Elsewhere Today (414)
Aljazeera:
Cluster bomb victims 'mostly civilians'
Thursday 02 November 2006, 18:47 Makka Time, 15:47 GMT
Nearly all the victims of cluster bombs are civilians, a third of them children, according to a report by the campaign group Handicap International.
"Cluster munitions are imprecise weapons designed to strike a large surface area," Angelo Simonazzi, the group's director general, said in a report released on Thursday at the UN's European headquarters in Geneva.
"They scatter small, highly lethal sub-munitions, creating a 'footprint' within which they indiscriminately kill and injure military targets and civilians."
The study said 98 per cent of the victims of cluster bombs were civilians, and the weapons had killed some 3,800 people and injured 5,500 more in 24 countries.
Unofficial estimates put the real number of victims at 100,000, the Brussels-based group said.
Handicap International is calling for a moratorium on their use and for the weapon to be banned under the UN's 1980 Convention on Conventional Weapons.
Boys at risk
But there is little hope of convincing countries such as the US and Russia to support a ban, Simonazzi told The Associated Press.
"These countries still think they need them for defence purposes," he said. "There are so many in stock that they are simple weapons to use."
In September, a move by Democrats in the United States to stop the Pentagon from using cluster bombs near civilian targets was defeated in the Senate.
Cluster bomblets - or sub-munitions - are packed into artillery shells or bombs dropped from aircraft.
Some 200 to 600 of the bomblets are typically scattered over an area the size of a football field from a single cluster-bomb canister fired to destroy airfields or tanks and soldiers.
Usually 10 to 15 per cent - in some cases up to 80 per cent - of the bomblets fail to explode immediately.
Those that do not explode right away can be detonated later by the slightest disturbance, experts say.
War zones
With an estimated 33 million sub-munitions lying in current or former war zones, and a further four billion stockpiled by armed forces around the world, the report said the potential for further harm from this type of weapon was significant.
Boys under 18 are particularly at risk, accounting for around 95 per cent of child casualties and about one-third of the overall number the bomblets have killed or injured, according to the report. This is because boys in many countries are responsible for herding animals and collecting wood or water, during which they are exposed to unexploded bomblets lying on open land.
Cluster bombs have killed or injured at least 2,060 people in Iraq, where up to 1.8 million sub-munitions have been dropped by US-led coalition forces, Handicap International said.
It also cited the growing risk from militant groups independent of governments, highlighting Hezbollah's use of Chinese-made cluster bombs against targets in northern Israel.
Israel dropped an estimated four million sub-munitions on Lebanon during fighting in July and August, and an average of two people are still being killed or injured in the country every day, Kathleen Maes, the group's victim assistance coordinator, told reporters.
Agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1E292B6D-BC7E-463E-B18B-966030799107.ht
allAfrica:
Brazil And India Join Senegal for Biofuel Production
By Wagdy Sawahel
SciDev.Net (London) NEWS
November 1, 2006
In a bid to decrease its dependence on oil and produce environmentally-friendly energy, Senegal will cooperate with Brazil and India to launch a biofuel production programme by 2007.
Through public-private partnerships, Brazil will provide scientific and technological know-how, Indian entrepeneurs will supply the capital, and Senegal will offer land and labour.
Biofuels, such as bioethanol, biodiesel and biogas, are renewable fuels generally produced from agricultural crops or organic matter.
The project is part of a plan by the Senegalese government to regenerate its rural economy through investment in biofuels to eventually replace the country's daily consumption of 33,000 oil barrels.
It was announced on 27 October by Farba Senghor, Senegal's minister of agriculture, rural hydraulics and food security in a meeting with a delegation of Brazilian biofuel experts in Dakar, Senegal.
"The issues are enormous for our country, as biofuel will help us diversify our energy sources and reduce the increasing oil bill, while protecting the environment from pollution," Senghor said to AngolaPress.
"Senegal has considerable advantages to develop the biofuel sector, because the country presents good climatic and geological conditions necessary for the increase in plants used as raw materials for ethanol or diethyl ether production," José Neiva Santos, head of the Brazilian delegation, said.
In an initial pilot project to reduce Senegal's oil imports by 10 per cent, jatropha plants will be grown on 4,000 hectares of land in Touba.
The extracted oil will be transformed into biodiesel in production units to be set up in Khelcom, some 100 km from Dakar.
The pilot project also aims to provide a knowledge hub from which other plantations could develop, according to Biopact, an organisation working for cooperation in biofuel and bioenergy between Europe and Africa.
Senghor indicated that Senegal will carry out an experiment of growing castor oil plants, sunflowers or jatropha over an area of 50,000 hectares in Kolda and Tambacounda, in southern and eastern Senegal.
This will help determine costs and the optimal conditions for biofuel production - examining the best way to extract the oil, as well as finding out what crop produces better biofuel at minimum cost.
News of the biofuel investment programme, which is part of a government plan called 'retour vers l'agriculture' ('back to agriculture'), comes ahead of the green power energy conference BiofuelsMarketsAfrica scheduled for 30 November in Cape Town, South Africa.
Copyright © 2006 SciDev.Net. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).
http://allafrica.com/stories/200611020021.html
AlterNet:
Andy Stern: Changing How America Works
By Andy Stern, AlterNet
Posted on November 2, 2006
Editor's note: On October 18th, SEIU leader Andy Stern was in the Bay Area on a book tour, and gave a talk at a crowded event at Lukas Restaurant in Oakland. The event was sponsored by Drinking Liberally, a group started by Justiin Krebs that brings together progressives in a number of cities to hear quality speakers and to connect over a beer. The following is a transcript of Stern's talk.
Ercilia Sandoval is one of the people in this country who did exactly what she was supposed to do. She worked hard every day sweeping floors, cleaning toilets, and taking out the garbage in some of Houston's most elegant office buildings. She is willing to work hard to raise her two girls. She tried to save what she could, but on a little more than $5 an hour, it's hard to find enough money to pay the bills.
Then she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Ercilia was already a fighter and a leader among her co-workers, but she was probably going to die. And her problem was that she was having problems with her health over a long period of time, but she couldn't afford to go to the doctor, couldn't afford to get healthcare and is now worried about what this means for her kids, and her work is dedicated to all the mothers in Houston, Texas, who are janitors, who she never wants to have live through the same thing. She happens to be on the Glamour magazine website right now, she's up for nomination as one of the five women of the year for Glamour.
I wrote this book because people like Ercilia should not work a day and be poor in the richest country on the face of the Earth, and certainly not to be dying in this country because they're poor. I wrote this book because I love this country, and I think America is a gift. Its greatest gift is this: people have come here from all over the world, and all they expected to do was work hard. And what they hoped was that their work would be rewarded. What they dreamed about was that their kids were going to do better than they were. That was the American Dream. And despite a civil war, two world wars, recessions, depressions, the American Dream has survived. Until now.
Fifty-two percent of all parents say that their kids are going to be worse off than they are. And the facts now are beginning to bear that out. That's not the America I want; I don't think that's the America we all need. I wrote this book because I think there are answers all around us. But in order to get to the answers, we have to understand the context of the discussion.
This is not our fathers' and grandfathers' economy. We've gone from an economy that's 9-to-5 to 24/7. We're living through the third economic revolution in the history of the world: the first was the agricultural revolution, which took 3,000 years; second was the industrial revolution, which took 300 years; this revolution is going to take 30 years. As we move from a national to an international economy, from muscle- to mind-work, no generation of people has ever witnessed so much change in a single lifetime.
This revolution is televised, it's Googlized, it's digitized, it's in your face, on your screen, 24/7. It is relentless and it's unending and is far from over. But it's not our fathers' and grandfathers' economy. The amount of transistors that were produced this year in the world was greater than the number of grains of rice that were grown. The Furby - that kids' toy - has four times the computing power of the Apollo spaceship that landed on the Moon. The world is going to send 84 billion emails today. In the late 1980s, there was no such thing as email.
We are as far today from the New Deal, as the New Deal was from the Civil War. I'm sure Roosevelt admired Lincoln, but he built an economy for 1935. And we need to build an economy for the 21st Century. Thomas Friedman is partially right, the world is flat - we now have a much more integrated global economy, particularly as we digitize things all around the world.
We now understand the facts about blue-collar jobs. Those that have white-collar jobs are increasingly going to see them go overseas by 2008. In China, America has its first real economic competitor. Last year, half of the concrete that was poured in the world was poured in China. America has 65,000 Intel Science Fair finalists last year, a record number. China had a million.
If you go to Beijing, where some of us have been... if you think Washington's a cool place to be with one beltway, Beijing has six beltways. And while we were there last time, they announced they were going to build 110 hotels in Beijing by 2008. China owns a trillion dollars worth of the foreign currency, and they're not just neutral bankers when it comes to policy. We have real competition.
Companies - not countries - are making the rules in the global economy. Of the hundred largest economies in the world, 52 are companies, and only 48 are countries. The sales of Wal-Mart are greater than the GDP of Ireland, or Singapore, or Venezuela. The companies are beginning to put pressure on the countries like France about their employment policies. Companies, not countries, - global trade, global finance, global companies. We've got to create global regulation and global government instead of allowing companies to make the rules.
We've now seen employers and employees getting a divorce. We're separated and getting divorced. The "one job in a lifetime" economy that I grew up in, where people went to work in a mine or a mill or a factory or driving a truck, and you worked there for your whole life, and then you got a gold watch from IBM and you went home, is over. My son is 20 years old, and will have 9-12 jobs by the time he's 35. Only one-third of the companies that exist right now will be economically viable in 25 years, and 25 percent of the America workforce today is contingent - they have no full-time employer.
When you think about constructing an economy, we need to think about - and I talk about them in the book - all of those factors and what they mean. And then we need to understand what the greatest thing we can see now going on in our economy is, as a result of those changes.
There are two major themes: one is we see growing inequality in America. John F. Kennedy said, "A rising tide lifts all boats," but right now we're only raising the luxury liners. The rest of the boats are on pretty rocky water, and wondering if they're going to be able to survive. Seven out of ten middle-income Americans say that they live paycheck-to-paycheck. Last year, America had negative savings for the first time since the Great Depression. Most Americans can't live through one medical emergency, which averages $3,300. More women went bankrupt than graduated college in 2005 and for the fifth straight year, American workers didn't get a raise.
Alan Greenspan, my new revolutionary hero, said that the gap between the rich and the rest of the population was so growing so wide and so fast that it could wreck democratic capitalism. Warren Buffett says the market's not working for poor people.
We now live in a time in America where the rich are richer than any time in history. There is more money going into corporate profit than any time in history, and less money going into wages. So America is growing apart, not growing together. It's not about growth, it's about distribution. It's about how we share the wealth. This is not Rwanda, this is not Bosnia. This is the richest country on Earth. We are not without resources: we have eight of the top ten research institutions in the world, we've won the Nobel Prize for science and economics, and yet we can't seem to figure out that America doesn't have a plan.
Clearly people are anxious. They're worried about their kids, they're worried about their future, and they have every reason for it. We have two parties that don't seem to get it. We can talk more about that, but clearly, people say, "What's the matter with Kansas?" That book says, "Why are workers voting against their interest?" And it says, here's the problem: People perceive the Democratic party as chardonnay-sipping, latte-drinking, Volvo-driving, Harvard- and Yale-educated liberals.
I'd say that I agree, with everything but the "perceive." Because that, too much, reflects the Democratic party. And I write about the 2004 convention, in which you had the opening night for Hillary and Bill Clinton's reception, which they didn't know, hosted by a person who broke our union. We had at the box, at the time John Kerry introduced himself to the world, the moment where George Bush or Bill Clinton put their son or daughter up, or a soldier, or firefighter or someone from 9/11, who did Democrats put in the box with John Kerry? None other than Bob Rubin. Not necessarily the most attractive person for middle-class working Americans in Ohio trying to figure out, is this guy on my side or not?
We have a Democratic party that doesn't get it, we certainly have a Republican party that wants to redistribute wealth, but they just want to redistribute it up, not down with America.
What are we going to do about it? Three things we shouldn't do.
One is that we shouldn't count on the market. If we've proven anything, we've proven that the market is not going to work. We actually conducted for 20 years with the IMF an experiment in South America, seeing if the market would work. And we ended up with even greater disparity of wealth in South America than we have in the U.S., although we're getting closer - and every economist now says the market is not the answer. As growth goes up and productivity goes up, wages are supposed to go up. They haven't. Five years in a row, and there's no end in sight.
Two, we're not going to solve this by doing what George Bush says. He likes to say, "well, average wages are going up in America" when the problem is... here's the problem. Imagine three nurses sitting together in a nursing station. Two of them make $50,000, and one of them makes $80,000. The average wage is $60,000. One of the nurse gets a call button, and they go down the hall, and Ray Irani, the CEO of Occidental Petroleum sits down. Now the average wage is $21,111,000 - and there wasn't one nurse that got a raise. [Laughter, applause.] But it is true that the average wage is now $21 million, so we should not measure the wrong thing in America.
The last thing I say, because I think it's important and I don't want to be misunderstood, is that education is not going to be the answer to our economic crisis. It is clearly an answer to every single individual - they should get every piece of education, we should pay for it, give our kids the skills, the training, the college education. But here's the problem: only 1 percent more of all jobs by 2012 will require a college education. So if everybody went to college, and only 1 percent more require a college education, that's going to be a problem. Only eight of the 30 fastest-growing jobs in America require a college education.
On top of all of that, college-educated kids in the last five years have lost the same amount of money in wages as blue-collar people. So if college education was the answer to America's problems - yes, we need it, but we should not be fooled by people that say, "Well, if everybody just gets an education, then America will redistribute its wealth." It will not do that. So what's the answer?
The horse-and-buggy healthcare system is over, it's a relic of the industrial economy. We cannot build an American economy and be the only country on Earth that puts the price of healthcare on the cost of our products, and then tries to compete with every other country in the world.
Toyota was just thinking about building a plant in the U.S. They went to every state, they begged them, they gave them concessions to build the plant in the United States, and then they realized, "We can go to Ontario, and build the same plan, and have no healthcare costs." No healthcare costs! They could save more money, so that's where they took the plant. We cannot compete in the global economy and be the only country that puts the price of healthcare on the cost our products.
We need a new universal system quality affordable healthcare for every American. [Applause.] Some people say it has to be Canadian or Scandinavian, I'll take any system where everyone's covered, we get everyone in the system and then we can fix it up. But I don't want Ercilia Sandoval waiting any longer to go to the doctor because she can't get any healthcare.
Also, we have a retirement system in the private sector that's not going work well. We're down to 18 percent of all private sector workers having any kind of defined-benefit pension plan. Only 50 percent of private sector workers have anything but Social Security. The average IRA is only $23,000, and I don't think anybody's going to retire on that. The saddest part is that people are now saying that over 35 percent of Americans are now going to work until they die, and they can't figure out any other plan.
The saddest story I read in the paper the other day is about a guy who went in a month ago, robbed a bank, turned the money over to the security officers, they arrested him. He went in front of the judge and the judge said, "What in the world are you doing?" He said, "Well, I worked my whole life, I'm 62 years old, for the same employer, and they went out of business. I cannot find anything but a minimum wage job. I can't pay my rent, I can't live and I can't eat. For my financial plans, put me in jail for three years because when I'm 65, I'll get Social Security. And then I'll be able to eat."
What kind of country says to someone who has worked his whole life, did everything right, and now he has to go to jail to get a roof over his head, three square meals, until he can get Social Security? So this retirement system is not working. Why don't we give everyone a personal account, not paid for by Social Security - that should be kept separate - but paid for by your employer? Why don't we have it accumulate during your whole life? Just one account so you don't have to find your ten 401k's by the time you retire.
Let's not let people take the money out during that period of time because we all know we say we're going to borrow it and we're going to give it back, we're not going to give it back. Let's have it professionally managed by non-profit organizations, so no one's trying to take a cut off the top of our money. And let us turn our retirement savings into a guaranteed pension plan, an annuity, with a defined benefit at the end of life, which you can do very cheaply if you do this as a country. You know what? We can call this TIAA-CREF, which is what happens for professors, or we can call this Australia, we can call this the Netherlands, because that's what other countries around the world are able to do. We can do that in America. [Applause.]
America made a good decision in the 1950s, you can see it up and down California - we built, as a country, the interstate highway system. It was the basis of commerce whether you're rich or poor, small businessperson or entrepreneur, everybody could use the interstate highway system. Commerce in the 21st Century is the Internet. And yet we haven't built it, as a country, so that we all can use it, rich or poor, entrepreneur or individual. Our kids could have the greatest access to equalizing in terms of knowledge. Everyone could have access to every piece of knowledge in the world and yet our country charges huge tolls, clogging up the Internet highway, and yet the interstate system is something America shared. We can do that again.
We all have to deal with some of our educational issues, and it isn't just about college, because it seems to me that we don't want our kids getting out of college, spending their first ten years of life paying off their debt. We'd like them to spend the first ten years buying a home, getting married, raising a family, and not worry. Plus, some of us would like to get our kids out of the home, [laughter] which is pretty hard, it's harder to do with debt as an issue. We need to think about different college education financing systems.
Here's why I love what the Army does in terms of education. They say if you serve your country, we will invest in your education. Part of the problem is, why is it the only way to serve our country by going into the military? Why can't I serve my country in a disaster relief force, so that when the next forest fire burns in California, we don't send a group of young kids to do that, or the next time we have a Katrina, our kids don't go down there. Why can't I serve my country by assisting in an urban school? Going to rural healthcare facility where no one has access to healthcare? We should trade service to our country on many different levels, so our kids can have an education they can use and take with them. [Applause.]
America needs a plan. We don't have one now. We need a different kind of leadership. I'll end by talking about this: if we think about how change is made in America, I think we have the wrong idea right now, and I don't know how we got here. Because somehow we're all waiting until after this election to figure out who we're going to elect to be the captain of the American ship in 2008. You can just see it waiting to break out. Hillary, Obama, Bill, John... I'm not sure who else is left in the race. Mark, Mayor Bloomberg, I mean, everyone wants in - this is the new spectator sport.
If you think about America as a sailboat, and you think about electing someone who has their hand on the tiller. If you've ever sailed a sailboat, and there's no wind, all you can do is push back and forth on the tiller, you just go around in a circle. It's the wind that fills the sail and allows the boat to go forward so someone can steer.
I grew up in a time of life where the wind was blowing in America. We had a civil rights movement not because someone passed a law in Washington, D.C., but because Rosa Parks and John Lewis stood up - people we never would have heard of - stood up for themselves and for civil rights. We blew America in a different direction, where the Lyndon Johnsons and the racists in the South weren't have to do with any more. America changed.
We had a women's movement starting as Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem and consciousness-raising groups stood up at their jobs, in their communities, in their unions and said they wanted change. And America did change. We had a young consumer activist named Ralph Nader that started a consumer movement, environmentalists that started Earth Day, students who started and led an anti-war movement. The winds of change were blowing in America, and we blew America in a different direction.
So we can not just think about who we're going to elect for president. That is not how change is going to happen alone in America - we have to be the winds of change. And what I write about in my book is, our union, I'm really proud of it. I think it's become a very powerful voice for change. I think the labor movement has huge potential, but it's not big enough. America needs to stop thinking about Democrats and Republicans and left and right, and think about kids and our communities and our families.
I don't want to be the parent, and I don't think any of you want to be the parent or grandparent or aunt or uncle who sees that you were the ones who let your kids and grandkids be the first generation of Americans to do worse than their parents. That's not the America we want, that's not the America we need, that's what is at stake. We can put this country back on track and make this an America that works if we all lift our voices and become the winds of change. Thank you very much.
Andy Stern is president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/43778/
AlterNet:
The Corrupting Power of Military-Industrial Complex
By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, New America Media
Posted on November 2, 2006
Editor's Note: When President Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address of the dangers of growing, unchecked power in America, he originally described a "military-congressional-industrial complex," but dropped "congressional" in later drafts of the speech. He was right the first time, the writers say. Jeffrey Klein, a founding editor of Mother Jones, this summer received a Loeb, journalism's top award for business reporting. Paolo Pontoniere is a New America Media European commentator.
When FBI agents raided the home of the daughter of Congressman Curt Weldon, R-Pa., on Oct. 16, he joined a long list of Republican congressmen linked to corruption scandals. Weldon's case is significant because of his vice chairmanship of the Congressional Armed Services Committee, where he oversees $73 billion a year in military spending. All of his power derives from this position. If Weldon is deprived of this power, how much of the corruption around him will go away?
The FBI was looking into whether Weldon's daughter Karen's firm got $500,000 from Itera, a Kremlin-connected natural gas enterprise, as a roundabout payoff to her dad. After the Florida-based Itera was blacklisted by the U.S. Trade and Development Agency (and shortly before Karen Weldon got the half-million), Curt Weldon sponsored legislation, co-hosted a dinner in the Library of Congress and traveled to Moscow to clear Itera's good name. Around the same time, Karen Weldon was also hired by business partners of former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic; her dad and his chief of staff then flew to the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade to lobby personally (and unsuccessfully) for the removal of the Milosevic partners from America's not-welcome list.
Another one of Weldon's daughters, Kim, landed a full-time job at Agusta-Westland, a subsidiary of Italy's defense giant Finmeccanica, after it won a $1.6 billion contract to build a fleet of new Marine One helicopters for President Bush.
Finally, Weldon's son Andrew's expensive race car driving hobby is financed by Boeing, his father's top campaign contributor.
Weldon himself was a key promoter of Finmeccanica for the Marine One contract, which has been widely reported as a payoff for Italy's support of Bush's Iraq policy. Italy provided what have now been proved to be forged documents that ostensibly showed Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire uranium ore from Niger - a claim that President Bush leaned upon in his 2003 State of the Union address preparing for pre-emptive war. Italian defense groups have since become partners with the United States in the sale of American warfare technology to sensitive and controversial countries such as Israel, Libya, Iran and republics of the former Eastern Bloc.
During the months leading up to Finmeccanica's surprising capture of the Marine One contract, consulting money flowed to Cecelia "Cece" Grimes, Weldon's real estate agent who calls herself "a longtime family friend." According to disclosure records, Rep. Weldon's chief of staff made a $14,400 trip to Rome, Bari, Genoa and Milan with his wife. This and an $8,200 Italian trip by another Weldon staffer were covered by Fincantieri, an Italian ship maker fully owned by Finmeccanica.
Weldon presents himself as a fierce opponent of unfair foreign competitors who steal American jobs. At the time when Finmeccanica was accused by the European Union of receiving $3.9 billion of interest-free, not-necessary-to-repay loans from the Italian state, Weldon appeared at promotional events for the company. On such occasions, his companions were Giovanni Castellaneta, current Italian ambassador to Washington and at the time also a vice president of Finmeccanica, and Steven Bryen, Finmeccanica USA president who previously served as the Pentagon's top cop preventing foreigners from gaining access to our technologies.
Though Weldon did not return repeated phone calls from New America Media to respond to allegations of impropriety, he has blamed many institutions and individuals for conducting a "smear campaign" against him, including the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, Bill Clinton, Sandy Berger (former National Security Adviser) and Mary McCarthy (the discharged CIA officer who exposed the CIA's secret prisons).
Weldon's campaign slogan is "Curt Weldon, Independent Fighter for US." However an analysis of contributions received by the congressman's campaign over the years identifies a number of defense industry contractors, especially foreign ones.
For example, employees of companies represented by CeCe Grimes - including Oto Melara, another fully owned Finmeccanica subsidiary - have contributed $27,300 to Weldon's current re-election campaign, while the CEO of Oto Melara contributed $2,700 alone. Agusta-Westland and Agusta Aerospace donated $7,000.
If Weldon is defeated and the Republicans lose their majority in the House, the Congressman most likely to pick up more military-industrial clout is John Murtha, D-Pa., ranking minority member on the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee. Because of his prominent opposition to the Iraq War, grateful Democrats are likely to approve whatever military appropriations Murtha wants. Is Murtha less corrupt the Weldon? Back in the 1980 Abscam scandal, the FBI captured Murtha on tape saying he wasn't interested "at this point" in taking a $50,000 payment from the FBI agents posing as Arab sheiks, but he was open to further discussions.
Early drafts of President Eisenhower's famous Farewell Address warned that in the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by "the military-congressional-industrial complex." He dropped the word "congressional" because he didn't want his parting words to be seen as partisan, Congress being controlled by the Democrats at the time. But Ike got it right from the start.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/43780/
Guardian: Spy planes, clothes scanners
and secret cameras: Britain's surveillance future
· Privacy watchdog foresees climate of suspicion
· Move to kickstart debate over level of monitoring
Rob Evans and Alexi Mostrous
Thursday November 2, 2006
It sounds like a scene from the Tom Cruise futuristic thriller Minority Report. A teenager enters a record shop and a scanner hidden in the doorway instantly reads data secreted in electronic tags embedded in his clothes. The scanner clocks the brand of clothing and where it was purchased, flashing to a database which analyses what type of person would have bought that line of clothing and predicts what other products that person would like to buy. In an instant, adverts for those products are beamed to eye-level billboards for the teenager to see.
But while Minority Report portrayed the world as sci-fi visionary Philip K Dick imagined it in 2054, a new report predicts that such scenes will be commonplace in Britain in just 10 years' time. Today, Richard Thomas, the watchdog entrusted by the government to protect people's privacy, sounds a strong warning that Britain is "waking up to a surveillance society that is all around us".
The information commissioner warns that technology is already being extensively and routinely used to track and record the everyday activities and movements of Britons, whether they are working, resting or playing. He is also warning that such "pervasive" surveillance is likely to spread in the coming years.
The first scenario of personally targeted advertising - already familiar to online shoppers on Amazon or iTunes - reveals how surveillance technology is a boon for commerce. But the potential for more sinister intrusion is also outlined in the 135-page report.
In another scenario, a man drives out of his gated community and a machine records his exact departure time and the number and identity of his passengers. Under pay-as-you-drive regulations brought in to ease congestion, the man's bank account is charged automatically for every mile he travels in his car. Thousands of discreetly placed CCTV cameras, controlled by private companies and the government, monitor his journey. Remote-control spy planes fly overhead relaying images from the streets back to police.
Mr Thomas is worried that many people do not realise that they are being watched, since the surveillance is often invisible or discreet. He has commissioned a report from experts to predict how technologies are likely to be used to keep tabs on people in 2016. The information commissioner wants to kickstart a debate on whether people are prepared to accept this level of surveillance.
He will tell a conference in London: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.
"Surveillance activities can be well-intentioned and bring benefits. They may be necessary or desirable - for example, to fight terrorism and serious crime, to improve entitlement and access to public and private services, and to improve healthcare. But unseen, uncontrolled or excessive surveillance can foster a climate of suspicion and undermine trust."
The report by the Surveillance Studies Network group of academics spells out some "fairly conservative" scenarios which would become reality in 2016.
They predict that employees will be subjected to a barrage of biometric and psychological tests to determine how fit they are. Those who refuse to undergo the tests or are seen as being unhealthy will not be given the job.
The experts believe that schools will also install a cashless card system to allow parents to pay for dinners. Initially, local councils will use this information to check that children are eating healthy food. But over time, the card will be used for other purposes, such as holding data on each child's exam results, after-school achievements, drug tests and internet use.
They also predict that older people will feel increasingly isolated as relatives use cameras and sensors to check up on them without paying them a visit. Electronic chips will be implanted in some of the elderly, letting carers and family members locate them more easily.
Dr David Murakami Wood, who headed the study, said: "Surveillance is not a malign plot hatched by evil powers to control the population. But the surveillance society has come about almost without us realising."
Although he emphasised its benefits, Dr Wood warned: "It can create real problems for individuals - social exclusion, discrimination and a negative impact on their life chances. Unfortunately the dominant modes of surveillance expansion in the 21st century are producing situations where distinctions of class, race, gender, geography and citizenship are currently being exacerbated and institutionalised."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/humanrights/story/0,,1937192,00.html
Guardian:
Standing up to scrutiny
Henry Porter
November 2, 2006 12:08 PM
Three reports in two days make it utterly clear that Britain is about to become the Twenty First Century's first surveillance society. It is not being melodramatic to say that each one of us stands on the threshold between a world in which individual liberty and privacy are taken for granted - and appear to the majority to be unthreatened - and a dystopia of total and unwavering scrutiny by big corporations and the state.
Yesterday the Guardian published an excellent report by David Leigh and Rob Evans which claimed that 40 million patients' private health records are to be uploaded to a central national database, regardless of their wishes or general concerns about security and privacy. At the same moment the Chairman of the Nuffield Council on Bioethics condemned the Police National DNA database for creating a nation of suspects and retaining DNA from people who had not been found guilty of a crime.
These were followed today by the long awaited report of the surveillance society is published by the Britain's Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas. You could not have a clearer picture of the rapid expansion of surveillance and the terrifying implication it has for the relationship between the individual and the state.
For the last few months I have been making a film about databases and the surveillance society with the director Neil Ferguson for More4 (to be broadcast on November 20). What surprised both of us was the extent to which the networks of surveillance and the reach of databases had grown with such little public awareness. Databases have an organic tendency to creep towards each other, creating new pathways of exchange that were never intended in the first place but which delight those that wish to control and know everything about us.
These reports all underline mine and Neil's fears. There is now absolutely no excuse for ignorance. The information is there for all of us to see. But what can we do about it? The first thing to know is that we cannot rely on Parliament. None of these reports was produced or even enabled by MPs, who largely remain unaware of the great threat to society and their own institution. Laws have been passed in the vague belief that they fight against crime and terrorism. Only on the Liberal Democrat benches has there been any consistent concern raised about security of databases, privacy and the type of controlled society that Tony Blair is creating.
Among the main parties there is very little evidence of democratic instincts .The Conservatives are compromised by a need to seem as tough on crime and terror as the government, while on the Labour backbenches you see a group of individuals who claim an entitlement to power which is utterly unmerited by their performance as democrats. We need to make those MPs understand that they have a duty to freedom and privacy, and the only way to do that is in Tony Blair's words "to harry, hassle and hound them" until they do.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/henry_porter/2006/11/post_565.html
Guardian: Inquiry into claims
of US global warming research censorship
Carolyn Fry and agencies
Thursday November 2, 2006
Two US agencies are to investigate claims that the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming, it emerged today.
The inspectors general for the commerce department - which oversees the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration - and Nasa will search internal documents and agency correspondence amid claims there were attempts to censor scientists' research.
In January, James Hansen, the director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, alleged that the Bush administration had tried to prevent him from speaking out.
The claim came after he gave a lecture calling for prompt reductions in the emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
In an interview, Mr Hansen said officials at NASA headquarters had ordered public affairs staff to review his forthcoming lectures, papers, postings on the institurte's website and requests for interview from journalists.
The public affairs officer, George Deutsch, a political appointee, resigned after the accusations.
A report published in the scientific journal Nature last month claimed administrators at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blocked the release of a report linking hurricane strength and frequency to global warming.
Officials at NASA and the Commerce Department have pledged to cooperate with the inquiry, but defended their media policies. NASA claimed it had revised its policy since Mr Hansen made his allegations.
The inquiry findings will be made public early next year.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1937735,00.html
Guardian: In the land of death,
scientists witness the birth of a new ocean
In Ethiopia's arid Afar region eruptions and earthquakes have created an open-air laboratory
Xan Rice in Afar, Ethiopia
Thursday November 2, 2006
The nomads were terrified. For a week the ground had shuddered violently. Cracks opened up in the soil swallowing goats and camels. Sulphur-laced smoke rose out of the dark slits. After retreating to the hills, the nomads saw chunks of obsidian rock burst through the Earth's crust "like huge black birds" and fly 30 metres into the air.
A mushroom cloud of ash dimmed the sun for three days. At night the new crater breathed flashes of fire.
"They had experienced earthquakes before but never anything like this," said Atalay Ayele, a seismologist at Addis Ababa University, who interviewed the Afar tribespeople soon after the volcanic eruption 13 months ago in this remote corner of north-eastern Ethiopia. "They said that Allah must have been angry with them."
But Dr Ayele, 37, and his colleagues wanted a scientific explanation. They knew the area was geologically unstable, but the number of earthquakes - 162 measuring more than four on the Richter scale in just two weeks - made them suspect that something extraordinary had happened deep underground.
They asked a team of British-based scientists with access to satellite technology for help. When the results came back it seemed as unlikely as birds flying out of the ground. Here in the Afar desert, one of the hottest and driest places on earth, the tribe had witnessed the birth of a new ocean. Images from the European Space Agency's Envisat satellite showed that a huge rift, 37 miles long and up to eight metres (26ft) wide, had opened deep in the Earth's crust. The tear, the largest observed since the advent of satellite monitoring, was created by a violent lateral rush of molten rock, or magma, along the fault line separating the Nubian and Arabian tectonic plates.
Tim Wright, a geologist at the University of Leeds who interpreted the satellite results, was astonished by the images and what they pointed to.
"The process happening here is identical to that which created the Atlantic Ocean," said Dr Wright during a recent research expedition in Afar. "If this continues we believe parts of Eritrea, Ethiopia and Djibouti will sink low enough to allow water to flow in from the Red Sea."
The findings caused a stir in the scientific community. This year teams from the UK, France, Italy and the US mounted expeditions to Afar, a region described by the British explorer Wilfred Thesiger as a "veritable land of death".
From above you can see vast black tongues of lava lapping at the desert sands, and rust-coloured volcanos with their lids long blown off.
There are so many fissures and faults where the ground has opened and slipped that the Earth's skin looks like elephant hide.
The lunar geography reflects what lies beneath. Afar stands at the junction of three tectonic plates, which form the outer shell of the Earth and meet at unstable fault lines. The Nubian and Somali plates run along the Great Rift Valley, which spreads south from Afar. Branching out like a funnel to the north is the Arabian plate.
Tectonic plates across the globe are constantly shifting - though slowly, usually by a few centimetres a year - with the magma beneath the crust. The plates can collide, forcing the crust upwards and creating mountain ranges - as happened with the Himalayas. They can also slide past one another, as occurs along the San Andreas Fault, in California, a notorious earthquake zone.
The plates can also pull apart causing continents to break up and oceans to form. Early in this process, at the plate margins, the Earth's crust stretches and thins in the manner of toffee. Magma rises up, eventually cracking the crust and helping the plates drift apart. Between the fault lines the crust, now heavy with cooled magma, sinks to form a valley and then allows water from a nearby sea to rush in.
This is how the Atlantic was formed, separating Africa and Eurasia from the Americas. And this is what scientists believe is happening in Afar as the Arabian and Nubian plates pull apart. Parts of the region have already sunk to more than 100 metres below sea level, and only the highlands around the Danakil depression stop the Red Sea from rushing in.
Analysis of the new rift is providing an insight into the role of magma injection in cracking the Earth's crust and the pace at which continental break-up occurs. The last big "ocean spreading" occurred in Krafla, Iceland, in the mid 1970s, along the boundary of the North American and Eurasian plates that forms the Atlantic's mid-ocean ridge.
But it took nine years to achieve what has occurred in Afar in a few weeks.
"We are looking at a huge open-air laboratory here," said Gezahegn Yirgu, a geologist from Addis Ababa University, as he peered out of a military helicopter swooping low over the Afar region.
In recent months there has been more instability in Afar. After a series of earthquakes in June the rift widened by a further two metres. Hundreds of Afar nomads are still seeking refuge in a town 25 miles from the main fault zone, too afraid to go home. They may be wise; the scientists say there could be more violent earthquakes and eruptions.
The new sea is predicted to be formed within about a million years. The separation of the Nubian and Somali plates along the Great Rift Valley could take 10 times as long. But that will be even more dramatic - for then Africa will eventually lose its horn.
"Some people think that extreme natural phenomena happened only in historical times," said Cindy Ebinger, an American geologist leading the research in Afar. "But here we can see them happening right now."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/
Harper's Magazine:
Weekly Review
Posted on Tuesday, October 31, 2006. By Theodore Ross
President George W. Bush officially replaced the phrase “stay the course” in Iraq with “We will stay in Iraq,” and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki insisted he never agreed to a U.S. timetable for reducing sectarian violence. “I'm not America's man,” he said.[Chicago Tribune][New York Times][News.com.au] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told critics of the war to “back off.”[Yahoo News] In Basra, Prince Philip of Britain assured the troops “at the sharp end” that “a great many locals do very much appreciate what you are trying to do for them,”[New Zealand Herald] and Senator Rick Santorum said, “As the hobbits are going up Mount Doom, the Eye of Mordor is being drawn somewhere else. It's being drawn to Iraq.”[New York Times] German soldiers serving in Afghanistan snapped commemorative photographs of themselves with the skull of a reputed Taliban militant.[Deutsche-Welle] Vice President Dick Cheney denied that “waterboarding,” a banned interrogation method, was the same thing as giving a terrorist detainee a “dunk in water.” He also said his term as “Vice President for Torture” was over.[VOA News] A United Nations official claimed that the United States has become a role model for prisoner-abusing governments around the world.[Washington Post] Mexican president Vicente Fox called a proposed 700-mile fence along the U.S.-Mexico border an “embarrassment,”[Yahoo News ] and Los Angeles admitted that it has 1.3 million outstanding parking tickets.[New York Times] French youths seized and burned three buses in a Paris suburb. Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin promised an immediate response to the disorder: “We cannot accept the unacceptable.”[Forbes] North Korea warned the United States not to make any “madcap nuclear moves” or to proceed with any “wild design to ignite a nuclear war,”[Korean Central News Agency] and Russian president Vladimir Putin blamed a failure to adopt a “proper tone” in diplomatic negotiations with North Korea for the current weapons crisis.[United Press International] The government of Niger told 150,000 Arab nationals that it was “high time” they returned to their native homeland in Chad.[BBC News] An official in the Netherlands suggested Dutch troops bring “a few prostitutes” along on foreign military missions,[Yahoo News] and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Iranians to have more babies. “It is said that two children is enough. I oppose this,” he said.[New York Times] President Bush admitted that he frequently consults “the Google.”[Wall Street Journal]
Former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling was sentenced to 24 years in jail. “I feel terrible about what happened,” Skilling said, referring to the company's collapse, which cost investors and employees more than $62 billion in devalued stock and pension plans. “That's not to say I did something wrong.”[New York Times] Ford Motor Company announced $7.6 billion in third quarter losses,[Sydney Morning Herald] Daimler Chrysler also lost $1.5 billion during the same time period,[New York Times] and thousands of American soldiers were avoiding overseas duty by going deeply into debt.[Washington Post] The Reproductive Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio, revealed that men who use their cell phones too much could be making themselves infertile.[The Independent] The American Association of Trial Attorneys announced it would change its name to the American Association for Justice,[New York Times] and scientists concluded that fat people lower the fuel efficiency of automobiles.[Local6.com] A physicist at the University of Central Florida proved that vampires are mathematically impossible,[Livescience.com] President Bush called Nancy Pelosi a “secret admirer” of tax cuts,[New York Post] and the city of Madison, Wisconsin, announced that its Halloween festivities will be a success if the police are not compelled to pepper-spray angry mobs of drunken residents.[CNN] Chinese president Hu Jintao was purging disloyal party members,[New York Times] and England's Queen Elizabeth II strained her back.[New York Times] Sheik Taj Aldin al-Hilali, mufti of Sydney, Australia's largest mosque, compared unveiled women to “uncovered meat.” “If you take out uncovered meat and place it outside,” said the mufti, “and the cats come to eat it . . . whose fault is it, the cats' or the uncovered meat's? The uncovered meat is the problem. If she was in her room, in her home, in her hijab, no problem would have occurred.”[Guardian] A pelican attacked and ate a pigeon in London's St. James's park.[BBC News]
John Spencer, a candidate for the U.S. Senate from New York, denied he had ever called Hillary Clinton ugly,[Breitbart.com] and Wyoming Representative Barbara Cubin threatened her congressional opponent, Thomas Rankin, after he insulted her during a debate. Cubin told Rankin, who has multiple sclerosis and is confined to a wheelchair, that “If you weren't sitting in that chair, I'd slap you across the face.”[Caspar Star Tribune via Drudge Report] Actress Mary Carey, star of such films as Pussyman's Decadent Divas 29 and Tit Happens, dropped out of the California gubernatorial race to care for her mother, a schizophrenic, who was injured while jumping from a four-story building.[Yahoo News and IMDB.com] Charlie Brown was running for Congress as a Democrat in Roseville, California.[Washington Post] Hunters in west Texas were stalking feral pigs,[New York Times] rich Americans were vacationing in packs,[New York Times] and an “unknown discharge” turned a half-mile section of China's Yellow River “red and smelly.”[New York Times] Former heavyweight champion Trevor Berbick, the last man to defeat Muhammad Ali, died of a “massive chop wound” in Norwich, Jamaica;[Observer] and Lim Pov, a Cambodian taxi driver, was killed when two unknown assailants “chopped” him to death with a hatchet.[Phnom Penh Post]
This is Weekly Review by Theodore Ross, published Tuesday, October 31, 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/WeeklyReview2006-10-31.html
il manifesto:
La Francia degli invisibili
Esce a Parigi una vasta indagine sulle nuove popolazioni pauperizzate: sfollati, disoccupati, «reddito minimo», clandestini, senza tetto, indebitati, ecc. Danni collaterali per il sistema. In realtà «inesistenti»
Anna Maria Merlo
Parigi
A sei mesi dalle presidenziali, le élites politiche sono inquiete. Difatti, i francesi hanno riservato negli ultimi tempi molte brutte sorprese alle classi dominanti, che sembrano non capire più quello che succede nella società : 21 aprile 2002, con Le Pen al ballottaggio e la sinistra espulsa dal secondo turno, «no» alla Costituzione europea nel 2005, rivolte delle banlieues, grandi manifestazioni contro il Cpe, il contratto precario per i giovani, che il governo ha dovuto cancellare nella primavera del 2006. L'imponente volume La France invisible (La Découverte, 647 pag., 26 €), a cura di Stéphane Beaud, Joseph Confavreux e Jade Lindgaard, con il contributo di 28 ricercatori, cerca di fotografare questi « invisibili », attraverso una trentina di categorie messe per oridine alfabetico. Ogni inchiesta è seguita da un'intervista con uno specialista. La seconda parte del libro è costituita da interventi più analitici, relativi alla critica dei modi di conoscenza del mondo sociale, alle sue rappresentazioni fuorvianti e alle trasformazioni della questione sociale, che via via scivola nella «gestione sociale».
Tutti questi «invisibili» non rappresentano una sola categoria sociale, vivono isolati uno dall'altro, possono avere interessi contrastanti. Se c'è però un elemento che li accomuna può essere riassunto in un concetto: precariato. Della casa, del lavoro, del reddito, delle prospettive di avvenire.
Non sono solo più le vecchie classi popolari, che si erano costruite un'identità propria, ad essere travolte dalla precarizzazione della vita del XXI secolo, ma anche le classi medie ne sono investite. Sentimenti di vergogna, di disprezzo da parte degli altri e da parte di se stessi, ne sono delle caratteristiche. Solitudine per la fine delle vecchie solidarietà, la debolezza degli strumenti di difesa del passato, come i sindacati. Un'immagine rivela il posto degli invisibili: gli stagisti, che nessuno voleva vedere, si sono fatti notare quando hanno manifestato nel 2005 con il vosto coperto da una maschera bianca. La France invisible fa discutere. Gli autori sperano che rappresenti un elettrochoc, come era stato nel '52 il libro Uomo invisibile, per chi canti? dello statunitense Ralph Ellison, il cui eroe - un giovane nero nel sud segregazionista - era diventato un simbolo, che aveva risvegliato le coscienze, eroe emblematico del movimento per i civil rights. «Sono invisibile, capite bene, semplicemente perché la gente rifiuta di vedermi (...) Questa invisibilità di cui parlo è dovuta a una disposizione particolare degli occhi della gente che incontro».
Valore di aggiustamento
Ci sono «delle popolazioni, più o meno pauperizzate, che sembrano solo più esistere nello spazio pubblico sotto forma di statistiche e di flussi». Si parla di loro come degli oggetti : «crescono», «calano». Si tratta dei disoccupati, dei rom, dei beneficiari dell'Rmi (reddito minimo), degli sfollati, dei clandestini espulsi o che rischiano di esserlo, dei senza tetto, di coloro che sono sovra-indebitati. «I poteri pubblici organizzano nei loro confronti un sistema di trasferimenti sociali che comporta pero' un numero crescente di buchi. Non sono materialmente abbandonati, ma sono diventati dei danni collaterali accettabili di un sistema economico che a volte ne trae anche guadagno». Le espulsioni di clandestini sono in aumento (un raddoppio tra il 2002 e il 2005, da 10mila a 20mila), ma chi si chiede cosa avviene di questi «espulsi» una volta che hanno varcato il confine nazionale? 400mila nomadi vivino in Francia, e la maggioranza ha la nazionalità francese, ma sono trattati come stranieri dell'interno.
Per i disoccupati, le statistiche dissimulano platealmente la realtà: la disoccupazione diminuisce, dice il governo. Ma i senza lavoro in Francia sono stati divisi in varie categorie, e le statistiche prendono in considerazione solo la categoria 1: ma da dieci anni a questa parte le altre categozie di senza lavoro sono aumentate del 40%, si tratta di persone, soprattutto donne, scoraggiate che non si iscrivono più agli uffici di collocamento, di persone che lavorano meno di 78 ore al mese, di assunti con contratti a termine o di solidarietà, pagati poco e male. Al punto che i sociologi propongono di farla finita con il termine «disoccupato», troppo generico, per sostituirlo con «privato di lavoro stabile e pagato decentemente».
Quelli «senza qualità»
Non si tratta dell'Ulrich di Musil, ma di persone che vivono drammi personali che non rientrano in nessuna politica dell'aiuto sociale. Né sans papiers, né senza tetto, né senza famiglia, «non corrispondono ai nuovi volti della grande precarietà e non si sono organizzati come minoranze». Si tratta dei lavoratori declassati, delle casalinghe per forza, delle persone che per ragioni di reddito e di percezione della sicurezza scelgono di vivere nelle zone di villette lontane da tutto, dei giovani rurali che non interessano nessuno e si annoiano come i banlieusards, degli intermittenti del lavoro, dei precari del settore pubblico (che sono più numerosi in Francia che nel settore privato) che lavorano a fianco dei «garantiti», dei lavoratori a cui viene chiesto sempre di più, che subiscono pressioni continue sotto la minaccia di perdere il lavoro ecc. C'è un'inchiesta sulle operaie della Levi Strauss de La Bassée, nella regione Nord, vittime di una delocalizzazione mai riconosciuta come tale, le storie di quadri di Neuf Telecom o di Ibm che hanno subito un'intensificazione del lavoro che ha portato alla demovitazione, quella di una libraia appassionata che ha perso ogni piacere quando la libreria dove era impiegata è stata assorbita da un grande gruppo della distrbuzione, che vuole solo «fare cifra». Le lettere di dimissioni non datate che devono firmare gli impiegati dei McDonald's, i nuovi concetti di management che diventano umilianti per il lavoratore ecc.
Le vittime delle nuove violenze
Ci sono persone che hanno perso la Sécurité sociale, altri che vivono costantemente nel terrore di essere controllati dalla polizia, anche se non hanno nulla da rimproversarsi, i giovani che non riescono ad entrare nel mercato del lavoro e che accumulano stages e contratti a termine, i lavoratori dell'ombra che stanno dietro le quinte, invisibili a tutti, dalla ristorazione agli stagionali dell'agricoltura. L'ineguaglianza delle generazioni di fronte al lavoro è plateale, poiché le imprese utilizzano ormai i debuttanti come variabili di aggiustamento del mercato del lavoro. Nell'83, dicono le statistiche, l'80% dei giovani avevano un impiego stabile un anno dopo l'entrata nella vita attiva, mentre oggi sono meno di uno su due. Una generazione low cost, che, a salario eguale, puo' permettersi di affittare metà dei metri quadrati di vent'anni fa, che spesso è obbligata a tornare a vivere dai genitori.
«Lavoro, casa e persino salute, le nuove generazioni non hanno più le stesse prospettive delle generazioni precedenti alla stessa età» dice il sociologo Luis Chauvel. La salute è diventata oggetto di discriminazione: la mortalità degli uomini di 45-59 anni che svolgono un lavoro manuale è del 71% più alta di quelli della stessa fascia di età che svolgono un lavoro non manuale. Le ineguaglianze della salute sono strettamente legate a quelle sociali.
Sono dei «discriminati» di cui la società parla, a favore dei quali vengono fatte delle leggi. Ma che poi vivono nel quotidiano un'altra realtà rispetto a quella caricaturata sul palcoscenico delle mediatizzazione. Sono i tossicodipendenti, gli handicappati, le prostitute, i banlieusards, gli stagisti ecc. «Gli invisibili - scrive l'introduzione - non sono quindi dei "nuovi proletari" : sovente non hanno nulla a che vedere gli uni con gli altri e per questo motivo sono difficili da percepire.
Sentimento di disprezzo sociale
Non formano una classe sociale omogenea e neppure delle categorie sociali stagne. Tuttavia, nel corso dell'inchiesta, molte delle persone incontrate si sono riconosciute nella nozione di invisibilità, intesa non tanto come categoria sociologica, né come uno status che darebbe dei diritti particolari, ma come una situazione e un insieme di processi che inducono un sentimento di non rinoscimento e di disprezzo sociale».
In realtà, i motivi dell'invisibilità sono cumulabili : essere contemporaneamente, «sotto controllo», «banlieusard», «rinnovati » (cioè sloggiati in nome del miglioramento dell'habitat) e «precari del settore pubblico, «intermittente del lavoro », «giovane occupato», e «allontananto», cioè obbligato per ragioni economiche e anche di scelta condizionata a vivere lontano dal centro. «Allo stesso modo, non si è "sotto pressione" a vita, o "in subappalto" per il resto dei propri giorni».
Ma moltissimi passano per queste esperienze, che diventano «banali»: «banalità che rende a priori la storia di vita meno emozionante e quindi meno ricercata». Invisibile, appunto.
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/01-Novembre-2006/art11.html
il manifesto:
La ricerca partita dal non voto
Tredici anni dopo La «Misère du Monde», l'indagine diretta da Pierre Bordieu, «La France invisible» del suo allievo, il sociologo Stéphane Beaud
Anna Maria Merlo
Tredici anni dopo La «Misère du Monde», inchiesta realizzata sotto la direzione di Pierre Bordieu, un suo allievo, il sociologo Stéphane Beaud (assieme a Joseph Confavreux e a Jade Lindgaard) pubblica in questi giorni una vasta inchiesta a più mani (28 autori) dedicata alla Francia invisibile (La France invisible, La Découverte, 647 pag., 26 euro). L'idea è partita dal risultato stupefacente delle presidenziali del 2002, quando il 21 aprile la sinistra è stata assente nel secondo turno, con la presenza al ballotaggio dell'estrema destra. Una situazione che rischia di ripetersi nel 2007.
C'è una sofferenza sociale, spiegano gli autori, che non si vede, che resta fuori dai riflettori, tanto più crudele poiché è spezzettata, discontinua, e lascia le sue vittime nel proprio isolamento. Le categorie classiche usate dalla sociologia (classi medie, operai, impiegati, disoccupati ecc.) non sono più adatte per far vedere l'entità delle sofferenza sociale attuale. «La France invisible» fa ricorso a registri diversi per individuare gli «invisibili», che vivono in una realtà che le élites non sanno più vedere : luogo di residenza, malattia, condizioni di lavoro, tipo di contratto, indebitamento eccessivo, colore della pelle ecc. «Un sentimento di scarto profondo prende allora corpo tra il vissuto dei francesi e la sua rappresentazione nel discorso politico, mediatico, statistico in occasione delle manifestazioni elettorali o sociali» scrivono i curatori nell'introduzione, come è successo il 21 aprile, o per il « no » alla Costituzione europea o nelle rivolte delle banlieues di un anno fa, e nell'eco che quegli avvenimenti hanno avuto in questi giorni di «commemorazione». La metodologia scelta ricorda quella adottata, con altri mezzi, dal fotografo Walker Evans e dal poeta-giornalista James Agee per il magazine Fortune nell'estate del '36 : percorrere le strade statunitensi per ritrarre il volto del paese, lasciato a se stesso, dopo la crisi del '29. Bourdieu, con la Misère du Monde, ma anche il sociologo Robert Castel, sono stati pionieri in questa approccio. Quello che risulta dal percorso realizzato da 28 sociologi e giornalisti nel «paese invisibile» di oggi è che non c'è solo una Francia della miseria che soffe, ma che «i processi di occultamento concernono oggi tutte le categorie sociali o quasi, anche se colpiscono maggiormente i più fragili». In una società che moltiplica i controlli - video-sorveglianza dappertutto, statistiche continue, «liste» che catalogano individui e famiglie - persistono enormi angoli morti, che nessuno vede o vuole vedere. «Uno scarto molto importante tra le categorie dell'analisi statistica e la realtà vissuta dai francesi» denuncia Stéphane Beaud. «In città come in campagna - aggiunge - assistiamo alla fine della classi popolari nella loro definizione sociologica anteriore».
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/01-Novembre-2006/art10.html
il manifesto:
Le cattedrali italiane nel deserto del Darfur
L'ospedale «Avamposto 55», annunciato in gran pompa al festival di Sanremo, che funziona part-time e solo come ambulatorio. L'acquedotto di Kass che non eroga acqua. Questi e altri sono i capolavori della cooperazione italiana in Darfur, sotto la direzione di Barbara Contini. Per fare chiarezza, la Farnesina invia una missione di tecnici
Stefano Liberti
Irene Panozzo
Un ospedale che funziona a singhiozzo, un acquedotto senz'acqua, un parco giochi circondato da filo spinato. Questa è in sintesi l'eredità che Barbara Contini ha lasciato in Darfur, la regione occidentale del Sudan, prima come coordinatrice degli interventi umanitari della cooperazione italiana, poi come responsabile dell'International management group (Img), un organismo internazionale finanziato anche dalla Farnesina. Quasi due anni di lavoro durante i quali la raissa, sbarcata tra le sabbie sudanesi dal precedente incarico di governatore della provincia irachena di Dhi Qar, ha gestito fondi, personale e progetti in modo del tutto personalistico, bypassando le normali (e stabilite per legge) procedure della Direzione generale per la cooperazione allo sviluppo (Dgcs) del Ministero degli esteri italiano.
Oggi, cambiati il governo e i vertici della cooperazione, si cerca di mettere un po' d'ordine in una situazione che appare ancora assai intricata e densa di ombre. Una missione esplorativa di tecnici è stata inviata dalla Dgcs in Sudan, a fotografare la situazione e cercare di mettere mano alle carte che mancano per capire come e dove alcuni fondi sono stati spesi. In questo caso, si tratta di una novità assoluta: la missione è diventata possibile solo negli ultimi tempi, visto che fino a qualche mese fa ogni tentativo di verifica veniva sistematicamente bloccato dall'alto. Il rapporto finale non è ancora concluso, ma indiscrezioni raccontano di scarsi risultati a lungo termine, soprattutto se paragonati ai soldi erogati (10 milioni di euro su due anni), di una gestione dei progetti mirata più alla visibilità di Contini che alla sostenibilità. E di una interpretazione quanto mai allegra del proprio ruolo di responsabile della cooperazione.
Una decisione presa in sette minuti
Siamo nell'autunno del 2004. La leggenda, tramandata dalla diretta interessata, narra che il suo incarico viene inventato in sette minuti da Gianni Letta, Umberto Vattani e Giuseppe Deodato, all'epoca rispettivamente sottosegretario alla Presidenza del consiglio, segretario generale del Ministero degli esteri e direttore generale della cooperazione allo sviluppo. I tre, con il placet di Silvio Berlusconi, avrebbero deciso di inviare l'ex governatrice di Nassiriya nella regione sudanese «perché non volevano perdermi», secondo quanto ha più volte raccontato l'inossidabile Contini. Ma già sul mandato la chiarezza è poca. Inviato straordinario del governo, come lei stessa ama definirsi? Semplice esperto esterno di cooperazione, come risulta dalla sua scheda alla Farnesina? Fatto sta che Contini si accredita sul campo come mediatrice; incontra e stringe rapporti con i ribelli del Sudan's liberation movement/army (Slm/a). Va addirittura ad Abuja, in Nigeria, sede dei negoziati tra guerriglieri e governo mediati dall'Unione Africana, salvo essere richiamata frettolosamente da una Farnesina sempre più irritata e imbarazzata dalle sue «private iniziative». Nel frattempo, nel febbraio 2005, la «lady di ferro» sbarca a Sanremo e lancia la campagna per raccogliere fondi per un ospedale da costruirsi alla periferia di Nyala. Si chiamerà - annuncia Paolo Bonolis dal palco dell'Ariston - Avamposto 55, in onore del 55esimo Festival della musica italiana.
Oggi Avamposto 55 spicca maestoso tra le sabbie. Ma è chiuso. O meglio, funziona a sprazzi. Nei cinque giorni in cui sono rimasti a Nyala, i tecnici della missione non sono riusciti a vederlo aperto, nonostante i ripetuti tentativi. È la fine del ramadan: tutto scorre più lentamente e anche l'ospedale si adegua ai ritmi imposti dalla festa. Ma anche in tempi normali pare che la struttura sia in attività a regime ridotto solo per le poche ore della mattina. «Quando sono arrivata mi era stato detto che avremmo dovuto aprire un ospedale generale», racconta la dottoressa Pina Garau, esperto della cooperazione italiana in Darfur dal febbraio al 29 aprile 2006, quando è stata costretta da Contini ad andarsene, finendo il suo mandato a Kassala, nell'est del paese. «In realtà, per il budget di cui io era conoscenza - continua Garau - si poteva predisporre un day hospital materno infantile e un centro nutrizionale, apportando le opportune modifiche alla struttura». Ma non è stato fatto neanche questo. E, alla fine, la struttura è diventata operativa solo come ambulatorio.
La colletta al festival di Sanremo
Dopo un inizio positivo, i rapporti tra Contini e Garau si rovinano velocemente. «Uno dei motivi di scontro - racconta la dottoressa - è stato l'accordo tecnico che dovevamo concordare con il ministero della sanità sudanese per poter aprire l'ospedale. Contini ha continuato a rimandare la cosa». Motivo: una difficoltà nello scegliere sotto quale etichetta far rientrare il progetto. Una domanda rimane in effetti ancora senza risposta. Per chi lavora Barbara Contini in questo momento? La sua missione con la cooperazione allo sviluppo è finita formalmente il 31 dicembre 2005, nonostante lei continui ad accreditarsi come inviato speciale del governo. Dal sito dell'Img, risulta invece responsabile per il Sudan dell'organizzazione, che però non è registrata nel paese africano e non compare da nessuna parte. La confusione è grande. Anche perché in realtà Img un ruolo ce l'ha ed è legato a un'altra situazione poco chiara, quella che riguarda i finanziamenti con cui Avamposto 55 è stato costruito.
Anche in questo caso, come già per la questione del mandato, le versioni sono discordanti. Quanto Contini ripete a ogni occasione fa a pugni con quanto emerge dalle carte e dai corridoi della Dgcs. La raissa ribadisce ormai da quasi un anno di aver costruito Avamposto 55 solo con fondi privati, per metà raccolti a Sanremo, attraverso l'autotassazione di Bonolis, degli artisti e della Rai, e per l'altra metà giunti «da altre persone che mi sono state vicine». Ma le cose stanno diversamente. Accanto ai 250mila euro del Festival, i soldi utilizzati per costruire l'ospedale sono stati messi a disposizione dall'Img che li aveva ricevuti, sotto forma di contributi volontari, dalla stessa cooperazione italiana.
La questione si è complicata ulteriormente negli ultimi mesi. Perché in vista della fine del suo contratto con Img, Contini ha pensato bene di creare una fondazione italo-sudanese senza scopi di lucro a cui affidare la gestione dell'ospedale. Il tutto senza interpellare il ministero degli esteri o la cooperazione italiani, le cui insegne capeggiavano su Avamposto 55 fino a non molto tempo fa. Ora sono sparite, sostituite in tutta fretta da targhe che portano il nome della fondazione, di cui fanno parte, oltre ad alcuni cittadini italiani, anche il governatore e il ministro della sanità del Sud Darfur e lo sheikh della principale confraternita islamica della regione, a cui appartiene il terreno su cui Avamposto 55 è stato costruito. Personalità pubbliche, dunque, che però intervengono nell'impresa a titolo meramente privato. Con il rischio, secondo fonti interne alla Farnesina, che tra un anno o due i notabili sudanesi coinvolti nell'operazione decidano di trasformare un ospedale costruito anche con fondi pubblici italiani in una clinica privata.
Tra gestione poco chiara dei fondi, commistione tra pubblico e privato e assenza degli standard minimi di un ambiente sanitario è ormai chiaro come Avamposto 55 sia nato sotto i peggiori auspici. Ma la cosa non riguarda solo questo progetto, sicuramente il più controverso. Anche negli altri, quelli in cui la gestione da parte della cooperazione italiana è stata diretta, le zone d'ombra e le inefficienze rimangono. Un esempio è l'acquedotto di Kass, altra opera che sulla carta potrebbe contribuire a migliorare gli standard di vita della popolazione ma che non è mai stato messo in funzione. Anzi no, per la verità un giorno ha funzionato. Era metà dicembre 2005 e l'allora direttore generale della Dgcs Giuseppe Deodato era in visita in Darfur, per l'inaugurazione di tutti i progetti targati cooperazione italiana. Quel giorno l'acqua è arrivata, grazie a un raccordo con l'acquedotto preesistente creato per l'occasione e poi prontamente eliminato. Dopo quell'effimero exploit l'acquedotto di Kass, anche se formalmente concluso e operante, è asciutto come e più del deserto circostante. E i venticinque punti di distribuzione, mai utilizzati, iniziano già a mostrare i segni del tempo. C'è poi il «playground» di Garba Intifada, poco fuori Nyala. Uno scivolo e due altalene colorate troneggiano tristi dietro un muro di filo spinato. I bimbi del luogo, distratti probabilmente da altre priorità, non sembrano aver mai avuto accesso a questo parco giochi. Forse anche perché la vicina scuola, sempre costruita dalla cooperazione targata Contini, fino a qualche mese fa non era ancora in funzione.
I tank rubati all'Unicef
Ma la smania di mostrare i risultati del proprio operato ha raggiunto l'apice con un'altra opera idrica. Cinque tank per la raccolta dell'acqua, che da dicembre scorso portano sul fianco, in bella mostra, il logo della cooperazione italiana. Ma che in realtà sono stati donati anni fa dalla cooperazione giordana e poi recentemente riabilitati dall'Unicef. La mossa, fatta sempre in vista dell'arrivo di Deodato, non ha certo contribuito a riabilitare il nome dell'Italia in Darfur, già messo in ombra della gestione personalista di Contini e dalle ricorrenti voci che circolano negli ambienti internazionali di Nyala e che parlano di presunte strette collaborazioni con lo Slm/a - tanto che uno dei leader ribelli sarebbe stato visto aggirarsi per le strade della città su una macchina della cooperazione italiana - e di non meglio specificate «attività misteriose».
Contini continua instancabile a raccogliere fondi per il «suo» ospedale: solo l'altro ieri, al teatro Argentina di Roma, ha partecipato a una serata di beneficenza organizzata dall'ong «Donne e non solo» in favore di Avamposto 55. Tra abiti da sera e immagini strazianti di bambini sudanesi, la «lady di ferro» ha magnificato le sorti del suo operato, dichiarando tra l'altro di «non essere abituata a lasciare le cose a metà». Ma lo sapranno le donne di «Donne e non solo» che l'ospedale pediatrico che si sono impegnate a sostenere «per aiutare i bambini a nascere e a crescere» non è altro che una cattedrale nel deserto?
http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/01-Novembre-2006/art46.html
Mail & Guardian:
How history will treat PW Botha
Dries van Heerden
02 November 2006 09:25
PW Botha will probably always be remembered as a "black hat" man. He and Magnus Malan loved wearing those ridiculous homburgs when they inspected their beloved troepies - whether in the "operational area" or south of the border, down Voortrekkerhoogte way.
In South African politics he also wore the symbolic black hat - as the bully-boy face of apartheid and the enforcer behind successive states of emergency aimed at keeping the lid on the boiling pot of black resistance.
I believe the hindsight of history will treat Botha much kinder than the quick appraisals following his death this week at his home in the Wilderness. For the image of a finger-wagging, self-righteous, smirking Groot Krokodil who defiantly refused to appear before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to account for the excesses of his administration is still too vivid in our collective memory.
However, Botha also deserves credit for the process of change he initiated in a period of history when white society was at its paranoiac and intransigent worst. During his reign the dismantling of the apartheid edifice gathered speed - first with the abolition of the largely inconsequential mixed-marriages and immorality acts, and later with the scrapping of the Group Areas Act and the noxious influx-control measures.
It can be argued that these changes came about not through the design of Botha but as a result of an inevitable chain of small events. At least it happened during Botha's watch, and he had to suffer a right-wing revolt in his own ranks and the break-up of his beloved National Party as a result of this.
With the right-wing breakaway of Andries Treurnicht and his conservative cohorts in 1982, Botha effectively split the entire Afrikaner edifice from the Broederbond through the Afrikaans churches into cultural organisations, sporting bodies and school committees.
He broke the mould of whites-only politics with his limited reforms around the three-chamber Parliament, and towards the end of his career he strongly hinted at the scrapping of the "independent" homeland concept.
And although he only scratched the surface of political reform, he did prepare the ground within broader white society that enabled FW de Klerk to plunge into the February 1991 initiative, the eventual unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and the release of Nelson Mandela and other leaders.
For more than half a century Botha had a Siamese-twin relationship with the National Party. He dropped out of Free State University to join the Cape party machinery as an organiser, quickly earning a reputation as a rabble-rousing orator and an enforcing thug who broke up the meetings of their United Party opponents.
He was rewarded with a parliamentary seat for the George constituency at the young age of 32 and a deputy ministership (coloured affairs) a decade later, and in the early Sixties his long relationship with the military started when he was appointed minister of defence.
The National Party had a habit of picking its leadership from the right wing of the party, but it still came as a surprise when, in 1978, the Cape hard-liner easily disposed of the softer options of Pik Botha and Connie Mulder when John Vorster fell on hard times because of the information scandal.
PW Botha's world view was strongly influenced by his relationship with men in uniforms. Via Magnus Malan and other top defence brass who were trained by the French forces in Algeria he became convinced that there was a "total onslaught" waged against South Africa, which could only be countered by a "total strategy". His obsession with military solutions for diplomatic problems affected an entire generation of South Africans - both the whites who were conscripted into a meaningless border war and blacks who were on the sharp end of uniformed actions in townships and in the front-line countries.
He surrounded himself with "securocrats" who wore similar blinkers and introduced the national security-management system to the country at a time when the majority of the population had started to run out of patience with the process of cosmetic reforms. The irresistible forces of revolution were met with the immovable objects of Botha's state of emergency.
Botha and the "Rubicon speech" will always be mentioned in the same sentence. The real story of what happened on the night of August 15 1985 when Botha addressed the Natal congress of the Nats will still be told. What is known is that Botha originally intended to deliver a major reformist speech, carefully crafted by a group of policy wonks in the office of constitutional affairs minister Chris Heunis.
Pik Botha was dispatched to inform foreign governments and embassies to prepare themselves for big announcements, and the local media received carefully leaked previews of the speech. For PW Botha, with his notorious disdain for the media (except Die Burger), the weight of expectations became too much and he baulked at the last moment. In the end Botha launched into a tirade against his favourite enemies - foreign interference in local affairs, the communist conspiracy and the media. All that remained of the original speech was a pathetic one-liner that South Africa had crossed the Rubicon of political reform.
The speech and the global reaction marked the effective end of his political career. International reaction was devastating, the rand plummeted to unprecedented lows and the ANC's campaign to isolate the Botha regime and introduce global sanctions received an unexpected shot in the arm.
His hold on to the levers of power became increasingly tenuous, but it was not until he suffered a minor stroke four years later that the feeble-hearted reformers in his party could summon the courage to plunge the knives in. With a trembling hand and a quivering lower lip Botha cut a sad and forlorn figure as he tried to fight the internal coup orchestrated by FW de Klerk and Pik Botha.
His final years were spent in both the physical and symbolic Wilderness, trying to stay out of politics but often unable to resist the temptation to snipe at his old foes - most notably De Klerk and the TRC's Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
PW Botha can hardly be described as a reformer. But he did start a process - the end of which he could hardly foresee when he started scratching the ugly warts of petty apartheid.
Dries van Heerden is a former political reporter
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=288645&area=/insight/insight__comment_and_analysis/
Mail & Guardian:
Kenyan women look to the sun for cooking
Joyce Mulama | Kajiado, Kenya
01 November 2006
The women in Kajiado were sceptical - unwilling to believe that cardboard containers lined with aluminium foil on the inside would cook food when placed in the sun.
But, their minds were changed during a recent demonstration of the unassuming containers. These solar cookers, also called "panel cookers", were loaded with several pots filled with meat, rice, eggs and other kinds of food - the pots black in colour to absorb heat, and covered in plastic bags to retain warmth. The shiny foil reflected sunlight on to the pots, creating additional heat for cooking.
After several hours the food was ready to eat, and giving off a mouth-watering aroma.
"I am shocked because I saw the food cooking without any fire. But here it is, really hot and tastier than the same foods cooked normally. This is amazing; I have never seen anything like this before," said 70-year-old Esther Lokuso.
Lokuso is one of the members of the Oloika Women's Group who congregated at a school in Kajiado for the demonstration, given by Solar Cookers International (SCI). Headquartered in Sacramento, California, this donor-funded organisation seeks to promote the use of solar power for the benefit of both people and the environment.
Forest cover
Kenya's forest cover is said to have decreased because of the widespread use of firewood and charcoal in fires typically required to prepare food. According to government figures, 85% of Kenya's 30-million-strong population lack access to electricity.
"We and our children walk for over four hours every day looking for firewood. Since it has been our main source of fuel, we have had no choice but to go collecting wood and even cutting down new trees to provide us with wood, so that we can cook for our families," said Janet Sirinyi.
"By using the sun for cooking, now we will be able to save our trees and forests," the mother of five added.
The Oloika women were also excited by the prospect of being able to turn their attention to other chores while food was being prepared in the solar cookers. "Since solar cooking takes a longer time, we will be able to do other domestic chores such as fetching water and even looking after animals as the food cooks, killing two birds with the same stone," observed Grace Orumai, smiling.
Proponents of solar cookers point out that they do not generate smoke that causes irritation to the eyes, nose and throat - as wood fires may do - or soot. In addition, the cookers do not pose as much of a risk as fires that can cause burns, or blow out of control.
The Oloika group is now trying to raise money to buy panel cookers for each of its 50 members. The model they aim to purchase is called the "Cookit", which operates even at moderate temperatures. Priced at about $8 (about R60) each, Cookits are affordable by certain standards, but costly for some in a country where the government estimates that 56% of the population lives on less than $1 a day.
Earning a living
In Nyakach, a region in western Kenya, women have gone one step further - not only using the Cookits, but also earning a living from them.
A project between SCI and communities there has allowed women to make and sell Cookits, and train people from surrounding areas in how to use the devices.
"Women come together to make these cookers, and some of them earn up to 300 shillings a day [about R30]. The cookers have provided an income-earning opportunity for them," said Margaret Owino, SCI regional representative in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. The project began in 2003.
But despite the benefits offered by solar cookers, they have yet to win acceptability across the board.
"Solar cooking involves cooking outside, and most Kenyans do not like cooking outside. A lot of awareness creation is needed in this area, because solar cookers remain unpopular in the country," said Jackson Maina, acting director of the renewable energy section in the Energy Ministry. "Unless the government plays a leading role, very few people will undertake the solar-cooker technology."
Tradition also presents challenges to be overcome. "Cultural beliefs have it that there has to be fire for food to cook. Without fire, the food is not food," said Owino, telling of how men in Nyakach warned their wives against eating solar-cooked food when the technology was introduced in the region.
She also cautioned that solar cooking is not a replacement for traditional cooking techniques - still needed on rainy days, for instance - "but [is] just another alternative to help save on fuel, since the sun is free".
In light of this, communities informed about solar cooking are also given information on other fuel-efficient devices that can be used alongside solar technology. These include the ceramic jiko (stove), which uses relatively less wood and charcoal, and the basket cooker: an insulated basket designed to complete the cooking of food that has already been partially prepared on a fire. The basket can also keep food hot for up to eight hours.
There are also various types of solar cookers on offer, such as the more expensive box cookers that are made from metal, and often able to contain two to three pots each.
IPS
All material copyright Mail&Guardian.
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=288540&area=/insight/insight__africa/#
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Del miedo al sueño de una Gran Corea
EL ENSAYO NUCLEAR DE COREA DEL NORTE DESPERTO LA ADMIRACION DE LOS JOVENES EN SEUL
En los últimos años, Corea del Sur ha elevado su nivel de vida gracias a un proceso de industrialización, pero el país vive con inseguridad por el arsenal de Pyongyang, el pasado imperial de China y Japón y las presiones de Estados Unidos. El sueño de la Gran Corea se choca con el fantasma de un colapso económico por los costos de una eventual reunificación.
Por Ramiro Trost
Desde Seúl, Jueves, 02 de Noviembre de 2006
El subte va cargado luego de otra jornada laboral. Para Kim Young Joo, una adolescente que está abstraída con sus auriculares inalámbricos mirando una película de alta definición en su celular, nada ha cambiado desde la prueba nuclear que realizó el vecino del Norte. Ella le dijo a Página/12 que no siente ningún temor por el ensayo atómico del 9 de octubre pasado y que está acostumbrada, como el resto de los surcoreanos, a los actos de Corea del Norte. Young Joo no ha alterado en nada su rutina y dice que no cree que el Norte ataque al Sur.
La postura de esta joven refleja el sentir de la mayoría en esta descomunal capital de Corea del Sur, con más de 10 millones de habitantes. El sur capitalista lleva décadas de desarrollo y bonanza al ritmo de las amenazas y provocaciones del régimen de Pyongyang.
Incluso el mismo día del ensayo atómico, concretado a pocos kilómetros al norte de la frontera, el tema no pasó de ser una charla más en la sobremesa del almuerzo. La sorpresa inicial no dio paso en ningún momento al pánico, ratificando que los surcoreanos se han acostumbrado a vivir en estado de armisticio, acuerdo con el que culminó el conflicto bélico de tres años que devastó toda la península entre 1950 y 1953.
Las escuelas no interrumpieron sus clases, los comercios no cerraron sus puertas, el tránsito infernal no tuvo ni un segundo de respiro y el consumismo frenético de los coreanos del Sur no supo de pausas. El Instituto de Investigación Económica de Samsung, un organismo de análisis muy respetado en el país, reveló una encuesta que señala que la mayoría de los surcoreanos no ha disminuido sus gastos luego de la prueba nuclear de Norcorea. El 78,6 por ciento de los 1000 hogares consultados, es decir cuatro de cada cinco hogares, expresó que mantendrá su actual consumo y el nivel de gastos. El 20,1 por ciento planea disminuir un poco sus erogaciones, mientras sólo el 1,3 por ciento cortará drásticamente sus gastos a raíz del ensayo atómico del Norte. Consultados por sus reacciones ante el acto norcoreano, solamente el 27,7 por ciento manifestó que es un asunto muy serio.
Lo que sí parece inquietar y molestar a los surcoreanos es el dinero y la ayuda humanitaria que el gobierno y entidades civiles del Sur envían al Norte. Solamente en el mes de agosto pasado, y para paliar los daños causados por lluvias torrenciales e inundaciones en Corea del Norte, el Sur despachó asistencia por valor de 230 millones de dólares. Además, según informó el Programa Mundial de Alimentación de la ONU, Corea del Sur colabora con 100.000 toneladas métricas de alimentos por año desde 2001 a través de este organismo, mientras que en forma directa envía entre 400.000 y 500.000 toneladas métricas de comida anualmente.
La gran irritación que sienten muchos es porque la prueba nuclear de Norcorea confirma una sospecha: la millonaria ayuda humanitaria que año tras año se envía desde el Sur se desvía invariablemente hacia el ejército y la cúpula gobernante del Norte. No hay veedores internacionales o surcoreanos en Norcorea, por lo cual no se puede controlar el destino de los fondos y la ayuda. Es por eso que los coreanos del sur se sienten, sobre todo, defraudados por el accionar del Norte.
Kim Seung Chae, director de la división de investigación en la Fundación Cultural Premio de la Paz de Seúl, le dijo al diario local Korea Times que la percepción sobre Norcorea ha cambiado entre los surcoreanos desde la histórica reunión cumbre de los líderes de ambos lados en el año 2000. Kim consideró que la gente ahora está inmune a las amenazas del Norte y que si el ensayo atómico se hubiese realizado hace 20 años, la población habría salido corriendo a comprar alimentos ante una inminente guerra.
Pequeños grupos de ancianos conservadores, integrados fundamentalmente por veteranos de guerra, han sido los únicos en salir a quemar banderas norcoreanas y fotos con la cara del líder del Norte, Kim Jong Il. El vocero del partido de derecha Gran Nación, Kwon Tae Geun, que participó de esos actos, expresó que “ahora es momento de que el Norte reciba un poco de azotes”. Dos precandidatos de esta organización se perfilan como los más serios aspirantes a la presidencia de Surcorea en las elecciones de diciembre de 2007. Un triunfo conservador marcaría un giro de la administración de Seúl hacia una política de línea dura hacia Pyongyang.
La población en general ha oscilado entre la apatía, el enojo o el respaldo silencioso a Norcorea, pero no ha modificado su vida cotidiana. El gobierno de Seúl oscila entre hacer frente a las presiones cada vez más fuertes de Washington para cancelar los proyectos económicos intercoreanos e imponer sanciones al Norte y la continuidad de la política de tolerancia hacia el régimen de Pyongyang, que le ha permitido desde 2000 disminuir la tensión en la península y aumentar los intercambios. Estados Unidos pretende que la administración de Seúl cancele los dos proyectos de cooperación intercoreana más relevantes: el complejo industrial en la ciudad norcoreana de Gaesong, donde se han instalado una docena de empresas surcoreanas, y el programa turístico a una zona montañosa del Norte. Washington cree que el dinero que Surcorea aporta para esas iniciativas va a parar directamente al régimen del Pyongyang y a financiar sus aventuras nucleares.
© 2000-2006 www.pagina12.com.ar|República Argentina|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-75490-2006-11-02.html
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Chávez y Bush se enfrentan en Nicaragua
CERRO LA CAMPAÑA PARA LAS ELECCIONES PRESIDENCIALES DEL DOMINGO
Jueves, 02 de Noviembre de 2006
No va más. La campaña nicaragüense terminó ayer, con actos, caravanas y conciertos multitudinarios. A pesar del creciente clima de tensión y polarización, los observadores electorales destacaron la paz que reinó en todo momento en las calles. Los candidatos hicieron énfasis en los dos principales problemas del país: la pobreza y la corrupción. El líder sandinista y favorito según todos los sondeos, Daniel Ortega, aprovechó la jornada para recorrer ciudades del interior y terminar a la noche con un último peregrinaje a la capital. Su rival más fuerte y aliado de la Casa Blanca, Eduardo Montealegre, dedicó el día a recorrer los barrios más pobres de Managua, incluyendo los tradicionales feudos del sandinismo. Allí, casualmente, se encontró con la caravana de su ex aliado y candidato del Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC), José Rizo. Los dos, apoyados por distintos sectores de Estados Unidos, buscan evitar una victoria de Ortega en primera vuelta.
Los últimos sondeos sitúan al líder del Frente Sandinista de Liberación Nacional (FSLN) con una intención de voto que oscila entre el 35 y el 30 por ciento. Según la ley electoral nicaragüense, para ganar es necesario obtener el 35 por ciento de los votos, con una diferencia de cinco puntos porcentuales con respecto al segundo candidato, o el 40 por ciento de los votos. El miedo de Ortega no es sólo no conseguir arañar el 35 por ciento, sino que Montealegre, el ex banquero que representa a la Alianza Liberal Nicaragüense, continúe achicando la distancia. Una última encuesta de la empresa estadounidense Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, difundida por el diario nicaragüense La Prensa, le daba 27 por ciento al ex ministro de Economía del actual gobierno.
El otro elemento que podría derribar las aspiraciones del ex comandante sandinista es un eventual traspaso de votos al Movimiento Renovador Sandinista (MRS), el sector disidente que dejó el FSLN por no estar de acuerdo con la dirección de Ortega y que hoy cuenta con una intención de voto de alrededor del 15 por ciento. Sin embargo, esta amenaza se debilitó con la muerte del candidato presidencial del MRS, Herty Lewites, tres meses antes de las elecciones. Su reemplazo fue su compañero de fórmula, el economista Edmundo Jarquín, un hombre casi desconocido para muchos nicaragüenses. Por eso, el partido eligió un dirigente con alto perfil para acompañarlo: el cantautor más importante de la Revolución Sandinista, Carlos Mejía Godoy. Utilizando su figura, el cierre de campaña del MRS fue un concierto masivo al aire libre en Managua.
Frente a una multitud de simpatizantes con velas blancas, Mejía Godoy repasó su repertorio más conocido con canciones como “La tumba del guerrillero” y “Nicaragua Nicaragüita”. El cierre le correspondió a Jarquín: “Vamos a terminar con la infamia en uno de los países más desiguales de la más desigual región del mundo. Por la justicia, por la dignidad, no les vamos a fallar”, prometió el único de cuatro candidatos que no ha recibido el apoyo de un gobierno extranjero (a Ortega lo apoya Venezuela).
Mientras el MRS eligió uno de sus bastiones para cerrar la campaña, Montealegre hizo su última aparición en medio de uno de los feudos del sandinismo. Subido a una caravana, recorrió una de las zonas más pobres de Managua, en donde la mayoría de las familias todavía le agradecen a Ortega por sus casas, construidas durante la revolución. El candidato del empresariado -nacional y extranjero- llegó a mitad de la tarde en su 4x4, seguido por una larga fila de colectivos que llevaban a sus simpatizantes. La caravana estuvo marcada por la tensión, especialmente cuando unos militantes comenzaron a tirarles pedazos de galletitas a los simpatizantes del FSLN que miraban desde las veredas.
El broche final de la campaña lo puso Ortega. Anoche continuaba recorriendo los barrios de Managua, luego de un día lleno de actos y reuniones. A la tarde se reunió con directivos de la Cámara de Comercio para firmar, como ya lo había hecho el resto de los candidatos, un documento, en el que se comprometió a respetar la libre empresa y a formar un gobierno amplio y de consenso. Luego de marchar por el centro del país, el líder sandinista llegó a la capital acompañado por miles de personas. Su discurso final fue un resumen de lo que ha sido su campaña: “Paz, trabajo, educación y reconciliación”.
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Página/12:
El cañón suelto en Medio Oriente
Por Immanuel Wallerstein*
Jueves, 02 de Noviembre de 2006
La atención de todos está en el sitio incorrecto. La mayor parte de analistas, periodistas y líderes políticos se preocupan de que algún gobierno haga en Medio Oriente algo tan desestabilizador que dispare una devastación regional generalizada. Los sospechosos comunes -según las convicciones políticas de cada quien- son Irak, Irán, Israel y Estados Unidos. Pero de hecho, por diferentes razones, es poco probable que alguno de estos países, ahora o en el futuro próximo, provoque un escenario que pueda conducir a una guerra generalizada. Irak está muy absorto en su guerra civil y en sus intentos por poner fin a la presencia estadounidense como para comenzar algo grave. Irán tiene un régimen bastante estable y su único intento es asegurarse de que Estados Unidos no le corte las alas. Israel resopla y puja contra Irán pero, después del fiasco en el Líbano, no está en posición de comenzar nada grave. Y el gobierno estadounidense se lame sus heridas del Medio Oriente y primordialmente busca minimizar el daño que ya le causaron a sus propios intereses.
El cañón suelto en Medio Oriente es Pakistán. Reflexionen sobre su historia. Hubo una vez un movimiento político muy secular y muy “moderno” en la India británica que buscó, y logró, que una zona de gran concentración musulmana se escindiera y fuera reconocida como un Estado independiente. Después de la independencia de India y Pakistán, en 1947, de inmediato se fueron a la guerra, se mataron unos a otros en grandes números y se involucraron en un intercambio masivo de población. Desde entonces ha existido una tensión continua entre ambos Estados, especialmente desde que, en efecto, dividieron la extensa área fronteriza de Cachemira, y ninguno de los dos países reconoce la legitimidad de la partición.
En más de medio siglo desde entonces han ocurrido muchos cambios importantes. Pakistán, que era una monstruosidad geográfica, se partió a su vez en dos. Su mitad oriental, geográficamente separada, se convirtió en el Estado independiente de Bangladesh (con el estímulo de India). Pakistán e India se enfrascaron en más guerras, lo que básicamente no cambió nada. (Y China e India tuvieron también una guerra fronteriza.) Durante la Guerra Fría, India se volvió líder del Movimiento No Alineado, sosteniendo relaciones bastante amistosas con la Unión Soviética. El resultado fue que dos países quedaron bastante descontentos con la política exterior de India: Estados Unidos y China. Por lo tanto, ambos buscaron mantener relaciones cercanas con Pakistán.
Ni India ni Pakistán firmaron el Tratado de No Proliferación de Armas Nucleares (el otro que no suscribió el acuerdo fue Israel). Ambos países desarrollaron armas nucleares. Desde 1948 India ha tenido una complicada y turbulenta historia política interna. Pero fundamentalmente se ha mantenido políticamente estable, pese a su supuesto potencial de desintegración. Por una razón, ha sobrevivido a los múltiples cambios de gobierno sin señales de que el ejército se entrometa.
La historia en Pakistán es muy diferente. Ha sufrido múltiples cambios de régimen y el ejército ha sido responsable de buen número de ellos. El régimen actual debe su existencia a un golpe militar. La religión juega un papel muy diferente en ambos países. En India, el fundamentalismo hindú ha sido muy fuerte y propenso a la violencia, pero últimamente se expresa a través de un partido político, el Bharatiya Janata (BJP, por sus siglas en inglés), que en gran medida juega con reglas parlamentarias, dentro y fuera del poder. Y permanece en India una población musulmana muy numerosa, cuyos votos importan. En Pakistán, los fundamentalistas islámicos han proseguido por múltiples senderos a la vez. Es verdad que crearon partidos que han estado en el poder y fuera de éste. Pero también conformaron movimientos guerrilleros que (por lo menos al comienzo) estuvieron muy activos en Cachemira. Yendo más al punto, han infiltrado las fuerzas armadas, alguna vez puramente seglares, y en especial sus operaciones de inteligencia. Y han establecido regímenes autónomos de facto en la llamada frontera del noroeste.
Los gobiernos paquistaníes han tenido que batallar para mantener la cabeza fuera del agua. Han intentado satisfacer dos diferentes clientelas al mismo tiempo: los “modernizadores” (es decir, occidentalizantes) por un lado, y los mucho más “populares” grupos islámicos. No ha sido fácil hacer malabarismos con esta pelota política. Una de sus técnicas clave fue desarrollar una cercana pero ambigua relación con Estados Unidos, para intentar conseguir tanto apoyo financiero y político militar como les fuera posible dándole a Estados Unidos lo menos posible a cambio.
Uno de los objetivos principales de Osama bin Laden ha sido derribar los puntales que sostienen este juego de ambigüedad. Con el ataque del 11 de septiembre, él confiaba en que Estados Unidos presionaría más a Pakistán para hacerlo un aliado más plenamente comprometido. Y hasta cierto punto Bin Laden logró esto (debido a la absoluta falta de sofisticación geopolítica del régimen de George W. Bush). Así, se produjo una clara reacción de Pakistán. El intento del ejército de poner “orden” en las provincias del noroeste (y así capturar a Bin Laden) fracasó y el ejército tuvo que retirarse. Entre tanto, India logró que Estados Unidos legitimara sus posteriores desarrollos nucleares, pero Estados Unidos se niega a hacer lo mismo con Pakistán, no sea que esto desequilibre la carreta de las manzanas en la mejorada relación Estados Unidos-India. Así que Pakistán voltea hacia su viejo aliado, China, para llenar el hueco.
No obstante, el presidente paquistaní, Pervez Musharraf, se asemeja cada vez más a un fracaso político. Su ejército renovó furtivamente su respaldo a los talibanes de Afganistán (de quienes Pakistán era el principal patrocinador en los años 90), lo que irrita más y más a Estados Unidos. Si Musharraf se tambalea, Pakistán bien puede tener de próximo régimen uno verdaderamente islámico, que sea bastante hostil a Estados Unidos, esta vez en un país militarmente poderoso y con armas nucleares. Ahí Osama bin Laden reside con impunidad.
Entonces, ¿qué?
* Investigador académico emérito en la Universidad Yale y autor de The Decline of American Power: The US in a Chaotic World (New Press).
Traducción: Ramón Vera Herrera.
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The Independent: Big Brother Britain 2006:
'We are waking up to a surveillance society all around us'
By Jason Bennetto, Crime Correspondent
Published: 02 November 2006
Britain has sleepwalked into becoming a surveillance society that increasingly intrudes into our private lives and impacts on everyday activities, the head of the information watchdog warns.
New technology and "invisible" techniques are being used to gather a growing amount of information about UK citizens. The level of surveillance will grow even further in the next 10 years, which could result in a growing number of people being discriminated against and excluded from society, says a report by the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas.
Future developments could include microchip implants to identify and track individuals; facial recognition cameras fitted into lampposts; and unmanned surveillance aircraft, predict the report's authors.
Mr Thomas,who heads an independent body that promotes public access to official information, calls for a debate on what level of surveillance is acceptable.
He said: "Two years ago I warned that we were in danger of sleepwalking into a surveillance society. Today I fear that we are in fact waking up to a surveillance society that is already all around us.
"As ever more information is collected, shared and used, it intrudes into our private space and leads to decisions which directly influence people's lives.
"Mistakes can also easily be made with serious consequences - false matches and other cases of mistaken identity, inaccurate facts or inferences, suspicions taken as reality, and breaches of security.
"I am keen to start a debate about where the lines should be drawn. What is acceptable and what is not?"
He was speaking at the launch of a report funded by the Information Commissioner's Office, which analyses current and future levels of surveillance. The study - "A Surveillance Society"- concludes that routine monitoring is increasing in most areas of life.
This includes the systematic tracking and recording of travel and use of public services; automated use of CCTV; analysis of buying habits and financial transactions; and the monitoring of telephone calls, e-mail and internet use in the workplace.
The major surveillance techniques include:
* Video cameras monitoring buildings, shopping streets and residential areas. Automatic systems can now recognise vehicle number plates and faces.
* Software that analyses spending habits and the data sold to businesses. When we call service centres or apply for loans, insurance or mortgages, how quickly we are served and what we are offered can depend on what we spend, where we live and who we are.
* Electronic tags to monitor offenders on probation.
* DNA taken from those arrested by the police and placed on a database.
* Information stored about foreign travel.
* Smart cards in schools to determine where children are, what they eat or the books they borrow.
* Taps on telephones, e-mails and internet use that can screened for key words and phrases by British and US intelligence services.
The Government also still plans to introduce a new system of biometric ID cards, including "biometrics" - fingerprints and iris scans - linked to a database of personal information.
The group of academics who compiled the report have also predicted future trends in surveillance in the next decade. The include:
* Shoppers being scanned as they enter stores. This will be matched with loyalty card data to affect how they are handled, with big spenders given preferential treatment over others.
* Cars linked to global satellite navigation systems which will provide the quickest route to avoid congestion and allow police to monitor speed and to track selected cars.
* Employees subjected to biometric and psychometric tests plus lifestyle profiles with diagnostic health tests common place. Jobs are refused to those who are seen as a health risk.
* Schools using card systems to allow parents to monitor what their children eat, their attendance, academic and drug test results
* Facial recognition systems to monitor our movements using tiny cameras in lampposts and walls, and unmanned aircraft above.
David Murakami Wood, a co-author of the report carried out by the Surveillance Studies Network said: "The level of surveillance in this country should shock people - it is infiltrating everything we do. The question is whether we want that or not. Most people do not understand how the information is used - for example details obtained from supermarket loyalty cards and credit cards are bought and sold to other companies to provide complex profiles of individual customers.
"It is difficult to challenge these organisations, find out what data they have on you, or to change inaccurate information."
Keeping up with the Joneses - day in the life of one family
It is London in 2006. The Jones family are returning from their holiday in Florida.
In the US they were photographed and fingerprinted on arrival. At Gatwick they have their hand luggage X-rayed and hand-searched, and they are all questioned. Passports - one member of the family has dual nationality with Pakistan - are checked. Details of the flight and all other travel information is recorded.
The family are seen by airport security cameras and on the courtesy bus, which drops them at the car park, which is also covered by CCTV.
As the family drives out of the airport, they switch on a sat-nav system, which guides them home, but also alerts them to speed and traffic-light cameras on the way - which record their progress. The son uses his mobile to call a friend - this is logged by the telephone company and could be used by police to locate where the phone was at the time.
On the way back they stop at an out-of-town mall. CCTV records them in the car park and entering the supermarket. All details of their shopping is recorded when they pay using a loyalty card. This will be used to build up a customer "profile" and can be sold on to others.
The money they spend on credit cards is also monitored to check for any unusual spending patterns, which could indicate the card has been stolen. The amounts spent and whether the family keep within agreed credit levels is also monitored and will be used by the bank or building society.
Later they go through the congestion charging zone - which they pay for via the mobile - and all details, including photographs of them entering central London, are recorded.
At home in central London they unload under the watch of a neighbour's private CCTV system. Waiting at home is a pile of junk mail. The names and addresses of the family have been obtained from a variety of databanks.
The son goes to his room to read a letter telling him his criminal records check is clear and that he has a place on a voluntary scheme.
He orders a takeaway - his address, card details and previous orders are already held by the pizza chain.
Britain under surveillance
* The national DNA database holds profiles on about 3.5 million people.
* There are an estimated 4.2 million CCTV cameras in Britain: one for every 14 people.
* More than half of the UK population posseses a loyalty card issued by the firm that operates the Nectar scheme.
* Since 2002 there have been more than 8 million criminal records checks for jobs, of which around 400,000 contained convictions or police intelligence information.
* There are plans to expand capacity to read vehicle number plates from 35 million reads per day to 50 million by 2008.
* Some 216 catalogue companies in the UK are signed up to the Abacus data-sharing consortium, with information on 26 million individuals.
* The database of fingerprints contains nearly 6 million sets of prints.
* An individual can be captured on more than 300 cameras each day.
* By the end of 2002 law enforcement bodies had made more than 400,000 requests for data from mobile network operators.
* The number of motorists caught by speed cameras rose from 300,000 in 1996 to over 2 million in 2004.
* In the year to April 2005 some 631 adults and 5,751 juveniles were electronically tagged.
© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article1948209.ece
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