Elsewhere Today 436

Aljazeera:
Deaths as bombings rock Pakistan

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 04, 2007
8:17 MECCA TIME, 5:17 GMT

Two successive bomb blasts have rocked the Pakistani garrison city of Rawalpindi, killing up to 24 people and wounding 66 others, police and military spokesmen have said.

The first blast on Tuesday happened on a bus carrying government workers, killing at least 15 people. A motorcycle bomb exploded minutes later, killing several others.

Military and government officials said the bus targeted was believed to be carrying Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission employees.

"It's terrorism because innocent people were killed in both blasts," Major General Waheed Arshad, a military spokesman, said.

Mohammad Hamid, a police officer, confirmed it was a bomb that tore through the bus in the city's Qassim market area.

"The explosive was on the bus," said Javed Iqbal Cheema, an interior ministry spokesman.

Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said Rawalpindi being a cantonment area with a large military presence was a high profile target.

He said questions would be asked as to how such attacks could be carried out in a city like Rawalpindi.

Hyder said it had been raining when the blasts took place and most people were indoors. "Otherwise, the casualties could have been much higher," he said.

Bus destroyed

The white-coloured 40-seater bus was completely destroyed and mutilated bodies lay on the street, a witness said.

Mohammad Tahir said: "There was a huge bang then I saw the bus in a mangled heap.

"Body parts were scattered across the road and there was blood everywhere."

The second bomb blast happened about three kilometres away in another market in the city, Cheema said.

Mohammed Afzal, a police official, said the dead and injured had been transported to different hospitals.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for either bombing.

Several retaliatory attacks have rocked Pakistan after the government of General Pervez Musharraf crushed an uprising by armed Islamic students at Islamabad's Red Mosque in July.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/FD00530A-121A-4E48-87A6-1286AD11DDF5.htm

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AllAfrica: Concern As Violence
Causes More Displacement in North Kivu

UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
3 September 2007
Nairobi

The UN Refugee Agency has expressed concern over the plight of thousands of civilians forced to flee worsening tension and fighting in North Kivu province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said on 3 September that an inter-agency team had, the day before, met groups of displaced people fleeing from Rubaya and villages in Masisi district walking towards Sake and Mugunga, where there is a site for internally displaced persons (IDPs), about 15km west of Goma.

"They had a few belongings packed in bundles. Mugunga IDP site, which had some 9,000 people at the beginning of August, continues to receive a daily trickle of new arrivals. According to the site leader, himself an IDP, this figure may have doubled in the past three weeks," UNHCR noted in a statement.

The agency said that in Masisi district, an estimated 2,000 newly displaced people had sought shelter around a school building in the centre of Mushake village. Some of the displaced had moved in with their cattle, it added. The displaced lacked blankets and there were concerns they were vulnerable to disease.

Another school close to Mugunga was already hosting an estimated 600 newly displaced people by the end of last week.

"There are fears that more displaced people may be trapped in areas inaccessible to humanitarian agencies. Some of the IDPs have reported ... rape and killings of civilians by armed men", according to the UNHCR, whose teams found unaccompanied children among the displaced, as well as parents desperately looking for their children.

The number of people newly displaced because of frequent outbreaks of violence in North Kivu has risen to more than 180,000 and continues to rise, according to UNHCR.

"UNHCR remains concerned that the pursuit of a military solution to the problems in North Kivu would plunge the province into a humanitarian crisis with a potential displacement of hundreds of thousands of Congolese. UNHCR hopes that the current problems in North Kivu can still be resolved through negotiations," the statement continued.

Violence between armed groups and the national army or clashes between rival militias in North Kivu have exacerbated the humanitarian crisis in the war-torn region in recent years. Civilians were often targeted by armed groups fighting each other.

The latest outbreak of fighting has pitted the national army against fighters loyal to dissident General Laurent Nkunda.

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

Copyright © 2007 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200709031242.html

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AllAfrica: As House of Representatives
Resumes Today... Etteh - the Daggers Are Drawn

By Stanley Nkwazema and Chuks Okocha, Abuja
This Day (Lagos) NEWS
4 September 2007

Ahead of today's stormy session of the House of Representatives as it reconvenes from its recess, it was a battle of wits last night in Abuja between the lawmakers rooting for House Speaker, Mrs. Patricia Olub-unmi Etteh, and those angling for her removal over the controversial N529 million renovation contract.

The House, speaking through Chairman Rules and Business Committee Hon. Ita Enang and his Media and Publicity Committee counterpart, Eziuche Ubani, said Etteh could not be stampeded out of office as Speaker until a thorough investigation of the allegations of wrongdoing in the renovation contract was done.

But members of the Integrity Group spearheaded by Hon. Farouk Lawan from Kano State, however, renewed the call for the Speaker to step aside over the allegation.

There were speculations that the group was working on getting the Speaker to step aside using a simple majority vote rather than opting for outright impeachment which requires two-third majority.

In the Order paper for today's proceedings issued by the National Assembly, however, the controversial renovation contract was not listed as an item for discussion.

A copy of the paper made available to THISDAY last night only contained the official remarks from the Speaker on the House's resumption and presentation of four Executive Bills and motions.

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), however, said yesterday that due process should be followed in handling the alleged contract scam against the House Speaker.

President Umaru Musa Yar'Adua had during a media chat on the Nigeria Television Authority (NTA) on Sunday called for proper investigation and Etteh given fair hearing before anybody could pass judgement on the controversial contract.

Etteh has come under attack for approving the N529 contract for the renovation of her official residence and that of her deputy, Nguroje.

Briefing the media last night, Enang and Ubani said Etteh had to be found guilty by a competent committee first before she could be asked to step aside as Speaker.

"You don't ask somebody to step aside when the issue has not been raised on the floor of the House. She is still the Speaker of the House of Representatives until proved otherwise. According to the standing Order of the House, there is a provision for stepping aside and we have to follow it," they said.

But the Integrity group, the umbrella body of the House members calling for the removal of Etteh and her deputy, Babangida Nguroje, over the renovation contract insisted that though the Speaker and her deputy were covered by a presumption of innocence under the constitution, they needed to step aside to give room for an unfettered investigation of the allegation.

Hon. Farouk Lawan, the arrowhead of the group, who led other members of the group which included Halims Agoda and Mercy Almona Isei to a news briefing last night said, "the House cannot conduct any meaningful and legitimate business under a cloud of controversy of this nature and as such, we wish to reiterate the need for the Speaker and her deputy to step aside pending the completion of the investigation by a panel set up by Speaker pro tempore under the House Rules."

Lawan said a precedent had already been set in the case of late Dr. Chuba Okadigbo who in 2001 stepped aside as Senate President in order for the contract allegation against him to be probed.

"We believe this to be the right approach as the Speaker under the rules of natural justice cannot be a judge in her own case. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to have been done," he said.

The group was scheduled to regroup last night at Protea Hotels Apo Abuja to map out the final strategies on how to get Etteh to step aside.

Lawan said though the National Assembly management had finally released a defence of the contract through a document dated September 2, 2007, "the management has elected to describe the contract in question as an upgrade and not a renovation. This play on words and semantics only exacerbates and further insults the intelligence of Nigerians and those of us who are calling for a probe."

In the executive bills listed in the order paper, the House is expected to discuss the N76 Billion Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2007 at its first reading.

There is also the Competition Anti Trust Bill 2007 being presented by Honourable CID Maduabum, the Energy Commission of Nigeria, an amendment bill, which Honourable Fancy Arole from Lagos State will present.

The last on the list is the Federal Character Commission Amendment bill being handled by Hon. Bassey Etim.

On the House's resumption, Ubani said, "We must thank God that there has been no casualty, we are resuming and almost everybody has returned to Abuja waiting for today's business.

"The Speaker is expected to speak tomorrow (today), the National Assembly has spoken, there is a lot of business to be done. Something has happened but we have to figure out how we can move the country forward," he said.

But THISDAY's investigations revealed that the plan to move against Etteh has been sealed.

Hon. Patrick Obahiagbon representing Oredo Federal Constituency of Edo state has been penciled down to lead the debate on the need for the Speaker to step aside.

Agoda who was at the House Hearing Room 1, where the Integrity Group spoke with newsmen, with 50 other antagonists of Etteh confirmed that Obahiagbon was chosen for the job for strategic reasons.

On whether attempts have been made to resolve the issue without recourse to any investigation, Lawan said the Speaker had made attempts to reach the group.

"We were visited by all sorts of emissaries from Etteh. It is not an individual matter. But no amount of blackmail and intimidation can stop us. We are at crossroads in the House.

"Allegations have been raised and we must have to conduct an independent investigation not because of Etteh but because of the integrity of the House."

Lawan told THISDAY that there was a need for a thorough investigation into the allegation.

"Let me tell you that from the Clerk to the least person who was part of the deal will not be spared during the course of our investigation. We will get the entire details and apportion blames wherever.

"That due process was followed at every stage as claimed by the management is precisely why we are calling for an investigation. "We as legislators do not consider the mere pasting of tender notices on the notice board of the National Assembly as meeting due process and public procurement rules and standards, particularly for a contract of such magnitude."

Also yesterday the Chairman of Women Affairs Committee of the House, Hon. Beni Lar, reiterated the confidence of the female caucus in Etteh's leadership.

Lar who last night led some non-governmental organization to the House said, "it is in the best interest of our nascent democracy to avoid raising unnecessary media attention aimed at distracting our Speaker as she performs a role which is crucial to the stability of our fragile nation, Nigeria."

PDP Deputy National Publicity Secretary, Mr. Bayo Alao, told newsmen in Abuja that the allegation against Etteh remained a rumour.

"The whole thing is still a rumour but as far as we are concerned, there must be fair hearing.

"We as a party cannot take any position now because the issues being raised are allegations. We will stay and watch for the members to come back from their recess to discuss the issue," Alao said.

Also, the National Assembly Security officials yesterday met at the Hearing Room 1 of the House of Representatives to on how to ensure effective security as the national Assembly reconvenes from the summer recess,

The meeting, which included the Police, Federal Road Safety Commission officials, the Sergeant -At- Arms and the State Security Service met for several hours to rehearse on how to ward off miscreants the resumption.

THISDAY also confirmed that the over 300 police men at the assembly complex and those attached to the legislative quarters at Apo Village were given clothing materials to make their new uniforms by the officers.

However, the security officials at the First Gate prevented placard-carrying youths from getting past the gate of the assembly yesterday.

The youths who came in ten buses wanted to get to the White House which houses the two chambers of the National Assembly but were sent back by the mobile police men at the First Gate.

Meanwhile, the Forum for Democratic Ethos and Norms, an umbrella body of former presiding officers of state Houses of Assembly said yesterday that "there are veritable processes recommended for the resolution of areas of disag reement in the House of Representatives.

"This could come in form of matter of urgent public importance or a motion on the floor of the House rather than taking it through the media to the public domain as the very first approach.

The system the group said "is in itself a breach of parliamentary ethics and privileges of the House and is capable of engendering a rush to judgement on the part of the public without having the opportunity to consider all sides of the issues."

The forum, in a statement signed by Friday Itulah, George Daika, Stanley Ohajuruka, Peter Linus Umoh and Bassey Ewa however resolved that the House should institute an investigative committee in line with the guiding rules to look into all the issues concerning the controversial contract award.

"In the interim, all parties involved should sheath their swords and wait for the outcome of the investigative committees for the sake of our nascent democracy, as it will not be in the interest of Nigerians for the National Assembly to be in crisis."

Copyright © 2007 This Day. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200709040004.html

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AlterNet: How Popular Movements
Can Confront Corporate Power and Win

By Michael Marx and Marjorie Kelly, YES! Magazine
Posted on August 29, 2007

Corporate power lies behind nearly every major problem we face-from stagnant wages and unaffordable health care to overconsumption and global warming. In some cases, it is the cause of the problem; in other cases, corporate power is a barrier to system-wide solutions. This dominance of corporate power is so pervasive, it has come to seem inevitable. We take it so much for granted, we fail to see it. Yet it is preventing solutions to some of the most pressing problems of our time.

With global warming a massive threat to our planet and a majority of U.S. citizens wanting action, why is the U.S. government so slow to address it? In large part because corporations use lobbying and campaign finance to constrain meaningful headway.

Why are jobs moving overseas, depressing wages at home, and leaving growing numbers under- or unemployed? In large part because trade treaties drafted in corporate-dominated back rooms have changed the rules of the global economy, allowing globalization to massively accelerate on corporation-friendly terms, at the expense of workers, communities, and the environment.

Why are unions declining and benefits disappearing? In large part because corporate power vastly overshadows the power of labor and governments, and corporations play one region off against another, busting unions to hold down labor costs while boosting profits, fueling a massive run-up in the stock market.

Why were electricity, the savings and loan industry, and other critical industries deregulated, contributing to major debacles whose costs are borne by the public? In large part because free market theory, enabled by campaign contributions and lobbying, seduced elected officials into trusting the marketplace to regulate itself.

With all this happening, why do we not read more about the pervasiveness of corporate power? In large part because even the "Fourth Estate," our media establishment, is majority owned by a handful of mega-corporations.

Big corporations have become de facto governments, and the ethic that dominates corporations has come to dominate society. Maximizing profits, holding down wages, and externalizing costs onto the environment become the central dynamics for the entire economy and virtually the entire society.

What gets lost is the public good, the sense that life is about more than consumption, and the understanding that markets cannot manage all aspects of the social order.

What gets lost as well is the original purpose of corporations, which was to serve the public good.

A Movement for the Public Good

The solution is to bring corporations back under citizen control and in service to the public good. The main components of such a movement already exist-including organized labor, environmentalists, religious activists, shareholder activists, students, farmers, consumer advocates, health activists, and community-based organizations.

We've seen the power of ordinary people working together on the streets of Seattle in 1999, challenging the World Trade Organization. We've seen them achieve impressive results curbing sweatshop abuses, limiting tobacco advertising, challenging predatory lending practices at home and abroad, and protecting millions of acres of forests, to name just a few successes.

We've also seen the growth of community-friendly economic designs like worker-owned enterprises, co-ops, and land trusts that, by design, put human and environmental well-being first.

Focus on Corporate Power

Each of these movements advocates for healthy communities, for a moral economy, and for the common good. If they acted together, they would possess enormous collective power. But as yet there is no whole, only disconnected parts. Despite many achievements, the gap in power between corporations and democratic forces has widened enormously in recent decades.

Activists and citizens are beginning to turn this around. We can build on this work. But if we are to close the gap in power, our strategies must evolve. We need to dream bigger, to speak with one voice across issue sectors, and to act more strategically. We need to focus less on symptoms of corporate abuse and more on the underlying cause-excessive corporate power. We must recognize that ultimately our struggle is for power. It is not just to make corporations more responsible, but to make them our servants, in much the same way that elected officials are public servants.

We need what the movement now lacks: a coherent vision of the role we want corporations to play in our society and a strategy for achieving that vision. It's about putting We the People back in charge of our future, rather than the robotic behemoths that set their sights on short-term growth and high profits, regardless of the consequences.

The streams of many small movements must flow together into a single river, creating a global movement to bring corporations back under the control of citizens and their elected governments. The urgent need for unified action impelled a small group of organizations to initiate a long-term Strategic Corporate Initiative (SCI), of which we are a part.

A Way Forward

Over the past 18 months, the SCI team interviewed dozens of colleagues and progressive business executives to develop a coherent, long-term strategy to rein in corporations. Three major strategic tracks emerged:

1. We need to restore democracy and rebuild countervailing forces that can control corporate power.

At the community level, this means elevating the rights of local municipalities over corporations. Communities should have the right to determine what companies will do business within their jurisdiction, and to establish requirements like living wage standards and environmental safeguards.

At the national level, restoring democracy means separating corporations and state. Corporations and the wealthy should no longer be allowed to dominate the electoral and legislative processes.

At the international level, the task is to create agreements and institutions that make social, environmental, and human rights an integral part of global economic rules.

2. We need to severely restrain the realms in which for-profit corporations operate.

Most extractive industries (fishing, oil, coal, mining, timber) take wealth from the ecological commons while paying only symbolic amounts to governments and leaving behind damaged ecosystems and depleted resources. The solution is to develop strong institutions that have ownership rights over common wealth. When commons are scarce or threatened, we need to limit use, assign property rights to trusts or public authorities, and charge market prices to users. With clear legal boundaries and management systems, the conflict over the commons shifts from a lopsided negotiation between powerful global corporations and an outgunned public sector, to a dispute resolved by deference to the common good.

3. We need to redesign the corporation itself, as well as the market system in which corporations operate.

Companies' internal dynamics currently function like a furnace with a dial that can only be turned up. All the internal feedback loops say faster, higher, more short-term profits. And maximizing short-term profits leads to layoffs, fighting unions, demanding government subsidies, and escalating consumerist strains on the ecosystem.

To prevent overheating, the system needs consistent input from non-financial stakeholders, so that demands for profit can be balanced with the rights and needs of employees, the community, and the environment.

To end "short-termism," company incentives-including executive pay-should be tied to measurements of how well the company serves the common good. Stock options that inflate executive pay should be outlawed or redesigned. Speculative short-term trading in stock should be taxed at significantly higher rates than long-term investments. Companies should be rated on their labor, environmental, and community records, with governments using their financial power-through taxes, purchasing, investing, and subsidies-to reward the good guys and stigmatize the bad guys.

At the same time, we need to celebrate and encourage alternative corporate designs, such as for-benefit corporations, community-owned cooperatives, trusts, and employee-owned companies.

The paths outlined here do not represent impossibilities. With a citizens' movement, we could turn these musings into reality in 20 years.

Building a Global Citizens' Movement

How can we change laws regulating corporate behavior when corporations dominate the political process? The answer is that change begins with the people, not their government. It always has. Civil society organizations and communities can align their interests to produce a wave that government leaders must either surf upon or drown within.

The people control the vital issue of legitimacy, and no system can long stand that loses its legitimacy, as fallen despots of the 20th century have demonstrated. Corporations have already lost much of their moral legitimacy. Business Week in 2002 found that more than four out of five people believed corporations were too powerful. A national poll by Lake, Snell, Perry, and Mermin two years ago concluded that over three-quarters of Americans distrust CEOs and blame them for the loss of jobs. An international poll by Globe Scan recently found corporations far behind NGOs in public trust.

Trigger events lie ahead that will create further openings for change. We can expect to see new global warming catastrophes, unaffordable energy price spikes, and new corporate scandals. We can capitalize on these openings if we can help people connect the dots-making the link, for example, between excessive CEO pay, companies' short-term focus, and the inability of the private sector to manage long-term problems like the energy crisis and global warming.

We also need conceptual frames that link various movements together into a common effort. Currently our economy is dominated by a Market Fundamentalism frame, based on the belief that when self-interest is set free, Adam Smith's "invisible hand" will create prosperity for all. Also dominant is the Private Property frame, which justifies actions by executives and shareholders to exploit workers, communities, and the environment in order to maximize the value of stockholder and executive "property" in share ownership.

We can advance new frames. "Moral Economy," for example, is a frame that puts the firing of thousands of employees and simultaneous awarding of multimillion-dollar bonuses to executives in a moral context. Suggested by Fred Block of the Longview Institute, the Moral Economy frame invites the introduction of new system forces into market dynamics in order to protect the moral order, and to counteract the amoral, short-term, self-interested behavior promoted by Market Fundamentalism.

Within the overarching framework of a Moral Economy, other frameworks like Community and the Commons challenge the supremacy of individualism and self-interest in the Market Fundamentalism frame. Community well-being becomes the standard by which business practices are judged, and communities themselves the arbiters of whether standards are met. The Commons represents our shared property and wealth, which is not to be exploited for the selfish benefit of the few.

New conceptual frames, trigger events, a crisis of legitimacy-elements like these can serve to help build a citizens' movement. But we cannot simply wait for this movement to form spontaneously. At the international level, we need regional organizations to come together to agree on overarching priorities. At the national level, we likewise need discussions that forge strategic priorities. At the community level, we need to create a network of municipalities working together to challenge corporate rights, to promote alternative business forms, and to inventory and claim our common wealth assets. Communities can also take the lead in creating public financing of campaigns, and in tying procurement and investment policies to corporate social ratings.

The idea is not that people will drop their issues and adopt new ones, but that we can learn to do both at once. We can knit ourselves into a single movement by adopting common frames and by integrating strategic common priorities into existing campaigns. For example, campaigns covering any issues from the environment to living wages could demand that targeted companies end all involvement in political campaigns.

As individuals, we can relegate our identities as consumers and investors to secondary status, elevating to first place our identities as citizens and members of families and communities, people with a stewardship responsibility for the natural world and with moral obligations to one another. We can stop buying the story that government is inefficient and wasteful, grasping that the real issue is how corporations and money dominate government. We can stop thinking that the solution is more Democrats in power, and realize it is more democracy.

The transformative changes we need will not be on any party's agenda until a citizens' movement puts them there. It's up to us to build that movement. By joining together-by taking on the common structural impediments that block progress-we can make it possible for all of us to achieve the variety of goals we're currently struggling for.

How would reducing the underlying power of corporations affect today's issue campaigns? Ending corporate campaign contributions and political advertising would benefit a great many public interest causes. How often in recent years have initiatives to protect forests, increase recycling, provide healthcare coverage, and raise minimum wages been defeated by corporations who outspent their civil society opponents by a ratio of over 30 to one? We've all witnessed elected leaders move to the political center once they started receiving a steady flow of corporate contributions.

Likewise, if we could reduce the 13,000 registered corporate lobbyists in Washington, D.C. and end the revolving door between government regulators and corporations, would a handful of companies be allowed to own the lion's share of our media? Would savings and loan, energy, transportation, and tobacco companies still have been de- or unregulated? Would oil and coal companies still drive our national energy policy?

Imagine …

Imagine what it might be like in 20 years if our efforts are successful and people could once again govern themselves. A line would be carefully drawn between corporations and the state, reducing financial influence over elections and lawmaking, making possible a whole new generation of progressive elected officials committed to social transformation.

In 20 years, imagine that the institutions of the global economy are overhauled so that labor and environmental issues are integrated into trade policies, and impoverished nations are freed from unpayable international debts. Trade and investment rules promote fair exchange, and national governments have the policy space to support social and environmental goals at home. Transnational corporations that take destructive action are held accountable in a World Court for Corporate Crimes.

In 20 years, imagine community self-governance has become the new norm. No longer can companies open new stores in communities where they are unwanted, or play communities off one another to extract illegitimate public subsidies. We value and protect our precious common wealth, from ecological commons like air, water, fisheries, and seeds, to cultural commons like music and science.

In 20 years, imagine that it is a violation of fiduciary responsibility for corporations to pay CEOs obscene amounts, or to aggressively fight unions and lobby against environmental safeguards. Responsible companies protect the environment as though there is a tomorrow, and they view worker knowledge and company's reputation in the communities where they operate as their greatest assets. Imagine such companies receive preferential treatment in government purchasing, taxation and investment policies, while irresponsible companies find themselves barred from government contracts.

Imagine we have a new national policy to make employee ownership as widespread as home ownership is today. And alternative company designs-like cooperatives and new, for-benefit companies-grow and flourish.

Imagine, in other words, that We the People are able to reclaim our economy and society from corporate control. Daring to dream that such a turn of events is possible-and charting the path to get there-is a critical challenge of our new century.

Michael Marx is director of Corporate Ethics International (CEI) in Portland, Oregon. Marjorie Kelly is with the Tellus Institute in Boston and the author of The Divine Right of Capital. They are part of the Strategic Corporate Initiative, a group unifying efforts to curtail corporate power, and igniting change toward a more humane, sustainable democratic society and economy. Read more about the SCI and read their full report: "Strategic Corporate Initiative: Toward a Global Citizens' Movement to Bring Corporations Back Under Control."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/61104/

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Arab News:
Will Basra Prove US Wrong?

Linda Heard, sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday, 4, September, 2007 (22, Sha`ban, 1428)

It looks as though the British are slinking out of Basra in the hope their retreat won’t be noticed. Their headquarters at Saddam’s old palace was bequeathed to the Iraqi military at 4.30 a.m. yesterday. Or to be precise uniform-wearing Shiite militias, which control the south.

For now, the 5,500 British remnant of the original 45,000 contingent is to be holed up at the airport on the city’s outskirts awaiting a politically opportune moment to depart. We’ll probably wake up one day to discover they’ve all flown home to mom, tea and sympathy.

In some circles this is being billed as an ignominious defeat. Right-wing US publications hint at betrayal. There are questions as to whether the “special relationship” is still as special.

Others, such as the American Thinker is more forthright: “The British retreat from Basra is simply the culmination of the BBC’s anti-American hate campaign for the last few decades,” goes the article, which blasts Britain and calls for a US withdrawal from NATO.

“If we do not receive full reciprocity (from our allies), they do not deserve our protection,” is its bitter sting in the tail.

Some Iraqi politicians warn of a power vacuum and an ensuing bloodbath. Firebrand Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr, who commands the Mehdi Army, is openly gleeful.

“The British have realized this is not a war they should be fighting or one they can win,” he told the Independent. “They are retreating because of the resistance they have faced,” he said while praising his Mehdi Army for its role in driving them out.

It’s interesting that Sadr has ordered a six-month moratorium on attacks against coalition forces. He said this will give the Mehdi Army time to regroup but there is some suggestion it may be part of a deal with Britain.

The British deny any such collusion but, let’s face it. Both parties benefit. British troops can withdraw relatively free of pursuing bullets and missiles, and due to their absence Sadr can tighten his grip on the south. Moreover, in the admittedly unlikely event peace were to reign, this would provide grist to the mill of those calling for a US withdrawal.

British newspapers are at odds over the pullout.

The Sun is awash with photographs of grinning, thumbs-up British soldiers under the heading “The job’s done for our boys.”

“British troops took the first steps toward handing power back to the Iraqis last night — feeling proud of a job well done,” writes the Sun’s defense editor.

“The momentous move could spell the end of Britain’s disastrous campaign in Iraq” is the message from the Mirror.

The Independent asks, “What was achieved?” and runs a column by Patrick Cockburn titled “Ignominious end to futile exercise that cost the UK 168 lives.”

The Guardian highlights the cheers of people in Basra as British troops left and quotes a local resident as saying, “We are pleased that the Iraqi Army is now taking over the situation — we as an Iraqi people reject occupation, we reject colonialism — we want our freedom.”

Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his senior ministers are naturally more upbeat. Brown told the BBC that far from being a defeat the move was organized and pre-planned.

Defense Secretary Des Browne and foreign secretary were driven to write a joint article that was published in the Washington Post defending the British action.

The pair admit the British force “could not create in four years in Iraq, the democracy, governance and security that it took Great Britain and the United States centuries to establish”, while putting the blame on “decades of misrule, deliberate neglect and violent oppression under Saddam Hussein.”

British generals are less diplomatic, heaping abuse on the US.

Gen. Sir Mike Jackson, who led the 2003 British invasion, recently labeled the approach of the then US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld “intellectually bankrupt” and blames his refusal to commit troops to nation building for the mess Iraq is in today.

Retired Maj. Gen. Tim Cross, responsible for postwar planning, termed the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq as being “fatally flawed”. Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister, agrees with both of them but regrets they failed to speak out earlier.

These attacks on the US military are going down like a lead brick in Washington with top advisers to George Bush blaming Britain for a deteriorating security situation in the south.

Bush still urges coalition allies to stay the course. “We need all our coalition partners,” he told Sky News. He said he understood that “everybody has got their own internal policies” but stressed there was more work to do defeating Al-Qaeda and Iranian-backed insurgents.

The US President is increasingly isolated in his “dog with a bone”, ideologically based approach.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Al-Maliki has gone out of his way to show he’s no Washington puppet and refuses to take the fall for US failures. Veteran Republican Sen. John Warner has openly called for US troops to be withdrawn by Christmas.

Some 49 percent of the American public believes the so-called surge has failed even before the verdicts of Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker expected to be delivered to Congress next week. Bush’s famous promise to stick with the plan even if Laura and his dog are his only supporters may soon become an unpalatable reality.

The war gang consisting of Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Alberto Gonzalez have disappeared under various clouds. Only Cheney is left. The British defection could signify a fatal blow to Bush’s credibility at home. As a Brit who was against this war from day one I’m delighted we’re on our way out of the fray. This was Blair’s blunder. Gordon Brown should be saluted for his “better late than never” decision.

I only pray the Iraqis will put aside their differences and step up to the plate to show the world that they’re the only ones who can rebuild their nation and put hurt feelings to rest. If Basra emerged as a model, US arguments for sticking around where they weren’t wanted would be demolished. That’s my hope but, in truth, I’m not holding my breath.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=100791&d=4&m=9&y=2007

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Asia Times:
Basra crisis is Iran's opportunity

By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Sep 5, 2007

In his surprise visit to al-Anbar province in Iraq on Monday, US President George W Bush boasted of coalition troops' accomplishments in bringing stability and uprooting the al-Qaeda menace with the help of Sunni tribes. At the same time, the last British soldiers were vacating Basra in the south in what a British paper described as "ignominious defeat".

The British withdrawal to the safety of their one remaining bunkered base at the airport "will bring perils for US troops", according to a US commentator. This is why the US military and the White House - "at the highest echelon" - have been lobbying London over new Prime Minister Gordon Brown's decision to phase out the British presence in Iraq.

Brown, inheriting an explosive legacy from his predecessor, Tony Blair, has delivered on his promises and the big issue now is whether or not the same forces which constantly harassed the British forces in Basra will remain operating on the outskirts of the city.

An even more important question is about the security vacuum that has been created, in light of the inter-Shi'ite power struggle in Basra and, indeed, the entire southern section of Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Shi'ite and within the purview of Iran's regional politics.

Recalling Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's recent statement that Iran can easily "fill the vacuum" of US forces, the situation in Basra may mean that Tehran may be forced to play that role sooner than expected, depending on the evolution or devolution of Basra's current state of emergency.

The ability of Iraqis to ensure a peaceful transfer of power, instead of a nosedive toward anarchy-driven factional strife, should not be underestimated however, particularly since Basra poses a litmus test of Shi'ite politics in the broader context of Iraqi national politics.

For Iran, the British withdrawal from Basra represents a conundrum. On the one hand Tehran counts it as a strategic gain that weakens the US's position with regard to Iran, given the greater vulnerability of the land supply route from Kuwait. But at the same time, the mere prospect of a security collapse in Basra spells major new and unwanted headaches for Iran, which has always insisted on an "orderly and timely" exit of foreign troops - in other words, no hasty and ill-planned withdrawal.

Yet, that is exactly what has happened in Basra, and a security meltdown there could easily translate into waves of Iran-bound refugees, thus warranting Iran's preemptive mediation in the ongoing inter-Shi'ite power struggle. This is mainly between and among the three dominant groups, Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army and its sub-factions, the Fadhila Party presently running the city, and the Supreme Iraq Islamic Council and its Badr militias.

Iran's already enormous influence in southern Iraq will likely grow more powerful in the near future, although this will be determined to some extent by political developments in Baghdad. For instance, a failure of the central government to maintain national unity will exacerbate the centrifugal tendencies that have primed southern Iraq as an Iranian sphere of influence.

"There are so many different scenarios in Basra and southern Iraq now, all tied to the US-Iran rivalry and it is a sure bet that short of a US military occupation [of southern Iraq] that is not feasible for the overstretched US Army, the scenario of Iran's rising influence will predominate, in other words, Iran is a sure winner of the British retreat," a Tehran analyst told the author.

And that means that the US now needs to engage Iran more than in the past to play a constructive role in Iraq.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, has renewed the US's interest in a follow-up discussion with Iran on Iraq's security, perhaps as a sign of recognition of Tehran's growing clout and responsibility in oil-rich southern Iraq.

Contrary to some Western analysts, Iran is not interested in turning southern Iraq into its satellite and harvesting the benefits of a de facto partition of the country. Rather, Iran still hopes that a strong, Iran-friendly national government in Baghdad will triumph over the odds piled up against it so that the two neighboring states can eventually remap the region's security calculus.

That expectation may have been compromised by the slew of difficulties facing the Shi'ite-led government of Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad, yet it is still the luminous light that directs Iran's Iraq policy.

Thus, the Basra microcosm, conceived as threatened with further yet ultimately manageable instability, fits into Iran's larger political map that connects Iraqi provincial politics to the national and even regional politics on a long-term basis, instead of looking for short-term gains.

Still, few analysts in Tehran are able to hide their rather euphoric reaction to the news of the British withdrawal from Basra, which potentially spells more trouble for those who are rattling sabers at Iran these days.

A US military option against Iran is now even less likely in light of the power vacuum in southern Iraq that, if need be, could be utilized by Tehran to undermine the stability of the US's presence in the rest of Iraq.

With Iran sensing both opportunity and crisis in southern Iraq, the stage is now set for a new depth to Iran's purely Shi'ite or Islamist politics that traverses narrow national(ist) considerations. After all, the ethos of Islamic revolution has always focused on Islamist solidarity and kinship, transcending limited territorial gains or considerations.

That is precisely why any fears of Iran's machinations to carve out southern Iraq into its sphere of influence are at bottom baseless. Iran will do so only as a last resort when and if a nightmare scenario of collapse of the center and irreversible regional autonomy appears inescapable.

That is not Iran's reading of the situation right now, even though policymakers have been toying with scenario-building in Iraq. Their threat analyses of Iraq do not envisage panic, partly as a result of Iran's thorough familiarity and rapport with the various Shi'ite factions, including the Mahdi militia, irrespective of Muqtada's occasional public misgivings about Iran's influence.

The Iranians' largely upbeat prognosis is in sharp contrast with the doomsday scenario seen in the US press, which depicts Basra as "plagued" with corruption, violence and gangsterism. There is a chance that the Iraqi army and police in and around Basra, deeply connected to various Shi'ite factions, might turn against each other, in which case Basra will disintegrate as a unified political unit.

Iran may well provide the glue that keeps that from happening - all the more reason for the US and its allies not to view every Iranian involvement in Iraq negatively, or as an act of subversion. Iran's vested interest in Iraq's national unity and territorial integrity translates into a calming influence in southern Iraq that can turn volatile only if other parts of Iraq break loose and set in motion southern Iraq's partition.

But, as stated above, Iran is not particularly worried about such a prospect at the moment and considers the other regional players, such as Syria and Turkey, sufficiently in sync with its Iraq policy to stave off the "nightmare scenario".

Yet, simultaneously there is another "nightmare scenario", that is, the possibility of a US strike against Iran's nuclear facilities that has been preoccupying Iran's leaders, which raises in turn the matter of linkage with Iraq. That possibility has now been dealt an indirect blow by developments in Basra.

Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.

Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/II05Ak04.html

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Guardian: Odd clothes and unorthodox views
- why MI5 spied on Orwell for a decade

· 1984 author suspected of being a communist
· Newly released files reveal Special Branch blunders

Stephen Bates
Tuesday September 4, 2007

The extent to which Special Branch police monitored George Orwell as a suspected communist has been revealed in papers disclosed for the first time today at the National Archives in Kew.

The documents, which include details of surveillance between the 1920s and 60s, indicate not only the wide range of groups and individuals being watched by police but also officers' spectacular ability to misjudge what they saw. The obtuseness of some exasperated their superiors.

A Sergeant Ewing of Special Branch, monitoring Orwell's attempt to recruit Indians to work for the BBC's India service in January 1942, noted: "This man has advanced communist views ... He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours."

A Home Office official named W Ogilvie - whose pencil was probably responsible for a question mark against Ewing's statement - responded a few days later: "I spoke to Inspector Gill of Special Branch asking whether his sergeant could elaborate on the question of Blair's 'advanced communist views'. Mr Gill rang me up this morning to say that Sergeant Ewing described Blair as being 'an unorthodox communist' apparently holding many of the views but by no means subscribing fully to the party's policy.

"I gathered that the good sergeant was rather at a loss as to how he could describe this rather individual line, hence the expression ... This fits in with the picture we have of Blair@Orwell [sic]. It is evident from his recent writings ... that he does not hold with the Communist party, nor they with him."

The authorities finally decided Orwell was not a communist from his answers to a questionnaire posed to leading leftwing figures and published in Left magazine, including the question: "Should Socialists support the British war effort?" to which he answered, "yes".

By then, Special Branch had been monitoring Orwell for more than 10 years.

Orwell, who was born Eric Arthur Blair in India in 1902, worked for the Burma police in the 1920s before heading to France, where the then penniless writer first came to the attention of MI6.

The file on "Orewell", as his name is spelt at least once, starts with him as Mr EA Blair in January 1929, when he was offering to work as Paris correspondent of the Workers' Life, the forerunner of the Daily Worker. Within a month Scotland Yard noted he was also claiming to be Paris correspondent for the Daily Herald and Daily Express.

It continues in the 30s as he helped out at a leftwing bookshop, Booklovers' Corner in Hampstead, where he was a friend of the owner, Francis Westrope: "[He] and Blair are on friendly terms and the latter is known to spend a good deal of time at the shop. He has on occasion conducted the business. Westrope is known to hold socialist views and considers himself an 'intellectual'."

The file contains a cutting from the Manchester Guardian in September 1938, noting that Orwell had signed the Joint Peace Manifesto alongside the Peace Pledge Union, the Quakers and the Labour party. Two years earlier, the chief constable of Wigan had requested information about the writer, who had been seen addressing Communist party meetings in the town.

There are also details from his passport application, noting: "height 6ft 2ins, eyes grey, hair brown, tattoo marks on the backs of both hands".

The police never found enough on the author of Animal Farm and 1984 to prevent him obtaining a passport or being accredited as a war correspondent for the Observer. A record in the file, dated 1942, describes him as someone who "has been a bit of an anarchist in his day and in touch with extremist elements". It adds that he had "undoubtedly strong leftwing views, but he is a long way from orthodox Communism".

Among others kept under watch in the 1950s was the American folk song collector Alan Lomax, who appeared regularly on the BBC.

Special Branch monitored the programmes, noting his association with the Scottish singer Ewan McColl "who is connected with Theatre Workshop, a dramatic company with communist connections", and even the film director Joseph Losey (left), labelled a communist sympathiser. A concert in St Pancras town hall in December 1953 was deemed suspicious because its theme, Songs of the Iron Road, with "melodies originating on the railway system" was advertised in the Daily Worker.

The BBC was asked to keep an eye on Lomax, but he was allowed to continue broadcasting and his folk song programme preceded the Queen's Christmas Day message in 1957.

A file from 1941 contains 13 pages of reports on a strike by dockyard apprentices in Chatham which followed a complaint about the standard of canteen food.

It includes a report by Sergeant Ivan Smith of the Kent police, who hid himself in the gents' toilet at a working men's club in Gillingham to listen to the speakers at a union meeting: "I was unable to hear the majority of the proceedings owing to my obscure position in the lavatory and to the fact that a boy was standing in the cloakroom door the whole time," it says. "I heard someone say that the best thing would be to have all the big fellows for that job [on the picket line]. The reply was that all present at the meeting should take their share and no shirking. The meeting closed at 1630 hours but I was unable to leave until 1655 as some of the apprentices were in the hall until that time."

The interrogation files of suspected spies and German agents have also been released, including, in that of a Norwegian seaman, a copy of the Naturist magazine of March 1945 whose photographs of nude women and advertisements for breast enhancement and "the Vitaman iodised jockstrap" were combed to see whether they contained writing in invisible ink.

One bulky file contains interviews over years with a Russian defector, Leon Helfland, who had been a KGB officer and assassin, and charge d'affaires in the Soviet embassy in Rome for seven years until he fled to the US in 1940. Helfland told an astonished British consular official named WH Gallienne over lunch in New York in 1941 that the Soviets, Italians and Germans had read every telegram and document from the British embassy in Rome from 1933: "Mr H said they often marvelled at our laxity."

Helfland never named the spy involved, but it is known to have been the Italian valet of the British ambassador, Sir Eric Drummond, who refused to believe that his servant could have betrayed Britain.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,,2161853,00.html

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Guardian:
Darfur by numbers

The pro-Khartoum lobby says the death toll is exaggerated but the true scale of the tragedy will only emerge with a proper investigation, writes Julian Borger

Tuesday September 4, 2007

Sooner or later in the history of any atrocity, the numbers game begins. In Darfur's case, it is well underway, played out between the advocates of western military intervention and apologists for the Khartoum regime.

In the most notorious cases in modern history - the Holocaust, Bosnia and Kosovo - the revisionists and apologists have always been proved wrong. Each time, the scale of the brutality outdid the reasoning of the doubters, who argued it was simply not possible for that many people to have been killed that quickly.

In the case of Darfur, however, Khartoum's supporters have won an important battle. Earlier this month, Britain's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that two activist pressure groups, the Save Darfur Coalition and the Aegis Trust, lacked solid proof for their claim in an advertising campaign that 400,000 "innocent men, women and children" had been killed in Darfur. The ASA concluded that "there was a division of informed opinion about the accuracy of the figure contained in the ad and it should not have been presented in such a definitive way".

The defeat was particularly bitter for the Darfur interventionists as the complaint was brought to the ASA by the European Sudanese Public Affairs Council, a pro-Khartoum business lobby led by David Hoile, a right-wing polemicist best remembered in the pages of the Guardian for wearing a "Hang Mandela" sticker on his tie when he was a young Tory. Dr Hoile had angrily demanded a correction when the Guardian Diary claimed in 2001 that he had worn a T-shirt emblazoned with the offensive slogan. When a picture of the sticker surfaced a few weeks later, he claimed to have no recollection of it, but stressed that the picture did not show a T-shirt. Such are Khartoum's current friends in Britain.

Nevertheless, the Save Darfur Coalition and the Aegis Trust were forced to retreat over the figures. They admit there is no definitive proof for the 400,000 claim, but still believe it reflects reality.

In full disclosure, I also used the 400,000 figure in an article I wrote on Darfur on April 28 this year, attributing it to UN officials. It had appeared in a UN publication and had been repeated to me by an official in the field.

A proper investigation once humanitarian workers gain proper access to the region may yet prove that figure to be right. However, the current evidence makes it look like an exaggeration. The most thorough estimate to date was carried out by the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters, which calculated that there were 120,000 deaths attributable to the conflict between September 2003 and January 2005. The evidence also suggests that the death rate has fallen since 2005, because aid has found its way to the region and because large numbers of Darfuris had already been driven from their homes and into camps by then. In that light, the death toll of 200,000 used by most governments looks about right.

That is still an enormous number of people to die without much by way of a response from the rest of the world, and no one is seriously disputing the 2 million plus figure for the number of displaced - civilians driven from their villages who are now trying to survive in makeshift camps in the arid scrub of Darfur and Chad.

If the planned hybrid UN-African Union peacekeeping force ever arrives in Darfur - and it may take a year for it to deploy even if everything goes smoothly, which it will not - it will be too late to stop the worst of the massacres. They have already taken place. But it will at least help the delivery of humanitarian supplies and, at best, support the refugees' return to their villages. How long they will be protected once they are home is another question. There is a lot of accounting yet to be done in Darfur.

· Julian Borger is the Guardian's diplomatic editor

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/julianborger/story/0,,2162062,00.html

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Internazionale:
Impressioni su Sicko

I drammi raccontati da Michael Moore sono atroci, e la gente li considera inevitabili

Tomás Eloy Martínez
Internazionale 708, 30 agosto 2007

In americano parlato Sicko è un vocabolo caduto in disuso. Era formato dall'unione di due parole: sick, malato, e psycho, psicopatico.

Nelle conversazioni di cinquant'anni fa si usava per una domanda offensiva: "Are you a Sicko?", sei fuori di testa? Michael Moore ha riesumato il vecchio termine e l'ha usato come titolo del suo duro attacco al sistema sanitario degli Stati Uniti.

Chi ha visto i documentari di Moore, a cominciare dal suo straordinario Roger&Me (1989), potrebbe immaginarselo come un uomo che ha scelto un destino da emarginato simile a quello dei profeti biblici che intonavano nel deserto il loro ritornello sul male e morivano lapidati dalla collera dei grandi signori.

A Michael Moore non succede nulla di simile, anche se i suoi film mettono spietatamente a nudo la crudeltà delle grandi aziende. Nel 2002 Bowling for Columbine – una feroce denuncia del fascino esercitato dalle armi sugli statunitensi – ha vinto l'Oscar. Due anni dopo, Fahrenheit 9/11 ha ottenuto una nomination all'Oscar e la Palma d'oro al Festival di Cannes.

Gli spettatori vanno in delirio quando Moore mostra le bugie dell'amministrazione Bush per giustificare l'invasione dell'Iraq e svela i legami tra la famiglia del presidente e quella di Osama bin Laden. Moore è un critico instancabile del sistema, ma il sistema lo tollera e lo premia. È un provocatore, come i buffoni di corte. Può cantare tutte le verità che vuole, senza che la corruzione e l'ingiustizia arretrino di un centimetro.

Sicko dovrebbe documentare una serie di tragedie, ma gli spot pubblicitari con cui cerca di attirare lo spettatore sono troppo frivoli: "Brutalmente divertente", "Riderete fino a sentirvi male", "Forse vi farà un po' male". I drammi che racconta Moore sono atroci, ed è proprio per questo che la gente li considera inevitabili.

In Sicko, per esempio, si racconta la storia di Donna e del suo bambino di pochi mesi che si sveglia in piena notte con 41 di febbre. Con il figlio in braccio, la ragazza corre al pronto soccorso più vicino. Lì non l'accettano perché la sua compagnia assicurativa le ha assegnato un altro ospedale.

Mentre cercano di capire di quale ospedale si tratta e chiedono l'autorizzazione per ricoverarlo, la febbre sale. La madre supplica che suo figlio sia curato. Tra le convulsioni, il bambino muore. Moore accumula in Sicko statistiche spaventose: 50 milioni di statunitensi vivono senza un'assicurazione sanitaria. Nove milioni sono bambini.

C'è chi non ha un lavoro e si paga l'assicurazione da solo. In quel caso, la spesa di una famiglia media senza malattie pregresse si aggira sui 26mila dollari all'anno. E spesso bisogna pagare a parte le medicine e quando ci si rivolge a un dottore che non è sulle liste dell'assicurazione si ottiene solo un rimborso parziale, dopo discussioni interminabili.

Sicko diventa una denuncia vera e propria quando paragona il sistema sanitario statunitense a quello canadese e a quello britannico, che sono universali e gratuiti. In un ospedale di Londra, Moore domanda a un paziente statunitense quanto ha pagato per il ricovero. "Niente", gli risponde l'uomo. "Niente?", insiste. "Niente. Qui non siamo negli Stati Uniti".

Non spiega però che i pazienti di quei paesi spesso aspettano mesi prima di poter fare una visita da un medico. Una donna attraversa la frontiera con il Canada, dove la curano gratuitamente. Moore allora commenta: "Siamo americani. Quando abbiamo bisogno di qualcosa, andiamo in un altro paese".

Il linguaggio del documentario è indubbiamente demagogico, ma anche efficace. Nell'ultima parte del film il regista spiega che mentre alcuni degli eroi dell'11 settembre sono vittime di un sistema sanitario costoso, arbitrario e lento, i nemici detenuti a Guantanamo hanno cure ospedaliere veloci e gratuite. Allora decide di andare a Cuba con i malati.

A Guantanamo li cacciano, ovviamente, ma alla fine ottengono all'Avana l'assistenza che gli è stata negata nel loro paese, in ospedali moderni con medici che parlano un inglese impeccabile. Moore non spiega le differenze tra quest'ospedale immacolato, per turisti e funzionari, e quelli a cui hanno accesso i cubani comuni.

È comunque innegabile che il sistema sanitario pubblico degli Stati Uniti sia al 37° posto nella valutazione dell'Organizzazione mondiale della sanità, ben al di sotto della Francia (primo posto), dell'Italia (secondo), della Spagna (settimo) e del Regno Unito (18°), anche se è due posti sopra a Cuba (al 39°).

Alla fine di una proiezione di Sicko nel New Jersey ho sentito un signore chiedersi a voce alta e in tono di sfida se a Cuba un film così critico verso il potere sarebbe stato distribuito. Sicuramente no. Sull'isola la sanità e l'istruzione sono garantite, ma la libertà di parola no.

La specie umana fa passi da gigante nella tecnologia e nella scienza, ma è ancora incapace di costruire società fondate sia sulla libertà sia sulla giustizia. Spesso, dove una è garantita l'altra è sacrificata. E a volte mancano entrambe.

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http://www.internazionale.it/firme/articolo.php?id=16832

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Jeune Afrique: Réunion de suivi
de l'accord de paix à Ouagadougou

CÔTE D'IVOIRE - 3 septembre 2007 - par AFP

Les principaux acteurs de la crise ivoirienne se retrouvent mardi à Ouagadougou pour "apprécier l'état d'avancement" de l'accord de paix signé le 4 mars dans la capitale burkinabè, a annoncé lundi le gouvernement ivoirien.

Présidé par le président burkinabè Blaise Compaoré, médiateur de la crise ivoirienne, le Comité d'évaluation et d'accompagnement (CEA) de l'accord de Ouagadougou se réunira dans la matinée, indique un communiqué de Meïté Sindou, porte-parole du Premier ministre ivoirien Guillaume Soro.

Les deux principaux signataires de l'accord, le président Laurent Gbagbo et son ancien ennemi Guillaume Soro, chef de la rébellion des Forces Nouvelles (FN) nommé depuis Premier ministre, y seront représentés par des délégués.

La réunion sera ouverte aux institutions internationales et bailleurs de fonds, notamment l'ONU, l'Union européenne, la Banque mondiale, le Fonds monétaire international et l'Union africaine, précise le communiqué.

Le CEA est chargé de "l'évaluation périodique" de l'application du plan de paix inter-ivoirien du 4 mars et de "suggérer toutes dispositions nécessaires" à sa "bonne exécution".

Il devrait notamment se pencher sur une réactualisation du calendrier d'application de l'accord, qui prévoyait au départ de boucler le processus de paix en 10 mois, avec des élections en décembre prochain, mais a accumulé les retards depuis.

Le 12 juin dernier, M. Compaoré avait présidé à Yamoussoukro (centre de la Côte d'Ivoire) la première réunion du Cadre permanent de concertation (CPC), l'autre instance de suivi de l'accord.

Il y avait estimé que les élections générales, l'un des principaux points de ce processus de paix, sans cesse repoussées depuis la fin 2005, pouvaient avoir lieu au premier trimestre de l'année 2008.

L'accord de paix de Ouagadougou a permis un début de normalisation de la situation en Côte d'Ivoire, en permettant notamment la suppression de la zone de confiance (ZDC) sous contrôle international qui séparait le nord du sud, et un début de redéploiement de l'administration nationale dans le nord.

Il n'a toutefois par encore permis d'enclencher les opérations d'identification de la population et de désarmement, autres volets prioritaires du processus de paix, qu'il prévoyait de relancer à partir d'avril.

Le processus de paix ivoirien vise à réunifier à terme un pays coupé en deux depuis septembre 2002 entre le nord, contrôlé par les FN, et le sud resté sous l'autorité du président Gbagbo. Les deux camps ont cessé de s'affronter militairement à la fin 2004.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP42417runiouoguod0

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Mother Jones: Hillary's Prayer:
Hillary Clinton's Religion and Politics

For 15 years, Hillary Clinton has been part of a secretive religious group that seeks to bring Jesus back to Capitol Hill. Is she triangulating—or living her faith?

Kathryn Joyce and Jeff Sharlet
September 01 , 2007

It was an elegant example of the Clinton style, a rhetorical maneuver subtle, bold, and banal all at once. During a Democratic candidate forum in June, hosted by the liberal evangelical group Sojourners, Hillary Clinton fielded a softball query about Bill's infidelity: How had her faith gotten her through the Lewinsky scandal?

After a glancing shot at Republican "pharisees," Clinton explained that, of course, her "very serious" grounding in faith had helped her weather the affair. But she had also relied on the "extended faith family" that came to her aid, "people whom I knew who were literally praying for me in prayer chains, who were prayer warriors for me."

Such references to spiritual warfare—prayer as battle against Satan, evil, and sin—might seem like heavy evangelical rhetoric for the senator from New York, but they went over well with the Sojourners audience, as did her call to "inject faith into policy." It was language that recalled Clinton's Jesus moment a year earlier, when she'd summoned the Bible to decry a Republican anti-immigrant initiative that she said would "criminalize the good Samaritan...and even Jesus himself." Liberal Christians crowed ("Hillary Clinton Shows the Way Democrats Can Use the Bible," declared a blogger at TPMCafe) while conservative pundits cried foul, accusing Clinton of scoring points with a faith not really her own.

In fact, Clinton's God talk is more complicated—and more deeply rooted—than either fans or foes would have it, a revelation not just of her determination to out-Jesus the gop, but of the powerful religious strand in her own politics. Over the past year, we've interviewed dozens of Clinton's friends, mentors, and pastors about her faith, her politics, and how each shapes the other. And while media reports tend to characterize Clinton's subtle recalibration of tone and style as part of the Democrats' broader move to recapture the terrain of "moral values," those who know her say there's far more to it than that.

Through all of her years in Washington, Clinton has been an active participant in conservative Bible study and prayer circles that are part of a secretive Capitol Hill group known as the Fellowship. Her collaborations with right-wingers such as Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) and former Senator Rick Santorum (R-Pa.) grow in part from that connection. "A lot of evangelicals would see that as just cynical exploitation," says the Reverend Rob Schenck, a former leader of the militant anti-abortion group Operation Rescue who now ministers to decision makers in Washington. "I don't....there is a real good that is infected in people when they are around Jesus talk, and open Bibles, and prayer."

Clinton's faith is grounded in the Methodist beliefs she grew up with in Park Ridge, Illinois, a conservative Chicago suburb where she was active in her church's altar guild, Sunday school, and youth group. It was there, in 1961, that she met the Reverend Don Jones, a 30-year-old youth pastor; Jones, a friend of Clinton's to this day, told us he knows "more about Hillary Clinton's faith than anybody outside her family."

Because Jones introduced Clinton and her teenage peers to the civil rights movement and modern poetry and art, Clinton biographers often cast him as a proto-'60s liberal who sowed seeds of radicalism throughout Park Ridge. Jones, though, describes his theology as neoorthodox, guided by the belief that social change should come about slowly and without radical action. It emerged, he says, as a third way, a reaction against both separatist fundamentalism and the New Deal's labor-based liberalism.

Under Jones' mentorship, Clinton learned about Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tillich—thinkers whom liberals consider their own, but whom young Hillary Rodham encountered as theological conservatives. The Niebuhr she studied was a cold warrior, dismissive of the progressive politics of his earlier writing. "He'd thought that once we were unionized, the kingdom of God would be ushered in," Jones explains. "But the effect of those two world wars and the violence that they produced shook his faith in liberal theology. He came to believe that the achievement of justice meant a clear understanding of the limitations of the human condition." Tillich, whose sermon on grace Clinton turned to during the Lewinsky scandal, today enjoys a following among conservatives for revising the social gospel—the notion that Christians are to improve humanity's lot here on earth by fighting poverty, inequality, and exploitation—to emphasize individual redemption instead of activism.

Niebuhr and Tillich's combination of aggressiveness in foreign affairs and limited domestic ambition naturally led Clinton toward the gop. She was a Goldwater Girl who, under the tutelage of her high school history teacher Paul Carlson (whom Jones describes as "to the right of the John Birchers"), attended biweekly anticommunist meetings and later served as president of Wellesley's Young Republicans chapter. Out of step with the era's radicalism, Clinton wrote Jones from college, lamenting that her fellow students didn't believe that one could be "a mind conservative and a heart liberal." To Jones, this question indicated that Clinton shared Niebuhr's notion of Christians needing to have "a dark enough view of life that they can be realistic about what's possible."

Two decades later, while Bill was campaigning for president, Clinton picked up that theme once more, displaying a theological depth that conservative believers could appreciate. In an interview with the United Methodist Reporter, she expressed regret that her church had focused too much on social gospel concerns in the '60s, '70s, and '80s, "to the exclusion of personal faith and growth." The spirit, believe theological conservatives, matters more than the flesh. Clinton added that she was happy to see her liberal denomination becoming more salvation centered in the '90s.

When Clinton first came to Washington in 1993, one of her first steps was to join a Bible study group. For the next eight years, she regularly met with a Christian "cell" whose members included Susan Baker, wife of Bush consigliere James Baker; Joanne Kemp, wife of conservative icon Jack Kemp; Eileen Bakke, wife of Dennis Bakke, a leader in the anti-union Christian management movement; and Grace Nelson, the wife of Senator Bill Nelson, a conservative Florida Democrat.

Clinton's prayer group was part of the Fellowship (or "the Family"), a network of sex-segregated cells of political, business, and military leaders dedicated to "spiritual war" on behalf of Christ, many of them recruited at the Fellowship's only public event, the annual National Prayer Breakfast. (Aside from the breakfast, the group has "made a fetish of being invisible," former Republican Senator William Armstrong has said.) The Fellowship believes that the elite win power by the will of God, who uses them for his purposes. Its mission is to help the powerful understand their role in God's plan.

Clinton declined our requests for an interview about her faith, but in Living History, she describes her first encounter with Fellowship leader Doug Coe at a 1993 lunch with her prayer cell at the Cedars, the Fellowship's majestic estate on the Potomac. Coe, she writes, "is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God."

The Fellowship's ideas are essentially a blend of Calvinism and Norman Vincent Peale, the 1960s preacher of positive thinking. It's a cheery faith in the "elect" chosen by a single voter—God—and a devotion to Romans 13:1: "Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers....The powers that be are ordained of God." Or, as Coe has put it, "we work with power where we can, build new power where we can't."

When Time put together a list of the nation's 25 most powerful evangelicals in 2005, the heading for Coe's entry was "The Stealth Persuader." "You know what I think of when I think of Doug Coe?" the Reverend Schenck (a Coe admirer) asked us. "I think literally of the guy in the smoky back room that you can't even see his face. He sits in the corner, and you see the cigar, and you see the flame, and you hear his voice—but you never see his face. He's that shadowy figure."

Coe has been an intimate of every president since Ford, but he rarely imposes on chief executives, who see him as a slightly mystical but apolitical figure. Rather, Coe uses his access to the Oval Office as currency with lesser leaders. "If Doug Coe can get you some face time with the President of the United States," one official told the author of a Princeton study of the National Prayer Breakfast last year, "then you will take his call and seek his friendship. That's power."

"If you're going to do religion in public life," concurs Schenck, a Jewish convert to fundamentalist Christianity who's retained his sense of irony, Coe's friendship is a kind of "kosher...seal of approval."

Coe's friends include former Attorney General John Ashcroft, Reaganite Edwin Meese III, and ultraconservative Rep. Joe Pitts (R-Pa.). Under Coe's guidance, Meese has hosted weekly prayer breakfasts for politicians, businesspeople, and diplomats, and Pitts rose from obscurity to head the House Values Action Team, an off-the-record network of religious right groups and members of Congress created by Tom DeLay. The corresponding Senate Values Action Team is guided by another Coe protégé, Brownback, who also claims to have recruited King Abdullah of Jordan into a regular study of Jesus' teachings.

The Fellowship's long-term goal is "a leadership led by God—leaders of all levels of society who direct projects as they are led by the spirit." According to the Fellowship's archives, the spirit has in the past led its members in Congress to increase U.S. support for the Duvalier regime in Haiti and the Park dictatorship in South Korea. The Fellowship's God-led men have also included General Suharto of Indonesia; Honduran general and death squad organizer Gustavo Alvarez Martinez; a Deutsche Bank official disgraced by financial ties to Hitler; and dictator Siad Barre of Somalia, plus a list of other generals and dictators. Clinton, says Schenck, has become a regular visitor to Coe's Arlington, Virginia, headquarters, a former convent where Coe provides members of Congress with sex-segregated housing and spiritual guidance.

We contacted all of Clinton's Fellowship cell mates, but only one agreed to speak—though she stressed that there's much she's not "at liberty" to reveal. Grace Nelson used to be the organizer of the Florida Governor's Prayer Breakfast, which makes her a piety broker in Florida politics—she would decide who could share the head table with Jeb Bush. Clinton's prayer cell was tight-knit, according to Nelson, who recalled that one of her conservative prayer partners was at first loath to pray for the first lady, but learned to "love Hillary as much as any of us love Hillary." Cells like these, Nelson added, exist in "parliaments all over the world," with all welcome so long as they submit to "the person of Jesus" as the source of their power.

Throughout her time at the White House, Clinton writes in Living History, she took solace from "daily scriptures" sent to her by her Fellowship prayer cell, along with Coe's assurances that she was right where God wanted her. (Clinton's sense of divine guidance has been noted by others: Bishop Richard Wilke, who presided over the United Methodist Church of Arkansas during her years in Little Rock, told us, "If I asked Hillary, 'What does the Lord want you to do?' she would say, 'I think I'm called by the Lord to be in public service at whatever level he wants me.'")

Coe counsels that Fellowship cells shouldn't engage in direct evangelical activism, but rather allow Christian causes to benefit from the bonds that develop within the cells. Former Nixon counsel Chuck Colson provides a rare illustration of the process in his 1976 Watergate memoir, Born Again. Facing prosecution in 1973, Colson allowed Coe to ensconce him in a Fellowship cell with a Nixon foe, Senator Harold Hughes. Hughes became the Nixon hatchet man's staunchest defender, voting in favor of a possible pardon for Colson and later supporting Colson as he built Prison Fellowship, now one of the most powerful organizations of the Christian right.

That's how it works: The Fellowship isn't out to turn liberals into conservatives; rather, it convinces politicians they can transcend left and right with an ecumenical faith that rises above politics. Only the faith is always evangelical, and the politics always move rightward.

This is in line with the Christian right's long-term strategy. Francis Schaeffer, late guru of the movement, coined the term "cobelligerency" to describe the alliances evangelicals must forge with conservative Catholics. Colson, his most influential disciple, has refined the concept of cobelligerency to deal with less-than-pure politicians. In this application, conservatives sit pretty and wait for liberals looking for common ground to come to them. Clinton, Colson told us, "has a lot of history" to overcome, but he sees her making the right moves.

These days, Clinton has graduated from the political wives' group into what may be Coe's most elite cell, the weekly Senate Prayer Breakfast. Though weighted Republican, the breakfast—regularly attended by about 40 members—is a bipartisan opportunity for politicians to burnish their reputations, giving Clinton the chance to profess her faith with men such as Brownback as well as the twin terrors of Oklahoma, James Inhofe and Tom Coburn, and, until recently, former Senator George Allen (R-Va.). Democrats in the group include Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor, who told us that the separation of church and state has gone too far; Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) is also a regular.

Unlikely partnerships have become a Clinton trademark. Some are symbolic, such as her support for a ban on flag burning with Senator Bob Bennett (R-Utah) and funding for research on the dangers of video games with Brownback and Santorum. But Clinton has also joined the gop on legislation that redefines social justice issues in terms of conservative morality, such as an anti-human-trafficking law that withheld funding from groups working on the sex trade if they didn't condemn prostitution in the proper terms. With Santorum, Clinton co-sponsored the Workplace Religious Freedom Act; she didn't back off even after Republican senators such as Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter pulled their names from the bill citing concerns that the measure would protect those refusing to perform key aspects of their jobs—say, pharmacists who won't fill birth control prescriptions, or police officers who won't guard abortion clinics.

Clinton has championed federal funding of faith-based social services, which she embraced years before George W. Bush did; Marci Hamilton, author of God vs. the Gavel, says that the Clintons' approach to faith-based initiatives "set the stage for Bush." Clinton has also long supported the Defense of Marriage Act, a measure that has become a purity test for any candidate wishing to avoid war with the Christian right.

Liberal rabbi Michael Lerner, whose "politics of meaning" Clinton made famous in a speech early in her White House tenure, sees the senator's ambivalence as both more and less than calculated opportunism. He believes she has genuine sympathy for liberal causes—rights for women, gays, immigrants—but often will not follow through. "There is something in her that pushes her toward caring about others, as long as there's no price to pay. But in politics, there is a price to pay."

In politics, those who pay tribute to the powerful also reap rewards. When Ed Klein's attack bio, The Truth About Hillary, came out in 2005, some of her most prominent defenders were Christian conservatives, among them Southern Baptist Theological Seminary President Albert Mohler. "Christians," he declared, "should repudiate this book and determine to take no pleasure in it."

Senator Brownback understood the temptation. He used to hate Clinton so much, he told us, that the hate hurt. Then came the Clintons' 1994 National Prayer Breakfast appearance with Mother Teresa, who upbraided the couple for their pro-choice views. Bill made no attempt to conceal his anger, but Hillary took it and smiled. Brownback remembers thinking, "Now, there's gotta be a great lesson here." He didn't know what it was until Clinton got to the Senate and joined him in supporting DeLay's Day of Reconciliation resolution following the 2000 election, a proposal described by its backers as a call to "pray for our leaders." Now, Brownback considers Clinton "a beautiful child of the living God."

Clinton, for her part, turned Mother Teresa's sucker punch into political opportunity. She met with the nun after the prayer breakfast, visited her orphanage in India, helped her set up another one in Washington (which has since become an apparently inoperative branch of Mother Teresa's conservative Vatican order, the Missionaries of Charity), and generally built a highly visible friendship with a figure whose moral bona fides also came with an anti-abortion imprimatur that couldn't but help Clinton on the right.

Of course, no matter how much Clinton speaks of common ground, she doesn't stand a chance of winning votes among pro-lifers. As Tom McClusky of the Family Research Council, command central for Washington's Christian right, told us, movement conservatives consider legislation like Clinton's Putting Prevention First Act, which supports greater access to birth control and sex ed, "just another condom giveaway."

But the senator's project isn't the conversion of her adversaries; it's tempering their opposition so she can court a new generation of Clinton Republicans, values voters who have grown estranged from the Christian right. And while such crossover conservatives may never agree with her on the old litmus-test issues, there is an important, and broader, common ground—the kind of faith-based politics that, under the right circumstances, will permit majority morality to trump individual rights. The libertarian Cato Institute recently observed that Clinton is "adding the paternalistic agenda of the religious right to her old-fashioned liberal paternalism." Clinton suggests as much herself in her 1996 book, It Takes a Village, where she writes approvingly of religious groups' access to schools, lessons in Scripture, and "virtue" making a return to the classroom.

Then, as now, Clinton confounded secularists who recognize public faith only when it comes wrapped in a cornpone accent. Clinton speaks instead the language of nondenominationalism—a sober, eloquent appreciation of "values," the importance of prayer, and "heart" convictions—which liberals, unfamiliar with the history of evangelical coalition building, mistake for a tidy, apolitical accommodation, a personal separation of church and state. Nor do skeptical voters looking for political opportunism recognize that, when Clinton seeks guidance among prayer partners such as Coe and Brownback, she is not so much triangulating—much as that may have become second nature—as honoring her convictions. In her own way, she is a true believer.

This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.

© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/09/hillarys-prayer.html

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Página/12:
Un posible huevo de la serpiente

Por Osvaldo Bayer
Martes, 04 de Septiembre de 2007

El doctor Fernando Comunale, conocido médico de Belgrano, cirujano y sanitarista, del Hospital Pirovano, quien fue director de regiones sanitarias de la provincia bonaerense e interventor de la Obra Social de los Obreros de la Carne, hizo ayer una denuncia que para muchos no será de total importancia, pero que guarda un significado muy peligroso que demuestra que, pese a que han pasado ya 24 años de democracia, hay sectores que parecen no haber aprendido nada.

Todo ocurrió en una cancha de rugby, con la característica especial de que ese campo de juego está dentro del Colegio Militar. Justo allí donde se educan los próximos oficiales del Ejército. El domingo pasado se estaba jugando un partido de ese deporte, por el campeonato de la Liga Universitaria de la Unión de Rugby de Buenos Aires, entre el equipo del Colegio Militar, como local, y el representativo de la Universidad José Ingenieros, que actúa en representación de lo que era el antiguo Club Obras Sanitarias, integrado por estudiantes de educación física. Durante el juego, hubo un penal a favor del club civil, que no fue cobrado por el juez, y los jugadores perdieron la calma y algunos de ellos se insultaron y tomaron a golpes de puño. Pero lo increíble fue que en las tribunas había personal militar con traje de fajina y armado con fusiles ametralladoras Fal, además de otros con armas de tiro corto. Algunos uniformados bajaron de la tribuna y comenzaron a castigar a los jugadores del equipo civil, mientras hacían ostentación de armas. Cuando el doctor Comunale –que servía allí como médico del equipo universitario y además como entrenador– reprochó la actitud de los hombres uniformados armados, un coronel le contestó agresivamente: “Esta cancha es territorio del Ejército Argentino”. A lo que contestó el doctor Comunale: “Usted se equivoca, un espacio deportivo siempre pertenece a los dos equipos mientras juegan”. Y siguieron las trompadas, en las que se destacó un mayor del Ejército.

Todo esto origina una serie de preguntas: ¿por qué el público militar estaba “disfrazado” con uniforme de combate? Además, es tradicional en ese deporte que se juegue un “tercer tiempo”, es decir, cuando los dos equipos, terminado el partido, se juntan para conversar y brindar por el deporte y por la amistad, aunque durante el partido haya habido desavenencias, protestas o hasta golpes. Cuando un jugador comete una falta es retirado del campo por diez minutos, para que recapacite, y luego puede entrar de nuevo. Así debe ser el deporte y no bordear la cancha con armas de fuego y entrar a trompada limpia. ¿Dónde han aprendido ese proceder los militares argentinos? ¿Cómo es posible que los oficiales tengan esa conducta, se crean los dueños de la verdad? ¿Quiénes son los profesores del Colegio Militar que no fundamentan una conducta de honorabilidad en vez de una agresividad inútil donde nace el odio? ¿No han aprendido nada después de la tragedia del cobarde método de la desaparición de personas?

El Ministerio de Defensa debería hacer una profunda investigación de este incidente en el campo de juego del Colegio Militar y luego también hacer una clase magistral de cómo tendrían que haberse conducido los responsables uniformados del incidente. Una enseñanza para que les sirva definitivamente para el futuro. Si se deja pasar por alto, podría servir como el huevo de la serpiente para el futuro de la democracia.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-90775-2007-09-04.html

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The Independent:
Strange goings-on here in Lebanon...

Stories that just don't seem to make it into print.

Robert Fisk
Published: 01 September 2007

Did you know that the Hizbollah "Party of God" has installed its own private communications network in the south of Lebanon, stretching from the village of Zawter Sharqiya all the way to Beirut? And why, I wonder, would it be doing that? Well, to safeguard its phones in the event that the Israelis immobilise the public mobile system in the next war. Next war? Well, if there's not going to be another war in Lebanon, why is Hizbollah building new roads north of the Litani river, new bunkers, new logistics far outside the area of operations of the Nato-led UN peacekeeping force in southern Lebanon?

Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's leader, boasts of new weapons. The Lebanese suspect that these include anti-aircraft missiles. If this is true – and many Lebanese who have spent their lives under Israel's cruel air attacks, assaults which have often been war crimes, hope it is – then the next war will be anticipated with dark but keen anxiety. Since the Israeli army is incapable of fighting the Hizbollah on its own ground – its collapse when faced by Hizbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon last year proved this – what happens if their awesome air power is also neutered?

Fouad Siniora, the Lebanese prime minister, ensconced in his little "green zone" in the old Turkish serail, can do little to alter the course of this coming battle. Supplied with bombs by the Americans so that the Lebanese army can continue to blast its way through the Palestinian Nahr el-Bared refugee camp – one of the most uncovered stories of the Middle East year – his government can do no more than wonder at the resistance of the ruthless non-Hizbollah Islamist insurgents who are still holding out there. The US ambassador watches approvingly as the Lebanese army continues to "advance" amid strongholds and bunkers at a cost of almost 140 soldiers' lives although, after four months of "advancing" – as one western NGO remarked to me a few days ago – they might soon, at this rate, reach Cyprus.

One can only reflect on how the US ambassador to Tel Aviv reacts when the Americans supply bombs to the Israelis which are then used on the Palestinians of Gaza. Weapons are always available to blast away at the Palestinians.

This is Fouad Siniora's predicament as Hizbollah tries to destroy his government and prevent the election of a non- partisan president next month. Locked into Washington's embrace as the latest Arab country to prove the spread of George Bush's fantastical version of democracy in the Middle East, powerless in a country where the only functioning institution is now the Lebanese army, the prime minister finds himself on America's side in the "war on terror" against Hizbollah's mentors in Iran. All Hizbollah needed now, poor old Fouad was quoted as saying the other day, was "a composer for a national anthem of their own".

But there are other fears creating shadows in Lebanon. One of them is the sectarianism of Iraq. Lebanon's Shias and Sunnis and Christians all have friends and family in Iraq. Many have visited their loved ones who have appeared amid the Iraqi refugee masses that have poured into neighbouring Damascus. For their care, of course, the Syrians have received not a scintilla of gratitude from the Americans who were responsible for creating the hell-disaster of Iraq in the first place. It's worth comparing the vital statistics (though not on CNN or Fox News): Syria has accepted almost one and a half million Iraqi refugees – caring for them, providing them with welfare and free hospital services – while Washington, when it isn't cursing Iraq's prime minister, has accepted a measly 800 Iraqis.

And Lebanon? No one realises that this tiny Arab country has accepted 50,000 Iraqis since the great refugee exodus began. Of course, the Shia Iraqis have moved into the Shia southern suburbs (home of Hizbollah), the Sunni into Sunni areas of Beirut and Sidon, the Christians into Christian east Beirut and the Metn hills. And because the Lebanese have always called the Iraqis brothers and sisters, there has been no friction between the different Iraqi groups – and this is truly wondrous because only last January, Lebanon's Shia and Sunni youths were stoning each other in their thousands in the streets of Beirut.

So what else do the Americans have up their sleeve for us out here? Well, an old chum of mine in the Deep South – a former US Vietnam veteran officer – has a habit of tramping through the hills to the north of his home and writes to me that "in my therapeutic and recreation trips ... in the mountains of North Carolina over the last two weeks, I've noticed a lot of F-16 and C-130 activity. They are coming right through the passes, low to the ground. The last time I saw this kind of thing up there was before Bosnia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan".

That was in early August. Two weeks later, my friend wrote again. "There were a few (more) C-130 passes... I know that some 75th Rangers have just moved out of their home base and that manoeuvres have gone on in areas that have been used... in the past before assaults utilizing [sic] aircraft guided by small numbers of special operations people."

And then comes the cruncher in my friend's letter. "I think that the Bush administration is looking for something to distract Americans before the mid-September report on progress in Iraq. And I believe that the pressure is building to do something about the sanctuaries for the Taliban and foreign fighters along the Pakistan/Afghanistan border..."

A few days after my friend's letter arrived in Beirut, the Pakistanis reported that the Americans were using pilotless drones to attack targets just inside Pakistan. But it seems much more ambitious military plans may now be in the works. An all-out strike inside the North West Frontier province before President Pervez Musharref steps down – or is overthrown? A last throw of the dice at Bin Laden before "democracy" returns to Pakistan?

Stand by for more disasters – from Pakistan to the shores of the Mediterranean. But don't expect to hear about them in advance.

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article2917317.ece

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The Nation:
The Hundred-Mile Diet

by CHRISTOPHER KETCHAM
[from the September 10, 2007 issue]

It's a pitiful thing to contemplate: By my estimation, close to 85 percent, perhaps even 95 percent, of the food that feeds my hometown of Moab, Utah, population 5,000, gets trucked or flown in over the red-rock desert, often from continental distances. Cut off that supply line-an absurd, wasteful and polluting operation where the average morsel travels 1,500 miles from farm to plate-and the city would starve to death in a week.

Eighty years ago Moab fed itself. The locals ate beef from cattle that grazed in the cool of the nearby mountains in summer or on the warm canyon floors in winter, where the townspeople also tended melons, peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, romaine lettuce and much else. The last of the old melon orchards are gone, bulldozed to make way for condo sprawl named after the destroyed gardens-a classic pattern that holds even for big cities. Among these is Washington, DC, where as recently as the 1950s most residents got their produce from Maryland farms next door that are now subdivisions of tarmac and drywall.

A few of my fellow Moabites balk at this foolery and plant their own gardens to take advantage of the desert sun. Jon Olschewski, who is 29 and pays his rent waiting tables at one of Moab's restaurants, where the food tastes like salted rubber, gets up to 70 percent of his family's diet from his 2.5-acre farm, depending on the season. He and his father, a stonemason, tend twenty-three types of fruit and vegetable and herb-melons, kohlrabi, cilantro, squash, edamame, garlic, dill, chocolate peppers-and cull the eggs of as many as ten chickens a season. "In the first half of the twentieth century, a semi truck of fruit rolled out of Moab every day," Olschewski tells me. "Out of acres and acres of orchards. Under 5 percent are still here. This town has turned a blind eye to its agricultural roots. And it's something that nobody wants to talk about." He likes to quote Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower, who notes that an average 2.5-acre farm suffices to provide enough produce for 100 locals for a year.

In an era when transcontinental food consumption has exploded-the value of international food trade is up threefold since 1960, the tonnage of food shipped between nations up fourfold (while population has only doubled)-Olschewski and his ilk are a beleaguered minority, to be sure. But their numbers across the nation are growing. They even have a name: They call themselves localvores. The term is the invention of a group of Northern Californians who on the occasion of World Environmental Day in the summer of 2005 saw an opportunity to fight global warming by eating only from their Bay Area "foodshed," defined as foods sourced within 100 miles of one's doorstep. Thus was born Locavores.com and the annual Eat Local Challenge, which has flowered into a nationwide movement that asks participants to spend several months out of the year confined to the "hundred-mile diet." Gourmet magazine, in an article by activist-author Bill McKibben, has featured the pleasures and challenges of localvorism, while alt-supermarket chain Whole Foods now dedicates shelf space to delectables identified as "locally grown." Novelist Barbara Kingsolver this spring published Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, a memoir-eleven weeks on the New York Times bestseller list-that chronicles a year of eating locally after she and her husband fled the deserts of the Southwest for the farms of Virginia. "Our highest shopping goal," Kingsolver writes, "was to get our food from so close to home that we'd know the person who grew it."

Kingsolver was inspired to engage in this all-consuming experiment by the same concern that drove the pioneer localvores in California: Transcontinental foodism is destructive, unsustainable, irrational. According to the Worldwatch Institute, an imported long-distance meal of typical value-meat, grain, fruits, vegetables-consumes up to four times as much energy and produces four times as much greenhouse gas emissions as the locally grown equivalent. In 2002 food transportation was among the largest and fastest-growing sources of British greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, trade studies in Britain find that the British import huge quantities of staples such as milk, pork and lamb, while exporting comparable tonnages of these same products-trapped in lunatic "food swap" trade agreements made possible by cheap oil, subsidized transport and centralized purchases by massive retailers. Perhaps localvorism is best understood as an act of rebellion against a system that should not-cannot-stand.

The one state in the union that appears most inclined to cut itself off from the industrial food pipeline is Vermont. A recent study by a graduate student at the University of Vermont found that the state leads the nation in localized movement of agricultural goods, with the highest per capita direct sales of farmers' products-1.2 percent-among the fifty states. Less than 2 percent is not a lot, of course, but it's a start. With this in mind, last winter 133 Vermonters in the Mad River Valley, accompanied by scores of others in five separate localvore "chapters" statewide, joined to exploit their state's market advantage in the so-called Winter Challenge. The Challenge required that participants survive only on a 100-mile foodshed for up to a week in cold February. Robin McDermott, who moved to Vermont with her husband three years ago and co-founded the Mad River Valley Localvores chapter in 2006, is somewhat harder on herself: Her challenge lasts all year.

By early summer, McDermott is planning six months of survival, from the first snows of September until the April melt. She cans, dries, cellars, preserves or freezes almost all of what she eats-her cellar stocked with carrots and potatoes, onions and beets; her freezer stocked with half a pig and half a lamb and many chickens, because "we know it is no fun for a farmer to slaughter chickens in the middle of the winter."

McDermott is unalloyed in her enthusiasm for the payoff in all this effort. If pipeline food promotes a kind of roboticism and mindlessness-every food always at hand, strawberries blooming in the aisles in icy January, the beef perfect in T-bones and strips always fresh-she believes that localvorism promotes intelligence, discretion and choice that go hand in hand with a recognition of limits. Consider the problem of asparagus. "There is a short period during the year, maybe three weeks, when I can get asparagus," McDermott tells me. "You can bet that I know when asparagus time is. I also know when strawberries, peas, spinach, tomatoes and corn will be available, and I plan for them."

There are two other big payoffs: one healthwise, the other as a stand for economic freedom. First, pipeline food is often polluted with additives, preservatives, pesticides and, not least, the germs of the many human hands and environments through which it passes (the latter most evident in the recent rash of Chinese food scandals-toxic fish, filthy shrimp, contaminated pet food). Second, if there's one big winner in the absurdist world-food supply line, it's large corporations that don't care about local economies. Just five companies control 75 percent of the global vegetable seed market; a handful of transnational companies control 90 percent of the trade in coffee and cocoa; five retailers account for 50 percent of all food purchases in France, Germany and Britain; the ur-predator among corporate retailers, Wal-Mart, is now the largest food retailer in the country.

On the other hand, if Vermonters shifted 10 percent of their food purchases to locally grown products, it would add more than $100 million to the state economy. Part of this added benefit is the infrastructure that arises to grow, process and distribute food (packinghouses, slaughterhouses, dairies, canneries). A study by the London-based New Economics Foundation concludes that food that stays local generates nearly twice as much income for the local economy as food exported or imported.

This spring I met two hippie vegetarians, Buck Butcher and Greg Marchand, as they wandered the West in a pickup chasing indigenous plants to eat (pinyon nuts in the high deserts of Nevada; strawberries, raspberries, currants in southern Montana). During the previous winter, in the hills of Tennessee, the two men culled at least half of their diet foraging in the richness of the temperate woods. Within a mile of their home-a notable 1/100th of the localvore limit-they gathered oyster mushrooms, watercress, wintercress, wild onions and Jerusalem artichokes. They roasted breadroots in olive oil with salt and pepper or boiled and mashed them like potatoes. "That was 50 percent of the time," said Buck. "The rest of the time we ate pizza."

Granted, most Americans have neither the leisure nor desire to wander the woods pulling roots, nor the skill and time to sow or kill their protein. We are bound to the diet that's most accessible-fast food, TV dinners, the wilted things at the supermarket-because of pressures of rent, work and children and, most important, because that's what the big food distributors make available. "I don't see this as an all-or-nothing proposition," says food scholar Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore's Dilemma, which devotes a chapter to localvorism. "Trade in food goes back thousands of years. It's not inherently evil, but we're trading too much. I can't see us going all the way back to local or even regional food production. But we can try to move in that direction, and the localvores are teaching us that. They're also teaching us how hard it is to go back."

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/ketcham

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ZNet | Africa
The Crisis in Darfur and Chad

by Bill Bonnar; frontline; September 03, 2007

The images on the television screen are now so familiar we become immune. Unimaginable numbers of people suffering and dying in a part of the world we know little about for reasons we know even less. What is it we feel? Sadness, pity, a sense of anger, a sense of hopelessness? Yet when 4 year old Madeline McCann is snatched from her parents in Portugal the sense of outrage and the demand for action is overwhelming. The difference is that we can feel empathy for Madeline's parents who are just like us and have an idea that our concerns and actions will make a difference. It becomes personal. It is difficult to do this for the mass of faceless people now suffering along the Darfur/Chad border so we make the right noises, perhaps make a donation to the relevant charity and move on to the next news item. Yet the people suffering are just like us; parents, children, brothers, sisters, grandparents; people with the same hopes and aspirations; fears and concerns and the same right to live in peace and security as us. The only difference is that we are lucky enough to have been born here. To understand the crisis in Darfur one has to know something of Darfur itself. Darfur is a large province in western Sudan bigger than Britain but with a population smaller than Scotland. Bordering the Central African Republic, Chad and Libya it is a largely desert region interspersed with some of the richest arable farmland in Africa. Access to this farmland and proximity to these other countries are key factors in the current crisis. Mostly African rather than Arab its southern border marks the boundary between Arab North Africa and the 'african' Africa.

Tribalism

Tribalism dominates politics in Darfur as it does in most of Sudan. This isn't to say that social, economic and class issues are absent but rather that they are usually expressed in tribal terms. Central to the current situation has been a long standing conflict between the dominant Fur tribe, from which Darfur derives its name, and various Arab tribes known collectively as the Janjaweed. The Fur are arable farmers and historically control some of the richest farmlands and access to water particularly in central Darfur. The Janjaweed are primarily cattle ranchers moving their herds through Darfur and Chad and competing with the Fur for access to grazing land and water. This conflict has been going on since far back in history and has usually been settled by negotiation and little bloodshed. In recent years, however, other forces have intervened, intensifying the conflict to almost genocidal proportions. Originally a self- governing sultanate Darfur was incorporated into British-ruled Sudan in 1916 and became the country's western province when Sudan achieved independence in 1956. Because of the distance from the capital, Khartoum, and the weakness of the central state, successive post-colonial governments have tried to govern Darfur by proxy. Establishing alliances with key tribes and actively intervening to ensure their allies control affairs on the ground. As all Sudanese Governments have been Arab dominated they have tended to support Arab rather and African peoples in Darfur as in other regions. From independence in 1956 to the military coup in 1989 which overthrew the government of President Sadiq al Mahdi, Darfur was a relatively peaceful and stable region with most internal conflicts contained by negotiation and the region enjoying a large degree of autonomy. In 1989 the National Islamic Front staged a coup and seized power in Khartoum. The current crisis in Darfur has its origin in this event.

National Islamic Front

The National Islamic Front staged its coup in response to a number of issues. Khartoum had effectively lost the war in the south to the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army (SPLA) and the NIF blamed this on the weakness of the government of Sadiq al Mahdi. Their fear was that other regional forces might look for greater independence weakening the state still further. Allied to this was the rise in strength and influence of the Communist Party which although only legalised for a few short years had grown into a genuinely mass organisation. With its call for Sudan to become a fully secular state the CPS was seen as anti- Islamic and a threat to the existing order. The spectre of 1971 was also regularly raised when the Communist Party was involved in an attempt to overthrow the government and seize power. The NIF solution; ban the CPS, re-launch the war in the South and turn Sudan into a fully fledged Islamic state. In Darfur, the military coup was treated with complete dismay especially when it became clear that the government would seek to undermine the region's autonomy. The long established policy of supporting Arab tribes in their conflict over access to land was stepped up and attacks by Arab militias increased. The aim was to make these tribes dominant in Darfur and strengthen alliances with them. This came to a head in 2002 when two local rebel groups, the Justice & Equality Movement (JEM) and the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM), accused the government of oppressing the non-Arab majority. Although representing different tribal and geographical areas they were both united in their desire for greater Darfur autonomy and a return to civilian government in Khartoum. Within both groups are elements committed to independence for Darfur. A problem with trying to tie down exactly who rebel groups are is that they are constantly changing with mergers, divisions and new groups coming onto the scene all the time.

On the 25th February 2002 a group calling itself the Darfur Liberation Front launched a successful attack on an army garrison in the Jebel Marrah district. There then followed a low intensity war between various rebel groups and the army in which government forces faired extremely badly. The Sudanese army, poorly equipped and trained, was already stretched by the war in the South. Proving no match for the rebels the government relied on aerial bombardment of rebel held areas which had a devastating effect on civilians. Despite this the government faced a humiliating defeat when on 25th April 2003 a joint force of SLM and JEM rebels attacked and destroyed the main army base in the regional capital, Al Fasher. Having effectively 'lost' the South to the SPLA the government feared that Darfur was going the same way. By the summer, government forces were on the retreat all over Darfur with the conflict threatening to spill over into the neighbouring Kordofan region.

Genocide

At this point the government changed tactics. An alliance was forged between the Janjaweed militia and the government which put the militia at the centre of Khartoum's counter-insurgency strategy. The Janjaweed, already well armed and organised, were supplied with new weaponry and logistical support. Supported by Military Intelligence and the air force they began to attack the civilian population from where the rebels had emerged. The strategy was both ruthless and amounted to a planned campaign of genocide. Their tactic was simple. A group of villages would be identified. The air force would go in first and bomb the villages. The Janjaweed would then follow raping, killing and generally creating as much carnage as possible. Those who escaped would become refugees and to make sure they couldn't return, everything left in the village; houses,crops and livestock would be destroyed. The tactic began in central Darfur but was soon rolled out across the entire region. By the spring of 2004 it is estimated that 10,000 people had been killed and more than a million turned into refugees causing a major humanitarian disaster. The conflict then took on an international dimension when more than 100,000 refugees poured over the border into Chad pursued by Janjaweed. In April 2004 Chad brokered a peace deal leading to the signing of the Humanitarian Ceasefire Agreement between the JEM, the SLM and the government. However, this deal fell apart almost as soon as it was signed, largely because the government was never really committed to it in the first place. This led to a further division in the rebel camp with some determined to stick to the terms of the agreement and others continuing the fight. If anything the Janjaweed campaign was stepped up which led Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, to accuse the government in Sudan of an organised campaign of genocide. Again, under international pressure another peace agreement was signed in May 2006 but fell apart for essentially the same reasons as the first agreement. In fact, it is clear that the only reason the Sudanese Government signs these treaties is as a sop to international opinion. The situation today is that Darfur presents one of the worst humanitarian disasters in the world. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed while more than one million have become refugees. Apart from attacks by the Janjaweed and Government forces many are dying from lack of food, shelter, medication and sanitation. Even if the conflict were to be resolved tomorrow it could take years to repairs the damage to the economy and infrastructure inflicted by the scorched earth policy.

Meanwhile the Khartoum Government is stalling on any future peace initiatives and actively resisting the sending in of international peacekeepers. The various rebel groups are divided about what to do. Some want to continue the fight; others want a negotiated solution in the face of catastrophe. Part of the problem for the Government is that their very survival depends very much on achieving 'victory' in Darfur. The coup in 1989 had little support in the country and relied on a coalition of Islamic, business and army interests for success. Since then the war in the South has been lost with the government forced into signing a humiliating peace treaty with the SPLA, the economy exists at a pitifully low level and further economic development, in particular the oil industry, is being hampered by political instability. Internationally the country has never been more isolated with even many Islamic states keeping it at arms length due to its operations in Darfur. The Government has tried to play the nationalist card claiming that they are victims of an international campaign to subvert the country and that the anti-government forces in Darfur are being manipulated by foreign powers. However, the Sudanese people might be poor and isolated but they are not stupid and blame the government for the present crisis.

Sanctions

Various suggestions have been put forward by the international community to deal with the crisis. These include sanctions against the regime in Khartoum, western intervention and or intervention by the African Union. The problem is that none of these are likely to prove successful. Sanctions, whether political or economic, would be ineffectual. The regime is already isolated internationally and the country in such precarious economic state that few people would notice that sanctions have taken place. In fact, the imposition of western sanctions might be beneficial to the regime. It would allow them to attempt to rally the people in the face of an outside threat and help them put pressure on Islamic and Arab states to give support. Western intervention, in the form of troops, has never been a serious proposal. To put it quite bluntly, the West has no economic or strategic interests in Darfur and therefore no reason to commit troops. Intervention by the African Union is also likely to prove ineffectual. The African Union is too politically divided and the forces that are likely to be committed too meagre to make much of a difference.

There is at present a limited African Union force tellingly made up mostly of Rwandan troops. The key to ending the crisis lies in Khartoum. The Islamic National Front government is clearly struggling and unstable. Its overthrow is an absolute prerequisite for any settlement in Darfur. What is needed is a return to a broad based civilian government committed to ending the conflict. Such a government would end military operations in Darfur, cut off supplies to the Janjaweed and be a genuine force for reconciliation in the region. Is the overthrow of the government likely and imminent? The answer is very likely. The Islamic Front now has little support in the country; much less than when it seized power in 1989. Ranged against it are a powerful de-facto alliance including the main opposition Umma Party, the Communist Party, The SPLA now in complete control of the South and various other regional forces. There is also evidence of deep divisions within the government and dissention in the army. Internationally the regime is completely isolated and with an economy in a perpetual state of crisis. As stated earlier, the coup in 1989 was organised by an alliance of Islamic, army and business forces. There is growing evidence that key elements in the army and big business have run out of patience with the regime and are looking for an alternative. The question is what kind of alternative. For some sections of this ruling group their opposition is based on the failure of the regime to deliver on its original programme and may look to put in power a army led government which will continue with the policies of the regime only more effectively. Others believe that their interests might be better served by supporting the opposition and helping to shape any future government they might form.

For Left and progressive forces in Sudan any future government must be based on a key principal. That the government should be democratic and broad-based representing a coalition of the disparate groups and people that make up Sudan and a government which respects regional autonomy in a secular state. Such a government would forge a new alliance with the regions based on equality and partnership. They see this as the prerequisite for tackling the many problems of this vast country and ultimately of moving the country in the direction of socialism.


[Bill Bonnar lived and worked in Darfur for almost three years up to 1989 and was a member of the Sudanese Communist Party which was then going through one of its brief periods of legality. He left the country following the military coup in 1989 when the Communist Party was banned.]

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=2&ItemID=13682