Elsewhere Today (415)

Aljazeera:
Israel kills women at mosque siege

Friday 03 November 2006, 15:40 Makka Time, 12:40 GMT

Two Palestinian women have been killed during a stand-off near a Gaza mosque while they were trying to rescue about 60 Palestinian men besieged inside.

The dramatic events came on the third day of an Israeli assault on the Gaza town of Beit Hanoun, the largest operation Israel has conducted in the Gaza Strip in months.

On Friday, about 200 Palestinian women marched towards the al-Nasir mosque in the town of Beit Hanoun, which Israeli forces surrounded on Thursday, in a attempt to rescue the men.

Israeli forces opened fire towards the women and two of them were killed. Six others were wounded.

Um Muhammad, a woman in her 40s, said after the rescue attempt: "We risked our lives to free our sons."

With Friday's shootings, at least 22 Palestinians have been killed since Israeli troops entered Beit Hanoun on Wednesday.

Escape

The Israeli army later confirmed that the Palestinian men had escaped from the mosque.

Shortly after they fled, the roof of the building, one of the oldest in Gaza according to locals, collapsed, witnesses and the Israeli army said.

The minaret was left standing, but most of the building was reduced to rubble.

The Israeli military, which earlier demolished a wall of the mosque compound and fired stun grenades and tear gas inside, said the collapse was the result of gunfire and damage done during the 12-hour siege.

Residents of the town of 30,000 people said Beit Hanoun was now effectively under an Israeli army curfew after infantry units backed by tanks stormed into the town on Wednesday.

At a Hamas rally after nightfall on Thursday in Gaza City, Ismail Haniya, the Palestinian prime minister, called the Israeli offensive "terrorism".

Deaths continue

Israel's offensive, called Operation Autumn Clouds, began on Wednesday and is aimed partly at halting the barrage of rockets into Israeli territory.

Despite the Israeli assault, Palestinian fighters still managed to fire six homemade missiles at the Israeli border town of Sderot on Thursday, wounding at least two people, medical officials said.

Overnight on Wednesday, eight Palestinians were killed in the Israeli raids, including at least five fighters, four of whom were from Hamas' armed wing, witnesses said.

An Israeli soldier was also killed during the Beit Hanoun operation. Hamas' armed wing said it had killed the Israeli soldier and wounded several others.

More than 280 Palestinians have been killed in the four-month-old offensive, about half of them civilians, while three Israeli soldiers have died.

Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/28281EF3-0276-4DED-B367-B74C0DAFDE89.htm

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allAfrica:
DRC's Election Results Make Its Neighbour Nervous

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
November 3, 2006
Lusaka

The Democratic Republic of Congo's (DRC) anxious wait for the outcome of the presidential election run-off is putting its neighbour Zambia on edge, with currency dealers stocking up on kwacha, the local currency, and dumping the DRC's Congolese franc.

Jonas Lembo, a DRC national and currency dealer in Zambia's Copperbelt Province, is only selling and not buying the DRC's currency, and in a few days since the 29 October second round of the presidential vote, the Congolese franc has weakened from 500 to 520 against the US dollar.

"Our country is unpredictable, anything can happen anytime," said Lembo. "I won't go to Lubumbashi [the regional capital of the DRC's Katanga province] until this election period is over, I don't want to be caught up there. With these [kwachas and dollars], it is easy to find a way if fighting begins in my country."

The DRC had a second round of voting late last month after the first round of voting in July failed to produce a presidential winner with a 50 percent plus one of the vote. Presidential incumbent Joseph Kabila captured 45 percent in the first round while his rival Jean-Pierre Bemba managed to secure 20 percent of the vote.

Three days of heavy fighting between Kabila's and Bemba's security guards after the announcement of the provisional results of the first round of the presidential elections left at least 23 people dead in Kinshasa and there were isolated incidents of violence in the mineral-rich country in the immediate aftermath of the presidential run-offs.

Although both candidates have publicly stated that they will respect the result of the first democratic poll since independence from Belgium in 1960, analysts still fear that the 226,7050 square kilometre country could slide back into its warring ways, a worse case scenario that cross border traders have been preparing for.

"I have been saving something everyday since July this year and now I have almost 1 million kwacha [$250] in my house," said a cross-border trader, Joanna Kabamba. "I hope to make more kwachas after selling my last Chitenge materials, then I can relax and wait for anything."

Zambia has been used as a safe haven by Congolese traders during times of conflict in their home country, but should the election not solve the DRC's cycles of violence, the effect, analysts forecast, will be the destabilisation of the sub-continent.

"If by any means the DRC elections fail to bring peace, then all central and southern Africa will be headed for an economic, political and humanitarian turmoil because there will be a lot of spill-over effects," Lee Habasonda said, executive director of the regional good governance watchdog, the Southern African Centre for Constructive Resolution of Disputes.

"There will be a cross-over of refugees into Zambia and other neighbouring countries, which will force host countries to stretch their budgets in looking for more food and financial resources to provide shelter for such refugees. A sharp increase in criminal activities would be another consequence because some of the fleeing refugees would be armed and have to survive using the same guns that they will carry."

Habasonda said an increase in the incidence of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases might also be triggered in the region because "rape cases are high in times of humanitarian crisis. Fleeing rebels abuse women by force and there are many cases of human trafficking as some people start benefiting from the disaster."

Copperbelt, which abutts the Kabila strongold of Katanga province, is Zambia's economic heartland accounting for over 80 percent of the country's export earnings. The DRC's Katanga region also has large mineral reserves including copper, cobalt, diamond, uranium, cadmium, tin, gold and silver. In the three years that relative peace has prevailed in the DRC, Copperbelt mining activities have more than trebled, driven by a heavy investment from the private sector.

Economic Association of Zambia vice-president, Ernest Mwape, said both copper production and general investment levels could be affected if the election results are disputed and spark another conflict.

"Much of the investment in Copperbelt is private sector-driven which thrives on long-term planning and business opportunities. Many business opportunities would be washed away in Zambia if a full-scale war broke out in the Congo. Our businesses have so far managed to put up with petty corruption and thefts from Congolese traders but a war would definitely be a big blow to our economy," Mwape said.

Besides the booming mining activities, Zambia has also increased its trade with its neighbour, according to Richard Salivaji, permanent secretary of Zambia's North-Western Province - home of two major copper mines, Kansanshi and Lumwana, and the newly-discovered oil reserves.

"DRC is increasingly becoming significant to our economy. Our people are now selling their goods, especially agricultural products, to DRC and we are getting a lot of earnings as a country from this sound bilateral trade. People deal in mealie meal [ground maize meal], goats, maize and vegetables while DRC traders bring in clothes and Chitenge materials," Salivaji said.

Katanga's mineral wealth has been the source of its restive reputation. Soon after independence, Katanga seceded under the leadership of Moise Tshombe with the support of Belgian mining interests. Katanga's secccession was only resolved a few years later with the assistance of United Nations troops.

[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]

Copyright © 2006 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com).

http://allafrica.com/stories/200611030181.html

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AlterNet:
Does the Military Send Sick Soldiers to War?

By Nina Berman, AlterNet
Posted on November 3, 2006

The government's own military doctors knew that Spc. Anthony Vanderpool was mentally unbalanced. He had been admitted to the Bronx and Manhattan Veterans hospitals for major depressive disorder, dizziness, spells, auditory hallucinations and suicidal ideation, according to his V.A. records.

And this was before he even went to Iraq.

"I have a lot of anger. I never should have gone, " said Vanderpool, a Army National Guardsmen with 16 years prior service in the Army, Army reserves, Navy, Navy reserves and Air Force. "They didn't care. They wanted me because I was infantry," he said.

Vanderpool spent 10 months in Iraq on meds, not sleeping, depressed, paranoid, suicidal until he finally "spun out of control," forcing his command to acknowledge that he was too sick to be in a war zone. Off he went to Ft. Polk, La., for five months of medical treatment, and in December 2005, he was honorably discharged due to a "personality disorder."

Since then, he has been living a marginal life in Bay Shore, N.Y., single, no children, unemployed, finding himself increasingly isolated and depressed, and vomiting almost daily. He has been hospitalized for attempted suicide, and a recent review of his medical records show that was prescribed a daily dose of Zoloft for depression, Seroquel and Buspirone for anxiety, Zolmitripitan for migraines and Omeprazole for acid reflux. He attends a Veterans Administration post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) outpatient program twice a week.

Vanderpool's story is not unique

"The DOD admits they are sending mentally unfit soldiers into combat in Iraq," said Steve Robinson of Veterans for America. "This is not supposed to happen; the military should not have deployed this veteran to the war; what were they thinking and what does it say about the overstretched military?"

In May, the Hartford Courant reported that service members with preexisting PTSD were being sent back to Iraq, and some of those afflicted had committed suicide.

The situation galvanized Sens. Boxer, Kennedy, Lieberman and Clinton to sponsor an amendment to the last Defense Appropriations Bill in June calling for more thorough mental health screening, evaluation and detailed guidelines on what precludes deployment to a combat zone.

But the final legislation, passed in mid-October, dropped an original provision that would have required screeners to take a mental health history and refer a service member to a specialist if the service member indicates a mental health issue prior to deployment.

Such a provision might have helped Spc. Vanderpool who said that when he was activated by the National Guard and then deployed to Iraq, he told his superiors that he had a history of psychological problems, but these issues were ignored or dismissed. Once in Iraq, they got worse.

"The military should treat combat stress and psychological injuries as medical conditions. Instead, the military treats our injured soldiers as if they lack moral fortitude and improperly sends them back into battle," said Robinson.

"They said I was malingering, that I was a baby, wah, wah, wah wah, " said Vanderpool of his treatment by 1st Sgt. Daniel J. Bien, of Delta Company 101 Cavalry, at Camp Liberty, Baghdad.

Interviews with Vanderpool and members of his guard unit paint a picture of a command that refused to admit anyone was physically or psychologically sick.

"He (Sgt. Bien) didn't believe anybody was hurt," said Vanderpool's former platoon mate, Spc. Danny Gomes.

Added Sgt. Dallas Eccleston, who saved Vanderpool's life during an ambush,"There were people developing problems over there and people not believing them." He went on to describe Sgt. Bien as "definitely a suck-it-up kind of guy."

Bien responded in an email that "soldiers with documented mental illness are not mobilized for war; rather, they are discharged from the Army."

He said he could not "disclose any personal, medical information related to any of my soldiers," then added that Vanderpool "was sent for two mental health evals while in Iraq and there is documentation that he was malingering (faking) to try to get a psych discharge." He did not elaborate on the documentation.

He said Vanderpool had early in his tour concocted a scheme to pretend he was crazy. "He told other soldiers that his brother was mobilized a year or so before and faked being crazy and now collects a paycheck from the state of New York for a mental disability. VDP (Vanderpool]) told others that his plan was to do the same."

Vanderpool has never had a brother in the service.

"Anthony is the only who has been in the service. I have no other sons in the service, and I don't think they want to go there," said Vanderpool's mother Johnnie Mae.

She said that her son had been disabled since 1994 and that he was on medication when he was mobilized to go to Iraq. "I didn't understand why they were taking him over there if he was in the V.A. with a medical problem. It seems they will take anyone over there as long as they carry a gun."

According to documents provided by Vanderpool, his story unfolds as follows.

He was deployed to Iraq after numerous hospitalizations at V.A. hospitals and was being medicated for depression. He arrived in Iraq at the end of October 2004 and was soon caught in a deadly firefight that nearly took his life. After the incident, his psychological condition worsened. Eccleston and Gomes remember Vanderpool walking around, never sleeping, acting strange. A sworn statement by his roommate, Sgt. Timothy Walsh, says Vanderpool complained of flashbacks and was telling bizarre stories about being trained by the CIA and killing people in Spain.

He was treated by a psychiatrist in Iraq who informed his command that "his weapon should be removed from him as he is a threat to himself and others." On Jan. 12, 2005, Sgt. Bien signed a memo putting Vanderpool on profile and taking away his weapons.

A month later Vanderpool returned to New York on leave, and while there was brought by a friend to the Northport Veterans Hospital emergency room. The friend told hospital staff that Vanderpool was acting strange and was nonverbal, and medical reports described him as confused and disoriented. After a meeting with a military liaison team, which reviewed Vanderpool's medical records, including those showing multiple psychiatric hospitalizations, Vanderpool was released from hospital, ordered to report back to duty and return to Iraq.

A few days later he showed up at the Nassau University Medical Center and was diagnosed with peptic ulcer diseases. After receiving treatment, he left the hospital with his Zoloft, Seroquel and Protonix, and was sent back to Iraq.

For five more months he was deployed with no weapon, even though his base was repeatedly hit by rocket fire, killing at least one and wounding several soldiers.

Vanderpool said he felt terrified without a weapon. Gomes said the command was prepared to send Vanderpool on a mission, defenseless.

"They were trying to send this guy on a mission to the fricking border with no weapon. Even the general turned around to 1st Sgt. [Bien] and told him he was crazy, not to let him off base without a weapon."

Bien said, "No soldier was ever sent out or asked to be sent outside the wire without a weapon."

Then he added, "We were also conducting training for Iraqis at another camp and I had to assign several personnel to run this camp. When I included VDP's (Vanderpool's) name on the list, he refused to go."

In July, Vanderpool said he "flipped out," tried to steal another soldier's rifle and attack a superior officer. He was flown out of Iraq, first to a psych unit in Germany and then to Ft. Polk, La., where he spent five months in medical hold under the care of psychiatrists.

Why would the military keep a soldier in Iraq who had attempted suicide and was clearly medically unfit?

"They kept him there out of spite, to use him an example to other soldiers, said Gomes who spent his whole tour with Vanderpool. "Bien wanted to use Vanderpool as an example to the rest of the platoon to obey him."

Bien said, "If every soldier that showed signs of stress was taken off the battle roster, there would be nobody left to fight."

Gomes, now back in Staten Island, out of the National Guard and working toward becoming a New York City policeman, describes his time in Iraq as "the worst thing that ever happened to me. I'd go to Rikers (the New York City detention complex) before I go back there."

Amid his medical files, Vanderpool showed me a yellow piece of paper, the fragments of his life. Scrawled on it were lists of friends from various towns in Nassau County, friends from his tour in Iraq, his mother and father and brothers and sisters, a pastor and therapists. He just wanted to write it down, he said.

To the V.A., Vanderpool's life is as follows.

The patient is a 40-year-old single, unemployed African-American male with a past history of depression who presented to the ER on July 20 upon voluntary admission due to feelings of extreme depression, lack of motivation, isolation and suicide ideation. The patient states that he has been depressed "on and off" since 1994 when he was diagnosed with major depressive disorder. The patient has had multiple psychiatric admissions to Manhattan and Bronx V.A. for dizziness, spells, auditory hallucinations and suicidal threats. The patient states that he is very disturbed by his experiences while in the Army and on his trip to and from Iraq. He continues to be paranoid and is disturbed by the memories he had while he was in Iraq first in 2004.

In the last two weeks prior to admission, the patient felt he was incapable of coming out of the depression and that he may "do something rash."

Upon admission, the patient continued to state that the depression was "out of control" and that he continued to isolate himself and to shy away from any social interaction. He denied alcohol, tobacco and drug abuse. He stated that the only thing that has made him feel better in the past is interaction and speaking with others such as members of his family; however, recently he has had no motivation or desire to contact anybody.

The patient states hat he sleeps very poorly, especially while he is depressed, and also eats very poorly. He has also been suffering with acid reflux and GERD, and while he is depressed, he discontinues his medication, which results in his regurgitating, so his eating habits continue to deteriorate. The patient states that he continues to "have a lot on his mind," mainly referring to the idea that he may be forced to go back to Iraq.

On Sept. 21, Vanderpool received an order from the Department of the Army, which appears to be an activation order. Attempts to verify whether Vanderpool has been called up again were unsuccessful, as the military refuses to discuss personnel issues. Vanderpool said that the guard base in Long Island confirmed it was an activation order. A public affairs officer with the New York Army National Guard said he has heard of rare occasions when those who have been medically discharged have been recalled for further evaluation because they were deemed to be cured and fit enough to complete the remainder of their service.

Nina Berman is a photographer and the author of Purple Hearts: Back From Iraq.

© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/43611/

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Clarín: Advierten que los océanos pueden
quedarse sin peces por la contaminación y la depredación

Un estudio realizado por científicos de EE.UU., Canadá y Europa, publicado por la revista Science, sostiene que de continuar la tendencia actual colapsará un gran número de las especies de peces y mariscos en el 2048.

Clarín.com, 03.11.2006

Si continúa la tendencia actual de contaminación y sobreexplotación de recursos pesqueros, en los próximos años será sólo un lindo recuerdo el sabor de los mariscos o el de pequeños peces en el arte culinario mundial. Un grupo de científicos estadounidenses, canadienses y europeos advirtió que la depredación podría disminuir sensiblemente la población ictícola.

El estudio, que fue publicado por la prestigiosa revista "Science", se basa en datos de la población marina desde 1950 al 2003 y hace una proyección. El futuro, según sostienen, es funesto: habrá un colapso de las especies en estado salvaje si no se toman medidas para preservarlas.

Boris Worm, investigador en jefe de la Universidad de Dalhousie en Halifax, Nueva
Escocia, reveló que "en este momento 29% de las especies de peces y mariscos se han colapsado, esto es, su pesca ha descendido en 90%. Es una tendencia muy clara, y está acelerándose". Y agrega: "Si la tendencia continúa a la larga, todas las especies de peces y mariscos se colapsarían en el lapso de nuestras vidas, para el año 2048 según proyecciones".

Durante cuatro años, Worm y un equipo internacional realizaron 32 experimentos controlados, otros estudios de 48 áreas marinas protegidas. Además, recabaron información de pesca global de la base de datos de la Organización de Alimentos y Agricultura de la ONU de todos los peces e invertebrados a nivel mundial desde 1950.

"Ya sea que observemos las lagunas o todo el océano, vemos el mismo cuadro. Al perder especies perdemos la productividad y estabilidad de ecosistemas enteros'', dijo Worm. "Se ve bastante tétrico y la proyección de la tendencia a futuro se ve aún más tétrica'', admitió.

De todas maneras, el científico estimó que "no es demasiado tarde para revertir esto; puede hacerse, pero debe ser pronto. Necesitamos realizar una administración por ecosistema en lugar de por especie". Claro que para ello, aclaró, "sólo se requiere de una buena dosis de voluntad política para lograrlo".

Copyright 1996-2006 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2006/11/03/um/m-01302578.htm

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Guardian:
Israeli troops open fire on women outside mosque

Staff and agencies
Friday November 3, 2006

Two Palestinian women were killed and another 10 were reported wounded when Israeli forces today opened fire on a group preparing to act as a human shield for militants in a Gaza mosque.

Dozens of women were gathering outside the mosque in Beit Hanoun in the northern Gaza Strip this morning after an appeal on a local radio station. More than 30 gunmen had taken refuge in the building after the Israeli army began its largest Gaza offensive in months in an attempt to stop militants launching rocket attacks on nearby Jewish settlements over the border.

Television pictures showed at least 50 women making their way along a pavement when shots could be heard ringing out. They started to flee in terror and at least two women were left lying on the ground.

Witnesses said two women, both aged about 40, were killed, and 10 others were wounded. The Israeli army said troops spotted two militants hiding in the crowd of women and opened fire.

A large group of women protesters went on to gather outside the mosque. In the resulting confusion all the militants managed to escape, some reportedly wearing robes supplied by the women.

A 22-year-old Palestinian man was also killed in the northern town, which troops seized on Wednesday. At least 23 Palestinians, most of them militants, have been killed and 155 wounded since the offensive began, according to local health officials.

Israeli tanks and armoured personnel carriers surrounded the mosque when militants took refuge there. Overnight, the two sides exchanged fire. Troops also threw stun and smoke grenades into the mosque to pressure the gunmen to surrender. Witnesses said an Israeli army bulldozer knocked down an outer wall of the mosque, causing the ceiling to collapse.

The Israeli army said the gunmen inside the mosque were able to take advantage of the women's demonstration to escape because there weren't enough infantrymen to block the protesters from approaching the building, and troops didn't want to shoot into the crowd.

However, live ammunition was fired in the course of the demonstration, wounding a Palestinian cameraman and a number of women. Hospital officials reported that many of the women were shot in the foot.

The Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh, of Hamas "saluted the women of Palestine ... who led the protest to break the siege of Beit Hanoun". He urged the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan, to witness first-hand "the massacres of the Palestinian people", and appealed to the Arab world to "stop the ongoing bloodshed".

A spokesman for Hamas militants said 32 gunmen who had taken cover in the mosque escaped with the help of the women.

Residents said Beit Hanoun, a town of 30,000 people, was effectively under full Israeli control, with a curfew imposed.

Loudspeakers across Gaza called on people to come to demonstrations after Friday prayers to express solidarity with Beit Hanoun. By late morning, two rallies were already in progress in Beit Hanoun, and militants in the crowds were firing at soldiers, the Israeli army said.

The Israeli army said it targeted Beit Hanoun because it was a major site for launching rocket attacks. But Israeli officials have said the takeover of Beit Hanoun was expected to last only a few days and did not signal the start of a wider military offensive in Gaza.

Militants, however, continued to fire rockets at Israeli border communities. Two Israelis were slightly wounded and a house was damaged in the latest attacks.

In a separate operation last night, an Israeli air strike on a car in Gaza City killed three Hamas fighters, including a local militant commander, witnesses said. An Israeli army spokeswoman confirmed the strike.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2006

http://www.guardian.co.uk/israel/Story/0,,1938667,00.html

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il manifesto:
L'ingegner fantasia iscritto al modernismo

Nuovi contributi alla conoscenza del più grande scrittore del '900 italiano vengono dai saggi di Raffaele Donnarumma, che privilegiano le sue doti di costruttore di intrecci su quelle di virtuoso erede dell'espressionismo linguistico

Pierluigi Pellini

A parlare di modernismo in Italia, si rischia ancora di evocare sfocati ricordi liceali, che più che rinviare al manuale di letteratura rimandano a quello di storia, ricordando la determinazione e l'intransigenza di Pio X, il quale attraverso il decreto Lamentabili del luglio 1907 e l'enciclica Pascendi di due mesi dopo, condannò definitivamente il modernismo, definendolo «la sintesi di tutte le eresie». In area anglosassone, invece, nessuno penserebbe a una corrente di rinnovamento ecclesiale: perché Modernism è l'etichetta che raggruppa le più importanti esperienze letterarie del primo Novecento, da Pound a Joyce. Non che sia agevole circoscriverne i confini: gli autori modernisti sono accomunati dal rifiuto delle convenzioni letterarie codificate e da un rapporto problematico con il pubblico e la nascente cultura di massa; a contatto con la complessità urticante della vita moderna, corrodono ogni certezza ideologica e insinuano il sospetto sulla trasparenza del linguaggio: senza rinunciare, tuttavia, a un'aporetica ricerca di verità. Ma altre questioni restano aperte: se fare risalire il 'movimento' a Flaubert e ai più avanzati esperimenti naturalisti, se includere nei suoi ranghi Conrad o Proust, se considerare le avanguardie storiche come esperienze alternative o come espressioni estreme della stessa temperie culturale.

Dall'estetismo alle avaguardie
Nel campo dell'italianistica, è venuto non a caso da due studiosi che lavorano oltre Oceano il primo, importante tentativo di riconoscere un Italian Modernism (University of Toronto Press): i curatori del volume così titolato, Luca Somigli e Mario Moroni, optano per un sondaggio storico che spazia dall'estetismo fin de siècle alle avanguardie e non si concentra specificamente sul genere-romanzo. Solo in parte, perciò, possono raccogliere la sfida di passare al vaglio del modernismo i grandi narratori del nostro primo '900 - Pirandello, Tozzi, Svevo, Gadda - per sottrarli a categorie vaghe, come quella stretta nella formula letteratura della crisi o perfino, nel caso loro, abusive (il troppo fortunato decadentismo). Su questa strada si mette invece con decisione il libro di Raffaele Donnarumma titolato Gadda modernista (Ets, 2006, pp. 189, euro 15,00), in cui sono raccolti saggi che tornano su temi non certo nuovi, come la riforma del «concetto di causa» e le letture filosofiche dello scrittore, i modi della satira e dell'umorismo, o il controverso rapporto con Milano; ma li si affronta tenendo fermi tre presupposti che garantiscono l'originalità, anche polemica, del volume.
Primo presupposto: l'autore del Pasticciaccio è innanzitutto un narratore. Sembra un'ovvietà, ma la persistente fortuna di letture fondate esclusivamente su spogli linguistici lo ha trasformato in prosatore puro (d'arte, magari), o perfino in lirico, trascurando la sua aspirazione al «romanzo romanzesco», la sua nostalgia sincera per «l'intreccio dei vecchi romanzi»: ormai impraticabile, certo, ma pervicacemente perseguito, complicato, e infine sgretolato dall'interno, senza mai venire eluso o disprezzato. Non a caso, infatti, per schematizzare lo «sviluppo» di quell'abbozzo di romanzo giovanile che fu Un fulmine sul 220, Gadda si prende la briga di disegnare una balzachiana «parabola», scandita in cinque punti, con tanto di «impostazione», «catastrofe in potenza» e «catarsi tragica». L'indagine sul concetto di causa, che il Gadda filosofo si industria a volere riformare (non cancellare), ha motivazioni al tempo stesso conoscitive e narrative. Lo lasciano già intuire, a sprazzi, gli appunti per la seconda e mai conclusa tesi di laurea, quella su Leibniz, ora pubblicati per le cure di Riccardo Stracuzzi nel quarto degli einaudiani «Quaderni dell'Ingegnere» (ne parla l'articolo qui sotto); l'altro pezzo forte del fascicolo sono le lettere che lo scrittore ha inviato al suo «main-publisher», Livio Garzanti, fra il 1953 e il 1969. L'inquieto laureando elabora il suo «fenomenalismo in continua deformazione», per «presentare la complicatio omnium» (lo dimostra Fabio Minazzi nello stesso fascicolo della rivista) come «fondamento» della metafisica leibniziana e «della sua personale percezione del mondo».
Più tardi, sostituendo il «diorama delle concause» alla linearità della catena causale, Gadda privilegia lo spazio sul tempo, puntando su una «coesistenza logica» degli eventi, che apre falle insanabili nella sequenzialità del racconto. Se ormai l'auspicata «parabola» è votata alla dissoluzione, non resta al narratore che ricorrere a una costruzione per blocchi tematici, di lontana ascendenza naturalista; o affidarsi al determinismo «a ritroso» della vita psichica, in un romanzo come il Pasticciaccio, dove forte, sottotraccia, è la presenza di Freud.

Luoghi comuni però fondati
Secondo presupposto: il barocco, l'espressionismo linguistico, la milanesità, il «gaddismo» dei «nipotini dell'Ingegnere» - ossia i luoghi comuni di tanta critica gaddiana - sono categorie non prive di oggettivi fondamenti, e perciò verosimilmente destinate a lunga vita; ma bisognose di verifiche e puntualizzazioni: come quella, lapidaria ma nella sostanza esatta, offerta dall'ultimo capitolo del libro di Donnarumma, che denuncia gli equivoci della «funzione Gadda», tracciando il diagramma delle marginali affinità, e delle incommensurabili distanze, fra Pasolini, Testori, Arbasino, Manganelli, Vassalli, Consolo e il loro presunto modello. Sorte non migliore è riservata al binomio, Gadda e Milano, che campeggia in testa a un capitolo tutto percorso da una forte tensione politica: perché alla costruzione del mito dell'Ingegnere lombardo, con il suo risentimento etico e razionalista, non sono estranee - sospetta Donnarumma - motivazioni ideologiche che appartengono ai critici, e all'oggi, più che allo scrittore, allergico a ogni moralismo e non restio allo scandaglio dell'irrazionale. Di Milano, in Gadda si dice (quasi) soltanto male: della borghesia come del popolo; e i soggiorni a Firenze e Roma non contano meno della formazione lombarda. Del resto, un approccio «geografico», o peggio localistico, non può che mancare il bersaglio, se pretende di spiegare i grandi del Novecento. Con buona pace dei troppi, superficiali emuli di Carlo Dionisotti.

Ipotesi per una genealogia
Terzo presupposto: è costante il tentativo di sottrarre Gadda alla sua ineffabile unicità, o alla metastorica compagnia dei maccheronici, inserendolo a pieno diritto nella tradizione del romanzo europeo, con i suoi padri nobili ottocenteschi e, appunto, i più recenti e affini sviluppi modernisti. Del resto, la genealogia letteraria cui guardava l'autore della Meditazione milanese allinea i nomi di Balzac, Dostoevskij e Zola. Anche di Manzoni, naturalmente: innanzitutto perché grande narratore, accidentalmente perché lombardo. E ignora invece la troppo spesso invocata, e irrilevante, Scapigliatura milanese. Del modernismo si attaglia a Gadda, soprattutto, la «dialettica irrisolta e vitale fra autoriflessività e spinte realistiche», che si ostina a chiedere conto di una «verità», non rinuncia a indagare la corposa materialità del mondo fenomenico e disgrega dall'interno le strutture narrative tradizionali.
Certo, l'Ingegnere dava sfogo al suo ironico autolesionismo, quando si definiva «minimissimo Zoluzzo di Lombardia». Ma l'ironia, si sa, è spesso ambivalente: e Gadda - «un modernista che ha molti debiti col positivismo», come spiega bene Donnarumma - è forse più vicino a Zola, e meno lombardo, di quel che siamo abituati a pensare.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/02-Novembre-2006/art73.html

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il manifesto: Da Leibniz le ipotesi del «gran lombardo»
su come organizzare il groviglio conoscitivo

Documenti preziosi nutrono il quarto fascicolo dei «Quaderni dell'ingegnere», curati da Dante Isella. Oltre alle lettere indirizzate a Livio Garzanti, in cui Gadda si affanna a giustificare i ritardi nella consegna del «Pasticciaccio», l'abbozzo della sua tesi di laurea in filosofia, che già rivela gli assilli del futuro scrittore

Mario Porro

Della vita e dell'opera di Carlo Emilio Gadda, così schivo e riservato nei suoi rapporti col mondo, abbiamo finito per conoscere quasi tutto. Il più grande prosatore italiano del '900 ha cercato in modo maniacale di nascondere i riferimenti alla vita privata presenti nelle sue pagine, di celare ad esempio i tratti che facevano della Cognizione del dolore la sua «tragica autobiografia»; ma la sua nevrosi di «archiviomane» e la stima degli amici hanno complottato nel rendere pubbliche molte delle sue lettere.
Il IV numero dei «Quaderni dell'Ingegnere», la rivista dedicata al Gran Lombardo e curata con la passione di sempre da Dante Isella, raccoglie la corrispondenza con l'editore Livio Garzanti; sono lettere degli anni dal 1953 al '69, e nelle prime dominano le giustificazioni per i continui ritardi (solo in parte motivati dalle condizioni di salute) nella consegna dei capitoli del Pasticciaccio.
La rivista contiene anche inediti da tempo attesi dagli studiosi di Gadda: le note preparatorie e l'abbozzo della tesi di laurea sui Nuovi Saggi sull'intelligenza umana di Leibniz. Reduce dalla grande guerra in cui era partito volontario, dopo la laurea in ingegneria nel 1920, Gadda si lascia guidare da quell'«ictus philosophandi» in lui già vivo dai tempi del liceo; si iscrive al terzo anno di Filosofia presso l'Accademia Scientifico-letteraria di Milano. Gli impegni di lavoro faranno sì che solo nel '28 prenda avvio il lavoro per la tesi concordata con Piero Martinetti, il cui «eretico» kantismo avrebbe inciso profondamente sullo scrittore(come ci ha spiegato Federico Bertoni nel suo libro titolato La verità sospetta, Einaudi).
Dotato di istanze critiche nei confronti del neoidealismo imperante all'epoca, e impegnato in una difesa della libertà morale che lo portò a rifiutare il giuramento di fedeltà al regime nel 1931, Martinetti ha avuto un ruolo rilevante nella filosofia italiana, come testimonia il bel libro di Amedeo Vigorelli a lui dedicato, che ha come sottotitolo «La metafisica civile di un filosofo dimenticato» (Bruno Mondadori), tanto che la sua lezione venne ripresa dalla «scuola» milanese di Banfi e Geymonat. Martinetti, dunque, nutriva grandi speranze nel suo non più giovanissimo studente - Gadda era nato nel 1893 - come si legge anche in una lettera in cui profetizzava all'«ingegner fantasia» un avvenire cattedratico: «la via dell'università (per storia di filosofia) Le sarebbe aperta».
L'abbozzo della tesi redatta da Gadda si sofferma quasi esclusivamente sulla prima parte dei Nuovi saggi leibniziani e rilegge la questione dell'origine delle idee e dell'innatismo in una prospettiva kantiana. Il problema fondamentale è quello dei principi che permettono di costruire un'impalcatura del mondo, cioè di metterlo in ordine, di mostrare dunque la consecuzione razionale delle cose; si ritrova così la questione che assilla il Gadda narratore-filosofo, «organare il groviglio conoscitivo», indagare sulle cause e le ragioni degli eventi. Il problema, su cui già meditava la prima prova di romanzo, il Racconto italiano del '24, ritornerà nella Meditazione milanese che Gadda compone fra la primavera e l'estate del '28.
Le poche decine di pagine dell'abbozzo relativo alla sua tesi di laurea ci aiutano a comprendere perché Gadda avrebbe disatteso la profezia di Martinetti: il suo interesse per Leibniz non è quello di uno studioso che con acribia filologica dispone pazientemente i pezzi di un saggio critico, bensì quello di un pensatore originale che insegue in Leibniz quanto può sfruttare per i problemi che lo assillano. A Gadda interessano, osserva Fabio Minazzi nel saggio di commento, «le faville di nuovi pensieri» che si sprigionano nella polemica di Leibniz contro il «demoniaco Locke».
La «complessità della rappresentazione», che induce Leibniz a riconoscere inclinazioni e disposizioni virtuali nelle «pieghe» del pensiero, viene ricollegata al naturalismo di Giordano Bruno: la capacità conoscitiva è integrata all'essere, la materia è ovunque organica e dunque «Il razionalismo leibniziano si dilata nella natura, assai al di là dei confini dello spirito umano».
Sono pagine, queste, in cui troviamo già abbozzata quella «coscienza della complessità» che Gadda dirà nella Meditazione propria al suo modo di pensare. Soltanto da poco la critica valuta i «conati» verso cui si spingeva la sua riflessione sul «sistema» come complessità organizzata alla luce di quelle scienze trasversali (in primo luogo la teoria dei sistemi) che hanno cercato nel '900 una visione integrata di meccanico e organico. Non è certo casuale che questo accada misurandosi con Leibniz, il pensatore della modernità a cui più si è richiamato il secolo scorso: a Gadda sfugge la dimensione logico-matematica e linguistica, ma non le componenti che delineano in Leibniz un'immagine della realtà e del pensiero contraria alla semplicità lineare della Ratio cartesiana.
Così, fra i temi metodologici proposti da Gadda c'è la «critica del metodo di isolamento» o di astrazione; il «senso del complesso» impone di connettere ogni singolo aspetto al molteplice e al tutto, secondo un orientamento che oggi diremmo olistico o sistemico. Ma è già chiaro a Gadda in cosa non sarà più seguibile il pensatore tedesco: «Leibniz distingue ipotesi da certezza, perché crede ancora a una certezza Le mie idee personali sono rivolte invece a riconoscere lo stato 'ipotetico' e 'provvisorio' in tutta l'organizzazione della conoscenza».
Non si dà più armonia prestabilita, né monade suprema che possa sconfiggere il caos del mondo, affidato ormai a una «disarmonia prestabilita», secondo la felice formula con cui Giancarlo Roscioni ha espresso il pensiero di Gadda.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/02-Novembre-2006/art72.html

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il manifesto:
Al Jazeera, 10 anni, parla anche inglese

La tv araba che ha sconvolto le global news festeggia il decennale a Doha. Auguri, premi, ambizioni e la conferma: dal 15 novembre parte il canale inglese

Donatella Della Ratta
Doha

Al Jazeera il 15 novembre debutta in inglese. E presto potrebbe parlare spagnolo, hindi, cinese... Alla conferenza stampa di ieri della prima «all news» araba satellitare (e anche prima rete non occidentale) a rompere il monopolio di Bbc e Cnn sull'informazione globale, per la festa del decennale della casamadre araba (proprio mentre il concerto di Marcel Khalife a Piacenza, trasmesso in mondovisione per festeggiare l'emittente, veniva boicottato dai militanti della Lega Nord con un volantinaggio), il direttore generale della rete, Wadah Khanfar, ha confermato la data di lancio di Al Jazeera International. E ha lasciato intravedere il futuro della rete nei prossimi decenni. Khanfar cita la Cina e l'India come territori privilegiati su cui il network -anche grazie al nuovo ufficio di Al Jazeera International nella sede strategica di Kuala Lumpur- vuole puntare. «È importante raggiungere le popolazioni nella propria lingua - dice Khanfar - Al Jazeera già realizza una versione del canale arabo in Pakistan, in collaborazione con una rete locale». E le parole del direttore lasciano immaginare che il management del canale investirà su alleanze strategiche con indiani e cinesi, territori che rappresentano una grossa fetta della popolazione mondiale nonché i colossi dell'economia futura. Mentre per il sito internet di Al Jazeera, Khanfar cita lo spagnolo come la prima lingua, dopo l'arabo e l'inglese, a candidarsi per un futuro allargamento del bacino di utenza dei lettori di aljazeera.net.
E, su domanda di un giornalista ucraino, non mette limiti nemmeno alla possibilità di espansione della rete verso lingue «minori», a patto di trovare partner locali. La parola d'ordine della nuova Al Jazeera è perciò decentralizzazione. Una strategia intelligente, se si pensa che la maggior parte della popolazione musulmana non è araba né arabo parlante: il nuovo canale in inglese andrà a coprire questa mancanza, ma in futuro altre versioni locali - magari in collaborazione con broadcaster del posto- potrebbero essere ancora più efficaci per raggiungere il target di Al Jazeera. E non è scenario futuribile immaginare una «guerra» delle onde fra Al Jazeera e reti occidentali come Cnn sul terreno di lingue pregiate e poco battute dai grandi broadcaster d'oggi. Allargamento linguistico ma non solo: nel futuro di Al Jazeera c'è anche un'espansione editoriale. Su territori nuovi, come il broadband e la distribuzione via Internet, e «vecchi», come la carta stampata. Khanfar annuncia l'apertura di un new media department per affiancare alla distribuzione via satellite (sempre la n. 1 nei territori arabi) altre forme più contemporanee, e che potrebbero essere d'aiuto su mercati - come quello cavo Usa - dove per ora Al Jazeera International non è ancora riuscita a strappare accordi di distribuzione pregiati, e dove potrebbe essere cruciale aggiungere alla diffusione satellitare anche quella on demand via broadband.
Insieme ai nuovi media tornano i «vecchi». Al Jazeera annuncia a sopresa di voler aprire un nuovo giornale panarabo, operazione per cui si è già assicurata una prestigiosa firma del giornalismo: Abdelwahab Badrakhan, ex responsabile del quotidiano Al Hayat. Badrakhan dovrebbe guidare il nuovo quotidiano da Doha, capitale del Qatar, stato che finanzia tutte le operazioni di Al Jazeera. È chiaro che l'emiro Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, lungimirante media guru che 10 anni fa ebbe l'idea di lanciare Al Jazeera come rete editorialmente indipendente (formula vincente che ha rotto tutti i tabù di un giornalismo arabo abbottonato e protocollare), punta a trasformare Doha nel centro mediale del Golfo, sottraendo definitivamente il primato all'Arabia Saudita. E l'unico settore finora privo di avversari dei sauditi è proprio la stampa panaraba, di cui il reame controlla due dei tre più importanti quotidiani, Al Hayat e Al Sharq Al Awsat. Come non è un caso che i sauditi impediscano a Al Jazeera di aprire un ufficio sul suo territorio o far entrare i suoi corrispondenti per raccontare l'hajj, il pellegrinaggio sacro dell'Islam.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/02-Novembre-2006/art81.html

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Jeune Afrique: Pékin à l'heure africaine
pour un sommet qualifié d'historique

3 novembre 2006 – AFP

Pékin accueille ce week-end une quarantaine de dirigeants africains pour un sommet qualifié d'historique, reflétant l'influence politique et économique croissante de la Chine sur le continent noir.

Pour l'occasion, les Chinois ont paré leur capitale, dont le trafic automobile sera strictement limité, d'innombrables banderoles, lanternes et photographies géantes de paysages africains avec girafes et éléphants.

"Afrique pleine de mystères et de miracles", proclame un des slogans en trois langues (chinois, anglais et français), affiché un peu partout.

"Depuis la fondation de la République populaire de Chine en 1949, le sommet de Pékin est la plus importante conférence internationale organisée par la Chine", a affirmé le porte-parole du ministère chinois des Affaires étrangères Liu Jianchao.

Parmi les chefs d'Etat et de gouvernement de plus de 40 pays d'Afrique, figureront des personnages controversés, comme les présidents du Soudan et du Zimbabwe, Omar al-Béchir et Robert Mugabe, cibles des critiques des pays occidentaux pour leurs politiques de violations des droits de l'Homme.

"Nous devons considérer ce sommet de Pékin avec une perspective plus large et à plus long terme des relations sino-africaines", s'est défendu Liu Jianchao, soulignant que les bonnes relations entre le géant asiatique et l'Afrique bénéficient également à "la paix mondiale".

Si la Chine a été présente en Afrique depuis les années 1960, les engagements politiques maoïstes de l'époque ont cependant laissé désormais la place à des objectifs beaucoup plus commerciaux et énergétiques.

Lors de la conférence ministérielle, qui se tient vendredi et durant le sommet du week-end, plus de 2.500 accords commerciaux séparés seront discutés, a indiqué le ministre adjoint du Commerce, Wei Jianguo, sans donner plus de détails.

Avant le sommet, les autorités chinoises ont souligné leur engagement en faveur des économies africaines, indiquant notamment avoir exempté de droits de douanes les exportations de matières premières de 28 pays africains les moins développés et avoir annulé ces dernières années la dette de 31 nations du continent pour un montant de 10,9 milliards de yuans (1,36 milliard de dollars).

De plus, selon M. Wei, la Chine a investi 6,27 milliards de dollars en Afrique à la fin 2005.

Mais cette présence chinoise accrue entraîne de nombreuses critiques, la plus récente étent venu du président de la Banque mondiale (BM) Paul Wolfowitz.

Ce dernier a mis en garde la Chine à propos de certaines de ses pratiques, qu'il s'agissent des méfaits environnementaux liés à des projets chinois d'exploitation de matières premières ou du réendettement de certains pays pauvres auprès de Pékin, alors même qu'une grande partie de leur dette a été annulée l'an dernier par les principales institutions internationales.

"Il ne faudrait pas qu'elles commettent les mêmes erreurs que la France et les Etats-Unis avec le Zaïre de Mobutu", a-t-il réagi.

Ces attaques sont régulièrement balayées par les dirigeants chinois.

"Nous ne pensons pas que le développement de relations amicales sur la base de l'égalité et des bénéfices mutuels soit une erreur", a déclaré Liu Jianchao. "La question clef est le bien-être des Chinois et des Africains et le développement économique de l'Afrique", a-t-il ajouté.

En septembre, un autre porte-parole du ministère, Qin Gang, avait usé de l'ironie. "On exagère pour faire sensation, on a l'impression que la pauvreté dans ces pays est causée par la Chine", avait déclaré Qin Gang.

© Jeuneafrique.com 2006

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP80636pkinleuqiro0

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Jeune Afrique: Dix ans après sa mort,
Bokassa sort des oubliettes de l'histoire

CENTRAFRIQUE - 2 novembre 2006 – AFP

Despote brutal, corrompu et excentrique, Jean-Bedel Bokassa est mort haï de tous le 3 novembre 1996. La Centrafrique s'apprête à célébrer l'anniversaire de la mort de l'ex-empereur, signe de son lent retour en grâce dans le pays.

L'hommage sera discret. Pas question de cérémonie officielle avec fanfare et personnalités. Mais, pour la première fois, les proches de feu Bokassa Ier ont décidé d'élargir le cercle de la poignée de fidèles qui, chaque 3 novembre, se retrouvaient en catimini autour de sa tombe.

"Pour le recueillement de cette année, nous voulons réunir les ressortissants de Bobangui, de Bérengo, de la Lobaye, en un mot des compatriotes, dans une communion d'esprit", annonce un membre du comité d'organisation des festivités. Avant de lâcher, comme pour se justifier: "il n'a pas fait que le mal dans ce pays".

Aux yeux des Centrafricains, le nom de l'ancien maréchal, président à vie puis empereur reste associé à quelques-uns des épisodes les plus terribles de l'histoire du pays, notamment le massacre en 1979 d'une centaine d'écoliers qui refusaient le port d'uniformes scolaires.

Dix ans après sa disparition, la population du pays, fatiguée de l'instabilité politique et de la pauvreté persistantes qui ont suivi son règne (1965-1979), lui reconnaît volontiers le titre de "seul président bâtisseur" de la Centrafrique. Mais le personnage de Bokassa reste encore largement honni.

Sans surprise, le Dialogue national réuni après le coup d'Etat du général François Bozizé à l'automne 2003 a catégoriquement refusé la demande de réhabilitation formulée par l'un de ses fils.

Mais depuis cette date, le nom de Jean-Bedel Bokassa est lentement sorti de l'oubli. Notamment dans les discours officiels du nouveau président Bozizé, qui se plaît régulièrement à rendre hommage à celui qui avait fait de lui son aide de camp.

"Lui au moins a pu faire quelque chose dans ce pays, même si on ne lui reconnaît que le mal", déclarait début 2005 le chef de l'Etat. "Tous les grands édifices de Bangui datent de l'époque Bokassa. Nous autres, qu'avons-nous fait de bon? Nous passons tout notre temps à mentir, à médire des autres, à détruire notre pays au lieu d'ajouter un peu à ce qu'il a fait".

"Il a porté haut le flambeau du pays par ses réalisations", insistait François Bozizé quelques mois après. "Ce sont des hommes comme lui qu'il nous faut. Pas ces +Munzu Voko+ (Noirs qui se disent Blancs ou intellectuels) au ventre bedonnant à force de piller les ressources de l'Etat".

"Le général parle de l'ex-empereur comme un enfant parle de son père", confie sous couvert de l'anonymat un proche du président. "Il aime bien dire +papa+ quand il fait allusion à Bokassa", ajoute-t-il. "Pour lui, c'était un homme qui aimait son pays, qui aimait son peuple, qui savait commander et qui lui a appris à connaître les Centrafricains".

Ces hommages appuyés ont redonné du baume au coeur des fidèles de l'ancien chef de l'Etat, qui pensent que l'heure de sa réhabilitation a sonné.

"Notre père a été jugé, condamné et gracié", rappelle l'un des fils de l'ex-empereur, le député Jean-Serge Bokassa. "Nous pensons qu'aujourd'hui, la Nation saurait lui pardonner à travers nous, qui demandons pardon au nom de toute la famille Bokassa".

"J'avais juré de ne pas pardonner à Bokassa. Même s'il devait mourir plusieurs fois", concède Serge, une des victimes des massacres de 1979. "Mais son fils Jean-Serge n'est pour rien dans ces massacres", poursuit-il. "Aujourd'hui, son pardon peut bien être accepté".

© Jeuneafrique.com 2006

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?
art_cle=AFP93926dixaneriots0

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Mail & Guardian:
Apocalypse now

David Adam and Larry Elliott
02 November 2006

Earth is being fundamentally altered by climate change

Sir Nicholas Stern was commissioned by British Chancellor Gordon Brown to write a landmark report on climate change, amid growing fears about the human and economic cost of global warming. Stern, an internationally regarded economist, spent more than a year examining the complex problem.

After a week of rumours and leaks, on October 30 he formally launched his 579-page report. Though dry in its delivery, it had a simple and apocalyptic message: climate change is fundamentally altering the planet; the risks of inaction are high; and time is running out. This is a summary of the key findings.

The science
Out of this enormously complex report comes a simple conclusion: human activity has raised the amount of the key greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.

Stern uses the standard scientific measure to show how the amount has risen from 280 parts per million (ppm) before the industrial revolution to 430ppm now. The gas traps heat and has caused the Earth to warm by more than half a degree, with a further half degree at least to come over the next few decades.

If carbon emissions continue as they are, the level will reach 550ppm by 2050 or sooner. Scientists believe this will drive global average temperatures to two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It could also release natural stocks of carbon from the soil or permafrost, making the situation worse.

With no action to cut emissions, by the end of the century the atmospheric level could hit 750ppm, with a 50% chance that a five degrees Celsius temperature rise would follow. "An illustration of the scale of such an increase is that we are now only around five degrees Celsius warmer than the last ice age," says the report.

The scale
World emissions of greenhouse gases were the equivalent of 42-billion tons of CO2 in 2000.

The biggest source (24%) is the use of fossil fuels to generate energy, such as power stations that burn coal, oil and gas to produce electricity. Energy as fuel for transport (14%), industry (14%) and to supply buildings (8%) is also a big emitter. So are agriculture (14%) and changes in land use (18%), which mainly means chopping down forests. Harvesting timber from tropical forests and using the land for oil palm and soya can boost income per hectare from $2 to $2 000. Stern says: "The loss of natural forests around the world contributes more to global emissions each year than the transport sector."

Impact on the economy
The Stern Review says doing nothing about climate change - the business-as-usual (BAU) approach - would lead to a reduction in global per capita consumption of at least 5% now and forever. That would represent a fall in living standards more than double that experienced in Britain's worst year since World War II.

Stern warns that the cost could be much higher and approach levels not seen since the great depression of the 1930s, when the US economy shrunk by almost 25%.

The cost of BAU would be higher still had the model used by the Stern team taken into account three additional factors.

Firstly, if direct impacts on the environment and human health are included, the estimate of the total cost of climate change increases from 5% to 11% of global per capita consumption. While the report admits that measuring these effects is difficult, it says the estimate is a cautious one.

Secondly, it says the planet may be even more sensitive to an increase in global temperatures than previously thought, because the carbon sinks that absorbed greenhouse gases are no longer as effective as they were and feedback effects have increased. Once this is factored in, the cost of climate change goes up to 14% of global consumption.

Finally, climate change affects poor parts of the world more than wealthy parts, even though developed countries are responsible for the lion's share of emissions. If the unequal burden was distributed more fairly, the estimate of the impact could rise by more than a quarter than without such adjustment.

"Putting these additional factors together would increase the total cost of BAU climate change to the equivalent of about a 20% reduction in consumption per head, now and into the future," it says.

The report also puts a price on the economic damage caused by every ton of carbon we currently emit: $85. "But these costs are not included when investors and consumers make decisions about how to spend their money."

Big natural disasters can today cost a low-income country about 5% of its GDP. The report says the cost of climate change to India and South-east Asia could be 9% to 13% of GDP by 2100. An additional 145-million to 220-million people could be forced to live on $2 a day and poverty could kill an extra 165 000 to 250 000 children every year in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa.

For developed countries, some initial economic benefits (one study said early climate change could boost the US economy by 1%) will be overrun by the cost of extreme weather events. The report says: "In the United Kingdom, annual flood losses could increase from about 0,1% of GDP today to 0,2% to 0,4% of GDP once global temperature increases reach three to four degrees Celsius."

Impact on people
"The impacts of climate change are not evenly distributed," says Stern. "The poorest countries and people will suffer earliest and most."

Changes in water availability will affect billions of people, with growing shortages in Africa, the Middle East, southern Europe and parts of South and Central America. The review says: "Melting glaciers will initially increase flood risk and then strongly reduce water supplies, eventually threatening one-sixth of the world's population, predominantly in the Indian subcontinent, parts of China and the Andes."

Disruption to agriculture from a two to three degrees Celsius rise will put 30-million to 200-million more people at risk of hunger. At four degrees Celsius and above, global food production is likely to be seriously affected.

Stern refers to a World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate that climate change has killed 150 000 people since the 1970s, mainly in Africa, through diarrhoea, malaria and malnutrition.

In higher latitudes, such as the US, Europe, Russia and Canada, cold-related deaths will decrease. But, worldwide, deaths from malnutrition and heat stress will increase. Malaria and dengue fever could become more widespread, with one study saying a two degrees Celsius rise in temperature could expose 40-million to 60-million more people in Africa to malaria. Other studies say the risk of malaria in West Africa could recede as rainfall decreases.

In cities, heatwaves will become more dangerous, with extreme temperatures and more dangerous air pollution.

On sea-level rise, Stern warns: "According to one estimate, by the middle of the century 200-million people may become permanently displaced due to rising sea levels, heavier floods and more intense droughts." Risks and a need for coastal protection will rise for Bangladesh, Vietnam, small islands in the Caribbean and Pacific, and large coastal cities such as Tokyo, New York, Cairo and London.

The report adds: "Damage to infrastructure from storms will increase substantially. Changes in soil conditions will influence the stability of buildings."

Impact on the planet
Significant warming will profoundly change our planet, says the report.

One of the first impacts will be on the water cycle. Droughts and floods will become more severe in many areas. Rain will increase at higher latitudes and decrease in the dry subtropics. Hotter land drives more powerful evaporation, which brings more intense rainfall and flash floods.

"Warming may induce sudden shifts in regional weather patterns such as the monsoon rains in South Asia or the El Niño phenomenon," says the report.

Differences in water availability between regions of the world will become more pronounced. Already dry areas such as the Mediterranean basin, Southern Africa and South America could lose 30% of their water if temperatures rise by two degrees Celsius. By contrast, South Asia, Russia and parts of northern Europe could get 10% more water, causing rivers to burst their banks.

Glaciers are melting - a quarter have gone from the South American Andes since the 1970s - and "some small glaciers are likely to disappear completely in the next decade".

Slight warming may lift crop yields in the US, Europe, Australia, Siberia and parts of China. But beyond 3°C to four degrees Celsius there will be increasingly negative effects. Experiments suggest worldwide cereal production could fall 5% for a two degrees Celsius rise and 10% if the rise was four degrees Celsius. Africa, western Asia and the Middle East could lose 15% to 35% of their main crops if temperatures rise by three to four degrees Celsius.

Extra CO2 from the atmosphere dissolving in the oceans is making them more acidic. An atmospheric level of CO2 equivalent to 560ppm would decrease average pH by 0,15 units. Such a rapid change has not happened for hundreds of thousands of years, and "makes it harder for many ocean creatures to form shells and skeletons from calcium carbonate", says Stern. It could disrupt sea life irreversibly, halting the growth of corals, with knock-on effects up the ocean food chain as far as salmon and whales.

Seas will rise by between 20cm and 80cm if the Earth warms three to four degrees Celsius, increasing the risk of coastal flooding and storm surges. Extreme weather events, hurricanes and typhoons for instance, will become more intense: peak wind speeds of tropical storms will increase 15% to 20% with a three degrees Celsius rise in sea surface temperature.

Arctic and mountain ecosystems are struggling. Climate change has helped wipe out more than 1% of the world's amphibians from tropical mountains. With further warming, many more species will be unable to adapt or move quickly enough to survive. In the Arctic, species such as polar bears and seals are likely to be highly sensitive to the rapid warming and substantial loss of sea ice.

Stern cites one scientific study that found one degree Celsius of warming could leave 10% of land species facing extinction, with tropical mountains badly affected. A two degrees Celsius rise could see 15% to 40% of land species threatened, including 25% to 60% of mammals in South Africa and 15% to 25% of butterflies in Australia. Half the tundra and a quarter of cool conifer forest could disappear.

Warming of three degrees Celsius threatens 20% to 50% of land species, with thousands lost from biodiversity hotspots such as African national parks and the Queensland rainforest. Large areas of coastal wetlands will be lost to the rising sea.

Some models suggest the Amazon could dry up and then start to die off, says the report.

In short

# Carbon emissions have already increased global temperatures by more than 0,5 degrees Celsius.

# With no action to cut greenhouse gases, we will warm the planet another two to three degrees Celsius within 50 years.

# Temperature rise will transform the physical geography of the planet and the way we live.

# Floods, disease, storms and water shortages will become more frequent.

# The poorest countries will suffer earliest and most.

# The effects of climate change could cost the world 5% to 20% of GDP.

# Action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the worst of global warming would cost 1% of GDP.

# With no action, each ton of carbon dioxide will cause at least $85 of damage.

# Levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere should be limited to the equivalent of 450 to 550 parts per million.

# Action should include carbon pricing, new technology and robust international agreements.

Stern Review final report

© Guardian News & Media Ltd 2006

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?
articleid=288661&area=/insight/insight__economy__business/#

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Página/12:
La consigna de Isabel es siempre “no me atosiguéis”

LA JUSTICIA MENDOCINA ORDENO LA DETENCION DE LA CUPULA DEL GOBIERNO DE ISABEL PERON

Por la desaparición de Héctor Aldo Fagetti Gallego, ocurrida en febrero del ’76, el juez federal de Mendoza Raúl Héctor Acosta pidió ayer la captura de la ex presidenta y de Italo Luder, Carlos Ruckauf y Antonio Cafiero, entre otros. El juez trató de relativizar el alcance de su decisión ante el escándalo provocado.

Por Alejandra Dandan
Viernes, 03 de Noviembre de 2006

Los efectos todavía no están claros, pero podrían terminar con la detención de figuras estelares del peronismo. La decisión está en manos del juez federal Raúl Héctor Acosta de Mendoza que investiga la desaparición forzada de Héctor Aldo Fagetti Gallego, ocurrida antes del último Golpe militar. Según el juez, el caso abre la posibilidad de investigar por primera vez la responsabilidad de Isabel Martínez de Perón y sus ministros en los decretos 2070/71/72 que se convirtieron en la antesala del terrorismo del Estado. En ese contexto, ordenó la “identificación” de los domicilios y pidió la “detención inmediata” de los supuestos responsables “a efectos de recibirles declaración indagatoria” como coautores de la desaparición forzada de Fagetti. La decisión se conoció ayer por la mañana y provocó una polémica de sur a norte del país. El escándalo y el escozor en algunos sectores fue tan profundo que el propio Acosta salió a bajarle el tono a la resolución: dijo que no dijo lo que dijo, aunque quedó escrito.

La resolución de Acosta alcanza a la antigua cúpula de la viuda de Perón casi por completo: desde Italo Argentino Luder, por entonces presidente provisional del Senado, hasta Carlos Ruckauf y Antonio Cafiero, por entonces ministros de Trabajo y Economía respectivamente y hoy protegidos por los fueros legislativos.

El juez convocó a todos ellos en estos términos: el juzgado “Oficia a la Policía Federal Argentina de la delegación San Rafael que con carácter de ‘Urgente despacho’ arbitre los medios necesarios para verificar los datos patronímicos de las personas que suscriben los decretos 2070, 2071 y 2072 todos del Poder Ejecutivo Nacional del 06 de octubre de 1975 teniendo en cuenta las personas que figuran en los ‘Anales de la Legislación Argentina’, Tomo XXXV-D 1975”.

Estas personas son (Italo) “Luder, Arauz Castex, Vottero, Emery, Ruckauf, Cafiero, Robledo como ministros del Poder Ejecutivo Nacional”. A pedido del juez, las fuerzas policiales deberán determinar documentos de identidad, cargos ministeriales y domicilios actualizados.

La lista del juez incluyó, además, a María Estela Martínez de Perón. “Resultando público y notorio –dijo– que a la fecha de los hechos que se investigan ejercía la presidencia de la Nación.” Como en el resto de los casos, espera de la policía la búsqueda de un domicilio actualizado y de sus datos.

De acuerdo con la resolución, todos serán citados por primera vez a una indagatoria en el marco de una causa por desaparición forzada de Fagetti del 25 de febrero de 1976. El juez manifestó “ordenar la inmediata detención de quienes resulten indicados por los informes que se solicitan a efectos de recibirles declaración indagatoria como presuntos coautores prima facie del delito previsto y penado por el artículo 142 (privación ilegal de personas) del Código Penal”.

Eso fue lo que dejó escrito en la resolución que lleva la fecha del 27 de octubre de este año, que fue publicada ayer a la mañana por el diario Los Andes de Mendoza y que ayer el juez se negó a confirmar en distintas entrevistas.

“Técnicamente, en su resolución está pidiendo dos cosas”, explicó anoche una de los funcionarios que sigue los avances de las causas de derechos humanos en todo el país. Por un lado, el juez solicitó la “identificación” de los domicilios de los funcionarios, información que confirmó el propio Acosta durante todo el día de ayer. Por otro, y más allá de las desmentidas, la resolución indica que se está ordenando la detención de los ex funcionarios para indagarlos.

¿Puede hacerlo? La desaparición forzada de personas es un delito de lesa humanidad, según consideró la Corte Suprema de Justicia el año pasado. Ese fallo habilitó no sólo la multiplicación de causas en todo el país sino que ahora habilitaría un pedido de prisión de los hombres (y mujer) del peronismo por los mentados decretos de aniquilación. Cuando se expresó al respecto la Corte no restringió las fechas de los delitos de lesa humanidad a la etapa posterior al Golpe. Por eso y por jurisprudencia previa como el llamado caso Prats de 1974, la desaparición de Fagetti Gallero queda encuadrada allí.

La causa de San Rafael se puso en movimiento hace unos diez días. Acosta decidió impulsarla en primera persona. El expediente no tiene querellantes, quien pidió la investigación es el fiscal federal Maldonado. “Yo no quiero que se me mal interprete”, le dijo Acosta ayer a este diario cuando preguntó por la resolución. “Yo pretendo entender la legitimidad de esos famosos decretos 2770, 2771 y 2772 y a partir de ahí ver si amerita tomar medidas”. Entre esas medidas analizará la detención. “Siempre que uno sigue una causa y analiza un abanico de posibilidades está pensando en una detención”, añadió.

Entre esa explicación y lo que dejó escrito en los papeles hay algunas diferencias. El paso de los días irá diciendo finalmente qué es lo que hará.

Acosta trabaja en las causas de Derechos Humanos en una provincia controvertida. Los organismos de derechos humanos locales y los abogados de las querellas denunciaron una y otra vez las parálisis de las causas y el temperamento de los jueces federales que se declararon incompetentes cuando la Justicia Federal de Córdoba les pasó las causas. Tuvo que intervenir la Cámara de Apelaciones local para que se ordenen las investigaciones que ahora lentamente empezaron a avanzar.

Pablo Salinas es uno de los abogados de las causas de Mendoza Capital, entre otras impulsa la investigación por el homicidio de Paco Urondo. Ayer conoció la decisión de Acosta. “Está claro que los hechos son repudiables y que hay que investigarlos”, dejó en claro. “Pero yo siempre vi ese tipo de argumentos como una estrategia de defensa desplegada por los militares y sus defensores desde el Juicio a las Juntas hasta ahora.”

Ese tipo de razones ayer alentó un debate que traerá cola y que cruza el último medio siglo de historia. La revisión del último gobierno de Juan Domingo Perón, la persecución a los militantes políticos, la formación de los grupos especiales y las bandas de escuadrones asesinas de la Triple A manejadas por José López Rega desde el corazón del poder son temas que tal vez se abrirán paso detrás de la resolución –¿?– del juez mendocino.

Fuera del esquema de funcionarios nacionales y del análisis de su situación, Acosta empezará a estudiar el futuro de quienes se asociaron a la ejecución del programa del “aniquilamiento” desde Mendoza.

“Oficiar al ministro de Gobierno de la provincia de Mendoza –dice uno de los párrafos– para que informe con carácter de ‘Urgente despacho’ sobre la identidad de las personas y sus domicilios actualizados que suscribieron o dispusieron poner las fuerzas policiales y penitenciarias provinciales bajo el control operacional del Consejo de Defensa de la Nación.”

Aquellas funciones tuvieron relación directa con lo que prescribieron los decretos a partir del 6 de octubre de 1975, dado que facultaban a los gobiernos provinciales a dejar a toda su fuerza de seguridad local a disposición de un recién creado Consejo de Seguridad Interna que en manos de los militares y bajo control de la Nación quedo de “inmediato” abocada a la “lucha contra la subversión”. El Comando Superior del Presidente de la Nación debía “ejecutar las operaciones militares y de seguridad que sean necesarias a efectos de aniquilar el accionar de los elementos subversivos en todo el territorio del país” (ver aparte).

Para saber cómo fueron las cosas en Mendoza, le pidió por escrito al ministro de Gobierno que adjunte resoluciones, “actas de adhesión, convenios y normas que pudieron haberse dictado para hacer operativos los decretos en cuestión”. Además pidió copias certificadas. Si las hubiera. Aclaró.

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Página/12: “Mostré que puedo gobernar
mejor que Cardoso y hoy compito conmigo”

El reelecto presidente de Brasil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, promete un espectacular crecimiento en su país para los próximos cuatro años. Quiere un Brasil protagónico en el escenario internacional y alienta la firma de un acuerdo entre el Mercosur y la UE.

Por Jorge Marirrodriga*
Desde Brasilia, Viernes, 03 de Noviembre de 2006

Enfrascado en la formación de su nuevo gobierno, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva –Caetés, Pernambuco, 1945– apenas disfruta de la victoria electoral que el pasado domingo le ratificó como presidente de Brasil hasta el año 2010. El mandatario brasileño recibe a los corresponsales de El País, La Repubblica y Le Figaro en su despacho del palacio presidencial de Planalto, en Brasilia, momentos antes de volar a Salvador de Bahía para tomar su primer descanso desde que comenzara la campaña electoral. Promete un espectacular crecimiento de su país en los próximos años.

–¿Qué perspectiva tiene en su segundo mandato?

–Quiero tener un segundo mandato infinitamente mejor que el primero. Ahora ya no tengo que compararme con el fracaso de la política de Fernando Henrique Cardoso (el anterior presidente 19952002), sino con lo que he hecho yo. He demostrado que puedo gobernar mejor que Cardoso, pero ahora tengo que competir conmigo mismo, que es más difícil.

–Usted ha anunciado una reforma política para su segundo mandato. ¿Qué dificultades prevé en el proceso?

–La reforma política será obra de los partidos políticos y del propio Congreso. Es un proceso que antes ha sucedido en España, Italia y Francia. El problema es que cuando el sistema político queda empobrecido los partidos se acomodan. Lo que queremos es una legislación que permita la renovación de los partidos políticos, que haya fidelidad en sus militantes, estabilidad interna mediante una lista de candidatos y que la financiación de los partidos sea pública y no privada. Quiero sacar la reforma adelante de manera urgente.

–¿Qué papel juegan los escándalos de corrupción en la reforma?

–Una de las cosas que me enorgullecen es que mi primer mandato se haya caracterizado por una política de lucha contra la corrupción. Alguna vez he comentado con el ministro de Justicia que a medida que se descubren grupos de corruptos, la gente puede confundir el combate contra la corrupción con el surgimiento de ésta. Los datos de la Policía Federal demuestran que las bandas que hemos descubierto llevaban años operando en el país y nadie decía nada. Se prefirió guardar la corrupción debajo de la alfombra y nosotros la hemos sacado a luz. Entre 2003 y 2006 la Policía Federal realizó más de 300 operaciones contra la corrupción organizada. En los anteriores ocho años apenas fueron 48.

–Su forma de gobernar desde la izquierda es a menudo comparada con otra forma diferente, la del venezolano Hugo Chávez. ¿Qué le parece la comparación?

–No tiene sentido. Cada presidente gobierna en función de la cultura política de su país. La relación de Venezuela con Estados Unidos no es la relación de Brasil con Estados Unidos. Las necesidades de Venezuela no son las mismas que las de Brasil. ¿Qué hacemos con estas comparaciones entre presidentes de países distintos? Creo que Chávez es un bien para Venezuela. Es el presidente que en los últimos treinta años se ha preocupado por los pobres. Lo mismo ocurre con Evo Morales, quien defiende lo que tiene Bolivia. Chávez trabaja en función de la realidad política de Venezuela y yo, en la de Brasil. Cuando se trata de política exterior en Sudamérica pensamos igual, pero cuando se trata de relaciones estratégicas él puede pensar una cosa y yo pienso otra.

–¿Qué relación va a tener Brasil con Europa y Estados Unidos?

–Queremos una relación privilegiada con Europa y también queremos mantener una relación privilegiada con Estados Unidos, que es una relación estratégica y que es nuestro mayor socio comercial individual. Pero necesitamos abrirnos a nuevos espacios en este mundo globalizado y no podemos estar dependiendo de una economía o dos. Hemos de pensar primero en quién está más próximo a nosotros, cuáles son las similitudes entre los países de Sudamérica y Brasil y qué podemos hacer para ayudarnos mutuamente.

–Brasil lidera el bloque económico del Mercosur. ¿Qué proyectos tiene respecto de la Unión Europea?

–Brasil quiere tener un papel muy fuerte en el plano internacional y que se firme un acuerdo Mercosur y la UE. Aunque estas cosas siempre son muy difíciles terminan teniendo una solución razonable porque Brasil y Europa compartimos intereses estratégicos comunes. Estoy convencido de que Brasil está en el camino correcto de su política exterior. He recibido informes del Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores de que en noviembre del año pasado nuestras exportaciones alcanzaron los 135.000 millones dólares y un superávit comercial de 46.000 millones de dólares. Si para nosotros es importante una alianza preferente con Sudamérica, es porque somos un país rico, pero no podemos crecer con países pobres alrededor. Sabemos cómo ayudar a esos países porque somos la mayor economía de Latinoamérica y tenemos obligaciones hacia nuestros socios.

–¿Hay un cambio en la política exterior?

–Hemos eliminado de nuestro diccionario cualquier atisbo de hegemonía. Brasil no quiere liderar nada, sino ser socio de todos los países y trabajar en armonía para que la gente pueda ver crecer nuestro continente.

–Usted ha prometido que Brasil crecerá al 5 por ciento y no al 2,5 por ciento actual. ¿Por dónde pasará el cambio económico?

–Hemos tenido que hacer grandes sacrificios durante estos años para garantizar la llegada al final de mi mandato con un Brasil muy equilibrado en términos de política monetaria. Ahora tenemos gran crecimiento de exportaciones, mercado interno, masa salarial, crédito y una caída de la inflación y la miseria. Por tanto, tenemos la estructura de la casa a punto para que la gente pueda dar el siguiente paso. Llevamos un año y medio sacando adelante el PPP (una ley que favorece la inversión privada en grandes obras públicas) para inversiones en grandes proyectos públicos. Estas inversiones se pondrán en marcha los tres primeros meses del año que viene.

–¿Qué papel jugará la inversión extranjera?

–Pretendo realizar numerosos seminarios con inversores españoles, italianos, franceses, ingleses o americanos para mostrar los nichos de oportunidad para el inversor en Brasil. Tengo la certeza de que Brasil puede crecer al 5 por ciento y mucho más.

* De El País de Madrid. Especial para Página/12.

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Página/12:
Choque de policías y estudiantes en Oaxaca

CON PALOS Y PIEDRAS, LOS UNIVERSITARIOS REPELIERON A LOS POLICIAS FEDERALES

Ayer se desató una batalla campal por el control de una radio que se transmite desde la universidad y que aglutina las fuerzas de la protesta social que mantiene en jaque al gobernador Ulises Ruiz. Los federales no pudieron doblegar a los manifestantes.

Por Gerardo Albarrán de Alba
Desde México, D. F., Viernes, 03 de Noviembre de 2006

El último bastión de la Asamblea Popular de los Pueblos de Oaxaca (APPO) fue asaltado ayer por elementos de la Policía Federal Preventiva que ocupan la ciudad desde el viernes pasado. La Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (Uabjo) fue cercada desde varios puntos y la policía avanzó hacia el campus, lo que provocó enfrentamientos durante ocho horas en las barricadas que resguardan los accesos a la Ciudad Universitaria. Al final, la PFP no pudo someter a los estudiantes y asambleístas y debió replegarse, pero los choques constantes dejaron un saldo de dos periodistas, siete policías y 12 jóvenes heridos, así como ocho detenidos. Este punto resulta estratégico porque desde sus instalaciones transmite la Radio Universidad, el único medio que le queda a la APPO para mantener la comunicación con el movimiento popular y organizar movilizaciones de emergencia. Con ocupaciones de edificios públicos, barricadas callejeras y huelgas docentes, los asambleístas mantuvieron paralizado el estado del sur mexicano durante más de cinco meses, hasta que la policía intervino la semana pasada. Pero la lucha política continúa.

En un primer asalto, a las 7.45 de la mañana, la PFP liberó las calles adyacentes a la universidad, y aunque se lanzaron tres granadas de gases lacrimógenos al interior del campus, los jefes del operativo declararon a los medios que no tenían instrucciones ni intenciones de tomar por la fuerza el recinto universitario. Al mediodía habían logrado retirar la mayor parte de las barricadas y avanzaban hacia el campus, pero debieron retroceder un par de veces ante una contraofensiva estudiantil. Ya con refuerzos, más de mil efectivos policiales, apoyados por 12 tanquetas con cañones de agua y cuatro helicópteros, realizaron varias incursiones durante ocho horas continuas hasta que se posicionaron en los principales accesos y se ubicaron en una rotonda.

Estudiantes y miembros de la APPO los repelieron con piedras, bombas molotov y rompeportones. Cerca de las 2.30 de la tarde, cientos de jóvenes habían rodeado a la policía desde diversos puntos. Algunos autos, autobuses y una casa ardían en llamas. La PFP perdió todo el control del operativo cuando estudiantes y militantes de la APPO les cerraron cualquier vía de escape y comenzaron a avanzar hacia ellos, además de que los enfrentamientos se habían extendido a varias colonias aledañas. Entonces los policías abandonaron las posiciones que habían conquistado en el curso del día y salieron del lugar apoyados por un helicóptero desde el que disparaban gases lacrimógenos hacia los estudiantes que seguían lanzando piedras.

Por la mañana, el rector de la Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (Uabjo), Francisco Martínez Neri, había pedido al gobierno federal que “recapacitara” y advirtió que una incursión de la PFP al campus universitario “tendrá consecuencias; la universidad no merece un allanamiento de esta naturaleza”. Horas después, en una transmisión desde Radio Universidad, defendió la autonomía universitaria y exigió el retiro de las fuerzas federales. Un ex rector de la Uabjo, Felipe Martínez Soriano (quien alguna vez fue preso como dirigente del movimiento guerrillero Partido Revolucionario Obrero Clandestino Unión del Pueblo y el Partido de los Pobres), llamó a los universitarios a defender la autonomía de la Uabjo “que tanta sangre ha costado”, y llamó al pueblo a “unirse a esta lucha” desde las barricadas que rodean Ciudad Universitaria.

En la Ciudad de México, varias de las principales calles y avenidas fueron cerradas por militantes de la APPO y simpatizantes que organizaron marchas en cuanto arreciaron los enfrentamientos en Oaxaca. Cientos de personas respondieron a los llamados hechos desde Radio Universidad (que se sintoniza por Internet) y a través de mensajes por teléfono celular y correo electrónico. Las marchas se dirigieron hacia las oficinas de la Secretaría de Gobernación y de la Policía Federal Preventiva, ambas en el centro de la ciudad.

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Página/12:
El policía inglés que mató a Menezes volvió a la carga

La familia del brasileño Charles de Menezes, asesinado porque se lo confundió con un terrorista tras los ataques de Londres, se indignó al conocer que uno de los policías mató a otro hombre.

Por Jason Bennetto*
Viernes, 03 de Noviembre de 2006

La familia del electricista brasileño, asesinado en Londres porque se lo confundió con un terrorista, reaccionó con furia ayer ante la noticia de que uno de los policías implicados en su muerte le había disparado a otro hombre causándole la muerte. El oficial de bomberos involucrado en la última balacera –de un sospechoso de robo a mano armada– era uno de los dos hombres que le dispararon a Jean Charles de Menezes, de 27 años, en la estación de subte de Stockwell en el sur de Londres en julio del año pasado, según fuentes de la policía.

Los dos oficiales fueron absueltos para volver y cumplir con sus deberes sin restricciones a fines de julio de este año, después de que el Servicio Fiscal de la Corona decidió que ningún oficial individual debería ser culpado por el incidente. En el último, un equipo de especialistas de Scotland Yard, la unidad de bomberos C019, estaba apoyando a detectives cuando intentó detener un ataque sospechoso en el banco Nationwide Building Society en New Romney, Kent, el martes a la noche. Un hombre de 42 años que supuestamente estaba implicado en el robo fue baleado por un policía durante la operación y murió más tarde en el hospital. La revelación de que había habido otro disparo fatal provocó la furiosa reacción de la familia De Menezes, que dijo estar “horrorizada” por lo sucedido.

Un vocero de la familia dijo: “La familia de Jean Charles de Menezes expresó su horror e incredulidad ante la noticia de que oficiales involucrados en la muerte de Jean Charles han matado nuevamente. Los miembros de la familia estaban horrorizados al enterarse de que los mismos oficiales habían recibido licencia para matar nuevamente, aun antes de que el proceso por la investigación de la muerte de Jean concluyera”. Alex Pereira, un primo de De Menezes, añadió: “Estamos asombrados de que alguien responsable por la muerte de un hombre inocente obtenga la licencia para matar. Las investigaciones sobre la muerte de Jean no han terminado, pero a los mismos oficiales se les entregaron sus armas como si nada hubiese ocurrido. Sir Ian Blair puede haber deseado poder barrer la muerte de Jean bajo la alfombra, pero cuando se repiten los mismos errores, tiene que hacerse responsable”.

La Comisión Independiente de Quejas de la Policía (IPCC), sus siglas en inglés, lanzó una investigación sobre los disparos de New Romney. Scotland Yard se negó a confirmar detalles de quién estaba involucrado en el último tiroteo. La fuerza sólo dijo que el equipo C019, implicado en la operación de Kent incluía a oficiales del incidente Stockwell. Los disparos sucedieron durante lo que se cree fue una operación de vigilancia por la policía del edificio, después de que se recibiera un aviso alertando que una banda armada estaba planeando un ataque. Los sospechosos aparentemente fueron enfrentados cuando salían del edificio. El hombre al que la policía le disparó supuestamente había abierto el fuego. La policía recuperó un arma de la escena.

Damian Hockney, un miembro de la Autoridad Policial Metropolitana, dijo que el involucramiento del oficial del caso De Menezes, suscitaba dificultades. “Es difícil saber lo que pudo haber hecho un oficial”, dijo. “Pero en el contexto de Stockwell, provoca algunas preguntas incómodas sobre dónde se ubica a un oficial armado de vuelta en la calle después de un incidente. ¿Cuánto tiempo debe pasar y hasta dónde uno debe ir para mantenerlos en segundo plano? ¿Es eso práctico?” Añadió: “Los oficiales armados se ofrecen como voluntarios para protegernos en las situaciones más difíciles y estoy preocupado, porque este último incidente puede provocar que los oficiales se muestren más reticentes a portar armas”. A De Menezes le dispararon siete veces en la cabeza en la estación de subte de Stockwell, después de que lo confundieran con un terrorista suicida. Durante más de un año después los dos policías tiradores, cuyas identidades han permanecido en secreto, han estado restringidos en sus deberes de acuerdo con el protocolo policial.

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

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elmundo/4-75558-2006-11-03.html

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Página/12:
Mujeres que corren a todos

Por Sandra Russo
Viernes, 03 de Noviembre de 2006

Hace ya algunos años, el libro de la norteamericana Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Mujeres que corren con lobos, causó un furor pocas veces visto entre el público lector femenino con alguna, aunque fuera mínima, conciencia de género. Fue uno de esos sucesos editoriales que surgen cuando un libro habla de algo que está en el aire y todavía no fue dicho. Mujeres... invistió y habilitó para millones de lectoras de todo el mundo la faceta guerrera femenina no como una contradicción, sino como un complemento de la feminidad profunda. Puede decirse, se me ocurre ahora, que Mujeres... fue un libro que incorporó cierta tendencia fálica como propia e inherente al género.

Su éxito dice entre otras cosas que eso estaba sucediendo en la realidad y que no estaba todavía conceptualizado. Hace algunos años, se usaba la palabra “fálica” como una acusación.

Las mujeres que corrían con lobos no eran, sin embargo, mujeres corridas de lugar, sino ubicadas en el centro de un instinto. A las mujeres nos han sido culturalmente confiscadas la ferocidad, la ira, la capacidad de ataque, el deseo de revancha. Todo eso ha ido a parar al equipaje que trae consigo la mala mujer. Más allá del libro, en el cotidiano promedio, empezó a haber un nuevo consenso implícito sobre lo femenino: no somos naturalmente buenas, ni dóciles.

Ese movimiento de sentido trajo nuevas conductas femeninas, como tomar la iniciativa. Muchas mujeres de todas las edades viven señalando con el dedo o gritando lo que quieren. No lo ocultan, como las geishas ocultaban la cara atrás del abanico. Esa es otra faceta con incipiente público admirador. Las mujeres empezaron a correr a los hombres. Correrlos para conocerlos, correrlos para tener una cita, correrlos para tener sexo, correrlos para tener la llave de la casa, y así sucesivamente, hasta que al hombre en cuestión le agarra el inevitable ataque de fobia masiva, y hace su retirada a la cueva.

Toda la tarea del cortejo, la seducción, el timing y hasta la provisión de cerveza, parece haber quedado en manos femeninas, que también se ocupan de sus juguetes eróticos en imágenes porno soft que se multiplican.

El péndulo de las tendencias parece haber completado un ciclo más. Hoy en el aire, a diferencia de hace unos años, no hay necesidad de que a una mujer le subrayen que es fuerte. Lo que hay es cansancio, bastante cansancio, y ganas de encontrar a un hombre en el que descansar.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-75560-2006-11-03.html

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The Independent: Pollock's 'No. 5, 1948'
commands record price for a painting

By David Usborne in New York
Published: 03 November 2006

When Jackson Pollock, the troubled and alcoholic American painter, dribbled paint on to a bare board laid on the floor of his Long Island studio nearly 60 years ago, he may or may not have wondered what kind of money might one day be paid for it. If he did, he surely never would have dreamed in millions.

Now we know that the natural insecurity of the artist was gravely, even naïvely, misplaced. Fast forward to yesterday when news emerged that one of the largest paintings Pollock completed - unromantically entitled No. 5, 1948 - has quietly changed hands for no less a sum than $140m (£73.35m).

The person alleged to have offloaded the picture, which measures 4ft by 8ft (1.2 by 2.4m), is David Geffen, a Los Angeles entertainment tycoon. Meanwhile, the price he charged - if the transaction is confirmed - would make it the most money ever paid for a painting, exceeding the $134m paid recently by the cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder for Gustav Klimt's shimmering Adele Bloch-Bauer I.

While the public was able to view the Klimt painting, which Lauder bought to hang in his own, public, Neue Galerie on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue opposite the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is most unlikely that any of us will be given equal access to the large Pollock.

The buyer, according to The New York Times, was David Martinez, a Mexican best known for keeping his private affairs, and presumably private possessions also, all to himself.

We do know, however, that Mr Martinez, 48, the founder of London-based Fintech Advisory Ltd, a financial house that specialises in buying Third World debt and which has a New York branch, has long been an avid art collector. Most of it ends up on the walls of the super-luxury apartment he bought in Manhattan's soaring Time Warner Centre for $54.7m two years ago.

Guests at Mr Martinez's apartment, on the 76th floor of one of the centre's blue-glassed towers, which he bought as a raw space when they were completed on Columbus Circle, will at first be struck by the 360-degree views over Manhattan and Central Park. Then, however, their eyes will surely settle on the art collection, which already includes works by Rothko and De Kooning, among others. But with 12,000 square feet of floor space, he presumably has free walls for his new Pollock too.

What the reclusive Mr Martinez seems to have acquired this week is a classic among Pollock's drip paintings, a thicket of yellow, white, maroon and black squiggles chaotically unleashed on to a sheet of fibreboard. Scholars of Pollock, who died in 1956 in a car crash, acknowledge the continuity of his drip-painting theme, but point to a wild diversity in his work also, with surfaces that ranged from powdery, to glass-smooth and encrusted.

Pollock's golden period came in 1950, just six years before he died at the wheel, tragically young at just 44 years old. In that single year, he gave the world works that included Autumn Rhythm, No. 32 and One, all three of which transport the viewer with his sublime loops of unrestrained energy.

Mr Geffen meanwhile seems to be engaged in something of a selling spree, adding to speculation that he may be manoeuvring to buy the Los Angeles Times newspaper, for which he may need new sources of cash. He is said to have sold two other paintings from his collection in the past month alone - a Jasper Johns and a De Kooning - for a total of $145.3m.

The Pollock sale comes, meanwhile, as the New York art scene is holding its breath for an autumn auction season that promises some extra excitement - and maybe more record prices - of its own. Among works scheduled for sale in the next two weeks is a Picasso belonging to Lord Lloyd-Webber and a Gauguin painting, Man with an Ax. Also begging for buyers is an Andy Warhol self-portrait.

Both Christie's and Sotheby's, the auction houses which perennially vie for the most glamorous and most lucrative of art auctions, are reporting unusually high levels of interest in this year's auctions, another sign that buyers for ultra-expensive art are in historically high supply. Christie's has already arranged for an overflow room to its main 750-seat sales room to accommodate all the expected bidders.

But for now, it appears the record for the priciest picture ever sold is Mr Geffen's.

It would have been held, until now, not by Mr Lauder but by the Las Vegas casino mogul Steve Wynn, who in October was set to sell a Picasso portrait to the financier Stephen Cohen for $139m. That deal famously fell through when Mr Wynn accidentally put his elbow through the canvas while showing it to friends.

Top sellers

£70m ($135m) - Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I by Gustav Klimt, June 2006

£58m ($104m) - Garçon à la Pipe by Pablo Picasso, May 2004

£51.5m ($95m) - Dora Maar au Chat by Pablo Picasso, March 2006

£47.1m ($82.5m) - Portrait du Dr Gachet by Vincent van Gogh, May 1990

£44.5m ($78m) - Au Moulin de la Galette by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, May 1990

£43.8m ($76.7m) - The Massacre of the Innocents by Peter Paul Rubens, July 2002

£37.1m ($65m) - Portrait de l'Artiste Sans Barbe by Vincent van Gogh, November 1998

£31.4m ($55m) - Rideau, Cruchon et Compotier by Paul Cézanne, May 1999

£28m ($51.67m) - Les Noces de Pierrette by Pablo Picasso, November 1989


© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1951278.ece

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The Independent:
A violent drunk - and the world's greatest painter?

Tom Lubbock
Published: 03 November 2006

Apocalyptic wallpaper: that was the brilliant phrase coined by the New York critic Harold Rosenberg, and it has stuck to Jackson Pollock's paintings ever since. It sums up the Pollock dilemma. Are these dense fields of looping drips and spatters profoundly meaningful - or profoundly meaningless? Whichever way they take you, there's no escaping the fact that, 50 years after his death, Pollock is still enormous.

No. 5, 1948 is one of his classics. It was made at the height of Pollock's powers. A year later Life magazine was asking: "Is he America's greatest living artist?" He was only in his late thirties. But it wasn't long before the claims got even bigger. Not just America's greatest, but the world's.

Of course, the hand of history was partly pulling the strings. Here was the United States: just won the war, richest nation, top of the free world, supremely confident. It needed something equivalent on the cultural front - something new and dynamic and ruggedly individualistic. Circumstances meant that the next big thing in American art was likely to get very big indeed.

Pollock's work fitted the bill perfectly. Its temperament was free, raw, expansive, commanding. It had wild pioneer spirit. But also it was - really was - highly original. The novelty of the paintings he made in a barn at the back of his Long Island home was partly in how they looked, partly in how they were done. The composition was "all over". There was no image, of course, and no governing design or obvious focal points. Pollock abandoned handiwork, too. Dripping his paint from sticks and old brushes, he substituted gravity for touch.

The relationship between painter and painting was changed. The canvas was laid on the floor. It became an arena for action. What developed on the surface wasn't so much a picture as a record of spontaneously choreographed body movement, energy, reflex. When someone asked why he didn't work from nature, he replied simply: "I am nature."

But he was myth too. "Jack the Dripper" was the archetypal boho rude-boy, famous for pissing in his patron's fireplaces. He was a violent brawling drunk, who would quite likely have drunk himself into oblivion if he hadn't died, aged 44, at the wheel of his car. But that premature death, that sudden crash, only made the myth stronger, more romantic, more desperate, more tragic. Along with Albert Camus and Marilyn Monroe, Pollock became one of the first great celebrity casualties.

Hard to see past a fame like that, and when a record sale price is added, even harder. But paintings are still just visible. And their power is that, for all their status and influence, when you're in front of them they refuse to settle into being works of art.

Pollock was right: he was nature. His achievement was to make human artefacts that have the fascination of convulsive natural phenomena, like geezers, like nebulae: blank wonders, endlessly interpretable.

© 2006 Independent News and Media Limited

http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article1951242.ece

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TomDispatch:
Nick Turse on the Bush Planetary Lock Up

The evil nature of our enemies has, it turns out, certain advantages - at least when secret imprisonment and torture are at stake. The Bush administration has proved adamantly unwilling to talk to, or deal with, the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, except when it came to parking terror suspects we wanted tortured on his lot. In fact, the Syrians proved so handy and so eager to be good allies in the shadow world of global incarceration that U.S. officials turned over at least 7 of their prisoners to Syrian ministrations, according to a recent piece in the British Guardian.

There was nothing unique about administration reliance on the Syrians for this. From Uzbekistan to Egypt, autocratic regimes willing to torture have been destinations for CIA secret prisoner "rendering" operations. Following kidnappings or captures elsewhere on Earth, the Agency has sent planes hopscotching - sometimes thousands of miles - across the globe to our jailors of choice. Though the aircraft used were posh indeed, such assignments proved so rigorous for CIA handlers that they evidently regularly repaired to five-star hotels in Italy, on the Spanish island of Majorca, and possibly elsewhere for a little of the recuperative good life. In places like the Marriott Son Antem, a golfing resort in the Majorcan city of Palma, they could "journey to deep inner peace" (as the hotel spa advertised) at American taxpayer expense, even while on "extraordinary rendition" trips.

In fact, when it comes to what Nick Turse calls the Bush administration's "prison planet," little bits of news about further horrors seep out almost daily. Just in the last week, for instance, thanks to the Israeli paper Haaretz, we learned for the first time that at least some CIA rendition flights stopped at Ben-Gurion International Airport in Tel Aviv on their way to and from Cyprus, Jordan, Morocco, and other spots east and west, north and south - and that the first case "of the United States handing Israel a world jihadi suspect" in a rendition operation has been confirmed.

At the same time, if you happened to be checking the South African press, you might have noticed a report that, a year ago, 10 unidentified men in several "luxury vehicles" - luxury being a good sign that the CIA is probably involved - pulled up in front of a home in the medium-sized town of Estcourt, ransacked it at gunpoint, shooed away the police, and then hooded and dragged off two Muslim men, one of whom was later released (thanks to the intercession of a South African lawyer). The other, Rashid Khalid, a Pakistani national, is suspected of being somewhere in the system of American secret global detention centers, but his fate remains a mystery twelve months later.

Meanwhile, in Iraq, the International Red Cross, it was reported, had "its first opportunity in more than 20 months" to see hundreds of former Abu Ghraib prisoners now rehoused in a state-of-the-art multimillion dollar prison, Camp Cropper, that the Bush administration has built, almost without notice, near Baghdad International Airport. Finally (but not exhaustively), back in our growing homeland security state, "in a stealth maneuver, President Bush has signed into law a provision which, according to Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vermont), will actually encourage the President to declare federal martial law." The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, according to Frank Morales, "allows the President to declare a ‘public emergency' and station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities, in order to ‘suppress public disorder.'"

And that's just a modest grab bag of recent Bush administration global incarceration news, another humdrum week on what's increasingly coming to look like an American prison planet. These bits and pieces of information seeping out are undoubtedly merely suggestive of what we don't yet know. Now, let Nick Turse, in his usual vivid, well researched fashion, make a little sense of all this for you. Tom

American Prison Planet
The Bush Administration as Global Jailor

By Nick Turse

Today, the United States presides over a burgeoning empire - not only the "empire of bases" first described by Chalmers Johnson, but a far-flung new network of maximum security penitentiaries, detention centers, jail cells, cages, and razor wire-topped pens. From supermax-type isolation prisons in 40 of the 50 states to shadowy ghost jails at remote sites across the globe, this new network of detention facilities is quite unlike the gulags, concentration-camps, or prison nations of the past.

Even with a couple million prisoners under its control, the U.S. prison network lacks the infrastructure or manpower of the Soviet gulag or the orderly planning of the Nazi concentration-camp system. However, where it bests both, and breaks new incarceration ground, is in its planet-ranging scope, with sites scattered the world over - from Europe to Asia, the Middle East to the Caribbean. Unlike colonial prison systems of the past, the new U.S. prison network seems to have floated almost free of surrounding colonies. Right now, it has only four major centers - the "homeland," Afghanistan, Iraq, and a postage-stamp-sized parcel of Cuba. As such, it already hovers at the edge of its own imperial existence, bringing to mind the unprecedented possibility of a prison planet. In a remarkably few years, the Bush administration has been able to construct a global detention system, already of near epic proportions, both on the fly and on the cheap.

Sizing Up a Prison Planet

Soon after the attacks of September 11th, 2001, the U.S. began the process of creating what has been termed "an offshore archipelago of injustice." In addition to using "the Charleston Navy Brig" and locking up "one prisoner of war in Miami, Florida," according to the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Bush administration detained people from around the world in sweeps, imprisoned them without charges and kept them incommunicado at U.S. detention facilities at a CIA prison outside Kabul, Afghanistan (code-named the "Salt Pit"), at Bagram military airbase in Afghanistan, and at Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, Cuba, among other sites.

Since it was set up in 2002, the detainment complex at Guantanamo Bay has been the public face of the Bush administration's semi-secret foreign prison network - a collection of camps, cells, and cages that today holds 437 prisoners. But "Gitmo" has always been the tiny showpiece, the jewel in a very dark crown, for a much larger, less visible foreign network of military detention facilities, CIA "black" sites, and outsourced foreign prisons. It is a prison camp that rightly attracts opprobrium, but it also serves to focus attention away from shadowy ghost jails, borrowed third-nation facilities, much larger prisons holding thousands in Iraq, and a full-scale network of detention centers and prisons in Afghanistan.

We may never know how many secret prisons exist (or, for a time, existed) in the shape-shifting American mini-gulag, but according to the Washington Post, some locations for these black sites include itinerant CIA detention centers "on ships at sea," a site in Thailand, and another on "Britain's Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean." Uzbekistan has been reported as one possible location, Algeria another. Denials were issued about ghost jails being located in Russia and Bulgaria. The British Guardian named "a US airbase in the Gulf state of Qatar" as another suspected site. And while proposed prisons on "virtually unvisited islands in Lake Kariba in Zambia" were evidently nixed, various black sites located in "several democracies in Eastern Europe" apparently did come into being.

ABC News reported that the "CIA established secret prisons in Romania and Poland in 2002-2003" before shutting them down in early 2006 and moving the disappeared prisoners on to "a facility in North Africa." Following this report, Tomdispatch contacted Major General Timothy Ghormley, then the commander of the Combined Task Force Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) for U. S. Central Command, to inquire about the prisoner transfer. Ghormley stated: "There are no other U.S. bases in the Horn of Africa besides Camp Lemonier [in Djibouti]." He went on to assert, "There are no prisons under CJTF-HOA's command, and Camp Lemonier does not do prisoner transfers." When asked about CIA operations at the camp, he said he was barred from talking about "any security operations worldwide" and could not speak for the CIA. It is, however, worth noting that Amnesty International reported earlier this year on a Yemeni man who was "disappeared" and "flown on a small US plane to a site probably in Djibouti, where he was questioned by officials who told him they were from the FBI."

While these illegal sites, mainly run by the CIA, were intermittently identified in the U.S. or foreign press, it was only this September that President George W. Bush finally acknowledged the existence of the CIA's secret prisons. Still, it's unknown how many CIA black sites are still active and how many clandestine military prisons are still in operation.

What little we do know, however, indicates that the "archipelago of injustice" has grown to world-spanning proportions. For example, in an investigative article in the British Guardian in March 2005, Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott-Clark reported that a network of over 20 U.S. prisons was believed to exist in Afghanistan, including "an official US detention centre in Kandahar, where the tough regime has been nicknamed ‘Camp Slappy' by former prisoners." Just recently, Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson, authors of Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights, confirmed this, reporting that "the U.S. military has erected some 20 detention centers [in Afghanistan]… which all operate in near total secrecy. These are facilities that the U.N., the Afghan government, journalists, and human rights groups can't get into."

We know as well that suspects, swept up around the world, have been outsourced to the prisons and torture chambers of third countries in "extraordinary rendition" operations. The number of prisons operated by other countries is shadowy, but certainly geographically wide-ranging. Foreign facilities available for Bush administration use evidently have included the al-Tamara interrogation center, located in "a forest five miles outside [Morocco's] capital, Rabat"; sites in Jordan including "prisons in the capital, Amman, and in desert locations in the east of the country"; facilities in Saudi Arabia; "a series of jails in Damascus," Syria; "the interrogation centre in the general intelligence directorate in Lazoughli and in Mulhaq al-Mazra prison" in Egypt; "facilities in Baku, Azerbaijan"; and "unidentified locations in Thailand," among others.

The treatment given in 2002 to Canadian Maher Arar, recently the recipient of the Letelier-Moffitt International Human Rights Award, offers a glimpse into the American prison planet in action in its early stages of formation. Arar has described how he was detained and then held incommunicado - shackled and chained - in a terminal in New York's JFK Airport before being transported to Brooklyn's Metropolitan Detention Center. At that Federal prison, Arar recalls an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent telling him, "The INS is not the body or the agency that signed the Geneva Convention… against torture."

"For me," said Arar, a Canadian citizen born in Syria, "what that really meant is we will send you to torture and we don't care." He was, in fact, soon flown to Jordan, where he was beaten, and then driven to Syria. There, he was locked in a filthy, dark cell "about three feet wide, six feet deep and about seven feet high" where he was kept in isolation for 10 months and 10 days when not being physically assaulted. Despite being tortured into a false confession, Arar was found to have no links to terrorism and was never charged with crimes of any sort by the United States, Canada, Jordan, or Syria. Instead, he was sent back to Canada without so much as an apology or explanation by the Bush administration. His is the archetypal tale of the American prison planet that has been under construction these last years - a torture tour of the globe's most dismal hell holes. How many others have suffered variations of this treatment remains unknown. The few useful figures we do have, such as the European parliament's April 2006 findings of over 1,000 secret CIA flights over European Union territory alone since 2001, suggest a large number of "extraordinary renditions" have been carried out.

When President Bush finally came (somewhat) clean about the CIA's illegal prisons (even turning them, along with his torture policies, into a proud election issue), a senior State Department official also asserted that there were "no detainees" still in them. Within days, however, newspapers began to point to evidence that people presumed to have been disappeared by the U.S. were still unaccounted for. In mid-October, a specific case hit the press when it was disclosed that "a Syrian with Spanish citizenship, was captured in Pakistan in October 2005 and is held in a prison operated by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency."

Operation Iraqi Freedom?

The war in Iraq boosted the profile of the American prison planet immeasurably, especially after the Abu Ghraib prison revelations burst into public view in the spring of 2004. At that time, approximately 20,000 Iraqis were imprisoned by U.S. forces, including - a report that year disclosed - more than 100 children as young as 10 years of age.

Over two years later, there are still many thousands of Iraqis held by U.S. forces in that country - including about 3,550 in a brand new "$60-million state-of-the-art detention center" at Camp Cropper near Baghdad's airport and another almost 9,500 in somewhat more primitive prison conditions at Camp Bucca in the south and Fort Suse in the Kurdish north.

Meanwhile, the number of prisoners and detainees held by the U.S.-backed Iraqi government and allied militias and death squads is murky at best, but probably sizeable. Secret prisons - where the grimmest kinds of torture are performed, often with power drills - are reputed to be scattered around Baghdad, the capital. In November 2005, then-Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari admitted receiving word on conditions in just one of these. According to the BBC, "173 detainees had been held [in an Interior Ministry building], that they appeared malnourished, and may have been 'subjected to some kind of torture.'" The next month, the Washington Post reported the discovery of a "second Interior Ministry detention center where cases of prisoner abuse have been confirmed by U.S. and Iraqi officials."

By June of this year, it was reported that the Iraqi Interior Ministry was still holding 1,797 prisoners; the Defense Ministry a smaller undisclosed number; and the Justice Ministry, at least 7,426.

Lockdown, USA

The offshore archipelago of injustice garners the headlines, but it's the homeland prison network that locks up far more people and provides at least one possible model for what the foreign network could morph into given the time and funds to expand and harden into a permanent supermax system. Comprised of federal and state prisons, territorial prisons, local jails, "facilities operated by or exclusively for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement," military prisons, "jails in Indian country," and juvenile detention facilities, the homeland prison system is a truly massive apparatus.

Just as the global network has expanded in the years since 9/11, so has incarceration in the U.S. In fact, it has climbed steadily in recent years. Today, the U.S. stands preeminent among all nations in treating people like caged animals. According to statistics provided to the BBC by the International Centre for Prison Studies, 724 people per 100,000 are imprisoned in the U.S., overwhelmingly trumping even increasingly authoritarian Russia, the world's second-ranked prison power, who's rate of caging humans is only 581 per 100,000.

All told, the U.S. now has 2,135,901 prisoners in domestic detention facilities, alone - several hundred thousand more than are imprisoned in both China and India, the world's two most populous countries, combined. Of these people, 192,198 are imprisoned in federal facilities - though just 5.3% of them for the violent crimes of most people's nightmares: homicide, aggravated assault, kidnapping, and sex offenses. Instead, most - 53.6 % - are locked up on (often small-time) drug charges.

Of the federal prison population, the government classifies about 0.1 % (100 people) as having committed "national security" offenses. There's no category in the U.S. system for political prisoners, which doesn't mean they don't exist. According to a 2002 Harvard BlackLetter Law Journal article by J. Soffiyah Elijah, there were, prior to September 11, 2001, "nearly 100 political prisoners and prisoners of war incarcerated in the United States" - many of them the surviving victims of Vietnam-era government campaigns against activists.

There is also another group of political prisoners of indeterminate number not listed on the rolls - war resisters. Just recently Iraq War veteran turned resister Kevin Benderman was released from a military prison where he had been held for over a year for refusing to redeploy to Iraq due to his conscientious objection to the war. While Army Lieutenant Ehren Watada is currently facing an eight-year prison sentence, if convicted, for similar opposition to Iraq. One website lists 27 war resisters "presently in legal jeopardy, or currently incarcerated" who have gone public with their stories.

Additionally, in the immediate wake of 9/11, the government conducted sweeps of Muslim immigrants (and Muslim-Americans) reminiscent of the detentions of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II, "locking up large numbers of Middle Eastern men, using whatever legal tools they can." There was never any full accounting of these mass roundups, codenamed PENTTBOM, or what happened to all the people who were rousted from beds or yanked out of places of work by federal agents. What little is known suggests that "762 of the 1,200 PENTTBOM arrestees were charged with immigration violations at the behest of the FBI because agents thought they might be associated with terrorism... [but] almost every one was either deported or released within a few months." Only a small percentage of the 1,200 are thought to have even been processed through the federal criminal justice system.

This summer the Washington Post announced that, after 5 years of captivity, Benamar Benatta, "believed to be the last remaining domestic detainee from the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was released." In mid-October, however, word surfaced that Ali Partovi, also caught in the dragnet, was still being held captive although he "is not charged with a crime, not suspected of a crime, [and] not considered a danger to society."

Preemptive Incarceration

From time to time, certain people in the U.S. also find themselves tossed into special kinds of detention facilities. For example, during the 2004 Republican National Convention (RNC) in New York City, protesters (and also bystanders) swept up in indiscriminate mass arrests or illegal acts of preemptive incarceration were temporarily locked up in "Marine and Aviation Pier 57," a filthy facility of razor-wire topped chain-link cages that was soon dubbed "Guantanamo on the Hudson." While being imprisoned in New York City's own Gitmo didn't begin to compare to being tossed in the real McCoy or any other secret offshore site, there was one striking similarity. U.S. intelligence officials estimated that 70-90% of prisoners detained in Iraq "had been arrested by mistake." That was also 2004. The next year, it was revealed that, of the large majority of RNC arrest cases that had run their course, 91% of the arrests were dismissed or ended in acquittals.

On the American prison planet, not only has the principle of habeas corpus been formally abolished and torture proudly added to the mix, but that crucial tenet of the legal system, the presumption of innocence, has been cast aside. Whether at home or abroad, the solution for U.S. security forces is a simple one, identify the likely suspects, conduct sweeps, and preemptively lock them up.

Concentration Camp, USA?

According to recent statements by the Department Homeland Security 's Immigration and Customs Enforcement bureau, some time in the future undocumented economic migrants may be imprisoned on "old cruise ships." Other illegals may even find themselves in a KBR concentration camp.

Earlier this year, news broke that Halliburton subsidiary, KBR - the firm infamous for building prison facilities at Guantanamo Bay and for scandals stemming from work in the Iraq war zone - received a $385 million contract from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to build detention centers, according to the New York Times, "for an unexpected influx of immigrants" or "new programs that require additional detention space." For anyone who remembers the First World War-era proposal by four state governors to imprison members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) for the duration of the conflict, or the 1939 Hobbs ("Concentration Camp") Bill that sought the detention of aliens, or the forcible relocation and imprisonment of Japanese and Japanese-Americans during World War II, or the 1950 McCarran Act's provisions for setting up concentration camps for subversives, or the Vietnam-era plans to round up and jail radicals in the event of a national emergency and conduct mass detentions in the face of possible urban insurrections, the announcement may have seemed less than startling. But thought of in the context of prison-planet planning, it nonetheless strikes an ominous note indeed.

One Vietnam-era radical, former Pentagon analyst Daniel Ellsberg, grasped the implications immediately. "Almost certainly this is preparation for a roundup after the next 9/11 for Mid-Easterners, Muslims and possibly dissenters," he said. "They've already done this on a smaller scale, with the 'special registration' detentions of immigrant men from Muslim countries, and with Guantanamo."

Fear of a Prison Planet

In 2005, Irene Khan, Amnesty International's general secretary, described Guantanamo Bay as "the gulag of our time." But the American gulag is so much more than Guantanamo and so much worse. The combination of U.S. "homeland" prisons, where "one in 140 Americans, or as many people as live in Namibia, or nearly five Luxembourgs" are locked away, the offshore imperial detention facilities, the shadowy CIA black sites, and the ever-shifting outsourced detention facilities operated by other nations adds up to something new in history - the makings of a veritable American prison planet.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. He has written for the San Francisco Chronicle, the Nation, the Village Voice, and regularly for Tomdispatch.

Copyright 2006 Nick Turse

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