Elsewhere Today 431
Aljazeera:
Deadly forest fires sweep Greece
SATURDAY, AUGUST 25, 2007
13:08 MECCA TIME, 10:08 GMT
At least 41 people have been killed as some of the worst forest fires to hit Greece in decades continued to sweep across the country.
Many of the deaths occurred in the western Peloponnese region, near the town of Zaharo, where firefighters were searching through charred houses on Saturday.
Hundreds of people were reported to have been trapped in the region by fires on several fronts in the south of the country.
Charred bodies were found in "cars, houses and in fields" in the area surrounding the village of Zacharo, in the southwest Peloponnese, firefighters said.
"It's a Biblical catastrophe, the sight is horrible. I saw people burnt alive in their cars," Christos Kafiras, the prefect of the Ilia fire department, told a television channel on Friday.
Government criticised
Throughout Friday and into the night, more than 170 fires raged across the country, from the western Ionian islands to Ioannina in northwestern Greece and down to the south.
With at least 25 fires starting long after dark, including one in a park in a wealthy neighborhood of Athens, authorities warned on Saturday that more blazes were expected.
A recent three-day heat wave, in which temperatures have touched 40C, has left forests and shrub land parched, with flames fanned by the strong winds.
But some of the fires are thought to have been started by arsonists.
Nicole Itano, a journalist in Athens, told Al Jazeera: "There is a lot of suspicion that these fires and previous fires from the summer have been set by arsonists. The suspicion is that people are setting fires in order to clear land for new developments."
But she said: "People here are simply stunned by the sheer number of the fires."
She said that gale force winds had made it difficult for firefighters, adding that "even without those winds I think firefighters would have been hard pressed to deal with them simply because there are so many".
Itano also said that the government had come under criticism for not being prepared despite "knowing this was going to be a long, hot, dry summer".
"The mood in Greece is definitely one of anger and this may affect the ruling party as they go into elections," she said.
Greece is expecting to see early elections in September.
Highway closed
In Athens, the capital, a fire broke out during the night in a park in the Filothei area, a few kilometres north of the city centre.
Two forest fires, that broke out near the Greek capital, blocked off the main highway between Athens and its international airport, authorities said on Saturday.
"The motorway has been shut down," a fire department spokesman said. Karolos Papoulias, the Greek president, said: "We are in a state of national mourning ... We must do whatever is necessary so this does not happen again."
Costas Karamanlis, the country's prime minister, held a crisis meeting in Sparta, in the southern Peloponnese.
After touring the fire-ravaged area the day before, the prime minister called the situation "a national tragedy."
The government has appealed to European Union countries to "send any help they can," said Spyros Flogaitis, the acting interior minister, after an emergency meeting of Greece's civil protection authority.
The Greek military has been called in to help firefighters.
Desperate appeals
Residents and local officials called television stations with desperate appeals for help.
"I'm one person, all alone in the dark in a blazing valley. I need help," said one man, whom the Mega television channel said was the mayor of Palaiochori village.
One woman in the village of Rodina, near Zaharo, told Antenna television that about 20 people, including children, were trapped in the village.
"We can see the fire in front of us. It's at our feet," said the woman, who did not give her name. "We're choking on the smoke."
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/C341F8BF-14FE-4DD4-A011-CA791D5A9188.htm
AllAfrica:
FG Suspends Naira Redenomination
By Josephine Lohor, Abuja
This Day (Lagos) NEWS
25 August 2007
President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua yesterday ordered the immediate stoppage of the Naira redenomination policy announced last week by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), citing the non-compliance by Professor Chukwuma Soludo, the CBN governor with Section 19 of the CBN Act.
The Attorney General of the Federation, Michael Aondoakaa who addressed State House correspondents on the president's position said the Act cited by the CBN governor to justify his position also provided that such action must be taken with the written approval of the president.
According to Section 19(2) of the Act: "The standard weights and composition of coins issued by the Bank and the amount of remedy and variation shall be determined by the President on the recommendation of the Board."
Mr Aonodoakaa said as the chief law officer of the country, he sought to know from the President "in the presence of the State House Counsel, Jalal Arabi whether presidential approval was sought or given before the redenomination policy was unveiled, the president answered in the negative."
He said the action of the CBN governor would only be tenable if he got the approval of the president in writing.
He said, "I drew the attention of Mr President to the provisions of the CBN Act of 2007 as to whether an approval was sought in accordance with the CBN Act before he (Soludo) commenced the process of re-denomination. The President, in the presence of myself and the State House Counsel denied that such an approval was sought for, and neither did he grant any approval.
"I, as the Chief Law Officer of the Federation, hereby stop all actions on the re-denomination of the Naira. This is because the action of the CBN Governor violated Section 19, sub-section 1 and 2 of the CBN Act. Therefore, the actions must abate. All actions of the CBN in the redenomination must be in accordance with the CBN Act. So, until an approval is sought for and obtained in writing from the President, all actions on the re-denomination must stop."
The attorney general said he was leaving the venue of the press briefing to "communicate to the CBN Governor within 10 minutes, to stop all actions on the re-denomination of the Naira until he has obtained written approval from the President."
The CBN had last week announced that with effect from August next year, the country would take away two zeros from its currency or move two decimal points to the left, with N20 as the highest denomination.
The government had last week Wednesday invited the CBN governor to brief members of the Federal Executive Council on the planned policy. It thereafter referred the matter to the Economic Management Team headed by the Minister of Finance, Shamsudeen Usman, to study the policy and report back to the council.
The council has not met since then, but yesterday's announcement puts to rest the controversy generated by the policy change, which would have put the exchange rate of the dollar to the Naira at 1 to $1.25 from next year.
This is the second time in two days that the Yar'Adua regime would announce a major policy reversal. The President on Thursday directed that the issuance of waivers, exemptions from taxes, duties and tariffs to individuals, companies or organisations, be suspended with immediate effect.
Although the duty exemptions and waivers were not granted by the Yar'Adua administration, the Finance Minister, Shamsudden Usman said the suspension became necessary to plug a number of revenue leakages through which corruption was perpetrated in the last three years.
Noting that the amount of waivers given so far was alarming, he said, "The Comptroller-General of Customs told us that one particular waiver was granted ten times over. A lot of state governments, private sector operators and churches were being granted waivers indiscriminately. Somebody was organising a game and was asking for waivers to import 600 cars."
Copyright © 2007 This Day. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200708250003.html
AlterNet:
Let's Face It: The Warfare State Is Part of Us
By Norman Solomon, AlterNet
Posted on August 23, 2007
The USA's military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.
While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes - and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative - such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that "the people must take back the government," but how can "the people" take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for "returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy," we're encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.
The warfare state didn't suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won't disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.
Born 50 years before George W. Bush became president, I have always lived in a warfare state. Each man in the Oval Office has presided over an arsenal of weapons designed to destroy human life en masse. In recent decades, our self-proclaimed protectors have been able - and willing - to destroy all of humanity.
We've accommodated ourselves to this insanity. And I do mean "we" - including those of us who fret aloud that the impact of our peace-loving wisdom is circumscribed because our voices don't carry much farther than the choir. We may carry around an inflated sense of our own resistance to a system that is poised to incinerate and irradiate the planet.
Maybe it's too unpleasant to acknowledge that we've been living in a warfare state for so long. And maybe it's even more unpleasant to acknowledge that the warfare state is not just "out there." It's also internalized; at least to the extent that we pass up countless opportunities to resist it.
Like millions of other young Americans, I grew into awakening as the Vietnam War escalated. Slogans like "make love, not war" - and, a bit later, "the personal is political" - really spoke to us. But over the decades we generally learned, or relearned, to compartmentalize: as if personal and national histories weren't interwoven in our pasts, presents and futures.
One day in 1969, a biologist named George Wald, who had won a Nobel Prize, visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - the biggest military contractor in academia - and gave a speech. "Our government has become preoccupied with death," he said, "with the business of killing and being killed."
That preoccupation has fluctuated, but in essence it has persisted. While speaking of a far-off war and a nuclear arsenal certain to remain in place after the war's end, Wald pointed out: "We are under repeated pressure to accept things that are presented to us as settled - decisions that have been made."
Today, in similar ways, our government is preoccupied and we are pressurized. The grisly commerce of killing - whether through carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan or through the deadly shredding of social safety-nets at home - thrives on aggressive war and on the perverse realpolitik of "national security" that brandishes the Pentagon's weaponry against the world. At least tacitly, we accept so much that threatens to destroy anything and everything.
As it happened, for reasons both "personal" and "political" - more accurately, for reasons indistinguishable between the two - my own life fell apart and began to reassemble itself during the same season of 1969 when George Wald gave his speech, which he called "A Generation in Search of a Future."
Political and personal histories are usually kept separate - in how we're taught, how we speak and even how we think. But I've become very skeptical of the categories. They may not be much more than illusions we've been conned into going through the motions of believing.
We actually live in concentric spheres, and "politics" suffuses households as well as what Martin Luther King Jr. called "The World House." Under that heading, he wrote in 1967: "When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments."
While trying to understand the essence of what so many Americans have witnessed over the last half century, I worked on a book (titled Made Love, Got War) that sifts through the last 50 years of the warfare state ... and, in the process, through my own life. I haven't learned as much as I would have liked, but some patterns emerged - persistent and pervasive since the middle of the 20th century.
The warfare state doesn't come and go. It can't be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it's at the core of the United States - and it has infiltrated our very being.
What we've tolerated has become part of us. What we accept, however reluctantly, seeps inward. In the long run, passivity can easily ratify even what we may condemn. And meanwhile, in the words of Thomas Merton, "It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared."
The triumph of the warfare state degrades and suppresses us all. Even before the weapons perform as guaranteed.
Norman Solomon's book, Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America's Warfare State will be published in early fall. The foreword is by Daniel Ellsberg. For more information, go to: www.MadeLoveGotWar.com
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/60500/
Clarín:
Todo empezó en los sesenta
LA EPOCA Y LOS CAMBIOS
Muchos de los datos del mundo actual provienen del pasado. No pocos corresponden, específicamente, a circunstancias que tuvieron lugar durante la década de 1960, cuando una generación de jóvenes, cargados de ideología, reinventó la vida y el arte (música popular, cánones de la moda y el diseño), en una operación que llega incluso hasta nuestro presente. En las páginas que siguen, la actualidad de esas marcas.
JORGE FONDEBRIDER
25.08.2007 | Clarin.com | Revista Ñ
Ya se trate de hechos trascendentes o triviales, los elementos constitutivos de cada época dependen del resultado de batallas libradas en épocas precedentes. Entonces, así como, según criterios políticos y presupuestos ideológicos particulares, hubo un día en que, a consecuencias de la Segunda Guerra, el planeta fue parcelado de una forma determinada, también hubo una vez en que, por caso, las mujeres comenzaron a usar la falda por encima de la rodilla. Hoy, con un planeta vuelto a dividir muchas veces y con menos esperanzas que hace cuatro décadas, se cumplen cuarenta años de, por ejemplo, el Summer of Love ("Verano del Amor"), pináculo del hippismo y de la cultura pop, y en el mundo entero se recuerda lo que ocurrió en ese entonces. También se celebra la aparición de un disco que contribuyó a cambiar nuestra percepción de la música. Ambos hechos, claro, están ligados.
Ambos lados del Atlántico
La historia se resume en estos términos: en diciembre de 1965, los Beatles editaron Rubber Soul, su sexto álbum. Según cuenta el crítico Barry Miles en su magnífica biografía de Paul McCartney Many Years from Now (de la que existía una muy buena traducción castellana en Emecé que la editorial Planeta, sin criterio de catálogo, decidió saldar), Brian Wilson, el compositor y líder del grupo estadounidense The Beach Boys, vivía obsesionado por emular a Lennon y McCartney y, en mayo de 1966 -mientras los Beatles se encontraban grabando Revolver, su próximo álbum- editó con su banda Pet Sounds. El disco fue considerado por críticos y músicos como uno de los mejores de la historia. Tal fue también el punto de vista de Paul, quien, a su vez, quiso emular a Wilson. "A menudo oía Pet Sounds -dijo McCartney- y lloraba. Se lo hice oír tantas veces a John que sería difícil que hubiese conseguido escaparse de su influencia. Era el disco de ese momento". Y ese momento era, justamente, el del último concierto público de los Beatles, que tuvo lugar el 29 de agosto de 1966. Para entonces, ya estaban experimentando nuevas maneras de hacer música que, en esa época, sólo podían lograrse en el ámbito cerrado de los estudios de grabación. De hecho, cansados de ser los Beatles, un día decidieron que sus próximas canciones fueran interpretadas por la Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (la Banda de Corazones Solitarios del Sargento Pimienta), una suerte de alter egos deformes y festivos. En palabras de George Martin, su productor, "la mera existencia del Sgt. Pepper se puede justificar por un motivo psicológico, porque en el disco aparecía otra entidad, algo alejada de ellos. Era como si no fueron ellos mismos los que hacían el disco".
El 1º de junio de 1967, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, el octavo álbum de los Beatles, salió en el Reino Unido. Era el resultado de 129 días en los Abbey Road Studios, de Londres. Rápidamente cientos de grupos trataron de descubrir la manera de copiar toda esa parafernalia de efectos especiales y el mundo se llenó de exégetas dispuestos a interpretar los menores detalles de las letras. Pero mientras todo eso sucedía, Paul McCartney ya viajaba a los Estados Unidos para presenciar el Monterey International Pop Music Festival, que tuvo lugar en la localidad californiana homónima, entre el 16 y el 18 de junio de ese mismo año. Fue el primer megafestival de rock, al que asitieron unas 200.000 personas para escuchar a sus músicos favoritos; entre otros, Otis Redding, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, The Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, The Mamas & the Papas, Buffalo Springfield y Simon & Garfunkel.
Guerras propias y ajenas
Mientras todo esto sucedía, en el sudeste asiático, se desarrollaba una vergonzante guerra -que los Estados Unidos iban a perder-, que se nutría, justamente, de jóvenes, a quienes, al cabo de unos meses, el gobierno devolvía mutilados, o en un cajón envuelto con una bandera, o, en el mejor de los casos, definitivamente trastornados. En el interior del país, en cambio, se libraba una guerra sorda contra el alistamiento compulsivo, los prejuicios raciales y el orden conservador. A esta luz, las bondades pregonadas por el "sueño americano" -un mundo sustentado por aforismos ramplones y electrodomésticos- ya no les producían ilusión alguna a los hijos de quienes, una generación antes, habían creído en esa fantasía. Ahora se trataba de cambiar la vida y el mundo, y la música, lejos de ser un mero entretenimiento o la excusa para vender gaseosas, estaba cargada de ideología. Dicho de otro modo, entre la trama de una película con Doris Day y lo que dice la letra de cualquier canción de Bob Dylan o del primer disco de The Doors -también de 1967-, había toda una galaxia donde entraban las diferentes versiones de lo que se llamó contracultura: negación del sistema capitalista, opciones políticas no tradicionales, búsqueda de otros modelos de sociedad, alternativas a la religiosidad tradicional, incipiente ecologismo, culto del amor libre, consumo de drogas para expandir la conciencia, etc.
El mundo alrededor
Hay que decir que todas esas transformaciones no fueron patrimonio único de los jovenes estadounidenses. En Gran Bretaña, detrás de una fachada de profundo hedonismo y acaso con un nivel de reflexión más importante, ocurría otro tanto. Por su parte, los estudiantes de Francia y Alemania preparaban su propio modelo de revolución cultural para el año siguiente. Mientras tanto, en Latinoamérica, luego del triunfo de la Revolución cubana de 1959, el socialismo en castellano se anunciaba por primera vez posible y todo el subcontinente acusaba inmediato recibo. Así, al tiempo que algunos jóvenes en Buenos Aires se reunían en el Instituto Di Tella de la calle Florida o en La Cueva de la avenida Pueyrredón, con el objeto de inventar una nueva versión del mundo, otros seguían con atención la Revolución Cultural china o los pasos del Che Guevara en Bolivia, quien habría de ser asesinado apenas unos meses después de la publicación de Sgt. Pepper's y de la realización del festival de Monterey.
La ocasión entonces es propicia para analizar cómo fue, qué dejó y cuáles son las grandes y pequeñas consecuencias sobre nuestras vidas de la cultura pop. De eso tratan los distintos artículos que componen este número especial de Ñ.
Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2007/08/25/u-00811.htm
Guardian: How three Swedish geeks
became Hollywood's Number One enemy
Hollywood's image of piracy has been altered by the internet
Bobbie Johnson, technology correspondent
Saturday August 25 2007
Operating under the sign of a Jolly Roger, The Pirate Bay website hopes to evoke a buccaneer spirit: swashbuckling swordsmen, or perhaps the pirate radio stations of the 1960s. But as the internet's number one destination for illegal downloads, it has raised the °©hackles of the entertainment industry and elevated its founders to the top of Hollywood's most wanted list.
With more than two million visitors every day, The Pirate Bay has become one of the sharpest thorns in the side of the media business. Its controversial success has caused havoc in the music, TV and film industries.
Current top downloads include The Bourne Ultimatum, Die Hard 4.0 and Knocked Up — all showing in British cinemas, but available to watch on a computer screen for those willing to take the risk.
The three-year campaign to bring down the website is almost an epic of Hollywood proportions, sprinkled with high-flying lawyers and accusations of political extremism. And yet, so far, the chase has failed to bring the pirates down.
Despite their high profile, however, the men behind The Pirate Bay are not part of an organised crime syndicate. Instead, they are an unlikely trio of Swedish computer geeks who began their war with the media from a small room in Stockholm.
The group, who spoke exclusively to the Guardian, live like students in the suburbs of Sweden's major cities. They wake late and work into the night. The closest thing they have to an official headquarters is a desk on the suburban outskirts of Malmo — and that is simply because it has a working fax machine.
But as the most hated men in Hollywood, they said they have become used to the attention. "We get legal threats every day, or we used to," said Peter Sunde, 28, one of the site's main workers. "But we don't have a problem with them — we're just a search engine."
Fredrik Neij, a 29-year-old IT consultant, has a more prosaic view: "It's nice to be noticed," he smiled.
Chief among those angered by The Pirate Bay's popularity is the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which represents the US film studios. It is waging war against the site, which it claims is costing billions in lost sales.
John Malcolm, executive vice-president of the MPAA, has railed against the trio, accusing them of cashing in on illegal activity. "The bottom line is that the operators of The Pirate Bay, and others like them, are criminals who profit handsomely by facilitating the distribution of millions of copyrighted creative works," he said.
Mr Sunde insists the site does not profit its founders, and money raised from advertising is used to cover expenses. Instead, he says, the team make their money from a variety of side projects and day jobs.
Filesharing and illegal downloading has been a big issue for media companies since the late 1990s. But while pioneering services such as Napster and Kazaa were closed down by the courts, the campaign against The Pirate Bay has failed to make a breakthrough.
The crux of the defence is that The Pirate Bay operates like any internet search engine: it points to downloads, rather than hosting any illegal content itself. Under Swedish law this has so far made it immune to prosecution.
"I don't like the word untouchable, but we feel pretty safe," said Mr Sunde. He thinks that European enmity towards the Bush administration has bolstered support. "The US government is losing popularity every day in Europe, and people don't want to see us give in to them."
Their apparent invulnerability to prosecution has made them heroes of the internet piracy movement, but not everybody feels the same way.
"I certainly don't see them as romantic pirates: it's out and out theft," says John Kennedy, chief executive of the international music industry body IFPI. "It's pure, ruthless greed — or total naivety."
But the group's supporters around the world say they are vexed with what they see as the "corruption" of the media industry.
"This is already happening — you cannot stop it," says Magnus Eriksson of Piratbyran, the Swedish thinktank which helped start the website in 2003. "But the thing is that the people who download the most are also the ones who spend the most on buying media. Media companies already know that they have to change."
The pirates suspect the cam°©paign against them is gathering pace. Last year police raided the site and held Gottfried Svartholm, the third member of the group, for questioning. No charges resulted, but the site was offline for two days.
Lately critics have focused on potential political links, including one German failed attempt to link the organisation with far-right extremists.
More recently Swedish police said they were considering blocking the website because of a tip-off that some pages linked to images of child abuse. This, says Mr Sunde, was just an attempt to smear The Pirate Bay's reputation. "There were three files in question, but it turned out that none of them contained child porn," he said.
The group is adamant it is just a search engine, but Mr Kennedy rejects any analogy with traditional internet businesses. "When I sit down with Google they are prepared to talk about copyright issues," he says. "If I thought The Pirate Bay guys were doing something really new and clever, then we'd look at it — but there's no evidence of that."
Mr Sunde remains unmoved. He says piracy is a way of life on the internet. "I started off copying disks on my computer when I was eight or nine," he said. "You should never tell people where they can't go or what they can't do."
* Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/aug/25/piratebay
Harper’s Magazine:
A Cartoon
Posted on August 24, 2007. By Mr. Fish.
This is A Cartoon, a cartoon by Mr. Fish, published August 10, 2007. It is part of The Cartoons of Mr. Fish: a Selection, which is part of Features, which is part of Harpers.org.
Written By
Fish, Mr.
Permanent URL
http://www.harpers.org/archive/2007/08/hbc-90001013
Internazionale:
I numeri contano
Ci sono alcuni articoli pieni di numeri che a mio avviso meritano un'attenta riflessione
Paul Kennedy
Internazionale 707, 23 agosto 2007
La nostra epoca è sicuramente l'era dei fatti, delle statistiche e dei dati: in poche parole, l'era dei numeri. Negli Stati Uniti il deficit federale viene aggiornato ogni secondo su un tabellone elettronico di Times Square, a Manhattan.
Il Guinness dei primati deve il suo successo alla nostra insaziabile curiosità per le cifre: chi ha mangiato più salsicce in una volta sola? Chi ha percorso la distanza più lunga a nuoto? Chi è l'uomo più ricco del mondo? Per lo più sono sciocchezze innocue.
Inoltre, la maggior parte di noi si tiene giustamente lontana dalle cifre, tranne quando controlla il proprio conto in banca. I politici e i professori che buttano lì un mucchio di numeri durante un discorso dovrebbero sapere che il livello di attenzione del pubblico cala immediatamente. I dotti editoriali pieni di statistiche invitano anche il lettore più attento a girare pagina.
Ma ci sono alcuni articoli pieni di dati che a mio avviso meritano un'attenta riflessione. Vi esporrò quindi la mia reazione a un paio di questi testi che sono riusciti a turbarmi. Non riguardano l'alta politica, sono statistiche – cifre – relative a persone piuttosto comuni. Purtroppo in entrambi i casi l'impressione che se ne ricava è che alcuni aspetti del tessuto sociale del nostro pianeta siano in grande crisi.
Il primo articolo, scritto per il Financial Times da Gunnar Heinsohn, un professore dell'università tedesca di Brema, analizza i rapporti tra l'esplosione di violenza nella Striscia di Gaza e l'enorme aumento di giovani arrabbiati in quel territorio.
Molti di noi accennano al collegamento tra incremento demografico, frustrazione e violenza nelle strade, ma lo fanno ogni tanto e in modo quasi casuale. Heinsohn ha raccolto una serie di cifre reali su questo problema.
Tra il 1950 e il 2007 la popolazione di Gaza è passata da 240mila a quasi un milione e mezzo di abitanti, a causa dell'alto tasso di natalità delle famiglie palestinesi. Una delle osservazioni più sorprendenti di Heinsohn è che "se gli abitanti degli Stati Uniti si fossero moltiplicati allo stesso ritmo di quelli di Gaza, tra il 1957 e il 2007 il loro numero sarebbe passato da 152 a 945 milioni, vale a dire a più del triplo degli attuali 301 milioni".
Ma la conclusione dell'autore è ancora più interessante: ci sono molti più giovani arabi (frustrati, arrabbiati e disoccupati) che giovani israeliani, e il loro numero sta crescendo così rapidamente da renderli incontrollabili. Se questo è vero, allora tutte le missioni di pace degli Stati Uniti o dell'Unione europea potrebbero essere inutili. I numeri contano. E nei prossimi decenni nessuno se ne renderà conto più di Israele.
Il secondo articolo basato sulle cifre che ha catturato la mia attenzione è apparso sul numero di giugno-luglio del Catholic Worker, una rivista sconosciuta ma meravigliosa dei cattolici americani. L'articolo riguardava un tema che non compare mai sulle prime pagine dei giornali e non è considerato di moda negli Stati Uniti: quello del numero dei detenuti nelle carceri americane.
L'articolo di Jim Reagan è intitolato "2.193.798 e continuano ad aumentare". La cifra si riferisce al numero di detenuti degli Stati Uniti d'America nel 2005. Secondo i dati forniti dall'International centre for prison studies dell'università di Londra, siamo al primo posto nel mondo, battiamo di gran lunga la Cina (un milione e mezzo di detenuti) e la Russia del nostro buon amico Putin (870mila).
In proporzione, mettiamo in prigione una percentuale della nostra popolazione sette o otto volte superiore a quella della maggior parte dei nostri amici europei, e dall'inizio degli anni novanta il numero assoluto delle persone rinchiuse nelle nostre prigioni è raddoppiato.
Siamo particolarmente bravi nell'imprigionare i maschi di colore, di origine ispanica o appartenenti alle altre minoranze. Secondo Jim Reagan, nella più famosa prigione di New York, Rikers Island, "più del 90 per cento dei detenuti sono latinoamericani e neri".
Quando mi trovo di fronte a queste cifre da capogiro, resto confuso. Non riesco a immaginare quale sarà la popolazione giovanile della Striscia di Gaza nel 2020, né pensare come faranno gli Stati Uniti in quello stesso anno a gestire un sistema penitenziario che potrebbe contare fra i tre e i quattro milioni di detenuti, per la maggior parte neri e ispanici.
Devo ammettere che trovo anche difficile immaginare le possibili implicazioni dei tanti rapporti sul riscaldamento globale o di quelli sulla conquista della leadership economica del pianeta da parte dell'Asia entro la metà del secolo. Inoltre, diffido di chiunque sostenga di sapere esattamente cosa significano queste tendenze e queste proiezioni statistiche.
Comunque, sono sicuro che significano qualcosa. Ed è per questo che non possiamo girare pagina quando ci capita tra le mani un articolo che contiene un mucchio di statistiche, sia che riguardino la prigione virtuale di Gaza sia quelle reali americane. A volte i numeri contano.
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Jeune Afrique:
Bouaké is back
par MARIANNE MEUNIER, ENVOYÉE SPÉCIALE
CÔTE D'IVOIRE - 13 août 2007
Promue cinq ans durant, et bien malgré elle, capitale de la rébellion, la deuxième ville du pays a tenu bon. Et retrouve aujourd’hui le giron national ainsi que les signes d’un retour à la normale. Reportage.
C’est l’histoire d’une survivante. Une survivante épuisée par la guerre, qui a vu ses enfants, petits et grands, vivre d’expédients, fuir ou mourir, ses richesses pillées, ses maisons dépecées. Qui a connu les fracas des tirs de roquettes et des bombardements, les nuits de couvre-feu, l’isolement, la peur, de brefs sursis et autant de désillusions. Une rescapée autrefois rayonnante, maintenant désolée, que deux hommes se sont disputée par armées interposées pendant près de cinq ans. Mais qui, par la grâce de quelque dieu pour les croyants, à force de caractère pour les autres, a résisté. Depuis cinq mois, les manchettes des journaux la persuadent qu’elle est bel et bien sauvée, que l’harmattan finira par emporter ses mauvais souvenirs. Encore une promesse de renaissance, mais un peu plus solide que les autres, à laquelle elle a envie de croire.
Cette survivante s’appelle Bouaké, la deuxième ville de Côte d’Ivoire, le point de rencontre des routes qui alimentent le Burkina et le Mali en marchandises venues d’Abidjan, à quelque 380 kilomètres au Sud, un centre de commerce réputé pour la douceur de son climat et la joie de ses 700 000 habitants. Mais cela, c’était avant le 19 septembre 2002, le jour où la capitale du Centre est devenue le fief des rebelles emmenés par Guillaume Soro, qui ont affronté les Forces de défense et de sécurité de Laurent Gbagbo - officiellement au nom de la reconnaissance de la citoyenneté ivoirienne pour une partie des habitants du pays. Après maints échecs, les belligérants sont enfin parvenus à un accord, le 4 mars dernier, à Ouagadougou, et Guillaume Soro est devenu Premier ministre. Depuis, la paix s’installe, bon an mal an. Et Bouaké essaie de retrouver ses couleurs d’antan.
Sous la grisaille d’un matin de fin juillet, la ville se réveille, quadrillage de goudron et de latérite bordé de maisons basses. Il est 7 heures. Dans la grande rue qui conduit au stade municipal, gros édifice jaune délavé posé sur une friche, les passants sont rares, les voitures et les taxis rouges encore plus, les maquis et les boutiques, fermés.
La veille à la même heure, cette large artère bitumée débordait d’habitants d’Abidjan, de Korhogo (Nord) de Guiglo (Ouest), venus retrouver leurs frères de Bouaké qui n’avaient pas vu pareille affluence depuis l’éclatement de la crise. Le maquis Wale, « prix national d’excellence », a fait recette.
Le Ranhotel, qui a rouvert ses portes il y a peu, après avoir été réhabilité, et ses concurrents, la Grâce, Mon Afrique, le foyer des Jeunes Viateurs, affichaient complet. Les parkings étaient bondés de cars et de minibus. Tout ce monde drapé dans les couleurs de la Côte d’Ivoire - orange, blanc, vert -, le visage bariolé, en tee-shirt à l’effigie de Laurent Gbagbo et Guillaume Soro sourire aux lèvres, célébrait la « Flamme de la paix ».
Les deux têtes de l’exécutif l’ont allumée ensemble sous les acclamations d’une foule euphorique, avant de mettre le feu au brasier des armes dont les plus émus ont récupéré « quelques petits restes », en souvenir. Le 30 juillet 2007 : un symbole, la première fois depuis la campagne présidentielle de 2000, et a fortiori depuis le 19 septembre 2002, que le chef de l’État posait le pied à Bouaké.
Mais la fête a fait long feu, les sifflets et les tam-tams se sont tus, les visiteurs d’un jour ont grimpé dans les bus. Et le 31 juillet, perdue au milieu des herbes folles, des arbres centenaires et des champs de maïs, Bouaké affiche dès le petit matin sa mine cernée de gris. À 11 heures, la rue du stade ne sera guère plus remplie qu’à 7. Au quartier Air France, le salon de coiffure décati qui fait face à l’école TSF Sud n’ouvrira pas. Dans le centre-ville, les portes de l’agence Ecobank et celles de la Banque centrale des États d’Afrique de l’Ouest (BCEAO, dont 20 milliards de F CFA de réserves ont été pillés en septembre 2003) resteront cadenassées. L’enthousiasme festif, qui jadis tenait Bouaké éveillée jusqu’au petit matin, s’est envolé. Le soir venu, ni musique ni danse à la buvette Pacha où, de mémoire d’habitant, l’équipe nationale de football du Nigeria s’est une nuit « amusée comme pas possible ». Comme si l’énergie de Bouaké se concentrait au marché, une succession d’étals en plein air où les klaxons se mélangent aux cris des marchands.
Au début de la guerre, des rebelles - qui s’organiseront rapidement en « Forces nouvelles » - ont pillé les magasins et les maisons. Des détenus leur ont prêté main-forte, la prison civile et le camp pénal ayant été ouverts. Pris de panique, n’ayant pas encore identifié les belligérants, des habitants ont fui, à pied, à vélo, en voiture, dans les villages alentour ou à Abidjan. Certains ont repris le travail des champs. Les bâtiments de l’État, commissariat, préfecture, ont été investis par les nouveaux maîtres de la ville. Les fonctionnaires - policiers, professeurs, employés de l’administration - ont eux aussi rejoint la capitale économique. Depuis, au quartier résidentiel Air France II, leurs maisons les attendent le long des rues trouées de nids-de-poule, portes et vitres cassées, jardins reconquis par une nature exubérante. « La ville s’est vidée de ses forces vives », déplore un notable. Près de la moitié des fonctionnaires, soit 2 000 personnes, et 200 000 habitants l’auraient désertée.
De cette paix ficelée à Ouagadougou il y a cinq mois, Bouaké ne porte pas encore la trace. Mais « la fin de la crise », la « réconciliation », la « réunification » sont sur toutes les lèvres. Intarissables, les habitants ont décidé d’y croire. Bonhomme jovial de taille moyenne, la barbe grisonnante et les cheveux coupés ras, le père Pierre a prêté l’oreille, pendant toute la crise, aux confidences de ses ouailles « moralement brisées ». Aujourd’hui, dans la cour fleurie de son église, il veut bien jouer le jeu : « Moi, je veux bien faire confiance à Laurent Gbagbo et Guillaume Soro. Je ne sais pas ce que chacun d’eux mijote, mais ils savent qu’il y a un temps pour tout et que maintenant, c’est celui de la paix. » Le père Pierre en veut pour preuve que les rangs de l’église, dont « seulement trois bancs étaient occupés fin 2002 », commencent à se garnir : « Pendant la crise, nous ne faisions qu’une messe le week-end. Aujourd’hui, nous en faisons une à 7 heures et une autre à 9 heures, l’affluence reprend, c’est encourageant. »
Nanan Kouakou N’Guessan, qui possède une grande partie de la ville, est, lui, serein. Pourtant, il y a deux semaines, l’irruption dans sa maison d’hommes armés de kalachnikovs - qui déguerpiront après les avoir frappés et volés, lui et son épouse - lui a rappelé les mauvais souvenirs de la guerre. Mais, assis dans le fond de son salon, ouvert sur une cour que protège l’ombre d’un manguier, il attend la visite de Guillaume Soro, imperturbable. « Le 30 juillet, c’est un symbole, c’est une loi qui existe, on ne peut plus revenir en arrière, professe le vieil homme d’une voix rocailleuse, en baoulé. Une commission est venue me voir de la part de Gbagbo et de Soro pour m’annoncer qu’ils allaient faire la paix, poursuit-il. Quand ils viennent me consulter, les hommes politiques ne me trahissent pas. » Comme nombre de notables attachés à leur ville, le sage ne l’a jamais quittée, même aux pires moments, quand, en octobre 2002, des corps calcinés s’étalaient sur la route ou, en novembre 2004, un camp de l’armée française était bombardé par les forces gouvernementales.
C’est peut-être pourquoi cette cité engourdie, maussade, n’est tout de même pas la ville fantôme que décrivent les Abidjanais. Isolée du reste du pays par la zone de confiance, une bande large de 60 kilomètres sous contrôle de l’Onuci qui s’étend à sa frontière Sud - démantelée en avril -, elle a continué à tourner, et certains n’ont pas attendu l’accord de Ouagadougou pour y revenir, ou même s’y établir. Comme Aïcha, petite jeune femme timide dans son boubou orange, qui rentre à la maison, un sac de provisions à la main, son nourrisson sur le dos. « Je suis venue ici parce que la grand-mère est morte, chuchote-t-elle. Et puis, je suis restée. J’ai monté un petit commerce. » Son fiancé, un « élément » des Forces nouvelles, lui donne de l’argent pour compléter, ce qui lui « permet de vivre ».
Avec la crise, les prix ont généralement baissé. Les produits ménagers qui viennent du Ghana, les disques importés du Togo, les oignons du Niger ne sont pas soumis aux taxes, l’administration ayant déserté. « Une moto que vous trouvez à 800 000 F CFA à Abidjan en coûte 300 000 F CFA ici », assure un jeune homme. Les habitants ne paient plus d’impôts à l’État - les Forces nouvelles prélèvent néanmoins des taxes -, l’eau et l’électricité sont gratuites et les Abidjanais se plaignent de voir leurs factures augmenter d’autant. Impossible d’obtenir un permis de conduire ou une carte d’identité, le commissariat étant passé sous le contrôle des Forces nouvelles. La poste n’est plus là, mais on se débrouille. Théodore passe par une compagnie de cars pour envoyer des lettres à sa famille à Abidjan.
Oui, il y a eu des pénuries. Au comptoir de la librairie Univers, Moussa Diabaté, le patron, fulmine devant ses étals qui n’ont pas été approvisionnés depuis le début de la crise. « Les fournisseurs ne veulent plus nous faire crédit, ils disent que c’est risqué. » Les banques ayant fermé, il ne peut les payer par virement. Pendant ce temps, les manuels scolaires qui remplissent les rayonnages se sont périmés, car en zone gouvernementale, ils ont été remplacés. Les trois grossistes qui alimentaient les pharmacies de la ville - dont certaines ont été pillées - ont également plié bagage. « On avait des hypertendus, des diabétiques, des cardiaques qui n’avaient plus leur traitement, raconte un pharmacien. Mes recettes ont baissé de plus de 70 % avec la crise. »
Mais depuis six mois, ce dernier sent une amélioration. Deux des trois grossistes sont revenus. « C’est le signe que c’est la fin », assure-t-il. Même son de cloche chez Doumbia, Sénégalais d’une trentaine d’années qui vend tout à la fois des téléphones portables, des piles, des postes de radio dans une échoppe du centre : « Ça reprend doucement, doucement, mais ça reprend. » Depuis 2005, le fonctionnement de la Nouvelle Librairie de Côte d’Ivoire, qui affiche les unes de la presse internationale sans retard sur leur date de parution, a repris son cours normal. Et depuis janvier 2006, ses employés ne sont plus obligés d’aller chercher la marchandise à Yamoussoukro, à 110 kilomètres. Le livreur accepte de faire le voyage jusque dans la « ville rebelle », les coupeurs de route ont cessé de semer la terreur et les barrages des Forces nouvelles qui ponctuaient le trajet ont quasiment disparu. Le préfet a repris ses quartiers, dans des bureaux réhabilités. L’enseignement, lui, n’a connu que deux interruptions, entre octobre 2002 et janvier 2003 puis de novembre 2004 à janvier 2005. Les effectifs - primaire et secondaire - pour l’ensemble de la région de Bouaké ont chuté de 245 000 à 140 000. Seulement un quart des professeurs du secondaire est resté. Il leur a fallu renoncer à leur paie, qu’ils ne pouvaient toucher en raison de la fermeture des banques, et enseigner avec les moyens du bord dans des salles de classe parfois vides de tables et de chaises, le matériel didactique ayant été pillé. « Le niveau en a pris un coup », reconnaît un responsable de l’Éducation nationale qui préfère garder l’anonymat. En retard, les examens se sont néanmoins presque toujours tenus. Et, pour la première fois cette année, les épreuves de l’entrée en sixième se sont déroulées en même temps qu’à Abidjan, le 31 juillet. Les Forces nouvelles et les Forces de défense et de sécurité ont assuré ensemble la sécurité des opérations. Un signe de la réunification.
Mais ce sont toujours les Forces nouvelles, dont leur branche armée est omniprésente dans le paysage, qui ont la haute main sur la ville. Accoudé au bar de la cafétéria Jérusalem, une échoppe peinte en bleu où l’on peut boire une tasse de café clair et manger une tranche de pain - avec du beurre quand il y en a -, Germain, employé d’hôtel, regarde filer l’un de leurs convois. Des pick-up chargés de militaires, regard fixe et béret rouge, escortent un 4x4 noir aux vitres fumées, sans plaque d’immatriculation. « Dedans, c’est Anaconda », assure le client. Anaconda, le nom de guerre de Ouattara, également surnommé Wattao par ses camarades, le chef d’état-major adjoint des Forces armées des Forces nouvelles (FAFN). Les dignitaires de cette armée rigoureusement organisée, Germain les connaît tous : Chérif Ousmane, le « chef de tous les comzones » (commandants de zone), son adjoint, Famoussa, Dem Kool, « chef de sécurité du secteur Ouest ». Chaque jour, il assiste à leurs parades qui, avec celles de l’Onuci, constituent l’une des rares animations de la ville. Sans coups de feu ni cris de guerre, elles sont toutefois plus sobres aujourd’hui qu’aux premiers mois de la crise.
Pour approcher le « grand » Wattao, il faut passer Dem Kool. Trente-six ans, silhouette sahélienne, tatouage au bras droit, ce dernier reçoit dans une villa « abandonnée par ses habitants au début de la crise ». Dans la cour, un 4x4 et un coupé de marque japonaise. En caleçon et maillot de corps blancs, assis sur un canapé dans un salon où trône une télévision à écran plat, il sort manifestement tout juste de son sommeil. La veille, il s’est chargé de la sécurité de la cérémonie de la Flamme de la paix, placée sous haute surveillance à cause de l’attentat qui, le 29 juin, a visé l’avion du Premier ministre Guillaume Soro, tuant quatre personnes. « On a patrouillé avec les Forces de défense et de sécurité, lâche-t-il entre deux bâillements. Pendant quarante-huit heures, on a dormi dans les mêmes camions. Ça s’est très bien passé. »
Vivant manifestement dans l’aisance, respecté, ce musulman pratiquant, « caporal-chef » dans l’armée régulière avant de rejoindre les FAFN, a-t-il vraiment intérêt à déposer les armes ? « La paix, c’est une bonne chose, assure-t-il. Il y a eu trop de souffrances. Si on continue comme ça, la Côte d’Ivoire va reculer. » Quant à ceux qui ont montré qu’ils ne voulaient pas de cette paix en lançant une roquette sur l’avion du Premier ministre, Dem Kool dit ne pas les craindre et préfère les narguer : « Ils nous ont permis de corriger certaines choses sur le plan sécuritaire. »
Pendant la guerre, des membres des FAFN comme des Forces de défense et de sécurité ont bénéficié de promotions fulgurantes, moyen pour leurs états-majors respectifs de les empêcher de passer dans le camp adverse. A priori, les membres des FAFN qui souhaiteront intégrer l’armée régulière ne seront pas dégradés. Et, pour ceux qui préfèrent le retour à la vie civile, le versement d’un petit pécule est prévu qui leur permettra de lancer une activité. Dem Kool penche pour la deuxième solution. Il n’a pas encore décidé de son « business », mais sait qu’il s’installera à Abidjan avec ses trois enfants parce que « si on veut changer de vie, il faut changer de lieu ».
Le prestige qu’ont acquis pendant la guerre certains dignitaires des Forces nouvelles, devenues de véritables éminences locales, le faste dans lequel ils ont vécu, laissent supposer que c’est avec regret, voire réticence, qu’ils retourneront à l’anonymat de l’armée. Un coup de fil au responsable de la sécurité d’Anaconda, « Sergent Petit Major », homme sec qui ne parle ni ne sourit derrière une épaisse brûlure lui boursouflant la joue droite, permet enfin d’accéder à la « légende » de Bouaké. Ou plutôt à sa salle d’attente, où patientent deux visiteurs venus le saluer avant de prendre la route pour Abidjan. Des photos de Che Guevara, du commandant Massoud et d’Anaconda lui-même, en uniforme, le visage inondé de soleil, décorent les murs. Gage d’allégeance, le portrait de Guillaume Soro trône au milieu de tous. Derrière la porte, Wattao, 39 ans, est assis à un petit bureau encombré d’un ordinateur à écran plat, d’une dizaine de téléphones portables et d’un cendrier aguicheur, sculpture de femme blonde qui offre sa poitrine généreuse au fumeur déposant sa cendre. Dans un coin de la pièce, une machine à café expresso. Dents du haut écartées, sourire presque candide, carrure de boxeur, le maître des lieux, ceinture noire de judo - deuxième dan -, Wattao donne sans conviction des garanties sur sa détermination à faire la paix : « S’il y a une faute, elle ne viendra pas de nous, et je suis sûr que le camp présidentiel est sincère. » Ses déclarations de bonne volonté ne convainquent pas tous les habitants de Bouaké, qui voient s’aligner une quinzaine de 4x4 rutilants aux abords de son imposante villa - quartier Air France - et savent que le champagne coule à flots à l’Acier Métal, au Savannah et au bar des Réconciliés, les trois night-clubs qu’il gère et que ne fréquentent pratiquement que les FAFN. Sa reconversion, ce colosse en uniforme aussi doué en stratégie militaire qu’en affaires n’y a pas encore pensé, car « mon avenir dépend de Dieu ». Mais il prétend que la Côte d’Ivoire est désormais prête à « avoir une armée unique ».
Germain assure qu’un « élément des Forces nouvelles a tué son parent au village, en 2003 », mais, comme beaucoup d’habitants de Bouaké, il ne nourrit ni crainte ni haine de Wattao ou de ces militaires postés à chaque coin de rue. « Ils ont toujours protégé la population, raconte-t-il. Ils n’ont pas cassé les canalisations, ils ont laissé les habitants utiliser l’électricité, ils ont assuré l’ordre. »
D’une certaine manière, c’est grâce à ces bêtes noires de Laurent Gbagbo que la ville n’a jamais basculé dans l’anarchie et la misère absolue. Président du conseil général de Bouaké - délocalisé à Abidjan à cause des « événements » - et directeur de cabinet de Charles Konan Banny quand il était Premier ministre, Jean-Claude Kouassi raconte comment, voulant apporter des vivres dans sa ville natale, il a collaboré avec les Forces nouvelles : « Nous avions un contact direct avec les comzones. La première fois que nous sommes allés les voir, ils nous ont dit : “Nous avons le devoir de vous protéger parce que vous aidez la population.” Nous y sommes retournés plusieurs fois. Et, même si tout était ralenti, nous avons réussi à mener notre programme d’électrification. »
Pour autant, Germain n’a jamais eu envie de faire comme son copain Charles, 28 ans, qui a rejoint les FAFN. Quand la guerre a éclaté, ce dernier étudiait le droit à l’université de Bouaké. Il n’avait jamais tenu une arme, mais s’est engagé dans le but « faire cesser les brimades ». Aujourd’hui, il assure être « l’équivalent d’un officier ». Il est logé, nourri, mais, contrairement à ses supérieurs, ne gagne pas d’argent. « Compte tenu de la fatigue d’un camp comme de l’autre, nous sommes prêts à aller à la paix », se résigne-t-il. À une condition toutefois, et pas des moindres : que l’État ou quelque autre instance le dédommage pour ces cinq années passées bénévolement dans les Forces nouvelles, au « service de la population ». S’il n’obtient pas gain de cause, Charles assure qu’il reprendra les armes. Il est encore trop tôt pour dire si les autorités satisferont sa revendication. En attendant, le jeune homme espère une bourse d’études à l’étranger. Comme Bouaké, il s’est remis à rêver.
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La militancia en imágenes
RESCATE DE LA OBRA DE ENRIQUE JUAREZ EN EL MALBA
Considerado perdido por más de treinta años, el documental Ya es tiempo de violencia da cuenta del Cordobazo y de la muerte de Augusto Vandor, entre otros acontecimientos de 1969.
Por Ana Bianco
Sábado, 25 de Agosto de 2007
Estuvieron perdidos, ocultos durante tres décadas. Y hoy volverán a ver la luz. El documental Ya es tiempo de violencia (1969) y el cortometraje La desconocida (1962), ambos dirigidos por Enrique Juárez, se exhibirán en copias nuevas en 35 mm en el Malba (Figueroa Alcorta 3415) hoy y el sábado 1º de septiembre a las 18.30 y el domingo 2 de septiembre a las 15, siempre con entrada libre y gratuita. El largometraje Ya es tiempo de violencia fue pensado por Enrique Juárez desde la única mirada posible para el realizador en ese momento: la de un militante peronista comprometido con su tiempo, al que la dictadura militar convirtió en desaparecido desde el 10 de diciembre de 1976.
El film, producido en la clandestinidad y sustentado en materiales de archivo de noticieros, toma como eje el Cordobazo, se extiende a otras resistencias obreras y estudiantiles y lo contrapone con el discurso oficial que los medios masivos reproducían durante la dictadura militar de Juan Carlos Onganía. Con el golpe de Estado de 1976 la película se consideraba perdida, pero una copia había quedado resguardada en los archivos del Icaic (Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos), en La Habana. Fernando Krichmar, del grupo Cine Insurgente, trajo esa copia a Buenos Aires y Aprocinain (Asociación para el Apoyo Patrimonial Audiovisual y la Cinemateca Nacional) pudo realizar un internegativo para su preservación. El documental, que circuló en ámbitos de la militancia, cuenta con las voces de Enrique Juárez y del actor Héctor Alterio y fue producido por Armando Bresky, el mismo del Romance del Aniceto y la Francisca..., de Leonardo Favio.
Ezequiel Juárez, sobrino de Enrique y egresado de la Enerc, participó en el rescate del material y en el hallazgo del corto (ver recuadro). “La mayoría de las imágenes del Cordobazo son de archivo, compañeros que trabajaban en televisión entregaban ese material en forma clandestina y Enrique y mi viejo las utilizaban para los documentales”, señala Ezequiel. En el comienzo, Ya es tiempo de violencia registra una pobreza que parece actual, campesinos con los rostros ajados por la miseria. El documental continúa con imágenes de archivo de la represión en Latinoamérica y vuelve a la ciudad de Córdoba, epicentro del Cordobazo y la histórica resistencia obrero-estudiantil del 29 y 30 de mayo del ’69. La calle convertida en barricada, la represión, la muerte del obrero Máximo Mena, fuego, humareda y banderas argentinas flameando.
Un relator en off se refiere al asesinato de Augusto Timoteo Vandor, jerarca de la UOM (Unión Obrera Metalúrgica), el 30 de junio de 1969. A continuación, Juárez realza con imágenes poderosas y multitudinarias el entierro de Emilio Jáuregui, líder del Sindicato de Prensa, acribillado tres días antes en una manifestación en repudio a la llegada de Rockefeller. El documental adquiere un tono irónico para tratar el consumo impuesto por el capitalismo a través de la televisión. El tema “Rocky Racoon”, de The Beatles, suena de fondo para tratar el repudio de la visita del enviado del presidente Richard Nixon a la Argentina: Nelson Rockefeller, uno de los dueños de los supermercados Miramax. En otro tramo la voz inconfundible de Héctor Alterio reproduce la carta de Agustín Tosco, líder del Sindicato de Luz y Fuerza de Córdoba, desde la cárcel de Santa Rosa, escrita el 12 de junio de 1969, en la que insta a la unidad y a continuar la lucha. Hasta llegar al poderoso cierre que destaca Ezequiel Juárez: “Enrique lee al final con su propia voz el poema Patria, que no es de su autoría pero que fue premonitorio de su propia suerte”.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/5-7408-2007-08-25.html
The Independent:
Even I question the 'truth' about 9/11
Robert Fisk
Published: 25 August 2007
Each time I lecture abroad on the Middle East, there is always someone in the audience – just one – whom I call the "raver". Apologies here to all the men and women who come to my talks with bright and pertinent questions – often quite humbling ones for me as a journalist – and which show that they understand the Middle East tragedy a lot better than the journalists who report it. But the "raver" is real. He has turned up in corporeal form in Stockholm and in Oxford, in Sao Paulo and in Yerevan, in Cairo, in Los Angeles and, in female form, in Barcelona. No matter the country, there will always be a "raver".
His – or her – question goes like this. Why, if you believe you're a free journalist, don't you report what you really know about 9/11? Why don't you tell the truth – that the Bush administration (or the CIA or Mossad, you name it) blew up the twin towers? Why don't you reveal the secrets behind 9/11? The assumption in each case is that Fisk knows – that Fisk has an absolute concrete, copper-bottomed fact-filled desk containing final proof of what "all the world knows" (that usually is the phrase) – who destroyed the twin towers. Sometimes the "raver" is clearly distressed. One man in Cork screamed his question at me, and then – the moment I suggested that his version of the plot was a bit odd – left the hall, shouting abuse and kicking over chairs.
Usually, I have tried to tell the "truth"; that while there are unanswered questions about 9/11, I am the Middle East correspondent of The Independent, not the conspiracy correspondent; that I have quite enough real plots on my hands in Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran, the Gulf, etc, to worry about imaginary ones in Manhattan. My final argument – a clincher, in my view – is that the Bush administration has screwed up everything – militarily, politically diplomatically – it has tried to do in the Middle East; so how on earth could it successfully bring off the international crimes against humanity in the United States on 11 September 2001?
Well, I still hold to that view. Any military which can claim – as the Americans did two days ago – that al-Qa'ida is on the run is not capable of carrying out anything on the scale of 9/11. "We disrupted al-Qa'ida, causing them to run," Colonel David Sutherland said of the preposterously code-named "Operation Lightning Hammer" in Iraq's Diyala province. "Their fear of facing our forces proves the terrorists know there is no safe haven for them." And more of the same, all of it untrue.
Within hours, al-Qa'ida attacked Baquba in battalion strength and slaughtered all the local sheikhs who had thrown in their hand with the Americans. It reminds me of Vietnam, the war which George Bush watched from the skies over Texas – which may account for why he this week mixed up the end of the Vietnam war with the genocide in a different country called Cambodia, whose population was eventually rescued by the same Vietnamese whom Mr Bush's more courageous colleagues had been fighting all along.
But – here we go. I am increasingly troubled at the inconsistencies in the official narrative of 9/11. It's not just the obvious non sequiturs: where are the aircraft parts (engines, etc) from the attack on the Pentagon? Why have the officials involved in the United 93 flight (which crashed in Pennsylvania) been muzzled? Why did flight 93's debris spread over miles when it was supposed to have crashed in one piece in a field? Again, I'm not talking about the crazed "research" of David Icke's Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster – which should send any sane man back to reading the telephone directory.
I am talking about scientific issues. If it is true, for example, that kerosene burns at 820C under optimum conditions, how come the steel beams of the twin towers – whose melting point is supposed to be about 1,480C – would snap through at the same time? (They collapsed in 8.1 and 10 seconds.) What about the third tower – the so-called World Trade Centre Building 7 (or the Salmon Brothers Building) – which collapsed in 6.6 seconds in its own footprint at 5.20pm on 11 September? Why did it so neatly fall to the ground when no aircraft had hit it? The American National Institute of Standards and Technology was instructed to analyse the cause of the destruction of all three buildings. They have not yet reported on WTC 7. Two prominent American professors of mechanical engineering – very definitely not in the "raver" bracket – are now legally challenging the terms of reference of this final report on the grounds that it could be "fraudulent or deceptive".
Journalistically, there were many odd things about 9/11. Initial reports of reporters that they heard "explosions" in the towers – which could well have been the beams cracking – are easy to dismiss. Less so the report that the body of a female air crew member was found in a Manhattan street with her hands bound. OK, so let's claim that was just hearsay reporting at the time, just as the CIA's list of Arab suicide-hijackers, which included three men who were – and still are – very much alive and living in the Middle East, was an initial intelligence error.
But what about the weird letter allegedly written by Mohamed Atta, the Egyptian hijacker-murderer with the spooky face, whose "Islamic" advice to his gruesome comrades – released by the CIA – mystified every Muslim friend I know in the Middle East? Atta mentioned his family – which no Muslim, however ill-taught, would be likely to include in such a prayer. He reminds his comrades-in-murder to say the first Muslim prayer of the day and then goes on to quote from it. But no Muslim would need such a reminder – let alone expect the text of the "Fajr" prayer to be included in Atta's letter.
Let me repeat. I am not a conspiracy theorist. Spare me the ravers. Spare me the plots. But like everyone else, I would like to know the full story of 9/11, not least because it was the trigger for the whole lunatic, meretricious "war on terror" which has led us to disaster in Iraq and Afghanistan and in much of the Middle East. Bush's happily departed adviser Karl Rove once said that "we're an empire now – we create our own reality". True? At least tell us. It would stop people kicking over chairs.
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2893860.ece
ZNet | Corporate Globalization
Globalization and Terror - double bait-and-switch
by toni solo; August 25, 2007
Recent interventions by central banks to flush liquidity into panic-stricken financial markets have demonstrated again the wistful make-believe of the corporate "free market" fairy tale. It has no happy ending. Free markets exist no more than fairies do. On the other hand, big bad transnational wolves and carnivorous fee-fi-fo-fum financial giants abound and rig markets to catch as many victims as they can.
Industries like financial services, pharmaceuticals, agri-business, oil and petrochemicals, mining, armaments production, media and communications are dominated by a handful of companies. Nothing is free about a market dominated by the few dozen corporations that together control such vast areas of the global economy. Likewise, the grotesque equation "free markets = democracy" touted so glibly by corporate-owned media and corporate-owned politicians amounts to a terminal corruption of language.
An underlying connection exists between the fraudulent verbal currency used by corporate media to misrepresent the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and elsewhere and worth-less-and-less monetary currency in the form of dollars and diverse credit derivatives paper blown around global financial markets by speculators. International markets have taken up the London Stock Exchange motto "My word is my bond" and turned it into "My word is my bond so long as some market-rigging bankers' cartel will somehow bail me out."
It was Czar Alexander and Talleyrand who with much satisfaction agreed they could change the meaning of words from one 19th Century G-8 meeting to the next. In those days, they called it the Congress System. Then, European despots ran the system to enrich themselves and their loyal elites, to sacrifice masses of their people to savage industrialization and to effect their colonialist genocides around the globe. In North America, their US and Canadian understudies learned the lessons well. Now similar kinds of elites sacrifice their peoples to corporate globalization and work their neo-colonial barbarism using double duplicity to get what they want.
Politically, they have exploited their peoples' fear of terrorism. Offering security, they have removed fundamental liberties and executed foreign policies violating the UN Charter and humanitarian and human rights law in a way bound to provoke terrorist retaliation. Economically, they have offered prosperity by deliberately fomenting an extended, unsustainable credit boom. Now they try to cover up the bust while still pursuing unsustainable policies that promote inequality at home and abroad. It is impossible to overstate the greed and cynicism of the global elites.
G-8 - an anti-democratic global mob
The G-8 latter-day Congress System is for all practical purposes a squalid cartel. These powerful countries use the G-8 process to work out how best to share quotas of power and to manage their respective spheres of influence. As an institution the G-8 process effectively sidelines the UN. The UN Security Council serves mainly to offer spurious legitimacy to decisions taken elsewhere by the G-8.
The G-8 gatherings began in 1975 at the instigation of French President Giscard D'Estaing. In those days the members were six, the United States, Japan, Britain, France, Germany and Italy. Canada joined the informal group in 1976. Russia began participating in 1997. The European Community, as it then was, began attending in 1977. Now the European Union, it is represented at G-8 meetings by the President of the European Commission and the President of the the European Council.
So this modern Congress System is in fact an imperialist Thing with far more tentacles than might appear from the economical-with-the-truth G-8 moniker. Although the summits happen once a year they are the annual culmination of constant coordination on many policy areas by government functionaries. Quarterly meetings by a group known as the Sherpas, aides of government leaders, prepare for the summits on the basis of information from other groups, like finance ministers and the other ministries of which most governments are composed, Foreign Ministries, Interior and Justice Ministries, Health Ministries, Environment Ministries and so on.
Terror - factitious bait
Working groups of various kinds also contribute to the preparations for each summit. Currently organized are the High Level Group on Non-Proliferation, the Rome/Lyons Group on terrorism and organized crime, the Counter-Terrorism Expert Group among various others. An extraordinary amount of work and organization - as many as 80 meetings a year - by many bright, talented people goes into dressing up the avowed aims of the summit declarations. They make a fine public relations mulch for corporate media to cover up the genocidal colonialist roots of the bloody fi-fi-fo-fum G-8 imperialist beanstalk.
In matters of trade and finance, governments and central banks coordinate policy in partnership with the world's major financial houses and monopolistic transnationals. International relations reflect their fundamental gangsterism - "do what we want, or else" - rendering irrelevant established international humanitarian and human rights law because those basic norms impede the imperialist globalizing project. Even by the standards of consummate humbugs like George W. Bush and Tony Blair, the hypocrisy of G-8 summit declaration-speak is extravagant.
The declaration on terrorism from this year's summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, is a fine example of G-8 cant from countries who collude in violations of human rights in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Somalia, Haiti and elsewhere. The G-8 countries support vicious repressive regimes around the world., from Mexico to Morocco, from Uzbekistan to Colombia, from Egypt to Equatorial Guinea. European Union governments have collaborated in gross violations of the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment by facilitating transfer of prisoners for torture either to third countries or to US clandestine prisons as well as to Guantanamo. Still:
"We reaffirm that the promotion and protection of human rights for all and the rule of law is essential to all counter terrorism efforts, and we recognize that effective counter-terrorism measures and the protection of human rights are not conflicting goals, but complementary and mutually reinforcing. We call on all States to ensure that any measures taken to combat terrorism comply with their obligations under international law, in particular human rights law, refugee law and international humanitarian law." (1)
Consider the unimaginable horror and suffering undergone by millions of Iraqis, brought about by these powerful leaders. Apart from the dead and wounded civilians - well over a million by now - several millions of refugees have fled the chaos provoked by the Bush regime and its allies. In Palestine, over a million people in Gaza are subjected to a medieval-style blockade by Israel supported by the European Union and the United States.
Israel holds around ten thousand Palestinian political prisoners and uses torture as a matter of routine. In Haiti, where thousands of civilians were murdered during the coup backed by the US and its European allies, hundreds of political prisoners remain unjustly imprisoned. Consider the hypocrisy of US allies' responses to the liberation of mass-murdering CIA man Luis Posada Carriles - a microcosm of their grotesque double standards.
And yet earlier in that same declaration these people stated, "We, the leaders of the G8, are united in condemning in the strongest terms all acts of terrorism and reaffirm that there can be no justification for such acts which constitute one of the most serious threats to international peace and security, and to life and the enjoyment of human rights. We remain resolute in our shared commitment to counter terrorism while promoting freedom, democracy, human rights, and economic growth and opportunity. Our sympathies belong to all victims of terrorist acts, wherever they occur and by whomever they are committed."
The horrific results of G-8 leaders' foreign policies have provoked terrorist retaliation against their peoples. The obvious best protection against terrorism is a genuine commitment to uphold existing, painstakingly established international law, not the ad hoc improvised G-8 counter-terrorism charade. G-8 leaders' insincerity is self-evident from the way their governments use anti-terror legislation to suppress legitimate dissent on contentious policy issues that have nothing to do with terrorism. Bait and switch.
From boom to bust - the "free market" switch
It can hardly be a coincidence that domestic repression via the abuse of anti-terror legislation, as in the US with Patriot Acts 1 and 2, the Military Commissions Act and recent legislation authorizing unlimited surveillance of ordinary citizens, accompanies looming recession in the US. Mainstream human rights outfit Amnesty International has this to say in the case of the Bush regime.
"The past five years have seen the USA engage in systematic violations of international law, with a distressing impact on thousands of detainees and their families. Human rights violations have included: Secret detention, Enforced disappearance, Torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment, Outrages upon personal dignity, including humiliating treatment, Denial and restriction of habeas corpus, Indefinite detention without charge or trial, Prolonged incommunicado detention, Arbitrary detention, Unfair trial procedures. Yet at the same time, US officials have continued to characterize the USA as a "nation of laws" and one that in the "war on terror" is committed to what it calls the "non-negotiable demands of human dignity", including the "rule of law"." (2)
The past five years noted by Amnesty happen to coincide with the decline and fall of Alan Greenspan's long credit boom engineered atop the imperialist beanstalk by non-governmental financial giant, the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve sells money that appears out of nowhere, like golden eggs rolling off the back of a truck parked somewhere up the beanstalk, entirely in tune with the overall G-8 ethos, a showbiz mixture of pantomime and gangsterism. Here's the fairground barker spiel the G-8 woofed out earlier this year on economic stability.
"We note that the world economy is in good condition and economic developments are now more conducive to an adjustment than in the past, not least because we have made progress in implementing our joint strategy. However, further efforts will be required to better re-balance global demand. Global imbalances took a long time to build. Likewise, their unwinding is likely to be a gradual process, entailing a medium-term re-balancing of demand growth across countries......Continued reforms to re-balance growth towards domestic demand, thus enhancing its sustainability, are key to reducing imbalances while sustaining the robust global expansion. In emerging economies with large and growing current account surpluses, it is crucial that their effective exchange rates move so that necessary adjustments will occur. Oil-producing countries should continue accelerating investment in capacity and economic diversification."
Translation : "Our major transnationals are doing great thanks to the global cartel-rigged economy we governments facilitate in partnership with central banks and the major financial houses. Things look a bit bad right now because people have been too greedy. But we all did well playing the markets we rigged on the way up. Now let's help our mates make a pile of money profit-taking as they go down. We can sustain big bucks for the corporate elites we serve so long as we strictly control redistribution of national income for the dumb majority. We just need China to revalue its currency - oh yeah, and keep that oil coming."
Here's what they said about hedge-funds:
"We discussed recent developments in global financial markets, including hedge funds, which, along with the emergence of advanced financial techniques and products, such as credit derivatives, have contributed significantly to the efficiency of the financial system. Nevertheless, the assessment of potential systemic and operational risks associated with these activities has become more complex and challenging. Given the strong growth of the hedge fund industry and the increasing complexity of the instruments they trade, we reaffirm the need to be vigilant."
Translation: "We haven't a clue about financial derivatives and hedge funds. Cross your fingers and hope for the best."
Plenty of signs now point to the worst. The "efficiency of the financial system" turns out to mean the insatiable greed inherent in capitalism's fundamentally anti-humanitarian dynamic. G-8 showbiz duplicity may well dump the world's economy into recession. Discontent at falling living standards will be exacerbated as climate change puts more stress on national economies. Military spending and support for repressive regimes like Israel, Colombia, Egypt and Pakistan will become problematic.
Public sector spending will be too over-stretched to meet the demands of the resulting mess. Governments unable to justify expenditure on foreign wars and interventions will repress legitimate dissent. This will happen at a time when dollar zone economies are battling to manage inflation and falling living standards provoked by a decline in the worth-less-and-less dollar. The G-8 governments just happen to have in place the repressive "counter terrorist" legislation necessary to manage widespread popular discontent.
US dollar water torture or one big waste-pipe sloosh?
Watching G-8 leaders perform on television one can hardly help thinking "my, what big teeth they have". Perhaps the most interesting question about the developing economic crisis is how far the G-8 leaders and their corporate accomplices can control the developing wreck the G-8 Congress System has set in train. Thanks to their persistent determination to prioritize corporate needs and perverse foreign policy priorities over their own peoples' fundamental interests, successive United States governments and their European and Pacific allies have themselves generated the current global political and economic crisis.
A principal tool of their failure has been faithless manipulation of interest rates and money supply. In 2004, established financial opinion in the US argued that the US could get by all right if China revalued its currency by about 20% at then current prices. But China has insisted on a gradual appreciation of its currency by no more than 5% a year. In the hall of mirrors of relative currency values since then, what the G-8 statement above calls "necessary adjustments", in relation to emerging markets' currencies, is a revaluation by China pretty much the same now as the one required back in 2004. Presumably that is why the G-8 declaration mentions it at all, albeit in dainty diplomatic language.
The dollar has declined against major currencies like the yen and the euro by 25% or more since 2003. Most commentators before last week's market chaos reckoned that the dollar would drop to about 1.38 or so against the euro by the end of this year, 2007. Perhaps the cartel of central banks and major financial houses managing that decline had not expected last week's sudden-death liquidity scare. The dollar had dropped from around 1.32 against the euro in January to 1.38 on July 20th. In a few days this August it rallied to 1.34.
A likely explanation might be that people anxious to settle dollar IOUs they were unlikely to be able to sucker other speculators into buying before available credit dried up, rushed to buy dollars. Dollar speculators who had bought dollars cheap, sold dear and took their profit. With insufficient cash available to meet demand, central banks flooded money into the markets and have made clear they will do whatever is necessary to keep markets liquid. Presumably all those golden egg dollars came rolling off the back of that Federal Reserve truck. No wonder the US authorities no longer publish complete money supply figures.
For the moment the dollar's level will probably continue to sink, drip by drip, permitting regular profit-taking by institutions and individuals able to get cheap credit so as to bet against the dollar in other currencies like the yen. Inflationary effects in the US economy creep up quietly on consumers, wiping out their wealth cent by cent. This progressive devaluation is presumably meant to accompany the G-8 declared commitment of eliminating the US budget deficit by 2012. Somehow that commitment has not stopped US Congress voting increased hundreds of billions on military spending.
When Britain devalued sterling by 14% in 1967, Prime Minister Harold Wilson famously declared that "It does not mean, of course, that the pound here in Britain, in your pocket or purse or in your bank, has been devalued." Subsequently, from at least 1970 onwards official bank rates in the UK never dropped below 6% for over 20 years. It has been pointed out (3) that the US government has lost effective control over interest rates. Those are a hostage to fortune now just like the money supply. Maybe China's dollar leverage is all that is preventing an attack on Iran, one of China's most important energy suppliers.
No one knows the full extent to which the Federal Reserve moonshine-men have been slooshing bootleg dollars into the markets from their fabulous stash of golden eggs. Nor does anyone know exactly how much funny money foreign creditors like China will go on buying before they kick the habit. Away up in their Eccles Building, Washington beanstalk, the Federal Reserve fi-fi-fo-fum giants put their faith in global aversion to dollar cold turkey.
Over in the Pentagon, the bankers' high quality muscle wait as ever for orders to attack whoever may be next on the Bush regime hit-list. Out in the Homeland, the FBI spies on dissenters. Their G-8 government counterparts ape them loyally. They all mix the motifs of terrorism and globalization so as to strip away fundamental freedoms and protect the wealth and power of entrenched corporate elites against the interests of their peoples.
toni solo is based in Central America - contact via toni.tortillaconsal.com
Notes
1. G8 Summit Statement on Counter Terrorism : Security in the Era of Globalization
2. http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/ENGAMR511542006
3. "China's Threat to the Dollar is Real", Paul Craig Roberts, Counterpunch, August 9th 2007
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=13612
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