coluichedubita: Elsewhere Today 458

Aljazeera:
Iraq to 'shut down' PKK operations

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 23, 2007
19:51 MECCA TIME, 16:51 GMT

Iraq has said it will shut down the operations of Kurdish separatists based in the country in a move aimed at heading off a threatened incursion by Turkish troops.

"The PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party] is a terrorist organisation and we have taken a decision to shut down their offices and not allow them to operate on Iraqi soil," Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, said.

"We will also work on limiting their terrorist activities which are threatening Iraq and Turkey," he said after crisis talks in Baghdad on Tuesday with the Turkish foreign minister Ali Babacan.

But he gave no details on how the rebels could be prevented from launching attacks from their remote mountain bases.

Turkey has deployed an estimated 100,000 troops near the border with Iraq after parliament granted approval to possible incursions into its neighbour's territory to pursue PKK fighters there.

Al-Maliki's comments came as the funerals of 12 soldiers killed by the separatists last week provoked huge protests across Turkey against the PKK.

The soldiers were killed during an ambush on Sunday on a military patrol near the village of Daglica on the Iraqi border, which also left eight soldiers missing.

A pro-Kurdish news agency close to the PKK published what it said were pictures of the eight soldiers they were holding hostage.

"The pictures show that the soldiers are in quite good health," the Firat news agency, based in western Europe, said on its website, next to 11 pictures of the soldiers by themselves and in groups.

There was no confirmation on the identity of the men.

Protests

Tens of thousands of angry Turks took to the streets across the country on Tuesday to protest against PKK violence as 12 soldiers, killed in an attack at the weekend, were laid to rest.

The funerals turned into seas of red and white as crowds of mourners marched waving the national flag.

Slogans were raised against the PKK, whose fighters ambushed a military unit near the Iraqi border on Sunday.

"Hang Apo," demonstrators chanted in the town of Keksin, referring to the nickname of the jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan.

A procession of about 7,000 people, about a fifth of the town's population, marched behind the casket of one of the dead soldiers.

Traffic was at a standstill in centre of the northwest city of Bursa as demonstrators thronged the main boulevard.

Media ban

They carried huge Turkish flags and portraits of soldiers killed by the PKK in its 23-year campaign for Kurdish self-rule in the southeast.

Government and military officials attended the funeral ceremonies, held in 11 provinces across the country.

There were also demonstrations aginst the PKK in other cities.

As newspapers reported clashes between pro and anti-PKK students and other sporadic acts of violence, Abdullah Gul, Turkey's president, appealed for public calm and restraint.

"However great the destruction caused by terrorism, the struggle against terrorism can be waged by legal means and only by the state," he said in a statement.

The government, keen to avoid further tensions, imposed a ban on all media broadcasts concerning the deaths of the 12 soldiers, whose pictures and life stories have featured prominently in the newspapers.

RTUK, the state body that oversees television and radio in Turkey, said the ban was necessary because broadcasting news about the deaths "hurts the psychology of society and public order and creates an image of the security forces as weak".

Until the ban, television channels had led news bulletins with footage of grieving wives, mothers, fathers and children.

Iraqi offer

Earlier in Baghdad, Hoshiyar Zebari, the Iraqi foreign minister, assured his Turkish counterpart "that the Iraqi government will actively help Turkey to overcome this menace".

"We agreed that the position we should take is a common one to fight terrorism. We will not allow any party, including the PKK, to poison our bilateral relations," Zebari said speaking at a joint news conference with Babacan in the Iraqi capital.

Zebari did not outline what form Iraqi support for Turkey would take.

"We will co-operate with the Turkish government, to solve the border problems and the terrorism that Turkey is facing through direct dialogue," he said.

Babacan said that "politics, dialogue, diplomacy, culture and economy" were the measures to deal with the current conflict.

"We do not want to sacrifice our cultural and economic relations with Iraq for the sake of a terror organisation," he said, in reference to the PKK.

However in London Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's prime minister, said his country will consider trade sanctions against Iraq.

"We may impose some sanctions with respect to some goods we export to Iraq," Erdogan told an investors' conference.

He had earlier said Turkish forces were prepared for military operations against the PKK.

"Right now we are in a waiting stance but Iraq should know we can use the [parliamentary] mandate for a cross-border operation at any time," Erdogan told a joint news conference with Gordon Brown, Britain's prime minister.

Brown condemned the PKK attacks on Turkish forces and said he had offered the help of Britain's counter-terrorism unit to Ankara.

Kurdish defence

Elsewhere Masrur Barzani, the head of security for the Kurdish regional government, told Al Jazeera the PKK problem cannot be solved by force and said his administration would not tolerate a Turkish incursion.

"We hope that Turkey does not export its own problems into our region," he said.

"But if we, for any reason become the target of a bigger, let's say, operation then we will do everything we can to defend ourselves."

Kurdish fighters based in northern Iraq have denied reports of offering a ceasefire if Turkey abandons plans to launch cross-border raids against them.

A statement on a PKK website had said that the fighters were "ready for a ceasefire if the Turkish army stops attacking our positions, drops plans for an incursion and resorts to peace".

Al Jazeera's Hoda Abdel Hamid, reporting from northern Iraq, said PKK fighters based in the region had not confirmed the ceasefire offer.

"The leadership based here is denying that at this point of time a truce offer has been made," she said on Monday, underlining the confusion.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/5818D317-8DAB-49A3-BBDD-047455333797.htm

AllAfrica:
8,000 Flee to Uganda

New Vision (Kampala) NEWS
22 October 2007

By Raymond Baguma and Agencies
Kampala

ABOUT 8,000 Congolese have entered Uganda to escape the fighting in eastern Democratict Republic of Congo between the national army and forces of renegade general, Laurent Nkunda.

The refugee influx started on Friday, as Congolese from villages close to the Ugandan border entered Bunagana in Kisoro district. Another small group of refugees fled to Busanza, another border point some 15kms north of Bunagana.

The UN refugee agency (UNHCR) fears that more people will be displaced if fighting continues in the Rutshuru area of North Kivu province.

An assessment team of government officials and humanitarian agencies are in Kisoro to verify the number of refugees and prepare the delivery of aid.

The Congolese army deployed three helicopter gunships against Nkunda's forces and Mai Mai militias, prompting thousands of residents to flee their homes in northeast Goma, AFP reported on Sunday.

Civilians also told AFP that they fled Rwandan Hutu rebels of the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), whose members are accused of having participated in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

Two Congolese admitted in a hospital in Bunagana with bullet wounds told UNHCR officials that they were caught in the cross-fire as fighting raged around their homes on Saturday morning.

UNHCR reported that women and children were sheltering on shop verandas in Bunagana, while others remained close to the border hoping to return home when calm returns.

Kisoro district authorities yesterday advised the displaced people to leave the border area for safety, and move to the Nyakabande transit centre set up by UNHCR and other relief agencies.

Yesterday, the UNHCR and WFP started distributing high-energy biscuits and basic household supplies to some 200 refugees at Nyakabande.

In August and September, about 30,000 Congolese fled North Kivu to Kisoro to escape skirmishes between the Congolese army and the local population there.

Copyright © 2007 New Vision. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200710230035.html

AlterNet:
11 Things We Can Learn from the Rest of the World

By , Ode
Posted on October 23, 2007

The world is becoming One. But the game is being played according to rules set by the West. Where colonialism ultimately failed at running the world, Hollywood and the stock market are succeeding. In the process, we are seeing material gain and progress for developing nations - but also substantial loss. And Westerners may lose just as much in this as the rest of the world. The cultural richness and indigenous innovation that is in danger of being wiped out in Africa, Asia and Latin America by globalization could actually make Western societies healthier and happier. Here are 11 lessons the West can learn that would improve Western life and create a better future for all humanity.

1) Democracy (Ghana)

Ubuntu for all!

By Baffour Ankomah

Here's a surprise. What Africa has to offer the West is democracy! History says Ancient Greece invented democracy. But the Greeks took their inspiration from the other side of the Mediterranean in Egypt. "African democracy," which is practiced to this day in villages and towns across the continent - where 70 percent of Africans live - is very different from "Western democracy." It is based on the humanist philosophy called Ubuntu, originating in southern Africa, which teaches, "I am because you are." African democracy is focussed on including everyone, whereas Western democracy, with its basis in majority rule, divides people and nations.

Traditional African democracy doesn't involve organized opposition. Power is arranged like a pyramid. At the top is the king who exercises supreme authority, assisted by his council of elders and sub-chiefs. But the king or chief has no power except that which is given to him by the people. He is usually enthroned for life, but the actual duration of his reign depends on how well or poorly he performs. If he is a good king, he stays. If he is a bad king - who oppresses the people, or acts against their interests and traditions - he is overthrown by the people, using the constitutional means established for the purpose.

African democracy has a lot to teach the world about decision-making. Minor day-to-day decisions are made by the chief or king in consultation with the council of elders. But major decisions affecting the community are made by the people - all the people. The job of the king or chief is really to implement the will of the people.

In the African system, for example, if villagers want to build a school, the chief calls the whole community together under the trees of the village square. The gathering of the villagers acts like a city council or parliament. Wide and passionate discussions are held that day on the subject of the new school. Everybody is free to voice an idea. There is no organized opposition, but opposing views are strongly and freely expressed. The chief or king is the last to speak, but that doesn't mean he has "the last word" as would be the case in Western culture. At the end of the day, a consensus is almost always reached. And - most important - the new initiative enjoys broad support, since even opponents feel heard and respected. This kind of democracy is not a struggle for power, but an organizing structure.

Baffour Ankomah, from Ghana, is the editor of the magazine New African.

2) Ingenuity (India)

Finding solutions for what's impossible

By Vijay Mahajan

In rural India, you may spot a rather unusual vehicle. Halfway between a cart and a tractor, it can carry maybe 12 passengers. It doesn't need a licence plate, but it does have a motor - taken from a surplus water pump - and can travel up to 40 kilometres (25 miles) an hour. That can be a problem, since the cart doesn't have brakes to speak of. When the driver needs to stop, the passengers jump off and drag wooden brake shoes against the wheels.

Jugaad is the name of this motorized problem-solving device, and it costs just 60,000 rupees (about $1,300). A jugaad is an alternative solution, an improvisation, a jury-rigged answer conceived by a creative culture in which scarcity and survival are constant challenges. While India makes headlines in the financial press as an economic force to be reckoned with, the real dynamism of its culture is in creations like the jugaad. It's their talent for improvisation that keeps a billion Indians moving forward into the future. Necessity is the mother of invention, as the saying goes - an important lesson for the West. Indian farmers ride triumphantly on their homemade vehicle. It represents their personal victory over the hard reality they inhabit, in which nothing is certain. In their lack of possessions - so unimaginable for Western souls - lies the secret to fulfillment and happiness.

A jugaad is an adaptation; Indians are constantly adapting to their situation. If a train car is too full, they find ways to move over to make space for new passengers. Flexibility is a condition for survival and future success, evolutionary biologist Charles Darwin concluded from his study of nature.

In the West, with its long-established rights and all-powerful lawyers, this wisdom has been lost. If something doesn't work quite right, a Westerner throws it away and buys a new one. An Indian goes in search of a jugaad - and often comes back smiling.

Vijay Mahajan is the founding director of microcredit institution BASIX in India.

3) Work (Nigeria)

Take the initiative

By Seyi Oyesola

Creating work. That's something the West could learn from the rest of the world. Asia, Africa and Latin America all host thriving cultures of entrepreneurship. People here constantly undertake new initiatives and create new jobs - for themselves and for others.

You seldom see local entrepreneurship anymore in the West. People are more likely to be employed by large corporations and organizations. Of course small business pioneers exist in Europe and the United States, but they are relatively few when you look at the entrepreneurial boom we're seeing in China and India. Social-welfare programs have tended to work against entrepreneurship, especially in Europe. Initiative is smothered if you aren't challenged to take care of yourself.

Wherever you go in Asia, Africa and Latin America, you see people creating work - and providing inspiration.

Seyi Oyesola practises medicine in London and is founding director of Global Medical Systems.

4) Yoga (India)

Bend it like a Brahmin

By Jagdish Parikh

Westerners should practise yoga. It's the best recipe for creating a healthier political system, economy and society.

Yoga? This may surprise you. In fact, you probably already know a lot of people who are doing yoga, right? Yoga studios are springing up everywhere in the urban West. They help people relax and stay in shape. But what on earth does yoga have to do with the functioning of society?

Real yoga is actually much more than the relaxation technique touted in the West. Yoga, an Indian life path that's been around for thousands of years, is about experiencing your self. Yoga points the way toward self-realization, which helps you see past identification with the ego to a consciousness more integrated with that of humanity and nature. Yoga is practised on eight levels. Hatha yoga, the physical yoga that's very popular in the West, is the first stage. Hatha helps relax you and promotes good health. These are nice side benefits, but not the core of yoga.

The other, deeper levels of yoga provide answers to a conflict that no economic model - from communism and socialism to the currently victorious capitalism - has resolved: the conflict between the individual as a human being and the individual as a tool for progress. In vain, people seek happiness and fulfilment in economic systems that are solely geared toward material growth. In the dominant Western model, an individual's private and professional lives are incongruent. Every activity is measured in money. Even the abundant supply of books and courses related to personal growth is mainly focussed on accumulating greater material wealth. No one can find happiness in such a model. We are not here to keep the economy going. Every individual comes to this Earth with his or her unique talents, and the true fulfilment of life is about developing those talents. This is why the economy and society must be reformed to allow people to develop and expand themselves through the work they do.

We can only really be happy if we can lead ourselves - instead of being led by the drive for more and more economic growth. To lead ourselves, we must first get to know ourselves. That is the path of yoga. When we learn that we are connected to our fellow human beings and nature, we become capable of making the transition from the current social model based on competition to a harmonious society based in co-operation. That transformation begins within us. Then, based on it, we can reform the way in which work is organized in society. Work should enable us to develop our talents.

Books about what needs to change and why abound. We know. Lack of knowledge isn't the problem. What we're missing is the courage to convert that knowledge into a behavioural shift. That courage can only be found through inner experience. Which is why yoga is so important.

Jagdish Parikh is managing director of the Lemuir Group of Companies, and the author of "Managing Your Self."

5) Community (Kenya)

The real social security

By Kimanthi Mutua

The greatest value that Africa can teach is its culture of collectiveness. Centuries of individualism and materialism have destroyed most of this essential support structure in the West. Today's Westerners are trying to rediscover it on the Web. Social networking is the hottest new trend - people bonding with one another in virtual reality. In Africa, people connect in the daily reality of their lives. They naturally support each other, which builds an experience of community and compensates for the hardships of their lives.

It is important and interesting to note that in studies by the World Values Survey, most people in Africa do not report feeling less happy than people in developed nations despite being the poorest people on the planet. Africa is a living example of the fact that more money does not bring more happiness. That is a mirror the West should look into. Happiness comes from connections, from hope for the future and from the sense that you belong to something bigger than yourself. And because of the support people feel from their communities, hope is always present in Africa. The strong ties within the community also support healing. Look how fast Rwanda is recovering from a ghastly genocide and compare that with another terrible chapter of history - the Holocaust - that still rips through individual lives and politics in the West. Rwandans are overcoming their disaster faster because they find healing in their communities. That is an inspiring message. The West could rediscover the spirit of community.

Kimanthi Mutua is managing director of the microcredit bank K-Rep in Kenya.

6) Raising Children (Kenya)

Families first

By Nthenya Mule

Raising a family is a full-time job. Without my extended family and close friends, I would not be able to take care of my two sons the way I want to do, given that I'm a single working mother. Not only are friends and family always available to step in and take care of my sons as needed, they also support me with advice about how to guide and educate them best. Without them I would not be able to do what I'm doing.

"Madness is genetic - you get it from your children," goes the saying, but before I ever go to a therapist, I have spoken with at least five people in my immediate circle and the problem that initially seemed insurmountable no longer seems as daunting.

I think solutions for problems and conflicts that are found in my community are more suitable, because there is broad and permanent support for them. I can even accept critique more easily, because such advice comes from relatives and lifelong friends, who have my best interests at heart. I know they mean well and care about me. That social fabric supports our lives and those of our children. It's something the West seems, sadly, to have lost in the quest for individualism above all else. Generations - even the world - would benefit if the West could rediscover its own communities again.

Nthenya Mule is the Kenya manager of the Acumen Fund, a non-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve the problems of poverty.

7) The Village (Tanzania)

Someone looking out for you

By Zuhura Sinare Muro

My marriage was a challenge for our families. I am a Sunni Muslim woman. My father was a leader of the Muslim Council of Tanzania. I fell in love with a man who comes from a staunch born-again Christian family. This was at a time when evangelical Christians were decimating congregations of traditional Christian churches in Tanzania. Knowing the sensitivities of a civil marriage and the family profiles involved, we decided to request our families to allow us do a small wedding ceremony.

When we presented that idea, it caused an uproar. Despite the challenge of the anti-religious wedding, both clans decided to arrange for a big ceremony. The climax was the wedding reception, with 1,200 invited guests, members from both families. Including the pre-wedding festivities, the wedding day and the after-wedding party, more than 2,500 people showed up. This is a typical way to celebrate a marriage in our society. The whole village came because people feel connected and wanted to be part of the event.

These strong community ties support me as a working mother. I can leave my children any moment - even unannounced - in the care of a sister, a grandmother or an aunt. It's easy; it's normal. I don't need daycare, because my children belong to the extended family. I also know that I will be taken care of when I'm ill. When I die, my family will take care of my children. And I know my clan will bury me.

The flip side of that is I'm expected to take care of my relatives as well. I may serve on the board of an international company, but I cannot leave on a business trip abroad when my mother-in-law has to be taken to the hospital. I am supposed to nurse her day and night. I will be shunned by my family or community if I let a stranger bathe and feed her. I'm also expected to look after any orphan the clan feels will develop well under my care.

The village - in the widest possible sense of that word - supports me, and I support the village. We give and we receive. We are connected.

Zuhura Sinare Muro is a social entrepreneur investing in value-based education.

8) Happiness (Bhutan)

Boost your country's GNH today!

By Lyonpo Jigmi Y. Thinley

Governments usually aim to achieve the highest possible economic growth as measured by the gross national product (GNP), which is how the world looks at progress. In Bhutan, however, we believe this is a narrow view that traps people in cages of materialism. All that humanity sacrifices at the altar of materialist progress to appease insatiable wants has not been in the best interests of furthering human civilization.

The king of Bhutan introduced the concept of gross national happiness (GNH), which is based on the idea that true development of society takes place when material and spiritual development occur side by side to complement and reinforce each other. That's why for the past two decades, happiness has been incorporated as a guiding principle in Bhutan's policies.

Over the years, we've made Bhutan greener than most countries and despite the advent of satellite TV and the Internet, the social fabric is still intact. These policies have also made Bhutan more secure than ever before. To us, these are all indications that our policies are beginning to realize the goal of making people happy. And that's what all of us want: to find more ways we can engage in the pursuit of happiness.

Lyonpo Jigmi Y. Thinley is the former home minister of Bhutan, a small kingdom in the Himalayan Mountains.

9) Non-violence (India)

One world, many truths

By Satish Kumar

The most important thing for the West to learn is that there is no one truth. There are many truths. You have a truth. I have a truth. Both could be true. Take a tree. A botanist sees a particular species. The carpenter sees wood for furniture. A religious person sees a sacred tree. A poet is inspired to write a poem and a painter sees a painting. One tree, many views. Many truths - all equally true.

Truth is not important. Anekant - "no one truth" - teaches the Jain religion of India. Without fixed truth, there are no dogmas.

However in the West, and particularly in science and religion, truth is supreme. The West needs believers. Hence the disagreements, the fighting, the wars and the conflicts. The Jains don't need believers. They seek happiness and practise friendship, respect, tolerance and harmony. Nonviolence is supreme; truth is secondary. And seeking the impossible one ultimate truth, with all its divisive effects, is not the primary objective in life.

Believing is temporary. You may change your mind. Today's truth may not be tomorrow's truth. Truth changes. The practise of nonviolence is enduring and universal.

Satish Kumar was trained as a Jain monk in India. He is the editor of Resurgence magazine.

10) Food (India)

The cradle of local food

By Vandana Shiva

Western industrialized agriculture is not as productive as most people think. The extensive use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides requires a lot of water, harms soil fertility and poses a threat to biodiversity. Numerous studies have shown that the yield per acre at organic farms is higher than at conventional farms, but just as profitable and often more so. By going organic, farmers can get higher yields, while taking better care of the land.

The very essence of good agriculture is sustaining the land. That cannot happen with the intensive chemical and mechanistic farming methods that characterize Western agribusiness. Some people in developed nations are beginning to understand this, as witnessed by the growth of organic and local food, even though it's nothing new in the rest of the world. This traditionally efficient way of farming in developing nations needs to be protected from the incursion of Western farming methods - so we can better feed our people, sustain our land and continue to offer inspiration to those in the West who understand the importance of these things.

Vandana Shiva is founder of Navdanya, a movement for Biodiversity Conservation and Farmers' Rights, based in India.

11) Humility (Sri Lanka)

Make a bow, receive a blessing

By Lalith Gunaratne

It was an emotional farewell for 24 boys and girls between the ages of 14 and 17 who had spent five days learning and sharing together. In keeping with South Asian tradition, most of them bowed down and prostrated themselves in gratitude and respect to the elders who had been their tutors. When they bowed to me, I got a sense of their innocence and felt genuine happiness for what we as adults had shared with them in their learning.

The youth were from six schools in the Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra states in India, participating in a British Council-sponsored experiential-learning program on leadership and teamwork through sports, held at a school in the city of Chennai. I was there supporting the lead trainer from Britain in working with these young leaders and six teachers.

The tradition of bowing to elders is one of the most beautiful acts of gratitude I encounter in Asia. Yet I had not always felt comfortable when someone bowed down to me. My urban parents had not brought me up in that tradition. A lot of hugging and kissing took place at my house, but no prostrating and bowing. So I had always felt embarrassed when anyone prostrated themselves in front of me. My Western beliefs led me to think that no one should feel so subjugated as to go down on his knees to anyone else.

I have come to realize that this is my Western notion of individuality coming out, even though I was born and spent my early years in Sri Lanka. My parents, both teachers, were part of a hybrid generation, having been English-educated in colonial Sri Lanka at Christian schools, but experiencing the Buddhist influence of humility and simplicity in their homes. So I did live in two worlds. The only time I bowed to my parents was at my wedding. My partner Samantha had been brought up in the tradition of bowing to her elders. Her German-born mother encouraged it as a part of her father's Sri Lankan tradition. I remember feeling awkward doing it, but then saw the tears in both my parents' eyes as I got up. It became a moment of great emotional significance for me.

Recently I discovered that in bowing, people are not only showing gratitude, but looking to receive a blessing from you in parting. When someone bows to you, the correct response is to touch the person with love and compassion, giving him a blessing for a happy future. It is a return gift of positive energy. Further, in bowing, a person shows you complete trust and abandons his ego as he puts his head down and takes his eyes off you. He is at your mercy. This show of trust strengthens the bond of our common humanity.

So now I see bowing to another in a different light. To bow to someone in gratitude and respect, in request of blessing, needs one to love and respect "self" first. If we can learn to bow to our self, to each other as the human family and to nature - if we can learn to bow with love and trust, and to receive blessings - we will have done much to keep our hope for humanity alive.

Lalith Gunaratne is a renewable-energy consultant in Sri Lanka and a Readers Blogger on odemagazine.com.

Reprinted from the October 2007 issue of Ode Magazine.

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/65847/

Clarín:
"La literatura no tiene ninguna función"

ENTREVISTA EXCLUSIVA A JOSE SARAMAGO

Desde su refugio en la isla de Lanzarote, muy cerca de una serie de homenajes por sus 85 años y los 25 de su "Memorial del convento", el Premio Nobel portugués respondió, parco, incisivo, a las preguntas de "Ñ" sobre la actualidad y el futuro de la literatura. Jurado del Premio Clarín de Novela, dice que la narrativa no debe escuchar al mercado, que preguntarse sobre la utilidad de la ficción es no entender nada y que esa pregunta sin respuesta se repetirá eternamente: tendrá siempre nuevos "preguntadores".

PATRICIA KOLESNICOV
pkolesnicov@clarin.com
20.10.2007 | Clarin.com | Revista Ñ

«Ahora, ahora mismo, ahora, ahora, mientras esto se escribe, mientras esta nota está por empezar a ser leída, allá en una isla volcánica, allá en su escritorio de caballetes, allá con su vista africana a un océano Atlántico intenso como un cielo sin luna, el Premio Nobel de Literatura, el escritor comprometido, el tipo serio que es José Saramago, escribe su próxima novela.

Sabemos su título: Se llamará El viaje del Elefante. Sabemos que sobre esa tabla que tiene por escritorio, ordenadas, prolijitas a un lado de su impresora, ya hay unas 50 páginas. Sabemos que la novela está basada en un hecho real, ocurrido en la época de Maximiliano de Austria, que nació en Viena, fue nombrado emperador de México en 1864 y fue fusilado en 1867. Sabemos también que la novela en la que está inmerso Saramago ahora, ahora mismo, está llena de ironía, de sarcasmo y de compasión. Que es una metáfora, dicen buenas fuentes, sobre los pobres diablos que somos los seres humanos. Sabemos que postulará, el autor del conmovedor Ensayo sobre la ceguera, que el destino que nos damos los humanos es estúpido, cuando podríamos alcanzar algo más que el ridículo. Que dirá que es ridículo o patético que nos pasemos la vida corriendo, trabajando, criando hijos, para acabar pobres, además de viejos y de olvidados. No habla de la vejez, nadie se atreva a hacer interpretaciones al vuelo y creer que porque está a punto de cumplir los 85 -el 16 de noviembre- José Saramago escribe sobre la vejez.

El tema de la novela que viene, desliza nuestra buena fuente, es la carrera hacia la nada que, según el punto de vista del escritor, parece llevar la humanidad. Una novela de ideas. Como lo fue Memorial del convento, la gran obra que está cumpliendo los 25 años y que lo tendrá de festejo en festejo en España y en Portugal, a mediados de noviembre. Festejo que reúne la alegría de los 85 del autor, 300 del Convento de Mafra, 350 de Doménico Scarlatti, el músico que es personaje de la novela. A lo grande: habrá un espectáculo que ya se hizo en Finlandia, con música de Scarlatti en la voz de una soprano, algunos pasos de ballet y palabras del Memorial... que dialogarán con un clavicordio. Y luego hablará Saramago. En España la producción tendrá como actor a Juan Echanove. En Portugal, a Jorge Vaz Carvalho. Los demás, finlandeses. Y con eso empezará su trabajo en Lisboa la flamante Fundación José Saramago. ¿Es todo? Para nada: el 17 de noviembre el escritor estará en Mafra, Portugal, para las celebraciones del convento. Y así: una mirada a su agenda de compromisos puede producir taquicardia.

No es fácil darse cuenta cómo lleva ese ritmo el Premio Nobel y además de escribir novelas tiene tiempo para enterarse y ocuparse de lo que considera injusto en el mundo, de asistir a Ferias del Libro, de volver a casarse con su mujer, Pilar del Río -lo hicieron en junio en Castril, el pueblo granadino donde ella nació-, de colaborar con la cineasta chilena Carmen Castillo para el documental Calle Santa Fe, sobre la resistencia en su país. De ir a Guadalajara, México, a leer partes de su novela Las intermitencias de la muerte -lo hizo en diciembre pasado- sobre un escenario, junto a un deslumbrado Gael García Bernal, en un duelo de galanes en el que no estuvo claro quién ganó.

Desde esa ventana al mar, desde Lanzarote, la isla donde vive, que es políticamente España y geográficamente Africa, a pocos días de subir al avión que lo traerá a Buenos Aires como miembro del jurado del Premio Clarín, Saramago responde las preguntas de Ñ sobre qué lo lleva a escribir, sobre la lectura hoy y sobre la literatura que vendrá. No es fácil entrevistarlo, quien lo haga debe saber que es probable quede ligeramente en ridículo. Porque como siempre, Saramago es sencillo, contundente y conmovedor.

«p-Después del premio Nobel, de tanto reconocimiento... ¿Qué lo mueve a seguir escribiendo? ¿Qué lo hace sentarse frente a la computadora?

«r-El hecho de haber dejado una página por terminar.

«p-¿Sigue buscando algo en la literatura? ¿Qué busca?

«r-Como cualquier otro lector, o escritor, me busco a mí mismo. Busco encontrarme en páginas, en ideas, en reflexiones, reconocer que somos algo más que esto que se presenta como "realidad", ése sigue siendo el mayor deslumbramiento.

¿Sí? ¿Seguimos los humanos encontrándonos en páginas, que no sean páginas web? Saramago hace rato que escribe sus textos en computadora y está lejos el día en que Pilar rescató de la papelera (la real, no la de Windows) la primera página de la última novela que su marido escribió a máquina y corrigió a mano, "Historia del cerco de Lisboa". La sacó del tacho, la alisó (era un bollito como los de las películas), le pidió una dedicatoria. Dice: "'A Pilar, esta página y mi vida'. José. 29 de diciembre del 87". La página fue enmarcada y colgada de la pared. Buen recuerdo, testimonio asegurado y a otra cosa, la escritura se volvió digital. En resumen: El Nobel no está paranoico con el papel que jugará la tecnología en la cultura.

«p-¿La literatura pierde terreno frente a la informática?

«r-La literatura no puede ocupar el terreno de la informática y viceversa. Son formas distintas de entender el mundo. La informática puede ser una contribución, no a la literatura, sino a la lectura

«p-Entonces, ¿se lee de una nueva manera?

«r-En cualquier caso, la literatura siempre ha sido una actividad minoritaria. Me parece que ahora se lee y se escribe más. Quizá por la informática.

«p-Si recordamos aquello de que el medio es el mensaje.. ¿cómo afecta este nuevo medio los contenidos de la literatura, es decir, el sentido?

«r-Es absurdo pensar que lo que un escritor tenga para decir dependa del instrumento que utilice.

Así contesta Saramago -ya avisamos que el entrevistador puede quedar en ridículo- como quien sabe apropiarse de los medios que tiene a mano para esparcir las ideas que tiene claras. Eso: alguna vez el dijo a esta cronista que de chico pensaba en ser "conductor de trenes, maquinista, el hombre que va conduciendo el tren". Y que cuando le preguntaban por qué, decía que era "por el tren, la velocidad, la noche, uhh, uhh". ¿Qué tiene que ver con su presente? Que se pensaba como un conductor. La interpretación, aclaremos, es de él: "Creo que no lo estoy inventando ahora, creo que haber sentido esa responsabilidad", decía entonces. ¿Condicionará la informática esa empresa? No parece. Tampoco lo hará el dominio de los medios audiovisuales. Quien tenga algo que decir encontrará su rumbo. El es terminante:

«p-¿Lo audiovisual le arrebató el relato a la literatura? ¿La novela perdió la hegemonía sobre las historias?

«r-No, no y no.

«p-Es decir que usted no piensa que vamos hacia el fin de la novela...

«r-Se ha pronosticado muchas veces ese final, y la novela sigue vivita y coleando. Un premio literario para novela suscita el aparecimiento inmediato de 200 o 300 candidatos. ¿Dónde estaban esos libros? ¿Han sido escritos corriendo para cumplir el plazo? ¿O son el resultado de meses y meses de trabajo responsable, respetuoso del idioma?; autores que llevan un mundo dentro y lo quieren confrontar con la realidad que los rodea y limita.

«p-Un mundo dentro y un mundo fuera. ¿Usted es un "escritor comprometido"? ¿Con qué?

«r-Estoy comprometido, o sea, vivo, en un mundo que es un desastre. Como escritor y como persona, mi empeño es no separar al escritor de la persona que soy. Me esfuerzo, en la medida de mis posibilidades, en tratar de entender y explicar el mundo.

«p-Como escritor, su medio de intervención es la literatura. ¿Podemos volver a pensar si sirve para algo? ¿Si la literatura pueda mejorar (o empeorar) la vida, el mundo?

«r-Llevamos siglos preguntándonos los unos a los otros para qué sirve la literatura y el hecho de que no exista respuesta no desanimará a los futuros preguntadores. No hay respuesta posible. O las hay infinitas: la literatura sirve para entrar en una librería y sentarse en casa, por ejemplo. O para ayudar a pensar. O para nada. ¿Por qué ese sentido utilitario de las cosas? Si hay que buscar el sentido de la música, de la filosofía, de una rosa, es que no estamos entendiendo nada. Un tenedor tiene una función. La literatura no tiene una función. Aunque pueda consolar a una persona. Aunque te pueda hacer reír. Para empeorar la literatura basta con que se deje de respetar el idioma. Por ahí se empieza y por ahí se acaba.

«p-¿Que se deje de respetar el idioma? ¿Y no que haga depender la literatura del mercado?«r

-Pobre mercado, que le salen moretones por todos lados. Si el libro es una mercancía, hay que venderlo. ¿Dónde lo haremos? ¿En la Luna?

«p-Claro. Pero ¿no se invierten los términos y se escribe lo que se vende en lugar de vender lo que se escribe?

«r-Hay que tener cuidado con las ideas hechas. Por ejemplo: que el mercado condiciona al autor. No es cierto. Puede el mercado manifestar una preferencia por ciertos tipos de libros, de "modas", pero eso no obliga a ningún autor a seguir ese camino. Estamos creando una gran confusión: imaginar que los autores son iguales entre sí. Nos ocupamos de tópicos remanidos y no estudiamos la realidad. Y olvidamos demasiadas veces que las preguntas no son inocentes. Me molesta hablar de literatura y mercado. La literatura es la creación y no importa qué montaje se haga en torno a ella. Hay negocios, hay literatura. Y personas que leen para entender y personas que leen porque siguen campañas. Y personas que no leen. Lo importante, me parece, es no dejarnos llevar por estas cuestiones que desde luego a mí, como escritor, me son ajenas.

Así, así como se lo lee, así se lo escucha a José Saramago. Así: hay que tener cuidado con lo que se le pregunta porque está atento, porque está escuchando, porque integra la especie -¿en extinción?- de aquéllos a los que nada de lo humano les es ajeno. En su boca, y en sus oídos, las palabras pesan, no habrá que hablarle jamás con ligereza. No le interesa el mercado, háblenle de literatura, háblenle de política, háblenle del amor y del dolor, pero no del mercado; él es escritor, mercader no.

«p-Entonces, ¿quiénes siguen para usted el camino posible y deseable para la literatura contemporánea?

«r-Creo que ningún escritor en su sano juicio osaría contestar a esa pregunta. Yo, hasta ahora, no he perdido el mío todavía. Y creo que cada uno hablará por sí mismo.

Vueltas de la vida, el chico salido de aquel pueblito portugués, el nieto de un campesino analfabeto, es hoy un nombre de referencia entre sus contemporáneos. Sigue recibiendo homenajes: el 23 de noviembre se inaugura una exposición sobre él en la Fundación César Manrique, un lugar espléndido construido dentro de burbujas de lava en Lanzarote. En tres salas recorrerán su vida, su escritura, sus intervenciones cívicas. Reunirán otras obras generadas a partir de las de Saramago en cine, en televisión, en ópera, en pintura. Habrá cincuenta pantallas que pondrán en movimiento lo que está quieto en las vitrinas.

A minutos de ahí estará el hombre, atento a unos lagartos pequeñitos que se escurren por el suelo de su jardín de lava y cactus. A su ventana, bajo la cual corren sus sobrinos. A un amor que late a la vista de todos, constante como un minutero. Al cielo gigante y el mar omnipresente de la isla. A su mundo interior, claro. Estará ahí, sentado al teclado aunque parezca que lo tiene todo. Porque, claro, tiene una página sin terminar.

Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2007/10/20/u-00611.htm

Guardian: September 11 wasn't that bad,
says Nobel winner Lessing

Haroon Siddique and agencies
Tuesday October 23, 2007

The Nobel prize-winning author Doris Lessing has described the September 11 attacks as "neither as extraordinary nor as terrible" as people thought.

The 88-year-old, who won the Nobel for literature this month, said some in the US would think she was "crazy", but that the attacks needed to be looked at in the context of the IRA's campaign of terror in the UK.

"September 11 was terrible, but if one goes back over the history of the IRA, what happened to the Americans wasn't that terrible," Lessing told the Spanish newspaper El Pais.

"Some Americans will think I'm crazy. Many people died, two prominent buildings fell, but it was neither as terrible nor as extraordinary as they think.

"They're a very naive people, or they pretend to be. Do you know what people forget? That the IRA attacked with bombs against our government.

"It killed several people while a Conservative congress was being held and in which the prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, was [attending]. People forget."

Almost 3,000 people were killed in the September 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

More than 3,700 died and tens of thousands were injured in more than 30 years of violence in Northern Ireland.

Lessing, the author of the Golden Notebook, also revealed her contempt for the former prime minister Tony Blair and the US president, George Bush.

"I always hated Tony Blair, from the beginning," she said. "Many of us hated Tony Blair - I think he has been a disaster for Britain and we have suffered him for many years.

"I said it when he was elected: 'This man is a little showman who is going to cause us problems,' and he did.

"As for Bush, he's a world calamity. Everyone is tired of this man. Either he is stupid or he is very clever, although you have to remember he is a member of a social class which has profited from wars."

The writer, who was born to British parents in what is now Iran, was also quoted as saying: "I hate Iran. I hate the Iranian government. It's a cruel and evil government.

"Look what happened to its president in New York, they called him evil and cruel in Columbia University. Marvellous! They should have said more to him. Nobody criticises him, because of oil."

When she was handed her Nobel prize, Lessing was praised by the judges for her "scepticism, fire and visionary power".

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

http://books.guardian.co.uk/nobelprize/story/0,,2197557,00.html

il manifesto:
Diritti kaputt

Rossana Rossanda
20 ottobre

Nel «nuovo che avanza» e cui bisognerebbe abituarsi viene messa la precarietà del lavoro. I media portano abbondante acqua a questo mulino. Ah ah, soltanto gli inetti pretendono la sicurezza dell'impiego o, peggio, del posto: inetti, pigri e spesso fannulloni. Il rischio invece è il sale della vita come ben sa l'imprenditore. La Montezemolo francese, boss del Medef, ha avuto la seguente uscita: «La vita, la salute, l'amore sono a rischio, il lavoro non dovrebbe esserlo?».
La signora Parisot ha molti titoli nel suo portafoglio, per cui rischiarne una parte le è agevole. Ma come accusare coloro che non sono proprietari di nulla, salvo talvolta i tre locali in cui abitano, di avere timore dell'avventura, cioè di restare disoccupati? Non si è mai sentito questo ragionamento da un «atipico», soltanto (e di rado) da chi ha un posto fisso.
E quel posto fisso se lo tiene con cura, o una professionalità così forte - architetto, medico, George Clooney -, da poterla spendere sul mercato con tranquillità e ad alto compenso. Il precario normale - e sono da quattro e mezzo a cinque milioni e mezzo - conosce lunghi periodi di inattività, che può reggere soltanto con il paracadute dei genitori, generazione a posto fisso. Non può amare il rischio chi ha bisogno di un lavoro e non può trovarlo, o non decentemente compensato, neanche se ha un titolo di elevata qualità; sono ormai una folla i precari nella ricerca, nell'università, negli ospedali, privati e pubblici. E non amano affatto il rischio le banche e i proprietari di immobili cui ci si deve rivolgere per avere un mutuo o un alloggio, e non ti concedono né l'uno né l'altro se non mostri una solida busta paga o solide proprietà. Nessuno ha coraggio di negarlo. L'astuzia sta nel non parlarne. O nel cambiare le carte in tavola, come quando si dice: «Ma come, vuoi avere lo stesso posto tutta la vita? Che noia. Non ti piacerebbe cambiare, giocare sulla flessibilità?». Sicuro che piacerebbe, lo scriveva anche Fourier (se uno ha voglia di leggerlo troverà nella Nuova società industriale divertenti osservazioni sull'umana inclinazione a produrre di più e con più gusto sfarfallando serenamente da un'attività all'altra). Solo che per cambiare con allegria devi essere sicuro di trovare un altro posto. E questo avviene soltanto in periodi di pieno impiego. Fa impressione dirlo, ma un'elevata mobilità sociale, il passaggio da un lavoro all'altro, c'è stata negli Stati uniti e nell'Unione sovietica, dove sino agli anni '80 trovavi ai cancelli delle fabbriche o negli atrii delle aziende elenchi di richiesta di manodopera. E' precarietà quando si subisce, flessibilità quando si sceglie. Ma il lavoratore dipendente, e la maggior parte dei piccoli autonomi, può scegliere? I salariati devono in genere «prendere o lasciare». E infatti si sono battuti oltre cento anni per strappare qualche forma di contratto che non li lasciasse esposti a salari invivibili o a zero salari da una settimana all'altra. Possiamo fare un poco, pochissimo, di storia? E' solo dopo la Rivoluzione Francese che si sancisce - udite udite - il «diritto a lavorare», non il «diritto ad avere un lavoro», cioè il diritto di accesso a un reddito in cambio di prestazione d'opera. La prima legislazione sul lavoro dichiara che «ogni uomo è libero di lavorare dove desidera, e ogni datore di lavoro di assumere chi desidera, concludendo un contratto il cui contenuto è liberamente determinato dai due interessati» (1791). Si intende allora che nessuno appartiene più a nessuno, feudi e corporazioni sono aboliti, ed è un passo avanti. Ma si dà per ovvio che c'è una simmetria fra le parti, padrone e lavoratore che si presenta alla sua porta in cerca di impiego - tesi che è alla base del liberismo e viene spacciata anche oggi. Subito dopo la legge di cui sopra, sono dichiarati reato l'organizzarsi dei lavoratori e lo sciopero. Hanno da essere uno a uno, l'uno con il suo capitale e l'altro con le sue sole braccia o la sua mente, come se fossero uguali le loro possibilità di scelta. Questo sistema è durato fino ai primi del Novecento. Ancora nel 1906, giusto un secolo e un anno fa, il regolamento delle fabbriche Renault prescriveva: «Gli operai potranno lasciare la Casa con un'ora di preavviso al caporeparto. Reciprocamente la Casa si riserva il diritto di licenziare senza indennità gli operai facendoli avvertire dal caporeparto un'ora prima». Sono l'organizzazione solidale della manodopera salariata e lo sciopero, pericoloso per essa ma anche per il padrone, che permettono agli operai di stabilire un rapporto di forza che li protegge dal licenziamento - se uno di loro è mandato via, i suoi compagni di lavoro staccheranno, e una volta su due sarà riassunto. Per questo si parla di «lotte» del lavoro, lotte sono state. Ma «staccare» è un rischio e tale resta. In Italia la Costituzione legalizza lo sciopero ma soltanto la legge Giugni toglierà al padrone il diritto di licenziare «senza giusta causa», e sarà votata solo negli anni Sessanta del Novecento - è il famoso articolo 18. Che il padronato tenta di metter in causa, alzando il numero dei dipendenti delle aziende in cui può non venire applicato. Dalla fine degli anni Settanta comincerà a giocare sulla tenuta dei lavoratori e dei sindacati, la paura di perdere il posto di lavoro per scomparsa dell'azienda - considerata giusta causa se mai ce n'è una. Infatti le «ristrutturazioni» che accompagnano i cambi di proprietà, le fusioni, la maggior parte della «esternalizzazioni» comportano una riduzione del personale. I teorici del libero mercato sostengono che le imprese reggono gareggiando nel produrre a prezzi bassi, e così rendendo felice il consumatore. Per un certo tempo avevano predicato che con le nuove tecnologie il costo del lavoro era sempre meno importante nel bilancio. Da un paio di decenni hanno precisato che grazie alle tecnologie il lavoro dell'operaio è diventato assai più rapido, e quindi è d'obbligo ridurre il personale, il cui costo è tornato ad essere importante, anzi importantissimo, perché è la voce di bilancio più comprimibile (oltre al profitto). Il ragionamento si può rovesciare: la tecnologia permetterebbe di ridurre per ciascuno il tempo di lavoro a parità di salario, perché la produttività è diventata assai più grande. Se prima delle tecnologie di questi ultimi decenni la differenza di produttività era da uno a uno e mezzo o due, con essa è diventata da uno a uno a dieci o cento. Il salario sarebbe dovuto crescere in proporzione, o ridursi in proporzione il tempo di lavoro a salario uguale. L'esatto opposto di quel che avviene. La produttività sale e il monte salari scende. A questo scopo servono precipuamente gli «atipici» che riportano il diritto del lavoro a oltre un secolo fa. Alla faccia della modernizzazione. I diritti del lavoro sono stati sempre in qualche misura elusi o circuiti. Li eludono la miseria e la disoccupazione, che costringono al lavoro nero, i lavori domestici o «alla persona», che si tende a retribuire poco e a non pagarne i contributi sociali, li elude legalmente il precariato. Il padronato italico ha sempre cercato di sfuggire al contratto, prima di tutto con il lavoro nero, che specie nel mezzogiorno accompagna la piccola e media azienda: lo sanno gli ispettori dell'Inps, al cui arrivo con la guardia di finanza gran parte della manodopera corre a nascondersi. Specie con la manodopera immigrata, e non solo nel sud ma nell'operoso nord, dove intere villette nascondono opifici e il caporalato, che pareva un residuo del XIX secolo ed è tornato a prosperare. Funziona all'interno stesso della manodopera immigrata, specie asiatica, dove uno funge da padrone, o lo diventa, e sottopone gli altri a salari e orari senza regole. Lo schiavismo che Hannah Arendt denunciava negli Stati uniti (il massimo della libertà politica con il massimo della schiavitù sociale) è ripreso in occidente su larga scala. La legge non ha inventato il precariato, gli ha messo regole legittimandolo. Questo è il problema. Ha accettato che la forza di lavoro venisse considerata come la più obsoleta o banale delle macchine. Questa è una trasformazione di mentalità che rappresenta un colossale passo indietro nei rapporti sociali. Non ha alcuna giustificazione funzionale, è soltanto risparmio sulla forza di lavoro. Che attua anche lo stato usando dei precari negli ospedali e nelle università, mentre a fil di logica dei diritti umani, se fossero una cosa seria, il precario dovrebbe essere pagato almeno il doppio di chi ha un contratto a tempo indeterminato. L'utilizzo del capitale cognitivo si somma a quello sul tempo di lavoro, cercando di «mettere fuori calcolo» l'uno e l'altro, e tende a diventare la forma principale delle nuove assunzioni. Quanto all'articolo del Protocollo sul welfare, secondo il quale per essere assunti occorrono 36 mesi di precariato è una vera presa in giro. Non diversa da quella che nel contratto di primo impiego, il famoso Cpe, il governo di destra voleva imporre in Francia e la mobilitazione degli studenti ha mandato in tilt. Questo è il processo reale che passa come «fine della classe operaia» o «declino operaio». Quel che è declinata in occidente è la grande fabbrica, forma «sociologica» della produzione che viene decentrata e frantumata grazie alle tecnologie dell'automazione e poi dell'informatica. Ma fuori della fabbrica il salariato si è moltiplicato, industria culturale, dell'informazione e dello spettacolo inclusa. E ha stravinto l'idea che l'accumulazione del capitale, e per di più privato, è inevitabile, è condizione dell'economia, ne è «legge oggettiva». Stravince anche perché il sindacato arretra o si pone sulla semplice difensiva (della quale il sovversivismo, che pretende di opporsi alla timidezza del sindacato, è una variante). Ma è obbligatorio difendere una trincea indebolita o arrendersi? Non mi pare. Il sindacato svedese non si è opposto all'innovazione tecnologica, ma l'ha contrattata sul serio. Il mutamento che si è verificato con la globalizzazione non è dovuto alla tecnologia, che potrebbe liberare tutti, ma ai rapporti di forza fra le parti sociali su scala mondiale. Mentre il capitale viaggia, come si usa dire, in tempo reale, la forza di lavoro materiale o intellettuale, corpi e vite, resta necessariamente ferma e niente affatto necessariamente scollegata fra un paese e l'altro: per cui la stessa mansione è pagata fino a dieci, cento volte di meno da un paese, specie asiatico, rispetto all' Europa occidentale. E' questo che rende il prodotto cinese così a buon mercato rispetto a quello europeo, ma è indecoroso che financo i sindacati europei chiedano misure protezioniste invece che tentar di collegare i lavoratori. Già lo spazio europeo sarebbe una regione contrattuale forte. Come non è decente che in nome della competitività i governi permettano la delocalizzazione delle imprese verso i mercati del lavoro a basso costo. Una delle ipocrisie più flagranti della Costituzione europea è che essa garantiva la libertà delle imprese di andarsene, mentre il diritto della persona di accedere concretamente a un reddito decente era del tutto ignorato. Il padronato, più o meno spersonalizzato nelle grandi multinazionali in concorrenza, non è tenuto a proteggere i lavoratori, protegge azionisti e il suo top management. E' il sindacato che è tenuto a proteggere i lavoratori, vi si affiliano per questo. Ma stenta a pensarsi fuori dello stato nazionale in cui è nato ma i cui confini sono stati sfondati dal movimento mondiale dei capitali, al quale i governi, di destra o di centrosinistra che siano, si adeguano. A questo si aggiunge la pochezza dell'imprenditore italiano il cui motto sembra «prendi i soldi e scappa» - investimenti a lungo tempo, necessari per la ricerca e l'innovazione di prodotto, non ne fa. Né lo induce a farlo la filosofia della Ue, che invita il nostro governo a non occuparsi di economia e spendere sempre meno in quel salario indiretto che sono la previdenza e la sicurezza sociale, trittico che le lotte del lavoro si erano conquistate. Il congegno del precariato ne fa parte, per il governo di centrosinistra è una bella responsabilità.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/20-Ottobre-2007/art2.html

il manifesto:
Attrazioni criminali nella fabbrica del consenso

Prove tecniche di «legge e ordine» in «tv-movie» dove ex-marines sono a caccia di killer in un paese sepolto sotto una montagna di cadaveri

Da Cogne a Erba, da Erika e Omar a Garlasco, la cronaca nera è diventata una pervasiva macchina del controllo sociale. Sono così cancellati i delitti compiuti dall'ecomafia e contro i beni comuni operati da quella grande industria dell'illegalità che vede nello stesso consiglio di amministrazione la criminalità organizzata e la grande finanza

Massimo Carlotto
20 Ottobre 2007

Come racconta il crimine la televisione italiana? E soprattutto quale crimine racconta? Vi è mai capitato di vedere un servizio sulla mafia russa o su una delle tante organizzazioni transnazionali che ormai hanno pianta stabile in questo paese? E sulla commistione tra investimenti economici italiani in certi stati dell'est e mafie locali? I casi sono troppo numerosi per essere elencati tutti ma, a parte qualche coraggioso esempio, come Blunotte di Carlo Lucarelli, Chi l'ha visto dell'era Sciarelli e Report di Milena Gabanelli, la televisione si guarda bene dal fare giornalismo d'inchiesta. Anzi, non ne ha la minima intenzione e il motivo è semplice. Gli affari criminali di un certo livello, quelli dove si fanno i soldi veri, non possono non prevedere il coinvolgimento di personaggi che provengono dal mondo della finanza, dell'imprenditoria e della politica. Il bacino del Mediterraneo è l'area dove viene riciclata buona parte del denaro sporco delle mafie internazionali, pensate che sia possibile senza rapporti di complicità con settori importanti delle categorie appena citate? E l'ecomafia?
L'Italia è sempre di più un paese corrotto e criminogeno, non c'è un solo settore della nostra società che non sia investito dal malaffare. Eppure tutto questo per la televisione non esiste pur occupandosi ampiamente di crimine. Dalla mattina alla sera non c'è programma dove conduttori e una pletora di «esperti» non si dilunghino sul caso del momento. Da tempo esiste un intreccio, anche produttivo, tra programmi di intrattenimento con momenti di informazione e quelli di «approfondimento» che ha come scopo occuparsi di delitti e crimini, seguendo due precisi filoni. Da un lato l'omicidio del momento e dall'altro l'allarme sociale più attuale.
Gogna mediatica
In Italia ci si ammazza spesso e volentieri. Soprattutto in famiglia. La causa è determinata dalla fine dello stato sociale che alimenta insicurezze profonde nelle persone sempre più preoccupate del presente e del futuro. Ansie che si riversano nella famiglia, che è diventata il fulcro di queste e altre contraddizioni pericolose e spesso insanabili. Ma ovviamente non è questa la lettura data al fenomeno e tantomeno si tenta di comprenderlo mettendo in discussione il tipo di società in cui viviamo ma, al contrario, vengono accuratamente scelti casi che per le caratteristiche di mistero e/o orrore e morbosità possono «affascinare» l'opinione pubblica. Dalla misteriosa morte della contessa Agusta in poi è stato messo in piedi un circo mediatico pronto a girare l'Italia alla ricerca di questo tipo di delitti, totalmente privi di «senso» per la comprensione dei fenomeni criminali in questo Paese. Erika e Omar, Cogne, la strage di Erba, il più recente delitto di Garlasco sono gli esempi più conosciuti e che tanto appassionano gli italiani. Casi di cui non ci libereremo mai perché anche la notiziola più insignificante è in grado di rimettere in pista il caso. Se fate attenzione vi renderete conto che sono tutti trattati nello stesso modo. Questo modo di fare giornalismo è perennemente uguale a se stesso. Gli esperti, in particolare, ripetono all'infinito sempre i soliti concetti. A ben vedere, le trasmissioni, peraltro seguitissime, sono di una noia mortale. Il segreto del loro successo sta nell'aver riprodotto e adattato al mezzo televisivo «l'uso sociale» del romanzo poliziesco e che lo ha reso il genere letterario più letto al mondo, il quale fin dalle sue origini ha avuto lo scopo di reificare la morte. Un concetto astratto che genera in ognuno di noi ansia, paure e infinite domande, nel giallo diventa un «oggetto» da analizzare. Non è la morte del lettore quella in discussione ma quella di un estraneo. La morte non è più tragedia ma l'oggetto di un'inchiesta. In questo senso la televisione ha fatto un salto di qualità perché lo spettatore nel seguire le infinite ore di trasmissione sul delitto di Garlasco riesce a sopprimere temporaneamente «tutte» le proprie ansie sostituendole con quelle determinate dal caso. La gente non ha mai letto Sherlock Holmes per coltivarsi, per capire la natura della società o quella della condizione umana in generale, ma semplicemente per distendersi. Ecco, anche lo spettatore si distende con quelle piccole tragedie ingigantite ad arte dalla spettacolarizzazione.
Magistratura delegittimata
Ma mentre il rapporto tra lettore e libro è individuale e intimo, quello tra spettatore e mezzo televisivo è collettivo. La conseguenza è stata la celebrazione dei processi al di fuori delle aule di giustizia. Al bar, in ufficio, sotto l'ombrellone, tra sconosciuti in treno, la moda nazionale è discutere del caso del momento con la stessa competenza da allenatore che gli italiani hanno sempre avuto nel parlare di calcio. E in un paese che, dal tempo della strage di Piazza Fontana, ha perduto il senso della verità e nessuno crede più alle versioni «ufficiali», questo agire collettivo ha determinato un lento processo di delegittimazione della magistratura e dei suoi giudizi. Perché una corte può decidere quello che vuole ma la parte dell'opinione pubblica orientata diversamente non sarà mai convinta della giustezza del verdetto.
Ma nel caso di Garlasco, il grande circo mediatico ha alzato il tiro. Per la prima volta, in modo massiccio, ha chiesto alla gente della strada un giudizio sulla colpevolezza di Alberto Stasi e questa insensatezza ha creato un clima da tribunale popolare a cui nemmeno gli esperti hanno saputo sottrarsi. Ore di trasmissione per analizzare se la presunta «freddezza» del giovane indagato era o meno la maschera dietro cui si nascondeva un omicida. Anni di garantismo e civiltà giuridica spazzati via dalla necessità di spolpare l'osso anche quando la notizia segnava il passo. E gli effetti si sono visti nel momento dell'arresto di Stasi, quando la gente, di fronte alle telecamere, ha ringhiato come un fedele rottweiler. E nessuno che si sia precipitato a dire che quel comportamento era incivile.
In stallo il caso di Garlasco, a tenere in piedi la baracca ci hanno pensato i coniugi accusati della strage di Erba, ritrattando la confessione. D'altronde anche imputati e avvocati guardano la televisione e hanno imparato le regole del gioco e se i Ris non hanno trovato tracce degli accusati sul luogo del delitto vuol dire che sono innocenti.
Questo reparto della scientifica è diventato un personaggio fondamentale di questa spettacolarizzazione e il messaggio che si è sedimentato nell'immaginario collettivo è che la scienza applicata alle indagini di polizia è infallibile. Peccato che la realtà sia ben diversa da una puntata di Csi e, nonostante tutti i casi più celebri abbiano puntualmente dato risultanze ambigue sul piano scientifico, si continua a blaterare di tracce ematiche e dna prive di reale significato probatorio. Questa non è solo cialtroneria e ignoranza ma corrisponde alla necessità di inviare al telespettatore un messaggio socialmente rassicurante e cioè che la scienza elimina la possibilità dell'errore giudiziario. E su questo spingono tutti, giudici compresi.
A proposto di giudici il caso di Garlasco ha visto come ospite in una trasmissione televisiva il procuratore capo, segno che nessuno ormai si può permettere di rimanere all'esterno del tendone del circo. Nessuno ha obiettato. Sarebbe troppo facile limitarsi ad affermare che si tratta di un segno dei tempi, è invece evidente che si stanno trasformando anche i rapporti tra magistratura e informazione e questo non fa presagire nulla di buono. Qualche malalingua sostiene che nelle procure tiri una certa aria, da voglia pazza di '92... ma si tratta certamente di illazioni come suggerisce la qualità dei rapporti tra magistratura e mondo politico.
Cercasi repressione
Diverso il ruolo dei programmi di intrattenimento con momenti di informazione che hanno il compito di trattare i cosiddetti fenomeni di allarme sociale, dalla droga ai rom, dagli effetti devastanti dell'indulto alle moschee. Ovviamente di Garlasco come degli altri casi hanno parlato ampiamente ma, per il tipo di struttura, sono più adatti ad affrontare il «sociale» tra un servizio sull'«Isola dei famosi» e uno sull'ultimo amore dell'ultima stellina dell'infinito firmamento televisivo.
Inutile soffermarsi sul modo in cui vengono tratti i vari argomenti ma quello che va sottolineato è che il messaggio generale punta a un rafforzamento del controllo sociale nella direzione di una società più repressiva. Non c'è un solo programma fuori dal coro. Gli esperti (che ormai sono il tormentone di questo modo di fare informazione e che sono trasversali alle reti) anche in questo caso vengono chiamati a dare autorevolezza ai soliti luoghi comuni. Non si può parlare di qualità dell'informazione ma si deve invece rendersi conto che si tratta di una potente fabbrica del consenso. Chi non capisce perché parte della sinistra sia oggi così meno sensibile ai temi dei diritti, delle libertà individuali e della solidarietà sociale farebbe bene a farsi una scorpacciata di questi programmi. Senza scordare quelli delle emittenti locali. Magari quelle del Nordest, tanto per fare un esempio.

http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/20-Ottobre-2007/art47.html

Internazionale:
Cinismo atomico

Ci vuole un disarmo nucleare mondiale: in gioco c'è l'esistenza del genere umano

Noam Chomsky
Internazionale 715, 18 ottobre 2007

I paesi che hanno armi nucleari sono criminali. L'articolo 6 del Trattato di non proliferazione nucleare impone agli stati di negoziare per eliminare definitivamente le bombe atomiche. Nessuno dei paesi in possesso di armi nucleari l'ha mai fatto. In prima fila fra quelli che non rispettano quest'obbligo ci sono gli Stati Uniti e, in particolare, l'amministrazione Bush.

Il 27 luglio Washington ha stipulato con l'India un accordo che contraddice apertamente la parte centrale del Trattato di non proliferazione. L'India, come Israele e il Pakistan (ma non l'Iran), non ha firmato il Trattato.

Con l'accordo di luglio – che ha suscitato forti polemiche all'interno del governo indiano, al punto che New Delhi potrebbe essere costretta a tornare sui suoi passi – l'amministrazione Bush non fa che avallare questo comportamento criminale.
L'accordo viola infatti la legislazione statunitense e scavalca il Nuclear suppliers group, il gruppo di 45 paesi che ha stilato una normativa rigorosa per ridurre i rischi di proliferazione.

Daryl Kimball, direttore esecutivo dell'Arms control association, osserva che l'accordo non impedisce all'India di compiere ulteriori esperimenti nucleari e "cosa incredibile, Washington si impegna ad aiutare New Delhi ad assicurarsi forniture di combustibile da altri paesi, anche nel caso che l'India riprenda gli esperimenti". Tutto questo costituisce una violazione diretta degli accordi internazionali in materia di non proliferazione.

È probabile che l'accordo tra Stati Uniti e India spingerà anche altri paesi a violare le regole. Pare che il Pakistan stia costruendo un reattore per la produzione di plutonio da usare nelle armi atomiche. E Israele, la superpotenza nucleare della sua regione, fa pressione sul congresso americano per ottenere privilegi analoghi a quelli dell'India.

Francia, Russia e Australia vogliono concludere accordi con l'India, come ha fatto la Cina con il Pakistan. E non ci si può certo sorprendere, visto che la superpotenza globale ha dato il cattivo esempio.

Dietro l'accordo di luglio ci sono varie motivazioni, militari e commerciali, ma la prima ragione è strategica: isolare l'Iran. Kimball osserva che gli Stati Uniti accordano all'India "condizioni commerciali più favorevoli di quelle riconosciute a paesi che rispettano tutti gli obblighi" imposti dal Trattato.

È evidente il cinismo che c'è dietro questa scelta. Washington ricompensa gli alleati e i clienti che ignorano le disposizioni del Trattato di non proliferazione, ma al tempo stesso minaccia di far guerra all'Iran, che a quanto risulta non l'ha mai violato.

In questi ultimi anni India e Pakistan hanno fatto grandi passi per allentare le tensioni bilaterali. Sono stati incoraggiati i contatti tra i due popoli e i governi hanno avviato colloqui sulle numerose questioni ancora aperte. Sono sviluppi promettenti che rischiano di essere vanificati dall'accordo nucleare tra Stati Uniti e India.

Uno dei mezzi proposti per creare fiducia nella regione era un gasdotto che dall'Iran, attraversando il Pakistan, arrivasse in India.

Il "gasdotto della pace" avrebbe costituito un elemento di coesione della regione e avrebbe aperto nuove possibilità di integrazione. Il gasdotto potrebbe essere una delle vittime dell'intesa sul nucleare: Washington non lo vuole, perché preferisce isolare il nemico iraniano, e offre all'India il nucleare in cambio del gas iraniano perduto.

Nel 2006 il congresso americano ha approvato lo Hyde act, un provvedimento legislativo che impegna il governo "a garantire la piena e attiva partecipazione dell'India agli sforzi intrapresi dagli Stati Uniti per dissuadere, isolare e, se necessario, sanzionare e contenere l'Iran per i suoi tentativi di dotarsi di armi di distruzione di massa". Vale la pena di ricordare che la grande maggioranza degli americani (e degli iraniani) è favorevole a trasformare il Medio Oriente – Iran e Israele compresi – in una regione libera dalle armi atomiche.

E che la risoluzione numero 687 adottata il 3 aprile 1991 dal Consiglio di Sicurezza dell'Onu – cui Washington si richiamava quando cercava una giustificazione per invadere l'Iraq – sostiene "la creazione nel Medio Oriente di una zona libera da armi di distruzione di massa e da tutti i missili usati per lanciarle".

Com'è evidente, non mancano i modi per uscire dalle crisi in corso. L'accordo tra Stati Uniti e India deve essere fermato. La minaccia di guerra nucleare è grave e incombente, e il motivo è anche che i paesi dotati di armi nucleari, Stati Uniti in testa, si rifiutano di rispettare gli obblighi sottoscritti.

Il congresso americano, dando voce a una cittadinanza stufa di giochetti atomici, potrebbe respingere questo accordo. Ma ancora meglio sarebbe affermare la necessità di un disarmo nucleare globale, visto che è in gioco la sopravvivenza stessa del genere umano.

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http://www.internazionale.it/firme/articolo.php?id=17338

Jeune Afrique:
Les retards dans le processus de paix inquiètent l'ONU

CÔTE D'IVOIRE - 22 octobre 2007 - par AFP

Le Conseil de sécurité de l'ONU s'est fait l'écho lundi des préoccupations du secrétaire général, Ban Ki-moon, sur la lenteur du processus de paix en Côte d'Ivoire, tout en saluant certains progrès dans la mise en oeuvre de l'accord politique de Ouagadougou.

Dans une déclaration non contraignante, le Conseil a "exprimé sa préoccupation devant les retards constatés (récemment) par le secrétaire général".

Dans un rapport du 8 octobre sur la Côte d'Ivoire, M. Ban s'inquiétait du "non-respect des délais fixés" ayant entraîné "un ralentissement qui, s'il se poursuit, risque de compromettre la bonne application de l'accord" de paix inter-ivoirien de Ouagadougou.

Il demandait aux dirigeants ivoiriens, le Premier ministre Guillaume Soro et le président Laurent Gbagbo, de "prendre les mesures nécessaires pour donner un nouvel élan à l'application de l'accord de Ouagadougou" signé par eux le 4 mars.

Reprenant ce thème, le Conseil de sécurité "appelle fortement les parties à mettre en oeuvre pleinement et de bonne foi leurs engagements".

Des progrès, souligne-t-il, doivent ainsi être faits en matière d'"identification et d'inscription des électeurs sur les listes électorales", de "désarmement des combattants", de "démantèlement des milices", de "rétablissement de l'autorité de l'Etat dans tout le pays", d'"unification des deux forces armées" et de "respect des droits de l'Homme".

Après plus de quatre ans d'une grave crise politico-militaire, la Côte d'Ivoire a entamé un processus de réconciliation avec la signature de l'accord de Ouagadougou entre M. Gbagbo et son ancien ennemi M. Soro, chef de la rébellion devenu depuis son Premier ministre.

Mais le calendrier d'application de cet accord, qui prévoyait d'achever l'ensemble du processus de paix en dix mois avec l'organisation d'élections présidentielle et législatives au premier trimestre 2008, a depuis accumulé les retards, dus aux blocages politiques et aux multiples problèmes logistiques.

La plupart des observateurs internationaux estime maintenant qu'il ne sera pas possible d'organiser les élections avant fin 2008.

La déclaration du Conseil salue cependant les premières mesures d'application de certains points de l'accord, comme le déploiement de six unités mixtes, qui a permis la suppression de la zone de confiance (séparant le nord du sud) et son remplacement par des postes d'observation de l'Onuci (Opération de l'ONU en Côte d'Ivoire) le long de la ligne verte.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP91727lesreunoltn0#

Mail & Guardian:
Retirement home for life presidents

Binyavanga Wainaina: CONTINENTAL DRIFT
22 Oct 2007

I am in Oslo, where we have been talking about New Images from Africa with a lot of people who know about such things. Mo Ibrahim, the mobile phone billionaire, spoke to us about his foundation, which has launched an index measuring how countries in Africa are governed. Later this year they will unveil a prize to be awarded to democratically elected presidents who step down after democratic elections. A sound idea - much sounder than many critics give it credit for. Leadership, almost anywhere, is extremely difficult to handle, and good leadership needs to be rewarded. No question in my mind. I was in Transkei in the early Nineties, and while there we heard word from Ugandans who had visited home about the phenomenal changes taking place. Until the late Eighties, Uganda was the poster child for failed states, and Idi Amin was the international symbol of national dysfunction. Later, Aids had replaced Amin in this caricature of Naipaulian Africa - Ugga and Booga, death and general horribleness. In only a few years all that was turned around. Yoweri Museveni and the leadership around him cut through problems like sharp knives, and with focus, dialogue and vision managed to do what seemed impossible to do: to get Uganda to work again. Retrospect is a terrible thing: after it got done, it seemed as though it was a possible thing. We forget how much was done. I saw doctors, teachers and professionals simply pack up and leave on the basis of Museveni’s promise. They left good jobs and settled lives to go and build a country out of what seemed like little but hope. Today, Museveni is fat - so am I - but the image works much better for a politician. He has become pompous, erratic and a bully. It is not entirely his fault. Gratitude has been flowing to him in intense waves for a long time. We make our leaders, and sometimes we are quick to blame them for their “bigness”, forgetting that we were dancing around saying “President for Life”. Over the past 20 years a “new generation” of leaders came into power in many African countries. We have seen a cycle that is now possibly measurable. In Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Rwanda (Kagame is surely the prime example of this) we meet these fixers - these leaders of high function and early discipline, who had the necessary skills and vision to take their countries from the impossible to the quite probable. But we have not found a way to guarantee their security beyond that. It is simply a problem of naming a thing and creating viable possibilities for it. Who are these people to us? What do we need to do about them? Now, none of these guys are likely to win a prize for governance - and many of them are not the right people to “encourage democracy”. But they have brought true value in their own way. We need to have a conversation about what to do with them that keeps them useful, but shoves them aside - yes, shoves them - when the “crisis” bit is over. This may be impossible. Certainly, what has happened so far is that after the “job” is mostly done, such men (inevitably men) go into an election and win ecstatically at the very point when they should be going home and leaving things to the democratic and technocratic types. The “third term” becomes the flabby one: they start gurgling nonsense, building cathedrals, dishing forests to investors, using their wives to build business empires, advising scientists about treating HIV/Aids and wanting to pass on their Imperium to their sons. We know this. This is routine for us. Yet we seem to encounter it anew each time we see it and say, “Oh my God, why? What is this person doing?” I keep hearing people who talk about governance and such going on about “institution-building”. Maybe it is time somebody built an institution, a grand and beautiful one, well funded and prestigious, set in a gentle place where these guys know they are appreciated and safe - a place they feel they can rise to. It is clear to me now that they live with fears and dreams that only grow worse if we do what we have been doing so far - praise them completely and then demonise them completely, until they want to use the entire nation as a shield, and they don’t even realise it. And no, for those who are thinking it, I am not talking about Robert Mugabe. Or Thabo Mbeki.

http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?
articleid=322654&area=%2finsight%2finsight__columnists%2f

Página/12:
El infierno de la ESMA

Declaro un testigo en el primer juicio por delitos de lesa humanidad

Martes, 23 de Octubre de 2007

Carlos Alberto García, uno de los sobrevivientes de la Escuela de Mecánica de la Armada (ESMA), afirmó esta mañana que "el 'Gordo Daniel' -tal como se conocía el ex prefecto Héctor Febrés- se ponía 're-loco' cuando torturaba tratando de sacar información".

Al declarar como testigo en el primer juicio oral por los delitos de "lesa humanidad" cometidos en la ESMA, García detalló con voz pausada y entrecortada los padecimientos que sufrió en ese centro clandestino de detención durante la dictadura militar.

Allí dijo haber visto "a una monja" en referencia a las religiosas francesas Leonnie Duquet y Alice Domon que pasaron por ese campo, una de las cuales "estaba preocupada por el chico rubio" en alusión el destituído capitán Alfredo Astiz que participó del secuestro de ambas.

García recordó que fue secuestrado el 21 de octubre de 1977, en inmediaciones de la casa de sus padres, en Carapachay, introducido en un Ford Falcon, golpeado, encapuchado y con un efectivo que "me puso una pata en la cabeza"; y trasladado a la ESMA.

El proceso de despersonalización de los represores no tardó mucho en llegar ya que a poco de su ingreso en "capucha" uno sus captores le aseguró que "acá te llamás 028. No tenés nombre".

En ese centro aseguró haber visto, también "a un chiquito de 16 años que lo mataron", a prisioneras "violadas", a "un cura que le daba la bendición a los oficiales", junto a parturientas y haber presenciado el nacimiento de Juan Cabandié.

Con voz entrecortada, su testimonio debió interrumpirse con un cuarto intermedio de 20 minutos, el testigo dijo varias veces que el cautiverio era "un infierno" en el que los prisioneros permanecían encapuchados, esposados y con grilletes en sus pies.

García también recordó que las guardias se integraban con "estudiantes de la escuela, muchachos de 18 o 20 años" a los que calificó como "muy malos" ya que "golpeaban por cualquier cosa".

La víctima refirió luego cuando, junto a otros prisioneros, fueron obligados a trabajar "como mano de obra esclava" y, en su caso por ser un trabajador gráfico, se lo obligaba a haber falsificaciones de "todo tipos de documentos".

Por su oficio, también era retirado diariamente y trasladado a un taller gráfico del barrio porteño de Constitución donde se editaba el periódico "Convicción" que apuntalaba el proyecto político del ex dictador Emilio Eduardo Massera.

En la jornada de hoy también está previsto que declaren testimonialmente Alfredo Julio Margari, Josefa Arminda Prada de Olivieri y Carlos Gregorio Lordkipanidse, quienes al igual que García son ex prisioneros del centro clandestino de detención que funcionaba en la ESMA.

Tras la audiencia de hoy, el TOF5 volverá a reunirse el jueves ocasión en la que está previsto escuchar el testimonio de Víctor Basterra, Adriana Marcus, Graciela Daleo y la periodista Miriam Lewyn, también ex detenidos luego liberados.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/ultimas/20-93391-2007-10-23.html

The Independent:
Executed at dawn. But who was he?

Robert Fisk
Published: 20 October 2007

All wars, like the ways into a human heart, are mysteries. Even A J P Taylor couldn't explain the origins of the First World War in his book of the same name. My dad couldn't either, and he was in it. But there's a mystery developing about the man whom Second Lieutenant Bill Fisk of the King's Liverpool Regiment was supposed to execute for the murder of a British military policeman in Paris.

Bill knew him as Frank Wills. I've even seen Wills's signature at the end of his last appeal to the military court which sentenced him to death. It did no good. Wills was shot at Le Havre in May of 1919 – though not by my dad who, in the noblest act of his life, refused to command the firing party and probably destroyed his own military career.

Frank Oswald Wills lies in the Sainte Marie cemetery (grave plot: Division 64. VI. F. 5) near the place of his dawn execution. But the man buried there may not be Frank Wills at all. Indeed, Frank Wills may not have existed.

So here I have to thank the tireless work of the Great War Forum and military researchers Bob Doneley and Beppo Sapone and Sandra and Tim and other emailers, most of them apparently Australian (their hard copy sent to me by Gerard Holuigue, since I remain a Luddite non-emailer). Great War sleuths may send me their own conclusions to this tale.

I will begin with my own copy of Wills's last words, vainly written to the court which ordered his execution in an attempt to spare his life: "I am 20 years of age. I joined the Australian Army in 1915 when I was 16 years of age. I went to Egypt and the Dardanelles. I have been in a considerable number of engagements there, & in France. I joined the British Army in April 1918 and came to France in June 1918. I was discharged from the Australian Army on account of fever which affected my head contracted in Egypt. I was persuaded to leave my unit by my friends and got into bad company. I began to drink and gamble heavily. I had no intention whatever of committing the offences for which I am now before the Court. I ask the Court to take into consideration my youth and to give me a chance of leading an upright and straightforward life in the future." Wills's appeal – rejected by the court – can be found in the Public Record Office (or the National Archives, as its Blairite title now reads) at Kew. His signature, in slightly shaky hand, is at the end.

Now to the first paragraph of Holuigue's 18-page file to me: "1709 Private Richard Mellor left Australia (in 1915) as a reinforcement for the 1st Light Horse Regiment. His mother stated that he enlisted under his brother's name and falsified his age. After less than salubrious service in Egypt and France, he deserted in May 1918 and was never apprehended. In 1939 his mother Elizabeth was still writing to the (Australian) Defence Department seeking information as to his fate." Mellor's 213-page service record is in the Australian National Archives.

Now to the jaw-dropper. "In May 1919, 253617 Gunner Frank O Wills, Royal Field Artillery, was awaiting execution for the military policeman he shot while being apprehended for desertion. He asked to speak to an Australian officer prior to his execution. Major Burford Sampson, Officer Commanding Australian Infantry Force troops in Paris, visited Wills in prison. There, Wills told him that he was actually Richard Mellor, an Australian deserter. He had been apprehended in a sweep for deserters and joined the British Army under the name of Wills. He outlined his past to Sampson and asked him to write to his mother and tell her what had happened to him ... on 27 May he was executed by firing squad and buried in the Ste Marie Cemetery, Le Havre."

Although Mellor's file contains Sampson's statement – which exactly matches the service record of Richard Mellor – and British Expeditionary Force orders recording Wills's execution, Mrs Mellor was never officially informed of her son's fate. Nor did the Australian Army ever officially record that Mellor and Wills were the same man. Indeed, even today Mellor is still listed by the Australians as a deserter, whereabouts unknown. In 1933, parts of his official file were marked "Secret". One page, dated 26 August 1920, asks if Mellor has yet been apprehended – well over a year after Wills/Mellor had been executed.

Yet Wills's story to Sampson appears watertight because he was able to give the Australian major details of Mellor with great accuracy – place of birth, mother's details, home address in Wigram Road in the Forest Lodge area of Sydney, dates of enlistment – and was apparently the same age as Mellor, who officially enlisted in 1915 aged 21 although Elizabeth says he was using his brother Richard's name and was only 16 at the time.

If this is true, then Richard Mellor was in fact the younger brother – whose name was Samuel Mellor. But why did Mellor – drawing the obvious conclusions from Wills's statement to Sampson – reinvent himself? Did he join the British Army in 1918 to avoid an Australian prison for desertion? Why didn't he provide his true identity to the court martial? And why wasn't poor Mrs Mellor told that her son had been executed? Sampson mentions his prison conversation with Wills in his diary, later published privately by his son. Sandra, in one of her emails, wonders whether Mellor married an English girl and was forced to enlist in the British Army. Did Wills fess up because he thought this would prevent his execution?

Elizabeth Mellor started her enquiries into her son's fate in 1920, and in 1939 she was still writing to the Australian authorities, stating that she was elderly and wanted to know what happened to her son before she died.

Her poignant, hopeless appeals for information about her son are a testament to official cruelty. "The despair shown by his mother does deserve an answer," one of the Great War Forum's investigators accurately points out today. But the real fate of Frank Wills – if he existed – remains a mystery. I suspect Bill Fisk would rise from the grave (if he had one – he was cremated) to demand an explanation from the authorities for all this tomfoolery. But alas, the authorities – like Richard Mellor and Bill Fisk himself – are dead.

Should the Commonwealth War Graves Commission think about a change of name on grave 64/VI/F/5 at Le Havre? A last intriguing clue: there's a W Mellor listed in the Sydney phone book, living only a short distance from Wigram Road, Forest Lodge. Had he been alive, Bill would have been tempted to ring the doorbell.

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3078962.ece

The Nation:
It's Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week!

by BARBARA EHRENREICH
[posted online on October 22, 2007]

I've never been able to explain Halloween to the kids, with its odd thematic confluence of pumpkins, candy and death. But Halloween is a piece of pumpkin cake compared to Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week, which commences today. In this special week, organized by conservative pundit David Horowitz, we have a veritable witches' brew of Cheney-style anti-jihadism mixed in with old-fashioned, right-wing anti-feminism and a sour dash of anti-Semitism.

A major purpose of this week is to wake up academic women to the threat posed by militant jihadism. According to the Week's website, feminists and particularly the women's studies professors among them, have developed a masochistic fondness for Islamic fundamentalists. Hence, as anti-Islamo-Fascist speakers fan out to the nation's campuses this week, students are urged to stage "sit-ins in Women's Studies Departments and campus Women's Centers to protest their silence about the oppression of women in Islam."

Leaving aside the obvious quibbles about feminist pro-jihadism and the term "Islamo-Fascism," which seems largely designed to give jihadism a nice familiar World War II ring, the klaxons didn't go off for me until I skimmed down the list of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week speakers and found, incredibly enough, Ann Coulter, whom I last caught on TV pining for the repeal of women's suffrage. "If we took away women's right to vote," she said wistfully, "We'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream; it's a personal fantasy of mine."

Coulter is not the only speaker on the list who may have a credibility problem when it comes to opposing oppression of women in Islam or anywhere else. Another participant in the week's events is former Senator Rick Santorum, whose book, It Takes a Family blamed "radical feminism" for pushing women into the workforce and thus destroying the American family. A 2005 column on that book in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, began with: "Women of America, I hope you look good in a burqa. If Senator Rick Santorum,R-PA, has his way, we will all be wearing the burqas discarded by our recently liberated sisters in Afghanistan..." (This was the before the Taliban re-emerged.)

Not quite in the burqa-promoting league, but close, is another official speaker for the week, Christina Hoff Sommers, who has made her name attacking feminism for exaggerating the problem of domestic violence and eliminating opportunities for boys. These are the people who are going to save us from purdah?

Another disagreeable feature of jihadism-anti-Semitism-is also represented on the list of speakers for Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, again by the multi-faceted Coulter. Just last week on CNBC, she referred to America as a "Christian nation." Asked where this left the Jews (not to mention the Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Wiccans and atheists), she said they could be "perfected" by converting to Christianity.

You might imagine that this view of Jews as "imperfect" would bother Horowitz, who is famously alert to any hint of anti-Semitism on the left. But no, he defends Coulter, writing that "If you don't accompany this belief by burning Jews who refuse to become perfected at the stake why would any Jew have a problem?" Sure, David and if that's the threshold for intolerance, Osama bin Laden could probably win an award for humanitarianism.

Maybe none of this should be surprising. When Mel Gibson, who is not known to be a member of the Hollywood left, unleashed a drunken anti-Semitic tirade on his arresting officers, Horowitz also rose to his defense, arguing that ensuing outrage reflected a "hatred"-not of anti-Semites but of Christians.

As for the anti-feminism of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week: This fits in neatly with the thesis of Susan Faludi's brilliant new book, The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America. She shows that, in the wake of an attack by the ultra-misogynist Al Qaeda, Americans perversely engaged in an anti-feminist campaign of their own, calling for an immediate restoration of traditional gender roles. Coulter was part of that backlash, opining in 2002 that "feminists hate guns because guns remind them of men."

Before you put on your costumes to celebrate Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week, let me set the record straight. American feminists do not condone, defend, or ignore jihadist misogyny. In fact, we were warning about it well before Washington turned against the Taliban and have been consistently appalled by the gender dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

But if the facts don't fit in with Islamo-Fascist Awareness, they have to go. For example, in a May '07 column in The Weekly Standard Christina Hoff Sommers listed me as one of the "feckless" feminists who refuse "to pass judgment on non-Western cultures." What? If Sommers had even done ten minutes of research she would have noticed, among other things, a column I wrote in the New York Times in 2004 stating that Islamic fundamentalism aims to push one-half of the Muslim world-the female half-"down to a status only slightly above that of domestic animals."

Yes, feminists tend to hate war and sometimes even guns and this may be why Horowitz and company hate us. They should know, though, that we especially hate a war that seems calculated to inflame Islamic fundamentalism worldwide. If many Muslim women around the world willingly don head scarves today, it's in part because our war in Iraq has, tragically, pushed them to value religious solidarity above their feminist instincts.

Or maybe I'm missing the point of Islamo-Fascist Awareness Week. Maybe it's really an effort to show that our own American anti-feminists (and anti-Semites) are just as nasty as the ones on the other side. If so, good job, guys! No need to continue with the trick-or-treating, you've already made your point.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071105/ehrenreich

ZNet | Corporate Globalization
Through the lens of the shock doctrine

by Justin Podur; October 21, 2007

Review of:
Naomi Klein’s
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.
Random House, Toronto, 2007.

I’ve been seeing the shock doctrine at work my whole political life without knowing it, it seems. Like Naomi Klein, I was born in the 1970s, which she dates as the doctrine's beginnings. I had just finished high school when my province, the Canadian province of Ontario, elected a mini-shock doctrine government that engaged in what Naomi Klein calls the three planks of the economic aspect of shock, the Chicago School, Milton Friedman approach: privatization, deregulation, cuts to social programs and protections.

Later, I saw the shock doctrine – and people fighting it – in Chiapas, where, in 2000, the Zapatista communities were ringed with tens of thousands of soldiers, who would constantly, visibly drive around their communities in displays of force, on trucks and jeeps bristling with soldiers with weapons drawn. I saw it again in Colombia in 2001, in paramilitary-controlled Putumayo, where a series of spectacular massacres had brought peasants under the control of the government and paramilitaries and shocked them into forced acceptance of the poisoning of their lands by aerial fumigation.

Then, again, in Palestine in 2002, I witnessed the most carefully calibrated shock, to terrorize children and parents with tanks and bulldozers and bullets. A friend, a reporter, traveling into Gaza recently described entering through a long, pitch black tunnel. He was being watched, he knew, but he could see nothing, for dozens of meters as he walked along in sensory deprivation. Gaza itself has lived sensory deprivation on a massive scale, since Israeli warplanes destroyed its power plant last year. Two planes, this same reporter was told, flew one run, fired their missiles, circled back, fired again to make sure. Palestinian emergency crews rushing to the scene were intercepted by American-made Israeli helicopters and turned back. An Israeli torturer told a Palestinian child prisoner: “Your world looks big now, but I will put this hood over your head and then your world will become very small, and then we will talk again.” (See the book "Stolen Youth" for more information on Israel's treatment of Palestinian children).

In Haiti in 2005, I saw the shock of another coup, designed to look just like a previous shock in 1991, with some of the same players, calibrated again to humiliate and degrade. A military and police force with close training ties to the US and Canada worked with a local elite to destroy a democratic government with a popular base. The coup took place on the bicentennial of the country’s independence, an extra humiliation inflicted on the whole society to add to the physical and political shocks. If in the Southern Cone dictatorships Naomi writes about, electroshock and disappearance were the symbols of torture, in Haiti the weapon was rape. From 1991-1994, the first coup, in addition to high profile massacres and assassinations that killed thousands, paramilitaries used rape repeatedly against political opponents. The same pattern occurred since 2004, with one study by Athena Kolbe and Royce Hutson estimating 35,000 rapes and 8,000 murders under the most recent coup regime.

Before reading the book, I’d understood these conflicts as being about racism and capitalism, the imposition of an economic and social model to benefit a few and all the violence required to force that model down people’s throats. For me, the book took the lens I’d developed and sharpened it immensely, revealing aspects of conflicts and social problems that are hard to make sense of otherwise. Organized chronologically, the book tells the story of the shock doctrine: the idea that violence, or shock, can be used to unmake people, or societies, and rewrite new rules, more favorable to the powerful, on a blank slate. Against that, Naomi advocates for a more real, impure, un-idealized, system: messy democracy, which leads, if people actually have a say, to progressively more economic equality.

To the believers in the shock doctrine, reality, full of real people with preferences of their own and ideas about the common good, is impure. And only violence can restore purity, on which a perfect capitalist solution can be placed. Of course, that capitalist vision is not the mathematical perfection of economics textbooks, but a world of corruption and impunity, in which a few people grow spectacularly wealthy and live above all rules and laws, while others are starved, bombed, tortured, and threatened.

The book made me see everything I’ve seen and done these past few years in a new light. The book does the same for the author’s own journeys. She describes how the book began when she spent about a year in Argentina (around 2003) and saw the echoes of the dictatorship of 1976-83, the lingering effects of the shock that the torture and disappearances of 30,000 people had inflicted on the society. In the years since, she traveled all over Latin America, to South Africa, to tsunami-afflicted Southeast Asia, to occupied Iraq, and to post-Katrina New Orleans.

Where others might have written a travelogue, Naomi’s genius was in seeing, in each of these situations, a different stage in the process of shock and recovery. Argentina was coming out of shock inflicted decades before. South Africans were reeling from economic shock inflicted while they were trying to recover from the many shocks of apartheid, not as far along in the process of recovery. Iraq was the place for experiments in whole new levels of shock, and New Orleans was where the lessons of those experiments were applied. This ability to build a narrative out of what might otherwise be viewed as random or disparate tragedies or horrors, is the true strength of the book. It also happens to be, as she points out, one of the best ways to defend oneself from shock, which depends on surprise.

The book has 7 parts. Part 1 describes the basics of the shock doctrine through the story of Ewen Cameron, a Montreal psychiatrist who carried out experiments on his unwilling patients for the CIA in the 1950s, destroying their personalities with electric shock, sleep and sensory deprivation, and drugs. Cameron is the doctor of physical shock. The economic shock doctor of the book is Milton Friedman and his ‘Chicago Boys’, whose attempts to impose ‘pure’ capitalism on socialist or mixed economies offer a precise analogy to Cameron’s attempts to erase personalities through torture. Cameron’s experiments ended up in torture manuals that guided the destruction of many people’s bodies in poor countries. Friedman’s doctrines ended up in economic policy documents that guided the destruction of these countries’ economies. The first laboratories of the shock doctrine were the dictatorships of the Southern Cone of South America – Argentina, Chile, Brazil, Uruguay (and Indonesia). These laboratories are described in Part 2, along with, in Part 3, a description of how the shock doctrine was adopted in the West, starting with Thatcher’s UK and Reagan’s US.

In Part 4, Naomi illuminates aspects of history that have not had nearly enough attention. China’s Tiananmen square revolt and massacre was as much about the violent imposition of capitalism as it was about the violent suppression of democracy, she shows, citing author Wang Hui’s book China’s New Order. Poland’s working people, like Russia’s, dreamed not of capitalism but of socialist democracy and had those dreams crushed by violence and economic shock therapy. South Africans, after fighting apartheid for decades and setting out their economic vision in a document called the “Freedom Charter”, were out-negotiated by the elite who maintained the economic inequality of apartheid by presenting economic issues as “technical”, and by the US and international financial institutions who threatened them with economic collapse. The Southeast Asian “Tiger” economies were melted down and sold at fire sale prices to American corporations in the context of an entirely manufactured “crisis”.

Parts 5 and 6 establish the book as a solid and important document of a history that is now unfolding. As the victims of economic shock began to recover from the disorientation and organize across national lines in the “anti-globalization movement” that Naomi was a participant and chronicler of, a new and even more devastating series of shocks hit, and were exploited to take disaster capitalism to a new level. 9/11, the Iraq invasion and occupation, the Asian Tsunami, and Katrina are all analyzed here in terms of their use for disaster capitalists.

In Part 7, Naomi uses the same methods she’s used throughout the book – her knowledge and connections to movements in different parts of the world – to show how people are resisting, waking up from shock. This section is much more powerful than a call to arms – it is a report of what people are actually doing. The Brazilian landless peasants’ movement, the Argentine occupied factories, the Bolivarian movement in Venezuela, the shock-weary Lebanese who refused to be goaded into civil war in 2006, the dictatorship-weary Spanish who refused an authoritarian solution to the Madrid bombing in 2004.

In addition to illuminating hidden aspects of recent history and presenting a new way to view them, the “Shock Doctrine” provides a framework for analyzing other times and places. Afghanistan, for example, is a society that has been under continuous shock since 1979: first a 10-year occupation by the USSR, followed by a civil war, followed by the Taliban, followed by a 6-year US/NATO occupation. The result is a country with basically no infrastructure, some of the worst health and nutritional outcomes in the world, total poverty, millions of landmines, and as of this writing, hundreds of people being murdered in a US counterinsurgency war every week. Like they do on much of Africa, the wealthy countries debate not how to stop the shocks, but how to divide up the task of further torturing the country.

Using the shock doctrine to analyze the past, consider that the Nazi military doctrine of “blitzkrieg” was a kind of shock doctrine: air power and a rapid, concentrated, armored push for the enemy capital before a defence could be organized or mounted. This is not at all unlike what Naomi quotes of American “Shock and Awe” doctrine, which is to “seize control of the environment and paralyze or so overload an adversary’s perceptions and understanding of events… rendering the adversary completely impotent”. Military historian Liddell Hart analyzed WWII in terms of the ratio of space and force. “Blitzkrieg” worked in France, but not in the USSR, where the Nazis were overstretched and ultimately defeated, at a tremendous cost to their victims.

How will the present “shock doctrine” fail? The shock doctrine ideal is of a “hollow state” which, rather than actually doing things, acts as a cash source for corporations which make super-profits but don’t actually deliver the goods in many cases. The hollow state's "holes" are being filled in Latin America by organized workers and peasants and indigenous movements. These have, in some places, managed to get rid of “shock doctrine” governments and are trying to work out how to move forward. In the Middle East, the holes left by the hollow state – in providing health facilities, schools, security, emergency relief are being filled by religious-based movements like Hezbollah in Lebanon or the Mahdi Army in Baghdad. These movements arose in a context of shock, and won’t easily be shocked out of existence (the Israelis certainly tried in Lebanon in 2006, as did the Americans in Iraq with the ‘surge’). At home, Michael Moore’s “Sicko” reveals as eloquently as Naomi's chapters on Katrina the hollowness at the core of the American social systems. If an organized movement could fill that hole, and the other holes of the socially collapsing US (as people in New Orleans are trying to do, Naomi reports), it might be possible for us to survive the next shocks that are on the horizon.

A central message of “The Shock Doctrine” is that the power of shock, torture and war is in overwhelming and disorienting their victims, preventing them from seeing the interests and agendas that lie beneath. When she spoke to torture survivors, Naomi found that the ones who understood these political and economic agendas, who could understand the meaning of seemingly senseless and total violence, were better able to cope. Starting with the shock, Naomi skillfully and patiently exposes these filthy agendas, naming names and showing evidence of massive crimes. By doing so, she might help our shocked world cope – and fight – better, as well.

Justin Podur is a Toronto-based writer and activist. He can be reached at justin@killingtrain.com

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=13&ItemID=14095

coluichedubita

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

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