coluichedubita: Elsewhere Today (404)

Aljazeera:
Many dead in Taliban bomb attacks

Tuesday 26 September 2006, 16:56 Makka Time, 13:56 GMT

A bomb attack in a southern Afghan town has killed 18 people, while an Italian soldier has also died after a separate blast near the capital, Kabul.

At least six Afghan policemen or soldiers were among the dead in the attack in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province, when a bomber detonated explosives strapped to his body at the front of the governor's compound, officials said.

Many of the civilians killed were reportedly queuing to complete paperwork so that they could go on the Hajj pilgrimage to Makka.

General Mohammad Nabi Mullahkhail, the provincial police chief, said another 18 people were wounded in the attack.

A provincial government spokesman said that Afghan soldiers had spotted the bomber who was trying to get into the governor's compound. They tried to arrest him when he blew himself up near a police post.

Italian troops from the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) confirmed that there had been an explosion near the compound and said it might have been directed at forces guarding the premises.

Muhammad Hanif, a spokesman for the Taliban, later told Aljazeera that the group said it carried out the attack and that on an Italian convoy.

Convoy attacked

In the second incident, a bomb struck the convoy of Italian troops on patrol on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, killing one soldier and wounding five others, the force said.

An Afghan child travelling in a vehicle behind the convoy was also reportedly killed in the blast.

Italy has almost 2,000 troops in Afghanistan as part of the ISAF force.

Meanwhile, a third attack in the south-eastern province of Khost was averted when a bomber attempting to attack a convoy of US-led troops blew himself up prematurely, although local police officials said the man was shot dead by troops.

A US military base in Khost province was also hit by rockets, an Aljazeera correspondent in Afghanistan reported, quoting local Afghan security officials.

Aljazeera + Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/43E5254C-ACDD-4435-8277-96DCEB9E5EE6.htm

allAfrica:
'Country Accounts for 82 Percent of Polio Cases'

By Deji Elumoye
This Day (Lagos) NEWS
September 26, 2006

In spite of the routine immunisation in Nigeria, it still accounts for about 82 per cent of the global wild polio-virus cases and 95 per cent of cases in Africa.

Making this known yesterday was the Principal Technical Officer in the National Assembly/Senate House Committee on Health, Mrs Buma Otobo, who was part of the House delegation that visited Lagos State, for a one-day advocacy/sensitisation workshop with members of the state House of Assembly, and other stakeholders.

Buma said though routine immunisation has improved, "but it still remains below the target level of 65 per cent DPT3 coverage for year 2006," adding that global, national and local efforts are being leveraged "to foster the needed partnership required to contain and indeed douse the raging wild polio viruses and improve routine immunisation."

She said as at September 2006, "Nigeria has cases of wild poliovirus in 17 states, compared to 547 for the same period in 2005 in 18 states," adding that the country's 69 per cent of the cases reported this year affected children of less than three years, whilst an alarming percentage of 42 were children with zero doses (those who had never received the OPV.)

Defending low coverage of government's immunisation programmes, Otobo said "the imperatives of a successful immunisation programme hinges on the effective involvement, participation and indeed ownership by all, particularly state and local government levels, who are responsible for implementation of immunisation activities.

"The capacity of the leadership at these levels to effectively mobilise the needed participation of the populace in immunisation programmes is undoubtedly a very important pivot towards improving the targeted coverage," she said.

She, however, urged Nigerians to imbibe the recent paradigm shift, as suggested by the international Expert Review Committee on Polio, at its April 2006 meeting where a new approach, styled Immunisation Plus Days (IPDs) against the usual National Immunization Days [NIDs] and Sub National Immunization Days (SNIDs), was decided.

According to her, IPDs is an Integrated which allows for polio vaccines, measles, DPT and other antigens to be administered during the IPDs as incentives, items such as " insecticide treated nets, deworming tablets, soaps etc; will also be distributed to children after immunization."With the adoption of the new approach, she believes that the missed children in the Oral Polio Vaccine [OPV], would be reached, even as the IPDs would increase routine immunization coverage "and thereby accelerates polio eradication; address other community health felt needs; revive the primary health care services and; achieve a reduction in childhood morbidity and mortality."The leader of the delegation, Hon. Ade Adegbenjo, explained that they came to the state and would also visit other southern states in the country in continuation of their objective which he said is "advocating to relevant state and local government level functionaries as well as traditional and religious leaders," adding that "the aim is to obtain their support towards effective mobilization and participation in immunization activities".

Copyright © 2006 This Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

http://allafrica.com/stories/200609260034.html

allAfrica:
Most Rebels Have Left Northern Uganda for Sudan – Army

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
September 26, 2006
Acholi Pii

The majority of Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) rebels who have been terrorising northern Uganda have left the region and crossed into southern Sudan, a top military official said.

"Almost all the rebels have moved out of northern Uganda - although we cannot rule out a few lingering," Ugandan army commander, General Aronda Nyakairima, said. "Peace is gradually becoming a reality in this region."

Addressing reporters ar Acholi Pii near Gulu town in northern Uganda on Monday, he said the decongestion of camps for internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the region would continue. "The purpose of satellite camps is for people to access more land for farming, so the process of decongestion will continue," Aronda added.

The army commander explained that 48 sites for new satellite camps had been identified in Pader District of which 28 are now occupied. Another 36 sites have been identified in Kitgum of which 21 are now occupied. "In Teso and Lango areas, we are implementing a go-home programme. There is increased humanitarian support for the IDPs from both government and NGOs," he said.

He, however, warned the LRA that his forces would hunt down the rebels should ongoing peace talks in the southern Sudanese town of Juba fail. "If the talks fail, we will go for the LRA," he said. "It will be a free-for-all. We know where Owiny Ki-Bul is, we know how long it will take to get there and we know where they will go next. It is a question of telling us there are no more talks and we shall be on them."

The rebels, according to a cessation of hostilities agreement signed between the Ugandan government and the LRA on 26 August, are supposed to assemble at Owiny Ki-Bul in Sudan's Eastern Equatoria State and in Ri-Kwangba in Western Equatoria State, during talks between the two parties. At least 1,600 rebels have assembled at the two sites, according to sources. The LRA commander Joseph Kony has not yet indicated when he will come to the assembly point, although his deputy Vincent Otti was at Ri-Kwangba last week.

Aronda's remarks appeared to contradict the agreement, which states that in the event of the talks breaking down, the rebels would be allowed to leave the two camps peacefully. But he added: "For those who are lost, the routes are still open. They should continue moving."

On Saturday, LRA delegates in Juba threatened to walk out of the peace talks, claiming the Ugandan army had besieged their fighters at Owiny Ki-Bul. Aronda denied this, saying his troops were 45 km away.

The rebels' demand that the composition of the government delegation be changed cast further doubt on the talks resuming. On Monday, the delegations separately met southern Sudan's Vice-President and mediator at the talks, Riek Machar, but there was no immediate sign that they would restart negotiations soon. Sources said a joint team would visit Owiny Ki-Bul on Tuesday to assess the rebel claims.

The rebels also repeated an earlier demand that indictments against their leaders by the International Criminal Court should be dropped. The Hague-based court had indicted Kony, Otti and fellow commanders Dominic Ongwen, Okot Odhiambo and Raska Lukwiya on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. Last week, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni said the indictments should not be rescinded until the rebel leaders signed a peace deal.

The LRA is blamed for displacing about two million people - including 935,000 children - and forcing them to live in more than 200 camps across northern Uganda in a conflict that has killed thousands.

Aronda said thousands of children kidnapped by the rebels during two decades of war had been rescued from captivity by government forces but many more were still not accounted for. "The remainder cannot be properly accounted for," Aronda said. "Some could still be in the bush, others may have died in the crossfire."

The United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) estimates that up to 25,000 children have been abducted to serve in combat or become sex slaves to male rebel fighters since the LRA war against the Ugandan government started. "Estimates based on available records on the conflict-affected districts show that about 15,000 children have returned during the course of the conflict," Chulho Hyun, UNICEF spokeman in Kampala, said.

Recently, Jan Egeland, the United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, said the rebels had agreed to release 'non-combatants', including women and children. According to some aid agencies in Uganda, about 1,500 children and women are believed to be held in rebel captivity. Local leaders in northern Uganda say the number could be higher.

[ 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/200609260349.html

AlterNet:
The Baby Boomer Border Invasion

By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on September 26, 2006

The visitor crossing from Tijuana to San Diego these days is immediately slapped in the face by a huge billboard screaming, "Stop the Border Invasion!" Sponsored by the rabidly anti-immigrant vigilante group, the Minutemen, the same truculent slogan reportedly insults the public at other border crossings in Arizona and Texas.

The Minutemen, once caricatured in the press as gun-toting clowns, are now haughty celebrities of grassroots conservatism, dominating AM hate radio as well as the even more hysterical ether of the right-wing blogosphere. In heartland as well as in border states, Republican candidates vie desperately for their endorsement. With the electorate alienated by the dual catastrophes of Baghdad and New Orleans, the Brown Peril has suddenly become the Republican deus ex machina for retaining control of Congress in the November elections.

A faltering GOP hegemony, too long sustained by the scraps of 9/11 and the imaginary weaponry of Saddam Hussein, now has a new urgency in its appeal to the suburbs. Not since Kofi Annan conspired to send his black helicopters to terrorize Wyoming, has such a clear-and-present danger threatened the Republic as the sinister armies of would-be busboys and gardeners gathered at the Rio Grande.

To listen to some of these demagogues, one would assume that the Twin Towers had been blown up by followers of the Virgin of Guadalupe or that Spanish had recently been decreed the official language of Connecticut. Having failed to scourge the world of evil by invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, Republicans, supported by some Democrats, now propose that we invade ourselves: sending the Marines and Green Berets, along with the National Guard, into the hostile deserts of California and New Mexico where national sovereignty is supposedly under siege.

As in the past, nativism today is bigotry as surreal caricature, reality stood on its head. The ultimate irony, however, is that there really is something that might be called a "border invasion," but the Minutemen's billboards are on the wrong side of the freeway.

The Baby Boomers Head South

What few people - at least, outside of Mexico - have bothered to notice is that while all the nannies, cooks, and maids have been heading north to tend the luxury lifestyles of irate Republicans, the Gringo hordes have been rushing south to enjoy glorious budget retirements and affordable second homes under the Mexican sun.

Yes, in former California Governor Pete Wilson's immortal words, "They just keep coming." Over the last decade, the U.S. State Department estimates that the number of Americans living in Mexico has soared from 200,000 to 1 million (or one-quarter of all U.S. expatriates). Remittances from the United States to Mexico have risen dramatically from $9 billion to $14.5 billion in just two years. Though initially interpreted as representing a huge spike in illegal workers (who send parts of their salaries across the border to family), it turns out to be mainly money sent by Americans to themselves in order to finance Mexican homes and retirements.

Although some of them are certainly naturalized U.S. citizens returning to towns and villages of their birth after lifetimes of toil al otro lado, the director-general of FONATUR, the official agency for tourism development in Mexico, recently characterized the typical investors in that country's real estate as American "baby boomers who have paid off in good part their initial mortgage and are coming into inheritance money."

Indeed, according to the Wall Street Journal, "The land rush is occurring at the beginning of a demographic tidal wave. With more than 70 million American baby boomers expected to retire in the next two decades... some experts predict a vast migration to warmer - and cheaper - climates. Often such buyers purchase a property 10 to 15 years before retirement, use it as a vacation home, and then eventually move there for most of the year. Developers increasingly are taking advantage of the trend, building gated communities, condominiums, and golf courses."

The extraordinary rise in U.S. Sunbelt property values gives gringos immense economic leverage. Shrewd baby-boomers are not simply feathering nests for eventual retirement, but also increasingly speculating in Mexican resort property, sending up property values to the detriment of locals whose children are consequently driven into slums or forced to emigrate north, only increasing the "invasion" charges. As in Galway, Corsica, or, for that matter, Montana, the global second-home boom is making life in beautiful, natural settings unaffordable for their traditional residents.

Some expatriates are experimenting with exotic places such as the Riviera Maya or Tulum in Quintana Roo, but more prefer such well-established havens as San Miguel de Allende and Puerto Vallarta. Here the norteamericanos make themselves at home in more ways than one.

An English-language paper in Puerto Vallarta, for instance, recently applauded the imminent arrival of a new shopping mall that will include Hooters, Burger King, Subway, Chili's and Starbucks. Only Dunkin' Donuts (con salsa?), the paper complained, was still missing.

The gringo footprint is largest (and brings the most significant geopolitical consequences) in Baja California, the 1,000-mile long desert appendage to the gridlocked state-nation governed by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Indeed, Baja real-estate websites ooze almost as much hyperbole as those devoted to stalking the phantom menace of illegal immigrants - just in a far more upbeat tone when it comes to the question of immigrant invasions.

In essence, Alta (Upper) California is beginning to overflow into Baja, an epochal process that, if unchecked, will produce intolerable social marginalization and ecological devastation in Mexico's last true frontier region. All the contradictions of post-industrial California - runaway land inflation in the coastal zone, sprawling suburban development in interior valleys and deserts, freeway congestion and lack of mass transit, and the astronomical growth of motorized recreation - dictate the invasion of the gorgeous "empty" peninsula to the south. To use a term from a bad but not irrelevant past, Baja is Anglo California's Lebensraum.

Indeed, the first two stages of informal annexation have already occurred. Under the banner of NAFTA, Southern California has exported hundreds of its sweatshops and toxic industries to the maquiladora zones of Tijuana and Mexicali. The Pacific Maritime Association, representing the West Coast's major shipping companies, has joined forces with Korean and Japanese corporations to explore the construction of a vast new container port at Punta Colonel, 150 miles south of Tijuana, which would undercut the power of longshore unionism in San Pedro and San Francisco.

Secondly, tens of thousands of gringo retirees and winter-residents are now clustered at both ends of the peninsula. Along the northwest coast from Tijuana to Ensenada, a recent advertisement for a real-estate conference at UCLA boasts that "there are presently over 57 real-estate developments... with over 11,000 homes/condos with an inventory value of over $3 billion... all of them geared for the U.S. market."

Meanwhile, at the tropical end of Baja, a gilded gringo enclave has emerged in the twenty-mile strip between Cabo San Lucas and San Jose de Cabo. Los Cabos is part of that global archipelago of real-estate hot spots where continuous double-digit increases in property values suck in speculative capital from all over the world. Ordinary gringos can participate in this glamorous Los Cabos real-estate casino through the purchase and resale of fractional time-shares in condominiums and beach homes.

Although Western Canadian and Arizona speculators have taken large bites out of Baja's southern cape, Los Cabos - at least judging from the registration of private planes at the local airport - has essentially become a resort suburb of Orange County, the home of the most vehement Minutemen chapters. (Many wealthy Southern Californians evidently see no contradiction between fuming over the "alien invasion" with one's conservative friends at the Newport Marina one day, and flying down to Cabos the next for some sea-kayaking or celebrity golf.)

Manifest Destiny, the Sequel?

The next step in the late-colonization of Baja is the "Escalera Nautica," a $3 billion "ladder" of marinas and coastal resorts being developed by FONATUR that will open up pristine sections of both Mexican coasts to the yacht club set.

Meanwhile, The Truman Show has arrived in the picturesque little city of Loreto on the Gulf side of the peninsula. There, FONATUR has joined forces with an Arizona company and "New Urbanist" architects from Florida to develop the Villages of Loreto Bay: 6,000 homes for expatriates in colonial-Mexico motif on the Sea of Cortez.

The $3 billion Loreto project boasts that it will be the last word in Green design, exploiting solar power and restricting automobile usage. Yet, at the same time, it will balloon Loreto's population from its current 15,000 to more than 100,000 in a decade, with the social and environmental consequences of a sort that can already be seen in the slum peripheries of Cancun and other mega-resorts.

One of the irresistible attractions of Baja is that it has preserved a primordial wildness that has disappeared elsewhere in the West. Local residents, including a very eloquent indigenous environmental movement, cherish this incomparable landscape as they do the survival of an egalitarian ethos in the peninsula's small towns and fishing villages.

Thanks to the silent invasion of the baby-boomers from the north, however, much of the natural history and frontier culture of Baja could be swept away in the next generation. One of the world's most magnificent wild coastlines could be turned into generic tourist sprawl, waiting for Dunkin' Donuts to open. Locals, accordingly, have every reason to fear that today's mega-resorts and mock-colonial suburbs, like FONATUR's entire tourism-centered strategy of regional development, are merely the latest Trojan horses of Manifest Destiny.

Mike Davis is the author, most recently, of Planet of Slums (Verso 2006), and, with Justin Chacon Akers, No One is Illegal (Haymarket 2006). His history of the car bomb, Buda Wagons, will be published by Verso early next year.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/42133/

Asia Times:
What a US recession means for China

By Jephraim P Gundzik
Sep 27, 2006

The risk of economic recession in the United States in 2007 is increasing rapidly. Rather than overly tight monetary policy at the Federal Reserve, the declining value of US homes is undermining personal consumption expenditure. The decline in home values is likely to accelerate next year as housing oversupply is met by increasingly weaker demand for new homes.

Much weaker growth of personal consumption expenditure in the US could slow China's real gross domestic product (GDP) growth to about 5% next year. However, China's ability to muster enormous resources to contain any economic weakness argues that a reversal in global commodity prices is unlikely.

US recession in the making

In the first half of 2006, real GDP in the US expanded at an annual rate of 4.3%. At the same time, real personal consumption expenditure, which accounts for about 70% of total GDP, expanded at an annual rate of 3.7%. Though both real GDP and real personal consumption expenditure remained quite strong in the first half of this year, the US economy slowed sharply between the first and second quarters. This slowdown was led by weakening personal consumption expenditure, which declined from an annual rate of 4.8% in the first quarter of 2006 to 2.8% in the second quarter.

Apart from hurricane-induced weakness in the fourth quarter of 2005, the last time real personal consumption expenditure in the US fell below 2.7% was in the fourth quarter of 2003. With the national unemployment rate declining and real wage growth accelerating, overly tight monetary policy in the US has been generally blamed for the slowdown in personal consumption. However, official interest rates remain low by historical standards and real interest rates are negative, suggesting that monetary policy continues to be quite loose.

Furthermore, both core consumer price inflation and the core personal consumption expenditure deflator lurched higher in the first half of 2006, approaching 3%. In simple terms, inflation in the US would not be increasing if monetary policy were overly tight. Finally, despite the clear acceleration of inflation, policymakers at the US Federal Reserve have become more concerned with slowing domestic economic growth than rising inflation, as evidenced by the Fed's decision to keep official interest rates steady at its meetings in August and September.

With monetary policy still very accommodative and likely to remain so until after crucial mid-term US elections in November, the primary factor undermining personal consumption expenditure in the second quarter was much weaker gains in home values. According to the US Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, the quarter-on-quarter deceleration of home-value gains between the first and second quarters of 2006 marked the weakest gain in home values since records began in 1975. Increasingly unaffordable house prices and rapidly rising inventories of unsold homes capped home-price gains in the second quarter of 2006 and are likely to produce contracting US home prices in 2007.

The last time US home values posted an annual contraction was more than 70 years ago. According to the US Department of Commerce, inventories of unsold homes reached an 11-year high this July. Over the past year, these inventories increased by more than 20%. The Department of Commerce also reported that home sales declined 13% since July 2005. Though these statistics are fraught with sampling errors and subject to large revisions, the trend over the past 12 months has shown home inventories rising rapidly and home-sales growth slowing sharply. Industry experts believe these statistics are underestimating the growth of unsold home inventories and the contraction of home sales.

Growing inventories of unsold homes - a product of overly easy US monetary policy over the past several years - are very likely to lead to contracting home values in 2007. Since 2001, rapidly rising home values have fueled US personal consumption expenditure by increasing household income via cash-out mortgage refinancing. According to statistics produced by Freddie Mac (the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp), one of America's largest mortgage lenders, cash-out mortgage refinancing accounted for about 50% of all mortgage refinancing between 2001 and 2004.

In 2005, cash-out mortgage refinancing accounted for 73% of all mortgage refinancing. In the first half of 2006, cash-out refinancing accounted for a staggering 87% of all refinancing. If US home values contract in 2007, household income will also contract. This could lead to much weaker or even contracting real growth of personal consumption expenditure in the US. Lower official interest rates are unlikely to reverse the fall in home values because the overhanging inventory of unsold homes is so large. Home prices must decline to clear this inventory.

US consumers drive China's growth

After a lull spanning from 1998 to 2001, real GDP growth in China accelerated to an average annual rate of about 10% between 2002 and 2005 - a period corresponding with booming growth of personal consumption expenditure in the US. This, in addition to an official upward adjustment in output in 2004, made China's economy the fourth-largest in the world at the end of 2005. Surging output has not been matched by surging private consumption growth. In fact, the real growth of private consumption in China has remained well below the real growth of GDP since mid-1990s. As a result, the ratio of private consumption to GDP has declined steadily, reaching a record low of 40% in 2005.

Low wages and China's high rate of unemployment have contained the growth of private consumption. According to official statistics, real wage growth in China was exceptionally strong between 2001 and 2005, at an average annual rate of about 11%. Strong real wage growth has been exclusively an urban phenomenon benefiting registered workers. Real wage growth in rural China, where more than 60% of the population resides, has been much weaker and is the primary reason that the income disparity between urban and rural China has widened over the past 15 years.

Moreover, real wages for rural migrant workers in urban areas, which constitute as much as 60% of the urban workforce, have also grown considerably slower than real wages for registered urban workers. Though the government has recognized the equal rights of migrant workers, they face significant wage and benefit discrimination. In addition to being underpaid and under-benefited, migrant workers also face non-payment of wages by employers. Like official wage statistics, official unemployment statistics, which indicate China's unemployment rate has been about 4% since 2001, do not reflect actual labor conditions in China.

Because rural migrant workers generally receive no social benefits, they are unable to register as unemployed. This excludes more than one-half of the urban workforce from China's urban unemployment data. Urban unemployment would be between 6% and 8% higher if unemployed migrant workers were included in unemployment data. Adding unemployment in rural areas would push China's nationwide unemployment rate up by 10-15 percentage points.

Rather than private consumption, external demand, originating primarily from US consumers, drives economic growth in China. Between 2001 and 2005, China's annual average rate of export growth was 25%. Exports grew by 35% in 2004 and 28% in 2005. The very strong nominal growth of exports accounted for about 2% of real GDP growth in 2004 and about 4% in 2005. In the first half of 2006, net exports accounted for about 2.5% of real GDP growth.

Including goods re-exported from other countries and Hong Kong, China's exports to the US account for about 50% of total exports. Thus export growth is largely determined by the growth of US demand. Because almost all of China's exports are consumer goods, personal consumption demand in the US drives China's export growth. In addition to exports, external demand also plays a key role in the growth of investment in China.

External demand dictates the growth of investment in manufacturing capacity in the export sector. External demand also influences China's investment in domestic infrastructure, such as power generation, ports, and road and rail transport, which is critical to expanding manufacturing and export capacity. Finally, external demand also influences China's domestic investment in real estate, which is necessary in securing locations for new manufacturing and power plants, as well as housing for employees.

External demand directly and indirectly drives about 65% of all domestic investment in China. As with exports, robust demand in the US arising from strong real growth of personal consumption expenditure has produced astounding investment growth in China, which averaged over 21% annually between 2001 and 2005. Rapid real growth of personal consumption expenditure in the US, which averaged over 3% annually between 2001 and 2005, accounted for almost one-half of China's economic growth over the same period.

How China can cushion the blow

A sharp slowdown or contraction of real personal consumption expenditure growth in the US in 2007 will lead to much slower economic growth in China. China's export growth could be flat or even negative while investment growth could be cut in half. In addition, rationalization in China's export sector could lead to much higher urban unemployment, especially among China's migrant workforce. This could heighten already increasing social instability, further undermining private consumption growth and economic growth in China.

A US economic downturn next year will undoubtedly have a strong negative impact on China's economy. However, this impact could be mitigated by the government's marshaling of China's considerable resources, including the country's nearly US$1 trillion of foreign exchange reserves. In addition to these reserves, China has enormous fiscal resources that it can employ to boost the economy either directly or indirectly through the country's massive state-owned banking system - not exactly music to the ears of foreign investors who have poured money into China's banks.

Though dependent on consumer demand in the United States, China's economy could easily withstand a US economic recession because of its vast resources and its ability to extend these resources through the still-dominant state-owned economic structures. As a result, slowing US economic growth does not imply a significant reversal in global commodity prices, especially oil prices. Even if economic growth in China slows to 5% in 2007, demand for energy and crude oil in China will remain quite strong.

Even more intriguing, economic recession in the US and slower economic growth in China could speed the reorientation of China's economy away from external-demand-driven growth toward private-consumption-driven growth.

Jephraim P Gundzik is president of Condor Advisers. Condor Advisers provides investment risk analysis to individuals and institutions worldwide. For more information, please visit www.condoradvisers.com

Copyright 2006 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Global_Economy/HI27Dj01.html

Clarín: Bush ordenó desclasificar
un informe secreto sobre la guerra en Irak

El documento, filtrado a la prensa, indicaría que la ofensiva militar contra el régimen de Saddam Hussein agravó la amenaza terrorista. Pero el presidente lo negó y aseguró que el informe de inteligencia será difundido "lo antes posible" para despejar dudas. Además, atribuyó las versiones a "motivaciones políticas".

Clarín.com, 26.09.2006

El presidente de Estados Unidos, George W. Bush, anunció hoy que ordenó la desclasificación parcial de un informe secreto de inteligencia, luego de que versiones de prensa señalaran que el documento indica que la guerra en Irak había agravado la amenaza terrorista.

El mandatario aseguró que es un error pensar que la guerra en Irak haya vuelto a Estados Unidos menos seguro y estimó que era "naíf" sacar esa conclusión, en el marco de una conferencia de prensa conjunta con el presidente afgano, Hamid Karzai.

Bush informó que la sección "juicios clave" del Informe Nacional de Inteligencia sobre Irak y el Terrorismo será difundida "lo antes posible". Según el mandatario, las filtraciones a la prensa sobre el documento tienen "motivaciones políticas", y afirmó que consideraba "naíf" suponer que haber atacado a aquellos "que quieren dañar a los estadounidenses nos haya vuelto menos seguros".

"No estábamos en Irak cuando sufrimos los atentados del 11 de septiembre de 2001. No estábamos en Irak cuando sufrimos el atentado contra el portaaviones Cole (en octubre de 2000). No estábamos en Irak cuando sufrimos atentados en nuestras embajadas en Kenia y Tanzania", recordó. La oposición demócrata aprovechó los informes periodísticos sobre el documento para atacar al gobierno de George W. Bush, a poco más de un mes de las elecciones legislativas del 7 de noviembre.

Ese informe, entregado al Congreso en abril pasado, se ha filtrado parcialmente en los últimos días a los medios de comunicación estadounidenses, y se ha convertido en un arma arrojadiza con vistas a las elecciones legislativas del 7 de noviembre.

Las partes filtradas indican que los servicios secretos de EE.UU. opinan que la guerra en Irak ha exacerbado y dispersado la amenaza terrorista y el sentimiento contra Estados Unidos en el mundo.

"Alguien se ha tomado la libertad de filtrar información clasificada por motivos políticos", denunció. El presidente ha insistido en reiteradas ocasiones que la invasión a Irak en marzo de 2003 ha hecho de Estados Unidos un país más seguro ante las amenazas terroristas, conclusión que aparentemente el documento negaría.

Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/09/26/um/m-01278804.htm

Guardian:
Iraqi tells of beating by British soldiers

Staff and agencies
Tuesday September 26, 2006

An Iraqi hotel owner told a court martial today that he thought he was going to die when he was repeatedly beaten and kicked by British soldiers after being arrested.

Ahmad Taha Musa Al-Matairi said soldiers from the Queens Lancashire Regiment took bets on who could make him fall down after arresting him in Basra on suspicion of being an insurgent.

He told the hearing at Bulford Camp, Wiltshire, that he was forced to lie on the floor with his staff while the troops gave him "insult kicks" and said the soldiers celebrated beating him and other Iraqis "like it was Christmas".

Mr Al-Matairi is the first prosecution witness in the trial of seven soldiers who stand accused of a number of charges from treating Iraqi civilians inhumanely to manslaughter.

He is one of nine suspected insurgents who claim they were hooded and beaten following their arrest at a hotel in Basra in September 2003.

Hotel receptionist Baha Mousa, 26, was also arrested during the raid and later died while in British custody.

Mr Al-Matairi described how he was hooded and repeatedly beaten and kicked after being taken for questioning at the nearby base of the regiment.

Describing one attack, he told the court: "They (the soldiers) supported me and made me stand and started to beat me again. They hit me in my abdomen and I fell again."

Last week, Corporal Donald Payne, 35, of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment - now the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment - became the first British serviceman to admit a war crime when he pleaded guilty to treating the detainees inhumanely.

He denies manslaughter and perverting the course of justice.

The other six deny the charges they face, which range from negligence and assault to manslaughter.

The inhumane treatment charge faced by three of the officers is being brought as a war crime charge under the International Criminal Court Act 2001. It is the first time British military personnel have been prosecuted under the act.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,1881572,00.html

Guardian: Earth's temperature is dangerously high,
Nasa scientists warn

Hilary Osborne
Tuesday September 26, 2006

Earth's temperature could be reaching its highest level in a million years, American scientists said yesterday.

Researchers at Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies said a further one degree celsius rise in the global temperature could be critical to the planet, and there was already a threat of extreme weather resulting from El Niño.

The scientists said that in the 30 years to the end of 2005, temperatures increased at the rate of 0.2 degrees per decade, a rate they described as "remarkably rapid".

Comparison of the current global temperature with estimates of historical temperatures - based on a study of ocean sediment - showed the current temperature was now within 1C of the maximum temperature of the past million years.

Dr James Hansen, who led the study, said further global warming of just 1C could lead to big changes to the planet.

"If warming is kept less than that, effects of global warming may be relatively manageable," he said.

"But if further global warming reaches two or three degrees celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet [to] the one we know.

"The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about 3m years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today."

The study showed that global warming was greatest at high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. The study attributed this to the effect of snow and ice melting, leaving dark areas that absorb more sunlight.

Warming was lower over sea than on land, but the research team said the temperature of the western Pacific had been increasing, and was becoming much warmer than the eastern Pacific. This increased difference could boost the likelihood of strong El Niño weather conditions such as those seen in 1983 and 1998, when many countries around the world experienced devastating floods and tornadoes.

Dr Hansen said that the increasing temperature could lead to the extinction of some species, which would find it increasingly difficult to find viable habitats.

Plants and animals have been observed migrating towards the poles to find areas where the temperature better suits them. However, Dr Hansen said that they were not keeping up with the pace at which temperature zones are moving - this movement had reached 25 miles per decade between 1975 and 2005.

He said: "Rapid movement of climatic zones is going to be another stress on wildlife.

"It adds to the stress of habitat loss due to human developments. If we do not slow down the rate of global warming, many species are likely to become extinct.

"In effect we are pushing them off the planet."

The environment group Earthwatch today warned that a change in climate could make the difference between survival and extinction for endangered lemurs in Madagascar.

A 20-year study of the Milne-Edward's sifakas lemur found that during dry spells, older females were unable to chew enough leaves to provide their infants with milk.

Lemurs are able to give birth up to five times during the final decade of their lives, but as they get older their teeth become worn, making it harder for them to eat.

If dry periods become more common, they will struggle to feed their young, and the numbers of animals who make it to adulthood will fall.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1881465,00.html

Harper's Magazine:
Weekly Review

Posted on Tuesday, September 26, 2006. By Theodore Ross

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaking at the United Nations in New York, proclaimed his love for all the world's peoples, and suggested that the United States halt domestic fuel production and buy its energy from him “at a fifty percent discount.”[BBC News] Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez objected to the smell of sulfur in the U.N.'s General Assembly hall, and offered to relocate the U.N.'s headquarters to Caracas. [New York times][Fox News] Ted Turner called the Iraq war one of the “dumbest moves of all time,”[CNN] and a spokesman for the Iraq Study Group, a think tank created to analyze events in Iraq, announced that it had “made no judgment of any kind at this point about any aspect of policy with regard to Iraq.”[Washington Post] The judge in the trial of Saddam Hussein was removed because “he hurt the feelings of the Iraqi people.”[New York times] In Afghanistan, Marine General James L. Jones claimed to have killed as many as a third of the Taliban's “hardcore” fighters, leaving only the “weekend warriors.”[New York times] A British major described the Royal Air Force as “utterly, utterly useless.”[The Independent] In Thailand, General Sonthi Boonyaratglin staged a coup d'etat, dismissing the prime minister and revoking the constitution. “Democracy has won!” said one coup supporter.[Reuters and the Washington Post] Hungarian prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany admitted that his campaign was based on lies. “We lied in the morning,” said Gyurcsany. “We lied in the evening.”[New York times] British Home Secretary John Reid declared that England's “fight is not with Muslims generally,”[BBC News] and in Jordan, a failed suicide bomber was sentenced to be hanged.[New York times] Israeli tourism officials circulated a sightseeing pamphlet bearing the slogan, “Jerusalem—there's no such city!”[BBC News] Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya said that Hamas would never recognize Israel. [monsters and critics.com] Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf said it was “very rude” for former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to threaten to bomb his country “back to the Stone Age.”[Times of London] Hezbollah leader Sheik Hassan Nasrallah attended a rally in Beirut to commemorate the “divine and historic victory” in the war with Israel,[New York times] and President George W. Bush said he now knew that the stability he believed to exist in the Middle East was a “mirage.”[Washington Post]

The United States Justice Department claimed Attorney General Alberto Gonzales “had his timeline mixed up” when he denied the United States had deported a Canadian citizen to Syria, where he was tortured.[New York times] The Food and Drug Administration announced that it had found the “smoking gun” of bacteria-infested spinach in a refrigerator in New Mexico.[CNN] The Federal Emergency Management Agency made final preparations to demolish the town of Elkport, Iowa,[CNN] and in Fernald, Ohio, the Environmental Protection Agency was planning to cart away 5,800 tons of contaminated soil so that a former nuclear production facility could be turned into a “natural” park.[New York times] In California, accused pedophile John Karr was described by his lawyer as a “southern gentleman with a sense of humor,”[New York times] and Virginia Senator George Allen acknowledged his Jewish ancestry.[Washington Post] The Boeing Company was awarded a congressional contract to build a 6000-mile “virtual fence” along the U.S.-Mexico border.[Washington Post] Fruit farmers rallied in Washington, D.C., to protest a shortage of low-wage, uninsured, illegal immigrant laborers.[New York times] In Maryland, the National Black Republican Association ran radio ads claiming that Martin Luther King was a Republican and that Democrats founded the Ku Klux Klan.[nbc4.com via google news] Nawar Shora of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee said that “the average Yousef” thought of an FBI agent as a “middle-aged white guy talking in their sleeve.”[Washington Post] In the basement of the Pentagon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld unleashed his deadly squash drop shot.[New York times]

President Bush predicted that, given the opportunity, Democrats would raise taxes.[Reuters] Bill and Hillary Clinton both agreed that they were “sick of Karl Rove's bullshit.”[The Examiner via the Drudge Report] Researchers in Massachusetts successfully gave a mouse a tan without exposing it to the sun; other scientists partially restored the sight of blind rats.[BBC News] A man believed to have ingested four glasses of draft beer jumped into a pen at the Beijing Zoo and bit Gu Gu, a six-year-old panda.[Yahoo News via the Drudge Report][BBC News] Hybrid lions were dying from a mystery disease in northern India. [The Drudge Report] The recipient of a penis transplant in Guangzhou, China, requested doctors remove the organ after he and his wife began experiencing “severe psychological problems.”[The Guardian] Australian researchers determined that lesbian women were 10 percent more orgasmic than their straight female counterparts.[Daily Mail] A survey showed that rap music fans are unlikely to recycle.[Innovations Report via Nerve.com] Businessman Richard Branson pledged to donate $3 billion to alternative energy development,[ABC News via google news] Paris Hilton gave a homeless man $100,[The Superficial via Nerve.com] and Michael Jackson was considering opening a leprechaun-themed amusement park in Ireland.[MSNBC] Television sets outnumbered people in American homes.[Breitbart.com via Nerve.com] Katelyn Kampf, 19, of Yarmouth, Maine, accused her parents of hog-tying and gagging her, forcing her into a car, and taking her to New York for an emergency abortion.[Local6.com] Anousheh Ansari, a communications entrepreneur from Texas, became the world's first female Muslim space tourist.[BBC News] Big box retail stores were employing anthropologists to help sell their products.[New York times] A poll conducted by the American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery found that 46 percent of American women wanted to be surgically altered to resemble Jennifer Aniston.[CNN] A pedigree bull mastiff deefer from Nottingham, England, underwent emergency surgery to have two pairs of ladies' underwear removed from his small intestine,[BBC News] and scientists announced that breakfast may not be the most important meal of the day.[Los Angeles Times]

This is Weekly Review by Theodore Ross, published Tuesday, September 26, 2006. It is part of Weekly Review for 2006, which is part of Weekly Review, which is part of Harpers.org.

Written By
Ross, Theodore

Permanent URL
http://harpers.org/WeeklyReview2006-09-26.html

il manifesto:
Bimbi stregoni, i rifiutati di Kin-la-Belle

Cacciati di casa con l'accusa di portare il malocchio, migliaia di bambini si aggirano affamati per le strade della capitale congolese. Dietro questo fenomeno inquietante, la crescita esponenziale delle chiese carismatiche pentecostali e la disgregazione sociale che ha colpito il paese in seguito alla guerra

Stefano Liberti
Inviato a Kinshasa

«Cent francs, Monsieur, s'il vous plait». Intabarrato in una copertina consunta, che lascia trasparire solo gli occhi appesantiti dal sonno, un bimbo minuscolo si alza dalla panca di legno che aveva eletto a giaciglio. Intorno a lui, una decina di compagni continuano indisturbati i loro sogni. Kinshasa, rond-point Ngaba, quartiere di Lemba, a due passi dal campus universitario. Ogni sera, il brulicante mercato diventa dormitorio per una squadriglia di infanti abbandonati. Sono gli shegué, i bambini di strada, figli dell'Aids e della guerra, ma soprattutto di quella decomposizione sociale che è diventata normalità in questa megalopoli caotica e sovrappopolata in cui solo il 5 per cento degli abitanti ha un regolare lavoro.
A Kinshasa, i bimbi di strada sono migliaia: a Masina, un sobborgo vicino all'aeroporto tanto affollato da meritarsi il soprannome di «Repubblica popolare di Cina» e nei vari quartieri «coupe-gorge» («tagliagola») della parte orientale della città, in cui è sconsigliato avventurarsi dopo il tramonto, una legione di shegué si aggira ogni notte a caccia di cibo. Si insinuano tra i banchi vuoti dell'enorme mercato fatto costruire da Laurent-Désire Kabila. Si accasciano in ritrovi di fortuna. Si aggrappano alla vita con quel misto di sfrontatezza e incertezza che segna una maturità raggiunta troppo precocemente.

Un universo di potenziali Harry Potter

L'incedere di questo esercito di bimbi privati della propria infanzia è ritmato da uno sfondo di grida forsennate, di urla isteriche che tagliano in due il silenzio di questi quartieri miserabili. Sono le sette pentecostali, spuntate come funghi e diffusesi con la forza di un uragano tropicale: in ogni angolo della capitale, le chiese carismatiche raccolgono ormai - e spesso per sessioni di preghiera che durano notti intere - migliaia di persone, che si gettano tra le braccia dei vari pastori e predicatori con la stessa foga con cui un naufrago avvinghierebbe una tavola di legno in mezzo al mare. Apparentemente slegati l'uno dall'altro, i due fenomeni sono assolutamente complementari. Anzi, sono un fenomeno unico. Perché lo sviluppo delle chiese pentecostali - a sua volta determinato dalla crisi che ha stravolto il tessuto sociale di tutto il paese - ha portato a una recrudescenza delle credenze nella stregoneria. E il terrore per la stregoneria ha diffuso nella capitale una sorta di universo parallelo perverso in cui ogni bambino è sospettato di essere un potenziale Harry Potter. Detto in altri termini, gran parte degli shegué che animano e agitano il panorama urbano di Kinshasa sono stati cacciati di casa con un'accusa gravissima: quella di essere degli infidi stregoni, che trascinano il malocchio sul tetto familiare.
Capro espiatorio perfetto, il bimbo troppo irruente o troppo silenzioso, quello che ancora fa la pipì a letto o che rifiuta il cibo è subito stigmatizzato e messo alla porta. Se non viene raccolto dalle organizzazioni che si occupano di assistenza e reinserimento, andrà ad ingrossare i già corposi ranghi dell'esercito degli shegué.
Vera e propria emergenza sociale in una città priva di ogni sistema di assistenza sociale o sanitaria, il fenomeno degli enfants-sorciers è relativamente recente. «Fino all'inizio degli anni '90, non avevamo mai sentito parlare di bambini stregoni», ricorda Richard Voka, presidente del centro Simba-ngai («Sostienimi» in lingala), che assiste i bimbi abbandonati dando loro un tetto e insegnando loro un mestiere. «Tutto è cominciato con la crisi economica e lo sviluppo delle sette evangeliche. Sono loro ad aver diffuso questa credenza nella stregoneria, che è diventata una vera e propria piaga».
Normalmente i bimbi stregoni vengono da famiglie miserrime, spesso disgregate, in cui i genitori o coloro che ne fanno le veci sono incapaci di fornire il necessario sostentamento alla numerosa prole. Il caso di Christian, a questo proposito, è emblematico. Alla morte del padre, la madre si trasferisce in Angola e questo bimbetto di tredici anni rimane a vivere con i nonni. Lo shock per l'assenza dei genitori si traduce in un atteggiamento introverso, al limite del mutismo. I nonni vanno a vedere un pastore evangelico, che identifica immediatamente i segni della stregoneria e propone un esorcismo. Ma i suoi tutori, terrorizzati dall'idea di avere uno stregone in casa, preferiscono malmenarlo e metterlo alla porta. Christian ha passato tre anni in strada prima di essere raccolto dai volontari di Simba-ngai. Ora sta facendo un apprendistato da falegname e ha un grande sogno in testa: aprire un atelier tutto suo.

L'appropriazione della devianza

Con i suoi tre laboratori di falegnameria e i suoi due dormitori, il centro Simba-ngai assiste 96 bimbi abbandonati. «Raccogliamo i ragazzini per strada e cerchiamo di convincerli a venire da noi a imparare un mestiere», racconta Voka. Che continua: «Non sempre è facile. Noi miriamo a reinserire i più piccoli, quelli che non sono ancora stati completamente traviati dalla vita di strada». Nella tassonomia della disgregazione sociale della capitale congolese, è prassi operare una distinzione tra due diverse categorie: «i bambini nella strada» (che sono stati abbandonati da poco o che semplicemente stanno tutto il giorno in giro ma non hanno lasciato la famiglia) e «i bambini di strada» (quelli cioè che hanno eletto la strada a propria famiglia). Si tratta di due livelli distinti, cui corrisponde un diverso grado e possibilità d'azione. «I bambini di strada sono gli shegué in senso proprio, quelli ormai impossibili da aiutare. Nelle nostre spedizioni notturne nei luoghi sensibili dove si ritrovano, noi cerchiamo invece di individuare i bambini nella strada», continua Voka. «Offriamo loro del cibo, discutiamo con loro e diamo loro l'indirizzo del nostro centro. Alcuni vengono. E il semplice fatto che hanno attraversato la città testimonia di un reale interesse ad abbandonare la strada. Dopo colloqui psicologici e un periodo di prova, li inseriamo nel programma di tirocinio. Poi, quando è possibile, contattiamo la famiglia per avviare un percorso di reinserimento».
Il problema è che spesso i bimbi stregoni introiettano le accuse che vengono loro rivolte e assumono il loro ruolo come vera e propria reazione a una società che tende a respingerli. Immaginano quindi di avere poteri straordinari, di vivere in un universo onirico parallelo («il secondo mondo»), in cui uccidono le persone con la forza del pensiero e se ne cibano. I racconti citati dall'antropologo belga Filip De Boeck, che ha studiato a lungo il fenomeno e ha scritto insieme alla fotografa Marie-Françoise Plissart un libro illuminante sulla città («Kinshasa. Tales of the invisibile city»), mostrano in modo molto chiaro questo meccanismo di appropriazione della devianza. «Il mio nome è Touckys. Sono diventato uno stregone a causa di mia zia. Mi ha trasformato quando avevo otto anni. Ora ho tredici anni. Anche mio fratello è nel secondo mondo. Ci incontriamo regolarmente durante i raduni notturni. Mio fratello ha cominciato a uccidere la gente prima di me. Da quando sono diventato uno stregone, ho mangiato solo una persona, una donna. Nel secondo mondo, sono sposato. Mia moglie si chiama Helena ed esiste solo durante la notte», ha raccontato uno dei bimbi interrogati da De Boeck.

Le perversioni del demone urbano

Il fatto è che i bimbi stregoni sono solo una delle molteplici perversioni di una città che è ormai ridotta a un cumulo di macerie. Nell'immaginario ironico e rassegnato dei suoi abitanti, la vecchia «Kin-la-belle» delle speranze post-coloniali ha ormai lasciato spazio a «Kin-la-poubelle» («Kin-la pattumiera»), gigantesca discarica a cielo aperto intasata da un traffico apocalittico e da stormi di indigenti, sorta di demone urbano che fagocita indifferente i suoi abitanti. In questo contesto desolante, l'arte d'arrangiarsi è l'unica speranza di sopravvivere. E, tolte le poche organizzazioni assistenziali, gli enfants-sorciers hanno ben pochi rimedi: tanto vale allora credersi stregoni e cercare di fare miracoli.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/24-Settembre-2006/art71.html

Internazionale:
L'attacco di Ratzinger

Benedetto XVI ha "offeso" il mondo musulmano e ci ha chiesto di diffidare della ragione

Christopher Hitchens
Internazionale 660, 21 settembre 2006

Nel mondo cristiano ci sono molti papi: la chiesa copta ne ha uno, e anche la chiesa ortodossa d'oriente vanta un patriarca o santo padre. Ma ormai abbiamo preso l'abitudine di usare questo termine per indicare il vescovo di Roma, e questo è un male, per vari motivi.

Conferisce una specie di autorità suprema al capo di una sola delle sette cristiane, contribuendo a dare ai non cristiani l'impressione che il capo del cattolicesimo romano rappresenti una porzione maggiore dell'"occidente" di quanto non faccia in realtà. Durante una visita in Germania Joseph Ratzinger, nel tentativo di rivitalizzare la sua chiesa moribonda, ha complicato ulteriormente il già difficile dialogo tra l'Europa e il mondo islamico.

Vi invito a leggere il testo completo della lezione che ha tenuto all'università di Ratisbona. Dopo una frettolosa introduzione, il papa ha citato un passo di Manuele ii Paleologo, un imperatore bizantino del quattordicesimo secolo. Si dice che un giorno il sovrano intavolò una discussione con un non meglio identificato persiano sul cristianesimo e l'islam.

Il bizantino disse al persiano: "Mostrami pure ciò che Maometto ha portato di nuovo, e vi troverai soltanto delle cose cattive e disumane, come la sua direttiva di diffondere per mezzo della spada la fede che egli predicava". Poi il monarca di Costantinopoli dalle vesti di porpora aggiunse: "Per convincere un'anima ragionevole non è necessario disporre né del proprio braccio, né di strumenti per colpire né di qualunque altro mezzo con cui si possa minacciare una persona di morte".

Non occorre essere musulmani per giudicare ipocrita la citazione di questo dialogo. Il cristianesimo, poco importa se bizantino o romano, non si sarebbe mai affermato se la fede non fosse stata imposta a suon di violenza e crudeltà. L'esempio preferito dai musulmani per autocommiserarsi è che furono i crociati cattolici a saccheggiare e dare alle fiamme la Bisanzio cristiana mentre erano diretti in Palestina, ma non prima d'aver sistematicamente perseguitato gli ebrei: cosicché il mondo musulmano non fu che la terza vittima di tanta barbarie.

Ma di tutte le espressioni che avrebbe potuto usare per suggerire alla religione che forse è giunta l'ora di spezzare l'antico legame con la conquista, l'intolleranza e la soggezione, Ratzinger ha scelto un esempio fatto apposta per ricordare ai suoi ascoltatori gli eccessi del medioevo.

È evidente che l'accenno a Manuele ii non è casuale né aneddotico: Ratzinger lo cita anche nel paragrafo conclusivo.

Adesso ci tocca sentire le patetiche scuse presentate dal suo portavoce e poi da Ratzinger in persona. Ma serviranno solo a convincere i musulmani infuriati che minacciando rappresaglie ed emanando qualche fatwa possono ottenere l'ennesima marcia indietro. Intanto sono successe le solite cose: una suora è stata uccisa in Somalia e alcune chiese cristiane sono state profanate in Palestina.

Tuttavia, leggendo il discorso ci si rende conto che, se il caso l'avesse fatto nascere in Turchia o in Siria anziché in Germania, il vescovo di Roma avrebbe potuto diventare un musulmano ortodosso. Diffida dell'islam perché quest'ultimo sostiene che la sua rivelazione è assoluta e definitiva, ma intanto afferma che l'apostolo Giovanni ha pronunciato "la parola conclusiva sul concetto biblico di Dio".

E se i musulmani credono che Maometto sia andato in trance e abbia scritto sotto dettatura di un arcangelo, Ratzinger prende per vera la leggenda altrettanto improbabile secondo cui san Paolo ricevette in sogno l'ordine di evangelizzare in nome di Cristo. Fraintende Maometto quando dice che il profeta proibì la "costrizione nelle cose di fede" solo quando l'islam era debole.

Ma avrebbe potuto citare le numerose sure che contraddicono questo messaggio all'apparenza benevolo. È il solito problema: se metti in discussione insistentemente la rivelazione e il dogma di un'altra religione, induci l'interlocutore a pronunciare un "tu quoque" a proposito della tua. Com'è avvenuto in questo caso.

I musulmani che protestano sono degli ingrati. In quasi tutti gli scontri tra l'islam e l'occidente o tra l'islam e Israele, il Vaticano ha preso una posizione equidistante oppure ha fatto da ventriloquo alle lamentele dei musulmani. Dall'inizio alla fine del suo discorso a Ratisbona, l'uomo che modestamente si considera il vicario di Cristo in Terra ha condotto un attacco implacabile contro l'idea che la ragione e la coscienza individuale si possano preferire alla fede.

Ha preteso che il termine logos possa significare insieme "ragione" e "parola", il che è vero in greco ma non nella Bibbia, dove è presentato come la verità divina. Ha menzionato di sfuggita Kant e Cartesio, non ha citato Spinoza e Hume, e ha cercato di far credere che in fin dei conti religione, illuminismo e scienza siano compatibili. Il nuovo capo reazionario della chiesa di Roma ha "offeso" il mondo musulmano, e al tempo stesso ci ha chiesto di diffidare dell'unica arma affidabile di cui disponiamo in questi tempi bui: la ragione.

Ottimo lavoro, non c'è che dire.

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http://www.internazionale.it/firme/articolo.php?id=13630

Jeune Afrique: Le médiateur de l'Union africaine
à Abidjan pour une visite en terrain miné

CÔTE D'IVOIRE - 25 septembre 2006 – AFP

Le médiateur de l'Union africaine pour la Côte d'Ivoire, le sud-africain Thabo Mbeki, accusé de partialité par l'opposition et la rébellion ivoiriennes, a rencontré lundi à Abidjan le président Laurent Gbagbo, après l'annonce mercredi du report des élections par l'Onu.

Les deux chefs d'Etat se sont concertés pendant deux heures à la présidence de la République d'où il sont sortis peu après 18H00 GMT et locales sans faire de déclaration

Le président sud-africain a également rencontré lundi dans la soirée le Premier ministre ivoirien Charles Konan Banny à l'hôtel Sofitel du quartier administratif où il est descendu, un entretien qui n'a pas non plus fait l'objet de commentaires.

Le médiateur de l'UA est venu discuter d'un nouveau cadre de sortie de crise après l'officialisation mercredi par l'Onu du report des élections générales initialement prévues avant fin octobre.

A l'issue de cette réunion des Nations unies boycottée par le chef de l'Etat ivoirien, l'Onu, les acteurs et les médiateurs de la crise en Côte d'Ivoire ont laissé aux instances collectives africaines le soin de décider prochainement de l'avenir du processus de paix dans ce pays coupé en deux depuis quatre ans.

Mais la légitimité du médiateur de l'UA est sérieusement contestée par l'opposition et par la rébellion qui accusent M. Mbeki de partialité.

Dimanche, la rébellion a demandé dans un courrier adressé au président en exercice de l'UA Denis Sassou N'Guesso "la nomination d'un nouveau médiateur" qui fasse "le consensus dans la classe politique".

Vendredi, le Parti démocratique de Côte d'Ivoire (PDCI, ex-parti unique) lançait "un appel pressant au médiateur de l'UA afin qu'il adopte un comportement impartial et juste dans la recherche de solutions".

La rupture avait été consommée fin août 2005, lorsque le vice-ministre sud-africain des Affaires étrangères Aziz Pahad s'était dit convaincu que le président ivoirien avait "rempli ses obligations", prévues par l'accord de Pretoria II (signé fin juin 2005 sous les auspices de Thabo Mbeki) et stigmatisé l'attitude de la rébellion.

Par ailleurs, les positions des protagonistes de la crise, telles qu'exprimées ces dernières semaines, semblent inconciliables.

L'opposition et la rébellion réclament une nouvelle transition avec un Premier ministre aux pleins pouvoirs, contrôlant notamment l'armée, et par voie de conséquence un Laurent Gbagbo dépourvu de ses prérogatives.

Ce dernier a pour sa part affirmé qu'il était "prêt à discuter" mais "plus à négocier", s'appuyant sur la constitution pour défendre son maintien à la tête du pays jusqu'à la tenue des prochaines élections.

Vendredi, le parti présidentiel, le Front populaire ivoirien (FPI) demandait la dissolution du Groupe de travail international (GTI) sur la Côte d'Ivoire, souhaitant que M. Mbeki devienne l'unique interlocuteur pour le règlement de la crise.

"A quel Mbeki aurons-nous affaire à Abidjan?, s'interrogeait lundi le quotidien Le Front (proche de la rébellion). Un Mbeki dont on dit qu'il épouse les idéaux de Gbagbo et qui vient rencontrer son poulain pour l'assurer de sa protection? Ou un Mbeki qui s'imagine encore dans la peau de médiateur?"

De son côté, Notre Voie, proche du camp présidentiel, saluait la "lecture réaliste et objective de la crise " de Thabo Mbeki, ajoutant que sa visite constituait "un réel motif d'espoir".

La courte visite de Thabo Mbeki sera suivie de plusieurs réunions d'importance dans les semaines à venir pour décider du sort de la Côte d'Ivoire: la Communauté économique des Etats d'Afrique de l'ouest (Cédéao) doit se réunir début octobre, puis l'UA et enfin le Conseil de sécurité de l'Onu le 17 octobre.

© Jeuneafrique.com 2006

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP31306lemdinimnia0

Jeune Afrique: Le Sénégal se veut rassurant:
"il n'y aura pas de charters de clandestins"

SÉNÉGAL - 25 septembre 2006 – AFP

Les autorités sénégalaises ont voulu être rassurantes lundi après la signature d'un accord sur l'immigration avec la France, assurant qu'il n'y aurait pas "de charters de clandestins" alors que Paris veut accélérer le rythme des expulsions des immigrés illégaux.

Le ministre sénégalais de l'Intérieur Ousmane Ngom, qui a signé samedi à Dakar cet accord avec son homologue français Nicolas Sarkozy, a été catégorique: "Il n'y aura pas de charters de clandestins"

"Désormais, le retour des migrants dans leur pays d'origine sera organisé conjointement par les deux pays", a indiqué le ministre lors d'une conférence de presse tenue après les vives critiques de la presse sénégalaise, réputée pour son franc-parler.

Qualifié d'"historique" par M. Sarkozy, cet accord a au contraire été perçu lundi comme ouvrant "la voie aux charters" d'immigrés illégaux par des journaux sénégalais.

"Accord sur la gestion concertée des flux migratoires: revoilà les charters", déclarait ainsi à sa Une le journal Sud Quotidien. "Les charters de Sarkozy vont, sous peu, reprendre du service", affirmait également le journal Le Quotidien.

"J'ai été très étonné de voir que la presse sénégalaise était critique, c'est peut-être parce qu'elle n'avait pas lu les termes de l'accord", a pour sa part estimé le ministre, qui a fait distribuer le texte de l'accord aux journalistes.

Concernant les rapatriements de clandestins, "il ne peut pas y avoir de décision unilatérale, il doit y avoir une décision, un accord entre les deux pays", a martelé le ministre sénégalais.

"Cela se fera donc dans des conditions qui respectent la dignité et les droits de l'Homme", a-t-il insisté.

Pays d'Afrique de l'ouest de 10 millions d'habitants, le Sénégal a une très ancienne tradition d'émigration, légale ou illégale. Et nombre de ses ressortissants figurent parmi les 25.000 clandestins, un chiffre record, arrivés depuis janvier sur l'archipel espagnol des Canaries.

Le dossier de l'immigration est très sensible pour les deux pays, liés par de nombreux liens, aussi bien historiques, politiques qu'économiques et culturels.

En France, Nicolas Sarkozy, candidat préféré de la droite pour l'élection présidentielle de mai 2007 a fait du contrôle de l'immigration l'un de ses chevaux de bataille, excluant toute régularisation massives d'étrangers, comme en Espagne et en Italie.

Au Sénégal, le rapatriement de clandestins constitue une opération à risque à quelques mois des élections générales de février 2007, le président sortant Abdoulaye Wade, 80 ans, élu en 2000, briguant un nouveau mandat de sept ans.

Dans ce pays pauvre, un départ pour l'étranger, qu'il soit légal ou illégal, est souvent un "investissement" pour l'entourage du migrant, qui l'aide à financer son voyage en espérant avoir en retour des transferts d'argent.

Un retour prématuré du migrant dans son pays est souvent perçu comme honteux et constitue une importante perte financière pour l'entourage ayant contribué au voyage.

Et, émigrer ou rester illégalement en France devient de plus en plus difficile. A la mi-septembre, les autorités françaises ont finalement décidé de ne régulariser que 7.000 immigrés clandestins dont les enfants sont scolarisés dans le pays. Quelque 30.000 demandes avaient été déposées.

Dans le même temps, M. Sarkozy a donné pour consigne aux services de police de porter le nombre d'expulsions en 2006 à 25.000 contre 15.000 en 2004. Les autorités estiment qu'entre 200.000 et 400.000 clandestins vivent en France.

Lors de sa visite à Dakar, samedi, le ministre français de l'Intérieur avait averti: "Ni l'Europe, ni la France ne peuvent recevoir tous ceux qui rêvent d'un Eldorado".

© Jeuneafrique.com 2006

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP63306lesngsnitse0

Mail & Guardian:
Police intuition

John Matshikiza: WITH THE LID OFF
25 September 2006

It was a strange kind of robbery. I woke up restless at 1.30am and went to the front room to switch channels on the decoder, vaguely intending to watch what was happening in the world from the point of view of the BBC and CNN. I bent down to press the buttons - only there were no buttons and no decoder, just a tangled mess of wires where it had been. Then I noticed that the DVD and VHS players had also been neatly removed from their usual locations in the same console.

At moments like this you can feel the hair literally standing up on your head. Staring wildly round the room, I saw that a window had been smashed. There was a gaping hole that only a small child could have crawled through. But even that would have been perilous. There were no signs of blood, as there usually are at a scene such as this, where someone taking a chance would have cut a hand or an arm.

I took it that a small person might have been helped through the hole in the window and then gone to let in accomplices through the door. But both front and back doors were securely locked. Strangest of all, most of the broken glass was lying on the ground outside the window, rather than inside the room, as you would expect in the case of a forced entry. The furniture immediately under the window had not been disturbed. It looked like an inside job, especially when I discovered the spare set of keys lying on a chair deep inside the room. Why had they not taken the keys and simply walked out through the front door?

My hair was standing up further and further on my head as I checked all the rooms, wardrobes and cupboards for lurking strangers. I was unarmed. I discovered my wallet was missing from my trouser pocket. Could they have come right into my bedroom while I was sleeping? How would they know just where to look?

I called the police. They showed up after about 45 minutes, Laurel and Hardy, one big and dark, the other slender and light-skinned. The big one did most of the talking, with the thin one nodding in agreement from time to time.

They didn’t seem to be too interested in the scene of the crime. They made it clear that they had to deal with dozens of other burglaries in the same neighbourhood that night. They made themselves comfortable at the dining room table and proceeded to take a statement. They said the fingerprint guy would be round the next day. Then they left.

The fingerprint guy dusted the area round the window and told me not to touch anything till the detective had been round. Like his colleagues the previous night, he shrugged the whole thing of as no big train smash.

The detective called me jovially on my cellphone the next morning, addressing me familiarly by the name of Zulu, a character I played in a movie many years ago. He said he’d be round that evening. It took him another 24 hours to make good on his word - and even then he said he had no transport and could I come round to the office to pick him up.

Meanwhile, I had had a phone call from another policeman, telling me they had found some of my property during a routine search of a suspect in Doornfontein. Some objects from my wallet had been found in the suspect’s pockets, including my ID book, driver’s licence, an ATM card and a receipt that happened to have my phone number on it, which is how he came to call me. He told me to meet him, not at the charge office, but in the car park at Jeppe police station. Curiouser and curiouser.

Sure enough, two cops rocked up in a police van in the car park shortly after I arrived and gave me these items. Credit cards and cash were missing, of course. So were business cards of various acquaintances and colleagues, and all the rest of the innumerable bits and pieces that pile up in your wallet. But at least I was street legal again. I had been dreading more queues at home affairs to replace those vital documents.

They told me to drive behind them to the scene of the arrest to see if we could pick up anything else. As we got out of our cars, 20 or 30 vagrants leaped to their feet like startled gazelles and ran off into the surrounding streets. They left behind the mattresses they had been lying on idly on the dirty sidewalk, waiting for night to fall to go back on the prowl. It seemed more like a game between cops and vagrants than a serious attempt to clean up crime.

The cops picked through some of the strewn items between the mattresses and discovered my decoder, smashed and useless. They seemed to know where everything could be found. They seemed to know exactly what was mine and what wasn’t. I was somewhat suspicious about the whole thing, but held my tongue, grateful for small mercies. I gave each of them a healthy tip. As we departed, the vagrants were slowly creeping back to their respective sleeping areas, ever on the alert for further raids.

I remain baffled by the whole affair, from the strange nature of the break-in at my home to the phone calls from jovial policemen and the unlikely retrieval of some critical documents that I kept in my wallet. I suppose I should count myself among the lucky few for that alone.

All material copyright Mail&Guardian.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=284873&area=/insight/insight__columnists/#

Página/12:
La Europa que baja la barrera

OCHO DEL BLOQUE CONTRA LA INMIGRACION ILEGAL

Martes, 26 de Septiembre de 2006

Ocho países de la Unión Europea (UE) le pidieron ayer a Bruselas que encuentre una solución urgente al problema de la inmigración ilegal. El pedido, que en realidad se acercó mucho a una súplica, llegó en un momento en que las naciones del sur del continente no pueden detener a las cientos de personas que todas las semanas intentan ingresar a la frontera sur del bloque. En una carta al presidente de la Comisión Europea, el conservador José Manuel Durao Barroso, los ocho firmantes explicaron que se trata de un desafío que sobrepasa las capacidades de cada Estado por separado. El principal impulsor de esta demanda –y el más afectado por la ola incesante de inmigrantes africanos–, España, destacó que no es sólo un problema de los países del sur europeo, sino que, con la libre circulación dentro del bloque, es un tema que afectará a todos los miembros.

En la carta que entregaron a Bruselas, España, Italia, Francia, Chipre, Malta, Grecia, Portugal y Eslovenia le pidieron al resto de los miembros de la UE que vayan a la próxima cumbre de jefes de Estado y de Gobierno con propuestas concretas para debatir. Con esto se confirma lo que ya se venía rumoreando: en la reunión del 20 de octubre en Finlandia, el tema obligado será la ola inmigratoria, que ya depositó a miles de africanos en las orillas de las islas Canarias en los últimos meses. Además de promover acuerdos de repatriación y de ayudar económicamente a los países de origen, todos piden que se refuerce el control de la frontera sur de la UE y que se dote de medios a la agencia comunitaria de Fronteras Exteriores (Frontex). “La inmigración ilegal afecta al conjunto de la Unión y no solamente a los países que guardan sus fronteras exteriores”, advierten los ocho países.

La propuesta busca fortalecer la cooperación entre los países de origen, de tránsito y de destino de los inmigrantes. Esta alianza supondría no sólo un trabajo conjunto entre los países del sur y del norte europeo, sino también con las naciones africanas. Esta petición se produjo apenas cuatro días después de que algunos países atacaran la política migratoria española durante una reunión del bloque en la ciudad finlandesa de Tampere.

El ministro de Interior de Alemania, Wolfgang Schäuble, criticó a Madrid por pedir a Bruselas una mayor colaboración al resto de los países del bloque para combatir la crisis migratoria sin precedentes que atraviesan las islas Canarias. “Pedir dinero a otra persona es siempre la manera más fácil de resolver un problema. No se empieza pidiendo dinero a los demás”, afirmó el ministro alemán. Sus pares de Austria y Holanda también cuestionaron al gobierno español. Destacaron que el proceso de regularización de inmigrantes, que llevó a cabo Madrid el año pasado, debería haberse hecho de forma coordinada con el resto de países del bloque.

Lo cierto es que, a pesar de que los todos países de la UE dicen apoyar a las naciones del sur con el problema de la inmigración ilegal, ninguno ha ofrecido una ayuda concreta. La semana pasada, en la reunión en Tampere, el vicepresidente de la Comisión Europea, Franco Frattini, le había pedido a los miembros del bloque que incrementen sus aportes para el patrullaje que realiza Frontex a lo largo de las costas africanas. En otras palabras, poner a disposición de Bruselas más barcos, helicópteros y aviones. Hasta el momento, ningún país europeo respondió al pedido.

La carta que enviaron ayer los ocho países parece ser sólo el primer paso dentro de lo que seguramente será una fuerte campaña de las naciones del sur europeo para convencer de la dimensión del problema migratorio a sus pares del norte. “La mayoría de los africanos que llegan a las islas Canarias son francófonos que aspiran a llegar a otros puntos de la UE, distintos de España. Van hacia el norte”, había advertido hace sólo unos días el ministro de Justicia español, Juan Fernando López Aguilar.

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

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Página/12:
Tudo legal, en primera o ballottage

LA SOCIALDEMOCRACIA DE BRASIL CONFIA EN GANARLE A LULA

La oposición de centroderecha logró juntar a los enemistados candidatos a presidente y gobernador, Alckmin y Serra. Atacaron a Lula y al PT, aprovechando el último escándalo de corrupción.

Por Darío Pignotti
Desde San Pablo, Martes, 26 de Septiembre de 2006

“El duelo final.” La gigantografía publicita la última carrera de Fórmula Uno entre Fernando Alonso y Michael Schumacher, pero bien cabría para esta última recta de la campaña presidencial brasileña. El afiche está a pocos metros del club donde anoche se celebró un acto del candidato opositor, Geraldo Alckmin. Aunque no fue el cierre oficial de la campaña en San Pablo –programado para mañana–, definitivamente fue el mitin políticamente más fuerte que tuvo hasta ahora el Partido de la Social Democracia Brasileña (PSDB). Ante los principales líderes de la alianza de centroderecha, que en 1994 llevó a la presidencia a Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Alckmin se animó a augurar una victoria en primera vuelta. Después del acto, Página/12 se acercó y le preguntó si realmente creía que ganarían el domingo próximo. “Estamos trabajando para ello”, se limitó a contestar el candidato opositor.

Mientras afuera se sufría uno de los días más fríos del año, dentro del pequeño club Esperia una multitud de militantes y seguidores del PSDB vivieron la noche más caliente de la campaña electoral. Ayer se respiraba un aire de esperanza, quizás un poco exagerada. “Cruza los dedos que el domingo vamos a segunda vuelta”, gritaban los militantes. Y acto seguido, coreaban el estribillo más popular entre los socialdemocrátas en estos días: “Por un Brasil más decente, Geraldo presidente”. Las palabras decencia, moral y ética fueron las estrellas de todos los discursos. El acto fue, en pocas palabras, un último intento de exprimir cualquier resquicio de beneficio político que quedara del escándalo por la compra del dossier para perjudicar a los candidatos del PSDB.

La expectativa de forzar una segunda vuelta es tal que logró juntar a los candidatos a presidente y gobernador por el PSDB, Alckmin y José Serra, en el acto de ayer, después de no verse la cara en casi toda la campaña. Los separan un conjunto de razones, entre ellas el proyecto presidencial de Serra. Una victoria de Alckmin este año afectaría seriamente las aspiraciones de su camarada de llegar a la presidencia en 2010, aspiración que paradójicamente, se beneficia con un triunfo de Lula, quien no tendrá chances de un tercer mandato. Serra y Lula habrían sellado un pacto de no agresión la semana pasada, luego de que explotara el caso de espionaje conocido como “dossiergate”. Este rumor pareció confirmarse ayer. Serra fue el único de los oradores que no atacó directamente al presidente, sino que sólo se refirió a la corrupción dentro del Partido de los Trabajadores (PT).

El resto, en cambio, no escatimó en calificativos al hablar de Lula. “Es Judas,” afirmaron Alckmin y Cardoso, recordando cuando Lula se comparó con Jesucristo. Estas dos figuras del PSDB tampoco compartieron la mayoría de la campaña. Recién llegado de Estados Unidos, el ex presidente se había mantenido distante del ex gobernador de San Pablo. Era conocido el apoyo de Cardoso a Serra para la candidatura presidencial, quien aunque estaba mejor en las encuestas, fue rechazado por el partido. Sin embargo, Cardoso se mostró ayer bien cerca de Alckmin, atacando a Lula. “Me da malestar hablar de esa gente”, afirmó el ex presidente, refiriéndose a los dirigentes petistas. “Me da comezón en la lengua oír tantas bobadas”, agregó, al desmentir las acusaciones de Lula sobre un posible golpe institucional, como también hicieron Alckmin y los líderes del PFL.

A los socialdemócratas del PSDB y los conservadores del PFL los unió, en 1994, la candidatura de Cardoso, cuando surgió como el único referente en condiciones de impedir la victoria de Lula, que en marzo de aquel año parecía incontestable. Los padres de ese acuerdo fueron el propio Cardoso, uno de los pocos políticos que en Brasil ven la política más allá de la coyuntura, y el líder pefelista sureño Jorge Bornhaussen, ex presidente de la federación de banqueros brasileños y ex gobernador de Santa Catarina durante la dictadura militar. Bornhausen, nunca reprimió su repulsa, a veces rayando en el asco hacia el petismo y lo que él califica como una “república de sindicalistas”. Es suya la frase, dicha el año pasado, de que habría que acabar de una vez por todas con “esa raza”.

Pero ese odio, casi folklórico, no es sólo una retórica de los candidatos socialdemócratas. En la entrada del club, María Elizabeth Melo, una ingeniera civil, entregaba en la puerta una calcomanía de la campaña.

“Soy una militante de la última hora, siempre fui de Serra con todo el corazón, aunque no estoy afiliada al PSDB. Pero quiero que se acabe esta basura de los sindicalistas corruptos”, explicó la mujer.

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

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Página/12:
El Papa le habló al mundo musulmán

BENEDICTO XVI SE REUNIO CON REPRESENTANTES DEL ISLAM

“Aquí comienza un capítulo nuevo”, dijo el vaticanista del diario La Repubblica al término de la reunión entre el Pontífice y los 40 delegados musulmanes en Roma. Benedicto llamó al respeto mutuo y remarcó su estima y respeto por los creyentes del Islam.

Por Peter Popham*
Desde Roma, Martes, 26 de Septiembre de 2006

En la movida más extraordinaria de su papado hasta la fecha, Benedicto XVI convocó ayer a 22 embajadores de países islámicos al Vaticano y dirigiéndose a ellos en francés les habló de su determinación de relanzar el diálogo entre cristianos y musulmanes. La reunión, televisada en vivo por la cadena árabe Al Jazeera y el Vaticano, fue el último intento del Papa de dar vuelta la página después de la dura controversia que se instaló desde que citó a un emperador bizantino que describía al Islam como “malvado e inhumano” y al profeta Mahoma como favoreciendo la conversión por la fuerza.

Un experto del Vaticano concedió que el “terremoto” causado por esas despectivas referencias había “sin duda dañado la imagen del Papa y su credibilidad en algunas partes del mundo musulmán”, pero que el discurso de ayer “repararía el daño y comenzaría a curar las heridas”. Fue la cuarta ocasión en que el papa Benedicto intentó tragarse sus palabras desde ese funesto discurso a los profesores y estudiantes de la Universidad de Regensburg en Alemania hace dos semanas. Esas palabras se hicieron tan famosas que ayer ni siquiera tuvo que mencionarlas cuando él y 40 delegados musulmanes –el resto representando a las organizaciones islámicas en Italia –estaban reunidos en el hall de los Guardias Suizos en el palacio de verano de Castel Gandolfo, al sur de Roma.

“Las circunstancias que originaron nuestra reunión son bien conocidas”, les dijo. “En este contexto particular, me gustaría volver a expresar toda la estima y el profundo respeto que tengo por los creyentes musulmanes.” Luego recordó a su audiencia lo que él llamó la “Carta Magna de diálogo musulmán-cristiano” –las palabras del Segundo Concilio Vaticano de 1965, que resumía los motivos por los cuales “la Iglesia mira a los musulmanes con respeto”–, incluyendo el hecho fundamental que el Alá adorado por los musulmanes es el único Dios viviente y subsistente, misericordioso y todopoderoso, Creador del cielo y de la tierra”.

El Papa se sintió obligado a volver a las bases ayer porque no son sólo los extremistas islámicos los que se han aprovechado de sus palabras y su persona durante las últimas semanas. En Italia, normalmente la nación más reflexivamente leal al Papa, el silencio entre los políticos relevantes después del discurso de Regensburg era ensordecedor. Walter Veltroni, el alcalde de Roma poscomunista, mantuvo ostentosamente una reunión con los líderes de las diferentes comunidades religiosas, enfatizando su distancia de los comentarios del Papa. Los analistas se remitían a los primeros días del papado de Benedicto, comparando su falta de entusiasmo por el diálogo interreligioso con la del papa Juan Pablo II, señalando cómo había mandado al exilio en El Cairo al hombre responsable por mantener el diálogo vivo, el arzobispo británico Michael Fitzgerald.

A los ojos de algunos, el Papa sólo empeoró las cosas cuando comenzó a disculparse. Los papas no se disculpan; se supone que son infalibles. Se preveía un grave daño a la imagen papal dentro de la Iglesia. La reunión de ayer por lo tanto, aunque duró sólo 30 minutos, era vital. “Es una muy importante iniciativa”, dijo de la reunión, Marco Politi, el corresponsal de La Repubblica ante el Vaticano. “Aquí comienza un capítulo nuevo.”

Gerard O’Connell, un analista del Vaticano, dijo: “Trasmitió muy claramente que su interés estaba en construir puentes, no en destruirlos. Se ha dado cuenta de que ha debido clarificar dónde está situado en el diálogo interreligioso, declaró claramente que tenemos valores religiosos comunes”.

Sin embargo, el Papa también subrayó la necesidad de “reciprocidad en todas las esferas”, citando las palabras de su predecesor a 80 mil jóvenes islámicos en Marruecos en 1985, queriendo decir, entre otras cosas, el derecho de los cristianos a adorar públicamente en Arabia Saudita, por ejemplo, unos derechos que actualmente no poseen.

Las primeras reacciones recogidas entre los que participaron del encuentro en Castel Gandolfo han sido que el discurso del Pontífice convenció al mundo musulmán. “Era lo que esperábamos”, comentó el embajador iraquí Albert Edward Ismail Yelda al término del coloquio. La Unión de la Comunidad Islámica en Italia habla del encuentro como “la señal de una voluntad de diálogo que no se puede ni se debe desatender y que se encuentra siempre lista y disponible en interés de nuestra comunidad y del país en el que vivimos y vivirán nuestros hijos”.

* De The Independent de Gran Bretaña. Especial para Página/12.
Traducción: Celita Doyhambéhère

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Página/12:
El mal ejemplo del Papa

Por Leonardo Boff*
Martes, 26 de Septiembre de 2006

La actitud del papa Benedicto XVI está provocando justificadas iras entre las comunidades islámicas a causa de la infeliz cita de un emperador bizantino del siglo XIV, según la cual “Mahoma defendía cosas malas e inhumanas, tales como su orden de difundir la fe por la espada”. Pero también causó escándalo y vergüenza a los cristianos. La citación es totalmente inoportuna. Sabe muy bien el Papa del enfrentamiento ahora existente entre el Islam y el Occidente que hace guerra a Afganistán y a Irak y que abiertamente apoya la causa israelí contra los palestinos, de mayoría islámica. En ese contexto la citación alinea al Papa con las estrategias bélicas del Occidente. ¿Cómo no irritarse contra esta actitud?

Para nosotros cristianos, la actitud del Papa nos deja perplejos porque es de la esencia de la fe cristiana perdonar y rezar como el pobrecito de Assis: “Donde hay ofensa que yo lleve el perdón”. No queriendo perdonar, el Papa legitima a todos aquellos que no quieren pedir perdón ni en la vida cotidiana, ni a los negros que esclavizamos por siglos, ni a los sobrevivientes de los indígenas que diezmamos. Si el Papa no hace oficialmente un acto de disculpa, nos da un mal ejemplo. No cumple el mandato del Señor de “confirmar los hermanos y las hermanas en la fe”.

Pero su gesto no es aislado. Como cardenal, se opuso a la entrada de Turquía en la Comunidad Europea por el simple hecho de que este país es mayoritariamente musulmán. Hace poco suprimió en el Vaticano la instancia que promovía el diálogo Cristianismo-Islamismo. En el documento Dominus Jesus de su autoría, del 15 de septiembre de 2000, uno de los textos más fundamentalistas de los últimos siglos, afirma que “la única religión verdadera es la Iglesia Romana Católica” y que “los seguidores de otras religiones objetivamente se encuentran, con referencia a la salvación, en una situación gravemente deficitaria”. No tienen sentido encuentros con otras religiones porque “es contrario a la fe católica considerar la Iglesia como una vía de salvación al lado de otras”. Con este trasfondo, no causa extrañeza su discurso en la Universidad de Ratisbona.

¿Sin embargo, no sería más digno del Papa pedir claramente perdón por las incomprensiones que provocó incluso involuntariamente? ¿Por qué no lo hace? Para entenderlo, se necesita comprender la ideología infalibilista que sigue vigente en el Vaticano y en general en la Iglesia. Según ella, el Papa no puede errar, aunque el dogma de la infalibilidad sea muy limitado. Afirma que el Papa es solamente infalible en situaciones bien delimitadas, gozando entonces, personalmente, de aquella infalibilidad que es de toda la Iglesia. Pero la ideología infalibilista atribuye de forma ilegítima infalibilidades a todas las palabras del Papa. Si al pedir perdón, confiesa que erró, haría algo que no es permitido por el infalibilismo.

Funciona en la cabeza del papa Benedicto XVI el despotismo papal formulado ya en 1302 por Bonifacio VIII que rezaba: “Para cada criatura humana es absolutamente necesario para su salvación estar sometida al Papa en Roma”. Eso no fue abolido siquiera por el Concilio Vaticano II en 1964. Fue introducida en los textos una “Nota explicativa previa” donde se reafirma que el Papa puede siempre actuar “según su parecer personal” como nombrar obispos, establecer normas y establecer políticas eclesiásticas. En otras palabras: un Papa puede autónomamente decidir todo; mil millones de católicos juntos no pueden decidir nada. Ese absolutismo nos hace entender las razones del Papa para no pedir perdón.

* El religioso Leonardo Boff es uno de los fundadores de la Teología de la Liberación.

* De Alai-Amlatina.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-73560-2006-09-26.html

The Independent:
The woman who defied the Taliban, and paid with her life

Women's rights campaigner in Afghanistan shot dead
One in two Afghan women a victim of violence
Suicide on the rise as Taliban's power increases

By Kim Sengupta
Published: 26 September 2006

Safia Amajan promoted women's education and work - a fairly ordinary job in most places - but in the Afghanistan of a resurgent Taliban it was a dangerous path to follow. She was a target, and yesterday she was gunned down outside her home.

Five years after the "liberation" of Afghanistan by the US and Britain, with promises of a new dawn for its downtrodden women, her murder was a bloody reminder of just how far the country is slipping back into a land of darkness.

Public figures, including the Afghan President, Hamid Karzai, lined up to praise Ms Amajan.

Yet this support was signally lacking while she lived. The former teacher worked in Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban, and also the place where women have faced the most virulent discrimination and mistreatment. It is also where Nato forces are fighting a ferocious insurgency. Ms Amajan had asked for, and been refused, a protective vehicle, or bodyguards, despite repeated death threats.

She was in a battered taxi when two gunmen on a motorcycle opened fire with automatic rifles. Her nephew, Farhad Jan, said: "She died on the spot. There was no time to give her treatment." In a place of fear where one can sign one's death warrant with the wrong choice of words, Farhad was careful not to blame anyone for the killing. All he would say was: "We had no personal enmity with anyone."

A Taliban commander, Mullah Hayat Khan, declared that Ms Amajan had been "executed". He said: "We have told people again and again that anyone working for the government, and that includes women, will be killed."

Ms Amajan had taken over the post of women's welfare officer soon after Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, fled with the fall of his regime. With the return of the Taliban, as the "war on terror" moved on to Iraq, aid workers - foreign and Afghan, men and women - were intimidated into leaving the region.

Ms Amajan was one of the few who refused to flee. Her secretary, Abdullah Khan, said: "She was very brave. She was also very hard-working. She was always trying her best to improve education for women."

As well as defying the Taliban, Ms Amajan made the mistake of being successful in what she was doing. In Kandahar alone she had opened six schools where a thousand women had learnt how to make and then sell their goods at the market. She was also instrumental in setting up tailoring schools for women, with some of the products making their way to markets in the West.

At the official end of the Afghan war, America's first lady, Laura Bush, was among those who declared that one of the most important achievements of overthrowing the Taliban was emancipation of women. However, since then female social workers and teachers have been maimed and killed, girls' schools shut down and female workers forced to give up their jobs. The few women out in the streets in Kandahar and other places in the south are covered in burqas. A report by the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission spoke of the "systematic and violent campaign" directed against women.

Statistics paint a bleak picture of women's lives with 35 female suicides in Kandahar alone and nearly 200 attempted suicides in the Herat region - one third of which were successful. Rights groups estimate that between 60 and 80 per cent of marriages in the country are forced. And the majority of those marriages involve girls under the age of 16.

Ms Amajan's funeral yesterday, in a Shia ceremony, was attended by the provincial governor and hundreds of mourners, including tribal elders. In Kabul, President Karzai said: "The enemies of Afghanistan are trying to kill those people who are working for the peace and prosperity of Afghanistan. The enemies of Afghanistan must understand that we have millions of people like Amajan."

Fariba Ahmedi, a female member of parliament, who attended the burial, said: "Those enemies who have killed her should know it will not derail women from the path we are on. We will continue on our way."

Human rights groups point out, however, that the battle for women's rights is in serious danger of being lost. There are now entire provinces where there is no girls' education; of the 300 schools shut or burnt down, the majority were for girls. The death rate at childbirth is the second highest in the world, and the number of women who have committed suicide, mainly through self-immolation, has risen by 30 per cent in two years.

Life gets worse for Afghan women

Violence

* 50 per cent of Afghan women say they have been beaten, while 200 women in Kandahar ran away from domestic violence this year.

* In the past year, 150 cases of women resorting to self-immolation have been reported in western Afghanistan, 34 cases in the south-east.

* 197 women in Herat were reported to have attempted suicide last year, 69 successfully.

* 57 per cent of girls are married before the legal age of 16.

Education

* 85 per cent of women in Afghanistan are illiterate.

* The number of girls going to school in Afghanistan is half that of boys.

* 300 schools were set on fire across the country this year.

Health

* 70 per cent of tuberculosis deaths are among women.

* Death rate of mothers in labour is 60 in 1000 - (60 per cent higher than developed world).

* Only 5-7 per cent of women in Zabul and Helmand province have access to health care.

Voting

* 41 per cent of the 10.5 million registered voters are women. Women's registration rates in southern provinces were much lower than the national average: Zabul (9 per cent), Uruzgan (10 per cent) Helmand (16 per cent), and Kandahar (27 per cent)

Source: AIHRC, UNICEF, HRW

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article1757264.ece

The News:
Noam Chomsky on the origins of terrorism

EXCLUSIVE Part I

MIT linguist and perhaps the best known critic of US policies of the current generation, Noam Chomsky, speaks to Saad Sayeed on, among other things, the origins of terrorism, Kashmir, Lebanon, his friendship with the late Eqbal Ahmed and the role of the intellectual.

Q. Osama Bin Laden wants the US out of the Middle East and many Muslims would like a resolution on the question of Palestine. But would even this almost unrealistic outcome end terrorism?

A. What we call terrorism has many different roots. But remember that what we call terrorism is terrorism by people that we don't like. Terrorism by people we do like is not called terrorism so the very term is fraught with ideology. But keeping to the conventional use, terrorism has many roots and one of them undoubtedly is the unresolved Israel-Palestine conflict where Israel and the United States (it's never just Israel) are systematically destroying the Palestinian people right before our eyes. So, sure that evokes the feeling of anger, passion, resentment, and sometimes it takes the form of terrorism. In that sense a resolution to the Israel-Palestine conflict, a fair and just resolution, would remove some of the sources of terrorism, maybe many of them.

Q. You just mentioned that when the media speaks of terrorism, we concentrate on groups such as Al Qaeda. But you have repeatedly stated that terrorism is also practised by states such as the US, Israel and Turkey just to name a few. How important is an understanding of these facts when we are examining the question of terror?

A. It depends on whether we want to be honest and truthful or whether we want to just serve state power. If we want to be honest and truthful, we should look at all forms of terrorism. I have been writing on terrorism for 25 years, ever since the Reagan administration came in 1981 and declared that the leading focus of its foreign policy was going to be a war on terror. A war against state directed terrorism which they called the plague of the modern world because of their barbarism and so on. That was the centre of their foreign policy and ever since I have been writing about terrorism.

But what I write causes extreme anger for the very simple reason that I use the US government's official definition of terrorism, the definition that is in the official US code of laws. If you use that definition it follows very quickly that the US is the leading terrorist state and a major sponsor of terrorism and since that conclusion is unacceptable it arouses furious anger. But the problem lies in the unwillingness to recognise that your own terrorism is terrorism. This is not just true of the United States, it's true quite generally. Terrorism is something that they do to us. In both cases it's terrorism and we have to get over that if we're serious about the question.

Q. In 1979 Russia invaded Afghanistan. The US used the Ziaul Haq regime in Pakistan to fund the rise of militancy. This gave Zia a green light to fund cross-border terrorism in Kashmir. Now we allegedly have some of those elements setting off bombs in Mumbai. Clearly, these groups are no longer controlled by any government.

A. The jihadi movements in their modern form go back before Afghanistan. They were formed primarily in Egypt in the 1970s. Those are the roots of the jihadi movement, the intellectual roots and the activist roots and the terrorism too. After all, [Anwar] Sadat was killed before Afghanistan. But when the Russians invaded Afghanistan, the Reagan administration saw it as an opportunity to pursue their Cold War aims. So they did with the intense cooperation of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and others. So the Reagan administration organised the most radical Islamic extremists it could find anywhere in the world and brought them to Afghanistan to train them, arm them.

Meanwhile, the US supported Ziaul Haq as he was turning Pakistan into a country of madressahs and fundamentalists. The Reagan administration even pretended that Pakistan was not developing nuclear weapons. They kept certifying to Congress that Pakistan was not developing nuclear weapons, which of course they were, so that US aid to Pakistan could continue. The end result of these US programmes was to seriously harm Pakistan and also to create the international jihadi movement, of which Osama bin Laden is a product. The jihadi movement then spread… they may not like it much but they created it. And now, as you say, it's in Kashmir.

Kashmir, though, is a much more complex story. There are plenty of problems in Kashmir and they go way back but the major current conflicts come from the 1980s. In 1986, when India blocked the election, it actually stole the election, and that led to an uprising and terrorist violence and atrocities, including atrocities committed by the Indian army.

Q. How central do you think the Kashmir issue is when we look at the bigger picture and what lies ahead for India and Pakistan in regards to this?

A. Kashmir is a difficult issue. The right path for India and Pakistan is the one that has been followed over the last few years to a certain extent. Various ways of improving relations, cultural, economic, and exchanges of various kinds to try to reduce the tensions between the two countries and Pakistan has to make a very serious effort to contend with the terrorist groups that operate within Pakistan. India has similar problems. Hindu fundamentalism can be as destructive as Islamic fundamentalism, look at what happened in Gujarat.

Q. What role does the international community have to play?

A. First of all we should be careful with the term international community. It's used in an ideological sense. It's used to refer to the United States and whoever goes along with the United States. So Blair reflexively goes along with the United States so the UK is part of the international community. France, for whatever cynical reasons, maybe sometimes goes along with the United States so its part of the community. But the term is almost meaningless. Let's take the alleged development of Iranian nuclear weapons as an example. What you read in the west universally is that the international community has demanded that Iran not develop any uranium. Well, that's true if by international community you mean the United States and whoever goes along with them. Certainly not throughout the world, not the non-aligned movement, which is a huge movement.

There was a conference not long ago in which they endorsed Iran's inalienable right to carry out uranium enrichment. The countries neighbouring Iran, Turkey, and the Sunni Arab countries and so on. The populations among these, they don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons but they prefer a nuclear armed Iran to any threat of intervention against them. So who's the international community? What should the international community do about Kashmir? It should support efforts on the part of India and Pakistan to resolve the issue peaceably. And there are various forms in which the resolution could take place. My old friend Eqbal Ahmed, years ago proposed what seemed to be sensible plans for resolving the Kashmir problem peacefully. It's not going to be easy but it's not impossible.

Q. You mentioned you were friends with Eqbal Ahmed. Can you describe that relationship and perhaps explain why he has gone somewhat unappreciated in Pakistan?

A. Eqbal was an old friend from the 1960s. We were involved together in all sorts of things, resistance against the war in Vietnam, Israel-Palestine and dozens of other issues. We were generally very close in our opinions on all of these issues. I had a very high regard for him, I thought he was, apart from being a close friend, greatly liked and admired; he was one of the most acute intelligent analysts of political and cultural affairs that I knew. He was really outstanding, I just wrote an introduction to a book of his, a collection of essays that just appeared. I don't know how he is regarded in Pakistan but he should be regarded as one of the leading and foremost Pakistani intellectuals and activists.

Q. We spoke of Kashmir earlier and that it is a colonial legacy but we rarely see the question of colonialism being brought up in the media. In fact, some journalists have dismissed it as irrelevant to the growth of terrorism. Does the colonial legacy play a role in the emergence of home-grown terrorists in countries such as the US, UK and Canada as well as to the creation of terrorism as a whole?

A. There's no doubt about that. It's not brought up in the west because it's inconvenient to think about your own crimes. Just look at the major conflicts going on around the world today, in Africa, the Middle East, in South Asia, most of them are residues of colonial systems. Colonial systems imposed and created artificial states that had nothing to do with the needs and concerns and relations of the populations involved. They were created in the interests of colonial powers and as old fashioned colonialism turned into modern neo-colonialism, a lot of these conflicts erupted into violence and those are a lot of the atrocities happening in the world today.

How can anyone say colonialism isn't relevant? Of course it is and it's even more directly relevant. Take the London bombing in 2005. Blair tried to pretend that it had nothing to do with Britain's participation in the invasion of Iraq. That's completely ridiculous. The British intelligence and the reports of the people connected in the bombing, said that British participation in the invasion and the resulting horrors in Iraq inflamed them and they wanted to do something in reaction.

Q. Another popular view propagated by the media is that dictators such as Zia are local products and that capitalism is actually providing third world jobs. This theory absolves the west of all responsibility. How do you counter such arguments?

A. With facts. Sure Zia was a local product but he had enormous support through the worst of his actions from the United States. As for capitalism providing jobs, capitalism doesn't provide jobs capital does. And capital can be used in many ways. Let's just take the last 30 years. There is what's called the Washington consensus, the point of view of US-based international organisations and major countries, it's called neo-liberalism, and that was pretty much imposed on the third world, on the former colonies, for the last 25 years or so. These have been some of the worst periods in their economic history. Countries that followed the rules religiously like Latin America suffered a disaster after very rapid growth in the previous period.

So Latin America literally stagnated for 25 years following the neo-liberal rule of Washington. On the other hand there were countries that ignored the rule in East Asia, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and have had very rapid growth. So does capitalism create jobs? If by that you mean the Washington-based US consensus created the very advanced economies of Japan, South Korea, and China, of course not. You can say the same about the early development of the developed countries. Take the United States, which is regarded as the leading capitalist country in the world. Is it a capitalist country? Not in any sense of capitalism that I have ever heard of. The modern economy, the so-called new economy, in the United States relies very heavily on the dynamic state sector. Computers, on the internet, telecommunications, lasers, satellites, trains, most of that comes straight out of the state sector of the economy.

Where's capitalism? I think it must be illusions.

(To be continued)

The writer has previously worked at the Herald magazine. Currently he is a student based in Toronto, Canada. Email: saadsayeed@gmail.com

http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=24436

ZNet | Iran

Media Tall Tales for the Next War

by Norman Solomon; September 26, 2006

The Sept. 25 edition of Time magazine illustrates how the U.S. news media are gearing up for a military attack on Iran. The headline over the cover-story interview with Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is “A Date With a Dangerous Mind.” The big-type subhead calls him “the man whose swagger is stirring fears of war with the U.S.,” and the second paragraph concludes: “Though pictures of the Iranian president often show him flashing a peace sign, his actions could well be leading the world closer to war.”

When the USA’s biggest newsweekly devotes five pages to scoping out a U.S. air war against Iran, as Time did in the same issue, it’s yet another sign that the wheels of our nation’s war-spin machine are turning faster toward yet another unprovoked attack on another country.

Ahmadinejad has risen to the top of Washington’s - and American media’s - enemies list. Within the last 20 years, that list has included Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein and Slobodan Milosevic, with each subjected to extensive vilification before the Pentagon launched a large-scale military attack.

Whenever the president of the United States decides to initiate or intensify a media blitz against a foreign leader, mainstream U.S. news outlets have dependably stepped up the decibels and hysteria. But the administration can also call off the dogs of war by going silent about the evils of some foreign tyrant.

Take Libya’s dictator, for instance. For more than a third of a century, Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi has been a despot whose overall record of repression makes Noriega or Milosevic seem relatively tolerant of domestic political foes. But ever since Qaddafi made a deal with the Bush administration in December 2003, the silence out of Washington about Qaddafi’s evilness has been notable.

When Qaddafi publicly celebrated the 37th anniversary of his dictatorship a few weeks ago, he declared in a speech on state television: “Our enemies have been crushed inside Libya, and you have to be ready to kill them if they emerge anew.” The New York Times noted that Qaddafi’s regime “criminalizes the creation of opposition parties.”

Today, while the human rights situation in Iran is reprehensible, the ongoing circumstances are far worse under many governments favored by Washington. Here at home, media outlets should be untangling double standards instead of contributing to them. But so many reporters and pundits have internalized Washington’s geopolitical agendas that the mainline institutions of journalism continue to rot from within. That the rot goes largely unnoticed is testimony to how Orwellian “doublethink” has been normalized.

These are not issues of professionalism any more than concerns about public health are issues of medicine. The news media should be early warning systems that inform us before current events become unchangeable history.

But when the media system undermines the free flow of information and prevents wide-ranging debate, what happens is a parody of democracy. That’s what occurred four years ago during the media buildup for the invasion of Iraq.

Now, warning signs are profuse: The Bush administration has Iran in the Pentagon’s sights. And the drive toward war, fueled by double standards about nuclear development and human rights, is getting a big boost from U.S. media coverage that portrays the president as reluctant to launch an attack on Iran.

Time magazine reports that “from the State Department to the White House to the highest reaches of the military command, there is a growing sense that a showdown with Iran ... may be impossible to avoid.”

The same kind of media spin - assuming a sincere Bush desire to avoid war - was profuse in the months before the invasion of Iraq. The more that news outlets tell such fairy tales, the more they become part of the war machinery.

______________________________

The paperback edition of Norman Solomon’s latest book, War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death, was published this summer. For information, go to: www.warmadeeasy.com

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=67&ItemID=11044

ZNet | Afghanistan

A Journey into the 'Taliban Republic' Where the Militias Rule Unchallenged

by Patrick Cockburn; Independent; September 26, 2006

Civil war is raging through the Iraqi countryside. Sunni insurgents have largely taken control of the province of Diyala, where local leaders believe the insurgents are close to establishing a "Taliban republic".

Officials in the strategically important province - composed of a mixture of Sunnis and Shias with a Kurdish minority - have no doubt about what is happening. Lt-Col Ahmed Ahmed Nuri Hassan, a weary-looking commander of the federal police, says: "Now there is an ethnic civil war and it is getting worse every day."

At the moment, the Sunni seem to be winning.

As the violence has escalated over the past three years, it has become too dangerous for journalists to find out what is happening in the provinces outside the capital. The UN said last week that 5,106 civilians were killed in Baghdad in July and August and 1,493 in the provinces outside it.

Insurgents have cut the roads out of the capital to the west and the north. As I travelled through the provinces of this vast, war-torn country, despite keeping to the relatively calm tongue of Kurdish territory that extends through the countryside almost to Baghdad, I was keenly aware that it is not a place to make a mistake in map reading.

We drove for a couple of hours beside the Diyala river which rises in Iran's Zagros mountains and looks like a smaller version of the Nile, a streak of vivid green vegetation running through dun-coloured semi-desert. Then we turned abruptly east before the road entered the strongly insurgent district of As-Sadiyah.

What could have happened if we had continued down the main road was evident at Lt-Col Hassan's headquarters. In one corner of the courtyard was the wreckage of a blue-and-white police vehicle, ripped apart by a bomb. "Five policemen were killed in it when it was blown up at an intersection in As-Sadiyah two months ago," a policeman told us. "Only their commander survived but both his legs were amputated."

In Diyala, it is possible to see the anguished break-up of Iraq at ground level. Going by the accounts of police and government officials in the province, the death toll outside Baghdad may be far higher than previously reported. Ibrahim Hassan Bajalan, the head of Diyala's provincial council - who had survived an attempt to assassinate him in Baquba with a mortar attack the previous day - says he believed that "on average, 100 people are being killed in Diyala every week."

The latest were three civilians shot dead yesterday by unidentified assailants. Behind them, as the killers sped away in their car through the streets of Baquba, the families of the dead were left to grieve, falling to their knees and throwing their arms open to the sky in despair.

Many of those who die disappear for ever, thrown into the Diyala river or buried in date palm groves and fruit orchards. The reason for their killings can be spurious, and people have become careful to avoid incurring the wrath of local Sunni insurgents who control much of the province according to strict Islamic laws. "They have even banned the sale of cigarettes in the provincial capital, Baquba, and kill anybody selling cigarettes," Mr Bajalan said. "I have to bring in cigarettes from other places to give them to council members who are smokers."

In a house in Khanaqin, a Kurdish enclave in the north-east of the province, Nazar Ali Mirza, a sorrowful-looking middle-aged woman, described how she had fled too late from Muqdadiyah, the Sunni-dominated town of 200,000 people where she was born. She was caught by surprise when death squads began to target Kurds and Shias in her neighbourhood. Her eldest son, Khalil Mohammed Ahmed, a taxi driver, went out to collect a washing machine in March and never came back. She is beginning to assume he is dead but no body was discovered.

"Kurds and Shias were being driven out of our district," she said. "Men in black masks came to me and said they would kill my sons, even if they flew up into the sky, unless I moved away." One of her other sons was a policeman permanently disabled in a bomb explosion.

Mrs Mirza and her family are among 300,000 Iraqis forced to flee their homes since the beginning of the year. Everywhere, minorities frightened for their lives are on the move. "Nobody waits any longer to find out if a threat is real," says Mamosta Mohsin, the leader of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan in Khanaqin which, in effect, runs the town. "Even if the threat is organised by two children, people will run." Most often, the threat is real. Lt-Col Hassan has a collection of files in which the names of the latest refugees are registered. Most of them are Kurds coming from Baghdad, Ramadi, Baquba and the rest of the country.

He hands over a piece of paper showing how the number of refugee families arriving in this small town had risen from 29 in January to 318 in June. It was still 239 in August.

Lt-Col Hassan says that neither Sunni nor Shia are particularly well organised: "It is not like Lebanon, because most of the killing is done by local or tribal militias." The problem is not that the insurgents are strong but that the government forces are so weak. A division of 7,000 government soldiers is in Diyala, he said, "but they are all Shias and only arrest Sunnis."

Mr Bajalan confirms that the army is weak in Diyala, saying most of it is tied down at checkpoints. He reckons there is one soldier for every 50 square kilometres of the province. "The soldiers are badly armed," he says.

"They just have Kalashnikovs while the terrorists have rocket launchers and heavy machine guns. When they attack, they always kill 10 or 15 army or police."

The Americans do have a base near Baquba, and act in a supportive role when they are asked to. "That isn't much use against guerrillas," says Mr Bajalan. "They've all gone home by the time the Americans arrive."

Baghdad announced signal successes around Baquba last week, including the capture of leaders of two Sunni insurgent groups. But nobody in Diyala had heard about it, and, without exception, they expected the civil war to grow in intensity.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=49&ItemID=11045

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Tuesday, September 26, 2006

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