanente de la ONU y por aliarse a sectores medios para “hacer los cambios democráticamente” y mostró su preocupación por terminar de editar sus memorias en vida.
Por Miguel Bonasso
Desde La Habana, Jueves, 14 de Septiembre de 2006
Me había preparado para verlo, pero la realidad fue mucho más fuerte. Incluso le llevaba de regalo un ordenador de viaje. Es decir una suerte de cartuchera de cuero argentino, que en su interior tiene espacios predeterminados para papeles, tarjetas, pasaje, pasaporte, anotaciones varias, todo lo que necesita un viajero. Sé muy bien que Fidel Castro no lleva tarjetas de crédito ni dinero en sus travesías por el mundo, pero el modesto presente encerraba un mensaje subliminal: “Espero que pronto esté bien para volver a viajar”.
Pero una cosa es lo que uno imagina, teme, desea, y otra bien distinta el hecho en sí. De pronto el llamado telefónico: “Esté a tal hora en tal lado”. Y nada más. Podía ser que lo viera personalmente o podía ser que me encontrara con algunos de sus hombres de confianza en una reunión preparatoria. No podía creer en mi buena suerte: era el primer invitado a la Cumbre del Movimiento de los No Alineados que tenía el privilegio de ver al Comandante en su recuperación, como ya lo habían visto antes de la Cumbre Hugo Chávez y Evo Morales.
Estaba tan aturdido que olvidé hasta una elemental libreta de notas por si tenía la suerte suplementaria de que me hiciera una declaración.
Pero al llegar a la cita supe que lo vería. Con sus colaboradores más cercanos recorrí el pasillo como en un travelling cinematográfico donde el visitante ve intensificarse la realidad a medida que avanza: al comienzo los hombres de su custodia vestidos de verde oliva, luego su médico personal siempre derrochando bonhomía, al final del largo corredor un trío compuesto por dos mujeres y un hombre alto, los tres de guardapolvo blanco. ¿Médicos, enfermeros? Por fin una señora muy amable que me introdujo en la habitación. Un cuarto austero, blanco, totalmente despojado de adornos. Fidel, que estaba sentado en una cama, con una mesa blanca y móvil por delante, se puso de pie para darme un abrazo.
Vestía una bata color vino y un pijama haciendo juego y, por suerte, era el Fidel de siempre. Más delgado, es verdad, pero no tanto como lo habían mostrado unas fotos recientes.
“Perdí cuarenta y un libras –me recordó–, pero estoy recuperando peso. Ya casi la mitad de lo que perdí.”
Muchos kilos para quien ya parecía un hidalgo español de prosapia cervantina y ostenta ahora un perfil quijotesco.
Nos sentamos para charlar. Eran las once y media de la mañana habanera de ayer y afuera reverberaba la canícula. El nudo que yo traía en la garganta se aflojó de golpe: puede sonar increíble, pero Fidel estaba tan lúcido y filoso como siempre. El mismo tono confidencial de conspirador que el oyente debe desentrañar, las mismas señas misteriosas o las acentuaciones gestuales de algún hallazgo verbal, alguna orden a sus colaboradores en voz bien alta, para demostrar que puede regresar a la oratoria en cualquier momento.
“Ves”, subrayó. “Puedo hablar en voz bien alta si quiero.”
Pasó un rato largo antes de que me hiciera la confesión que carga de peso existencial esta nota. Arrancó como siempre, apasionado por los hechos colectivos, políticos, poniendo lo personal en un tercer o cuarto plano de sombra. Estaba entusiasmado con el hecho de que Venezuela gane la batalla para ocupar un sitial en el Consejo de Seguridad de las Naciones Unidas. “Genio y figura”, pensé. El tránsito por la enfermedad y la presencia cierta de la muerte no han disminuido un ápice la intensidad de sus sueños y obsesiones.
“No van a poder bloquear el ingreso”, aseguró. Y subrayó que su gran amigo Hugo Chávez Frías se ha convertido en un líder mundial. “Chávez ha ido creando un modelo indestructible. No es portador de un socialismo extremo, sino realista. Indiscutiblemente va a tener éxito en crear un gran partido que reúna y represente a todos los revolucionarios venezolanos. Los diversos partidos que lo apoyaban han respondido bien a su convocatoria para lograr la unidad. Además –agregó– ha prometido realizar todos los cambios democráticamente, consultando al pueblo. No es extremista. Ha prometido cooperar con las capas medias y el respeto y la colaboración con las empresas privadas que acaten los principios de la revolución. Además ha desarrollado programas sociales que no tienen paralelo en el mundo y que lo convierten en un líder imbatible. Pienso que un pueblo tan saqueado como el venezolano merece este cambio. Y veo con alegría el impulso hacia la integración de América latina, en la que Venezuela será un ejemplo de lo que se puede hacer cuando un país pone sus recursos al servicio del pueblo. Chávez no sólo usa bien esos recursos sino que los multiplica con medidas fiscales que antes no se tomaban.”
Después abordó el tema de la “Operación Milagro”, uno de los programas de salud que más lo apasiona. Y lo hizo con la misma intensidad de siempre. Como si no hubiera pasado por el filo de la navaja dejando en terrible suspenso a millones de personas. Recordó que en apenas dos años, unos 400 mil latinoamericanos habían sido operados de cataratas, pterigium y otras enfermedades de la vista con la nueva técnica oftalmológica desarrollada por los médicos cubanos. Y que todas esas operaciones, muchas de las cuales se habían llevado a cabo en Cuba, habían sido gratuitas, en beneficio de los latinoamericanos más pobres.
Al rato Fidel me ofreció más café, mientras nos sacaban un montón de fotos. Con su sempiterno entusiasmo, me comentó admirado: “Son increíbles estas cámaras digitales”.
Nos íbamos acercando a la confesión. Sobre la mesa había un libro voluminoso. La portada sobria, bien realizada, anunciaba Cien horas con Fidel. Y abajo: “Conversaciones con Ignacio Ramonet. Segunda edición. Revisada y enriquecida con nuevos datos”.
Algunos meses antes había visto con inocultable envidia la primera edición de esa megaentrevista en la que el líder cubano pasa revista a su vida y a la historia mundial que lo destaca como uno de sus principales protagonistas. En junio último, el Comandante me había mostrado sus correcciones manuscritas a las respuestas de la primera edición. Las preguntas de Ramonet, obviamente, habían sido respetadas por el entrevistado. A fines de julio, cuando volví a verlo en Córdoba, viajaba acompañado por las pruebas de página, en pleno proceso de revisión y aumento. Pero nunca hubiera imaginado lo que ocurrió tras la operación del 27 de julio.
“Lo seguí corrigiendo en los peores momentos –musitó–. No paré de corregirlo. No creas que lo hice cuando mejoré. Desde los primeros días. Y lo hice no sólo por su contenido sino porque le había prometido al pueblo que lo revisaría antes de publicarlo. Así que pasé muchas horas dictándole a Carlitos (Valenciaga, su secretario). Muchas horas.”
Entonces me miró, con los ojos muy abiertos y esa expresión como de asombro que le redondea la boca cuando tira un dardo decisivo, para aclarar en un tono profundo, pero despojado de énfasis y dramatismo:
“Quería terminarlo porque no sabía de qué tiempo dispondría”.
La sombra del gran límite, de la imposibilidad de toda posibilidad, anidaba todavía en el fondo de la mirada como un fondo de café. Comenté:
“Otra gran batalla”.
Asintió en silencio y agregó:
“Estas cosas te las cuento como amigo y escritor”.
Después se excusó de no poder regalarme el libro por razones protocolares, hasta entregar una copia a los jefes de Estado que concurren a la reunión del Movimiento de No Alineados. A nuestro lado, el infatigable Carlitos Valenciaga –el joven colaborador que leyó la histórica proclama sobre el traspaso de poderes– ponderaba algunas incorporaciones a esta nueva edición aumentada:
“Hay cartas inéditas a Sadam Hussein recomendándole que se retire de Kuwait. Las cartas a Nikita Kruschev contextualizadas”.
Sobre la mesa blanca había también un folleto reproduciendo la portada del libro con la siguiente leyenda: “Capítulo 24 - Los sucesos de abril de 2002 y otros temas de América latina”.
“Está traducido a nueve idiomas”, aclaró Valenciaga. Pedí uno para reproducirlo como anticipo en Página/12, después que se le entregara a los jefes de Estado. En particular a dos amigos fieles que el Comandante aguarda con impaciencia: Chávez y Evo Morales. En ese capítulo 24, además de las intimidades del fallido golpe contra Chávez, el lector encontrará interesantes reflexiones sobre los militares nacionalistas y progresistas de América latina, como Omar Torrijos, Juan Velasco Alvarado o el propio Juan Domingo Perón. Y referencias agudas a la derrota de Carlos Menem y el triunfo de Néstor Kirchner en 2003.
Se acercaba el momento de la despedida. La charla se había prolongado durante hora y media. Fidel señaló el modesto televisor que tenía frente a la cama (nada de plasma ni equipo estereofónico) y comentó:
“La tele está cada vez más violenta. Todo es de una violencia extrema. Todo es publicidad y violencia. Desde las ficciones hasta los noticieros internacionales”.
Le dije, con total sinceridad, que me iba muy contento de verlo tan bien.
“Todo en su justo medio”, advirtió, mientras me daba un apretón de manos. “No hay que olvidar que la máquina a reparar ya tiene ochenta años.”
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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Página/12: Por primera vez en EE.UU.,
podría llegar al Congreso un musulmán
El abogado negro Keith Ellison aspira a quedarse con una banca demócrata en las legislativas de noviembre. Ganó las primarias en un distrito de Minnesota. Ellison defiende la retirada de las tropas de Irak e impulsa una reforma del sistema de salud.
Por José Manuel Calvo*
Desde Washington, Jueves, 14 de Septiembre de 2006
Keith Ellison tiene grandes posibilidades de convertirse, el próximo 7 de noviembre, en el primer miembro del Capitolio que profesa la religión musulmana. Ellison, un abogado negro de 43 años que ya ocupa un escaño en la Cámara del Estado, ganó el martes las primarias en un distrito de Minnesota que siempre vota al Partido Demócrata. En las legislativas se enfrentará a un republicano y un independiente que no tienen esperanzas de derrotarlo.
En las elecciones presidenciales de 2004, el demócrata John Kerry ganó en este distrito –que incluye la ciudad de Minneapolis y sus alrededores– con un 71 por ciento de los votos, con lo que la elección de Ellison está prácticamente garantizada. Ellison se convirtió al Islam cuando tenía 19 años y estudiaba en la Universidad de Detroit. “Mi fe me recuerda que debo ser considerado, justo y respetuoso, pero no hago de ella un principio en mi relación con los que me rodean”, declaró a The Hill.
Ellison hizo una campaña en la que defendió la retirada de las tropas de Irak y la necesidad de reorganizar el sistema de salud de Estados Unidos. Logró el 41 por ciento del respaldo de los demócratas registrados, en un distrito en el que la mayoría de la población es blanca, desplegando gran energía en la movilización de simpatizantes; reclamó el legado del difunto senador de Minnesota Paul Wellstone –fallecido en un accidente aéreo hace cuatro años– y se impuso a sus adversarios. Para los cinco millones de musulmanes del país, cuya presencia política es casi insignificante, la elección de Ellison servirá de estímulo. Aunque el candidato ha repetido que su carrera política no tiene nada que ver con la religión, también ha dicho que “es ya hora de que haya en Estados Unidos una voz musulmana moderada, es hora de ver que el rostro del Islam es como cualquier otro rostro. Sería bueno que hubiera un musulmán en el Congreso para que nos sintiéramos más integrados y para que otros norteamericanos supieran que nosotros también queremos hacer nuestra contribución al país”.
Según los datos de la Asociación de Musulmanes Americanos, en 2004 hubo un centenar de candidatos musulmanes que aspiraron a diversas posiciones; la mitad salió adelante, pero ninguno de los cuatro que luchaban por escaños en la Cámara y el Senado consiguieron el escaño. Este año hay otros dos musulmanes que intentan abrirse camino hacia el Capitolio, los dos de Texas y los dos republicanos. Pero uno perdió las primarias en Dallas el martes y el otro se enfrentará a una sólida adversaria demócrata en noviembre. Ellison no sólo disfruta del respaldo del ala progresista del partido y del obvio apoyo de las asociaciones musulmanas de Estados Unidos: también apostó por él el periódico de Minneapolis Mundo Judío Americano. “Represento todas las confesiones, todas las razas, todos los barrios, y así es como ganaremos: creando una poderosa fuerza unida en torno a la pasión por la justicia”. Ellison apoya la ayuda de Estados Unidos a Israel.
Si Ellison puede ser el primer musulmán en el Capitolio, Michael Steele podría convertirse en el primer senador republicano negro. Aunque su desafío es mucho más difícil, porque su estado, Maryland, es demócrata. Steele ganó el martes las primarias republicanas. El voto negro, fuerte en Baltimore y otras ciudades, podría dividirse entre su tradicional afiliación demócrata y la posibilidad de estar representado por Steele, que dijo ayer a sus seguidores: “Si queremos realmente una manera diferente de hacer política hará falta que enviemos a Washington un tipo de senador distinto al tradicional”. El rival de Steele será el demócrata Ben Cardin, que ganó en las primarias al afroamericano Kweisi Mfume, que algunos expertos consideraban mejor candidato para garantizar la victoria.
* 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:
El fujimorismo impulsa una ley de impunidad en Perú
La medida, motorizada por el hermano del ex presidente, cuenta con el apoyo de sectores del oficialismo y ex seguidores de Ollanta Humala. En tanto, renunció el zar anticorrupción.
Por Carlos Noriega
Desde Lima, Jueves, 14 de Septiembre de 2006
Mientras espera en Santiago que la Justicia de Chile resuelva un pedido de extradición, el ex presidente Alberto Fujimori (1990-2000) maniobra para consagrar la impunidad. Utiliza como arma de negociación la fuerza parlamentaria que obtuvo en las últimas elecciones: 13 legisladores sobre un total de 120 bancas. El congresista Santiago Fujimori, hermano menor del extraditable ex presidente, ha presentado un proyecto de ley que les garantizaría a los congresistas inmunidad absoluta frente a cualquier acusación penal, incluso en los procesos judiciales que se les hayan abierto antes de su elección.
La medida favorecería a varios congresistas fujimoristas, incluido el propio Santiago Fujimori, que tienen causas abiertas en la Justicia por actos de corrupción cometidos durante la administración fujimorista, considerada por muchos como las más corrupta de la historia moderna del país. Pero los hermanos Fujimori no están solos. Con el apoyo de congresistas del oficialista partido aprista y de Unión Por el Perú (UPP), agrupación que apoyó la candidatura de Ollanta Humala pero que terminadas las elecciones se ha distanciado del Partido Nacionalista de Humala, el fujimorismo ha logrado poner a debate en el Congreso la “ley de impunidad”.
Si la ley impulsada por Fujimori llegara a aprobarse, se truncarían todos los juicios a los congresistas que tienen causas abiertas en la Justicia, sin importar cuándo se hayan iniciado éstas. Y el primer favorecido sería el propio Santiago Fujimori, acusado penalmente por haber sobrevaluado en ocho millones de dólares la compra de un avión presidencial para su hermano. En las próximas semanas debe iniciarse el juicio oral contra Santiago Fujimori por este caso –salvo que antes se apruebe la ley que él mismo promueve–. Santiago Fujimori también es investigado judicialmente por el pago de sobornos a jueces y fiscales durante el gobierno de su hermano.
Keiko Fujimori, hija de Alberto Fujimori y congresista desde julio, también se beneficiaría con la ley impulsada por su tío. Ella tiene pendientes procesos penales por corrupción, que también se truncarían. Y más allá de la familia Fujimori, son varios los parlamentarios del fujimorismo –otros dos ya tienen procesos judiciales en marcha por cargos de corrupción– que podrían comenzar a respirar tranquilos si pasa la ley de impunidad.
El fujimorismo está avanzando peligrosamente en su objetivo. Gracias a un entendimiento político con el oficialista partido aprista y con la derechista Unidad Nacional (UN), ha logrado colocar a sus representantes en puestos claves del Congreso.
María Cuculiza, quien fuera operadora política de Vladimiro Montesinos, el ex brazo derecho de Fujimori y encargado de hacerle los trabajos sucios, es la tercera vicepresidenta del Congreso que preside la aprista Mercedes Cabanillas. José Souza, abogado de Fujimori, encabeza la Comisión de Relaciones Exteriores, desde donde puede tener un rol clave para influir en contra de la extradición de su cliente. Souza también integra la Comisión de Fiscalización. Por su parte, el Ejecutivo, amparado en el argumento de que se trata de un tema exclusivamente judicial, se ha desentendido del proceso de extradición de Fujimori.
El presidente Alan García no muestra ningún interés en el tema. Hace unos días el jefe de la Procuraduría Anticorrupción, Antonio Maldonado, quien venía dirigiendo activamente el proceso de extradición del ex presidente, abandonó su puesto luego de quejarse de falta de apoyo a su trabajo. Mientas el gobierno se mantiene mudo en el tema Fujimori y negocia políticamente con la bancada fujimorista, Alberto Fujimori sigue moviendo sus fichas desde Santiago y, según todo indica, ha logrado mejorar su posición frente al proceso de extradición. La ley presentada por su hermano Santiago para convertir en intocables a los fujimoristas es un salto hacia adelante en sus pretensiones de enterrar el proceso anticorrupción. En las próximas semanas, cuando esta ley deba votarse en el Congreso, se verá quiénes están de su lado.
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Página/12:
El tigre acorralado
Por Immanuel Wallerstein*
Jueves, 14 de Septiembre de 2006
Cuando, hace muchos años, algunos de nosotros dijimos que la decadencia de la hegemonía estadounidense en el sistema-mundo era inevitable, imparable y estaba ya ocurriendo, la mayoría de la gente nos dijo que ignorábamos la obvia y avasalladora fuerza militar y política de Estados Unidos. También hubo críticos que dijeron que nuestros análisis hacían daño porque servían como un vaticinio que acarrea su propio cumplimiento.
Luego, en la presidencia de Bush, subieron al poder los neoconservadores e instrumentaron su política unilateral de militarismo macho, diseñada (decían ellos) para restaurar la indisputable hegemonía estadounidense, amedrentando a sus enemigos e intimidando a sus amigos para que obedecieran, sin cuestionar, las políticas de Estados Unidos en el ámbito mundial.
Los neoconservadores tuvieron su oportunidad y sus guerras han fracasado espectacularmente: no han logrado atemorizar a quienes son considerados enemigos ni intimidar a sus antiguos aliados a que obedezcan sin chistar. La posición estadounidense en el sistema-mundo es hoy mucho más débil de lo que era en 2000, y esto es resultado, precisamente, de las muy erradas políticas neoconservadoras adoptadas durante la presidencia de Bush. Hoy, mucha gente está dispuesta a hablar abiertamente de la decadencia estadounidense.
Así que, ¿ahora qué pasa? Hay dos sitios a los cuales debemos mirar: al interior de Estados Unidos y al resto del mundo. En el resto del mundo, los gobiernos de todas las tendencias le prestan cada vez menos atención a cualquier cosa que Estados Unidos diga o quiera. Cuando era secretaria de Estado, Madeleine Albright dijo que Estados Unidos era “la nación indispensable”. Esto pudo haber sido cierto alguna vez, pero ciertamente no es verdad ahora. Hoy, el tigre está acorralado.
No es todavía plenamente el “tigre de papel” del que hablara Mao Tse Tung, pero es cierto que va en camino de ser exhibido como un tigre agazapado, a la defensiva.
¿Cómo tratan otras naciones a un tigre acorralado? Con una gran dosis de prudencia, podría decirse. Aunque Estados Unidos ya no puede imponer sus modos en casi ninguna parte, sigue siendo capaz de infligir grandes daños si decide dar un coletazo. Irán puede desafiar a Estados Unidos con aplomo, pero intenta ser cauteloso para no humillarlo. China puede sentirse plena de vigor, segura de que se fortalecerá más en las décadas venideras, pero maneja con tiento a Estados Unidos. Hugo Chávez puede torcerle la nariz al tigre abiertamente, pero Fidel Castro, más viejo y sabio, habla en un tono menos provocador. Y el primer ministro italiano, Romano Prodi, toma de las manos a Condoleezza Rice mientras emprende una política exterior encaminada a fortalecer el papel mundial de Europa, independiente de Estados Unidos.
¿Por qué son todos tan prudentes? Para responder, debemos indagar lo que ocurre en Estados Unidos. Dick Cheney, jefe del Ejecutivo, de facto, sabe lo que se requiere hacer desde el punto de vista de los militaristas machos, de los cuales él es el líder. Estados Unidos debe “mantener el rumbo” y de hecho escalar la violencia. La alternativa sería admitir su derrota, y Cheney no es alguien que vaya a hacer eso.
Sin embargo, Cheney tiene un agudo problema político en casa. Sus políticas (y él mismo) pierden respaldo, masivamente, dentro de Estados Unidos. Los discursos amedrentadores acerca de los terroristas y las acusaciones de traición que lanza contra sus críticos ya no parecen ser tan efectivos como antes lo fueran. La reciente victoria del crítico de la guerra Ned Lamont sobre el defensor de la guerra Joe Lieberman, en los comicios de Connecticut para elegir candidato del Partido Demócrata al Senado, ha sacudido al establishment político estadounidense de ambos partidos.
Si, como parece bastante posible ahora, los demócratas obtienen el control de ambas cámaras del Congreso en las elecciones de noviembre de 2006, existe el riesgo de una estampida en favor de la retirada, pese a la renuencia del liderazgo demócrata en el Congreso. Esto será más seguro si, en varias elecciones locales, ganan prominentes candidatos que se oponen a la guerra.
¿Qué hará el bando de Cheney entonces? Uno no puede esperar que graciosamente reconozca el advenimiento de un presidente demócrata en las elecciones de 2008. Sabe que tal vez cuenta con sólo dos años más para crear situaciones de las cuales sea casi imposible que Estados Unidos pueda retirarse. Y dado que, con un Congreso controlado por los demócratas, no podrá lograr que pase ninguna legislación importante, se concentrará (todavía más que ahora) en intentar utilizar los poderes ejecutivos de la presidencia, en manos de su dócil testaferro, George W. Bush, para agitar estragos militares por todo el mundo y así reducir radicalmente el rango de libertades civiles dentro de Estados Unidos.
Sin embargo, en muchos frentes habrá resistencia contra la camarilla de Cheney. Sin duda, el más importante sitio de resistencia será el de los líderes de las fuerzas armadas estadounidenses (con la excepción de la Fuerza Aérea), que claramente piensan que las actuales aventuras militares han extralimitado en gran medida la capacidad militar estadounidense. Este liderazgo está muy preocupado de que la opinión pública estadounidense culpe a los militares cuando Rumsfeld y Cheney desaparezcan de los titulares de los periódicos. Resistirán también contra la camarilla de Cheney las grandes empresas, que consideran que las actuales políticas tienen consecuencias muy negativas para la economía.
Por supuesto, los de izquierda y centroizquierda en Estados Unidos impulsarán una resistencia contra esta camarilla, ahora que se sienten revigorizados, enojados y ansiosos por el rumbo de la política norteamericana. Hay una lenta pero clara radicalización de la izquierda y aun de la centroizquierda.
Cuando eso ocurra, la derecha militarista emprenderá represalias muy agresivamente. Cuando Lamont ganó las elecciones internas en su estado, un lector del Wall Street Journal escribió una carta que decía: “Hemos llegado al punto de inflexión en este país; si permitimos que la izquierda gobierne como mayoría, nuestro país está acabado”. Este lector llama “ineptos” a los líderes republicanos. El, como muchos otros, buscará líderes más fieros.
Todo el mundo se preocupa por la guerra civil en Irak. ¿Y qué pasará en Estados Unidos? Tiempos alarmantes se avecinan.
* Director del Fernand Braudel Center. Su último libro publicado en Argentina es Un mundo incierto. De La Jornada de México. Especial para Página/12.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-72986-2006-09-14.html
The Independent: Blair hit by Lebanon backlash
as minister admits ceasefire 'mistake'
The war lasted 34 days. It left 1,393 people dead. Another 5,350 injured. And more than 1,150,000 displaced, of whom 215,413 are still homeless. The damage amounts to more than £2.6bn. Exactly one month after it ended, a Foreign Office minister admits that Tony Blair should have called for a ceasefire
By Andy McSmith
Published: 14 September 2006
A Foreign Office minister has conceded that Tony Blair's refusal to call for a ceasefire during 34 days of slaughter in Lebanon may have been a mistake.
The admission by Kim Howells, minister for the Middle East, reflects the growing worries of senior figures in government that Mr Blair's defence of US foreign policy at every turn is damaging his administration at home and abroad.
Mr Howells also conceded that the decision to oppose - with the US - the international demand for an immediate ceasefire was not properly explained to the British public.
Mr Blair's isolated stance is seen as a major reason for the revolt that forced him to announce last week that he would be standing down within 12 months.
The Prime Minister's controversial approach to foreign policy - he has been criticised as President Bush's poodle - has begun to unravel of late. Yesterday, he was pleading in vain with Nato members to pledge 2,000 more troops to the troubled mission in Afghanistan, where 40 British servicemen have been killed in recent weeks.
In a further setback yesterday for the Prime Minister, Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, denounced the US prison camp at Guantanamo as "a shocking affront to the principles of democracy". He had previously called it "intolerable and wrong". Mr Blair, though, refused to be drawn on those remarks. He has gone no further than to call the camp an "anomaly", and has steadfastly refused demands to intervene with Mr Bush.
Iraq, where Mr Blair has stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Mr Bush, remains a quagmire, and there are growing doubts among the British military about its ability to fight on two fronts in the "war on terror".
Mr Howells' remarks will fuel the growing exasperation inside and outside Parliament with the Government's foreign policy.
During a two-hour grilling by MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, he admitted that it might have been more effective if the UK had pursued a "dual" policy of simultaneously calling for a ceasefire in Lebanon and trying to find a solution to the crisis.
He also implied that the Israeli bombing of Lebanon had been a military blunder that left Hizbollah stronger.
He told MPs: "I'm not saying that a dual approach might not have worked. I'm not saying that, I'm not dismissing that at all. Maybe it would have worked. What I am saying is we had to take decisions at the time based on what we knew and what intelligence we had. That's why we took those decisions. They were taken in absolute good faith - not in complicity with the Americans or anyone else." Mr Howells, who has a reputation for blunt speaking, went on to admit that it was "a difficult position to defend" and added: "We didn't try to explain it very well."
During the conflict, which left up to 1,400 Lebanese dead and inflicted an estimated £3bn damage on the country, Mr Blair refused every challenge to join calls for a ceasefire.
It was this defiance that fuelled the crisis that overtook Mr Blair's premiership, when 17 Labour MPs, including a defence minister, signed a letter calling on him to resign.
Mr Blair's visit to Beirut this week provoked a demonstration by hundreds of students who accused him of being pro-Israeli. In public, the Prime Minister has defended his position, saying his effectiveness as a mediator in the Middle East depended on good relations with the US and Israeli governments. But privately one of his senior advisers admitted this week: "We got it wrong. We didn't get the balance right. We gave the impression we were against the ceasefire."
Mr Howells' remarks were applauded by both defenders and critics of government policy. Andrew Mackinlay, a member of the committee, said: "It was refreshingly candid. What we got from it was some recognition that if they had their time over again, they would do things differently.
"It gave me the impression that he's of the view that a twin approach could and should have been applied. We're now paying a heavy price for not having done that."
The Liverpool MP Peter Kilfoyle, a former defence minister, said: "There's no doubt that a dual approach would have been the right thing to do both morally and in terms of what is in the country's interest. It's clear to see, if only because of what has been shown during the Blair visit to the Lebanon, that our approach has devalued our standing in the region."
The former foreign office minister Denis MacShane, a Blair supporter, said: "In geopolitical terms, calling for a ceasefire would not have stopped a single bomb from being dropped or a single rocket from being fired, but the whole of Britain was outraged by what they saw on television and there are times when government must consider public opinion."
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/politics/article1578727.ece
The Nation:
Stargazer
by ARTHUR C. DANTO
[posted online on September 13, 2006]
Ric Burns's four-hour documentary on Andy Warhol's career, which aired on PBS's American Masters Series and is now showing at New York's Film Forum, opens with a priceless piece of footage. Andy, in sunglasses, is being interviewed in front of a few of his Brillo boxes by an earnest someone, while an insider in a business suit looks on, smirking.
"Andy," she asks, "the Canadian government spokesman said that your art could not be described as original sculpture. Would you agree with that?" Warhol answers, "Yes." "Why do you agree?" "Well, because it's not original." "You have just then copied a common item?" "Yes." The interviewer gets exasperated. "Why have you bothered to do that? Why not create something new?" "Because it's easier to do." "Well, isn't this sort of a joke then that you're playing on the public?" "No. It gives me something to do."
This riotous exchange must have taken place about a year after Warhol's celebrated-but commercially not so successful-exhibition of what the film's narrative calls "grocery boxes" at Manhattan's Stable Gallery in April 1964. A Toronto dealer had attempted to import eighty of the boxes, each valued at $250. Canadian customs insisted that they were not original art but "merchandise," and demanded 20 percent of their value as duty. The director of the National Gallery of Canada, consulted as an expert, examined some photographs of the boxes and said that he could see that they were not sculptures. At this point, I wished the film had dwelt on the historical importance of the "grocery box" show. There should have been someone to say that with these works, a new era of art had begun. That these works were blazingly original art in a new sense of the expression. That they raised the deep philosophical issue of what the difference was between art and reality when there was no perceptual difference.
Instead, the film segues into an uncharacteristically soupy verbal portrait of Andy Warhol as "the most American of artists and the most artistic of Americans"-praise ascribed to the flinty Las Vegas-based art critic Dave Hickey-while images of Warhol by Warhol slide by sideways on the screen and a screamingly monotonous background score goes loo loo, loo loo, loo loo, loo loo. It is a studied insult to speak of Warhol, the deepest philosophical artist of modern times, as "artistic." He was "artistic" when he made shoe advertisements for I. Miller, or the effete books of pretty drawings of pussycats, butterflies and cupids for the gift shop crowd, using the broken line and luminous colors that had made him one of the most successful commercial artists in New York in the 1950s. He was artistic when he was called Andy Candy. But when he enlarged black and white images from cheap advertisements, or painted uninflected pictures of all the flavors of Campbell's soup, or created 300 (or 400?) grocery boxes-art of a kind that had never been seen or thought of before-he was not being artistic. Nor was he especially American, except that he favored hot dogs, Coca-Cola and canned soup, and believed in hard work (even if it required amphetamines in the form of diet pills). He, more than Jackson Pollock, had "broken the ice." He remade the world, as Hickey later redeems himself by saying. Nothing is served by calling him a genius as everyone in the film mechanically does. The point is to explain what kind of genius he was.
Later, in the second part of his film, Burns again shows the dialogue that serves his film as prologue. He does so this time after we have seen some footage of the opening at the Stable Gallery. We're told that Warhol was "deeply wounded" by his show's reception. Yet again, we have a portrait of the "misunderstood artist," ahead of his time, when in truth he created the time. It is a piece of soap opera disguised as documentary truth. To be sure, people were baffled and uncertain about the grocery boxes. To this day, specialists are trying to figure out how they are art and what they were about. Warhol certainly wasn't used to selling much. His show of Campbell's soup cans "sold out" only because the gallerist, Irving Blum, bought the entire series for $1,000, which he paid out at $100 a month, the way people did in those days. The later show, also at his gallery, of Elvis and Liz, sold nothing. But shortly after the grocery box show, Warhol was taken on by Leo Castelli's gallery, which was his dream. That was where his heroes, Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns exhibited. It was the place to be if you were a Pop artist. And everyone in the art world was discussing his show.
Warhol had made the transition from a highly paid commercial artist to a poorly paid fine artist (he eventually became a highly paid one, too), but his reputation for greed notwithstanding, what he was really interested in, as the film makes amply clear, was fame. And there he would soon outshine everyone else. There was something about the soup cans and the Brillo boxes that, more than Lichtenstein's appropriation of Mickey Mouse, more than Jasper Johns's American flags, certainly more than Oldenburg's giant hamburgers and slabs of painted pie, flouted what had traditionally been accepted as art. Never mind that something like it had been done fifty years earlier by Marcel Duchamp with his ready-mades. Nobody knew about that at the time. Warhol's art captured the popular imagination in ways that nothing in the history of modern art had. He made his work out of what everyone knew and had believed was the absolute opposite of art. Exactly what, given his values, could have made Warhol unhappy about that?
The miracle years were 1961-1964, the years in which his astonishing output consisted in the kind of art that could not get through Canadian customs without being taxed, the most original art of its era that looked exactly like nothing but "copies of common items." It began with Warhol's first show at Bonwitt Teller in April 1961, which chiefly consisted of those enlarged crude black-and-white images taken from the back pages of blue-collar magazines, advertising remedies for what he agonized over-his awful complexion, his thinning hair, his unprepossessing physique-displayed as background for mannequins dressed in summery frocks. It ended in June 1964, with his monumental eight-hour film Empire, which showed the Empire State Building standing still. Between these extraordinary works came the images of stars; the soup cans; the portrait of Ethel Scull composed of thirty six dime-store photographs, suitably enlarged; the photographic silk-screens of disasters, messily reproduced from the front pages of tabloids; and the home movies in which nothing happens-a man sleeps, or gets a haircut, or eats a banana, or (though it is not evident) receives a blow job. Warhol had an eye for significant banality, and made the "artist's hand" irrelevant to the making of art. He turned what everyone in the culture was familiar with into art. No one has to be told who Elvis was, or Marilyn, or Liz. No one needs to be told what a grocery box is, or a newspaper photograph. All they have to be told is why any of this is art. The explanation was up to the critics and the philosophers, who are still arguing over why and how.
By mid-1964, the breakthroughs had all taken place. Warhol left behind the small group of advisers who wanted a new kind of art and helped him produce it (the curator Henry Geldzahler, the documentary filmmaker Emile de Antonio, the dealer Ivan Karp) and fell into the hands of the transvestites, the speed freaks, the slumming celebrities and the crazies who constituted the edgy population of the Factory-the studio Warhol found on East 47th Street in early 1964, and had lined with silver foil by a certain Billy Linich, aka Billy Name-where he began to make films in which something actually happened. Burns's film comes to life in this phase, which culminates in the assassination attempt by Valerie Solanas in 1968, after which everything changed. In the final phase Warhol was taken over by a final group of managers (Fred Hughes, Bob Colacello, Vincent Fremont and Paul Morrisey)-educated, entrepreneurial and ambitious men who kept the underground at bay and rationalized Warhol's artistic production. It was the period of celebrity portraits, print portfolios, what Saul Steinberg once called political still-lifes, like the great "hammer and sickle" pictures of 1977. It was the period when Andy was seen wherever there was glamour.
The narrative sequence, then, is: a childhood of illness and poverty in Pittsburgh; followed by a successful career as a commercial artist in New York (1929-59); the breakthrough period of creative genius, (1961-65); the Silver Factory period of sex, drugs and studio movies, culminating in The Chelsea Girls and the Solanas murder attempt (1964-68); the post-Solanas wind-down (1968-87). Despite Burns's helpful experts-Dave Hickey, Donna de Salvo, Stephen Koch, Wayne Koestenbaum, John Richardson, Neil Prinz (who is doing the indispensable catalogue raisonné) and others-the segment that deals with the great artistic breakthrough is by far the least satisfactory. That period was really the "Exploding Plastic Inevitable," to use Warhol's name for his famous East Village nightclub-a condensed renaissance in which contemporary art was invented and the history of Western art up to that point definitively ended-and it calls for an equally innovative cinematic format. The rest of Burns's documentary is fascinating, thanks to all the archival material he's assembled. I watched it three times and expect to see it again, if only to marvel at the beauty of Edie Sedgwick, the paradigm Superstar who emblematized her era and died, tragically, at 28.
Copyright © 2006 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060925/danto
ZNet | Iraq
No Qaeda-Saddam links: Senate report
by Stephen Collinson ; September 14, 2006
Saddam Hussein had no ties with Al-Qaeda or slain operative Abu Musab al-Zarqawi before the Iraq war, according to a US Senate report, contradicting repeated claims by President George W. Bush.
"Saddam Hussein was distrustful of Al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from Al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support," said the report, which ignited a new political row.
The assessment, by the Senate Intelligence Select Committee, also dismissed administration claims that Saddam had links with Al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Zarqawi, killed in a US raid on June 7 after unleashing a string of attacks.
"Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted unsuccessfully to locate and capture Zarqawi, and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi," the report said.
Saddam had also repeatedly rebuffed requests for meetings from Al-Qaeda operatives, the report said.
Before, and after the 2003 invasion Bush administration leaders used purported ties between Iraq and terrorist groups including Al-Qaeda, as partial justification for the war.
On June 14, 2004, for example, Vice President Dick Cheney said : "Saddam Hussein was in power, overseeing one of the bloodiest regimes of the 20th century ... he had long-established ties with Al-Qaeda."
A day later, Bush was asked at the White House to name the best evidence for a link between Saddam Hussein and Al-Qaeda.
"Zarqawi. Zarqawi is the best evidence of connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda," Bush said.
On August 21, this year, Bush said: "Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life, ... who had relations with Zarqawi."
The report also found that Iraq ended its nuclear program in 1991, and its ability to reconstitute it progressively declined after that date. The administration had claimed before the invasion of Iraq that the program had been restarted.
A second committee report released Friday probed the role of the exiled Iraqi National Congress in providing intelligence on Saddam's weapons of mass destruction programs, which was later discredited.
The Senate assessments immediately stoked a new row over the US drive to war with Iraq, ahead of November's crucial congressional elections.
"Todays reports show that the administrations repeated allegations of a past, present and future relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq were wrong and intended to exploit the deep sense of insecurity among Americans in the immediate aftermath of the September 11th attacks," said Democratic Senator John (Jay) Rockefeller in a statement.
"The administration sought and succeeded in creating the false impression that al-Qaeda and Iraq presented a single unified threat to the United States," he said.
Another Democrat, Senator Carl Levin, said the report was "a devastating indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration's unrelenting, misleading and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that Saddam Hussein was linked with Al-Qaeda."
But White House spokesman Tony Snow, speaking before the report was released, said it contained "nothing new."
"It's, again, kind of re-litigating things that happened three years ago," he said.
"The president's stated concern this week, as you've seen, is to think, 'okay, we'll let people quibble over three years ago. The important thing to do is to figure out what you're doing tomorrow and the day after and the month after and the year after to make sure that this war on terror is won.'"
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=10952
posted by attilav at 21:41
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