Elsewhere Today 461

Aljazeera:
Deadly blast near Pakistan army HQ

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2007
10:39 MECCA TIME, 7:39 GMT

A suicide attack has killed at least seven people, including the bomber, less than a kilometre from Pervez Musharraf's army headquarters in Rawalpindi, police say.

Three policemen and three passers-by were among those killed, while 11 people were wounded in Tuesday's blast, Saud Aziz, the city police chief, said.

The policemen were manning a checkpoint on a road leading to the army headquarters.

"Our policeman challenged the attacker who exploded himself near their picket," Aziz said.

"The police were the target."

Tariq Azim Khan, deputy information minister, said General Musharraf was safely in his office some 2km away at the time of the blast.

A Reuters journalist saw body parts on the road near a perimeter wall of the residence of the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Tariq Majid.

Earlier, Al Jazeera's correspondent Nadim Baba, speaking from Islamabad, described the blast as very powerful and said two of the dead were policemen.

"We know the blast site was an extremely sensitive place," he reported.

"A government minister has admitted that President Musharraf was in the building at the time. He was meeting local governors and chief ministers to discuss security in various parts of the country."

Previous attempts

Musharraf has survived at least three assassination attempts - two in December 2003, and one in July as his aircraft took off from Rawalpindi's airport.

Suicide and roadside bomb attacks on security forces have multiplied since commandos stormed the Red Mosque in the capital, Islamabad, in July to crush a Taliban-style movement.

More than 100 people were killed in the fighting.

The security situation in the country has continued to deteriorate, and scores of people have been killed in fighting between security forces and anti-government fighters in the scenic valley of Swat in North West Frontier Province during the past few days.

The worsening security comes at a time of intense political uncertainty in Pakistan.

An attack, possibly two suicide bombers, killed 139 people at a procession in the southern city of Karachi held to welcome the return of Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, from self-imposed exile on October 18.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/73201827-237C-4383-84D5-B9F58611285E.htm

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AllAfrica: Congolese Militia Leader
in North Kivu Surrenders to UN Peacekeepers

UN News Service (New York) NEWS
29 October 2007

The United Nations Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) reports that a militia leader in the country's troubled North Kivu province has turned himself over to peacekeepers along with nearly 30 of his men.

Kibamba Kasereka, leader of the Forces patriotiques Mayi-Mayi, also known as Forces armées populaires de libération (FAPL), and 29 of his men surrendered to UN peacekeepers on Saturday morning in the town of Kisharo, in North Kivu province, the UN mission, known as MONUC, said in a press release.

There has been a recent flare-up of fighting in North Kivu province, where Government forces have been clashing with those loyal to renegade General Laurent Nkunda and other groups, resulting in a large number of refugees and displaced persons.

MONUC notes that the surrender is the result of a military operation by the Congolese Army and the strong pressure it placed on Kasereka and his militia.

The mission hopes the event "will be quickly followed by the surrender of many other fighters, as a step towards their integration into the national army, their demobilization or their repatriation, notably that of the negative forces with which Kasereka operated."

It calls on all remaining illegal armed elements to lay down their weapons and to join the process of integration into the national army.

Meanwhile, on Friday, the UN's Independent Expert on the human rights situation in the DRC voiced concern about ongoing grave violations, including arbitrary executions, rape, torture and other forms of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, including by members of the armed forces and police operating in a climate of impunity.

In North Kivu, clashes involving the forces of General Nkunda have been accompanied by rights abuses in conditions exacerbated by violations of humanitarian law which complicated efforts to provide relief aid to the affected population, said Titinga Fédéric Pacéré, in an address to the General Assembly's Social, Humanitarian and Cultural (Third) Committee.

He emphasized the widespread problem of sexual violence, with the worst cases in the Kivus and Equateur province. From 2005 to 2007, 287 cases of rape were referred to the authorities, while figures compiled from health centres indicated that close to 14,200 new cases of sexual violence were registered during the same period.

"This indicates that less than 1 per cent of rape victims have seen their cases referred to the justice system," he said, and of that small per cent, an even smaller number resulted in any punishment.

He called on the authorities to adopt a "zero-tolerance" approach to serious violations of human rights and to give priority to fighting the prevailing climate of impunity. He also called for the creation of an international tribunal specifically to deal with crimes in the DRC.

Copyright © 2007 UN News Service. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200710300019.html

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AlterNet: The Business Press
and Me: a Case of Unrequited Love

By Naomi Klein, Comment Is Free
Posted on October 25, 2007

On a recent visit to Calgary, Alberta, I was taken aback to see my book on disaster capitalism selling briskly at the airport. Calgary is ground zero of North America's oil and gas boom, where business suits and cowboy hats are the de facto uniform. I had a sudden sinking feeling: did Calgary's business class think The Shock Doctrine was a how-to guide - a manual for making millions from catastrophe? Were they hoping for tips on landing no-bid contracts if the US bombs Iran?

When I get worried about inadvertently fueling the disaster complex, I take comfort in the response the book has elicited from the world's leading business journalists. That's where I learn that the very notion of disaster capitalism is my delusion - or, as Otto Reich, former adviser to President George Bush, told BBC Business Daily, it is the work "of a very confused person".

Many publications have seen fit to assign business journalists to review the book. And why not? They are the experts. Unabashed fans of the late free-market evangeliser Milton Friedman, these are our primary purveyors of the idea that ballooning corporate profits are on the verge of trickling down to the citizens of the world in the form of freedom and democracy.

So in the Times, for instance, the book was reviewed by Robert Cole, who writes the paper's personal investor column and is author of the volume Getting Started in Unit and Investment Trusts (Chapter 7 - Taxing Questions: Pepping up Your Prospects). Cole was none too pepped by The Shock Doctrine, which disappointed him as "too easy to dismiss as a leftist rant". In the New York Times, the task of explaining why "it's all a grand capitalist conspiracy" fell to Tom Redburn, author of its Economic View column. "That's a lot to lay on poor Milton," Redburn sniffed.

No one took it quite as hard as Terence Corcoran, the business editor of Canada's National Post. Disaster capitalism is apparently my "fevered creation". And how could I have said those things about Friedman, a man Corcoran has described as "the last great lion of free market economics"?

In the Financial Times, the unbiased dissection was carried out by John Willman, the paper's UK business editor (who, on the side, advocates shifting healthcare costs to families in Britain and tuition increases in Scotland). Willman declared the book "a polemic" and warned "impressionable readers" not to be fooled by my 60 pages of endnotes. While Cole claims I rely on "partisan contributions from the cuttings library", Willman accuses me of a far greater crime: relying on cuttings from the FT. "She quotes the Financial Times when it suits her, for example, but not when it would be inconvenient."

It's true. I do, in fact, quote the FT when it suits me. In The Shock Doctrine, I cite the paper 26 times. And this is what hurts most about the attacks from the world's business editors: even as they find new ways to dismiss me, I remain a devoted reader of their pages. Sure, financial editors have to do PR for capitalism. Their reporters, however, have a crucial market role. Investors require reliable information, and it's their job to supply it. Without this honest reporting, I would never have understood how economic shock therapy programmes relied on external disasters - the very disaster capitalism I now learn, from these same pages, does not exist.

It was from the FT that I learned of the so-called Davos Dilemma. Columnist Martin Wolf describes it as "the contrast between the world's favourable economics and troublesome politics". He explains that, in recent years, the economy has faced "a series of shocks" - from the dotcom crash to September 11 to chaos in the Middle East. And yet the market is in "a golden period of broadly shared growth".

A great deal of light is shed on the Davos Dilemma by the FT. For instance, it reported that Lockheed Martin - the biggest single winner from the economy of disaster - has begun "buying companies in the $1,000bn-a-year healthcare market". It's just one glimpse into the exploding economy of privatised disaster, with Lockheed poised to profit not only from making weapons but also from treating the people injured by them - a new era of morbid vertical integration.

The FT has long explored how politicians harness disasters to push through unwanted economic policies. In 1998, for instance, it published an article by Jeffrey Sachs outlining how the IMF took South Korea's democracy hostage, withholding a desperately needed loan until all presidential candidates committed in writing to a harsh austerity plan. Some months later, Hurricane Mitch swept Central America. I learned from the FT that, with countries still knee-deep in rubble, foreign lenders were demanding privatisations.

In the first months after the US "shock and awe" attack on Iraq, the FT reported on US envoy Paul Bremer's shock therapy programme. The paper stated his decrees "make Iraq one of the most open economies in the developing world and go beyond even legislation in many rich countries". It's a concise summary that I often draw upon.

But now, after all these years of fruitful (if one-way) collaboration, the FT calls my thesis "ultimately dishonest". Stinging as this may be, I stand behind the honesty of the FT's reporting, which has been so very helpful in the evolution of my world view.

I wish disaster capitalism were a product of my fevered imagination. I have recently, however, come across more evidence to support its existence. It comes from Paul B Farrell, author of publishing sensations such as The Millionaire Code and The Lazy Person's Guide to Investing. "Hot tip: Invest in 'disaster capitalism'," begins his review in Dow Jones Business News. Farrell acknowledges that an economy built on disaster "is a hot-button political issue. But for the moment, let's put aside partisan politics … Let's look at this strictly as investors and briefly consider what may also be a guide for aggressive investors". Many unmentionable stock tips follow.

It is just as I had feared - The Shock Doctrine as a how-to-guide. At the end, however, Farrell shows some misgivings. "Is 'Disaster Capitalism' merely a hot short-term investment opportunity for you? Or is it a national 'crisis,' a warning bell, a 'shocking' call to … rein in the 'military-industrial complex' mindset that's pushing America into a disastrous, self-destructive future?"

Moral confusion in the business pages? Where am I supposed to get my news now?

Naomi Klein is the author of "No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies" and "Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate."

© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/66106/

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Asia Times:
Bagging trophies on Iraqi safari

By Nick Turse
Oct 31, 2007

This month, news of the military's use of Human Terrain Teams - US combat units operating in Afghanistan and Iraq that contain anthropologists and other social scientists who have traded in their academic robes for body armor - hit the front-page of the New York Times.

While the incorporation of academic experts into combat units has raised ire in some scholarly circles, their use as "cultural advisers" to aid the war effort has been greeted by the military as "a crucial new weapon in counterinsurgency operations" and in the media as an example of increased cultural sensitivity as well as evidence of a new Pentagon willingness to think outside the box.

But the university is only one of a number of areas where an overstretched military, involved in two losing wars, is in a desperate search for new ideas. And humanizing allies and enemies alike has only been one part of the process. Dehumanizing them has been the other. At a recent conference on urban warfare in Washington, DC, James Lasswell, a retired US Marine Corps colonel who now heads the Office of Science and Technology at the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory, opened an interesting window into this side of things.

He noted that, as part of an instruction course named "Combat Hunter", the marines have brought in "big-game hunters" to school their snipers in the better use of "optics". According to a September article by Grace Jean in National Defense Magazine, "[T]he lab conducted a war game with marines, African game hunters and inner city police officers to search for ways to improve training." The program included a 15-minute CD titled "Every Marine a Hunter."

This year, according to an article by Kimberly Johnson of the Marine Corps Times, Colonel Clarke Lethin, chief of staff of the I Marine Expeditionary Force - I MEF, a unit based in Camp Pendleton, California that took part in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and will be returning there soon - indicated that its commanders "believe that if we create a mentality in our marines that they are hunters and they take on some of those skills, then we'll be able to increase our combat effectiveness".

The article included this curious add-on: "The corps hopes to tap into skills certain marines may already have learned growing up in rural hunting areas and in urban areas, such as inner cities, said Colonel Clarke Lethin, I MEF's chief of staff." Outraged by the statement, one Sergeant Ramsey K Gregory wrote a letter to the publication asking, "Just what was meant by that comment about the inner city? I hope to God that he's not saying that people from the inner cities are experts in killing each other and that we all just walk around carrying guns."

While the colonel's language - defended by some - did seem to suggest that inner-city dwellers lived in an urban jungle of gun-toting hunters of other humans, none of the letters, pro or con, considered quite a different part of the colonel's equation: the implicit comparison of enemies in urban warfare, today largely Iraqis and Afghans, to animals that are hunted and killed as quarry. As Lethin had unabashedly noted, "We identified a need to ensure our marines were being the hunters ... Hunting is more than just the shooting. It's finding your game."

That military men might indulge in this sort of description was perhaps less than surprising, given the degree to which "hunting" the enemy has been on the lips of America's commander-in-chief. George W Bush has, on many occasions, invoked the image: "We're hunting them down, one at a time" he likes to say of, for instance, al-Qaeda terrorists, or "we're smoking them out", as he said in November 2001.

In fact, the president needed no big-game hunters to coach him on his optics or anything else. He's talked incessantly of hunting humans - in speeches to American troops, at photo ops with foreign leaders, at family fundraisers, even in the midst of remarks about homeownership.

Nor is there anything new about Americans treating racial and ethnic enemies as the equivalent of animals to be abused or killed. In his memoir of the Vietnam War, Dispatches, acclaimed combat correspondent Michael Herr, for example, recalled a young soldier from the army's 1st Infantry Division who admitted, "Well, you know what we do to animals ... kill 'em and hurt 'em and beat on 'em ... Shit, we don't treat the dinks [Vietnamese] no different than that."

Another veteran, quoted elsewhere remembered, "As soon as I hit boot camp ... they tried to change your total personality ... Right away they told us not to call them Vietnamese. Call them gooks, dinks ... They were like animals, or something other than human ... They told us they're not to be treated with any type of mercy ... " Today, the slurs of the Vietnam era have been replaced by "haji" and "raghead", while the big-game hunters and the language that goes with killing animals have added to the atmosphere of dehumanization.

That program of instruction is, however, just one recent example of an undercurrent within the military's institutional culture that implicitly reduces people to animals. It's not just in the language of everyday anger and dismissal by soldiers in a strange land where danger is everywhere and it's difficult to tell friend from foe. It's lodged right in the institutional language, if you care to notice. Last month, a piece in the Washington Post, for example, drew much media attention when it came to light that US Army snipers from the "painted demons" platoon of the 1st Battalion, 501st Infantry Regiment, 25th Infantry Division allegedly took part in "a classified program of 'baiting' their targets" to lure insurgents within their sniper scopes.

"Basically, we would put an item [like a spool of wire or ammunition] out there and watch it," said Captain Matthew P Didier, the leader of the elite sniper platoon in a sworn statement. "If someone found the item, picked it up and attempted to leave with the item, we would engage the individual as I saw this as a sign they would use the item against US forces." While there has been much subsequent discussion about the ethics and legality of such a program, nobody seemed to take note of the hunting language involved. After all, when you "bait" a trap (or a hook), it's to lure an animal (or fish) in for the kill. But "bait" for a human?

While the use of anthropologists and other social scientists has made headlines, the utilization of "big-game hunters" as troop trainers for the "urban jungles" of Iraq has been essentially ignored. Programs stressing cultural sensitivity may be covered, but treating Iraqis scavenging in a weapon-strewn war zone as the equivalent of elephants, water buffalo, or other prized trophies of great white hunters has gone largely unexamined in any meaningful way.

From the commander-in-chief to low-ranking snipers, a language of dehumanization that includes the idea of hunting humans as if they were animals has crept into our world - unnoticed and unnoted in the mainstream media. Perhaps a few linguistics professors or other social scientists might like to step into the breach and offer their views on the subject - unless, of course, they've already been mustered into those Human Terrain Teams.

Nick Turse is the associate editor and research director of Tomdispatch.com. His first book, The Complex, an exploration of the new military-corporate complex in America, is due out in the American Empire Project series by Metropolitan Books in 2008.

(Copyright 2007 Nick Turse.)

(Used by permission Tomdispatch)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IJ31Ak01.html

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Clarín:
"El islam ya es una religión europea"

ENTREVISTA A TARIQ RAMADAN

Admirado por los jóvenes árabes que pueblan los suburbios de París, juzgado con desconfianza por funcionarios y legisladores europeos, que lo ven como una amenaza, Tariq Ramadan se ha convertido en la voz más audaz de la intelectualidad musulmana. Una voz que advierte: la inmigración árabe provocará "la renovación del islam" pero, aun antes, la "islamización de Europa". El Viejo Continente, escribió, "debe aprender a compartir, por las buenas o por las malas".

RODRIGO CARRIZO COUTO
27.10.2007 | Clarin.com | Revista Ñ

«En 2003, la televisión francesa emitió un debate (ya mítico) que enfrentaba en torno de la cuestión de la laicidad al entonces ministro del Interior, Nicolas Sarkozy, y a un intelectual suizo de origen egipcio, considerado "el más influyente teórico del islam europeo", Tariq Ramadan. El tema: ¿pueden o no las niñas musulmanas ir con velo a la escuela? El fascinante debate lo ganó por goleada el actual presidente de Francia: Sarkozy exhibió un verbo agresivo y una inteligencia feroz. Años más tarde, Ramadan explicó que le constaba que esa noche "Sarkozy había prometido a sus allegados aplastarme". ¿Quién es Ramadan, para que el presidente de Francia considere necesario aplastarlo?

Nacido en Ginebra, Ramadan pertenece por derecho propio a la aristocracia del pensamiento islámico: puede aspirar a un tratamiento de "emir" ("un privilegio al que prefiero renunciar", dice) y es doctor en filosofía además de ulema, es decir doctor en ley musulmana. El primer título lo obtuvo en Suiza con una tesis sobre la obra de Nietzsche y el segundo, en la Universidad Islámica de Al-Azhar, El Cairo. Es también autor de numerosos libros sobre el islam y los casetes con sus discursos se venden por cientos de miles entre los jovenes árabes de las banlieues calientes de París, Ginebra, Marsella o Bruselas.

La revista Time lo nombró "uno de los 100 hombres más influyentes del mundo". El filósofo francés Bernard-Henry Lévy lo definió como "un polemista temible". Ha formado parte del "Consejo de Sabios" nombrado por Romano Prodi para "el diálogo de civilizaciones euro-mediterráneo" y Tony Blair lo invitó a unirse a una comisión para analizar causas y consecuencias de los atentados islamistas de Londres. En Gran Bretaña aceptó igualmente un puesto en el prestigioso Saint Anthony's College de Oxford, donde disertó sobre "pensamiento islámico".

Ramadan cree que la inmigración musulmana en Europa provocará, con el paso del tiempo, "la necesaria renovación del islam" y, de paso, la "islamización de Europa", según sus (muy) numerosos detractores y enemigos declarados. La acusación màs habitual en relación con Ramadan es que su pensamiento tiene dos caras: una amable, democrática, racional y europea que esgrime en sus encuentros con la prensa o los políticos; y otro conservador e intolerante que ofrece en árabe a sus seguidores islámicos de los suburbios de las capitales europeas, ahogados en fundamentalismo. "No tengo ningún doble discurso -se inflama Ramadan-, sostengo las mismas tesis en la mezquita y en la calle". Pero, por lo visto, la duda y la sospecha de sus vínculos con círculos fundamentalistas fueron suficientes para que las autoridades de los Estados Unidos le revocaran el 28 de julio de 2004 su visa para ir a enseñar en la Universidad de NÉtre-Dame, en Indiana. El Departamento de Seguridad Interior (DHS) esgrimió razones "de seguridad pública". Igualmente, la duda fue suficiente para que el presidente José Luis Zapatero se negara a recibirlo en Madrid, cuando Ramadan visitó España, a fines de 2005 ("Algún consejero le habrá dicho que yo era una especie de terrorista y extremista", dice, irónico). Una polémica más reciente enfrentó a Ramadan con los pensadores franceses (todos ellos judíos) Alain Finkielkraut, Bernard-Henry Lévy, André Glucksmann y Bernard Kouchner, actual canciller de ese país. Resultado de dos entrevistas realizadas en Ginebra y Londres, Ramadan contesta sobre ésta y otras polémicas.

«p-Ha dicho que "reconoce el derecho a la existencia del Estado de Israel" y que los judíos son sus "hermanos del libro". ¿Lo mantiene?

«r- Absolutamente. Israel es un hecho. Es inaceptable legitimar elementos antisemitas en el discurso musulmán. Hay que diferenciar entre la crítica al Estado de Israel, legítima como cualquier crítica política, y el mantenimiento de posturas racistas a partir de la política israelí.

«p-¿Repite esas ideas ante los miles de jóvenes magrebíes que le siguen en los suburbios de Marsella, Ginebra o Londres?

«r-En uno de mis discursos sobre el Corán digo claramente que es "inadmisible hacer una amalgama entre los judíos y el Estado de Israel". Mantengo esto en público y en privado; tanto en la mezquita como afuera.

«p-Justamente, la acusación más habitual hacia usted es: "maestro del doble discurso".

«r-Deberían aportar pruebas de ese doble discurso; los periodistas recogen mi discurso y lo reconstruyen.

«p-Declaró que hay que aplicar una "moratoria indefinida" respecto a la lapidación de las adúlteras y los castigos corporales. ¿Qué significa?

«r-He dicho que hay que aplicar una "moratoria absoluta" de la pena de muerte, la lapidación y los castigos corporales en el mundo musulmán. Los sabios musulmanes dicen que, a pesar de que estos castigos están contemplados en el Corán, son muy raramente aplicables. Luego he visto con mis propios ojos la realidad. Dado que los doctores de la ley no están de acuerdo sobre la aplicación de las penas, se debe beneficiar siempre a la víctima. Pero sólo pueden funcionar los argumentos islámicos contra las leyes islámicas. No puede haber solución a esto si no sale del interior del mundo musulmán.

«p-Son más las opiniones críticas que favorables hacia usted y su obra. ¿Cómo define su trabajo?

«r-Soy un intelectual que intenta releer el islam a la luz de nuestro contexto contemporáneo, tanto del mundo occidental como musulmán. Quiero, desde el interior de la civilización musulmana, asumir los desafios de la sociedad contemporánea y poder ser un europeo musulmán y vivir en mi sociedad. No sólo integrándome sino también contribuyendo. Deseo que el mundo musulmán sea partícipe del concierto de las naciones dentro de un marco de pluralismo. La idea de que no existe más que "una sola civilización posible", Occidente, y que las demás culturas deben alinearse con ella no es buena ni para Occidente ni para las otras civilizaciones. Estoy a mitad de camino entre dos universos de referencia. Interpelo mi propio marco musulmán, del cual soy muy crítico. En Europa, les digo que el destino de los musulmanes no es la asimilación; no estamos destinados a desaparecer. Vamos a seguir siendo lo que somos.

«p-Francia integró a rusos, judíos, españoles, italianos. ¿por qué los árabes parecen los únicos incapaces de integrarse en el modelo republicano?

«r-Los españoles o los italianos han logrado integrarse dado que han pasado más tiempo en Francia. No se puede juzgar a la gente sobre la base de dos generaciones. Pero lo que usted dice es cierto: no es sólo un problema de Francia sino que también se debe culpar a estas poblaciones que durante largo tiempo se han marginalizado, alejado de la sociedad. Incluso a nivel intelectual y psicológico. El "síndrome del colonizado" perdura. Las responsabilidades están compartidas. Francia debe dejar de mirar al islam como una religión extranjera (toda Europa debe darse cuenta: el islam es ya una religión europea). Y los musulmanes deben dejar de hacer responsable de sus problemas a la sociedad de acogida y deben terminar con su eterna auto-victimización y marginalización intelectual. Toda crítica es percibida como contraria al islam, pero no toda crítica es necesariamente "islamófoba". Hay que entender que en el mundo musulmán nadie tiene derecho a tocar las religiones y en Occidente existe el derecho a, incluso, reírse de la religión. El musulmán debe comprender que en Europa ha cambiado de universo.

«p-¿Cómo ve la situación de Oriente? Se habla de la "primavera árabe". ¿Está de acuerdo?

«r-No. La supuesta "primavera árabe" es la emergencia de ciertos procesos democráticos en el mundo musulmán, pero las dictaduras siguen siendo la regla. Es hora de que los intelectuales árabes renueven su discurso de que "todo es culpa de Israel". Israel no es responsable de nuestra falta de consciencia política.

«p-¿Cabe esperar una renovación del islam? ¿Sería deseable?

«r-El futuro del islam pasa en gran parte por Occidente pues aquí está la democracia, o sea, el espacio de libertad. Debemos empezar a pensar el islam en términos de derecho a y no exclusivamente de obligación de. La tradición musulmana se basa sobre la religión obliga, pero no desarrollamos aún un discurso sobre el islam como un espacio de derechos.

«p-¿Cree que es posible la convivencia entre el islam practicante y la Europa laica y republicana?

«r-No hay contradicción entre los principios y fundamentos del islam y la democracia, pero cada país debe encontrar su propio modelo. Hay en Europa millones de musulmanes integrados en el proceso democrático y hay que dejar de verlos como extranjeros.

«p-El islam es una visión del mundo que abarca lo espiritual y lo terrenal. ¿No hay incompatibilidad de principio con la democracia laica en un sistema que mezcla lo político y lo religioso?

«r-Yo objeto esta intrusión de la esfera privada dentro de lo público. La dimensión espiritual debe estar separada de la terrena, aunque eso no implica un divorcio radical de ambas. Ahí no hay ninguna contradicción con la tradición musulmana.

«p-Se dice que su estrategia pasa por invitar a los musulmanes de Europa a participar en la vida política de sus países a fin de "islamizar" las leyes nacionales. Un Caballo de Troya islámico.

«r-Esa es la vieja acusación de "entrismo". Ayer, los musulmanes estaban en el gueto y se les acusaba de aislarse y de propugnar el "comunitarismo". Son los que no pueden considerarme a mí como suizo o europeo. Les molesto, les doy miedo. Siempre fue más fácil identificar al enemigo a través de la alteridad que cuando el enemigo elimina su diferencia y se convierte en uno más.

«p-¿Cree que la comunidad musulmana condena con suficiente firmeza los ataques terroristas? Ninguna autoridad religiosa declaró una "fatwa" a Bin Laden.

«r-Ante los atentados y el recrudecimiento del terrorismo fundamentalista a escala mundial los musulmanes deberían ponerse en pie. Denunciar esa violencia. Todas las organizaciones musulmanas del Reino Unido, o casi todas, condenaron unánimemente los atentados de Londres. Pero los medios no están interesados en las personas que intentan construir puentes sino en los que intentan destruirlos.

«p-En un editorial escribió que "Europa debe aprender a compartir, por las buenas o por las malas". Suena a amenaza...

«r-Los ciudadanos musulmanes debemos tener el derecho de compartir todo en nuestros países, incluido el poder real, pero, ¿quieren esto los europeos? Me temo que no, pero no tendrán otra solución a mediano o largo plazo. Soy un europeo de confesión musulmana y, lo quieran o no, somos el futuro. Yo no invito a los musulmanes a que "islamicen" Europa, sino que invito a Europa a que comprenda que el islam ya está en ella y que los musulmanes son ciudadanos de pleno derecho. Los europeos ¿están preparados para aceptar que los musulmanes tienen algo que aportar a esta sociedad? ¿Europa admite tener ciudadanos de confesión musulmana?

«p-¿Y si la respuesta fuera "no"?

«r-Al menos los términos del debate estarían claros. Europa tiene miedo y desconfía. Yo digo: abran los espacios de confianza. No podremos construir nada desde la sospecha y el miedo.

«p-¿Qué es lo mínimo que cabe esperar de una persona para considerarla integrante de su sociedad, basta un pasaporte?

«r-Es ciudadano aquel que detenta un pasaporte, respeta las leyes del país y es activo socialmente. Pero lo cierto es que no estoy de acuerdo con la pregunta. No creo que haya "mínimos exigibles" de pertenencia. Aunque es preocupante ver que el discurso tradicional sobre la inmigración de la ultraderecha se banalizó y hoy lo esgrimen casi todos los partidos.

«p-¿Puede pertenecer a la sociedad un hombre que no habla el idioma del país de acogida?

«r-No. Debe hablar el idioma, conocer las tradiciones, la historia, las instituciones y las leyes del país donde vive.

«p-¿Qué piensa de los problemas que genera el velo islámico?

«r-No podemos pedirle a una niña musulmana que deje de ir a la escuela por respeto al velo. Pero tampoco es bueno que todas las niñas musulmanas terminen realizando sus estudios en escuelas coránicas. Entre el velo y la falta de escolarización, debe primar la educación. Eso está antes que el respeto a las tradiciones religiosas. Lo que necesitamos es la mezcla social. Debemos ir radicalmente contra la tendencia natural y comprensible de los inmigrantes de agruparse entre iguales. En Londres, hay escuelas públicas con 99% de estudiantes paquistaníes. Eso es intolerable.

«p-¿Qué ocurre, en su opinión, en el caso de que un musulmán tenga un hijo homosexual?

«r-La homosexualidad, según la tradición islámica, "no forma parte del plan divino" pero el respeto a la dignidad del ser humano debería estar por encima de las tradiciones religiosas.

«p-¿El sida es un castigo de dios?

«r-No diría eso; pero todas las religiones asocian la enfermedad al castigo divino.

«p-¿Una mujer musulmana puede casarse con un "infiel" y seguir siendo miembro de la "nación del islam", o "Umma"?

«r-Según la tradición, no. Pero nada en la ley musulmana dice que debamos expulsarlas de la comunidad. Cuando me consultan al respecto digo que sean conscientes de las enormes dificultades que esa elección encierra.

«p-¿Qué es un "imam"?

«r-Es el hombre que dirige las plegarias en la mezquita y da el sermón. Su elección es democrática: los propios fieles de la comunidad lo eligen.

«p-Israel -ha dicho- no es la causa del problema del mundo árabe-musulmán, sino su consecuencia directa. ¿Cual sería el problema, entonces?

«r-No hay un problema, sino muchos. Uno es el eterno culpar de nuestros dramas y carencias a los sionistas, americanos o europeos. ¡Nosotros somos la causa de nuestros problemas y miserias! Los intelectuales árabes no cumplen su rol; carecemos de proyecto social y político. En los 60, Mohammed Iqbal, influyente pensador del islam, dijo algo que explica bien el tema: "Los países árabes fuimos colonizados porque eramos colonizables".

Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2007/10/27/u-01011.htm

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Guardian: Darfur refugees
forced out by troops, UN claims

Jonathan Steele in Khartoum
Tuesday October 30, 2007

Sudanese troops used force to relocate hundreds of homeless Darfur families, loading their possessions on to lorries and surrounding them with machine guns mounted on pick-up trucks late on Sunday evening, UN humanitarian officials said yesterday.

The incident, on the outskirts of Otash camp for displaced people near Nyala, affected an estimated 2,000 people, many of whom are still missing.

They were camping in the open after fleeing another camp, Kalma, a few days earlier after their houses were burnt down and up to 17 people were killed by members of a tribe opposed to the Darfur peace talks in Libya.

John Holmes, the UN emergency relief co-ordinator, said in a statement from New York: "It is imperative that any relocation be wholly voluntary, in agreement with the internally displaced. Given that security forces were threatening the displaced with sticks and rubber hoses at Otash camp, the involuntary nature of this relocation is clear, and is contrary to agreements with the government".

A joint UN and African Union team rushed to the scene on Sunday night, but were denied access by a representative of the Sudanese government's Humanitarian Aid Commission.

After entering the area by another route, they saw 10 vehicles with heavy machine-guns surrounding a group of internally displaced people and eight lorries being loaded with possessions. Up to 20 families appeared to have been forced into the vehicles.

"A lot of people fled, which is a natural response. We don't know where they are now", said Orla Clinton, a UN spokesperson in Khartoum.

UN protection staff and other aid workers were frantically searching refugee camps in the area yesterday to try to find them, but by mid-afternoon had found nobody.

HAC told the UN that the operation was an initiative of the security forces. Officials said the displaced persons' goods were being kept near one of Nyala's bus stations, where families could go and collect them.

On Sunday, a few hours before the relocation, Mohammed Salih, the senior spokesperson for the governor of South Darfur, told the Guardian: "Otash has some Kalma families and the UN agencies and the government are preparing a new location. Otash is closed. We don't impose any solution that doesn't satisfy the choice of the internally displaced person. Any IDP has to choose for himself", he insisted.

Asked yesterday about the UN accusations that force was used, Mr Salih said: "That's a lie."

"The IDPs are still in Sudan. They're not going to be taken to Chad, or on to Paris", he said, referring to allegations of abduction involving a French charity.

Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sudan/story/0,,2201896,00.html

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Internazionale:
Laboratorio svizzero

Blocher ha tessuto la sua tela instillando nella popolazione la paura dello straniero

Serge Enderlin
Internazionale 716, 25 ottobre 2007

La Svizzera ormai ha un solo grande partito. Ed è un partito xenofobo. Ecco il principale insegnamento delle ultime elezioni in questo piccolo paese ricco e senza problemi, che oggi è un'isola in mezzo ai ventisette stati dell'Unione europea. Un'isola felice di esserlo e più ricca che mai.

La sua situazione economica non è mai stata così buona come negli ultimi trent'anni: ha una crescita del 3 per cento, quasi cinese. E ha un tasso di disoccupazione praticamente inesistente. Ma allora dov'è il problema? Dove si fermerà il vento populista e alpino di Christoph Blocher?

Grande vincitrice delle ultime elezioni con quasi il 30 per cento dei voti, la poco centrista Unione democratica di centro (Udc) è in realtà un partito di estrema destra. Nel suo programma si trovano tutti gli elementi dei nazionalisti con tendenze xenofobe: riduzione delle tasse, lotta contro la burocrazia, contro l'immigrazione e il diritto di asilo, diffidenza istintiva nei confronti dell'Unione europea.

Il partito si è distinto durante la campagna elettorale per i suoi eccessi razzisti, a cominciare da un manifesto in cui si vedevano tre pecore bianche su una bandiera svizzera che davano un calcio a una pecora nera. Lo slogan era: "Per una maggiore sicurezza, qualità svizzera". In qualunque altro paese questo manifesto sarebbe stato vietato per istigazione all'odio razziale. Non in Svizzera, dove una parte importante della popolazione lo condivide.

Christoph Blocher ha 67 anni, ed è ormai il populista più potente d'Europa. La sua nuova vittoria è la coronazione di una strategia di conquista del potere cominciata più di quindici anni fa. Di elezione in elezione Blocher, rozzo ma sanguigno, ha pazientemente intrecciato la sua tela instillando nella popolazione la paura nei confronti dello straniero.

Il suo primo successo risale al 1992, quando riesce a convincere gli svizzeri a rifiutare l'adesione allo Spazio economico europeo (Eee), anticamera dell'Ue. La guerra fredda è appena finita, i Balcani sono in fiamme. La Svizzera si sente in prima linea e vede arrivare nel suo paese migliaia di profughi.

Ma il paese soffre soprattutto una crisi di identità: nel nuovo contesto mondiale che segue al crollo del blocco dell'est, la neutralità e la croce bianca hanno perso gran parte del loro interesse. Che fare? Blocher ha la risposta: l'eurofobia. Per tutti gli anni novanta costruisce la sua popolarità criticando Bruxelles (per lui una sorta di insulto), un tema che ancora oggi gli dà grande popolarità.

A questo aggiunge rapidamente la denuncia degli "stranieri approfittatori" – cioè gli immigrati che abuserebbero dei sistemi di previdenza sociale – e quella degli "stranieri delinquenti", che minaccerebbero la leggendaria sicurezza elvetica. Due argomenti estremamente popolari visto che il clima sociale, come dimostrano le statistiche, comincia a deteriorarsi: all'inizio del duemila le casse pubbliche accumulano deficit e la piccola delinquenza, in passato sconosciuta, cresce in modo evidente.

Il 1 gennaio 2004 Blocher diventa uno dei sette ministri del governo di coalizione della Confederazione elvetica e comincia a destabilizzare in profondità questa vecchia istituzione.

Il politologo François Chérix ricorda alcune sue caratteristiche: "Sete di potere, autocelebrazione narcisistica, atteggiamento messianico, individuazione paranoica di nemici esterni (l'Europa) e interni (gli stranieri e i socialisti), attacchi continui contro le istituzioni per ridicolizzarle".

Blocher moltiplica le sue iniziative, manipolando l'opinione pubblica: si fa passare per il capo dell'opposizione anche se è membro del governo, afferma di difendere i poveri mentre è al servizio del grande capitale. Del resto lui stesso è miliardario e possiede un'impresa internazionale, la Ems-Chemie.

È in questi elementi che va vista tutta l'ipocrisia e la grande forza di questo nuovo genere di populismo di cui la Svizzera è il laboratorio. Il paradosso ha dell'incredibile: nessun paese in Europa ha tanto approfittato della globalizzazione quanto la Svizzera.

In una decina d'anni, per esempio, la zona lungo il lago Lemano, tra Ginevra e Losanna, si è trasformata in un'unica grande metropoli di più di un milione di abitanti, composta per un terzo da stranieri. Stranieri ricchi, dirigenti di multinazionali che vengono a vivere nella regione; stranieri poveri, immigrati o persone che chiedono asilo. Questa "Lemanopolis", come ha cominciato a essere chiamata, è una vera Babele poliglotta, una città-mondo caratterizzata da un grande cosmopolitismo culturale.

Eppure anche lì ha vinto l'Udc. Per capire questo fenomeno è necessario pensare a un populismo post-globale che non combatte la globalizzazione (è già avvenuta), ma si rivolge a chi ne ha sofferto, a chi non ha saputo adattarsi. E gli altri, quelli che ne hanno saputo approfittare? Non votano, o votano troppo poco.

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tel +39 06 4417 301 • fax +39 06 4425 2718 • email posta@internazionale.it
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http://www.internazionale.it/firme/articolo.php?id=17399

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Jeune Afrique: 13.000 Congolais
se sont réfugiés en Ouganda en 10 jours

RD CONGO - 29 octobre 2007 - par AFP

Quelque 13.000 Congolais se sont réfugiés en Ouganda, après des combats ayant éclaté le 20 octobre au Nord-Kivu, dans l'est de la République démocratique du Congo (RDC), a indiqué lundi le Haut commissariat des Nations unies pour les réfugiés (HCR).

Des réfugiés congolais ont continué ces derniers jours à traverser la frontière à un rythme constant d'environ 800 par jour, a précisé le HCR dans un communiqué diffusé à Kampala.

Lundi, le HCR a entamé les préparatifs pour le transfert d'une partie des 12.000 réfugiés du centre d'accueil de Nyakabanda, situé à 15 km de la frontière congolaise, vers un camp de réfugiés installé à Nakivale, à près de 300 kilomètres, a-t-il poursuivi.

Un millier de personnes ont manifesté le souhait d'être transférées vers Nakivale, quelques heures après un appel du HCR en ce sens. Les premiers départs vers ce centre de réfugiés sont prévus pour le 6 novembre.

Quelque 1.500 autres réfugiés se trouvent toujours à la frontière entre la RDC et l'Ouganda, côté ougandais, non loin de Bunagana, une localité congolaise où les hommes de l'ex-général Laurent Nkunda avaient affronté les 20 et 21 octobre des milices locales Maï Maï.

Ces combats avaient entraîné la fuite de milliers de villageois vers la ville de Rutshuru (à 25 km au sud-est) et vers l'Ouganda.

"Nombre d'entre eux expliquent qu'ils sont épuisés par les vagues successives de déplacements et préfèrent attendre la paix avant de retourner chez eux", explique Adan Ilmi, l'un des coordinateurs du HCR dans la région.

Le 24 octobre, le HCR évaluait à 8.000 le nombre de villageois réfugiés en Ouganda à la suite de ces combats.

Le bureau de coordination des affaires humanitaires de l'ONU (Ocha) au Nord-Kivu avait estimé à environ 25.000 les déplacés arrivés dans la zone de Rutshuru à la suite de ces combats et d'autres accrochages entre insurgés nkundistes et Forces armées de RDC (FARDC) à 30 km au sud de Rutshuru.

L'Ouganda accueille actuellement 216.000 réfugiés sur son sol, dont 31.000 Congolais, 162.000 Soudanais et 17.000 Rwandais, selon le HCR.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP60147congosruojn0

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Mail & Guardian: UN: Weekend fighting
drives 36 000 from Mogadishu

Geneva, Switzerland
30 October 2007

About 36 000 Somalis have fled Mogadishu after weekend fighting, the worst in months between Ethiopian troops backing the interim government and Islamist-led rebels, the United Nations refugee agency said on Tuesday.

Most of the displaced headed for the town of Afgooye, 30km to the west, which is already struggling to cope with 100 000 people who left the capital earlier this year, it said.

"After a weekend of violence in Mogadishu there has been another wave of displacement from the capital, with about 36 000 more Somalis fleeing from their homes," spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said.

Aid workers described the fighting as "the worst in months", but the situation appeared to have calmed down since, she told a news briefing in Geneva.

Many people leaving the capital with their household goods piled on trucks, buses and donkey carts had expressed fear that the violence could escalate into major battles in the city.

"They said that insurgents had begun attacking police stations and military bases in broad daylight," Pagonis said.

The fragile Somali government, which has UN backing, has been shaken by an insurgency of Iraq-style roadside bombings, assassinations and suicide attacks since it routed a hard-line Islamist movement in January with the help of Ethiopian tanks and warplanes.

An estimated 400 000 Somalis fled Mogadishu by May, of whom about 125 000 later returned to the coastal city. But renewed violence sparked a new wave of departures in June, with an estimated 90 000 people fleeing, according to the UNHCR.

Reuters

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=323503&area=/
breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/

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Mother Jones:
Workers of the World Unite

Unions are going global, so your job doesn't have to.

Joan Hamilton
October 25 , 2007

This magazine's namesake would not be pleased.

There's a crisis in the labor movement: In the past half century, union membership in the United States has dropped from 35 percent to 13 percent of the work force. As homegrown employers such as Alcoa and Firestone have morphed and prospered in the global economy, American workers have stood pat and lost their shorts. More than 3 million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been cut. Working in the fastest-growing industries—retail, health care, and other human services—tends to be a heartless affair: non-union, temporary, part-time, no health care, no vacation, no retirement. "It has taken unions a long time to realize they've been hallucinating," says Ruth Needleman, a professor of labor studies at Indiana University. "How do you bargain with someone who doesn't care about you?"

In some ways, unions have contributed to workers' woes. Long before Ronald Reagan was in office, labor bosses practiced trickle-down economics. They focused on the salaries and benefits of members in a few core industries such as steel and autos, thinking that their gains would become the standard for other workers. "That's why we don't have national health care," says Needleman. "When other countries were instituting social welfare programs, our unions argued that if the government gave people these benefits, they wouldn't join unions. Today we're left with a tiny corps of organized workers, a perception that unions are selfish, and a huge mass of people without unions."

But a few progressive unions are working hard to beat capital at its own game. After all, if companies can go global, unions can too. This fall, the United Steelworkers held talks in Pittsburgh with the U.K.'s Unite to explore the idea of merging to create the mightiest (or at least the largest) union in the world. Together, the two unions represent 3.4 million active and retired workers. With worsening wages and conditions for workers all over the world, and one country being played off against another, "workers in this new century need a transatlantic union to tame the exploitation of global corporations," said Steelworkers president Leo Gerard in a press conference last April.

The Steelworkers represents 850,000 Canadians and Americans working in the paper, forestry products, steel, aluminum, tire and rubber, mining, glass, chemicals, and petroleum industries—which already makes it the largest industrial union in North America. Since Steelworkers leaders first started taking action on the threat of globalization about a decade ago, they have been coordinating efforts with unions in Germany, Australia, Brazil, and Mexico, as well as in the U.K. Whether the more formal Steelworkers-Unite merger goes ahead (they've given themselves until next spring to work out the details), the two unions have agreed to pool resources to help workers in developing countries, mentioning possible projects in Africa, Columbia, India, and China.

The goal is not to establish one big global bargaining table where wages and benefits are the same everywhere; the world is too complicated for that. Wages are the equivalent of $3.38 a day at the Bridgestone Firestone rubber plantation in Liberia, for instance, and $22.50 per hour plus benefits at the Bridgestone Firestone plant in Des Moines. Rather, the aim is to come up with basic rules that allow workers to make a fair wage and have safe working conditions locally. "Globalization allows multinational corporations to export jobs to the developing world, where oppression and a glut of workers keep wages to a minimum," Gerard says. "This not only destroys North American jobs, it undermines the security and sense of fair play that unions have historically offered here. If we don't raise the standard of living of workers in the developing world, they will be used as cannon fodder against us."

Other unions are co-opting globalism in their own ways. The Teamsters are yoking up with longshoremen in the United States and in Latin America to back each other on strikes and demonstrations. SEIU (Service Employees International Union) is harnessing the power of the janitors, bus drivers, and hotel and security workers who are employed by the same few transnational companies in major cities around the world. Last fall, for example, the SEIU organized 5,000 janitors in Houston. Simultaneous "Justice for Janitors" demonstrations were staged by union brothers and sisters in Mexico City, Moscow, London, and Berlin.

How much will all this fraternizing help unions rise to the challenges posed by multinational corporations? Some argue that globalizing unions is simply "a defensive move—a way of pooling the resources they have," says labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein of the University of California-Santa Barbara. "It's a good thing, but what the movement really needs is better labor laws, universal health care, and a shift to the left politically to make unions more central."

Still, Indiana University's Needleman, whom the Steelworkers hire to teach an annual weeklong leadership course, believes that a little global jujitsu could bring hope and understanding to the beleaguered movement. In fact she herself has hosted worker trips to Brazil. "The unions in other countries, particularly Latin America, are way ahead of us in terms of tying the labor movement to broader social goals," Needleman says. "But it's going to take time for American workers to realize that a Latin American worker is an ally, not an enemy."

Joan Hamilton, a former editor in chief of Sierra magazine, is a freelance writer and editor based in Berkeley, California.

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

© 2007 The Foundation for National Progress

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/10/workers-of-the-world-unite.html

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Página/12:
“Hubo un reconocimiento, pero no a mí”

PRIMERAS DEFINICIONES DE CRISTINA KIRCHNER COMO PRESIDENTA ELECTA

Luego del triunfo electoral, concedió una entrevista a un programa de cable. Sostuvo que las prioridades de su gestión pasarán por el combate a la pobreza y a la desocupación. Explicó que en el caudal de votos obtenido hubo un reconocimiento para la gestión del presidente Kirchner, no a ella.

Martes, 30 de Octubre de 2007

Pasó casi toda la campaña sin conceder entrevistas, pero a menos de 24 horas de su elección como presidenta de los argentinos a partir del próximo 10 de diciembre, Cristina Fernández ofreció un reportaje y enumeró las prioridades que se plantea para su gestión: “Combate a la pobreza y la desocupación, educación, salud y todas las cuestiones que tienen que ver con mejorar la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos y darnos mayor competitividad como país”. También habló de la inflación, de su relación con la oposición y con los medios de comunicación y del futuro de Néstor Kirchner, aunque no ofreció mayores precisiones al respecto. “Va a hacer lo que siempre ha hecho; es un animal político”, dijo y le reconoció el mayor mérito por el triunfo electoral: “Hubo un reconocimiento, pero no a mí porque nunca me la he creído, sino a la gestión del Presidente.”

Después de festejar en Olivos hasta bien entrada la noche, la todavía primera dama pasó allí todo el día. Un grupo de simpatizantes le armó un camino con pétalos de rosas en el ingreso de la Casa de Gobierno por la calle Balcarce, pero no tuvo oportunidad de transitarlo.

En la residencia presidencial, la presidenta electa recibió nuevos saludos de primer nivel, como los del español José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, el francés Nicolás Sarkozy y el ex presidente chileno Ricardo Lagos. También la llamaron del Foreign Office británico y le propusieron “trabajar juntos” en las cuestiones pendientes entre Argentina y el Reino Unido. Entre felicitaciones y reuniones con sus colaboradores, Cristina recibió a Joaquín Morales Solá y le concedió un reportaje para su programa “Desde el llano”. En treinta minutos repasó los siguientes temas:

- Relación con la oposición

Se mostró disgustada porque “no me llamó ninguno de los candidatos que perdió” y reveló que la única política argentina que levantó el teléfono para felicitarla fue la vicejefa de gobierno electa Gabriela Michetti. Más tarde la llamó también Raúl Alfonsín. Además, manifestó que “los acercamientos y los diálogos no pueden solamente ser exigibles al Gobierno, sino que deben ser de los dos lados”.

- Inflación

Consideró “desacertado” hablar de “un fenómeno hiperinflacionario”. Atribuyó esos planteos a “una sobreactuación de tipo electoral” y aseguró que la inflación es la prevista en el presupuesto, además de recordar que el Fondo Monetario Internacional prevé una suba de ese índice de 12,6 por ciento para el año próximo. No mencionó qué piensa hacer para evitar subas en los precios, pero reiteró que se va a adoptar la metodología que se usa en Estados Unidos para realizar las mediciones.

- Indec

Se quejó de que al respecto de lo que ocurre en ese organismo “hubo un relato que no ha sido veraz” y que las personas que fueron desplazadas “estaban con los concursos vencidos”. Definió a sus reemplazantes como “cuadros técnicos del Estado” y acotó que “los 1400 empleados que forman parte del Indec, donde una sola mínima parte sigue en conflicto, tienen también alineación política”.

- Seguridad

“No concibo a la seguridad como un plan diferente al modelo económico vigente”, expuso y añadió que “hay que sostener un modelo de desarrollo social que permita que mayor cantidad de gente tenga trabajo, mejor remunerado y no informal”. Apuntó que a la inseguridad se la combate, además, con educación y salud y acotó que “el tema de la droga y fundamentalmente del paco también está muy anclado al tema de seguridad”.

- Evaluación de las elecciones

“Hubo un reconocimiento, pero no a mí porque nunca me la he creído, sino a la gestión del presidente Kirchner; he sido tributaria de eso”, analizó, aunque dijo sentir también el triunfo como algo propio “porque me siento parte de esa gestión”. Además, relativizó la lectura en el sentido de que el electorado de las grandes ciudades le dio la espalda: “No se puede tomar únicamente como centro urbano los lugares como Córdoba, donde salimos segundos. Mendoza es un centro urbano por excelencia de clase media y ahí ganamos con muchísima amplitud. Hay clase media también en el Gran Tucumán y ganamos ampliamente. Todo el primer cordón que rodea la Capital Federal tiene comportamientos electorales muy parecidos a los de la ciudad y también triunfamos ampliamente”.

- Policía porteña

“El Presidente y el jefe de Gobierno electo, Mauricio Macri, acordaron que iban a obtener la ley que permitiera que el gobierno de la ciudad de Buenos Aires tuviera su propia policía. Eso está cumplido: el Parlamento modificó la famosa Ley Cafiero”, explicó. Mantuvo, además, la línea del oficialismo en cuanto a que el traspaso de la policía a los porteños depende “de una organización federal en la cual hay mucha reticencia por parte de gobiernos provinciales acerca de transferir recursos”.

- Rol del Estado en la sociedad

Planteó “hacer una articulación inteligente entre el Estado y mercado, pero concibiendo al Estado como aquel que necesariamente tiene que actuar en beneficio de los más débiles, que son los usuarios o consumidores frente a intereses que pueden cartelizarse o monopolizarse.

- Relación con la prensa

Dijo que “si los medios vuelven a ser de comunicación y no de oposición, va a ser perfecta” y protestó porque los oficialistas no tienen “el mismo trato” que con los opositores. “A nosotros nos interrogan y a los otros los escuchan. Si han decidido someterme a un interrogatorio, sepan que puedo ejercer el derecho de defensa que me considera el artículo 18 de la Constitución: no me pueden obligar a declarar contra mí misma”, remató. También aconsejó a los medios de comunicación “revisar lo que hacen, pero no por nosotros, sino porque en definitiva le dan una lectura diferente a su lector, a su oyente, a su televidente”.

- Santa Cruz

Después de los conflictos del último año, la elección en esa provincia tenía para los Kirchner una connotación personal y se notó que Cristina disfrutó ese triunfo. “Decían que la izquierda iba a hacer una muy buena elección en Santa Cruz y que otro candidato tenía una excelente opción. Los dirigentes de izquierda que citaban los diarios, a los que les dieron tapas y hablaban en todos los noticieros acerca del feudo de los Kirchner y de que los Kirchner no pueden caminar en Santa Cruz, obtuvieron el 0,50 y el 0,60. Y los del feudo, los Kirchner odiados... obtuve casi el 70 por ciento de los votos, batiendo récords”, destacó. Después enumeró: “De los 24 diputados que se renovaban, sacamos 21. Ganamos todas las municipalidades, menos de Río Gallegos, pero ahí ganamos el Concejo Deliberante, que representa al pueblo”.

- Partidos políticos

“El realineamiento de los partidos políticos se va a dar a través de orientaciones de centroizquierda y centroderecha sin perder las identidades de los partidos porque hay una identidad muy fuerte del peronismo y también del radicalismo”, evaluó.

- Política exterior:

“Hemos resituado nuestro lugar en América latina y retornado a casa”, apuntó a modo de ratificación de la política implementada por Kirchner y planteó un par de cuestiones a futuro: la necesidad de “tener más complementariedad en nuestras economías y de esa manera competir o relacionarnos con otros bloques” y de “ampliar el Mercosur y fundamentalmente el tema de la energía”.

El resultado



La isla bonita

“Que dejen de votar como una isla”, se oyó ayer al jefe de Gabinete muy temprano. Alberto Fernández habló de las elecciones, de los resultados y de lo que, a su criterio, sucede con los porteños. Molesto por la victoria de Elisa Carrió en el distrito, en el que por otra parte es jefe del PJ, pidió a la ciudad que “se integre, sea parte del país y deje de votar como una isla”. Y sin más, habló los “soberbios”: “Soy parte de esta ciudad, he nacido y la amo como quiero a cada uno de los porteños, soy también parte de su lógica y los entiendo bien, pero les voy a seguir pidiendo que algún día la ciudad se integre y sea parte de un país, y deje de votar como una isla y deje de pensar como una isla en el país”. En una lectura diferente, el legislador electo de Diálogo por Buenos Aires, Aníbal Ibarra, dijo que el resultado debía interpretarse como que la ciudad “no tenía dueño político”. Y subrayó que hace poco tiempo Mauricio Macri sacó más del 60 por ciento en la segunda vuelta y el domingo la cosecha del PRO se redujo en casi 47 puntos.

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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-93775-2007-10-30.html

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Página/12:
Tampoco, el renegado

Por Juan Sasturain
Martes, 30 de Octubre de 2007

Es sabido que los galochas, ese pueblo escurridizo que supo hacer liviano pie en las fuentes del Orinoco, cultivaron desde tiempos inmemoriales, junto con la mandioca y el clásico maíz, otras dos cosas mucho más raras de encontrar en América (y en el mundo en general, sin ir más lejos): la soberanía de la voluntad mayoritaria y el respeto por la opinión de las minorías.

Así, en pos del equilibrio entre lo individual y lo colectivo tantas veces buscado por otras sociedades más o menos evolucionadas que la suya, los imaginativos galochas intentaron y practicaron distintas formas de una democracia que ni siquiera sabía su nombre. Y –más allá de logros parciales– no les funcionó. Tras muchos ensayos, descubrieron, solitos como estaban, lo obvio: el problema era el poder. Pero no quién lo tenía o cómo se conseguía o a quién se le entregaba, sino el poder mismo como verbo y como sustantivo: como acción y como estado o atributo.

Al respecto, en un erudito folleto titulado “Tampoco, el renegado, o la voluntad de no poder”, el profesor Augusto Mercapide, única autoridad reconocible y reconocida en todo lo que tiene que ver con el destino y los avatares de este pueblo singular, sostiene que los galochas, gente exagerada, llevaron más lejos que nadie en teoría y práctica la idea de cómo neutralizar los abusos del poder en cualquiera de sus formas. Y empezaron –paradójicamente– abusando ellos mismos del idioma, tensándolo hasta la minucia diferencial más sutil.

Así, toda esa bolsa de gatos semántica que en castellano se esconde tras un único rótulo –la palabra, verbo y nombre, “poder”– y que en inglés se disemina en la dupla de auxiliares modales “can” y “may” y en el sustantivo “power”, recibía un tratamiento mucho más prolijo y exhaustivo entre los habitantes de las volubles fuentes del Orinoco. Así, en la lengua galocha –lamentablemente perdida– se supone que había más de veinte palabras distintas para referirse a los quasi infinitos matices del hecho de poder. Porque una cosa era poder a secas; otra, poder y querer, otra poder y no querer, otra poder poco y sufrir por eso, otra poder pero reservarse, etcétera. Los galochas, filosóficamente, podían lo que hacían, como cualquiera; y hacían lo que podían, como todos. Y así les iba.

Hasta que –según cuenta el profesor Mercapide en su opúsculo– irrumpió para iluminarlos y dar un giro absoluto a estas líneas de pensamiento el irreductible Tampoco, conocido desde niño como “el renegado”. Este galocha singular adquirió ese apodo que sería definitivo cuando sus padres descubrieron que el precocísimo pequeño se salteaba la habitual “etapa del no” –típica de los primeros gestos de afirmación individual del niño– para pasar rápidamente a un nivel superador: la primera vez que (se) negó no dijo “no” sino “tampoco”, con lo que estableció una especie de segundo grado de negación que presuponía –hacia atrás y hacia adelante– la imposibilidad de afirmación alguna: negaba lo puntual y lo substituto o adyacente por venir... Claro que esta doble negación (negar dos veces, negar el no) significaba una afirmación radical que pronto se manifestó, en Tampoco, como voluntad positiva y solidaria.

Con la madurez, Tampoco pudo llegar a formular y poner en práctica su teoría de la “voluntad de no poder” con la que dio un giro copernicano al “problema” tal como se lo planteaban la incipiente filosofía y la inexperiente ciencia política entre los galochas. Definido el poder como espacio no deseable, por ser motivo de corrupción y desasosiego, el acceso a su ejercicio –en lugar de premio– se convirtió en castigo.

No fue necesario entonces esperar que el poder ocasional corrompiera o confundiera a los buenos sino que los mayoritariamente saludables galochas “castigaron” en elecciones libres, limpias y transparentes, a los enfermos de soberbia con diferentes espacios, lugares y momentos de poder: como si fuera una vacuna, a los ansiosos de poder se los convertía en poderosos. Concebido como lugar de servicio a la comunidad, el poder pasó a ser la cárcel de los antisociales obligados a ejercerlo, que de gobernar y no de otra cosa se trataba. Es decir: no podían no poder.

Claro que, como no podía ser de otra manera, el sistema de Tampoco, tampoco funcionó. Pero al menos estaba previsto.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-93783-2007-10-30.html

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The Independent:
King Abdullah flies in to lecture us on terrorism

By Robert Fisk
Published: 30 October 2007

In what world do these people live? True, there'll be no public executions outside Buckingham Palace when His Royal Highness rides in stately formation down The Mall. We gave up capital punishment about half a century ago. There won't even be a backhander – or will there? – which is the Saudi way of doing business. But for King Abdullah to tell the world, as he did in a BBC interview yesterday, that Britain is not doing enough to counter "terrorism", and that most countries are not taking it as seriously as his country is, is really pushing it. Weren't most of the 11 September 2001 hijackers from – er – Saudi Arabia? Is this the land that is really going to teach us lessons?

The sheer implausibility of the claim that Saudi intelligence could have prevented the ondon bombings if only the British Government had taken it seriously, seems to have passed the Saudi monarch by. "We have sent information to Great Britain before the terrorist attacks in Britain but unfortunately no action was taken. And it may have been able to maybe avert the tragedy," he told the BBC. This claim is frankly incredible.

The sad, awful truth is that we fete these people, we fawn on them, we supply them with fighter jets, whisky and whores. No, of course, there will be no visas for this reporter because Saudi Arabia is no democracy. Yet how many times have we been encouraged to think otherwise about a state that will not even allow its women to drive? Kim Howells, the Foreign Office minister, was telling us again yesterday that we should work more closely with the Saudis, because we "share values" with them. And what values precisely would they be, I might ask?

Saudi Arabia is a state which bankrolled – a definite no-no this for discussion today – Saddam's legions as they invaded Iran in 1980 (with our Western encouragement, let it be added). And which said nothing – a total and natural silence – when Saddam swamped the Iranians with gas. The Iraqi war communiqué made no bones about it. "The waves of insects are attacking the eastern gates of the Arab nation. But we have the pesticides to wipe them out."

Did the Saudi royal family protest? Was there any sympathy for those upon whom the pesticides would be used? No. The then Keeper of the Two Holy Places was perfectly happy to allow gas to be used because he was paying for it – components were supplied, of course, by the US – while the Iranians died in hell. And we Brits are supposed to be not keeping up with our Saudi friends when they are "cracking down on terrorism".

Like the Saudis were so brilliant in cracking down on terror in 1979 when hundreds of gunmen poured into the Great Mosque at Mecca, an event so mishandled by a certain commander of the Saudi National Guard called Prince Abdullah that they had to call in toughs from a French intervention force. And it was a former National Guard officer who led the siege.

Saudi Arabia's role in the 9/11 attacks has still not been fully explored. Senior members of the royal family expressed the shock and horror expected of them, but no attempt was made to examine the nature of Wahhabism, the state religion, and its inherent contempt for all representation of human activity or death. It was Saudi Muslim legal iconoclasm which led directly to the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan by the Taliban, Saudi Arabia's friends. And only weeks after Kamal Salibi, a Lebanese history professor, suggested in the late 1990s that once-Jewish villages in what is now Saudi Arabia might have been locations in the Bible, the Saudis sent bulldozers to destroy the ancient buildings there.

In the name of Islam, Saudi organisations have destroyed hundreds of historic structures in Mecca and Medina and UN officials have condemned the destruction of Ottoman buildings in Bosnia by a Saudi aid agency, which decided they were "idolatrous". Were the twin towers in New York another piece of architecture which Wahhabis wanted to destroy?

Nine years ago a Saudi student at Harvard produced a remarkable thesis which argued that US forces had suffered casualties in bombing attacks in Saudi Arabia because American intelligence did not understand Wahhabism and had underestimated the extent of hostility to the US presence in the kingdom. Nawaf Obaid even quoted a Saudi National Guard officer as saying "the more visible the Americans became, the darker I saw the future of the country". The problem is that Wahhabi puritanism meant that Saudi Arabia would always throw up men who believe they had been chosen to "cleanse" their society from corruption, yet Abdul Wahhab also preached that royal rulers should not be overthrown. Thus the Saudis were unable to confront the duality, that protection-and-threat that Wahhabism represented for them.

Prince Bandar, formerly Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Washington, once characterised his country's religion as part of a "timeless culture" while a former British ambassador advised Westerners in Saudi Arabia to "adapt" and "to act with the grain of Saudi traditions and culture".

Amnesty International has appealed for hundreds of men – and occasionally women – to be spared the Saudi executioner's blade. They have all been beheaded, often after torture and grossly unfair trials. Women are shot.

The ritual of chopping off heads was graphically described by an Irish witness to a triple execution in Jeddah in 1997. "Standing to the left of the first prisoner, and a little behind him, the executioner focused on his quarry ... I watched as the sword was being drawn back with the right hand. A one-handed back swing of a golf club came to mind ... the down-swing begins ... the blade met the neck and cut through it like ... a heavy cleaver cutting through a melon ... a crisp moist smack. The head fell and rolled a little. The torso slumped neatly. I see now why they tied wrists to feet ... the brain had no time to tell the heart to stop, and the final beat bumped a gush of blood out of the headless torso on to the plinth."

And you can bet they won't be talking about this at Buckingham Palace today.

http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3109869.ece

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The Nation:
Beyond the Age of Petroleum

by MICHAEL T. KLARE
[from the November 12, 2007 issue]

This past May, in an unheralded and almost unnoticed move, the Energy Department signaled a fundamental, near epochal shift in US and indeed world history: we are nearing the end of the Petroleum Age and have entered the Age of Insufficiency. The department stopped talking about "oil" in its projections of future petroleum availability and began speaking of "liquids." The global output of "liquids," the department indicated, would rise from 84 million barrels of oil equivalent (mboe) per day in 2005 to a projected 117.7 mboe in 2030-barely enough to satisfy anticipated world demand of 117.6 mboe. Aside from suggesting the degree to which oil companies have ceased being mere suppliers of petroleum and are now purveyors of a wide variety of liquid products-including synthetic fuels derived from natural gas, corn, coal and other substances-this change hints at something more fundamental: we have entered a new era of intensified energy competition and growing reliance on the use of force to protect overseas sources of petroleum.

To appreciate the nature of the change, it is useful to probe a bit deeper into the Energy Department's curious terminology. "Liquids," the department explains in its International Energy Outlook for 2007, encompasses "conventional" petroleum as well as "unconventional" liquids-notably tar sands (bitumen), oil shale, biofuels, coal-to-liquids and gas-to-liquids. Once a relatively insignificant component of the energy business, these fuels have come to assume much greater importance as the output of conventional petroleum has faltered. Indeed, the Energy Department projects that unconventional liquids production will jump from a mere 2.4 mboe per day in 2005 to 10.5 in 2030, a fourfold increase. But the real story is not the impressive growth in unconventional fuels but the stagnation in conventional oil output. Looked at from this perspective, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the switch from "oil" to "liquids" in the department's terminology is a not so subtle attempt to disguise the fact that worldwide oil production is at or near its peak capacity and that we can soon expect a downturn in the global availability of conventional petroleum.

Petroleum is, of course, a finite substance, and geologists have long warned of its ultimate disappearance. The extraction of oil, like that of other nonrenewable resources, will follow a parabolic curve over time. Production rises quickly at first and then gradually slows until approximately half the original supply has been exhausted; at that point, a peak in sustainable output is attained and production begins an irreversible decline until it becomes too expensive to lift what little remains. Most oil geologists believe we have already reached the midway point in the depletion of the world's original petroleum inheritance and so are nearing a peak in global output; the only real debate is over how close we have come to that point, with some experts claiming we are at the peak now and others saying it is still a few years or maybe a decade away.

Until very recently, Energy Department analysts were firmly in the camp of those wild-eyed optimists who claimed that peak oil was so far in the future that we didn't really need to give it much thought. Putting aside the science of the matter, the promulgation of such a rose-colored view obviated any need to advocate improvements in automobile fuel efficiency or to accelerate progress on the development of alternative fuels. Given White House priorities, it is hardly surprising that this view prevailed in Washington.

In just the past six months, however, the signs of an imminent peak in conventional oil production have become impossible even for conservative industry analysts to ignore. These have come from the take-no-prisoners world of oil pricing and deal-making, on the one hand, and the analysis of international energy experts, on the other.

Most dramatic, perhaps, has been the spectacular rise in oil prices. The price of light, sweet crude crossed the longstanding psychological barrier of $80 per barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange for the first time in September, and has since risen to as high as $90. Many reasons have been cited for the rise in crude prices, including unrest in Nigeria's oil-producing Delta region, pipeline sabotage in Mexico, increased hurricane activity in the Gulf of Mexico and fears of Turkish attacks on Kurdish guerrilla sanctuaries in Iraq. But the underlying reality is that most oil-producing countries are pumping at maximum capacity and finding it increasingly difficult to boost production in the face of rising international demand.

Even a decision by the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost production by 500,000 barrels per day failed to halt the upward momentum in prices. Concerned that an excessive rise in oil costs would trigger a worldwide recession and lower demand for their products, the OPEC countries agreed to increase their combined output at a meeting in Vienna on September 11. "We think that the market is a little bit high," explained Kuwait's acting oil minister, Mohammad al-Olaim. But the move did little to slow the rise in prices. Clearly, OPEC would have to undertake a much larger production increase to alter the market environment, and it is not at all clear that its members possess the capacity to do that-now or in the future.

A warning sign of another sort was provided by Kazakhstan's August decision to suspend development of the giant Kashagan oil region in its sector of the Caspian Sea, first initiated by a consortium of Western firms in the late '90s. Kashagan was said to be the most promising oil project since the discovery of oil in Alaska's Prudhoe Bay in the late '60s. But the enterprise has encountered enormous technical problems and has yet to produce a barrel of oil. Frustrated by a failure to see any economic benefits from the project, the Kazakh government has cited environmental risks and cost overruns to justify suspending operations and demanding a greater say in the project.

Like the dramatic rise in oil prices, the Kashagan episode is an indication of the oil industry's growing difficulties in its efforts to boost production in the face of rising demand. "All the oil companies are struggling to grow production," Peter Hitchens of Teather & Greenwood brokerage told the Wall Street Journal in July. "It's becoming more and more difficult to bring projects in on time and on budget."

That this industry debilitation is not a temporary problem but symptomatic of a long-term trend was confirmed in two important studies published this past summer by conservative industry organizations.

The first of these was released July 9 by the International Energy Agency (IEA), an affiliate of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the club of major industrial powers. Titled Medium-Term Oil Market Report, it is a blunt assessment of the global supply-and-demand equation over the 2007-12 period. The news is not good.

Predicting that world economic activity will grow by an average of 4.5 percent per year during this period-much of it driven by unbridled growth in China, India and the Middle East-the report concludes that global oil demand will rise by 2.2 percent per year, pushing world oil consumption from approximately 86 million barrels per day in 2007 to 96 million in 2012. With luck and massive new investment, the oil industry will be able to increase output sufficiently to satisfy the higher level of demand anticipated for 2012-barely. Beyond that, however, there appears little likelihood that the industry will be able to sustain any increase in demand. "Oil look[s] extremely tight in five years' time," the agency declared.

Underlying the report's general conclusion are a number of specific concerns. Most notably, it points to a worrisome decline in the yield of older fields in non-OPEC countries and a corresponding need for increased output from the OPEC countries, most of which are located in conflict-prone areas of the Middle East and Africa. The numbers involved are staggering. At first blush, it would seem that the need for an extra 10 million barrels per day between now and 2012 would translate into an added 2 million barrels per day in each of the next five years-a conceivably attainable goal. But that doesn't take into account the decline of older fields. According to the report, the world actually needs an extra 5 million: 3 million to make up for the decline in older fields plus the 2 million in added requirements. This is a daunting and possibly insurmountable challenge, especially when one considers that almost all of the additional petroleum will have to come from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, Sudan, Kazakhstan and Venezuela-countries that do not inspire the sort of investor confidence that will be needed to pour hundreds of billions of dollars into new drilling rigs, pipelines and other essential infrastructure.

Similar causes for anxiety can be found in the second major study released last summer, Facing the Hard Truths About Energy, prepared by the National Petroleum Council, a major industry organization. Because it supposedly provided a "balanced" view of the nation's energy dilemma, the NPC report was widely praised on Capitol Hill and in the media; adding to its luster was the identity of its chief author, former ExxonMobil CEO Lee Raymond.

Like the IEA report, the NPC study starts with the claim that, with the right mix of policies and higher investment, the industry is capable of satisfying US and international oil and natural gas demand. "Fortunately, the world is not running out of energy resources," the report bravely asserts. But obstacles to the development and delivery of these resources abound, so prudent policies and practices are urgently required. Although "there is no single, easy solution to the multiple challenges we face," the authors conclude, they are "confident that the prompt adoption of these strategies" will allow the United States to satisfy its long-term energy needs.

Read further into the report, however, and serious doubts emerge. Here again, worries arise from the growing difficulties of extracting oil and gas from less-favorable locations and the geopolitical risks associated with increased reliance on unfriendly and unstable suppliers. According to the NPC (using data acquired from the IEA), an estimated $20 trillion in new infrastructure will be needed over the next twenty-five years to ensure that sufficient energy is available to satisfy anticipated worldwide demand.

The report then states the obvious: "A stable and attractive investment climate will be necessary to attract adequate capital for evolution and expansion of the energy infrastructure." This is where any astute observer should begin to get truly alarmed, for, as the study notes, no such climate can be expected. As the center of gravity of world oil production shifts decisively to OPEC suppliers and state-centric energy producers like Russia, geopolitical rather than market factors will come to dominate the marketplace.

"These shifts pose profound implications for U.S. interests, strategies, and policy-making," the NPC report states. "Many of the expected changes could heighten risks to U.S. energy security in a world where U.S. influence is likely to decline as economic power shifts to other nations. In years to come, security threats to the world's main sources of oil and natural gas may worsen."

The implications are obvious: major investors are not likely to cough up the trillions of dollars needed to substantially boost production in the years ahead, suggesting that the global output of conventional petroleum will not reach the elevated levels predicted by the Energy Department but will soon begin an irreversible decline.

This conclusion leads to two obvious strategic impulses: first, the government will seek to ease the qualms of major energy investors by promising to protect their overseas investments through the deployment of American military forces; and second, the industry will seek to hedge its bets by shifting an ever-increasing share of its investment funds into the development of nonpetroleum liquids.

The New 'Washington Consensus'

The need for a vigorous US military role in protecting energy assets abroad has been a major theme in American foreign policy since 1945, when President Roosevelt met with King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia and promised to protect the kingdom in return for privileged access to Saudi oil.

In the most famous expression of this linkage, President Carter affirmed in January 1980 that the unimpeded flow of Persian Gulf oil is among this country's vital interests and that to protect this interest, the United States will employ "any means necessary, including military force." This principle was later cited by President Reagan as the rationale for "reflagging" Kuwaiti oil tankers with the American ensign during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-88 and protecting them with US warships-a stance that led to sporadic clashes with Iran. The same principle was subsequently invoked by George H.W. Bush as a justification for the Gulf War of 1991.

In considering these past events, it is important to recognize that the use of military force to protect the flow of imported petroleum has generally enjoyed broad bipartisan support in Washington. Initially, this bipartisan outlook was largely focused on the Persian Gulf area, but since 1990, it has been extended to other areas as well. President Clinton eagerly pursued close military ties with the Caspian Sea oil states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan after the breakup of the USSR in 1991, while George W. Bush has avidly sought an increased US military presence in Africa's oil-producing regions, going so far as to favor the establishment of a US Africa Command (Africom) in February.

One might imagine that the current debacle in Iraq would shake this consensus, but there is no evidence that this is so. In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: possibly fearful that the chaos in Iraq will spread to other countries in the Gulf region, senior figures in both parties are calling for a reinvigorated US military role in the protection of foreign energy deliveries.

Perhaps the most explicit expression of this elite consensus is an independent task force report, National Security Consequences of U.S. Oil Dependency, backed by many prominent Democrats and Republicans. It was released by the bipartisan Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), co-chaired by John Deutch, deputy secretary of defense in the Clinton Administration, and James Schlesinger, defense secretary in the Nixon and Ford administrations, in October 2006. The report warns of mounting perils to the safe flow of foreign oil. Concluding that the United States alone has the capacity to protect the global oil trade against the threat of violent obstruction, it argues the need for a strong US military presence in key producing areas and in the sea lanes that carry foreign oil to American shores.

An awareness of this new "Washington consensus" on the need to protect overseas oil supplies with American troops helps explain many recent developments in Washington. Most significant, it illuminates the strategic stance adopted by President Bush in justifying his determination to retain a potent US force in Iraq-and why the Democrats have found it so difficult to contest that stance.

Consider Bush's September 13 prime-time speech on Iraq. "If we were to be driven out of Iraq," he prophesied, "extremists of all strains would be emboldened.... Iran would benefit from the chaos and would be encouraged in its efforts to gain nuclear weapons and dominate the region. Extremists could control a key part of the global energy supply." And then came the kicker: "Whatever political party you belong to, whatever your position on Iraq, we should be able to agree that America has a vital interest in preventing chaos and providing hope in the Middle East." In other words, Iraq is no longer about democracy or WMDs or terrorism but about maintaining regional stability to ensure the safe flow of petroleum and keep the American economy on an even keel; it was almost as if he was speaking to the bipartisan crowd that backed the CFR report cited above.

It is very clear that the Democrats, or at least mainstream Democrats, are finding it exceedingly difficult to contest this argument head-on. In March, for example, Senator Hillary Clinton told the New York Times that Iraq is "right in the heart of the oil region" and so "it is directly in opposition to our interests" for it to become a failed state or a pawn of Iran. This means, she continued, that it will be necessary to keep some US troops in Iraq indefinitely, to provide logistical and training support to the Iraqi military. Senator Barack Obama has also spoken of the need to maintain a robust US military presence in Iraq and the surrounding area. Thus, while calling for the withdrawal of most US combat brigades from Iraq proper, he has championed an "over-the-horizon force that could prevent chaos in the wider region."

Given this perspective, it is very hard for mainstream Democrats to challenge Bush when he says that an "enduring" US military presence is needed in Iraq or to change the Administration's current policy, barring a major military setback or some other unforeseen event. By the same token, it will be hard for the Democrats to avert a US attack on Iran if this can be portrayed as a necessary move to prevent Tehran from threatening the long-term safety of Persian Gulf oil supplies.

Nor can we anticipate a dramatic change in US policy in the Gulf region from the next administration, whether Democratic or Republican. If anything, we should expect an increase in the use of military force to protect the overseas flow of oil, as the threat level rises along with the need for new investment to avert even further reductions in global supplies.

The Rush to Alternative Liquids

Although determined to keep expanding the supply of conventional petroleum for as long as possible, government and industry officials are aware that at some point these efforts will prove increasingly ineffective. They also know that public pressure to reduce carbon dioxide emissions-thus slowing the accumulation of climate-changing greenhouse gases-and to avoid exposure to conflict in the Middle East is sure to increase in the years ahead. Accordingly, they are placing greater emphasis on the development of oil alternatives that can be procured at home or in neighboring Canada.

The new emphasis was first given national attention in Bush's latest State of the Union address. Stressing energy independence and the need to modernize fuel economy standards, he announced an ambitious plan to increase domestic production of ethanol and other biofuels. The Administration appears to favor several types of petroleum alternatives: ethanol derived from corn stover, switch grass and other nonfood crops (cellulosic ethanol); diesel derived largely from soybeans (biodiesel); and liquids derived from coal (coal-to-liquids), natural gas (gas-to-liquids) and oil shale. All of these methods are being tested in university laboratories and small-scale facilities, and will be applied in larger, commercial-sized ventures in coming years with support from various government agencies.

In February, for example, the Energy Department announced grants totaling $385 million for the construction of six pilot plants to manufacture cellulosic ethanol; when completed in 2012, these "biorefineries" will produce more than 130 million gallons of cellulosic ethanol per year. (The United States already produces large quantities of ethanol by cooking and fermenting corn kernels, a process that consumes vast amounts of energy and squanders a valuable food crop while supplanting only a small share of our petroleum usage; the proposed cellulosic plants would use nonfood biomass as a feedstock and consume far less energy.)

Just as eager to develop petroleum alternatives are the large energy companies, all of which have set up laboratories or divisions to explore future energy options. BP has been especially aggressive; in 2005 it established BP Alternative Energy and set aside $8 billion for this purpose. This past February the new spinoff announced a $500 million grant-possibly the largest of its kind in history-to the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Illinois and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to establish an Energy Biosciences Institute with the aim of developing biofuels. BP said the institute "is expected to explore the application of bioscience [to] the production of new and cleaner energy, principally fuels for road transport."

Just about every large oil company is placing a heavy bet on Canadian tar sands-a gooey substance found in Canada's Alberta province that can be converted into synthetic petroleum-but only with enormous effort and expense. According to the Energy Department, Canadian bitumen production will rise from 1.1 mboe in 2005 to 3.6 mboe in 2030, an increase that is largely expected to be routed to the United States. Hoping to cash in on this bonanza, giant US corporations like Chevron are racing to buy up leases in the bitumen fields of northern Alberta.

But while attractive from a geopolitical perspective, extracting Canadian tar sands is environmentally destructive. It takes vast quantities of energy to recover the bitumen and convert it into a usable liquid, releasing three times as much greenhouse gases as conventional oil production; the resulting process leaves toxic water supplies and empty moonscapes in its wake. Although rarely covered in the US press, opposition in Canada to the environmental damage wreaked by these mammoth operations is growing.

Environmental factors loom large in yet another potential source of liquids being pursued by US energy firms, with strong government support: shale oil, or petroleum liquids pried from immature rock found in the Green River basin of western Colorado, eastern Utah and southern Wyoming. Government geologists claim that shale rock in the United States holds the equivalent of 2.1 trillion barrels of oil-the same as the original world supply of conventional petroleum. However, the only way to recover this alleged treasure is to strip-mine a vast wilderness area and heat the rock to 500 degrees Celsius, creating mountains of waste material in the process. Here too, opposition is growing to this massively destructive assault on the environment. Nevertheless, Shell Oil has established a pilot plant in Rio Blanco County in western Colorado with strong support from the Bush Administration.

Life After the Peak

And so we have a portrait of the global energy situation after the peak of conventional petroleum, with troops being rushed from one oil-producing hot spot to another and a growing share of our transportation fuel being supplied by nonpetroleum liquids of one sort or another. Exactly what form this future energy equation will take cannot be foreseen with precision, but it is obvious that the arduous process will shape American policy debates, domestic and foreign, for a long time.

As this brief assessment suggests, the passing of peak oil will have profound and lasting consequences for this country, with no easy solutions. In facing this future, we must, above all, disavow any simple answers, such as energy "independence" based on the pillage of America's remaining wilderness areas or the false promise of corn-based ethanol (which can supply only a tiny fraction of our transportation requirements). It is clear, moreover, that many of the fuel alternatives proposed by the Bush Administration pose significant dangers of their own and so should be examined carefully before vast public sums are committed to their development. The safest and most morally defensible course is to repudiate any "consensus" calling for the use of force to protect overseas petroleum supplies and to strive to conserve what remains of the world's oil by using less of it.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071112/klare

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ZNet | Economy
Outsourcing Government

by Naomi Klein; Los Angeles Times; October 28, 2007

We didn't want to get stuck with a lemon. That's what Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said to a House committee last month. He was referring to the "virtual fence" planned for the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada. If the entire project goes as badly as the 28-mile prototype, it could turn out to be one of the most expensive lemons in history, projected to cost $8 billion by 2011.

Boeing, the company that landed the contract "the largest ever awarded by the Department of Homeland Security" announced this week that it will finally test the fence after months of delay due to computer problems. Heavy rains have confused its remote-controlled cameras and radar, and the sensors can't tell the difference between moving people, grazing cows or rustling bushes.

But this debacle points to more than faulty technology. It exposes the faulty logic of the Bush administration's vision of a hollowed-out government run everywhere possible by private contractors.

According to this radical vision, contractors treat the state as an ATM, withdrawing massive contracts to perform core functions like securing borders and interrogating prisoners, and making deposits in the form of campaign contributions. As President Bush's former budget director, Mitch Daniels, put it: "The general idea that the business of government is not to provide services but to make sure that they are provided seems self-evident to me."

The flip side of the Daniels directive is that the public sector is rapidly losing the ability to fulfill its most basic responsibilities and nowhere more so than in the Department of Homeland Security, which, as a Bush creation, has followed the ATM model since its inception.

For instance, when the controversial border project was launched, the department admitted that it had no idea how to secure the borders and, furthermore, didn't think it was its job to figure it out. Homeland Security's deputy secretary told a group of contractors that "this is an unusual invitation. We're asking you to come back and tell us how to do our business."

Private companies would not only perform the work, they would identify what work needed to be done, write their own work orders, implement them and oversee them. All the department had to do was sign the checks.

And as one former top Homeland Security official put it: "If it doesn't come from industry, we are not going to be able to get it."

Put simply, if any given job can't be outsourced, it can't be done.

This philosophy, so central to the Bush years, explains statistics like this one: In 2003, the U.S. government handed out 3,512 contracts to companies to perform domestic security functions, from bomb detection to data mining. In the 22-month period ending in August 2006, the Homeland Security Department had issued more than 115,000 security-related contracts.

If government is now an ATM, perhaps the war on terror is best understood not as a war but as a sprawling new economy, one based on continued disaster and instability. In this economy, the Bush team doesn't run the venture exactly; rather, it plays the role of deep-pocketed venture capitalist, always on the lookout for new security start-ups (overwhelmingly headed by former employees of the Pentagon and Homeland Security). Roger Novak, whose firm invests in homeland security companies, explains it like this: "Every fund is seeing how big the [government] trough is and asking, how do I get a piece of that action?"

The Boeing border contract is just one piece of that action. Another, of course, is the security contractor boom in Iraq, currently starring Blackwater USA.

Last month, when the Iraqi government accused Blackwater guards of massacring civilians in Baghdad, it became clear that the U.S. Embassy had no intention of severing ties with Blackwater, because it could not function without it.

Perhaps that's why that same bureau rushed to respond to the Iraqi government's allegations in the September shooting with a "spot report" of its own: that Blackwater guards had come under attack and had responded accordingly. Days later, it emerged that an embassy contractor wrote the report, a contractor who worked for Blackwater. The administration then sent in the FBI to investigate the shootings. Yet it quickly emerged that the FBI investigators could well be guarded by Blackwater. The FBI announced that other arrangements would be made, but this was an exception.

And remember Hurricane Katrina, when contractors, including Blackwater, descended on New Orleans? FEMA was already so hollowed-out by then that it had to hire a contractor to help manage all the contractors. And with all the controversies, the Army recently decided it needed to update its manual for dealing with contractors, giving the job of drafting the new policy to one of its major contractors.

It still looks like a government, with impressive buildings, presidential news briefings, policy battles. But pull back the curtain and there is nobody home.

The Blackwater scandal could have provided an opportunity to question the wisdom of turning state security into a for-profit activity, but not in today's Washington. Instead, rather than replacing its cowboy contractors with troops, the State Department says it will put video cameras on the vehicles they guard.

Video surveillance is one of the most lucrative sectors of the war-on-terror economy. This could even turn out to be great news for the top executives at Blackwater, who have launched a new private intelligence company billed as a "one-stop service able to meet all the intelligence, operational and security needs." If the past is any indication, there is no reason why the men from Blackwater cannot be contracted to spy on Blackwater. Indeed, it would be the perfect expression of the hollow state that Bush built.

Naomi Klein is the author of many books, including her most recent, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which will be published in September. Visit Naomi’s website at nologo.org.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=10&ItemID=14159