Elsewhere Today 470
Aljazeera:
Lebanon mourns army leader
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 14, 2007
10:08 MECCA TIME, 7:08 GMT
Lebanon is observing a day of national mourning as it holds a funeral for a senior army general whose death has raised fears of deepening a political crisis in the country.
A coffin holding Major-General Francois al-Hajj, who was killed on Wednesday by a car bomb, was taken to his family home in Baabda, Beirut, on Friday.
A funeral mass is being held for the general, who was a Maronite Christian, in a cathedral in Harissa, northeast of Beirut. His body will be laid to rest in his native village of Rmaich, in southern Lebanon.
On his death, al-Hajj was promoted to major-general.
Al-Hajj was tipped to take leadership of Lebanon's army if the current chief, General Michel Suleiman, who is the leading candidate for the vacant presidency, is elected to that post.
Rula Amin, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Lebanon, said that Cardinal Nasrallah Boutorus Sfeir, the Maronite Christian patriarch, set a measured tone in his address to the memorial service in Harissa.
"He tried to stay away from politics. He did say that al-Hajj was a great officer and that he tried to put as much as possible into the army," she said.
"[Sfeir] said the army is the protector of this country [but] it was interesting that the patriarch stayed away from the political manoeuvring in Lebanon," she said, adding that Sfeir was considered to be frustrated with the failure to agree on a unified political programme for the country.
Presidential vacuum
Lebanon has been without a president since November 23, when Emile Lahoud stepped down at the end of his term.
The ruling March 14 majority bloc and the opposition, which is led by Shia party Hezbollah, have so far been unable to agree on a successor to Lahoud.
Suleiman has emerged as a consensus presidential candidate, but the constitution has to be amended to allow him to take office.
Political wrangling between the majority and the opposition has held up the required constitutional amendments, meaning that parliamentary voting sessions have also been postponed.
Al-Hajj's murder has sparked warnings that Lebanon could sink deeper into its most serious crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.
Senior commander
On Wednesday, security agents detained four Lebanese in whose names the car used in the bombing was registered, a security official said.
The individuals were detained near Ein el-Hilweh Palestinian refugee camp near Sidon, which is considered to be a base for radical Palestinian fighters.
Authorities are investigating if the assassination was planned by al-Qaeda-inspired fighters seeking vengeance against al-Hajj.
The commander led operations against fighters from Fatah al-Islam, which is ideologically close to al-Qaeda, hiding in a Palestinian refugee camp this year.
Fatah al-Islam was defeated by the Lebanese army after 15 weeks of fighting at the Nahr al-Bared camp, near the northern city of Tripoli.
No group or individual has claimed responsibility for al-Hajj's killing.
All schools and universities have been closed in Lebanon as part of the day of mourning.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/EF4BE8DF-F0CA-4BC5-8D54-F1C97EA8C865.htm
AllAfrica:
At Least Six Dead in Sectarian Violence
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
13 December 2007
Kano
At least six people have been killed and 30 critically injured since clashes between Muslim and Christian communities in the north-central Nigerian city of Bauchi broke out on 11 December, Red Cross workers and residents said.
Some 3,000 people have fled their homes in the area of the fighting, witnesses said. The government has ordered a 9pm to 6am curfew and closed the local university, which has often been the site of violent clashes.
Fighting started 11 December and continued to the next day, following a dispute over the planned construction of a mosque at a secondary school in Yelwa - a mixed Muslim and Christian neighbourhood of the city.
"We have recovered six dead bodies," Adamu Abubakar, Red Cross director in Bauchi, told IRIN by telephone.
"The situation is still tense and hundreds of people have fled their homes and are now seeking refuge in police barracks," Abubakar said.
Mu'azu Hardawa, a journalist, said he saw one charred body in a gutter. He said homes, vehicles and other structures have been burned.
"I counted 20 houses, eight cars, five motorcycles, two mosques and two churches all burnt in the violence," said Hardawa, who accompanied Bauchi state governor, Isa Yuguda, on a visit to the neighbourhood on 12 December.
Hardawa said on the second day of the violence people were fighting using locally made weapons such as machetes, daggers and clubs.
People have fled their homes for fear of getting caught up in the fighting, Godwin Agbara, a local journalist, told IRIN by phone from the police barracks where he and his family are staying. "I left my home because it is not safe for me to stay as tension is still high. I can't risk my life and that of my family."
Agbara said people are sleeping in the open. "The National Emergency Management Agency has brought mattresses and blankets while Red Cross provides medical supplies but we feed ourselves which is not easy."
A government official said troops have been deployed in the city, which has a population of about 1 million and is in the state of Bauchi. "Apart from the curfew military troops have been deployed from Gombe, Plateau and Adamawa states to patrol the city and ensure the return of normalcy," Muhammad Abdullahi, the governor's spokesman, told IRIN by phone from Bauchi.
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2007 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved.
AlterNet: Big Coal's Dirty Plans
for Our Energy Future (with shocking photos)
By Antrim Caskey, AlterNet
Posted on December 14, 2007
Just as the American people and the world are beginning to recognize the necessity of shifting to renewable energies, Big Coal, in collusion with an out-of-step administration, is pushing their dirty fossil fuel as the solution to our nation's energy crisis.
Big Coal and its cohorts envision a "clean coal technology" future fueled by liquifying and gasifying coal, capturing the carbon emissions and injecting them underground. By 2030 the West Virginia Division of Energy - a nascent state agency formed in July, 2007 - wants to oust oil and exalt coal by displacing the 1.3 billion gallons of foreign oil the state currently imports every year.
The WVDoE believes "that higher energy prices are providing and will continue to provide market opportunities" for a variety of alternative coal technologies including "coal waste, coal fines and coal bed methane," according to a document released in December 2007 called, "A Blueprint for the Future."
But scientists and environmentalists say "clean coal" does not exist; it is a misnomer and an oxymoron. The National Resources Defense Council has said, using the term "clean coal" makes about as much sense as saying "safe cigarettes." The extraction and cleaning of coal inevitably decimate ecosystems and communities.
Citing abundant supplies of quality domestic coal, escalating oil prices that are hoving around $100 per barrel, and security concerns raised by dependence on foreign oil, the coal industry is chomping at the bit to secure their stake in the false pursuit of domestic energy independence through a federally assisted coal-based economy. But as the world wakes up to the climate crisis and people learn more about modern coal mining and the continuing exploitation of Appalachia, which has sickened entire communities, polluted the water and air, and condemned vast sections of an ecologically extraordinary land to death, the coal industry faces an increasingly uphill battle against growing public awareness and concern.
Just this year, plans for a dozen new coal plants in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Kansas and others have been repudiated by the growing public awareness and concern about the role of coal and other fossil fuels in our climate crisis. Playing on stereotypes and employing scare tactics about the unpredictability of the Middle East, the coal industry is developing a Frankenstein-like future for U.S. energy needs.
In Kansas, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius recently blocked plans for two coal-fired electricity plants; afterwards, on Nov. 5, a full page ad in Kansas newspapers explained that now, because of Sebelius' decision, "Kansas will import more natural gas from countries like Russia, Venezuela and Iran." The ad displayed the grinning faces of the leaders of these countries and continued, "Without new coal-fueled plants in our state, experts predict that electric bills will skyrocket and Kansans will be more dependent than ever on hostile, foreign energy sources." In fact, Kansas exports natural gas to other states and the United States does not even import natural gas from Russia, Venezuela or Iran, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.
Why carbon capture is no safety net
Nationwide there are grandiose plans for more than 100 new coal-fired power plants but that will all hinge on being able to sell the public and legislators on outfitting and funding these new plants with Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology. This process siphons off or "captures" carbon dioxide before it can escape into the atmosphere, contributing to acid rain, smog and warming the planet. The sequestered carbon would then be pumped and stored underground.
But is it really possible to bury our daily CO2 emission? Australia's renown physicist, Karl Kruszelnicki, who is running for public office on the Climate Change Coalition ticket, told the Sydney Morning Herald on Nov. 1, "One cubic kilometer of CO2 to get rid of every day? It's not possible! But they don't tell you that that's what they've got to get rid of. They make reassuring noises that they're spending millions looking for underground caverns. But I'm here to tell you that they're not going to find it ... The point is that they can only store 1,000th of 1 percent, not all their daily output."
Not only do we not have the capacity to store all the CO2 we produce, but the technology isn't there yet. The coal industry acknowledges that CCS is 15 years away, but continues to promulgate the myth of "clean coal technology" and to guide generous government subsidies to themselves and to West Virginia universities, assigning valuable research money to dirty technology. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's 2007 report "The Future of Coal" stated that "there is no standard for measurement, monitoring, and verification of CO2 distribution. Duration of post-injection monitoring is an unresolved issue."
In other words, Big Coal is betting on a pipe dream with an entire ecosystem at stake. Adding CCS to plans for the more than 100 proposed coal-fired power plants on the drawing board would increase operating budgets by 50 percent to 80 percent. And the gasifying and liquifying of coal into syn-gas and diesel would create potential emissions twice as carbon-rich as petroleum based gasoline or natural gas. If Big Coal gets its way, the U.S. Air Force will cruise the skies on liquid coal fuel - spewing dangerously concentrated CO2 into our fragile atmosphere, and we'll be building more polluting plants based on false promises from an outlaw industry.
Exacerbating the water crisis
To many observers, the next natural resource wars will be waged over water, not oil or coal. People in the United States are waking up to the reality of a looming water crisis, but the coal industry is still advocating for a technology that is part of the problem, not the solution.
The U.S. Department of Energy stated in December 2006, that the demand for water to produce coal conversion fuels "threaten our limited water supply." Coal conversion - gasification or liquefaction - requires an absurd amount of fresh water. Each new Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle (IGCC) or Coal to Liquid (CTL) plant will require millions of gallons of fresh water every day. And these new plants will require even more coal.
Big Coal's proposed plans will require a large increase in coal extraction - at least 15 percent more, though some reports quote as high as a 45 percent increase in coal production would be necessary to fuel "clean coal technology." The surge in demand for coal would be met with a surge in mountaintop removal coal mining, which means more water pollution. Mountaintop removal mining and the chemical cleaning of coal also threatens Appalachian headwater streams, which are the drinking water source for the southeastern United States - an area that has endured frightening water shortages this year in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.
The coal-to-liquid plants that coal state politicians like Gov. Joe Manchin, III of West Virginia and Gov. Ernie Fletcher of Kentucky are scrambling to site in their states would have one consequence that many observers underestimate or ignore: the increase in production of coal sludge - one of the least known and least regulated toxic wastes in the United States - a direct threat to water supplies.
Ben Stout, a biologist from Wheeling Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., who testified in the landmark Bragg v. Robertson case, where 88 community members sued a coal operator for destroying their land, has witnessed the environmental and human health devastation wreaked on the unique mountain ecosystems and communities of Appalachia firsthand.
"Clean Coal Technologies is a misnomer," he said. "There's nothing clean about coal. The extraction end is not addressed; if you live in southern West Virginia, the landscape you grew up in has been destroyed and rearranged. The question is, why are so many people in West Virginia so desperate to get hooked up to county water supply?"
The answer is: toxic coal sludge. Coal sludge, laden with heavy metals found in coal and released during extraction, like arsenic, chromium, cadmium and mercury, has been pumped underground in West Virginia for decades, with scant regulatory oversight. The sludge has intercepted underground water tables, from which mountain communities draw their drinking water. Coal sludge also contains carcinogenic chemicals like floculants, which are used to process coal.
In West Virginia, the second-largest coal-producing state in the nation, more than 470 mountaintops have been blown apart, 800 square miles of the most diverse temperate hardwood forest razed and replaced with more than 4,000 valley fills and 675 toxic coal sludge ponds. By 2012, the U.S. government estimates that we will have destroyed 2,500 square miles of pristine Appalachia. Currently there are over 107 trillion gallons of coal slurry stored or permitted to be stored in active West Virginia "impoundments."
The total mechanization of coal extraction epitomized by mountaintop removal/valley fill coal mining has buried thousands of miles of vital headwater streams and pumped previously mined lands full of sludge. The coal industry says that it has "elevated" some streams - after they've buried them upstream - relocating them and "repurposing" them into chemical spillways called National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) streams.
Coal sludge, the waste by-product of the chemical cleaning of coal in preparation for shipping to market, is initially put into surface ponds, but eventually this chemically concentrated, pudding-like waste leaches into the groundwater. In southern West Virginia, where the largest seams of coal lie, whole communities have been poisoned over years by mining waste that has contaminated their drinking water.
Coal sludge is a disaster waiting to happen, like the 2.8 billion gallons of toxic sludge that stand behind a 325-foot, leaking, unsound dam of slate, 400 yards from the Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, W.Va. Or, Brushy Fork, in Boone County, W.Va., one of the largest coal sludge dumps in the world, holding back 9 billion gallons of coal waste.
Sludge is also injected underground into the sprawling abandoned mine works of decades past. Coal sludge is turning up in the water in Mingo County, W.Va., where documentation of this practice stretches back for more than 30 years. Residents of Mingo County have suffered catastrophic illness after the toxic sludge breached the local aquifers that feed home wells. More than 650 of these residents have signed on to a massive class-action lawsuit against the offending coal company, Massey Energy.
Pursuing "clean coal technology" will cause an increase in the production of coal and toxic coal waste which contains dangerous levels of arsenic, barium, cadmium, coper, iron, lead, manganese and zinc. In some cases, there are no standards by which to measure contaminants because some have never been found in drinking water before.
While scrubbers on smoke stacks have cleaned coal fired power plant emissions considerably, the cleaning on the combustion end causes the processing of coal for market to be exponentially dirtier. The coal going to market is cleaner burning today, with lower sulfur and mercury content, but these dangerous elements are left behind in the coal sludge and in drinking water.
The dirty truth about "clean coal"
The environmental destruction caused by mountaintop removal coal extraction is just one of many reasons to immediately transition out of coal. A plethora of substantial hurdles for the alternative coal industry include technological uncertainties, billion dollar budgets, lack of project partners willing to invest in coal, growing concern about carbon emissions from coal fired power plants, uncertainty about future environmental regulations, rising constructions costs and an array of water contamination issues.
But, we've been here before. In response to the energy crisis of the 1970s, the U.S. government invested $15 billion in a failed attempt to jump-start the coal-based synthetic fuel industry including the infamous 1.5 billion syn-fuel plant in Beulah, N.D. In the end, the '80s era attempt at gasification and liquefaction of coal failed miserably because of volatile oil prices bankrupting the nascent industry leaving taxpayers with a $330 million loss.
The newborn West Virginia Division of Energy - formed to put a better face on coal - would like to institutionalize all possible manifestations of coal production. The state agency says it would like to surround coal extraction sites and the coal-fired power plants with "additional advance coal opportunities" like the "production of ammonia nitrate from coal, as well as nitrates for fertilizer."
These processes require the same copious amounts of water as CTL and IGCC plants. WVDoE's outline for an energy future goes hand-in-hand with what mountain people call the declaration of a "National Sacrifice Zone" fueled by a plan to depopulate the coal-rich region of the southern mountains. A similar strategy was publicly declared when the federal government found uranium under Native American lands in the Four Corners area in the 1970s. In the end, the uranium was deemed more important than the land and the people; vast regions of Native American lands were declared "National Sacrifice Zones," and people were forced from their homelands.
Massey Energy's CEO, Don Blankenship, recently suggested the idea of a far-reaching coal industrial complex upon releasing a statement regarding the purchase of vast parcel of coal lands, increasing Massey's reserve holding to 100 million tons in Northern Appalachia. "This region is becoming increasingly important to the coal and energy industry, and this transaction will enable us to take advantage of the growth in demand for Northern Appalachian coal," he said. Massey's newly acquired coal lands are in West Virginia, across the Ohio River from Meigs County, Ohio, where a notorious cluster of coal-fired power plants are concentrated.
And momentum is building in the region. At a coal-to-liquids conference in Beckley, W.Va., in August this year, U.S. Sen. Jay Rockefeller sent word to the crowd that, "We need the equivalent of the Apollo and Manhattan Projects that would provide billions in federal funding for research and development so that the best and brightest engineers and scientific minds can tackle carbon capture sequestration and CTL development."
It is time to stop the momentum and break our coal habit. Instead we need an Apollo and Manhattan project to replace coal with solar, wind and geo-thermal or our kids will be stuck cleaning up after the dirtiest energy industry. Coal companies are notorious for leaving their mess behind.
"The worst offenders declare bankruptcy, opting to clear their plate of financial obligations and skip town," says Earthjustice attorney Lisa Evans. "Residents are left with poisoned soil and water; taxpayers are stuck with a hefty clean up bill." Only 3 percent to 5 percent of West Virginia mined lands have been reclaimed and developed - the Twisted Gun Golf Course in Mingo County, Mt. View High School in McDowell County and a FBI complex in Clarksburg, W.Va., are all built on unstable, previously mined lands - but the lands can never be truly reclaimed because of the extent of the destruction. Large-scale surface mining has converted forests to grasslands, resulting in a loss of carbon sequestration capacity of approximately 1.4 million acres, according to Stout.
When Big Coal talks about economic benefits of CTL, they talk about how cheap raw coal is and how we need to stick with cheap energy. But they avoid talking about the budgets in the multi-billions, the fact that CCS is unproven and untested commercially, and the externalities of extracting coal: the decimation of Appalachia's ecosystems and communities.
It is impossible to estimate the true cost of coal in a dollar figure - how do you calculate the destruction of animal habitats, forests, fresh water, heritage, family history, hometowns, livelihoods, and personal health? When you add it all up, coal costs too much!
The plunder and destruction of West Virginia began with a plan in 1760 called the Great Land Grab, when a small group of wealthy Americans plotted to buy the coal-rich lands out from under the mountain people who didn't know the value of what was beneath their homes. Today, coal advocates ignore the global climate crisis, while pushing untested coal-based technology and scaring Americans about our dependence on foreign oil, hoping to fuel the planet with their coal, regardless of the consequences.
No matter what, the immediate transition away from coal is necessary and inevitable, as is a moratorium on all new coal-fired power plants. The world is coming to understand the impacts of dirty energies like coal and the need for sustainable, renewable, clean energy. James Hansen, the leading climate scientist at NASA, who shared the Nobel Prize this year with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), testified as a private citizen at the Iowa Utilities board and said, "Coal will determine whether we continue to increase climate change or slow human impact."
The coal industry's proposed path to a coal-based energy independent future for the United States is like laying down a 16-lane superhighway through the bedrooms of coal-rich regions like Appalachia. "Clean coal technology" would require a sizable increase in coal extraction and for the mountain communities of Central Appalachia, already suffering under the mountaintop removal/valley fill coal-mining campaign, "clean coal technology" is a highway to hell. We have a choice - let's build a new road to renewable energy and sustainable communities.
Antrim Caskey is a Brooklyn-based independent photojournalist who has been reporting on the human and environmental costs of Mountaintop Removal/Valley Fill coal mining since May 2005.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/70475/
Asia Times:
British 'success' under siege in Afghanistan
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Dec 15, 2007
KARACHI - British troops have once again recaptured the less than a few square kilometers of the district headquarters of Musa Qala town in Helmand province from the Taliban, but, as before, it could turn out to be a pyrrhic victory.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) headquarters in Kabul have heralded this week's operations as a "most strategic and significant success" in the province, where 80% of Afghanistan's poppy cultivation is located.
British troops have seized Musa Qala before, but then have become virtual prisoners in their barracks. Indeed, last year they were only able to vacate the town after striking a truce with the Taliban, who controlled all the surrounding areas of the inhospitable terrain.
The Taliban put up token resistance this week, according to a Taliban commander in Kandahar, Moulvi Abdul Jalil, who told Asia Times Online on telephone that the organisation now aims to concentrate its efforts on Kandahar province and has already captured two districts near Kandahar city.
With regard to Musa Qala, Mullah Noormal (a jihadi alias), a lieutenant of Mullah Abdul Bari, said in a satellite phone interview with Asia Times Online, "They [British] fired continuous artillery shells for two days on the civilian population and as a result the people evacuated the area. The Taliban did not receive any casualties as we did not actually fight. Civilians were the one victims. We were under the command of Mullah Abdul Bari and retreated when the troops rolled into town.
"Now that the troops are in Musa Qala, we have taken over positions nearby, namely the towns of Raigi and Shaban. The British troops are now once again trapped, like they were in 2006. We will now retaliate at a time of our choice. They don't have even offices to stay in in Musa Qala as we destroyed the Olaswali [administrative office] before leaving the town," said Noormal.
"Now they are in Musa Qala's headquarters and we are sitting in all the villages around Musa Qala. They don't have a way forward or backwards.''
Noormal's comments could be taken with a pinch of salt, but they are not entirely untrue. This correspondent spent considerable time traveling in all the districts of Helmand province under the control of the Taliban (and also those under British control. He saw the area extensively through the eyes of the Taliban late last year and through the eyes of NATO forces early this year.
Beyond Greskh district, on the way to Musa Qala, there is no road network. Vehicles have to travel on wide deserted plains, following the tire marks of other vehicles. The average speed is less than 10 kilometers an hour. The approach to Musa Qala is marked by agriculture fields and tress. The town itself comprises some shops, a hospital, a few mosques and inns and the district headquarters.
NATO's obsession with Helmand
It is clear that NATO is obsessed with Helmand province in order to complete the renovation of Kajaki Dam, a hydroelectric project that will ensure uninterrupted power supply to Kandahar and Helmand provinces. This is strategically significant for a backward region where roads do not exist and the people still rely on natural rain water reservoirs.
Helmand shares a lawless border with Pakistan through which smugglers carry goods to Iran via Pakistan's Balochistan province. Kandahar province lies to its east. The bumper poppy crops in Helmand that make their way through Pakistan and Iran to Europe earn the Taliban huge dividends to fuel their war against NATO. And the smuggling routes are reliable supply lines for arms and human resources to flow into Afghanistan.
From the province's southern district of Gramsir, bordering Pakistan, to the northern end of Baghran, large areas are partially or completely under Taliban control. Partial control means that district headquarters are under the control of the Kabul administration and all surrounding villages are under the control of the Taliban.
British authorities in Helmand confirm that poppy cultivation takes place across the province. Drug-processing labs are mostly in Taliban-controlled Sangin district, north of Gramsir. The trafficking routes pass through the government-controlled provincial capital of Lashkargah, between those two districts, with the connivance of Afghan security before going on through Taliban areas to Pakistan. Using exactly the same route via Pakistan, arms are smuggled into Helmand then spread all over Afghanistan.
In this context, NATO is once again desperate to cut off these vital arteries.
The scope of success
US-led forces entered Helmand province without much resistance during the invasion of 2001 because it was a collective tribal decision to say goodbye to the Taliban and welcome the new power. It was believed the incoming forces would be able to provide basic necessities such as water, electricity, food and ultimately prosperity.
This did not happen, while efforts were made to curtail poppy cultivation, a vital cash crop. By 2005, the tribes - once again unanimously - decided that it was time to boot out the foreign forces (rather than welcome the Taliban again) so they could grow their poppy and lead their lives according to their own traditions and tribal codes without the intervention of the non-local Afghan army and police.
They did allow the Taliban to operate, and foreign forces were driven away from many areas. However, apart from Baghran district, which is completely ruled by the Taliban, and Lashkargah, which is run by the Afghan government, all districts are run by local tribal councils, which allow the Taliban to stay.
From December 2006 until now, British Commonwealth Office staff and the British task force stationed in Helmand have tried their level best to make Helmand "civilized". They have opened schools, rebuilt mosques, dug wells, launched programs for capacity building and many other development projects in coordination with tribal elders. But this has not delivered the expected results, as the population remains obsessed to drive out the foreigners.
It should be stressed that this does not necessarily mean that people are fully committed to the Taliban and their ways. Except for Baghran, most places are manned by pro-Taliban commanders who don't represent the Taliban hardcore - they are just local tribal warriors who have joined the Taliban rank and file for the time being.
The greatest challenge facing NATO is to retain control of the recaptured region of Musa Qala and win desperately needed indigenous support. This is possible through two means: complete administrative liberty for the people, which means tribal rule, and the financial freedom for them to grow poppy and trade (read smuggle). Once NATO agrees to this, the people will be won over and the Taliban will be sidelined.
It's a tough choice. Meanwhile, the Taliban have captured two districts near Kandahar to build up pressure in that province to distract NATO from Helmand.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/IL15Df03.html
Clarín:
El regreso de la política
ENTREVISTA A TONI NEGRI
El ensayista italiano anuncia el fin de la posmodernidad, al menos en su rasgo político de indiferencia ante el bien común. Dice que recomienza la narración de un proceso de liberación. En esta charla analiza la situación actual del capitalismo y sus derivaciones en el trabajo. Sus posturas han conocido las objeciones de Laclau, Dri y Borón, entre otros, que lo acusan de un exceso de utopismo y de no tener en cuenta las dimensiones nacionales de la lucha política.
MARIANA CANAVESE Y BRUNO FORNILLO
08.12.2007 | Clarin.com | Revista Ñ
Suele decirse que la Italia de fines de los años 60 y gran parte de los 70 estuvo inmersa en un grado de movilización colectiva que operó como una suerte de laboratorio de las políticas de emancipación. En Argentina, tras visitar Bolivia y Venezuela, el filósofo Antonio Negri -uno de los animadores de aquel ciclo y de la renovación de ese discurso-, enuncia el tiempo de una nueva narración de las prácticas políticas. Sujeto a múltiples lecturas, interpreta que la recepción local de su obra ha sido "negativa y limitada" respecto de las discusiones que detonó en otras regiones del continente.
-Hay un grado de vitalismo que usted expresa fuertemente y que contrasta con quienes subrayan la discontinuidad de la política. ¿En qué se funda ese optimismo?
-No tengo optimismo como tampoco vitalismo. Si usted dice que en la filosofía contemporánea hay posiciones mortuorias en vez de vitalistas, diría que son las fundamentales. Basta pensar en Heidegger, que es la filosofía de la muerte. La actitud represiva sólo puede organizarse sobre la muerte y el miedo. Por otra parte, es lo que siempre han enseñado los curas: la muerte como fin de la vida y el pecado como organización de la vida. Veamos, en cambio, cuál es la pasión fundamental que está en la base... Yo considero que el ser, esta cuestión de la que tanto la filosofía como la política deben ocuparse, es un ser productivo. Es una posición que tiene una historicidad, de Maquiavelo, a Spinoza, Marx y el posestructuralismo. Es una línea respecto de la cual apostamos como apostamos siempre en la vida. Pienso que la vida es una cosa malditamente pesada, dura, pero que es construida. Pensemos en un bebé que nace, si no fuéramos un poco optimistas y no lo amáramos, moriría de inmediato, y, en general, debemos tomar ese ejemplo para todo lo que sucede en la vida. Es sólo el amor, la solidaridad, la reciprocidad, lo que permite que la vida se reproduzca y pasar de las fases más elementales -la asistencia a un bebé- a lo que está hecho de ayudarse, de enseñarse el lenguaje, de trabajar -cosa que nunca hacemos solos-, y así sucesivamente. Es este amor, en sentido ontológico -no tiene nada que ver con Freud ni con la pornografía-, amor verdadero, sólido, el que construye la vida. ¿A eso lo quiere llamar optimismo? Llámelo optimismo. Ciertamente, si no existiera este optimismo -que no es optimismo sino simple realismo-, la vida no existiría.
-Respecto de las pasiones, ¿cuál ha sido la influencia de Spinoza en su pensamiento?
-Perdón si hago un poco de cronología de mi vida. Nací bajo el fascismo y viví mis primeros años durante la guerra, hasta los 12 o 13 años. Y la guerra me marcó muchísimo, la guerra, la miseria, el esfuerzo de vivir. Fui comunista antes de ser marxista. Cuando tenía 20 años, trabajé en un kibutz en Israel, y allí me hice comunista, sobre la exigencia de una vida en común,Experimenté esa fase de Israel que fue muy bella. Después me puse a trabajar en política y me volví marxista. Me inserté sobre todo en un proceso de lucha, entre los años 60 y 70, que fue creativo, realmente formidable, y que permitió desarrollar una crítica extremadamente fuerte. En Italia, el 68 no fue un mayo, no fue un mes, fueron 10 años que nos permitieron, a mí, a miles, a millones de compañeros, desplegar una crítica del capitalismo como crítica, justamente, del modo en que el capitalismo maneja las pasiones. Luego de lo cual fui a la cárcel, y ahí releí a Spinoza interpretando, criticando, mi viejo marxismo, pero recuperando al mismo tiempo esa capacidad spinoziana de fundar sobre el mecanismo conatus vivente, el conatus de vida, el conatus sensible, el amor o la cupiditas, como el momento de asociación constructiva y constituyente. Y después, el amor racional, ontológicamente constructivo, que me permitió reconquistar no sólo el sentido del trabajo, de la actividad, que el marxismo me había enseñado, sino ese sentido de la pasión que debe cubrir los conceptos y permitirles desarrollarse. Cuando, por otros motivos, me encontraba frente a un análisis constitucional positivo, aprendí de esa manera, por ejemplo, a evaluar si detrás de cada fórmula jurídica existía un conjunto de pasiones que era cultivado. Y cuando, posteriormente, en la etapa que siguió a la prisión, me encontré con la temática de la crítica de las instituciones, del globalismo, del desarrollo de la biopolítica, el desarrollo foucaultiano, esas cosas se unieron y se dio esa síntesis que fue más o menos correcta. No creo que la historia de la filosofía nos enseñe mucho, al contrario. Deleuze decía: "Espero ser el primero que no fue castrado por la historia de la filosofía".
-¿Por qué decidió que su vida esté trazada por la política?
-La política, o sea, la elección de los conocimientos y las actividades que llevamos sobre la cosa común, sobre el Commonwealth, sobre la riqueza común, es fundamental. En general, la política, es decir, este conocimiento, esta experiencia ampliada del saber común para la reproducción del común, de la libertad, está en la base de todo saber.
-Recientemente dio en la Argentina una charla sobre "Commonwealth"...
-"Commonwealth" es el tercer volumen, escrito junto con Michael Hardt, de la serie que iniciamos con "Imperio" y que continuó con "Multitud". Es un texto probablemente más filosófico y, por ende, más político, en el sentido de que nos hacemos preguntas absolutamente esenciales: ¿Qué es lo político? ¿Qué es el bien y el mal? ¿Qué es el odio o la guerra? El libro empieza con una reivindicación de la pobreza como elemento fundamental de caracterización de la multitud: encontramos que alrededor del 1600, con la Revolución inglesa, el término "multitud" desaparece del vocabulario político y es sustituido por el término "pueblo". Este se distingue de la multitud en tanto es propietario. Tenemos, entonces, la exclusión de los pobres del pueblo, la multitud excluida del pueblo, la pobreza excluida de la construcción de lo político. La pobreza es un elemento oscuro fundamental que no puede ser recuperado dentro de las categorías de lo político moderno; queda siempre afuera, y queda como resistente. A menudo nos han acusado de eurocentristas y de haber dejado de lado, por ejemplo, lo colonial. Aquí hicimos un esfuerzo enorme por recuperar ese tipo de literatura dentro de la problemática actual bajo la categoría de pobreza. Nos interesaban los aspectos de antagonismo indígena que organizaban y mantenían la autonomía. Luego, un tercer capítulo enfrenta el problema de qué es hoy el capitalismo. Una hipótesis central es que asistimos a una ruptura del proceso capitalista: la acumulación de esas resistencias -la pobreza, el anticolonialismo- unida a la transformación de la fuerza de trabajo en los países centrales, que se presenta en términos cada vez más cognitivos, inmateriales, socialmente conectados y cooperantes, llevan a una ruptura en la historia del capital. Este quiebre produce una forma cada vez más parasitaria, más abstractamente dominante del desarrollo capitalista, tornando vacía la relación capitalista. El obrero ya no se encuentra frente al capitalista como organizador de la fuerza de trabajo sino que esa organización se transforma cada vez más en un proceso autónomo que el trabajador conduce. Este, sin embargo, se encuentra frente a mecanismos de renta (inmobiliaria, financiera, de acumulación), fenómenos que remiten a un elemento barbárico de la organización capitalista del trabajo. Y, por otra parte, está el éxodo de la fuerza de trabajo, que significa la capacidad de desarrollar contracultura pero sobre todo nuevas institucionalidades. La relación de gobierno es cada vez más una relación que ya no es para nada algo gerencial sino una relación de fuerzas; es gobierno sobre una red viva. Existe, además, una tentativa de empezar a narrar, a describir, ese éxodo. Estoy convencido de que hay que salir de lo posmoderno y del miedo de hacer una gran narración. Hoy recomienza el tiempo de una narración del proceso de liberación, porque todos estos elementos construyen ese mosaico sobre cuya base se puede volver a contar una historia de liberación que es absolutamente necesaria.
-Tanto en Génova como en la Argentina de 2001 hubo una irrupción de masas que, en principio, no llegó a plasmarse en una nueva institucionalidad. En Bolivia hay un grado mayor de potencialidad, pero así y todo la Asamblea Constituyente está debilitada. ¿Qué obstáculos identifica?
-El éxodo significa capacidad constituyente. El gran problema pasa a ser la difracción de los poderes constituyentes. Dentro de las teorías jurídicas, el poder constituyente siempre ha sido considerado como un poder extra-legal; actúa de una sola vez, erige el ordenamiento y no existe más. Debemos empezar a imaginar el poder constituyente como un poder que se despliega en esa relación dual. Este año en Bolivia, por ejemplo, las discusiones que tuvimos estaban referidas, justamente, a nuevas formas constitucionales que no necesariamente ven el poder constituido como negación del poder constituyente, sino como estructuras de nuevos ordenamientos totalmente abiertas a un poder constituyente. Es decir, un nuevo modelo de constitución. Respecto de la Argentina, es claro que aquellos movimientos específicos se acabaron, pero la acumulación de estos procesos es algo que se debe tener muy en cuenta. Y estos son fenómenos completamente irreversibles. Estoy convencido de que cuando se habla de constitución -la relación entre constitución material y formal, entendiendo por constitución material el conjunto de las relaciones de fuerza que constituyen la sociedad- se debe tener presente esa composición política latente. Por otra parte, las corrientes actuales más vivas del derecho, post-Luhmann, hablan incluso de constitución sin Estado. También lo posmoderno en toda la fase de aleatoriedad y de matiz está terminando. Entramos en una nueva época donde lo contemporáneo vuelve a mostrar su solidez.
-En cierta ocasión mencionó que el movimiento de resistencia global está en crisis. ¿Cómo piensa la organización política post-partido?
-Cuando se habla de la crisis de la forma partido se habla de la crisis de la representación política, de todo un sistema de formación y transmisión de la voluntad política que, justamente, caracteriza actualmente a la democracia. Por lo tanto, plantearse el problema más allá de los partidos significa plantearse también si existe otra forma de democracia. ¿Qué es, cómo puede concretarse el ideal de democracia absoluta? Creo que todavía se trata de moverse en el terreno de la investigación. Es evidente que la definición de partido -cuando era una definición seria y no puramente ideológica- se organizaba sobre la relación que existía entre composición técnica y social de la fuerza de trabajo, la composición política en general, y la forma política, ligada a una tentativa de reapropiarse del ciclo productivo, en la expresión de los consejos obreros, por ejemplo. Hoy todo eso es muy difícil de determinar: dentro de la composición técnica del trabajo está esa composición social, cognitiva, abstracta, móvil, precaria. Por eso tenemos un auténtico tejido en el cual la institucionalidad debe, muy probablemente, plantearse como problema no de representación sino de presentación. Siempre consideré que no son los intelectuales los que inventan las formas en las que se organizan las masas o las multitudes; son ellas las que proponen a la reflexión las formas bajo las cuales actuar. Creo que el gran paso que viene a través del capitalismo es el hecho de que, lejos de profundizarse lo individual, se profundiza la singularidad y la participación de cada individuo en el común. Es la inmanencia de la singularidad en el común. Esta inmanencia y esa autonomía común se dan como base tanto más institucional cuanto que si hay algo anárquico en este momento es el individualismo. Nunca he sido anarquista.
-¿Cuáles serían las características del trabajo precario?
-Obrero precario es una definición sociológica o económica para referir, ante todo, a una forma de salario. Se trata de un trabajador esencialmente móvil, flexible, que ya no está ligado a un espacio determinado como tampoco a una estructura temporal específica, la jornada laboral de ocho horas. Mientras, desde el punto de vista salarial, al trabajador-masa lo llamábamos fordista, a este trabajador flexible lo llamamos precario. Estamos, en términos macroeconómicos, en una situación global, ya no nacional. El inmigrante, por ejemplo, es fundamental dentro de esta figura del precario. Saben que cuando hacemos las manifestaciones por San Precario, este santo reúne a centenares de miles de personas en Milán el 1ø de mayo. Es un proceso muy bello, se hacen santos que se llevan en procesión, hay música y coros... "San Precario: ayúdanos". La imagen es la de un joven, una persona cualquiera, no con cara de santo sino una más astuta, porque ésa es su cualidad fundamental: ser vivo, hábil... Ahora, por un lado, el trabajador precario está mal pago y en una situación inestable, pero, por otro, alguien puede preferir trabajar así. La figura del precario es sobre todo la del trabajo femenino: hoy, ir a trabajar a la fábrica o a la oficina puede significar no tener hijos, porque si tenés un hijo te echan. Entonces, el trabajador precario es, por ejemplo, una mujer que prefiere quedarse en su casa y trabajar allí según sus tiempos.
-Han mencionado, con Hardt, la idea de guerra global permanente, que podría pensarse concatenada, al menos en América latina, a un proceso cada vez más intenso de militarización, de criminalización y judicialización de la protesta social, de miedo y fuerte presencia de un discurso que reclama seguridad...
-En cuanto al discurso sobre la guerra permanente, como en general sobre el estado de excepción -son estados de excepción permanentes-, vale tanto más hoy cuando la centralización de ese proceso termina. Estados Unidos intentó el golpe de Estado sobre la mundialización, ser el poder soberano que dominaba el campo. En la medida en que ese poder soberano unilateral cesa, en que se afirman ámbitos multilaterales de regulación, toda una serie de instrumentos pasan a ser de criminalización interna, de excepcionalidad difusa. Todo eso se relaciona con la separación del comando capitalista de la organización del trabajo: en la medida en que el capital se despega de la organización del trabajo asume ese recurso a la fuerza; la violencia se convierte en la clave del mando.
Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2007/12/08/u-00611.htm
Guardian:
Climate talks edge towards deal
David Adam in Bali and James Sturcke
Friday December 14 2007
World climate talks edged towards a compromise agreement today, with delegates trying to agree a form of words on carbon cuts that satisfies both Europe and the US.
Officials said good progress had been made on almost all sections of the so-called Bali roadmap, though a deadlock remained on whether industrial countries should pledge to cut carbon pollution by 25-40% up to 2020.
Britain and Europe support the target but the US wants it removed. The dispute must be settled by tonight for countries to agree the roadmap, which is needed to frame a new global deal on carbon limits.
The German environment minister, Sigmar Gabriel, said he was sure a deal could be reached.
"I think the situation is good and the climate in the climate conference is good, and we will have success in the end," Gabriel said, without going into specifics of the talks.
The environment secretary, Hilary Benn, told the BBC's Today programme that the British delegation was "negotiating hard".
"The real negotiations only got under way yesterday evening. Once people start talking about the detail then you have the potential to make progress. We are going to go on for a few more hours but nobody is under any illusions about the importance of the task that we've got."
He stressed the need for a successor to the Kyoto protocol. "Because the science is very, very clear and what we are doing currently is way short of what is needed to prevent dangerous climate change," he said.
Rachmat Witoelar, Indonesia's environment minister, proposed a compromise dropping specific 2020 targets but reaffirming that emissions should be reduced at least by half by 2050.
Yvo de Boer, the head of the UN climate secretariat, said ministers were trying to agree language that based the roadmap on the scientific findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Europe says the IPCC supports the 25-40% by 2020 range; the US argues that is one of several possible scenarios.
Publicly, the Europeans stuck with their position. "We continue to insist on including a reference to indicating an emissions reductions range," said the EU environment commissioner, Stavros Dimas.
But Witoelar's proposal gave the two sides room to work out the long-expected compromise, producing a relatively vague mandate for two years of negotiations.
Earlier, the UN's De Boer said he remained "still very concerned about the pace of things". But he struck an optimistic note, saying: "I think everyone is working toward a result."
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2007/dec/14/climatechange.world
Internazionale:
Come siamo buoni
Non potete farcela da soli. Abbiamo dedicato la nostra vita a voi. Venite qui, micetti
Binyavanga Wainaina
Internazionale 723, 13 dicembre 2007
"Secondo una statistica di una decina di anni fa, il quoziente d'intelligenza medio degli americani bianchi era 103. Quello degli americani di origine asiatica era 106. Quello degli ebrei americani era 113.
Quello dei latinoamericani era 89. Quello degli afroamericani era 85. Gli studi condotti in tutto il mondo arrivano più o meno alla stessa conclusione: 100 per i bianchi, 106 per gli asiatici, 70 per i subsahariani". Dall'articolo di William Saletan Created equal, pubblicato dalla rivista online Slate.
Ehi, micio? Sei un orfano? Sei sudanese? Sei ciadiano? Sei un abitante dell'Africa subsahariana che soffre di un leggero ritardo mentale? Sei una donna africana che soffre a causa di un maschio africano? Vuoi un biscotto della Oxfam? Antiretrovirali biologici? Sei stata violentata? Forse non lo sai, ma sei un orfano, un rifugiato. Possiamo portarne 103 in Francia per dargli un po' d'amore?
Possiamo anche allattarti. Possiamo fare di te un orfano del Darfur. Se sei nero e hai meno di dieci anni, vieni a parlare con noi. Vieni, micio, vieni. Possiamo salvarti da te stesso. Possiamo salvare noi stessi da noi stessi. Aiutaci a salvare tutto il mondo nero come fa Oxfam, aiutaci a farne un posto migliore.
Vogliamo darti più potere. No, tua madre non può farlo. Il tuo governo non può farlo. Il tempo non può farlo. Sembra che neanche l'evoluzione possa farlo. Né l'istruzione. E neanche il tuo quoziente di intelligenza può farlo.
Nessuno può darti più potere, tranne noi. E se non vuoi ascoltarci, i nostri cattivi, quei razzisti repubblicani-conservatori-cinesi-petrolieri verranno a prenderti: puoi scegliere tra il nostro compassionevole seno e le loro forze di mercato. Tra le nostra braccia compassionevoli sarai un vegano.
Elimineremo la tua impronta ecologica, il tuo testosterone, la tua dipendenza dalle religioni. Ti terremo lontano dai cattivi, cioè da tutti gli altri uomini. Noi non viviamo in armonia con la natura e scoreggiamo gas serra ovunque. Ti insegneremo a vivere senza scoreggiare gas serra.
Chiuderemo tutte le vostre fabbriche e costruiremo nei vostri parchi nazionali le nostre scuole biologiche progettate da Jeffrey Sachs, dove potrete restare in contatto con la natura, coltivare prodotti che non danneggiano l'ambiente, commerciare in modo equo e solidale con gli ecoturisti e ricevere ogni mese visitatori delle Nazioni Unite che batteranno le mani quando danzerete.
Invece delle fabbriche dove vi sfruttano, ci saranno botteghe Ubuntu dove potrete andare in perizoma biodegradabile a fabbricare gioielli di osso per persone compassionevoli che guadagnano un milione di dollari all'anno, vivono a San Francisco o a Città del Capo e per questo si sentono in colpa. Nel nostro mondo futuro avrete tre pasti equilibrati al giorno.
Ogni pomeriggio, Jeffrey Sachs verrà e insegnerà ai ragazzi come costruire un villaggio senza povertà e senza discriminazioni sessuali, dove tutto è in comune e dove i sentimenti umani più spregevoli – la lussuria, l'ingordigia e la competizione – verranno sviluppati in modo sostenibile nella vostra testa, accanto a idee veramente pericolose come quella di ribellione.
Dopo aver fatto qualche gioco non violento (come il salto della corda e il gioco degli abbracci), scriverete lettere ai vostri amorevoli genitori adottivi a Toronto. Per un'ora al giorno vi insegneremo a fabbricare vestiti, scarpe e capanne con i nostri tappi di bottiglia riciclati.
Abbiamo capito qual è il vostro destino osservando le persone e i bonobo che vivono in armonia nelle foreste e nei deserti, e vi aiuteremo a realizzarlo. Quando avremo finito, avrete tutti orgasmi multipli non sessisti, sarete pacifisti, danzerete e farete baldoria con vino di mango riciclato con l'aggiunta di erbe, che vi farà provare un improvviso e travolgente amore universale.
Alcuni di noi sono convinti che se rinuncerete all'industrializzazione e coltiverete erbe innocue, il vostro quoziente d'intelligenza aumenterà del 30 per cento, perché non assorbirete tossine. Altri pensano che, se l'alto quoziente d'intelligenza dell'occidente è insostenibile, è importante abbassare il livello d'intelligenza di tutto il mondo.
Qualunque sia la nostra opinione in proposito, pensiamo tutti che voi siate speciali. Se noi siamo scimpanzé, voi siete bonobo. Gli scimpanzé sono violenti perché sono più intelligenti dei bonobo.
Se alcuni di voi hanno il petrolio, vi aiuteremo noi a utilizzare questa risorsa – in modo sostenibile, naturalmente – per accendere le vostre eco-candele e per produrre olio di capelli a livello locale. Il resto del petrolio è cattivo, cattivo, cattivo. Lasciatelo stare (lo prenderemo noi).
Terremo alla larga i cinesi. Guardate come stanno soffrendo per aver abbandonato il buddismo. Permetteremo solo agli ecoturisti e ai turisti della povertà di visitare i vostri paesi.
Fidatevi di noi. Non potete farcela da soli.
Abbiamo dedicato la nostra vita a voi. Venite qui, micetti, venite dalla mamma.
Internazionale viale Regina Margherita, 294 - 00198 Roma
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Jeune Afrique: Le bilan des attentats
du 11 décembre s'alourdit à 37 morts
ALGÉRIE - 14 décembre 2007 - par AFP
Les deux attentats à la voiture piégée perpétrés mardi à Alger ont fait 37 morts, selon un niveau bilan officiel diffusé vendredi par le ministère algérien de l'Intérieur.
Le bilan s'est alourdi jeudi après-midi lorsque trois corps d'employés algériens de l'ONU ont été sortis des décombres des locaux onusiens dans le quartier d'Hydra, selon le communiqué.
Le précédent bilan officiel faisait état de 34 morts et de 177 blessés, tandis que, de sources médicales, le nombre de morts se situe entre 62 et 72. Les deux attentats, visant le Conseil constitutionnel et les représentations de l'ONU dans la capitale algérienne, ont été perpétrés par des kamikazes à bord de véhicules piégés.
L'enquête s'est poursuivie jeudi à la recherche d'éventuels complices des kamikazes et certains Algérois, gagnés à nouveau par la psychose de l'attentat, craignent de nouveaux attentats.
Certains Algérois, gagnés par la psychose de l'attentat après les deux attentats à la voiture piégée de mardi contre le Conseil constitutionnel et les locaux de l'ONU, se préparent "à une nouvelle tempête après une accalmie", déclare Dorra Benyahia, médecin. "Maintenant qu'ils ont réussi leur coup, ils vont nous laisser tranquilles pendant quelques mois ou quelques semaines, avant de recommencer", prédit Mohammed Layachi, 75 ans, gardien d'immeuble. "C'est sûr qu'ils recommenceront", ajoute-il fataliste.
Depuis que la police a repris le contrôle des grandes villes en 2002, les groupes islamistes armés ont habitué les Algériens à frapper, à s'éclipser et à frapper à nouveau.
Après l'attentat du 11 avril contre le palais du gouvernement à Alger, ils avaient attendu le 11 juillet pour s'attaquer à une caserne à Lakdaria (est), puis le 6 septembre pour mener deux attaques rapprochées contre le cortège présidentiel à Batna (est) puis, le lendemain, contre une caserne à Dellys (côte est).
"Cette stratégie, inspirée par la doctrine militaire du prophète Mohammed, fondée sur une alternance entre offensive et repli, est le point fort d'al-Qaïda au Maghreb, mais traduit aussi sa faiblesse", estime un expert algérien du terrorisme, sous couvert d'anonymat.
Traqués par l'armée jusque dans leurs repaires des maquis et montagnes de Kabylie (est d'Alger), les groupes islamistes, qui ont perdu ces derniers mois plusieurs de leurs "émirs", n'auraient plus la capacité de mener des opérations rapprochées, comme ils le faisaient jusqu'en 2002, selon cet expert.
Depuis mardi, les services de sécurité mènent dans les quartiers à dominante islamiste des investigations à la recherche d'éventuels complices des deux kamikaze de mardi.
Ces services disposeraient de dossiers sur des "suspects" et des "recherchés", dont des femmes et des jeunes de 18 à 25 ans, "représentant un danger imminent", affirme le quotidien arabophone Ech-chourouk.
Par ailleurs, les deux kamikazes des attentats de mardi ont été identifiés. Il s'agit de Rabah Bechla, 64 ans, dont deux enfants ont été tués dans les maquis islamistes, et de Larbi Charef, 30 ans, un "repenti" qui est retourné au maquis après sa libération en 2006, a-t-on appris de source sécuritaire algérienne.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP82237lebilstromt0
Mail & Guardian:
Ugandan refugees question rebels' mea culpa
Alexis Okeowo | Koch Goma camp, Uganda
14 December 2007
The rebels whirred up a cloud of orange dust in the stifling heat when they came to meet their victims at Koch Goma Camp in northern Uganda. They had come this time not to kill, but to plead for forgiveness, and refugees cheered their arrival.
But now the dust has settled, and the 17 500-member camp is questioning the sincerity of November's visit by the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA).
The LRA murdered, raped and mutilated thousands, abducted children to be fighters and sex slaves, and uprooted nearly two million civilians during a brutal 20-year war between the Ugandan government and rebels. A ceasefire in August 2006 halted the conflict.
Led by former Kenyan exile Martin Ojul, a rebel delegation travelled to Gulu, one of the towns hardest hit by the rebellion, in mid-November to kick off its landmark country-wide tour to reconcile with its victims.
Yet rumours that LRA leader Joseph Kony killed his deputy Vincent Otti plagued the rebel group's tour through the country. Otti was regarded by many as a vital agent in peace talks.
While the team denied the allegations, local newspapers have reported the opposite.
"They should have told us the truth about Otti's death, then we could have told them our feelings," said Jennifer Adong (19). "The LRA is not trustworthy."
Leadership
The LRA's top leaders have been hiding in the bush in Garamba National Park in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), while its fighters are scattered across the DRC and southern Sudan.
In late November, seven deserters from the LRA arrived in Uganda after surrendering in the DRC. The group said that Kony had ordered the execution of Otti.
"I was not happy when I heard that Otti was dead - he was the key figure in the talks linking the rebels and the people," said Simon Ngeko (25), adding that he was impressed with the delegation's visit, but he now thinks LRA leaders may be changing their minds about peace efforts. "They should be genuine in their appeals for forgiveness," said Adong.
The rebel team met a feverish rally at Koch Goma Camp with high-pitched singing, wildly energetic dancing, running children and echoing drums. "I ask you to forgive us so we can rebuild - otherwise we cannot move forward," Ojul told the large, excited audience.
In order to gauge war victims' mood on punishment and forgiveness for the LRA, the rebel delegation planned town-hall meetings and visits to scarred refugee camps. Its reconciliation tour was completed a few days ago.
Peace talks
Peace talks in the south Sudanese capital, Juba, between the LRA and the Ugandan government have been plagued with interruptions, disagreements and threats from both sides.
The LRA has said it will not sign a peace agreement while 33 International Criminal Court (ICC) indictments against it still stand.
For help in apprehending the rebels, Uganda had called upon the Netherlands-based ICC, which charged the LRA with war crimes and crimes against humanity.
But even if the rebels succeed in gaining forgiveness from its victims, it will have little effect on the ICC, analysts have said.
"I don't think this kind of suffering should continue," Ojul said at the rally, sweeping a hand over the neglected land. The crowd of people before him, some who have spent their entire lives at the camp, nodded sombrely in agreement.
Survivors said that reconciliation is necessary in order for the LRA to disband and return home to live side-by-side with its victims - but reports of the LRA's internal conflict dampened the hopes of Santo Ouma (45): "All we want is peace, but now we are doubtful if the LRA ever really wanted peace."
Sapa-AFP
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=327773&area=/
breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/
New Statesman:
Unity Mitford and 'Hitler's baby'
As war broke out, Hitler admirer Unity Mitford made a botched suicide attempt and was invalided home. But how come she ended up in a maternity home?
Martin Bright
Published 13 December 2007
Journalists on national newspapers get used to crank calls from people claiming the government is controlling their minds using radio waves or the Duke of Edinburgh is opening their post. So when Val Hann first called me at the Observer almost exactly five years ago, I was, I have to say, extremely sceptical about what she told me.
She had read an article I had written about Unity Mitford, the 1930s society beauty who became a groupie to Adolf Hitler and shot herself in Munich at the outbreak of war. Although the bullet entered her brain, Unity survived and lived out the rest of her short life as an invalid. But my caller claimed to have an extraordinary new angle on the story.
Val was a little nervous as she explained that her aunt Betty Norton had run a maternity home to the gentry in Oxfordshire during the war and that Unity Mitford had been one of her clients. Her aunt's business, in the tiny village of Wigginton, had depended on discretion and she had told no one except her sister that Unity had had a baby. Her sister had passed the story on to her daughter Val.
I casually asked who she thought the father might be and there was a short silence on the other end of the line before she said: "Well, she always said it was Hitler's."
I must say I was tempted at this point to put down the phone. Christmas was coming and I was very busy. But for some reason I decided to carry on listening to this bizarre tale. Val didn't sound mad, and she said she was merely passing on a family story.
The child was a boy, she believed, and he had been given up for adoption. She didn't want any money; she just wanted me to look into it. So here was the prospect of Adolf Hitler's love child alive somewhere in Britain - it was either the scoop of the century or completely bonkers. But it had to be worth a few hours of my time, even if it turned out to be a dead end.
My original story had cast doubt on the official version of events about Unity Mitford's return from Germany. In the millions of words written about the Mitfords, accounts of Unity's movements in those early months of 1940 remain sketchy. And, despite the obvious trauma to the family, only a handful of the hundreds of letters that the letter-writing sisters have had published discuss this period.
The newly released diaries of Guy Liddell, number two at MI5 during the war, suggested that the security service was not even convinced Unity had shot herself in the head. Liddell was determined that Unity should be searched and interrogated on her return from Germany and then interned for her Nazi sympathies.
Writing on 2 January 1940, Liddell made a powerful case. "Unity Mitford had been in close and intimate contact with the Führer and his supporters for several years, and was an ardent and open supporter of the Nazi regime. She had remained behind after the outbreak of war and her action came perilously close to high treason. Her parents had been associated with the Anglo-German Fellowship and other kindred movements, and had obviously supported her in her ideas about Hitler.
"We had no evidence at all in support of the press allegations that she was in a serious state of health and it might well be that she was being brought in on a stretcher in order to avoid publicity and unpleasantness to her family."
However, Liddell failed to convince his superiors and the home secretary himself, Sir John Anderson, finally intervened to say that nothing should be done on Unity's return. In fact, Liddell was wrong about her injuries. She had indeed shot herself and later died of an infection caused by the bullet in the brain.
Nonetheless, it still seems astonishing that she was never questioned, considering how close she was to Hitler. As Liddell wrote at the time: "If we had been dealing with Miss Smith or Miss Joyce, the probability was that we should not be arguing the case."
If it hadn't been for Wigginton, I would never have taken it any further. Val gave me an address for the maternity home, Hill View Cottage, and I contacted the present owner, who agreed to show me around. She confirmed that Nurse Norton had indeed used the cottage in her work as a midwife. She also agreed to introduce me to the one person in the village who remembered Unity being there. Audrey Smith was a little girl at the time, but by pure chance her sister (now dead, unfortunately) had worked at the home and had talked about Unity. Audrey herself claimed she had seen Unity wrapped in a blanket and looking very ill. However, she insisted that she was at the home not to have a baby, but to recover from a nervous breakdown.
By now I was intrigued and wrote to Unity's surviving sister, Deborah, the Duchess of Devonshire. She had been angry at my original article and had written a furious letter to the Observer denouncing Liddell's claims that her sister might not have shot herself. She also suggested I take less notice of the gossip of villagers. The Duchess of Devonshire was adamant that there was nothing in the Wigginton story and claimed she could, if necessary, produce her mother's diaries to prove it.
At this point I decided to return to the National Archives, where I discovered a file on Unity that had been sealed under the "100-year rule" - reserved for only the highest classification of top-secret files. An official told me that it was possible to have the classification of such files reviewed and I applied to have the file opened. To my great surprise, the Home Office agreed. Inside was a startling new piece of information: it wasn't quite the birth certificate of a child, but here was hard evidence that Unity might not have been quite the invalid it was supposed.
By October 1941, while she was living at the family home in Swinbrook, Oxfordshire, the police picked up rumours that "Unity Mitford has formed an attachment for an officer in the RAF". Further investigation found that she had been "consorting with Pilot Officer John Sidney Andrews, an RAF test pilot".
As a result, Andrews, married with a child, was transferred to the far north of Scotland.
At this point, the trail went cold. There were too many loose ends for a news story and my research sat in my notebooks until this year when I mentioned it to Mark Roberts, an executive from Channel 4, who agreed to put the story on film. Further research, including an exhaustive trawl through birth records at the Oxfordshire register office, confirmed that Nurse Norton had helped dozens of wartime mothers give birth at her maternity home. But no record of Unity Mitford. Airman Andrews, it turns out, was a former bank clerk, and died in a Spitfire crash in 1945. There is no evidence that he ever saw Unity after his transfer to Scotland.
So what is the truth about Unity Mitford's missing months? Is it possible that the sightings in Wigginton were a case of mistaken identity? Or was she there to recover from a nervous breakdown? One woman still alive who could add to the story is the Duchess of Devonshire, formerly Deborah Mitford, who travelled back to Britain with Unity in 1940. But she has so far declined to be interviewed for the programme. She has also told people close to her that any suggestion of a child is fanciful.
Five years on from that original phone call, I have taken this story as far as I can. It remains a mystery and I remain as sceptical as I was when I first spoke to Val Hann. But one nagging thought remains: if Unity Mitford was in Wigginton during the war, what was she doing at a maternity home?
"Hitler's British Girl" will be shown on Channel 4 on Thursday 20 December at 9pm
http://www.newstatesman.com/200712130027
Página/12:
“Hay rastros indubitables de cianuro”
EL REPRESOR FEBRES MURIO ENVENENADO Y HAY DOS PREFECTOS DETENIDOS
El último prefecto que estuvo a cargo de la custodia de Febres y el jefe de la sede Delta, donde estaba detenido, fueron arrestados. No se sabe si el miembro del grupo de tareas de la ESMA se suicidó o fue asesinado. Piden que todos los represores vayan a cárceles comunes.
Por Adriana Meyer
Viernes, 14 de Diciembre de 2007
“Encontramos rastros indubitables de cianuro en el cuerpo”, le dijo el perito por teléfono a la jueza. Eran las diez de la mañana y seguía la autopsia al cadáver del represor Héctor Febres en la Morgue Judicial. Sandra Arroyo Salgado, la magistrada a cargo de la investigación de la muerte del prefecto, salió del juzgado federal de San Isidro hacia la Capital. Por la tarde, los expertos hicieron una contraprueba que dio el mismo resultado. Sin moverse del lugar, la jueza firmó la orden de detención de dos miembros de la Prefectura Naval, el último prefecto que estuvo a cargo de la custodia de Febres, en la sede Delta de esa fuerza de seguridad, y el jefe de esa dependencia, prefecto mayor Rubén Iglesias. Ambos fueron separados de sus cargos, al tiempo que el ministerio del Interior entregó una carpeta con toda la información del caso a la presidenta Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. Todavía resta dilucidar si el represor fue asesinado o se suicidó, pero los abogados querellantes en el juicio en su contra, cuya sentencia debía conocerse hoy, responsabilizaron al Estado por su muerte y reclamaron que “esta misma noche” todos los represores sean trasladados a cárceles comunes.
Ayer a las 9.30 los peritos y médicos forenses retomaron su tarea sobre el cadáver de Febres, encontrado muerto el lunes en la habitación de la Prefectura zona Delta en la que estaba detenido mientras era juzgado por delitos de lesa humanidad cometidos cuando revistaba en la ESMA. Debían seguir con la parte correspondiente a los análisis toxicológicos, aunque el color azulado del rostro había sido una primera señal del posible envenenamiento, dato que no trascendió por el secreto del sumario impuesto por la jueza Arroyo Salgado. Sin embargo, ayer se supo que encontraron una “alta concentración” de cianuro en la sangre y en las vísceras del represor. “La contraprueba dio positiva y se determinó que el cianuro fue ingerido por boca”, confirmaron fuentes judiciales. En ese procedimiento estuvieron presentes peritos de la querella, la familia y la fiscalía.
Apenas le avisaron del hallazgo del potente veneno, que despierta connotaciones tanto políticas como literarias, la jueza ordenó un nuevo allanamiento y otras medidas tendientes a detectar la presencia de cianuro en los objetos que manipuló Febres y establecer cómo pudo haber llegado al lugar donde estaba alojado.
A última hora de la tarde llegaba a la Casa Rosada el informe que elaboró el Ministerio del Interior para la Presidenta con datos seguramente aportados por la Policía Federal, a cargo de la investigación desde que la jueza separó a la Prefectura.
Cárcel común y renuncias
“Es lo mismo que ocurrió con (el testigo desaparecido Julio) López cuando al principio decían que estaba en casa de una tía o bajo un puente. Ayer era muerte natural y hoy ya hablamos de envenenamiento con cianuro”, se quejó la abogada querellante Myriam Bregman.
Febres estaba siendo juzgado desde el 18 de octubre por el Tribunal Oral Federal 5, por los secuestros y aplicación de torturas a Carlos Lordkipanidse, Carlos García, Josefa Prada de Olivieri y Alfredo Margari, quienes estuvieron cautivos en el centro clandestino que funcionó en la ESMA y lograron sobrevivir. “Esto es una cuestión de gravedad institucional y confirma lo que sospechábamos que pasaba en su lugar de detención, estos tipos te están mostrando lo matamos y te lo ponemos bien evidente, el cianuro es bien simbólico,”, dijo indignado Lordkipanidse a Página/12. “La causa ESMA se convirtió en la causa Febres, estaba el gordo solo sentado ahí, sin Astiz, Acosta y los demás, y fue un cabeza de turco, no sólo porque son los que pagan sino porque les cortan la cabeza”, agregó el sobreviviente.
¿Es posible que se haya suicidado?, preguntó este diario, tras confirmar que Febres estaba “muy deprimido” en sus últimos días. “Nadie se suicida con tanta cantidad, es obvio que fue un envenenamiento, estaba todo azul”, dijo uno de los peritos. “Por más que se haya querido suicidar alguien se lo proveyó, estaba detenido en un organismo del Estado, si alguien entra así hay una cadena de responsabilidades, desde el que aceptó no ponerlo en una cárcel común, y dejaron encima que lo custodie la propia fuerza”, respondió Lordkipanidse. “Si se hubiera suicidado es igual de grave”, consideró el abogado Rodolfo Yanzón, otro de los querellantes. Este diario le preguntó si se sorprendió con la noticia dado que ayer había expresado que todo indicaba que había sido una muerte natural. “Más que sorpresa tengo preocupación porque esto hay que ligarlo con López, siguen estando ahí, incluso si alguien le dijo ‘suicidate’”, contestó.
En 2004, la Cámara Federal resolvió que los procesados por delitos de lesa humanidad debían ser custodiados por el Servicio Penitenciario, pero, en los hechos, la orden sólo se cumplió en forma parcial. “Desde el primer día dijimos que Febres debía ir a una cárcel común y nos decían que estábamos locos. El TOF 5 nos respondió que ese lugar (Prefectura) lo había dispuesto el juez de la causa Nicolaides, por la que fue excarcelado en 2005, pues entonces el juez de la causa ESMA Sergio Torres y el TOF 5 son los responsables de la muerte, además de Aníbal Fernández y la Prefectura”, enumeró la abogada Bregman en la conferencia de prensa de Justicia Ya!
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Página/12: Presos en sus casas,
en cuarteles militares y pocos en las cárceles
Sobre 339 represores presos, más de un tercio están en unidades militares. Un 35 por ciento goza de prisión domiciliaria. Hubo reclamos de querellantes, fiscales y el Ministerio de Defensa para que no están en unidades de las Fuerzas Armadas.
Por Diego Martínez
Viernes, 14 de Diciembre de 2007
Los restos de cianuro hallados en el cadáver del prefecto Héctor Febres reavivan el debate sobre lugares y condiciones de detención de los represores. Algo es evidente: el Estado falla. Con o sin el consentimiento de Febres, alguien ingresó cianuro al destacamento de Prefectura. Suicidio o asesinato, el Estado, con sus jueces federales a la cabeza, tiene el deber de dar explicaciones.
Desde la reapertura de la causa ESMA, tanto querellantes como fiscalía cuestionaron los privilegios de los imputados. En 2004, la Secretaría de Justicia y Asuntos Penitenciarios transmitió a los jueces su inquietud por los detenidos en bases de la Armada, Gendarmería y Prefectura. Al mes, el abogado Rodolfo Yanzón solicitó que ocho represores de la ESMA fueran trasladados a la cárcel de Marcos Paz. El juez Sergio Torres pidió informes y constató cómo vivía Febres: recepción, comedor, dormitorio, baño privado. El juez adujo “riesgos” y negó el pedido. Cuando el fiscal Eduardo Taiano le recordó que las cárceles argentinas son inhóspitas para todos, desempolvó otro argumento: “El rechazo que han generado en la opinión pública los hechos”, léase torturas y asesinatos. El rechazo no los diferencia de otros delincuentes presos, contestó Taiano. Fue en vano. El fiscal federal Félix Crous retrucó que se trataba de un privilegio insostenible, resabio de fueros derogados y competencias prohibidas. La Cámara Federal coincidió, a fines de 2005, y le ordenó a Torres que los marinos pasaran a ser custodiados por agentes del Servicio Penitenciario Federal, pero nada cambió.
Cinco meses después, la ministra de Defensa insistió para que los jueces reconsideraran la decisión de enviar genocidas a los cuarteles. La Constitución lo prohíbe, las funciones penitenciarias están vedadas a las Fuerzas Armadas y sus miembros tienen prohibido vincularse con detenidos, explicó. Pero el juez no modificó su postura.
El 17 de julio último, Garré convenció a Torres de trasladar a los marinos al Instituto Penal de las Fuerzas Armadas, la cárcel de Campo de Mayo, donde ahora los custodian agentes del Servicio Penitenciario. Sin celulares ni Internet, los oficiales navales no tuvieron mejor idea que presentar un hábeas corpus, recurso que se utiliza cuando se supone en riesgo la vida, la libertad o la integridad de una persona. Claro que la medida de Garré no alcanzó a Febres, que hasta el final siguió rodeado por sus camaradas de Prefectura.
¿Alguna razón justifica que los represores detenidos no estén en cárceles comunes? Fuerzas Armadas, de seguridad y policiales no disponen de la infraestructura propia de una penitenciaria. Sus hombres no se capacitan como guardiacárceles. Tampoco merecen semejantes compañías. Las leyes de defensa y seguridad vedan a las tres armas las funciones de custodia y seguridad de presos a disposición de tribunales ordinarios.
Sobre 339 represores presos registrados por el Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales, un 35 por ciento goza de prisión domiciliaria, otro tanto está en unidades militares y el resto en cárceles comunes, categoría que incluye Campo de Mayo.
Los imputados por el fusilamiento de Margarita Belén viven plácidos en la Base de Apoyo Logístico de Resistencia. Toman aire en la plaza donde exhibieron los cadáveres y son servidos por soldados y suboficiales. El ex director de seguridad de Marcos Paz ordenó en marzo brindar un “trato privilegiado” a los genocidas. Los consideraba “presos políticos”. Cuando esto se supo, fue pasado a disponibilidad. Un fiscal denunció al SPF por obstaculizar la investigación para esclarecer la segunda desaparición de Julio López. La mayor parte de los policías provinciales procesados en el interior están detenidos en dependencias de sus propias fuerzas. Los privilegios parecen haberle jugado a Febres una mala pasada.
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Página/12:
Un prefecto al servicio de la Armada
EL DERROTERO DEL REPRESOR QUE ENTREGABA A LOS BEBES EN LA ESMA
Por Alejandra Dandan
Viernes, 14 de Diciembre de 2007
Hay dos datos que se repitieron una y otra vez a lo largo del juicio oral al prefecto Héctor Febres, como si fueran capaces de provocar una síntesis. Que se ponía “re-loco” en las sesiones de tortura que condujo dentro de la ESMA entre 1976 y 1980. Y que fue quien cargó en brazos a los hijos de las embarazadas y separó a muchos de los que aún siguen sin aparecer. En 1998, cuando lo detuvieron, habló durante cinco horas en el juzgado de Adolfo Bagnasco. “Los jefes de la Armada están en sus casas –dijo– y yo me tengo que comer las fiestas preso.” Sin embargo, nunca aportó un dato que permitiera reconstruir el destino de un joven apropiado. El cianuro abrió las sospechas sobre su muerte, y la hipótesis de que alguien lo haya suministrado para impedirle hablar.
Desde la detención del ’98 hasta ahora Febres no había hablado demasiado. Ese día declaró durante cinco horas en las que reconoció parte de sus tareas contra los “subversivos”, admitió que había trabajado de “enlace” entre la Armada y la Prefectura y que perteneció al grupo “antisubversivo” de la ESMA. Ahora nadie sabía si iba a volver a hablar. Una vez que se conoció la muerte, se publicó alguna línea sobre una supuesta intención de preparar algo con la colaboración de los abogados.
Su pasado en la ESMA y su rol pueden explicar alguna parte de las sospechas que se dispararon al final de su historia. En 1976, Febres estaba en la ESMA por detrás de Jorge “El Tigre” Acosta y Alfredo Astiz pero con las mismas facultades. Había llegado no como militar sino como oficial de inteligencia de la Prefectura Naval, un organismo que por entonces dependía de la Marina como fuerza subalterna. Los ex detenidos recordaron esa situación durante el juicio oral como si allí hubiese alguna explicación para su sadismo. Y también para entender las internas. En pasillos de la Marina, ayer se barajaba la hipótesis de que Febres podría haber decidió hablar el próximo viernes. En ese caso, estimaban, que podría haber implicando a marinos en actividad, como sus ex jefes durante la represión ilegal.
Febres era morocho y regordete, en medio de una fuerza militar como la Marina considerada entre sus tropas como una elite. Hasta 1980, tuvo a cargo el Sector 4 que funcionaba en el sótano de la ESMA y donde había tres salas de tortura, una imprenta y una maternidad a la que le decían “La Sardá”. El era “El Gordo Selva” o “El Gordo Daniel”, porque expresaba la brutalidad de todos los animales al mismo tiempo. El último 10 de noviembre, la fiscal Mirna Goransky leyó su alegato para pedir la pena máxima de 25 años de prisión por crímenes de lesa humanidad enmarcados en el genocidio. Ese día Febres siguió todo lo que se decía en la audiencia sentado en el banquillo de acusados, detrás de sus defensores mientras jugaba con una pelotita de papel entre los dedos de la mano.
El alegato confirmó allí lo que habían dicho los testigos. Para la fiscal “tuvo mucho poder de decisión dentro de la ESMA” como jefe de calle de los grupos que salían a buscar a los blancos de la marina y como jefe de zona. En ese período tenía la “triste tarea de ocuparse de las mujeres embarazadas en La Sardá”, recordó. “Se llevaba los bebés y nunca reveló a quienes les entregaron los chicos: por eso dijo que él podría a ayudar a aliviar tanto dolor.” Uno de los testigos, lo vio dar órdenes al grupo de secuestradores en la calle y comandar todo el operativo. Participó de los secuestros a los opositores políticos que estaban exiliados en Paraguay y Uruguay y como jefe del sector donde estaba la sala de torturas y autor de los tormentos.
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Página/12:
La segunda muerte de Víctor Sueiro
Por Leonardo Moledo
Viernes, 14 de Diciembre de 2007
Víctor Sueiro murió ayer a las 13.30. No era la primera vez que lo hacía. Sueiro había nacido en Buenos Aires el 9 de febrero de 1943 y siempre estuvo vinculado con el periodismo. A los 16 años se inició periodísticamente en el diario El Mundo y también participó como conductor en programas de preguntas y respuestas. A los 19 años colaboraba con la sección policiales del diario. Luego ingresó en la revista Gente, donde se codeó con periodistas de gran nivel como Samuel “Chiche” Gelblung y Lucho Avilés, y accedió a la televisión, donde debutó en el ciclo El juicio del gato. En 1974 condujo Siesta, participó en Teleshow, junto a la actriz Tita Merello colaboró en Siempre Tita, en 1980 realizó guiones para películas de primera línea, en las que participaban Palito Ortega, junto a Alberto Olmedo y Jorge Porcel.
Pero la gran experiencia, que marcó un quiebre en su vida y lo lanzó a la fama, fue cuando en junio de 1990 murió y resucitó unos segundos después, convirtiéndose así en el primer argentino que regresó de la muerte (desde ya no el primer ser humano en hacerlo, ya que una fuente indubitable como el evangelio informa que Jesús cumplió la misma hazaña que Sueiro a los tres días, y durante la Edad Media en especial, estas resurrecciones se producían a menudo entre santos y santas que regresaban para obrar algún milagro o realizar una buena acción). Pero el caso de Víctor Sueiro permitió la posibilidad de blandir un resurrecto local.
Nunca lamentó la experiencia, ya que, en esos escasos segundos, según contó, vio un “túnel con la luz al final”; de los libros que posteriormente escribió se puede deducir que esa luz, parecida a la que en la película Ghost llama y recibe a los bienaventurados, procedía de la Virgen de Fátima (o de alguna otra Virgen que lo esperaba al final para darle la bienvenida al Reino). “Un túnel con una luz hermosa al final, y la línea mortal. Ahí no hace frío ni calor, no hay temores ni sensaciones malas. Nos esperan cosas buenas.” Más allá de definirlo como atérmico, nunca especificó otras propiedades del túnel, como por ejemplo sus medidas, lo cual da pie para conjeturar que su longitud puede ser una especie de Purgatorio que debe recorrerse hasta alcanzar la buenaventura. El hecho de “que no hiciera frío ni calor”, empero, demuestra cabalmente que el túnel se encuentra, por así decirlo, fuera del Universo (la temperatura del espacio es de 270 grados bajo cero). Pero Sueiro se encargó de aclarar que en ningún momento experimentó angustia ni temor, sino una sensación de felicidad, que superaba la conciencia de estar muerto, fuera del Cosmos, y a punto de ser envuelto por una luz que, es de suponer, tampoco desprendía calor, interrumpida por la restitución a la vida.
La muerte y resurrección determinaron un giro en su destino, ya que fue capaz de industrializarlas en libros como Más allá de la vida, con ventas masivas en toda Latinoamérica, al que siguieron Poderes, Curas sanadores, La gran esperanza, El ángel, un amigo del alma, La Virgen, milagros y secretos y Los siete poderes, entre otros, que suman más de un millón de ejemplares vendidos.
Además, la experiencia lo volcó a un catolicismo militante, en estrecha colaboración con la Iglesia y con cuanta cura milagrosa o milagro a secas (vírgenes que lloran, curaciones por la fe de enfermos desahuciados) hubiera, que le valieron, junto a sus otros trabajos periodísticos, varios premios durante los años del menemismo. Incluso logró el casi máximo honor a que puede aspirar un habitante de estos lares: figurar en la clásica foto de la revista Gente como uno de los protagonistas del año 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000 y 2003, y como uno de los personajes del siglo en 1999, junto –es de suponer– a figuras como Pollock, Einstein, Menem y algunos otros. Asimismo, el escritor y periodista poseía el récord latinoamericano de intervenciones de cateterismo y angioplastias, once en total, que tal vez lo ubiquen en el Libro Guiness de los records.
También tuvo que sufrir la incredulidad positivista del staff científico y soportar que se lo tachara de “impostor” y mero negociante. Que no lo afectaron, ya que él confiaba en la seguridad de haber muerto y resucitado, en sus obras de ayuda a las curas milagrosas, que le traían fama y una más que razonable fortuna.
Ayer, finalmente, vivió su segunda muerte tras un paro cardíaco que lo devolvió al túnel que debió abandonar antes de tiempo la primera vez, sin llegar a tocar la luz.
¿Volverá nuevamente? Aunque los médicos dicen que no, no se puede saber. De todas maneras, no es necesario llorarlo mucho, ya que Víctor Sueiro, en cierto sentido, amaba a la muerte, como lo expresó al describirla, apelando a una imagen ferroviaria: “Morir es como un viaje en tren: lloran los que se despiden en el andén, pero el que viaja está muy contento”, olvidando por un momento el estado de los trenes argentinos.
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Historia triste
Por Rodrigo Fresán
Desde Barcelona
Viernes, 14 de Diciembre de 2007
UNO
Las historias felices –esas en las que las personas, de pronto y sin aviso, dicen algo así como “Déjame que te lo explique” y se ponen a cantar y a bailar– siempre aparecen barnizadas por una pátina de inverosimilitud. Para eso y por eso, insisto, se inventaron las comedias musicales: para que la felicidad transcurra y crezca en una especie de dimensión paralela y orquestada y technicolor.
Las historias tristes, en cambio, son inmediatamente creíbles. Estamos más y mejor preparados para aceptar la desgracia y supongo que eso es lo que nos distingue (descontando a aquellos patrocinados por los Disney Studios) de los animales. Y –ya que estamos en tema– nuestra tan mentada superioridad como raza y espécimen es más que relativa. La otra noche volví a ver por televisión un documental donde se explicaba que el paso de los milenios había erosionado por completo nuestro instinto de supervivencia. En el documental se decía que, si se colocaba a un número indeterminado de animales dentro de una habitación con varias puertas y se iniciaba en el otro extremo del recinto un fuego, los animales, a la hora de la huida, se distribuirían automática y armoniosamente y utilizarían todas las puertas para salir. De repetirse el mismo experimento con seres humanos, sentenciaba la ominosa voz en off, todos correrían desesperados hacia una sola de las salidas, ignorando las demás, para morir atrapados. Qué triste. Después, cambiando de canal, en el noticiero, me enteré de que se había venido abajo un viejo edificio en Santander. El locutor contó entonces una historia triste que es la que voy a contar yo ahora y que, en principio, resulta inverosímil, pero enseguida se hace creíble. Porque es una historia protagonizada por seres humanos y sólo los seres humanos son capaces de protagonizar historias así.
DOS
¿Cómo empezar a contar una historia triste? Tal vez haciendo uso de las virtudes del Goo-gle Earth. Arrancar desde arriba, desde el más exterior de los espacios, y comenzar a descender sobre el planeta en un zoom de vértigo: primero Europa, después España, después Santander, después el histórico barrio de Cabildo de Arriba, después un edificio ubicado en el número 14 de la calle Cuesta del Hospital que no sabe que le quedan apenas unos segundos de vida. O sí, porque nadie ha esclarecido aún si los edificios son capaces de pensar. En él, en una de sus buhardillas, se encuentra parte de la familia Colmero: la madre Gumersinda, de 73 años, el padre cuyo nombre desconozco, y su hijo Jesús (también conocido como Chuchi), de 53 años. Y ninguno sabe que les quedan apenas unos segundos de vida. O sí, porque aunque esté fehacientemente probada la capacidad de los humanos para pensar, bueno, a veces pasan cosas tristes.
TRES
Gumersinda le está preparando la cena a Chuchi, quien mira fijo la pantalla del televisor donde varios hombres corren por un campo verde. El asunto –comprendemos enseguida– consiste en meter ese objeto esférico que patean los hombres en dos rectángulos de madera y red perfectamente delimitados en ambos extremos del campo. Una voz que sale del televisor recita sin cesar nombres y apellidos y apodos. A veces grita.
CUATRO
¿Qué cocina Gumersinda? Me gusta pensar que prepara un potaje espeso, ideal para este otoño frío. Gumersinda revuelve despacio el contenido de la olla mientras habla por teléfono con Fran, otro de sus hijos. ¿Teléfono móvil o teléfono fijo? Yo diría que fijo, negro, antiguo, pesado; porque me cuesta imaginar a Gumersinda con uno de esos pequeños y coloridos y radiactivos objetos junto a su oreja. En cualquier caso, el teléfono no es lo importante. Lo importante es lo que le dice Gumersinda a su hijo Fran. Gumersinda –sin saber que serán sus últimas palabras– dice: “Ay, hijo, que la casa se está moviendo”. Y eso es todo lo que Gumersinda alcanza a decir.
CINCO
Porque el edifico –“la casa”, como dijo Gumersinda– se viene abajo ese sábado 8 de diciembre a las 18.10 de la tarde, hora peninsular. Las últimas palabras del edificio en el número 14 de la calle Cuesta del Hospital –no es el primero y todo parece indicar que no será el último edificio que se viene abajo en el histórico barrio de Cabildo de Arriba– son, supongo, algo así como “Crack Crash Kaboom”. Las últimas palabras del televisor bien pueden haber sido “¡Penal! ¡Penal”. No ha quedado rastro entre las ruinas de las últimas palabras de Chuchi y me gusta pensar que el padre es uno de esos tipos duros que no dicen nada desde hace años.
SEIS
Busco el diario de ese sábado 8 de diciembre, miro las páginas con la programación televisiva y veo que a las 22 horas de ese día, por la Sexta, se emitió la retransmisión desde el estadio de San Mamés del partido de Liga que enfrentó al Athletic de Bilbao con el Real Madrid. Ese era el partido que quería ver –llueva o truene o derrumbe– el aficionado Chuchi. Busco el diario del domingo 9 de diciembre y leo la crónica del partido. Ganó 1-0 el Real Madrid. En un párrafo se alude “a la hora tan tardía”; por lo que supongo que el partido –retransmitido a las 22 horas– habrá empezado a las 21 o algo así. Lo que significa que Chuchi era una de esas personas que necesitan de una larga y exhaustiva preparación para ver un partido de fútbol y que a la hora del derrumbe –18.10– no podía estar viendo el partido. Lo que invalida mi poco gracioso chiste sobre las últimas palabras del televisor. ¿Qué estaba viendo Chuchi a esa hora? Vuelvo a consultar la programación: casi todas son películas, pero en el Canal 2 pasaban uno de esos programas maratónicos y deportivos de varias horas. Por lo que lo escrito en el párrafo TRES de esta contratapa y el chiste del párrafo CINCO vuelve a funcionar, más o menos, algo así.
SIETE
Pero llegado a este punto compruebo que no he podido transmitir la verdadera y legítima tristeza de todo este asunto. Compruebo entonces que las historias tristes no admiten trucos formales ni desórdenes metaficcionales. Las historias tristes hay que contarlas en línea recta, sin vueltas, con el gélido y cromado y funcional idioma de las noticias. Y así es como voy directamente a un recorte de El País del martes 11 de diciembre y ahí está la foto de esa pequeña Zona Cero en el barrio de Cabildo de Arriba, Santander, y ahí está también la historia triste. Y la historia es así: Gumersinda Colmero estaba advertida de las posibilidades de derrumbe. De ahí que la familia hubiera pasado la noche del viernes en un piso especialmente habilitado. Pero, problema: no tenía televisor. Por eso Chuchi se negó a abandonar “la casa”. No pensaba perderse el Athletic de Bilbao/Real Madrid. Por eso Gumersinda y su esposo volvieron a la buhardilla del número 14 de la calle Cuesta del Hospital. Por eso murieron todos. Desconozco si se guardará un minuto de silencio por ellos en algún partido de este fin de semana. Quién sabe. Verlo pero no oírlo. Por televisión, claro.
OCHO
“Ay, hijo, que la casa se está moviendo.”
NUEVE
Titular: El empeño por ver el fútbol sepultó a una familia / Los tres muertos de Santander habían vuelto a su casa para ver un partido.
DIEZ
Qué historia triste.
© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-96173-2007-12-14.html
The Independent:
Al Gore: The world can't wait for George Bush
Bali climate change summit hears a passionate appeal for action by the Nobel Prize-winner
Published: 14 December 2007
We, the human species, face a planetary emergency. That phrase still sounds shrill to some ears but it is deadly accurate as a description of the situation that we now confront.
The accumulation of greenhouse gases continues to trap more and more heat from the sun in our atmosphere threatening the stable climate balance that has been an unappreciated but crucial assumption for the development of human civilisation.
Just this week new evidence has been presented. I remember years ago listening to the scientists who specialise in the study of ice and snow express concern that some time towards the end of the 21st century we might even face the possibility of losing the entire north polar ice cap. I remember only three years ago when they revised their estimates to say it could happen halfway through the 21st century, by 2050.
I remember at the beginning of this year when I was shocked to hear them say it could happen in as little as 34 years and now, this week, they tell us it could completely disappear in as little as five to seven years.
A sense of urgency that is appropriate for this challenge is itself a challenge to our own moral imagination. It is up to us in this generation to see clearly and vividly exactly what is going on. Twenty of the 21 hottest years ever measured in atmospheric record have come in the last 25 years – the hottest of all in 2005, this year on track to be the second hottest of all. This is not natural variation. It is far beyond the bounds of natural variation and the scientists have told us so over and over again with increasing alarm.
But because our new relationship to the earth is unprecedented we have been slow to act. And because CO2 is invisible, it is easy for us to put the climate crisis out of sight and out of mind until we see the consequences beginning to unfold.
Despite a growing number of honourable exceptions, too many of the world's leaders are still best described in the words Winston Churchill used in 1938 when he described those who were ignoring the threat posed by Adolf Hitler. He said, and I quote: "They go on in strange paradox, decided only be undecided, resolved only to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity, all powerful to be impotent."
I am not an official of the United States and I am not bound by the diplomatic niceties. So I am going to speak an inconvenient truth. My own country, the United States, is principally responsible for obstructing progress here in Bali. We all know that. But my country is not the only one that can take steps to ensure that we move forward from Bali with progress and with hope.
Over the next two years the United States is going to be somewhere it is not now. You must anticipate that. Just in the last few days, on the eve of this meeting, I have received more than 350,000 emails from Americans asking me to say to you: "We're going to change in the United States of America."
During this upcoming two-year period there will be a national election in the United States. One year and 40 days from today there will be a new inauguration in the United States.
If you decide to continue the progress that has already been made here on all of the items other than the targets and timetables for mandatory reductions; on the hope (and with the expectation) that, before this process is concluded in Copenhagen, you will be able to fill in that blank (with the help of a different position from the United States) then you can make great progress here.
For starters that means a plan that fully funds an ambitious adaptation fund, to build an adaptive capacity in the most vulnerable countries to confront the climate crisis. It means creating truly innovative means for technology transfer, to allow for mobilising technology and capital throughout the world.
We need a deforestation prevention plan. Deforestation accounts for 20 percent of global carbon emissions – the equivalent to the total emissions of the US or China. It is difficult to forge such an agreement here.
Believe me if I could snap my fingers and change the position of the United States of America, and change the position of some other countries, and make it instantly much easier to move forward with targets and timetables, I would do so in an instant. But if we look realistically at the situation that confronts us, then wisdom would call for moving forward in spite of that obstacle.
I can tell you that there is a growing realisation all over the world – including in my country – beyond these actions that have already been taken that I've described to you. Mothers and fathers, grandparents, community leaders, business leaders, all around the world, are beginning to look much more clearly at what is involved here.
Not too long from now, when our children assess what you did here in Bali, what we and our generation did here in this world, as they look backward at 2007, they will ask one of two questions.
They'll look back, and either they will ask "What were you thinking? Didn't you hear the IPCC four times unanimously warning the world to act? Didn't you see the glaciers melting? Didn't you see the deserts growing, and the droughts deepening, and the crops drying up? Didn't you pay attention to what was going on? Didn't you care? What were you thinking?"
Or they'll ask a second question, one that I'd much prefer them to ask. I want them to look back on this time, and ask: "How did you find the moral courage to successfully address a crisis that so many said was impossible? How were you able to start the process that unleashed the moral imagination of humankind to see ourselves as a single, global civilisation?" And when they ask that question, I want you to tell them that you saw it as a privilege to be alive at a moment when a relatively small group of people could control the destiny of all generations to come.
Instead of shaking our heads at the difficulty of this task, and saying "Woe is us, this is impossible, how can we do this?", we ought to feel a sense of joy that we have work that is worth doing that is so important to the future of all humankind. We ought to feel a sense of exhilaration that we are the people alive at a moment in history when we can make all the difference.
This is an edited extract from Al Gore's speech at the Bali climate change conference
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3249876.ece
The Independent:
Syria denies killing General in car-bomb attack
Robert Fisk
Published: 13 December 2007
So, they assassinated another one yesterday. A general, Francois El-Hajj by name, not known in Europe but a senior officer and the chief of the Lebanese general army staff, whose battle for the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camps earlier this year made him an obvious target for the Syrians, for the Iranians, for the Palestinians, for just about anyone else you care to note.
Although he was an obvious target, the implications for the current army chief and possible future president – General Michel Suleiman – were devastating.
General El-Hajj was blown to pieces with three of his colleagues at about seven o'clock in the morning as he moved through Baabda, a Christian and supposedly safe suburb of Beirut. He was looked after by his own bodyguards and he was lost by them.
There was no way in which he was going to be saved from the blast. His vehicle was passing a car packed with 35 kilos of TNT when the parked car exploded. The force of the blast, in front of the Baabda municipality buildings, threw the bodies 15 yards and shook the diplomatic quarter. The General, his driver and one bodyguard were confirmed dead. A fourth man is believed to have been killed in the explosion and seven were wounded.
The Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi Aridi blamed the Syrians for the assassination although, interestingly, and with great concern for his use of words, Walid Jumblatt, who has constantly blamed the Syrians for attacks on democratic politicians in Lebanon did not do so. Nor did Marwan Hamadi, one of Mr Jumblatt's parliamentary colleagues.
It seems, therefore, that Lebanese politics are changing once again and that those who were enemies of the Syrians are no longer necessarily so.
But Lebanon's appalling pseudo-civil war nonetheless continues. The last assassination was the anti-Syrian member of parliament Antoine Ghamem, murdered in his car on a Beirut street in a Christian area not far from Baabda. Almost every other week we are faced with an assassination. And, much worse, we are supposed to expect it.
When I had dinner with Mr Jumblatt, I made the point that what was terrible about the assassinations was we are beginning to expect them, they are part of our daily life. Every day we are expected to endure an assassination or an attempted assassination, and what is it meant to mean? Syria denied involvement in yesterday's bombing, accusing "Israel and its Lebanese instruments" in a statement from Damascus, of benefiting from the atrocity.
But if this was a warning from Syria, and if General El-Hajj was meant to die – which he did – what is the message for General Suleiman and for all Lebanese?
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3247574.ece
The Nation:
The Obama Effect
by GARY YOUNGE
[from the December 31, 2007 issue]
At around the age of 7, Barack Obama saw a picture in Life magazine of a black man who had tried to peel his skin off, and Obama had an epiphany. "I imagine other black children, then and now, undergoing similar moments of revelation," he wrote in Dreams From My Father. "I know that seeing that article was violent for me, an ambush attack."
At around the same time, the Rev. Jesse Jackson was involved in a quite different ambush attack. At Martin Luther King's side when he was assassinated by a sniper's bullet, Jackson appeared on television the next day with the civil rights leader's blood on his shirt. The formative events that shaped the last generation of black leadership could not be more different from those that have informed this one.
Obama was born in 1961, the year the Freedom Riders rolled through the South and were met with chains, clubs and firebombs. He was just 2 when Dr. King made his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington. By his seventh birthday, both King and Malcolm X had been assassinated, and Congress had moved to protect a right to vote he wouldn't be able to exercise for another eleven years. Obama knows those years and places only from the history books, and even that knowledge is less than reliable. When he went to Selma, Alabama, to address the Brown Chapel AME church on the anniversary of Bloody Sunday earlier this year, he credited the demonstration for enabling his parents, a mixed-race couple, to fall in love. It turned out he had been born four years earlier.
Obama is the most prominent figure in what has been cast as a new generation in black politics. It's an illustrious list that includes, to name a few, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, Newark Mayor Cory Booker, former Tennessee Congressman and Democratic Leadership Council chair Harold Ford Jr., Maryland Lieutenant Governor Anthony Brown and Washington Mayor Adrian Fenty. As the civil rights movement forced open the doors of academe, corporate America and elite universities, this new generation strode through. Booker is a graduate of Yale Law School and a Rhodes scholar; Obama went to Columbia and Harvard law; Patrick and Brown were at Harvard. Ford was at the University of Pennsylvania.
The emergence of this cohort has filled the commentariat with joy-not just because of what they are: bright, polite and, where skin tone is concerned, mostly light-but because of what they are not. They have been hailed not just as a development in black American politics but as a repudiation of black American politics; not just as different from Jesse Jackson but the epitome of the anti-Jesse.
"[Obama] is in many ways the full flowering of a strain of up-tempo, non-grievance, American-Dream-In-Color politics," wrote Terence Samuel in The American Prospect recently. "His counterparts are young, Ivy League professionals, heirs to the civil-rights movement who are determined to move beyond both the mood and the methods of their forebears."
There are many problems with this. Chief among them is that this "new generation" is itself a crude political construct built more on wishful thinking than on chronological fact. Patrick, born in 1956, is hailed as part of it, but hapless New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, who was born the same year, and civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton, who was born just two years earlier, are not. Obama and Booker are always mentioned as members of this new club, but Congressman Jesse Jackson Jr., who was born between them and spent his twenty-first birthday in prison protesting apartheid, is not.
So whatever else this is about, it is not just about years. It is one thing to say there is a critical mass of black politicians of a certain age and political disposition. It is entirely another to claim that they represent the views of a generation.
Moreover, those who constructed the model forgot to build any women into it. Donna Brazile, who in 2000 became the first African-American to direct a major presidential campaign, is rarely mentioned in their number, even though she is younger than Patrick. Nor is Donna Edwards, who in 2006 mounted a strong challenge to Albert Wynn in Maryland in a generational battle royal that will see round two in 2008.
But the champions of this new generation have their hearts set on a symbol far greater than a more diverse electoral landscape. At the very least the post-civil rights cohort represents proof of the nation's unrelenting progress and boundless opportunities. "They've lived the dream, and represent a generation of black Americans who do not feel cut off from the larger society," writes Samuel.
At most it does not just mark a new chapter in America's racial history; it shreds the entire book and then burns the remains. To some this period, which has seen voter disenfranchisement in Florida, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina and the Jena Six cases, is not only post-civil rights but postracial. "Obama embodies and preaches the true and vital message that in today's America, the opportunities available to black people are unlimited if they work hard, play by the rules, and get a good education," wrote Stuart Taylor Jr. in National Journal.
In 1925 Alain Locke, a professor of philosophy at historically black Howard University, hailed the emergence of the "New Negro" as it related to the Harlem Renaissance. "Hitherto, it must be admitted that American Negroes have been a race more in name than in fact, or to be exact, more in sentiment than in experience. The chief bond...has been that of a common condition rather than...a life in common. In Harlem, Negro life is seizing upon its first chances for group expression and self determination."
More than eighty years later the value of the new "Negro" leadership is, it seems, directly proportional to its distance from the black community and its experiences. Its cheerleaders desire not so much to refashion black politics as to eliminate it altogether, not so much to eliminate racism as to eradicate discussion of it. This is not necessarily the fault of politicians. But it is their challenge.
"[Obama] is being consumed as the embodiment of color blindness," says Angela Davis, professor of history of consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. "It's the notion that we have moved beyond racism by not taking race into account. That's what makes him conceivable as a presidential candidate. He's become the model of diversity in this period...a model of diversity as the difference that makes no difference. The change that brings no change."
Commenting on the presidential ritual of pardoning one turkey in the run-up to Thanksgiving, Arundhati Roy once said, "A few carefully bred turkeys...the occasional Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice...are given absolution and a pass to Frying Pan Park. The remaining millions lose their jobs, are evicted from their homes, have their water and electricity connections cut and die of AIDS. Basically they're for the pot.... Who can say that turkeys are against Thanksgiving? They participate in it!"
What is true of the Republican Administration is differently true of American society. The older generation of black politicians-those decried as pursuing narrow racial interests-created the conditions for a new political class and a new agenda. So although the way this "new generation" has been characterized is misleading and self-serving, it does not mean that they represent nothing at all.
Their résumés are relevant. During the latter half of the last century black leaders rose in politics primarily through religious institutions, which since slavery had been one of the few autonomous areas of black life. "The principal social institution within every black community was the church," wrote Manning Marable in Black Leadership. "As political leaders, the black clergy were usually the primary spokespersons for the entire black community, especially during periods of crisis. As the political system became more democratic and as more blacks were permitted to participate in voting, it was only a small shift from running a large church to running for public office." In other words, they emerged from organizations that had an organic link with the black community, and their advancement was inextricably tied to a broader agenda that advanced the interests of black people.
If religion was the principal conduit into the political class, it also played a crucial role in shaping black political culture. "To some extent, this tradition has been characterized by a charismatic or dominating political style," Marable wrote. It was a "messianic style" that produced stronger leaders than it did movements. After King died, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference never really recovered; when Malcolm X was shot, the Organization of Afro-American Unity virtually died with him. When Jesse Jackson stopped running for President, the Rainbow Coalition ceased to have any significant influence. "The difference between the Christian Coalition and the Rainbow Coalition is that the Christian Coalition exists," a former Jackson aide told me.
So by the time this new generation of leaders came of age, no black-led movement existed, and while most have been active members of predominantly black churches, these would not provide the vehicle for their ascent. Having usually arrived on the political scene through business or academe, they are not so much produced by the black community as presented to it. "We used to think there was a black community. It was always heterogeneous, but we were always able to imagine us as part of that community. That's no longer possible," says Davis. "I don't think it's possible to mobilize black communities in the way that it was in the past.... I don't even know that I would even look for black leadership now. That category assumes a link between race and progressive politics."
This, more than tortured explanations of ethnic authenticity, explains the initial ambivalence black voters display toward many of these candidates. They have no idea who they are and want to know where they are coming from and whom they plan to represent. "Are they black enough?" is often shorthand for a universal voter concern: "Will they represent my interests?"
Given the manner in which these politicians are depicted as going "beyond racial politics," the concerns of black voters are well founded. The records of this "talented tenth" are mixed. Booker has so far concentrated primarily on fighting crime in Newark and is a strong advocate of school vouchers. Patrick has been rolling back the more egregious policies of his predecessor, Mitt Romney, by rescinding the ban on embryo research and decriminalizing undocumented immigrants. He has also championed casino gambling, property tax relief and state health insurance. Fenty has been criticized for being secretive and authoritarian since he took over the DC school system with the aim of radically improving some schools, closing others and giving the schools chancellor the right to fire nonunion workers.
Obama was criticized by some black leaders for not speaking out more forcefully on the Jena Six incident. "If I were a candidate, I'd be all over Jena," Jackson said after a speech at the historically black Benedict College in South Carolina. "Jena is a defining moment, just like Selma was a defining moment." By not seizing on the issue more, Jackson claimed, Obama was "acting like he's white." (Jackson later said his comment was misrepresented; the State newspaper of Columbia stood by its reporting.) But the parallels Jackson drew shed light on the key differences between his campaign and Obama's. For if he were the candidate he wouldn't be doing as well as Obama, and the reason is less because Obama is "acting white" than because he is making every effort not to act "too black."
Indeed, the main thing the new leaders have in common is that they don't scare white people. Or at least not too many and not too much. This is not an entirely accidental or insignificant fact. For while they do not control the way they are perceived, they do have some influence over how they come across. "In so much of the work I've done, I've found that you had to put people at ease on the question of race before you could even start to talk about what you were doing," explains Patrick. "I don't fit a certain expectation that some people have about black men. And I don't mean that as anything other than an observation about my life."
This is a sad but honest reflection on the reality of black middle-class life in America. Anyone who wants to make it in a predominantly white world has to navigate racism in all its subtlety and plausible deniability. In this sense the boardrooms and debating chambers are no different from the rap videos on BET. Race is, among other things, a performance.
Obama knows this only too well. In The Audacity of Hope, he recalls sitting in the Illinois Senate with a white Democratic legislator as they watched a black colleague (referred to as John Doe) deliver a speech on the racist implications of eliminating a certain program. "You know what the problem is with John?" the white senator asked him. "Whenever I hear him, he makes me feel more white." Obama reflected. "In defense of my black colleague, I pointed out that it's not always easy for a black politician to gauge the right tone to take-too angry? not angry enough?-when discussing the enormous hardships facing his or her constituents. Still, [his] comment was instructive. Rightly or wrongly, white guilt has largely exhausted itself in America."
Whether "white guilt" has ever truly been exercised, let alone exhausted, and what good it ever did anyone even if it has, are moot points. The fact of the matter is that a black politician who wants white support must first "gauge the right tone." In 1995, when it seemed as though Colin Powell might run for President, he explained his appeal to white voters thus: "I speak reasonably well, like a white person," and, visually, "I ain't that black."
In the past this would not have mattered. There was a time when Powell could have been as light-skinned as a latte and as eloquent as Shakespeare and still not be in the running. In 1958, 53 percent of voters said they would not vote for a black candidate for President; in 1984 it was 16 percent; by 2003 it was 6 percent. Herein lies one substantial fact that is remolding the nature of black politics and the opportunities for black politicians-white people have become a viable electoral constituency for black candidates. According to a Washington Post/ABC News poll early this year, a candidate's being over 72, a Mormon or twice divorced are all greater issues for voters than race.
There is, of course, the very real chance that they are lying.In the past white voters have told pollsters that they were happier about voting for black candidates than they actually were, leaving the vote for black candidates about five points less than predicted. This was once known as the Bradley effect, after the 1982 gubernatorial candidacy of black Democratic candidate Tom Bradley in California. Bradley was ahead in the polls until the very end but lost. Some white voters who said they would vote for Bradley changed their minds on election day. Seven years later it was renamed the Wilder effect, after Douglas Wilder narrowly scraped to victory as Virginia governor in what, according to polls, ought to have been a far more comfortable win.
But it seems unlikely that this time around there will be an "Obama effect." A report by the Pew Research Center, which matched the polls to the results for five black candidates in statewide races during the 2006 midterms, found that they were highly accurate. "Fewer people are making judgments about candidates based solely, or even mostly, on race itself," concluded the Pew report. This change in voting patterns enables black candidates to make substantial rather than symbolic runs for state or even national office and therefore lends different potential priorities to black political possibilities. But to be successful they have to nurture a different base and create a different coalition of interests than their predecessors did.
"The civil rights generation saw politics as the next step in the struggle for civil rights," explains Salim Muwakkil, senior editor of In These Times. "Their aim was to get their agenda taken up by whoever won. But this new generation do not conceive politics as the next step but just as what it is-politics. Their aim is to win."
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20071231/younge
ZNet | Mexico
Zapatistas, Compañeros
by Canek Peña-Vargas and Greg Ruggiero; December 14, 2007
The following text is taken from the editors’s note to:
The Speed of Dreams
Collected Writings of Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, 2001–2007
Edited by Canek Peña-Vargas and Greg Ruggiero
Published by City Lights Books | www.citylights.com
ISBN-13 978-0-87286-478-8
In Chiapas, these are complicated times, in an even more complicated place. The desire for knowledge refuses simple answers and instead offers itself in the form of new questions. To a visiting traveler, valuable insights drift elusively through the air. In moments like these, expect to be disoriented, because this is a place where disparate worlds meet, mingle, or collide. A sign on the main road offers an explanation of what to expect:
municipio autonomo rebelde zapatista – junta de buen gobierno – corazón céntrico de los zapatistas delante del mundo(1)
This is Oventik, a zapatista caracol, a spiral-shaped path where travelers from around the world arrive, share questions, learn, and then return home. The zapatistas are here, standing before the world with their hearts in their hands—an invitation to solidarity. And here she is, a young and enthusiastic medical student, whose determined path takes her from Chile to Cuba, and now to Chiapas. She has come to embrace the heart of zapatismo and thinks she will find it at the center of this caracol, perhaps wearing a mask, perhaps smoking a pipe. Her time here is short, so she asks her questions quickly. “Have you read Marcos’s latest communiqué? What did you think? Will he really ride his motorcycle through all thirty-one states of Mexico?”
Her questions receive a few brief, though friendly, responses, and then silence. The aspiring doctor struggles to slow her enthusiastic pace to the jungle’s patient rhythm: the fog’s wandering crawl, the sun’s steady arc across the sky. Silence—followed by another question, which strikes to the source of her fascination. “Have any of you actually met Marcos?”
“Of course, we are all Marcos.”
Another compañera had looked up and spoken. Her response turned a small crowd of heads; and now the group was looking at her and she was looking back at them. And there was an understanding. All of them, including the well-intentioned medical student, giggled at the absurdity of looking for the heart of a movement behind the mask of a single man.
When she addressed the Mexican National Congress in 2001, Comandanta Esther found it necessary to correct similar misunderstandings:
Some might have thought that this tribune would be occupied by Sup Marcos, and that it would be he who would be giving this main message of the zapatistas.
You can now see that it is not so.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos is that, a Subcomandante.
We are the Comandantes, those who command jointly, the ones who govern our peoples, obeying.
We gave the Sup and those who share hopes and dreams with him, the mission of bringing us to this tribune...
Now it is our hour… And so it is I, an indigenous woman.
There are many echoes of Comandanta Esther’s lesson in this collection. The words that fill these pages reach beyond the signature of that renowned writer and insurgent, Subcomandante Marcos. Many of these words are signed by members of the zapatista guerrilla leadership, the Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee-General Command (CCRI-CG) of the EZLN: Comandates David, Eduardo, Tacho, Gustavo, Zevedo, Sergio, Susana, Omar, Javier, Filemón, Yolanda, Abraham, Isaías, Daniel, Bulmaro, Mister, Abel, Fidelia, Moisés, Alejandro, Esther, Maxo, and Ismael.(2)
In Chiapas, the indigenous command of the EZLN and representatives of the Good Government Juntas have revived a form of leadership, mandar obedeciendo, which means to command by obeying. This model of accountability is reflected in the process and product of zapatista writing as well. Communiqués or speeches might be signed by an individual, but they represent the voices of many.
“Through my voice speaks the voice of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation” are words one encounters often in zapatista speeches and writings. Despite the single signature at the bottom of each communiqué, zapatista texts have more than several authors. They have thousands, primarily indigenous, many of whom are illiterate, but all of whom contribute their work, their sweat, their leadership, their thoughts, and (all too often) their blood to the authorship of their own history.
The composition of zapatista communiqués is a collective process that includes as much action as writing. The words cannot be separated from the activity that animates them. Of course, indigenous zapatistas do not simply contribute sweat and blood to the movement. Their intellectual contributions travel through an intricate network of community councils, striving toward consensus through popular participation. This process is always present but not always overtly expressed in the now-classic sign-off: “From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast. Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos.”
• • •
As editors and activists in solidarity with the zapatistas, publishing THE SPEED OF DREAMS presented several challenges. How to make a selection of the most poetic and philosophical texts from the vast trove of material produced by the EZLN? Which pieces will best communicate with English-speaking readers the questions, stories, and vision of the zapatistas’ insurgent community? Limitations of time and space obliged us to limit our selection to pieces that had already been translated into English, and to those that were made public from 2001 to the present, the period of time following the publication of Our Word Is Our Weapon, to which The Speed of Dreams is a sister edition.
Originally written or spoken in Spanish and distributed by the zapatistas during public gatherings, through their Web sites, and through the Mexican daily paper La Jornada, most of the zapatista texts are translated into English by cultural workers and activists who translate as an act of movement solidarity and resistance. We are particularly grateful to the many years of translating rendered by irlandesa. Many, if not most, of the writings in The Speed of Dreams are based upon her translations.
The EZLN are prolific, and volumes of their public speeches, musical recordings, stories, and communiqués have been posted online as video and audio files, speech transcripts, and translated texts during the period this book covers, 2001 to the present. Along with the more allegorical, philosophical, and poetic texts, we also included some shorter examples of historical or logistical communiqués in order to reflect the poetics of praxis. Lacking the metaphors, imagery, and playful dialogue characteristic of the more “literary” pieces, these communiqués speak to the daily processes of building power, democracy, and sustainability within the autonomous communities. In a moment of self-consciousness, Subcomandante Marcos comments jokingly on his own dry tone: “I know that some of you will be thinking that this is starting to look like a government report, and the only thing missing is my saying ‘the number of poor have been reduced’ or some other ‘Fox-ism.’”(3) Nevertheless, at times these logistical reports or linear histories inspire the imagination—the dream that another world is possible—in ways that metaphors and allegories cannot.
The Speed of Dreams begins with the March of the Color of the Earth, the EZLN’s political march from Chiapas to Mexico City in 2001, and continues through to the Sixth Declaration in 2005 and its manifestation as a nationwide grassroots organizing effort, the Other Campaign, in 2006. Along the way, readers will notice a period of silence between 2001 and 2003. During this time, the zapatistas released few public statements. Instead, they focused on the task of building local networks of autonomy, communication, sustainability, and self-governance.
Readers may encounter new or unfamiliar terms, many of which we briefly explain with footnotes. However, we intentionally did not attempt to translate certain Spanish and indigenous words for which we could not agree on an adequate English translation. In the majority of these cases, we marked non-English words with italics. However, in several cases we chose not to italicize particular words as a way of introducing them to English. These immigrant words—as of yet undocumented by Merriam-Webster and the Oxford Dictionary—have no single-word English equivalent. In Zapata and the Mexican Revolution, historian John Womack illustrates the need to expand English vocabulary with the example of the word “campesino”:
The word “peasant” does not normally appear here. I have preferred other words on purpose... I do not deny that there were and still are peasants in Mexico, but only affirm that by 1910 most families outside the cities there probably were not peasant; certainly most families in Morelos were not. What they were is clear in Spanish: “campesinos,” people of the fields.(4)
There are many words in The Speed of Dreams that are similar to “campesino” in that they resist translation. One example is the word “compañero” and its abbreviated form, “compa.” The word means “comrade,” “partner,” “close friend,” but no one of these can stand in for “compa” or “compañero.” Rather than assimilate by translation or issue a temporary visa via italics, we chose instead to invite compañeros directly into English.
Another example is the word “ejido,” communal land shared by the people of a community. There is no single-word translation for “ejido” and its variants: “ejidal,” “ejiditario,” etc. Considering Merriam-Webster has already included a definition for “hacienda,” we found it important to introduce this alternative model of land use, one that references the historic struggle for Mexican land reform. Ejidos are one example of such an alternative, which prioritizes subsistence and collectivity as opposed to profit and hierarchy, and so we adopt rather than translate “ejido” as well.
In keeping with the EZLN’s own use of the term, “zapatista” remains uncapitalized, except in instances where it appears as part of a proper name such as the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Special thanks go to many compas for their inspiration, support, feedback, and friendship throughout the editing process: Thank you Ren-Yo, Jacob, Maka, Karlita, El Pinche Simon, RJ, Juan, Miguelito, and Lydia. Thank you Roger Stoll for your dedication to the task of transcribing and translating zapatista music, making these songs accessible to the world. Thank you to organizations such as Estacion Libre, Movement for Justice in El Barrio, the Regeneración Childcare Collective, Pachamama, Pacifica Radio, and many others, whose actions lend flight to the words in this book, proving that international solidarity means global consciousness and local groundedness. Un abrazo fuerte to Laura Carlsen for her excellent introductory essay, and to Alejandro Reyes for his invaluable eleventh-hour help with translation. Finally, thank you Elaine, Stacey, Chante, Bob, and everyone at City Lights Books for supporting this project and making it a reality.
The texts in this book whisper and conspire. They do not simply recount historical events but inspire reflection, analysis, deeper connections, and direct action. They were spoken and written as acts of resistance and embody what the zaptistas call caminar preguntando, to walk questioning. The Speed of Dreams is thus an invitation to retrace and join the zapatista path of listening, connecting, questioning, resisting, dreaming—not just as isolated readers, but as compañeros in a global movement.
NOTES
1). ZAPATISTA AUTONOMOUS REBEL MUNICIPALITY—GOOD GOVERNMENT JUNTA—CENTRAL HEART OF THE ZAPATISTAS BEFORE THE WORLD
2). On December 2, 2000, it was announced that these twenty-three members of the CCRI-CG EZLN, together with Subcomandante Marcos, would comprise the zapatista delegation to Mexico City, the March of the Color of the Earth.
3). “Foxism” refers to the former Mexican president Vicente Fox Queseda. This communiqué excerpt is taken from Chiapas: The Thirteenth Stele, Part Five: A History.
4). Womack, John. Zapata and the Mexican Revolution. New York: Vintage Books, 1970.
All royalties from the sale of The Speed of Dreams go to autonomous media projects in Chiapas.
In 2008, City Lights Books will publish The Fire and the Word, A History of the Zapatista Movement by Gloria Muñoz Ramirez. Gloria will be making a major U.S. tour. For details and updates, check City Lights Web page, www.citylights.com
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=59&ItemID=14500
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