Elsewhere Today 435

Aljazeera:
Car bomb rocks Afghan Nato airport

FRIDAY, AUGUST 31, 2007
8:54 MECCA TIME, 5:54 GMT

One Afghan soldier was killed and several wounded after a suicide car bomb exploded outside a Nato military airport in Kabul, officials said.

The blast took place near a group of Afghan soldiers after apparently failing to explode during a head-on collision with a German military vehicle, one Afghan soldier said.

Ali Shah Paktiawa, a Kabul police official, said: "The bomber was in a car and tried to get into the airport through an entrance under the control of Isaf.

"I know that one Afghan has been killed and there are wounded people too. I do not know about Isaf casualties," he said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Civilians killed

Zemarai Bashary, the Afghan interior ministry spokesman, said two civilians were among the injured.

The Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) confirmed the explosion had involved some of its soldiers and a spokeswoman said some suffered minor injuries.

The 37-nation Isaf does not give the nationalities of its casualties.

The Isaf airport is near Kabul's main airport and in a busy area in the northeast of the city.

An Afghan airport official said civilian flights to and from the airport were continuing as normal.

Last week, a suicide bomb wounded three foreign troops and four Afghan civilians.

On August 15, three German security officers attached to the embassy were killed when their vehicle struck a roadside bomb.

Source: Agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/775DD308-30FA-45FB-B7F8-DFA6BFE82987.htm

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AllAfrica:
Industry Players Differ On Scrapping of NNPC

By Chika Amanze-Nwachuku And Fidelia Okwuonu
This Day (Lagos) NEWS
31 August 2007

Reactions yesterday greeted Thursday's approval by the Federal Government for the unbundling of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) into five new organizations as industry players differ on what will be the place of the corporation between now and six month's time when the new policy will take effect.

However, the President of Independent Petroleum Marketers Association of Nigeria (IPMAN), Mr. Segun Husenwe has described it as a welcome development, noting that it will make the oil companies autonomous and quickens decision makings.

But his National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) counterpart, Mr. Peter Akpattason, has called for further clarification on the whole issue in view of the fact that the law setting up the NNPC is yet to repealed.

He argued that it was controversial for the federal government to effect the changes based on a new law in place, when the old one has not been repealed. "There is an act sitting up NNPC, that act is yet to be repelled and aside, there are some controversies in the new pronouncement of the Federal Executive Council (FEC), a situation where a new law is coming into existence without repealing the old one, and the new one is already coming to take effect, how the effect is concurrent with the old one is what we don't understand and this would require answers to make the situation clearer.

"They are talking about scrapping the NNPC and coming up with the National Oil Company (NOC), unbundling PPMC and the rest of the agencies, we actually don't know how that configuration would affect the Group executive Council (GEC) of NNPC and how it would affect the work force in terms of numbers and in terms of posting and in terms of general industrial relation issues.

All these are posers for us and we believe they require very quick answers. Until we get enough details, we might not be able to provide answers to these" he asserted.

However, in a swift reaction, the Group General Manager, Public Affairs of the defunct NNPC, Dr. Levi Ajuonuma argued that the NNPC has not been scrapped as widely reported yesterday, but has been unbundled into five organizations.

According to him, the FEC at the said meeting "simply approved a new National Oil and Gas Policy and the commencement of the implementation of the policy as enshrined in the road-map for the restructuring of the oil and gas industry", adding, "the government approved duration for the implementation exercise is six months".

"The FEC approved the establishment of the National Energy Council to serve as a supra-Ministerial advisory body for the energy industry.

Under the new arrangement, five new companies will emerge. These include: The National' Petroleum Directorate; National Petroleum Company of Nigeria; Petroleum Inspectorate Commission; Petroleum Products Distribution Authority; and National Oil and Gas Assets Holding and Management Services Company.

"A new National Oil Company, to be known as the National Petroleum Company of Nigeria (NAPCON), which will have seven directorates including: Upstream; Refinery & Petrochemical; Marketing and Investments; Gas & Power; Engineering & Technology; Finance and Accounts; and Corporate Services will replace the current NNPC".

Ajuonuma noted however that the "corporation would be divorced of some of its current roles of policy regulation and national assets management to function properly as a profit-oriented, commercial and duly-capitalized limited liability company with rights to raise funds for its projects and operations, adding that an Implementation Committee has been constituted by the President Umar Musa Yar'Adua on the new policy, which is aimed at efficient management of the nation's hydrocarbon resources in line with international best practices.

Copyright © 2007 This Day. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200708310406.html

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AlterNet: From Apocalypse to Disaster,
America Is Obsessed with the Prospect of Bad News

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet
Posted on August 31, 2007

Given the windfall profits reaped by corporations like Halliburton in the wake of Katrina and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the concept that disasters can benefit some will surprise few close observers.

However, when Kevin Rozario set about researching the dark days of the American experience, he stumbled across something unexpected. Americans, at large, viewed catastrophic earthquakes, fires and hurricanes with surprising optimism. Whether seeing it as a religious opportunity to get back on the straight and narrow, or an economic opportunity to rebuild bigger and better, Americans are uniquely steeped in the potential of crisis.

Rozario's recent book The Culture of Calamity explores the role that massive catastrophe has played in American culture. Why did the stock market radically jump despite the prediction of thousands of jobs lost in Hurricane Katrina? Who benefits from disasters? How did it come to be that, in the wake of 9/11, an average of $2.1 million in tax-free payments were made to the families of those killed in the attacks? Why are mainstream media outlets inundated with images of destruction?

Rozario, having spent years exploring primary documents from fires during the time of the Puritans, overcivilized San Franciscans living through the great earthquake, to the fallout of 9/11, has a unique perspective on America's crisis-oriented imagination. He joined AlterNet in a recent interview to explain how the American economy and self-perception has become dependent upon catastrophe.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri: You write that the United States is particularly crisis-oriented. Why is that?

Kevin Rozario: Going back to the 17th century, religious ideas were important to the formation of thinking about disaster. The Puritans in New England were especially weighted with this Calvinist sense that trial through suffering is the thing that leads you to God. A culture like that is going to be absorbed in catastrophic events because they're always looking for those testing times.

From the very beginning of European settlement in the 17th century, there was intense fascination with hurricanes, fires and earthquakes. The religious dimension imposed a narrative on these moments of destruction, and the narrative is that settlers are sinners, god speaks to them primarily through disasters, and when a disaster happens, that's god telling them how to correct your evil ways and get back on the track of salvation and virtue. These ways of thinking spread more broadly into the population. And it's this way of thinking that led to a perception of calamities as instruments of progress.

OR: What opportunities do disasters provide Americans?

KR: Generally speaking, it tends to be more affluent and powerful Americans who view disasters as opportunities, as blessings, because they're the ones who are able to capitalize on them in order to bring about the kinds of political and economic outcomes that they want.

Take Increase Mather, a Puritan divine in the late 17th century, a very influential figure. For him, a disaster was specifically useful for bringing people back to the path of God. Everyone stopped to listen to him at a time of crisis. It allowed him to pursue his own moral and political agendas. He had a thing about people with long hair and drinking and breaking the Sabbath. He basically said that when a disaster happens, that's God telling us not to do these things. The politics of disaster is one in which people in positions of influence very early on come to realize that disasters can be very useful for capturing hold of the people's attention.

OR: But isn't catastrophe an economic obstacle for those in power?

KR: As early as the 17th century, you see disasters turning out to have economic benefits. For example, in 1676, there's the Boston Fire. It burned down a lot of obsolete and inefficient buildings and enabled the city to step in and rebuild more efficiently laid out roads. The people whose homes and businesses burned down tend not to be quite so excited by a disaster unless they have good insurance, but what does often seem to be the case is that a lot of the disasters, especially in the 19th century, were urban conflagrations, and they tended to hit downtown areas and business districts. They often wiped out decaying and crumbling infrastructure and basically cleared space so that you could build on top of them.

In the New York City fire of 1835 the value of land goes up eight times in the two months between the fire and the aftermath of the fire. The land was worth more cleared of the property than with property. That tells us something very interesting about the way that American capitalism works and the importance of destruction in order to create space for new developments and expansion.

OR: The connection between disaster and economic boon can be seen even today. You write that, despite the Congressional Budget Office's prediction that Hurricane Katrina would result in some 4,000 jobs lost, the Dow Jones average went up 300 points. Can you explain this phenomenon?

KR: In a way that story goes back to 1906. After the San Francisco earthquake, there was a lot of concern about what kind of economic hit the country was going to take as a result of the disaster. What turned out was that there was a relatively buoyant economy, stock prices went up after the disaster.

A New York Times correspondent started to investigate disasters to see what happened to stock prices afterward and he discovered a phenomenon that he called "catastrophe markets." Investors get quite excited by these moments. Either these are opportunities for massive rebuilding or capital investment with high rates of return. The Wall Street Journal did a study in 1999 and found it to still be broadly true. Wherever disaster happens, there were economic benefits that outweighed the economic costs if you look at the economy broadly, not considering who is benefiting and who is losing.

This sort of instability is what the economy feeds and depends upon. When we talk about the economy as an abstraction, that's one thing. But, we have to ask the question: Who is actually going to be reaping those benefits?

OR: You argue a broader point in the book that our economy may require this kind of obliteration in order to stay afloat.

KR: Capitalism itself is a system of destruction and creation. You have to keep destroying the old in order to clear space for then new. Otherwise, it achieves stasis, and if it achieves stasis, it dies. It depends on constant expansion just to keep going. But again, to be very clear about this, not all Americans think this is a blessing. This is a process that can be extremely lucrative for businesses, but it's a process that can be extremely destructive for laborers. The benefits of disaster are very unevenly portioned and they go to those with power and influence rather than ordinary Americans.

OR: Is this lack of trickle-down to the working poor seen throughout the history of catastrophes?

KR: One could say that there are some general trickle down effects for most people. At the same time, if you look at specific disasters, you tend to see that people at the margins get victimized. Disasters are such useful instruments for those in power to say, "This is a crisis, an emergency; we need to suspend civil liberties and submit to authority."

In 18th century Boston, when there was a large fire, what were called Negroes and mulattos at the time were conscripted for free work to rebuild the cities. That's great for the people who own the city. Not so great for the people whose work is being coerced.

OR: Historically, an American market for sensational disaster developed fairly early on - when Americans were concerned with "overcivilization." Can you explain how this developed?

KR: One of the things that is most striking about the 1890s is that on the one hand you have the story of modernity, of American industrialization. There is increasing rationality, technical command, mechanization and order. But there was also this growing sense, especially among the elite, that American has overcivilized. If the frontier is gone, and America is becoming too bureaucratic and civilized, where is American greatness going to come from?

There's this real fear that America is going to lose something quite precious - it's dynamism, it's courage, what I call its crisis-oriented imagination. It's stunning to read about the San Francisco earthquake. They're able to join in, to watch a whole city rocking or to see buildings swaying, to have a suspension of civilized routine, be cooking outside. Life becomes one great outdoor adventure.

OR: If anyone professed to enjoy such a catastrophe today, they would probably be shunned.

KR: Yes, it's very much of that moment. Again, the people who are expressing this enjoyment and excitement are the people who are allowed to say what they want to say. It tends to be well-known journalist philosophers like William James, Teddy Roosevelt and so forth.

Those are the people that are allowed to talk about the odd compensating delights of these great moments of adversity. You don't really find that happening anymore. Certainly after Katrina, you didn't find anyone really talking about the vacation that came with that disaster.

OR: What's the change?

KR: In the last couple of decades, we've shifted into a new cultural moment where disasters tend to fill people more with a doom and anxiety than with a sense of possibility. People living through Katrina, or even people watching it on television aren't having a sense that things will be rebuilt bigger and better. That loss of sustaining optimism has shaken the sense of disaster as adventure.

At the same time, if you look at something like Spike Lee's When the Levees Broke, there's still a certain amount of humor. The people who got through that disaster look back on it with, not a sense of it as an adventure, but the sense that this disaster brought out the best in some people who were there and that this was a world historical moment that they lived through.

There's the sense that many of them rose to the occasion in helping out their neighbors in situations of incredible adversity. But it's not going to be an adventure if your home might be wiped out forever and there's no guarantee that you're going to be allowed back into your old neighborhood.

OR: How has disaster been covered by the press? You trace the sensationalism back to the first mainstream newspaper, the New York Herald, which promised to "exhilarate the breakfast table."

KR: In a way it goes back even earlier. For all of the Puritans' talk about the importance of salvation and righteousness, they were very excited by disasters. Even in the 1600s, they tended to produce a lot of very sensationalistic sermons like "The Duty of Rejoicing Under Calamities and Afflictions."

This is an early form of media, sensationalizing disaster and making it exciting in some ways. The rise of mass newspapers in the 1830s was a moment of escalation. Suddenly, there are newspapers trying to entertain people and arouse their readership.

Newspapers before the 1830s were really about selling a political vision. By the 1830s, they're about making money. The rise of commercial media is very closely connected to the rise of sensationalistic representation of disaster as an event that people want to read about on their table in the morning, to be thrilled by, appalled by, excited by. By the time you get to the late 19th century, newspapers are increasingly illustrated, and those begin to take over the pages. Again, the image itself tends to sensationalize disasters.

The rise of the movies in the 1890s and onward also uses destruction as a topic of interest. This ties into the overcivilization phenomenon. People who are bored by their daily lives tend to look to disaster to be exciting. Also, there's a lot of censorship about what can shown in newspapers, newsreels and movies. You can't have much in the way of explicit sexual representation. You often can't have representation of wars because that is deemed dangerous to national security interests.

Disaster doesn't violate obscenity laws or threaten national security. By default, it seems, that the sensationalistic media is magnetized by disaster. By the time you get into the CNN world of 24-hour coverage, it becomes increasingly difficult to know how to hold people's attention hour after hour and disasters are perfect.

OR: The book explores the correlation between the amount of time that media spends covering a catastrophe and how much money is contributed. How close is that connection?

KR: Everybody agrees that we live in a culture of spectacle. It's hard to disagree. The question is, what kind of effect does this have on culture as a whole? What struck me about my research into this was that contrary to the common line that living in a culture of spectacle pacifies or anesthetizes us, these spectacles are actually extremely energizing events. People who watched and read coverage of 9/11 actually got out there and raised money and volunteered. The same thing with Katrina.

At the same time, in the case of 9/11, there was also a response of pretty rampant xenophobia rather than a real commitment to figuring out the political, economic and social histories that produce these events. That's a problem of the culture of spectacle. We tend to get aroused for that moment, we want our cathartic response, but it doesn't necessarily lead to people really trying to figure out the processes that govern our world.

The 9/11 Fund gave an average of 2.1 million in tax-free payments to each family of those killed in the attacks. It's extraordinary the amount of money that the government was willing to commit, but also people through the Red Cross. I was as horrified as anybody else by 9/11 and moved to tears by the plight of the victims.

But, in a world of limited resources, who does one help out? There are plenty of other people who are suffering in the country who don't get that kind of hand-out. And with the 9/11 victims, some of them actually came from pretty affluent families who didn't require that sort of charitable help.

OR: Is the leadership response to 9/11 characteristic of a post-disaster situation?

KR: There are certain patterns of response to disasters that seem to be replicated after 9/11. One is that disaster introduces emergency or crisis conditions. You also find municipal governments seizing enormous powers to protect citizens, rescue them, and to rebuild parts of the city. You also see people in positions of power using disasters to augment their own authority. Decisive leadership can lead to some wonderful effects.

There are many times in history where people have just decided to suspend the Constitution and do what needs to be done to save the people. The exemplary case study was the Coast Guard in Hurricane Katrina ripping up its rulebook and saying we're going to do whatever it takes to save these people.

On the other hand, when there are people in positions of authority who, given that kind of license, use that to shore up their own authority to serve their own agenda. And I think that happened at 9/11. There was a lot pressure to limit civil liberties, to the point where a permanent disaster was declared. That means that the government can permanently suspend due democratic processes.

There are historical similarities, but there is something qualitatively about 9/11. The sheer size of the security apparatus dwarfs anything before. It's one thing to talk about municipal governments taking advantage of the 1727 earthquake to push through some kind of some new law, it's another thing when you talk about the Homeland Security apparatus, which is an extraordinarily powerful bureaucracy. There's a real escalation in scale here about the decisiveness with which government has stepped in to suspend civil liberties and promote its agendas. And as we know some of those agendas are obviously political.

After previous disasters, people began to demand their civil liberties much more quickly than happened after 9/11. It's extraordinary to see how long it took before civil liberties and democratic process began to get a fair hearing after 9/11. That suggests a certain complicity on the part of the public as well as effectiveness on the part of the government at protecting its powers against due process.

OR: How has the concept of national security evolved in relation to catastrophe?

KR: At the beginning of the 20th century, social security became one of the buzzwords of government and public policy. Social security basically meant the security of people against homelessness, unfair suffering and the kinds of misfortunes that they could not be held responsible for.

There were pensions for widows or various benefits for homeless soldiers passed in the early 20th century. By the time you get to the 1930s with the New Deal, this whole notion of social security really becomes paramount and feeds into disaster response. There was a sense that living in America should mean being safe from undeserved misfortune.

But in the 1950s, national security is defined in terms of protecting the state and the people from enemies who wish to destroy them. Those enemies could be enemies abroad or it could be enemies at home. It's a sense of national security as something that requires spy networks, CIA, FBI, a national security state. It's an intricate dance after disasters between the two notions of security. Is the role of the state to protect us against enemies, or is it to protect us against broader misfortunes?

It's very unclear to me what the cultural outcome of Katrina is going to be. On the one hand, there was a lot of talk especially in government, that the way to deal with an event like Katrina, was to build a bigger security state apparatus, a bigger homeland security system in order to keep Americans safe. At the same time, I think Katrina got people thinking much more in social terms, and concerned with issues of race, poverty, welfare, unemployment and environmental problems.

OR: After 9/11, we developed the most expansive disaster state ever. Yet the response to Katrina was embarrassing.

It's a matter of where the resources are being allocated. Most of the money that was going into FEMA was going to security state issues. A lot of the resources were being directed to the Iraq war and to surveillance. Those aspects of security were being overemphasized and the broader security of people, environmental, economic and so forth were being neglected. It was the outrage that Katrina provoked that was so interesting.

Historically, disasters have been absorbed into a narrative of progress. Disasters happen, Americans triumph over adversity. What happened after Katrina is that it exposed the weakness of America. The mainstream press, even pretty conservative press outlets made the story of Katrina that something is not well with the state of our country.

Not only that, but it puts the problems with poverty and racism at the center of that story. It opens up interesting possibilities for the way that we might respond to disasters in the future, but also the kinds of infrastructure that we want to build, and how we rebuild cities.

OR: What is the evangelical Christian relationship to catastrophe imagery?

KR: The evangelical Christian revival of the last few decades has been nursed on images of catastrophe, books, movies, all talking about the horrible catastrophes that are to come unless we change our ways. When I delved in deeper into that, the catastrophe mentioned by many of these evangelical commentators was exactly the kind of catastrophe that Hollywood had been putting up on its screens for the last few generations.

An event like 9/11 was mesmerizing to many evangelicals, not simply because of its message, that this was god's retribution or that it was a sign that we had to put our support in our conservative administration, but that they, like many other people, found it spectacularly exciting in certain ways.

When 9/11 happened, it fit a Hollywood engineered notion of what a big disaster was and therefore it fit everybody's expectation of what an apocalyptic moment should look like. That seemed to have led a lot of people, especially evangelicals, to believe that God was speaking through that particular disaster.

OR: You cite Slavoj Zizek's observation that "in a way, America got what it fantasized about and that was the biggest surprise." What do you take this to mean?

KR: When 9/11 happened, everybody was shocked and appalled. The buzz phrase at the time was, "This changes everything." It was as if something like this had never happened in American history, that it was unimaginable. The basic point that Zizek was making was that we imagine this all the time.

Not only do we imagine this, we're obsessed with this. Every time we go to a movie to watch a summer blockbuster to get entertained, we find the destruction of landmarks like the twin towers. That is what we go to for our excitement, for our thrills, to have a good time. These movies are thrilling precisely because they show American infrastructure being destroyed.

If you see this repeatedly in movies, television shows and video games for decades and then 9/11 happens, it's not unimaginable. It's an event that has been overimagined. It's become the stuff of our fantasies. That raises all sorts of questions about what kind of emotional, psychological, cultural response is elicited by the spectacle of the twin towers falling. What does it mean to us that this is real rather than fabricated by Hollywood. What does it mean to us that we enjoy this when it's fictional?

OR: I had a moment of questioning like that after seeing Hotel Rwanda. When I left the theater, there were two teenagers talking, arguing whether it was better than Titanic.

KR: A theater conditions us to have an entertainment response to certain types of images. Then we take ourselves out of the theater and watch it happening in the city. I think Zizek is onto something interesting when he suggests that this is a moment to look deep into our own souls and psyches and try to figure out what kind of people we've become.

I wouldn't be surprised if there's not some connection between the type of thrill response some of us might have got at some level from watching these images and the desire to purge ourselves by going out and doing something to help people, a thrill guilt sequence.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a San Francisco-based freelance writer. A former assistant editor for AlterNet.org, she has written for AlterNet, The American Prospect, MotherJones.com, In These Times, Huffington Post, Truthdig, PopMatters, and Women's eNews.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/61008/

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AlterNet:
Is George Bush Restarting Latin America's 'Dirty Wars'?

By Benjamin Dangl, AlterNet
Posted on August 31, 2007

Two soldiers in Paraguay stand in front of a camera. One of them holds an automatic weapon. John Lennon's "Imagine" plays in the background. This Orwellian juxtaposition of war and peace is from a new video posted online by U.S. soldiers stationed in Paraguay. The video footage and other military activity in this heart of the continent represent a new wave of U.S.-backed militarism in Latin America.

It's a reprise of a familiar tune. In the 1970s and 1980s, Paraguay's longtime dictator, Gen. Alfredo Stroessner, collaborated with the region's other dictators through Operation Condor, which used kidnapping, torture and murder to squash dissent and political opponents. Stroessner's human rights record was so bad that even Ronald Reagan distanced himself from the leader. Carrying on this infamous legacy, Paraguay now illustrates four new characteristics of Latin America's right-wing militarism: joint exercises with the U.S. military in counterinsurgency training, monitoring potential dissidents and social organizations, the use of private mercenaries for security and the criminalization of social protest through "anti-terrorism" tactics and legislation.

In May of 2005, the Paraguayan Senate voted to allow U.S. troops to operate in Paraguay with total immunity. Washington had threatened to cut off millions in aid to the country if Paraguay did not grant the U.S. troops entry. In July of 2005 hundreds of U.S. soldiers arrived in the country, and Washington's funding for counterterrorism efforts in Paraguay doubled. The U.S. troops conducted various operations and joint training exercises with Paraguayan forces, including so-called Medical Readiness Training Exercises (MEDRETEs). Orlando Castillo, a military policy expert at the human rights rights organization Servicio, Paz y Justicia in Asunción, Paraguay, says the MEDRETEs were "observation" operations aimed at developing "a type of map that identifies not just the natural resources in the area, but also the social organizations and leaders of different communities."

Castillo, in his cool Asunción office, with the standard Paraguayan herbal tea, tereré in his hand, said these operations marked a shift in U.S. military strategy. "The kind of training that used to just happen at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, is now decentralized," he explained. "The U.S. military is now establishing new mechanisms of cooperation and training with armed forces." Combined efforts, such as MEDRETEs, are part of this agenda. "It is a way to remain present, while maintaining a broad reach throughout the Americas." Castillo said this new wave of militarism is aimed at considering internal populations as potential enemies and preventing insurgent leftists from coming to power.

Bruce Kleiner of the U.S. Embassy in Paraguay said that the MEDRETEs "provide humanitarian service to some of Paraguay's most disadvantaged citizens." But this video by Captain William Johnson shows that there's more to the MEDRETE operations, with local Paraguayans being questioned as they receive treatment, as well as events and ceremonies aimed at strengthening ties between the military personnel of both countries. Often, heavily armed men are seen walking past lines of local families while they wait for medicine and questions. The lighthearted depiction of these joint military operations seen in the video is in sharp contrast with reports from local citizens.

A group of representatives from human rights organizations and universities from all over the world, including the Madres de la Plaza de Mayo in Argentina and a group from the University of Toulouse, France, traveled to Paraguay last July as part of the Campaign for the Demilitarization of the Americas (CADA) to observe and report on the repression going on in the country linked to the presence of U.S. troops. The local citizens they interviewed said they were not told what medications they were given during the U.S. MEDRETEs. Patients said they were often given the same treatments regardless of their illness. In some cases, the medicine produced hemorrhages and abortions. When the medical treatment took place, patients reported that they were asked if they belonged to any kind of labor or social organization. Among the leaders of such organizations, dozens have been disappeared and tortured in recent years, just as they were during Latin America's "dirty wars" in the Reagan era.

While Orlando Castillo is adamant that the historic military links between Paraguay and the United States remain strong, the U.S. troops that arrived in 2005 have reportedly left the country. In December 2006, the Paraguayan Senate and executive branch, responding to pressure from neighboring countries, voted to end the troops' immunity. Paraguay would have been excluded from the lucrative regional trade bloc of Mercosur if it continued to grant immunity to U.S. forces.

Privatizing repression

Castillo sees private mercenaries, or paramilitaries, as another key piece of the new militarism puzzle. In Paraguay, the strongest paramilitary group is the Citizens Guard. "These paramilitary groups are made of people from the community. They establish curfews and rules of conduct, and monitor the activity of the community. They also intervene in family disputes and can kick people out of the community or off land ... this all very similar to the paramilitary activities in Colombia." Castillo said that while this activity is illegal, the police and judges simply look the other way. Many of the paramilitaries are connected to large agribusinesses and landowners and have been linked to increased repression of small farming families that have resisted the expansion of the soy industry, a cash-crop mostly for export. The shadow army of the Citizens Guard is as big as the state security forces: These paramilitary groups have nearly 22,000 members, while the Paraguayan police force is only 9,000 strong and the military has 13,000 members.

The use of private security is on the rise throughout the Americas. Journalist Cyril Mychalejko reported that the Bush administration was recently incriminated in a scandal involving Chiquita Brands International Inc. and their funding of paramilitaries to repress a discontented labor force in Colombia. The paramilitary group, the United Self-Defense Force of Colombia (AUC) is designated by the State Department as a terrorist organization. In 2003, a former executive at Chiquita told Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff that they were paying the paramilitary group. Chertoff looked the other way, allowing the company to pay an additional $134,000 to the AUC throughout that year.

Castillo's comments about the new U.S. military strategy for the region apply to all of Latin America. Carrying on the legacy of the School of the Americas, the International Law Enforcement Academy (ILEA) was recently opened in El Salvador, where similar training is going on to broaden the military's reach in the area.

Exporting the "War on Terror"

Anti-terrorism rhetoric and legislation is being mixed into this deadly cocktail in Paraguay, as it is across Latin America. The Paraguayan Senate is scheduled to pass an anti-terrorism law that will criminalize social protest and establish penalties of up to 40 years in prison for participating in such activities. A large march against the passage of the law took place in the country's capital on July 26.

The U.S.-based corporate media plays a part in what has become a war against labor movements and leftist politicians. Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, has regularly been portrayed in the American media as a haven and training ground for Middle Eastern terrorist organizations. Regional analysts believe this terrifying narrative has aided the Pentagon in its military plans for the country. Terrorism talk is similarly being used for political purposes elsewhere in Latin America. The U.S.A Patriot Act was used to revoke the U.S. travel visa for Bolivian human rights leader and labor organizer Leonilda Zurita shortly after leftist president Evo Morales came to power.

In Venezuela's national divide between pro- and anti-Chavez citizens, everything is political. CNN recently entered the fray when it aired footage that Venezuelan governmental officials said falsely linked Chavez to Al-Qaeda. The Venezuelan government has filed charges against CNN for the act. Information Minister William Lara said CNN showed photos of Chavez alongside those of an Al-Qaeda leader. He explained that "CNN broadcast a lie which linked President Chavez to violence and murder." CNN denied having "any intention of associating President Chavez with al Qaeda …"

In Nicaragua, the media has recently been used as a tool by Washington to promote its foreign policy agenda. A long time lab rat for U.S. imperialism, Nicaragua is the poorest country in Central America and the site of a socialist revolution in the 1980s when the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship. The specter of a Sandinista-led government still haunts the White House. In a 2001 presidential election in Nicaragua when Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega was running for re-election, (right after 9/11) similar tactics were employed, and the media was a key tool. In an ad in the Nicaraguan paper La Prensa, Jeb Bush was quoted as saying: "Daniel Ortega is an enemy of everything the United States represents. Further, he is a friend of our enemies. Ortega has a relationship of more than 30 years with states and individuals who shelter and condone international terrorism." The tactic worked, and the pro-free market, right-wing Washington ally Enrique Bolaños beat Ortega. In the lead up to the presidential election on Nov. 5, 2006, former U.S. Lt. Col. Oliver North visited Nicaragua to warn voters not to elect Daniel Ortega. In the 1980s North was convicted of violating U.S. law to organize the Contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government. North reminded voters that the same terror could return to Nicaragua under a new Ortega administration. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., threatened another trade embargo and to prevent money sent from Nicaraguans in the United States from reaching their families at home. U.S. Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli said that if Ortega won the elections, the United States would "re-evaluate relations" with the country. The media was used against Ortega as well, with TV commercials showing corpses from the Contra war in the 1980s, warning citizens against voting for the left's choice. This time, however, the media campaign backfired, and Ortega won the election.

Paraguayan journalist Marco Castillo shook as head while contemplating this new landscape of repression. Dozens of social organization leaders and dissidents have been disappeared and tortured in recent years. "Impunity reigns," he said. "This is as bad as it was during the worst years of the Stroessner dictatorship."

Benjamin Dangl won a 2007 Project Censored Award for his coverage of U.S. military operations in Paraguay. He is the author of The Price of Fire: Resource Wars and Social Movements in Bolivia (AK Press, 2007).

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/58605/

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Arab News:
Another Blasphemous Caricature

Arab News
Friday, 31, August, 2007 (18, Sha`ban, 1428)

JEDDAH, 31 August 2007 — The Organization of the Islamic Conference yesterday condemned the publication of a blasphemous caricature of the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) by Swedish artist Lars Vilks in the Nerikes Allehanda newspaper.

The Swedish daily published the drawing, part of a series by Vilks, last Friday after art galleries had declined to display it. The newspaper argued the publication was in the defense of free speech.

OIC Secretary-General Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu strongly condemned the newspaper for publishing the blasphemous caricature and said that this was an irresponsible and despicable act with mala fide and provocative intentions in the name of freedom of expression. He said the caricature was intended to solely insult and arouse the sentiments of Muslims of the world.

Ihsanoglu said: “The international community was well aware of the serious impact of such publications that were globally felt during the controversy that was created by the publication of similar cartoons by a Danish newspaper last year.”

He called on the Swedish government to take immediate punitive actions against the artist and the publishers of the cartoon and asked for their unqualified apology. He also called on Muslims to remain calm and to exercise restraint.

Earlier, Pakistan condemned the publication of the caricature, calling it offensive and blasphemous. “Regrettably, the tendency among some Europeans to mix the freedom of expression with an outright and deliberate insult to 1.3 billion Muslims in the world is on the rise,” the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“Such acts deeply undermine the efforts of those who seek to promote respect and understanding among religions and civilizations,” it said.

The Swedish charge d’affaires was summoned to the ministry and a strong protest lodged with him, the ministry said.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=4§ion=0&article=100646&d=31&m=8&y=2007

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Guardian: Global food crisis looms
as climate change and population growth strip fertile land

. 'Ignorance, need and greed' depleting soil
. Experts warn competition will lead to conflict

Ian Sample in science correspondent
Friday August 31 2007

Climate change and an increasing population could trigger a global food crisis in the next half century as countries struggle for fertile land to grow crops and rear animals, scientists warned yesterday.

To keep up with the growth in human population, more food will have to be produced worldwide over the next 50 years than has been during the past 10,000 years combined, the experts said.

But in many countries a combination of poor farming practices and deforestation will be exacerbated by climate change to steadily degrade soil fertility, leaving vast areas unsuitable for crops or grazing.

Competition over sparse resources may lead to conflicts and environmental destruction, the scientists fear.

The warnings came as researchers from around the world convened at a UN-backed forum in Iceland on sustainable development to address the organisation's millennium development goals to halve hunger and extreme poverty by 2015.

The researchers will use the meeting to call on countries to impose strict farming guidelines to ensure that soils are not degraded so badly they cannot recover.

"Policy changes that result in improved conservation of soil and vegetation and restoration of degraded land are fundamental to humanity's future livelihood," said Zafar Adeel, director of the international network on water, environment and health at the UN University in Toronto and co-organiser of the meeting.

"This is an urgent task as the quality of land for food production, as well as water storage, is fundamental to future peace. Securing food and reducing poverty ... can have a strong impact on efforts to curb the flow of people, environmental refugees, inside countries as well as across national borders," he added.

The UN millennium ecosystem assessment ranked land degradation among the world's greatest environmental challenges, claiming it risked destabilising societies, endangering food security and increasing poverty.

Some 40% of the world's agricultural land is seriously degraded. Among the worst affected regions are Central America, where 75% of land is infertile, Africa, where a fifth of soil is degraded, and Asia, where 11% is unsuitable for farming.

The majority of soil erosion is caused by water, either through flooding or poor irrigation, with the rest lost to winds. Farming practices such as ploughing also damage soil, as does repeated planting in fields, which depletes the soil of nutrients.

"You can sum it up as need, greed and ignorance," said Andrew Campbell, an Australian environmental consultant. "Some pressures on soil resources come from simple human needs, where people don't have any option but to grow crops or farm animals. But in other instances world markets demand produce, so farmers try to meet those markets. And sometimes, there will be land that's cleared that should not have been, or grazed when it shouldn't have been. All these place great pressures on soil resources."

He warned that increased competition over depleted resources would lead to conflict - "and the losers will inevitably be the environment and poor people".

According to the UN's food and agriculture programme, 854 million people do not have sufficient food for an active and healthy life.

The global population has risen substantially in recent decades. Between 1980 and 2000 it rose from 4.4bn to 6.1bn and food production increased 50%. By 2050 the population is expected to reach 9bn.

The threat of a food crisis is exacerbated by fears over energy security, with many countries opting to plant biofuel crops in place of traditional food crops. India, for example, has pledged to meet 10% of its vehicle fuel needs with biofuels.

Andres Arnalds, of the Icelandic soil conservation service, said the pressures on food production would have knock-on effects all over the world because of the international links in food supply.

Mr Campbell said: "If we can improve agricultural practices across the board we can dramatically increase our food production from existing lands, without having to clear more or put more pressure on soils. Simple things like good crop rotation, sowing at the right time of year, basic weed control, are what is needed. They're very well known but not always used."

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/aug/31/climatechange.food

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Jeune Afrique: Tensions persistantes au Nord-Kivu
où l'armée envoie des renforts

RD CONGO - 31 août 2007 - par AFP

La situation restait tendue vendredi au Nord-Kivu, dans l'est de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC), où l'armée régulière a commencé à envoyer des renforts après de violents combats jeudi entre soldats insurgés et loyalistes.

Les troupes du général déchu tutsi congolais Laurent Nkunda et les militaires des Forces armées congolaises (FARDC) observent depuis jeudi après-midi une "trêve fragile", a déclaré à l'AFP Sylvie van den Wildenberg, porte-parole de la Mission de l'ONU en RDC (Monuc) au Nord-Kivu.

La nuit a été "globalement calme" dans la région, survolée par des hélicoptères de combat de la Monuc, a-t-elle ajouté.

Toutefois, des mouvements de troupes, de l'armées congolaise, des insurgés ralliés à Nkunda et des rebelles hutus rwandais des Forces démocratiques de libération du Rwanda (FDLR) ont été signalés à travers la province, selon des sources onusiennes et d'observateurs internationaux.

Des accrochages ont opposé dans la nuit des FDLR et des troupes de Nkunda près de Ngungu, dans le sud du territoire de Masisi (à environ 40 km à l'ouest de Goma, capitale du Nord-Kivu), selon un observateur occidental.

Les rebelles hutus rwandais, basés depuis 13 ans dans l'est de la RDC et accusés par Kigali d'avoir participé au génocide rwandais de 1994, renforçaient par ailleurs leurs positions sur l'axe Rutshuru-Ishasha (entre 50 et 120 km au nord de Goma).

"Ils occupent des positions abandonnées (mi-août) par les soldats des brigades mixées", notamment les hommes fidèles à Nkunda commandés par le colonel Sultani Makenga qui ont fait mouvement vers Bunagana, à la frontière ougandaise (plus à l'est), a expliqué Mme van den Wildenberg.

Dans le centre du Masisi, la trêve était respectée entre troupes de Nkunda et loyalistes de la brigade mixée Charlie, après de violents accrochages les 27 et 28 août et des combats à l'arme lourde jeudi à Katale (à plus de 40 km au nord-ouest de Goma).

Joint vendredi à Katale, le colonel loyaliste Philemon Yav a affirmé que les assaillants s'étaient "repliés" après avoir "subi de lourdes pertes" jeudi, tandis qu'il déplorait un mort et 29 blessés dans ses rangs.

Il a indiqué avoir reçu des "renforts", sans préciser leur nombre, et affirmé que les troupes de Nkunda s'étaient repliées vers Bihambwe, à environ 20 km de Katale, et se réorganisaient.

Selon des autorités locales citées par la radio okapi, parrainée par l'ONU, près de 10.000 personnes auraient fui ces récents affrontements, en direction du nord. Le bureau des affaires humanitaire de l'ONU a indiqué qu'il était très difficile d'évaluer le nombre de déplacés, dont un grand nombre a entamé un mouvement de retour à la faveur de l'accalmie.

Dans le Rutshuru, les différents mouvements de troupes signalés ont entraîné des déplacements de population, notamment autour des camps de la Monuc.

"C'est l'accalmie, mais cela ressemble à une veillée d'armes. Chacun se réorganise, se repositionne avant de probables nouvelles hostilités" qui pourraient éclater sur plusieurs fronts dans les territoires de Masisi et Rutshuru, a estimé une source sécuritaire occidentale.

Jeudi soir, le ministre de la Défense de RDC, Diemu Chikez, a annoncé l'envoi de deux brigades dans l'est, accusant "les insurgés du général déchu Laurent Nkunda" d'avoir déclenché les hostilités alors que le gouvernement privilégiait initialement une "approche pacifique" pour régler la crise.

Le même jour, un proche de Nkunda avait déclaré à l'AFP que leurs troupes observaient "une trêve" qui serait immédiatement rompue en cas d'engagement de renforts loyalistes sur le terrain.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP72647tensistrofn0#

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New Statesman:
Rebel without a pause

Once Hollywood's enfant terrible, Spike Lee is now directing blockbusters and TV shows. But, he tells Stephen Armstrong, he is still fighting for black cinema

Stephen Armstrong
30 August 2007

The current thinking has it that Spike Lee has mellowed. This, after all, is the man who once argued so much with an interviewer from US Esquire that the magazine ran its piece under the headline "Spike Lee hates your cracker ass". He approached conversations as combat and Hollywood as the shyster promoter, overseeing the big-money bout for its tidy 10 per cent. At the age of 50, however, he has to all appearances made his peace with the system. His heist flick Inside Man (2006), a mainstream offering starring Denzel Washington and Jodie Foster, took a healthy $200m worldwide. He started working in television - shooting the pilot for James Woods's legal drama Shark, among other projects - and in June he announced he would be directing Clive Owen in a Broadway revival of the PoW play Stalag 17.

"You get older and realise you can't rant and rave 24/7," he says, smiling, when we meet at a New York hotel. "You have to pick and choose what you rant and rave about." In contrast to former labours of love such as Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X, Lee's recent work has had a more practical bent; Ron Howard offered him the director's chair on Shark after the success of Inside Man, and he was happy simply to turn up and take the money. "I don't mind being a director for pilots," he shrugs. "You're paid very well, you set the style, the look, the tone, and you leave."

Even within the confines of this network genre show, however, you can see his expert hand at work. The pilot feels edgier than subsequent episodes, though the scripting and performan ces are essentially the same. When I point this out, Lee seems slightly surprised. "TV people are much more hands-on, especially in the edit," he says slowly, thinking aloud. "You have your cut and then they say, 'Thank you very much. We'll see you later' - because they want to cut, cut, cut every millisecond. They're paranoid that if you hold on a shot for more than five seconds someone's going to switch the channel."

Nevertheless, Lee has found it hard to get his own TV projects off the ground. Around the same time as he was shooting Shark, he was talking to NBC about a drama called NOLA (New Orleans, Louisiana). He thought he'd written a poignant, relevant and funny script; NBC felt otherwise. "They never really tell you the reason," he sighs. "You never get the real reason."

He is full of praise for HBO, which funded and backed his epic, post-Katrina documentary about New Orleans, When the Levees Broke, which is still picking up awards almost a year after it was made. "HBO gave me wonderful freedom," he says, sounding proud. "It would not have been the same animal without them. The profanity, the images, the way we went after Bush and Condoleezza Rice - studios and networks would have changed all of that."

Once the conversation turns to New Orleans, the mellow Spike starts to melt away, and it becomes obvious that Shelton, the angry kid from Brooklyn who earned his nickname for being so damn feisty, is still lurking underneath. "What really gets me is that Levees was pretty much all the follow-up reporting there has been." He leans forward, sighs again and rubs his hands across his face. "I talk about it as much as I can and we're going to do a follow-up, but that's about it. I was in Venice for the film festival when Katrina hit and I spent the time in my hotel zipping back and forth between BBC and CNN. It was a great education. I've seen overseas how the war is covered differently. And a lot of that BBC footage ended up in the documentary; that stuff was shown. But they did not want those images to be seen on American television - the same way you are never going to see coffins coming back from Iraq. The US government, in cahoots with the media, determines what the public can see and what they can't see."

I wonder to what extent the situation might change if Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States. Lee pauses. "It's interesting that in the last Democrat debate New Orleans never came up," he says finally. "It didn't even come up." But would a black president make a difference? "A black president, or Obama?" he shoots back. "I mean, Condoleezza Rice could be president - she's African American. And that would be horrible." OK, I concede, I meant Obama. He smiles, enjoying his own footwork, then relents. "Obama has the following, but does he have the experience? He can certainly speak well. But look, I'm not going to come out and endorse anyone at this time."

Lee clearly feels he can't just line up with black America, for better or for worse. For instance, he is annoyed that virtually the only black star who spoke out about the government's handling of the New Orleans disaster was the rapper Kanye West. "I would say what [West] did was a heroic act," he says. "It was spontaneous. There were a lot of other people who had the opportunity, and who had microphones and a camera in their face but who chose to stay mum. I think that is indicative of the climate in the US - people are afraid to speak out, because the administration's knee-jerk reaction is to brand them unpatriotic.

"Many people have not been sophisticated enough to see past that and are being too careful what they say, for fear that it's going to affect their career, and their bottom line."

The son of a jazz musician and a schoolteacher, Lee grew up in the 1960s and 1970s in a home where freedom of expression was valued intensely. His anger at America's 21st-century creative lockdown is fuelled by the fear and silence from people who ought to be role models. "Today's media are used as a narcotic to put people into stupors," he says. "I mean, the most popular show right now is American Idol." He grins as he makes a sly aside: "I guess we could blame you British for sending us Simon Cowell, just like you sent us all your religious nuts."

Lee's greatest disappointment is that black cinema has not come closer to fulfilling its potential. "There is the exception of Denzel [Wash ington], or Will [Smith], or people like that, but for the most part if you are a screenwriter or an African-American director you are relegated to these ghettos: hip-hop shoot-'em-ups or lowbrow romantic comedy. It is very hard to find films that show the breadth of the African-American experience. That's why a lot of these films contain coonery and buffoonery."

Two decades into his career, Lee is still almost single-handedly trying to change that. He is trying to find funding for a new adaptation, announced in July, of James McBride's novel Miracle at St Anna, which looks at the role played by African-American soldiers who fought the German army in Tuscany during the Second World War. "This is the paradox," he told a press conference as he launched the project - "black people who were fighting for democracy but at the same time were second-class citizens at home."

He is clear about the reasons for the dearth of big-bucks black film talent, but torn about the solution. Recently, he had a James Brown biopic project turned down by every major studio. "It's the trilogy that has not been made," he says, laughing bitterly - "first Jackie Robinson, then Joe Louis, now James Brown. For me, it has been a wake-up call. I thought after the worldwide success of Inside Man it would be a little easier to make what I want, but I was mistaken. It all goes back to the gatekeepers. There are very few people in Hollywood - and these individuals are predominantly white males - who decide what you are going to see. And it's a problem. Many times when I go to these meetings, the only black person I see is the brother at the gate who lets me in. Even today, I will sit in meetings about James Brown and I'm the only black person in the room. These people in Hollywood don't see James Brown as the universal figure that he is; they only see him as the subject for a black film."

What puzzles him is how to get around these gatekeepers. Dreamgirls, he explains, got made only because of David Geffen - what DG wants, DG gets. Ali got made because it starred Will Smith, who is one of the biggest stars in the world. And so, Lee says, he is working it all out. For one thing, he's looking at means of finance from outside Hollywood, and thinking of setting up a film fund. "Lots of people are doing it with less track record than I have," he says with a shrug. The other way is to play the politician. "OK, so I shouldn't have had Denzel in Malcolm X talking about the white blue-eyed devils," he smiles. "Then maybe I could have got Jackie Rob inson, Joe Louis and James Brown made."

Maybe that is why people are under the impression Spike Lee has mellowed. He has learned to talk the talk, to shake the hands and take the cash from network TV to keep things ticking over. But those who love the artful polemics at the heart of Do the Right Thing and 25th Hour shouldn't worry too much. Lee is about as mellow as the Pacific Ocean: on a good day, it's as calm as a millpond, but when the wind starts blowing, you'd better head for the shore.

Spike Lee's pilot episode of "Shark" goes out on UKTV Gold on 24 September (10pm)

Spike Lee: the CV

1957 Born Shelton Jackson Lee in Atlanta, Georgia to Bill Lee, a jazz musician, and Jacquelyn Shelton Lee, a teacher. The family relocates first to Chicago and then Brooklyn, New York.

1982 Graduates with a Master's in Fine Arts from the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, and soon establishes his 40 Acres and a Mule production company.

1986 His debut feature film, She's Gotta Have It, appears. Grosses $7m at the box office.

1989 Do the Right Thing earns Lee new critical kudos and two Oscar nominations. As well as producing, directing and writing, Lee stars as the pizza delivery man Mookie.

1992 Lee's biopic Malcolm X is released to great acclaim. Warner Brothers had initially approached Norman Jewison to direct, but Lee got the contract after campaigning for it on the grounds that a black director had to tell the story.

1999 Lee jokes that the president of the National Rifle Association, Charlton Heston, "should be shot". His remarks are quoted out of context and he becomes the target of widespread criticism.

2006 Release of the documentary When the Levees Broke: a Requiem in Four Acts, the first of his films not to be dubbed "A Spike Lee Joint".

http://www.newstatesman.com/200708300025

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Página/12:
Que se venga la papa de todas partes

IMPORTARAN Y DARIAN SUBSIDIOS PARA ASEGURAR EL ABASTECIMIENTO

La preocupación por la insuficiencia de oferta que se espera hasta fin de año obligó a buscar la solución en la papa importada. La traerían de Canadá, Francia o Brasil, pero subsidiada para que no impacte en el precio al consumidor. En los súper, ya se vende a 4 pesos.

Por Fernando Krakowiak
Viernes, 31 de Agosto de 2007

No tienen el peso de una multinacional como Shell ni el poder de lobby de los ganaderos. Sin embargo, los empresarios que integran la cadena de la papa son los únicos que le están quitando el sueño al secretario de Comercio, Guillermo Moreno. En las últimas semanas, las asociaciones de consumidores denunciaron subas de hasta un 50 por ciento en el precio de este producto y las proyecciones oficiales indican que podría seguir aumentando. La papa es un alimento central de la canasta básica y su incidencia en el segmento verduras del índice de precios es del 18,3 por ciento. Para intentar ponerle un freno a la suba, el Gobierno oficializó ayer la creación de un registro de importadores y prometió subsidiar a los que se inscriban. En una reunión con los productores del sector, Moreno aseguró el miércoles estar dispuesto a poner hasta 15 millones de pesos.

En el Gobierno aseguran públicamente que el aumento de la papa es una consecuencia de las heladas que destruyeron la producción en Córdoba y Tucumán, pero las subas ya venían registrándose y lo que hizo el invierno fue agravar la situación. Moreno reconoció el miércoles ante los empresarios que la culpa no es sólo del clima. “Ustedes me cagaron, pero el mes que viene no va a volver a pasar”, les advirtió cuando les adelantó la creación del registro.

Durante la mayor parte del año pasado, la bolsa de 35 kilos de papa se conseguía en el Mercado Central a cerca de 10 pesos. Sin embargo, en los últimos meses comenzó a subir sin freno y ayer estaba a 55 pesos. En el primer semestre, la ciudad de Buenos Aires y el conurbano se abastecen casi exclusivamente con la producción proveniente del sudeste de la provincia de Buenos Aires (Balcarce y alrededores). En esa zona, las heladas no provocaron daños significativos porque la cosecha se realiza en el verano. Sin embargo, a partir de agosto comienza a crecer la participación de las producciones provenientes de Córdoba y Tucumán hasta concentrar casi la totalidad de la oferta y allí el frío hizo estragos.

Cuando los productores de Buenos Aires se enteraron del daño que provocaron las heladas en el interior, comenzaron a subir el precio anticipándose a la escasez que luego comenzó a notarse. El margen que están obteniendo quienes no vieron afectada su producción es tan alto que han empezado a retacearle sus entregas a la industria de congelados, como la multinacional McCain. Este tipo de empresas compran grandes cantidades de papa y exigen alta calidad y bajos precios. Sin embargo, ahora los productores prefieren vender la papa fresca a los mercados concentradores.

Los comercializadores también están aprovechando para remarcar los precios de manera voraz. En el Mercado Central el kilo de papa se consigue a 1,60 peso. Sin embargo, durante los últimos días los supermercados estuvieron vendiendo a cerca de 4 pesos y las verdulerías no se quedan atrás. Esta escalada impactará en el índice de precios, por más esfuerzos que se hagan para disimularlo, ya que según los datos del organismo oficial el mes pasado el kilo de papa se podía conseguir en las verdulerías a 1,13 pesos. Es decir, más barato que lo que se vende ahora en el Mercado Central.

La intención del Gobierno es que se importe papa de Brasil, Canadá o Francia. Las bolsas de 50 kilos se podrían vender en el país a 80 pesos a nivel mayorista. Ese valor por kilo es similar al vigente actualmente en el mercado. Por eso, el gobierno piensa otorgar un subsidio a los importadores para que se consigan precios más bajos. Si el aporte termina siendo de 15 millones de pesos, tal como les adelantó Moreno a los productores, se podrían ofrecer 26 millones de kilos a 1 peso cada uno, cerca del 75 por ciento de la papa que vende el Mercado Central en un mes.

Es un volumen significativo, pero la papa importada no estará disponible en los próximos días para planchar los precios de septiembre, como desea Moreno. Una vez cerrado los contratos de compra se deberá esperar el tiempo que demora el flete en barco, cerca de 20 días si proviene de Canadá o Francia. Brasil podría proveer en menos tiempo, pero en la zona sur de ese país también se registraron heladas y todavía es difícil precisar cuánto se podría importar de ese destino.

Además, habrá que tener previsiones sanitarias para preservar la salud de la población. En 1989, por ejemplo, el funcionario alfonsinista Ricardo Mazzorin decidió importar papa de Polonia, pero se detectó que algunas partidas estaban contaminadas con residuos radiactivos de Chernobyl. Como era imposible identificar qué papas eran, la gente se asustó y el consumo se retrajo a menos de la mitad provocando fuertes pérdidas los importadores y al conjunto de los productores.

También será necesario sellar acuerdos con los supermercados. Los especialistas consultados por este diario aseguraron que de nada servirá que el kilo de papa se consiga a 1 peso o menos en el mercado mayorista, si los comercializadores la siguen ofreciendo en las góndolas entre 3 y 4 pesos. Esa articulación del Estado con el conjunto de la cadena para morigerar los márgenes y garantizar el abastecimiento viene siendo necesaria desde hace varios meses. Moreno, en cambio, privilegió exclusivamente el control de precios en el Mercado Central.

© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/economia/2-90572-2007-08-31.html

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Página/12:
El peligro del puré

Por Alfredo Zaiat
Viernes, 31 de Agosto de 2007

En México es el maíz, cereal básico para elaborar la tortilla, comida esencial de la gastronomía azteca. En los países asiáticos es el arroz, que acompañado con pescado es base insustituible de la dieta de la población de esa zona del planeta. En Argentina son el trigo y la papa, productos imprescindibles del menú de los hogares del país. En estos tres casos, el maíz, el arroz, el trigo y la papa son el alimento fundamental de la población más pobre de esas naciones. Son baratos y brindan la sensación de saciedad, fundamental para esquivar el hambre. Por diferentes motivos se precipitó la crisis: en México, por el desarrollo del biocombustible en Estados Unidos en base al maíz, y en la Argentina, por el avance de la soja y por factores climáticos (inundaciones y heladas). Un alimento básico que era barato y abundante se volvió caro y escaso. Gran parte del menú de los argentinos se complementa con el tubérculo de cuna incaica, que lo convierte en un producto que está fuertemente arraigado en la cultura y no es fácilmente sustituible por otro. Por ese motivo es considerado un alimento de primera necesidad. Junto a los derivados del trigo constituye la dieta fundamental de los argentinos pobres, unos 10 millones. Esta es la razón principal para que el Estado se comprometa con una eficaz y eficiente estrategia de intervención para garantizar el abastecimiento de papa, en cantidad y en precios accesibles. Se trata de un bien-salario clave, con una elevada ponderación en el rubro Verduras de la canasta de consumo que releva el Indec. La necesidad de una política pública, entonces, es indispensable en el hoy sensible mercado de la papa, pero también en el resto de los alimentos básicos. Se requieren medidas de corto plazo para superar la actual crisis, como facilitar la importación y la instrumentación de subsidios a los productores, pero también resulta fundamental estructurar una estrategia de mediano y largo plazo para incentivar la ampliación de la producción. Además, abordar el problema de la cadena de comercialización que aplica márgenes abusivos. En ese sentido, la actual intervención en el Mercado Central ha demostrado ineficiencia porque se apuntó al control del precio fijado por el productor primario, beneficiando así a los intermediarios y a las grandes cadenas y, por lo tanto, se terminó perjudicando al consumidor. En ese complejo escenario, pecar por prudencia por las previsibles críticas de la ortodoxia a una política de intervención en el mercado de alimentos implica asumir el riesgo de terminar hechos puré.

© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/economia/2-90574-2007-08-31.html

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Página/12:
De Lady a secreto de Estado

Por Juan Gelman
Viernes, 31 de Agosto de 2007

El 31 de agosto de 1997, el Mercedes que transportaba a la princesa Diana y al millonario egipcio Dodi al Fayed se empotró en un pilar del túnel que pasa debajo del Puente de Alma en París. Ambos fallecieron, también el chofer, Henri Paul, y sólo no perdió la vida el guardaespaldas de Dodi, Trevor Rees-Jones. A casi 10 años del hecho, Lord Stevens presentó finalmente las 800 páginas del informe que se le encargara para echar luz sobre lo acontecido. Sus conclusiones: se trató de “un trágico accidente”, el automóvil viajaba a velocidad excesiva, la culpa fue del conductor, que había ingerido demasiado alcohol, y no de los paparazzi que perseguían el vehículo. Esta es la tesis oficial de los gobiernos británico y francés y a ella se atienen no pocos documentales o películas de casi ficción como La muerte de Lady Di, que el Discovery Channel proyectó el domingo 26. El día anterior, France 3 daba a conocer Diana y los fantasmas del Alma, un documental bien diferente, dirigido por Francis Gillery.

Gillery cuestiona tanto la versión oficial como la hipótesis del complot en la que insiste el padre de Dodi, el multimillonario Mohammed al Fayed –dueño de la cadena Harrod’s pero rico sobre todo por el mismo comercio que practicaba su hijo, la venta de armas–, convencido de que la Corona no iba a permitir que Diana se casara con un árabe. El documental sugiere que no hubo accidente sino crimen y que el objetivo podría haber sido Dodi –tal vez por sórdidas razones de negocios–, una muerte oscurecida y aun borrada por el magnetismo mediático de Diana y el cariño que le tenía –y le tiene– el pueblo inglés. Tampoco esto interesa centralmente a Gillery. Tras siete años de investigación concluye que tanto el silencio francés como el relato británico obedecerían a los imperativos del secreto de Estado. Buceó en papeles, interrogó a testigos y descubrió cosas. Raras.

Gillery había evocado años atrás en Lady Died –un libro primero, luego un documental– la conversación que sostuvieron en París James Andanson, el fotógrafo preferido de Diana, y Frédéric Dard, el escritor más leído de Francia, inventor del comisario San-Antonio y autor de cuentos, dramas y novelas policiales. Andanson circulaba por el túnel del Alma cuando se produjo el hecho, se acercó, tomó fotos y observó detalles que comentó con su amigo en la comida que éste le ofreció en su casa. Andanson habría sido suicidado a comienzos de mayo del 2000: su BMW negro apareció incendiado en un bosquecito del sur de Francia y lo curioso es que no habría aparecido el cuerpo carbonizado, como suele suceder, sólo cenizas y huesitos. Hubo filtraciones a los medios que explicaban el “suicidio”: que el fotógrafo se había matado al descubrir la infidelidad de su mujer, o que su vinculación con el M16 británico y los servicios franceses le había traído la desgracia. Lo primero lo desvinculaba de cualquier relación con la muerte de Diana. Lo segundo, todo lo contrario. A continuación, y sólo un mes después, falleció Dard. Casualidades son casualidades.

Una instancia judicial interrogó durante horas a la viuda y a la hija de Dard, presentes en la conversación de marras, primero por separado, luego juntas. “Como mantenían su testimonio, fueron acosadas hasta que les hicieron decir que se habían levantado de la mesa para servir los platos y que tal vez habían entendido mal la conversación. Sin embargo, los Dard tenían meseros”, relató Gillery en una entrevista reciente que otorgó al periodista y escritor Thierry Meyssan, presidente del Réseau Voltaire. No hay por qué pensar mal: nada impide que se ayude al personal de servicio, aunque la conversación sea muy interesante.

Gillery subrayó otros hechos: en el legajo judicial francés no figuran las investigaciones de los servicios del primer ministro de entonces, el socialista Lionel Jospin, ni las de la brigada antiterrorista. No hubo autopsia del cadáver de Dodi: se partió del presupuesto de que era un accidente. Nunca se localizó al Fiat 1 blanco –ni a su dueño– cuya lentitud en el túnel habría provocado la maniobra fatal. Dodi no estaba paseando por París –como se dijo–, concurría a una cita de negocios. Los resultados del análisis de sangre del conductor, Henri Paul, son dudosos: además de alcohol, se detectó una cantidad de monóxido de carbono “que no le habría permitido estar de pie y todavía menos conducir un vehículo”. No sería su sangre la que se analizó, propone Gillery. Un segundo análisis realizado días después arrojó los mismos resultados, “lo cual es aún más ridículo, pues el índice de alcoholemia tendría que haber variado con el tiempo”. Ni en los análisis de sangre se puede ya creer.

Henri Paul era jefe de seguridad del Hotel Ritz en el que la pareja se alojaba. Según la policía británica, había sido informante de los servicios de inteligencia franceses y poco antes de morir depositó mucho dinero en una de sus 15 cuentas bancarias. Otro misterio que no aborda el informe británico oficial. Se limita a mencionar que el conductor perdió el control del auto, pero no explica la razón. “Era importante analizar la caja eléctrica –señala Gillery– y en el informe se asegura que todo estaba en muy mal estado y que no se podía examinar. Evidentemente, no es creíble en el caso de la caja.” A su juicio, Lord Stevens –ex comisionado de la Policía Metropolitana agraciado con el título de barón de Kirkwhelpington en 2005, en plena preparación del informe– descartó los hechos discordantes con la versión buscada y no ahondó en los que no podía descartar. Y guarda silencio Trevor Rees-Jones, guardaespaldas que fuera de Dodi y único testigo de la tragedia: afirma que la amnesia le impide recordar lo sucedido.

Todos estos elementos llevan al cineasta y escritor francés a manifestar que su empeño no sólo comprueba nuevamente la existencia del secreto de Estado: es, en el caso Diana, “un estudio del mecanismo de la mentira de Estado. Solo y sin recursos, logré reunir mucha información –apunta–. No puedo creer que Scotland Yard, con una decena de investigadores dedicados al tema a jornada completa y con los medios considerables de que dispone, no la haya obtenido en tres años de pesquisa”. Francis Gillery revela cómo se fabrica un secreto de Estado. Le resultó posible –con mucho trabajo, claro– porque tres personas pueden guardar un secreto sólo si dos de ellas están muertas, pensó Benjamin Franklin.

© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-90542-2007-08-31.html

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The Independent:
Cholera spreads in Iraq as health services collapse

By Patrick Cockburn
Published: 31 August 2007

Lack of clean drinking water and poor sanitation has led to 5,000 people in northern Iraq contracting cholera.

The outbreak is among the most serious signs yet that Iraqi health and social services are breaking down as the number of those living in camps and poor housing increases after people flee their homes.

"The disease is spreading very fast," Dr Juan Abdallah, a senior official in Kurdistan's health ministry, told a UN agency. "It is the first outbreak of its kind here in the past few decades."

Doctors in Sulaimaiyah in Iraqi Kurdistan have appealed for help because of the rapidly increasing number of cases, saying there is a shortage of medicines. Although the city has been less affected by fighting than almost anywhere in Iraq, Unicef says that mains water is only available for two hours a day and many people have dug shallow wells outside their homes.

"There is a shortage of medicines to control the disease and the focal point [the source of the disease] hasn't been identified yet," Dr Dirar Iyad of Sulaimaniyah General Hospital told the UN news agency Irin. Ten people have already died and he expects more deaths to occur "over the next couple of days as victims are already in an advanced stage of illness."

The number of Iraqis fleeing their homes has risen from 50,000 to 60,000 a month, the UN High Commission for Refugees reported earlier this week.

"My two children, husband and mother have been affected by cholera because we weren't able to get purified water and one of my children is very sick in hospital," said Um Abir, a 34-year-old mother. "We have been displaced since January and we have to camp near a rubbish tip which, according to the doctor, might be the reason for all of the family being affected." The number of Iraqi refugees stands at 4.2 million of whom two million have been displaced within Iraq. Many live in huts made out of rubbish and have no fresh water supplies. In addition to Sulaimamiyah, the cholera has spread to the oil city of Kirkuk.

"The bad sanitation in Iraq, especially in the outskirts of cities where IDPs [internally displaced person] are camped, has put people at serious risk," said Dr Abdullah. "In Sulaimaniyah and Kirkuk, at least 42 per cent of the population don't have access to clean water and proper sewage systems." Unicef says that local reports suggest that only 30 per cent of people in Sulaimaniyah have clean drinking water.

Most of Iraq outside Kurdistan is flat so water and sewage need to be pumped, but this has often become impossible due to a lack of electricity. The water in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers is highly polluted and undrinkable.

In central and southern Iraq, the Mehdi Army, commanded by the nationalist Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, has so far obeyed his surprise instruction to suspend their activities for six months after clashes with police and rival militiamen in Kerbala left 52 dead and hundreds wounded. Checkpoints that normally protect the Sadrist bastion in Sadr City in Baghdad were unmanned yesterday.

Militia leaders say they will fight if provoked. "It will be hard to stand still with our hands tied when we are attacked or arrested by the Americans," said Abu Hazim, a Mehdi commander. Ahmed al-Shaibani, an aide of Mr Sadr, said the suspension might only last a week if arrests continued.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2914413.ece

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ZNet | Race: New Orleans Hit By
Another "Hurricane of Racism, Greed and Corruption"

by Malik Rahim; Democracy Now; August 31, 2007

AMY GOODMAN: I’m here in the Lower Ninth Ward. Behind me is the Industrial Canal levee that broke two years ago between Lake Pontchartrain and the Mississippi River. At 9:38 a.m. local time on Wednesday, a moment of silence was held across New Orleans to mark the moment the levees were breached two years ago.

Hurricane Katrina flooded about 80% of New Orleans and killed well over 1,600 people, displacing another one-and-a-half million people from the Gulf Coast. Only two-thirds of the region’s population has returned home.

Few areas in New Orleans were as hard hit by Hurricane Katrina as the Lower Ninth Ward, where we’re broadcasting from today. This predominantly African American working-class neighborhood remains largely in ruins two years later.

In a moment, we’ll be joined by Malik Rahim, cofounder of the Common Ground Collective, and Alice Craft-Kerney of the Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic, but first I want to go back two years ago to rebroadcast a part of Malik’s first interview on Democracy Now! just days after Katrina hit New Orleans.

MALIK RAHIM: I would have commandeered everything, Greyhound buses, Amtrak trains, school buses, public service buses, and had them all filled with people, getting them out of harm's way. That was the very first thing I would have done. And then, second, I would ask for volunteers, volunteers of people that live in the community, that know the community, that didn't need a map to find out where such-and-such a street exists, and had them to come back in here. I would have had my police force to commandeer every boat that was available, because everybody knew the flooding was going to happen, you know, to make sure that people would have been getting out. I wouldn't have left it on a faith-based community. I would have made sure that everybody would have had a means that wanted to leave or they had the means to leave.

AMY GOODMAN: That was Malik Rahim speaking days after Hurricane Katrina. A week later, Malik was again on Democracy Now!, as he was giving us a tour of the Algiers neighborhood. As our video cameras followed him, Malik showed us how corpses still remained in the street.

MALIK RAHIM: Now, his body been here for almost two weeks. Two weeks tomorrow, alright, that this man's body been laying here. And there's no reason for it. Look where we at. I mean, it's not flooded. There's no reason for them to be - left that body right here like this. I mean, that’s just totally disrespect. You know? And, I mean, two weeks. Every day, we ask them about coming and pick it up. And they refuse to come and pick it up. And you could see, it's literally decomposing right here, right out in the sun. Every day we sit up and we ask them about it, because, I mean, this is close as you could get to tropical climate in America. And they won't do anything with it.

AMY GOODMAN: Malik, do you know who this person is?

MALIK RAHIM: No. But regardless of who it is, I wouldn't care if it's Saddam Hussein or bin Laden, nobody deserve to be left here. And the kids pass by here, and they’re seeing it. I mean, the elderly, this is what’s frightening a lot of people into leaving. We don't know if he's a victim of vigilantes or what. But that's all we know is that his body had been allowed to remain out here for over two weeks.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Malik Rahim joins us again today, as we broadcast from the Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans. He’s a longtime community activist in New Orleans and cofounder of the Common Ground Collective. We’re also joined by Alice Craft-Kerney of the Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic. And we welcome you both to Democracy Now!, though it’s odd to welcome you both to your own neighborhood as we come in from New York.

But, Malik, let's begin with you. Set the scene for us. I mean, outside the view of our camera, of our microphones right here, when we were down here two years ago, there were a lot of destroyed houses. Right now it’s mainly nature taking over. We don't even see the foundations of the houses.

MALIK RAHIM: No. Most of the houses that wasn't destroyed during Katrina was demolished under our city’s Good Neighbors Program. So what you have is - is just a series of empty lots. And it's a testimony of the lack of recovery. This is a testimony of a lack of, truly, support by our federal, state and local government for the upliftment of this community. You find other areas of the Lower Ninth Ward that have a large population of whites, the Holy Cross area, and it’s doing well. But over here you only have - I know of only one house that has been totally rebuilt. So maybe about -

AMY GOODMAN: Who determines what gets built, what doesn't?

MALIK RAHIM: Funds. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln. You know, they make the - Hamilton - those are the ones who make the determination. If you don't have the money or if you don't have the strength to rebuild, then you are just in a dismal situation.

AMY GOODMAN: What is this Road Home fund?

MALIK RAHIM: You know what? When you find out, Amy, you ask me. Only thing I could say is it’s funding for those who are well connected, you know, because those who don't have the connections, they haven’t seen nothing but promises from Road Home.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us what happened two years ago here just behind us. There is the levee.

MALIK RAHIM: Well, three blocks - well, the levees broke, I believe it was because of the fact of the Mississippi River Gulf Outlet, which is just about two miles away from here, and when it pushed that storm surge through that canal, it came through and it broke the levee here at Industrial Canal. And a barge came through, and that barge traveled about three-and-a-half blocks, just crushing houses.

You know, this is an area that had the highest death toll in the entire city. Somewhere between 300 to 500 people lost their lives right here. A good friend of mine now, he lost his mother and his granddaughter, you know, the morning of the 29th. So you have many people here that have really suffered that pain.

And there wasn't no trauma counselors here. You know, you had people that, after going through this, after witnessing and experiencing the worst disaster to hit America, they have yet to have any type of counseling, and then they have yet to have any type of support in rebuilding their lives.

So you see the area where the people was hardest hit two years ago by a hurricane, now two years later they are still being the hardest hit by another hurricane, but this hurricane is called racism, greed and corruption.

AMY GOODMAN: Where are the people who had homes here who didn't die?

MALIK RAHIM: They are displaced all over. We have a mailing list of roughly around 700 of the residents in this area, and they’re all over America. I mean, they all over America. We have some as far as Seattle, Washington, Miami. We have met some in New York, you know, from this area that’s now living in New Jersey, at least in New Jersey. You know, but they are displaced all over America.

AMY GOODMAN: As we talk about recovery efforts, I want to play a clip of what President Bush told the country on September 15, 2005, when he visited New Orleans.

PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH: And tonight, I also offer this pledge of the American people: throughout the area hit by the hurricane, we will do what it takes, we will stay as long as it takes to help citizens rebuild their communities and their lives. And all who question the future of the Crescent City need to know there is no way to imagine America without New Orleans. And this great city will rise again.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Bush. He was speaking - I believe it was Jackson Square, where there was a candlelight vigil last night. The generators were put on for the first time. He was flooded, bathed in light for that speech. And then the generators were turned off, and they didn't see electricity for a long time. Malik?

MALIK RAHIM: Well, you know, anything that he said about Jackson Square - at Jackson Square, he was speaking to all the residents in that area. You know, and he has helped them. You know, they are recovered. The French Quarter is doing well. The New Orleans Saints is doing well. You know, the Garden District is doing well.

I’m talking about the Ninth Ward. I’m talking about this area, the Lower Ninth Ward. I’m talking about New Orleans East, where he wouldn't even put a blue tarp on the roofs of these houses, where they put blue tarps on - a sea of blue tarps on every other community. Here, nobody received anything. And two years later, nobody is receiving anything.

AMY GOODMAN: Alice Craft-Kerney, you founded the health clinic that’s here in the Lower Ninth Ward. You also lost your home.

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Yes, I did.

AMY GOODMAN: Where did you live?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: My home was in eastern New Orleans. And I received five-and-a-half feet of water in my home.

AMY GOODMAN: Where were you that day?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Actually, I was here in the Lower Ninth Ward in my brother's home. He has a three-story historic home in the Holy Cross area.

AMY GOODMAN: Is his home OK?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Well, he has decided to rebuild, and he has completed that reconstruction, and he and his wife are living in their home now.

AMY GOODMAN: And your home destroyed?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: My home, through the efforts of friends, brothers and sisters who saw my plight, they came down and they started working on my home. And it’s about 80% complete, enough for me to move into.

AMY GOODMAN: Were you able to get Road Home funds?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Not as of yet. I’m waiting to see what will happen. But you have to understand, Road Home appeared to be a program that was set up to fail. And many of the folks who did receive the Road Home money, really, that was not their intended target. The folks who were supposed to receive the money were supposed to be people who were flooded. Our state started giving money to people who had wind damage, and that was not the true intention. So those folks received money over folks who were actually flooded. So there’s a problem there.

AMY GOODMAN: I saw Cynthia McKinney yesterday, the former congresswoman from Georgia. She was up protesting at Kennebunkport and then drove her way down here to be here for the second anniversary. And I asked her what she thought of President Bush coming here, and she said, “Did he bring money?” She said that’s all that counted.

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Exactly.

AMY GOODMAN: The clinic, tell us about it

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Well, my friend Patricia Berryhill, who’s been with me the entire time, she and I decided, once we started the clinic - now, I must tell you that Common Ground Relief - this is a project of Common Ground Relief, the Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic, because Michelle Shin, who was an organizer down here in the Lower Ninth Ward, along with Leaders Creating Change Through Contribution, were able to come up with a plan for us to assist us to get this clinic up and running. Once we got the idea of a clinic, we needed people to run it who had medical experience, and then they turned to residents, and that was myself and Patricia Berryhill. This clinic was formed because there was a need. There was no primary healthcare here in the Lower Ninth Ward.

AMY GOODMAN: You're a nurse.

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Yes, I’m a registered nurse. And my friend Patricia Berryhill is a registered nurse who’s Master’s-prepared with over thirty-two years experience. And we have dealt with this population before, because we were both working at the Medical Center of Louisiana, Charity Hospital, and she was at the other campus, University.

AMY GOODMAN: Charity is closed.

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: And Charity is closed.

AMY GOODMAN: Isn't Charity where they had a ceremony yesterday, setting up a mausoleum for a hundred identified remains?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: That's correct. But Charity was the safety-net provider for the medically indigent patients in the community, and with that being destroyed, with that infrastructure being destroyed, we knew that many people were going to be caught - the uninsured were going to be caught without any type of medical care. We saw people really just dying on both sides of the street, just because they didn't have access to medical care. And we decided we weren't going to wait. We saw people dying at Convention Center Boulevard, the Superdome, just waiting for the bus, and we decided we weren't going to wait for the healthcare bus. So we determined we were going to open this clinic.

And the clinic was opened by people giving their time, their talent. And what happened was we had folks from all over the country who came to renovate the building, and we had supplies, medical supplies and equipment that was sent down to us, contributions from folks like yourself, as well as some foundations, that got us started. And so, that's how the clinic actually started and opened.

AMY GOODMAN: What do you need now?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: Right now we need money for operating funds. We’re dealing with a scarcity of healthcare professionals, because, just like my family left the region, many of the healthcare providers left the region.

AMY GOODMAN: Did I see a figure, something like 90% of doctors gone?

ALICE CLARK-KERNEY: I’m not going to say 90%, but there was a large number that actually left, never to come back again. And we're not just talking about doctors, we’re talking about nurses, nurse practitioners, physical therapists, pharmacists, anybody in the healthcare field. All of these folks are gone, and many of them are not going to return. So that leaves us here with a few healthcare professionals, and they can basically name their salary. So we're competing against hospitals with wonderful fringe benefit packages, sign-on bonuses. And it’s very difficult at this point. So we need funds so that we can actually attract good people to the clinic.

AMY GOODMAN: Malik Rahim, as we wrap up this segment, we’re sitting in front of Common Ground Relief, and there are all different signs. One says, “Tourist, shame on you. Drive by without stopping, paying to see my pain. 1,600-plus died here.” And another says, “Wish list: men's clothing, food items, cleaning supplies, baby supplies.” How do you keep going here?

MALIK RAHIM: Basically off the generosity of grassroots people.

AMY GOODMAN: What about the city?

MALIK RAHIM: Two years later, we have served 170,000 people in direct services, and we have yet to even be visited by any elected official. So we don't receive no federal, state or local support.

AMY GOODMAN: I spoke to Mayor Ray Nagin yesterday. He had dinner with President Bush the night before. I asked him what his demands were, and he said it wasn't a time for demands.

MALIK RAHIM: Well, you know, if your home is rebuilt, if you’re living well, if you're full, then maybe it wasn't the time. But if you’re hungry, if you’re homeless, if you have been traditionally disenfranchised, then the time has always been there, you know.

AMY GOODMAN: You travel not only around the country, around the world now. What is the message that you are spreading?

MALIK RAHIM: Well, the one that I’m spreading most is the fact that we had vigilantes in this city that have killed young African American males, I mean, with complete immunity. One equated killing young males as - equated it with pheasant season, shooting pheasants in South Dakota. And nothing is done. That person whose body that I showed you in Algiers who was killed by vigilantes, his body wasn’t identified. He is one of those hundred.

These are the things that we are spreading, the injustice that exists here, that Jefferson Parish refused to open up its border to African Americans, that there's two forms of America: there’s America that’s for the white and the rich, and then there's another America for the poor, the minorities, the disenfranchised. And that has to change.

So what we’re trying to promote now is that we have to come together, that New Orleans is a testing ground for this nation, that if we fail this test on bringing democracy and justice to New Orleans, then this country is doomed.

AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for being with us. Malik Rahim is founder of Common Ground Relief. We’re sitting in front of Common Ground Relief and, behind that, the levee that was breached two years ago. Alice Craft-Kerney is executive director of the Lower Ninth Ward Health Clinic, her home also devastated in East New Orleans. I want to thank you both for being with us. We'll be back with People's Hurricane Relief Fund.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=30&ItemID=13667