Elsewhere Today 485
Aljazeera:
Thai army chief rules out coup
Tuesday, September 02, 2008
11:42 Mecca time, 08:42 GMT
Thailand's army chief has ruled out the possibility of military coup hours after Samak Sundaravej, the prime minister, declared a state of emergency in the capital.
"There is no possibility of a coup. We must turn to the parliamentary mechanism," General Anupong Paojinda told reporters on Tuesday.
The army chief also vowed not to use force against protesters following the declaration of the emergency.
Samak declared the emergency after one person was killed and dozens were injured in Bangkok as police and both pro- and anti-government protesters clashed overnight on Monday.
New crisis
Shortly after Samak spoke, a new crisis confronted his government.
The election commission recommended that his People's Power Party be disbanded for alleged electoral fraud committed during the elections in December.
The commission forwarded its findings to the attorney general's office to decide whether to submit the case to the constitutional court for a final ruling. This process that could take months.
Samak and other party leaders would be banned from politics for five years if the ruling is upheld.
Al Jazeera's correspondent reported many were saying that the unanimous vote by the five-member commission could be the beginning of the end of the PPP.
Tuesday's move was reminiscent of the court dissolving Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party last year, which later regrouped under the PPP flag.
Thai newspapers have reported that the PPP is preparing for the worst and lining up a new "shell" party to admit all its MPs, who could try to cobble together another coalition government.
Kudeb Saikrachang, the PPP spokesman, told Al Jazeera that party MPs already had another party in mind in case the PPP were to be dissolved.
Soldiers deployed
Under the sweeping emergency powers announced on television and radio, all public gatherings in the capital are banned and restrictions have been imposed on media reports that "undermined public security".
"There is an urgent need to solve all these problems quickly. Therefore the prime minister declares a state of emergency in Bangkok from now on," the announcement read.
Around 400 soldiers armed with batons and shields were sent to back up police struggling to contain the street battles in the worst violence since the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) launched its street campaign against the prime minister in May.
Kudeb Saikrachang, a spokesman for Samak's People Power party, told Al Jazeera that the party had "no part" in the violence.
"We don't support violent means whatsoever," he added.
By sunrise on Tuesday, General Jongrak Jutanond, Bangkok's police chief, said "the situation is now under control".
Some schools were shut in Bangkok on Tuesday, but morning rush-hour traffic was flowing as normal and the airport, the main gateway for foreign tourists visiting one of Asia's top holiday destinations, remained open.
'Soft option'
Samak called emergency rule the "softest means available" for restoring calm.
In a nationally televised news conference on Tuesday, he gave no timeframe for how long the decree would stay in effect but said it would be over "moderately quickly".
The prime minister had said last week that he had hoped to avoid declaring an emergency, but said he was left with little choice after violence erupted.
"I did it to solve the problems of the country," he said. "Because the situation turned out this way, I had no other choice."
Al Jazeera's Selina Downes, reporting from Bangkok, said the emergency law gave the prime minister absolute control over the situation, as he had made himself defence minister when he was elected in January and was therefore in charge of the military.
The state of emergency gives Samak special powers outside of the constitution to deploy police and soldiers on the streets to quell protests.
Our correspondent said there had been mounting pressure on the government to get a handle on the increasingly chaotic situation.
The PAD had been in the driving seat after storming and occupying the Government House compound a week ago and many analysts said there had appeared no other way out of the situation.
Strike threat
On Monday, the PAD had announced that its supporters in state enterprise unions would cut off water, electricity and phone service to government offices as part of a "general strike" set for Wednesday.
Alliance supporters said they also would delay departures of flights of the national airline.
They were already disrupting rail service and planned to cut back public bus transportation as well.
Samak has repeatedly said he would not be bullied by a mob into resigning or dissolving parliament and calling fresh elections.
Leaders of the anti-government protest movement that has occupied the prime minister's official compound for the past week said they would not budge.
"There are not enough jails to put us all into," Chamlong Srimuang, one of the leaders of the PAD that is leading the anti-government protests, told thousands of supporters inside the compound camped in behind makeshift barricades of razor wire and car tyres.
Samak's announcement blamed unnamed people for "wreaking havoc" and undermining the economy and national unity.
Thais Al Jazeera spoke to were angry and frustrated that they were "back to square one" two years after Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted in a military coup after weeks of street protests against the then prime minister.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2008/09/20089281103197.html
AllAfrica:
Elections - Real Choice, or No Change?
By Steven Gruzd
South African Institute of International Affairs (Johannesburg)
1 September 2008
Africa faces a spate of parliamentary and presidential polls before the end of the year.
Angola, Rwanda and Swaziland will vote in September, Zambia and Côte d'Ivoire (if it happens) in November, and Ghana in December. But will any of them offer genuine choice or real change for citizens?
Despite many excellent governance standards ratified by parliaments across the continent, and reform initiatives like the African Peer Review Mechanism (APRM) to which all these states - except Swaziland and Côte d'Ivoire - have acceded, many African elections are becoming more fractious, rigged and violent than ever, especially where the result is close. Or they produce landslides for ruling regimes.
SAIIA's analysis of the publicly available Country Review Reports from the APRM aptly demonstrates that African states face common problems with elections.
Benin's report describes a weak electoral system: the high cost of elections; bribery; the absence of a reliable voters roll due to poor national records (2 million citizens lack birth certificates or identity documents), and diminished credibility of the Independent National Electoral Commission (CENA) which is dissolved after each poll, shedding institutional memory.
Reports from Rwanda, Ghana and Kenya also noted problems with electoral commissions - their capacity, resources, and, critically, independence. Recommendations were made to South Africa to regulate private funding to political parties, and "find creative ways to make MPs more accountable to the electorate and less to the party hierarchy that determines the party list." Rwanda was urged to replace their local elections practice - where voters physically line up behind their preferred candidates - with secret ballots.
Kenya's 2006 APRM report noted weaknesses in the electoral system - most notably vastly different constituency sizes arbitrarily determined and laws that foster ethnic politicking - and chillingly presaged the impending December 2007 violence. It stated baldly that "political parties are regional, ethnic based and poorly institutionalised ... they can be described as electoral vehicles for political entrepreneurs."
The aftermath of voting in Kenya and Zimbabwe in March and June demonstrate the worst extremes in a worrying trend.
Elections can create a winner-take-all mentality. There is too much at stake for leaders to admit defeat gracefully and vacate State House quietly. Voter registration is restrictive, voters' rolls are suspect and constituency maps gerrymandered, all to suit incumbents. State institutions - including those overseeing voting - are increasingly militarised, and not averse to ballot box stuffing. State media churn out pro-government stories. Voters are intimidated for months before elections, even if polling day is peaceful. Observers appear oblivious, complicit or impotent. Ethnic and economic cleavages are manipulated. Vicious violence ensues. It culminates, at best, in messy, compromise pacts among elites, bloated cabinets and unresolved issues, left to fester until the next vote.
So what do key remaining elections in 2008 herald?
Some look like one-horse races. In Angola, the ruling MPLA is expected to sweep parliamentary polls on 5-6 September. These are the first elections held in the booming oil-rich state since the 1992 presidential elections were abandoned after the first round of voting re-ignited a civil war that raged for another decade, and have been repeatedly delayed. Despite being one of Africa's biggest oil exporters (it earned over $40 billion in oil exports in 2007, produces about 2 million barrels a day, and is China's biggest oil supplier), petrol shortages persist at home, and huge inequalities exist between the tiny ruling class and the two-thirds of the population living on less than $2 a day.
A party that has been in power since independence from Portugal in 1975 despite almost three decades of civil war, seems extremely unlikely to squander the benefits of that degree of incumbency against weak and divided opposition parties. And the international oil industry will place a premium on the stability offered by an MPLA victory.
No surprises are expected in Rwanda either. President Paul Kagame's Rwanda Patriotic Front is expected to emulate its huge winning margins from the 2003 elections to the House of Deputies. Swaziland's elections have been condemned as farcical by civil society. All candidates must stand as individuals, because political parties have been banned by the Swazi king since 1973.
Other election results are less predictable. The death of President Levy Mwanawasa in a Paris hospital on 19 August means that Zambians can expect fierce party infighting before citizens must unexpectedly choose a new president in a by-election before 17 November, according to the 1996 Constitution. Despite a voter registration drive, many analysts doubt that Côte d'Ivoire's oft-delayed elections slated for 30 November will be credible or even held at all.
If nothing else, Ghana's vote in December will yield a personality change, at least. President John Kufuor will relinquish the reins after two largely successful, stable and prosperous four-year terms. What will it take for more leaders to leave quietly when their time is up?
Steven Gruzd is head of the Governance and APRM Programme of the South African Institute of International Affairs
Copyright © 2008 South African Institute of International Affairs. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200809011475.html
AlterNet: How the GOP Is Counting on
Hurricane Gustav for an Image Makeover
By Brad Reed, AlterNet
Posted on September 1, 2008
With another enormous hurricane bearing down upon the Gulf Coast, John McCain and prominent Republican leaders have decided that this could be the perfect time to rebuild their image.
Think I'm being too cynical? Consider that McCain decided yesterday to gin up publicity for his campaign by touring the Gulf region with newly-minted vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin. While down in Mississippi, McCain announced that the Republican National Convention this week would be transformed from "a party event to the call to the nation for action, action to help our fellow citizens in this time of tragedy and disaster, action in the form of volunteering, donations, reaching out our hands and our hearts and our wallets to the people who are under such great threat." What this means is anybody's guess, although GOP officials have been floating trial balloons about the idea of transforming the entire RNC into a giant telethon to help the hurricane victims. Not to be outdone, Senator Norm Coleman blatantly made the case that McCain would be the best president to defend the country from both terrorism and natural disasters. The hurricane also gave Bush a convenient opportunity to skip out of town and without weighing down the party with his sub-zero approval ratings. As one anonymous Republican strategist told the Washington Post, "Now the Republican brand out there is not so bad... the does-Bush-help-or-hurt question doesn't need to be asked or answered."
To understand why the GOP has been so quick to cover all its bases on the current hurricane, we should consider the tremendous fallout that Hurricane Katrina had on the Bush presidency. The 2005 storm had a devastating political impact on George W. Bush and the Republican brand because it showed the American public what happens when a political party believes at its core that government should not be taken seriously.
Sound extreme? Consider Michael Brown, the woefully unqualified former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who became the public face of the disaster when Bush praised him against all evidence for doing a "heck of a job." Prior to becoming head of the nation's largest disaster relief agency, Brown worked for 11 years as "the chief rules enforcer of the Arabian Horse Association." His only supposed experience in emergency management had been working for the emergency services division in the city of Edmond, Oklahoma for three years in the 1970s.
You would think that with such a thin résumé, Brown would have been laughed out of the FEMA offices. But under the rules of Bush governance, partisan loyalties and ideological zeal always trump talent, intelligence and experience. Consider some other classic Bush appointees who were not merely unqualified, but who were in some cases actively hostile toward the institutions they were chosen to lead. There's George C. Deutsch, the former NASA press officer and college dropout who threatened NASA scientists with "dire consequences" for undermining the administration's position on global warming and who harped upon agency web designers to not dismiss intelligent design creationism on the agency's website. Or how about Monica Goodling, a religious zealot and former Justice Department political appointee who would screen candidates for career positions at the DOJ by asking them questions such as "What is it about President Bush that makes you want to serve him?" And who could forget notoriously unqualified Supreme Court nominee Harriet Miers? Or John Bolton, the former United Nations ambassador who hates the United Nations? Or all the Heritage Foundation staffers who were sent over to rebuild Iraq?
The point is that for the past eight years, the administration has routinely appointed people to key government positions who are insane, incompetent, evil or some unholy combination of the three. This cavalier attitude toward hiring unqualified people for important positions resulted in the humanitarian disasters in both Iraq and the Gulf Coast, in government agencies where scientists feel threatened for not towing the administration line and in a Justice Department that has been plagued by shame and scandal. While one or two of these blunders would be bad enough on their own, collectively they have destroyed the GOP's image as the "daddy" party that believes in limited but effective governance.
Which brings us back to Hurricane Gustav. While it's unlikely that the GOP will totally undo the damage that the Bush years have wrought to its brand, the Republicans will likely attempt to show the public that during an election year they can at least try to govern in a manner that isn't wholly reminiscent of the Keystone Cops. Expect to see Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal giving us regular updates via satellite feed proclaiming that unlike in years past, federal relief workers are doing a heck of a job. Texas Governor Rick Perry will offer us heartfelt testimony from hurricane refugees grateful for the help they've been receiving. And finally, we'll probably watch Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour tell us that the government's excellent response to the hurricane shows that Barack Obama is dangerously unqualified to be president.
While you'd be right to call this cynical pandering, there are a couple of upsides to it. After all, assuming that the Republicans don't simply funnel all the money to Blackwater, it will be good to mobilize people to give money for hurricane relief. And let's face it, it is nice to now have two major political parties at least paying lip service to the radical idea that the government shouldn't simply sit by while its citizens drown.
AlterNet is a non profit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by our writers are their own.
Brad Reed is a writer living in Boston. His work has previously appeared in the American Prospect Online, and he blogs frequently at Sadly, No!.
© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/97103/
Arab News:
Bihar floods: Some lessons
Editorial
Tuesday 2 September 2008 (02 Ramadan 1429)
THE Indian government yesterday reacted angrily to accusations from NGOs that they were doing too little to help the nearly one million people, stranded or made homeless by the horrific Bihar floods. It is unusual for NGOs to go public so quickly in criticizing a government response to natural disaster. Maybe they have become more sensitive since the tragedy that unfolded in the wake of this May’s cyclone catastrophe in Myanmar or maybe the Indian authorities are indeed being overwhelmed.
New Delhi protested with some justice that hardly anyone could have imagined a cataclysm on such a scale. Nevertheless, the fact is that the world’s climate is changing, storms are becoming ever more extreme and dams, such as that which burst in Nepal to cause the Bihar inundation, were often built to withstand less severe rainfall. All governments, not least that in populous India and China, ought now to be aware that when the weather goes wrong, it is likely to go seriously wrong.
Journalists from many nations including India, who unlike international aid organizations, ought to have no axes to grind, attest to the heroic efforts being made by the Indian military to rescue some 350,000 stricken survivors of the floods. They also speak of the rescue and support missions undertaken by ordinary civilians who have come to the affected region to do whatever they can to help. However, the media note that there appears to be virtually no overall coordination for rescue operations and for the sheltering, feeding and medical care of hundreds of thousands of people who have been brought or made their own way to dry land and safety.
Individual army units have operated with admirable military precision and discipline, but as in battle, unless their contribution is part of a wider plan, it must inevitably count for less. Therefore the authorities in Delhi must answer for a lack of even basic disaster planning. That is perhaps why they are so sensitive to outside criticism.
If the government is being shown in a bad light, there are individuals in Bihar who should be hanging their heads in shame. It is reliably reported that people with boats and tractors were charging flood victims large amounts of money to carry them to safety. One man reportedly gave away his only ox to a money-grubbing rescuer. Such behavior at a time of disaster that calls for common humanity and kindness is little different from looting abandoned homes. When the time comes, these greedy, insensitive people should be identified and made to return what they extorted. And when the time comes to analyze how these floods were handled, the lessons really must be learned. As an emerging economic superpower, India has does itself little credit in this disaster. Maybe one conclusion will be not only to establish proper disaster planning but also a fully maintained and trained disaster-response force which could immediately spearhead rescue efforts, both in India and the wider region. Muddling through is simply not an option for a country with India’s pretensions.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=113730&d=2&m=9&y=2008
Asia Times:
Russia remains a Black Sea power
By M K Bhadrakumar
Aug 30, 2008
If the struggle in the Caucasus was ever over oil and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) agenda towards Central Asia, the United States suffered a colossal setback this week. Kazakhstan, the Caspian energy powerhouse and a key Central Asian player, has decided to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Russia over the conflict with Georgia, and Russia's de facto control over two major Black Sea ports has been consolidated.
At a meeting in the Tajik capital Dushanbe on Thursday on the sidelines of the summit meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Kazakh President Nurusultan Nazarbayev told Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that Moscow could count on Astana's support in the present crisis.
In his press conference in Dushanbe, Medvedev underlined that his SCO counterparts, including China, showed understanding of the Russian position. Moscow appears satisfied that the SCO summit also issued a statement on the Caucasus developments, which, inter alia, said, "The leaders of the SCO member states welcome the signing in Moscow of the six principles for regulating the South Ossetia conflict, and support Russia's active role in assisting peace and cooperation in the region." The SCO comprises China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
There were tell-tale signs that something was afoot when the Kazakh Foreign Ministry issued a statement on August 19 hinting at broad understanding for the Russian position. The statement called for an "unbiased and balanced assessment" of events and pointed out that an "attempt [was made] to resolve a complicated ethno-territorial issue by the use of force", which led to "grave consequences". The statement said Astana supported the "way the Russian leadership proposed to resolve the issue" within the framework of the United Nations charter, the Helsinki Final Act of 1975 and international law.
The lengthy statement leaned toward the Russian position but offered a labored explanation for doing so.
Kazakhstan has since stepped out into the thick of the diplomatic sweepstakes and whole-heartedly endorsed the Russian position.
This has become a turning point for Russian diplomacy in the post-Soviet space. Nazarbayev said:
I am amazed that the West simply ignored the fact that Georgian armed forces attacked the peaceful city of Tskhinvali [in South Ossetia]. Therefore, my assessment is as follows: I think that it originally started with this. And Russia's response could either have been to keep silent or to protect their people and so on. I believe that all subsequent steps taken by Russia have been designed to stop bloodshed of ordinary residents of this long-suffering city. Of course, there are many refugees, many homeless.
Guided by out bilateral agreement on friendship and cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia, we have provided humanitarian aid: 100 tons have already been sent. We will continue to provide assistance together with you.
Of course, there was loss of life on the Georgian side - war is war. The resolution of the conflict with Georgia has now been shifted to some indeterminate time in the future. We have always had good relations with Georgia. Kazakhstan's companies have made substantial investments there. Of course, those that have done this want stability there. The conditions of the plan that you and [President of France Nicolas] Sarkozy drew up must be implemented, but some have begun to disavow certain points in the plan.
However, I think that negotiations will continue and that there will be peace - there is no other alternative. Therefore, Kazakhstan understands all the measures that have been taken, and Kazakhstan supports them. For our part, we will be ready to do everything to ensure that everyone returns to the negotiating table.
From Moscow's point of view, Nazarbayev's words are worth their weight in gold. Kazakhstan is the richest energy producer in Central Asia and is a regional heavyweight. It borders China. The entire US regional strategy in Central Asia ultimately aims at replacing Russia and China as Kazakhstan's number one partner. American oil majors began making a beeline to Kazakhstan immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 - including Chevron, with which US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was associated.
Unsurprisingly, Kazakhstan figured as a favorite destination for US Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W Bush has lavishly hosted Nazarbayev in the White House.
The US had gone the extra league in cultivating Nazarbayev, with the fervent hope that somehow Kazakhstan could be persuaded to commit its oil to the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, whose viability is otherwise in doubt. The pipeline is a crucial component of the US's Caspian great game.
The US had gone to great lengths to realize the pipeline project against seemingly hopeless odds. In fact, Washington stage-managed the "color" revolution in Georgia in November 2003 (which catapulted Mikheil Saakashvili to power in Tbilisi) on the eve of the commissioning of the pipeline. The general idea behind the commotion in the South Caucasus was that the US should take control of Georgia through which the pipeline passes.
Besides, Kazakhstan shares a 7,500 kilometer border with Russia, which is the longest land border between any two countries in the world. It would be a nightmare for Russian security if NATO were to gain a foothold in Kazakhstan. Again, the US strategy had targeted Kazakhstan as the prize catch for NATO in Central Asia. The US aimed to make a pitch for Kazakhstan after getting Georgia inducted into NATO.
These American dreams have suffered a setback with the Kazakh leadership now closing ranks with Moscow. It seems Moscow outwitted Washington.
Belarus voices support
The other neighboring country sharing a common border with Russia, Belarus, has also expressed support for Moscow. Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko visited Medvedev in Sochi on August 19 to express his solidarity.
"Russia acted calmly, wisely and beautifully. This was a calm response. Peace has been established in the region - and it will last," he commented.
What is even more potent is that Russia and Belarus have decided to sign an agreement this autumn on creating a unified air defense system. This is hugely advantageous for Russia in the context of the recent US attempts to deploy missile defense elements in Poland and the Czech Republic.
According to Russian media reports, Belarus has several S-300 air defense batteries - Russia's advanced system - on combat duty and is currently negotiating the latest S-400 systems from Russia, which will be made available by 2010.
Attention now shifts to the meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is scheduled to take place in Moscow on September 5. The CSTO's stance on the crisis in the Caucasus will be closely watched.
It appears that Moscow and Kazakhstan are closely cooperating in setting the agenda of CSTO, whose members are Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The big question is how the CSTO gears up to meet NATO's expansion plans. The emergent geopolitical reality is that with Russia's recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Moscow has virtually checkmated the US strategy in the Black Sea region, defeating its plan to make the Black Sea an exclusive "NATO lake". In turn, NATO's expansion plans in the Caucasus have suffered a setback.
Not many analysts have understood the full military import of the Russian moves in recognizing the breakaway Georgian republics.
Russia has now gained de facto control over two major Black Sea ports - Sukhumi and Poti. Even if the US-supported regime of Viktor Yushchenko in Ukraine creates obstacles for the Russian fleet based in the Crimean port of Sevastopol - in all probability, Moscow will shrug off any Ukrainian pressure tactic - the fleet now has access to alternative ports on the Black Sea. Poti, in particular, has excellent facilities dating to the Soviet era.
The swiftness with which Russia took control of Poti must have made the US livid with anger. Washington's fury stems from the realization that its game plan to eventually eliminate Russia's historical role as a "Black Sea power" has been rendered a pipe dream. Of course, without a Black Sea fleet, Russia would have ceased to be a naval power in the Mediterranean. In turn, Russia's profile in the Middle East would have suffered. The Americans indeed had an ambitious game plan towards Russia.
There is every indication that Moscow intends to assert the strategic presence of its Black Sea Fleet. Talks have begun with Syria for the expansion of a Russian naval maintenance base at the Syrian port of Tartus. The Middle East media recently suggested in the context of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to Moscow that Russia might contemplate shifting its Black Sea Fleet from Sevastopol to Syria. But this is an incorrect reading insofar as all that Russia needs is a supply and maintenance center for its warships, which operate missions in the Mediterranean. In fact, the Soviet navy's 5th Mediterranean Squadron had made use of Tartus port for such purpose.
China shows understanding
Moscow will approach the CSTO summit pleased with the SCO's backing, even it it was not without reservations. Medvedev said of the SCO meeting,
Of course, I had to tell our partners what had actually happened, since the picture painted by some of the Western media unfortunately differed from real facts as to who was the aggressor, who started all this, and who should bear the political, moral and ultimately the legal responsibility for what happened ...
Our colleagues gratefully received this information and during a series of conversations we concluded that such events certainly do not strengthen the world order, and that the party that unleashed the aggression should be responsible for its consequences ... I am very pleased to have been able to discuss this with our colleagues and to have received from them this kind of support for our efforts. We are confident that the position of the SCO member states will produce an appropriate resonance through the international security, and I hope this will give a serious signal to those who are trying to justify the aggression that was committed.
It must have come as a relief to Moscow that China agreed to line up behind such a positive formulation. On Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry in Moscow also seems to have had its first contact with the Chinese Embassy regarding the issue. Significantly, the Foreign Ministry statement said the meeting between Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexei Borodavkin and Chinese ambassador Liu Guchang took place at the Chinese initiative.
The statement claimed, "The Chinese side was informed of the political and legal motives behind Russia's decision and expressed an understanding of them." (Emphasis added.) It is highly unlikely that on such a sensitive issue, Moscow would have unilaterally staked a tall claim without some degree of prior tacit consent from the Chinese side, which is a usual diplomatic practice.
The official Russian news agency report went a step further and highlighted that "China had expressed its understanding of Russia's decision to recognize Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia".
The favorable stance by Belarus, Kazakhstan and China significantly boosts Moscow's position. In real terms, the assurance that the three big countries that surround Russia will remain on friendly terms no matter the West's threat to unleash a new cold war, makes a huge difference to Moscow's capacity to maneuver. Any time now - possibly this weekend - we may expect Belarus to announce its recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
Clearly, Moscow is disinterested to mount any diplomatic campaign to rally support from the world community for the sovereignty and independence of the two breakaway provinces. As a Moscow commentator put it, "Unlike in comrade Leonid Brezhnev's time, Moscow is not trying to press any countries into supporting it on this issue. If it did, it could find quite a few sympathizers, but who cares?"
It serves Moscow's purpose as long as the world community draws an analogy between Kosovo and the two breakaway provinces. In any case, the two provinces have been totally dependent on Russia for economic sustenance.
With the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, what matters critically for Moscow is that if the West now intends to erect any new Berlin Wall, such a wall will have to run zig-zag along the western coast of the Black Sea, while the Russian naval fleet will always stay put on the east coast and forever sail in and out of the Black Sea.
The Montreal Convention assures the free passage of Russian warships through the Straits of Bosphorous. Under the circumstances, NATO's grandiose schemes to occupy the Black Sea as its private lake seem outlandish now. There must be a lot of egg on the faces of the NATO brains in Brussels and their patrons in Washington and London.
Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JH30Ag02.html
Clarín: "Gustav" pierde fuerza,
pero aún hay dos millones de evacuados
El temible huracán se convirtió en tormenta tropical y provoca daños menores a los esperados. Con fuertes lluvias y vientos, ahora se dirige a Texas. No obstante, se informó que en Louisiana causó al menos ocho muertos. Recomendaron a los evacuados no regresar a sus hogares por el momento.
Por: Clarín.com
02.09.2008
El temible huracán "Gustav" sigue perdiendo fuerza en su paso por Estados Unidos y esta mañana ya se había convertido en tormenta tropical, con fuertes lluvias y vientos, mientras se dirigía ru mbo al noroeste del país, desde Louisiana hacia el noreste de Texas. Mientras, siguen en estado de emergencia esas dos ciudades, además de Alabama y Mississippi.
El Centro Nacional de Huracanes (CNH) de EE.UU. informó que la velocidad máxima sostenida de los vientos había bajado a los 75 kilómetros por hora, con algunas ráfagas más fuertes. A esa velocidad, el centro de "Gustav" debe sobrepasar hoy la parte oeste de Louisiana y entrar de lleno en la parte este de Texas.
Así, sin provocar la temida devastación que hace tres años dejó Katrina, el huracán perdió fuerza en antes de tocar suelo estadounidense y siguió debilitándose al adentrase en el país. Tocó tierra ayer por la mañana en el estado de Louisiana, en la población de Cocodrie, a 116 kilómetros al sureste de Nueva Orleans. Antes de tocar tierra había bajado a categoría dos.
No obstante su pérdida de fuerza, responsables del estado de Louisiana indicaron que el huracán causó al menos ocho muertos a su paso por las costas estadounidenses. Así, se elevó el número de víctimas fatales por el huracán, luego de que en el Caribe dejara un saldo de 85 muertos.
En tanto, los alrededor de dos millones de evacuados fueron instados a no regresar por el momento a sus casas, ya que previamente se debe estimar la
magnitud de los daños causados. Sólo el restablecimiento del suministro de energía para los alrededor de 800.000 afectados podría demorar semanas.
Copyright 1996-2008 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/diario/2008/09/02/um/m-01751526.htm
Guardian: Yes, I'm a fructivist.
My mission is to show you what you're missing
We have lost the sweetest of our native fruit: the only way to get it back is to grow it - even if that means guerrilla grafting
George Monbiot
The Guardian, Tuesday September 2 2008
I feel almost shy about writing this column. It contains no revelations, no call to arms. No one gets savaged - well, only mildly. The subject is almost inconsequential. Yet it has become an obsession which, at this time of year, forbids me to concentrate for long on anything else.
Though we still subsist largely on junk, even bilious old gits like me are forced to admit that the quality and variety of most types of food sold in Britain has greatly improved. But one kind has deteriorated. You can buy mangoes, papayas, custard apples, persimmons, pomegranates, mangosteens, lychees, rambutans and god knows what else. But almost all the fruit sold here now seems to taste the same: either rock-hard and dry, or wet and bland. A mango may be ambrosia in India; it tastes like soggy toilet paper in the UK. And the variety of native fruits on sale is smaller than it has been for 200 years.
Why? Most people believe it's because the supermarkets select for appearance, not taste. This might be true for vegetables, but for fruit it's evidently wrong. Green mangoes, Conference pears, unripe Bramley, Granny Smith or Golden Delicious apples look about as appealing as a shrink-wrapped stool. Appearance has nothing to do with it. What counts to the retailer is how well the variety travels.
Take the Egremont Russet, for example. It's a small apple that looks like a conker wrapped in sandpaper. But it has one inestimable quality. It can be dropped from the top of Canary Wharf, smash a kerbstone and come to no harm. This means it can be trucked from an orchard at Land's End to a packing plant in John O'Groats, via Sydney, Washington and Vladivostock, then back to a superstore in Penzance (this is the preferred route for most of the fruit sold in the UK) and remain fit for sale. The supermarkets must have had some trouble shifting it because of its strange appearance, so they promoted it as a connoisseur's apple. Such is our suggestibility that almost everyone believes this, even though a dispassionate tasting would show you that it's as sweet and juicy as a box of Kleenex.
For the same reason, we are assaulted with Conference pears, most of which resemble some kind of heavy ordnance, rather than any one of a hundred exquisite varieties such as the Durondeau, Belle Julie, Urbaniste, Glou Morceau, Ambrosia, Professeur du Breuil or Althorp Crasanne. It is because these pears are so delicious that they cannot be marketed. They melt in the mouth, which means they would also melt in the truck before it left the farm gate. As the best pears, plums, peaches and cherries are those which go soft and juicy when ripe, the grocers ensure that we never eat them.
To compound the problem, the supermarkets demand that fruit is picked long before it ripens: it doesn't soften until it rots. This makes great commercial sense. It also ensures that no one in his right mind would want to eat it. But, happily for the retailers, we have forgotten what fruit should taste like. The only way to find out is either to travel abroad or - the low-carbon option - to grow your own. I find myself becoming a fruit evangelist, a fructivist, whose mission is to show people what they are missing.
When I lived in Oxford, at a time when allotments were underused, I spent a week in the Bodleian library reading Hogg and Bull's Herefordshire Pomona, a massive book of apples and pears, written in the 1870s (you can now buy it on CD from the Marcher Apple Network). Then I cleared two and a half plots and planted the best varieties I could find. I left just as the trees were ready to fruit. But land here in mid-Wales is cheap. I bought half an acre and have started planting a second orchard.
When I first tried to place an order, I caused great excitement among the nurseries I phoned. Where had I seen these apples? Who recommended them? Two of them, I discovered, had been extinct for at least 50 years. So I have had to settle for second best, by which I mean breeds that still exist. I began by planting a Ribston Pippin and an Ashmead's Kernel. These apples, both exquisite when fully ripe, can be stored from October till May. To spread the fruit as far through the year as possible, I have ordered an apple called the Irish Peach, which ripens in early August; a St Edmund's Pippin (September) and a Wyken Pippin (December to April). After a long search I think I have pinned down the apple I once tasted and loved in a friend's garden. I'm pretty confident that it was a Forfar, also know as the Dutch Mignonne, so I've bought one of those too. If I'd had more space, I would also have planted a Catshead, a Boston Russet, a Sturmer Pippin and a Reinette Grise.
I have bought two pears - a Seckle and a Beurré Rance - a green plum (the Cambridge Gage), a fig, a medlar, a peach, currants, gooseberries, raspberries, loganberries and blueberries. But what excites me most are the suggestions made by a man called Ken Fern. Once a London bus driver, Fern has spent most of his life cataloguing and growing the edible species of fruit and vegetable which can survive in this country. His list now extends to 7,000, some of which are featured in his book Plants for a Future. I've decided to buy an Arnold Thorn (Crataegus arnoldiana), which belongs to the same genus as the hawthorn, but grows sweet juicy fruits the size of cherries, and to replace my hedge with Elaeagnus x ebbingei, which produces sweet red berries with edible seeds, in (uniquely) April and May. This means, if it works out, that I can eat fresh fruit all the year round. I can store apples and Beurré Rance pears until the Eleagnus fruits, then my strawberries should be ready more or less when it stops. One day, when I can afford it, I will buy more land and plant a few dozen of the weird species Fern has found.
Most people have less space than I do, but even a tiny garden can support half a dozen apple trees, if you grow them as cordons (single stems with short spurs) 80cm apart against a wall. If you have room for only a couple of pots, you could grow blueberries, strawberries, cranberries or some of the little shrubs Fern recommends, such as Vaccinium praestans and Gaultheria shallon. Or you could become a guerrilla planter or guerrilla grafter, growing fruit on roadsides, on commons and in parks and wasteland. Apple twigs of any kind can be grafted on to crab trees. Medlars and one breed of pear (a delicious variety called Joséphine des Malines) can be grafted on to hawthorn. Kiwi fruit, passion fruit and a vine called Schisandra grandiflora will climb into trees of any kind.
It's not just the produce I love. When you start growing fruit, you enter a world of recondite knowledge, accumulated over centuries of amateur experiments. You must choose the right rootstocks and pollinators and learn about bees, birds and caterpillars. But above all you must learn patience. Growing fruit forces you to think ahead, to imagine a sweeter future and then to wait. Perhaps it is this, as much as the forgotten flavours, that I have been missing.
monbiot.com
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/02/food.foodanddrink
Internazionale:
Un paese sottomesso
L'estate è stata segnata dal disinteresse per la politica. I partiti italiani soffocano la partecipazione. E senza il contributo dei cittadini la democrazia è in crisi, scrive Udo Gümpel.
Udo Gümpel
Internazionale, 1 settembre 2008
Le chiacchiere sotto l'ombrellone, davanti allo stesso mare e sulla stessa spiaggia, rivelano molte cose sullo stato d'animo di un paese. Sulla spiaggia tutti sono rilassati, i poveri come i ricchi, tutti si mettono pazienti in fila per la doccia. Ecco finalmente un paese pacifico.
Mai, negli ultimi vent'anni, avevo sentito parlare così poco di politica sotto l'ombrellone come quest'estate. Nelle conversazioni nessuno fa più cenno ai classici temi del tormentone estivo: gli immigranti clandestini, i nomadi, la crisi. Niente più discussioni. La politica? Lasciamola al governo. Si direbbe che sia questo il nuovo motto del paese.
Un'Italia ubbidiente, docile, disciplinata. Come un cane ben addestrato, ha scritto Nadia Urbinati il 20 agosto sulla Repubblica. Non ha tutti i torti: il paese sembra pronto a sottomettersi al padrone, a riconoscere che il dissenso è un crimine sociale, a permettere che le regole del gioco democratico esalino l'ultimo respiro. Cane e padrone camminano su un sentiero che va in direzione opposta rispetto alle altre democrazie, dove si lascia più spazio al dissenso, prima di tutto verso un legittimo governo democratico.
La massa dei cittadini di questo paese ha rinunciato spontaneamente ai propri diritti e le minoranze si trovano così esposte a un rischio reale. Tutto questo è dovuto a una strisciante perdita di fiducia, cominciata anni fa, nella partecipazione democratica e nella libera capacità di contribuire a plasmare la società. Ed è un fenomeno nato all'interno dei partiti.
La frequenza delle consultazioni elettorali negli ultimi anni in Italia potrebbe sembrare, in apparenza, un indizio di democrazia. Ma la realtà è diversa. Le elezioni non sono altro che un auditel politico, perché i candidati sono sempre espressione dei clientelismi dei direttivi. A definire il programma sono in pochissimi: per questo chi si sente spettatore preferisce cambiare canale e, quando arriva il momento di infilare la scheda nell'urna, magari ci scrive sopra "Viva Antonio La Trippa!".
Il fatto che Silvio Berlusconi nutra una sincera avversione per la democrazia di base non deve stupire. Che poi ci siano ancora dirigenti di An che insistono perché il congresso, in vista della fusione con Forza Italia, venga organizzato con rappresentanti democraticamente eletti, è degno di rispetto. Invece, che il principale partito d'opposizione si basi su regole di democrazia interna che in qualsiasi altro paese lo avrebbero esposto a severe critiche è un problema di cui né i sostenitori del Pd né i cittadini sembrano afferrare l'importanza. Perché con la democrazia succede proprio questo: quando se ne va, all'inizio è difficile accorgersene, come insegna la storia del Novecento.
A questo punto chiedo scusa ai miei lettori italiani, ma devo spiegare cosa sono i congressi elettorali in Germania. Sono quei meeting di partito in cui, nel corso di votazioni a scrutinio segreto, vengono scelti i singoli candidati delle liste elettorali dei partiti (di tutti i partiti). Se mai un partito tedesco trasgredisse questa regola elementare non convocando regolarmente i congressi o consentendo la nomina di centinaia di funzionari per acclamazione, presumibilmente verrebbe sciolto con l'accusa di aver commesso una grave violazione della democrazia interna.
Ah, ancora una cosa: anche i bilanci dei partiti devono essere sottoposti a verifica, e quindi essere veri bilanci. Ma tutto ciò interessa ancora all'Italia che sonnecchia sotto l'ombrellone? Ci tiene davvero a essere consultata? Dopo un'estate come questa, comincio seriamente a dubitarne.
Udo Gümpel è il corrispondente delle reti televisive tedesche N-tv, Wdr e Rbb. Vive a Roma dal 1984. Per scrivere ai giornalisti stranieri: corrispondente@internazionale.it
Internazionale viale Regina Margherita, 294 - 00198 Roma
tel +39 06 4417 301 • fax +39 06 4425 2718 •
email posta@internazionale.it
http://www.internazionale.it/home/primopiano.php?id=20094
Jeune Afrique: La junte forme un gouvernement
sans fixer de durée à "la transition"
MAURITANIE - 1 septembre 2008 - par AFP
La junte qui dirige la Mauritanie depuis le coup d'Etat du 6 août a installé lundi un gouvernement sans fixer de durée à la "transition", au moment où l'opinion mauritanienne s'interroge sur le temps que les militaires mettront cette fois à restituer le pouvoir aux civils.
Tard dans la soirée de dimanche, un communiqué de la présidence du Haut conseil d'Etat (junte) annonçait à la télévision d'Etat qu'un gouvernement de 22 ministres avait été formé "par décret", sous la direction du diplomate Moulaye Ould Mohamed Laghdaf.
Cette annonce intervenait 26 jours après le putsch qui a renversé Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi, premier président démocratiquement élu depuis l'indépendance du pays en 1960, et porté au pouvoir un conseil d'officiers dirigé par le général Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz.
Ce cabinet, rénové dans sa grande majorité, est notamment censé préparer des concertations nationales autour de cette "transition", selon une source proche de la junte.
La majorité des ministres appartient à la mouvance qui soutient le coup d'Etat, pour la plupart de jeunes technocrates inconnus du public et dont le choix viserait à "faire peau neuve et rassurer l'opinion", a estimé lundi l'éditorialiste du journal La Tribune.
Le directeur de l'hebdomadaire indépendant Le Calame, Ahmed Ould Cheikh, jugeait plutôt que la formation d'un gouvernement "(pouvait) provoquer l'escalade avec la communauté internationale et enclencher la spirale des sanctions internationales".
Dès lundi matin, la France a considéré que "cette décision, comme l'ensemble des mesures prises par les responsables militaires qui se sont emparés du pouvoir, et en particulier la destitution du président, (était) dénuée de toute légitimité".
Le nouveau ministre des Affaires étrangères, Mohamed Mahmoud Ould Mohamedou, universitaire ayant enseigné à Harvard (Etats-Unis), aura la tâche difficile de convaincre la communauté internationale des bonnes intentions des militaires.
Il devrait être l'interlocuteur des émissaires de l'Union africaine (UA), "prêts à se rendre de nouveau à Nouakchott afin d'approfondir les discussions pour la recherche d'une solution à la crise", avait annoncé l'UA samedi.
Le Front national pour la défense de la démocratie (FNDD), coordination de cinq partis mauritaniens contre le coup d'Etat, a exprimé son "rejet absolu de cette formation illégale". Le FNDD a dénoncé "l'acharnement à violer la légalité" de "putschistes qui se sont affublés du nom de Haut conseil d'Etat".
Des membres de deux formations d'opposition au régime de Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi font en revanche leur entrée au gouvernement: le Parti mauritanien pour l'union et le changement (PMUC) de Saleh Ould Henenna et le Rassemblement des forces démocratiques (RFD) d'Ahmed Ould Daddah.
Mais, aussitôt après cette annonce, le RFD, deuxième parti à l'Assemblée nationale, a considéré ces ministres comme "automatiquement démissionnaires" du parti.
Le RDF avait en effet annoncé qu'il ne participerait pas au gouvernement, faute d'avoir obtenu des garanties sur l'inéligibilité à la présidentielle de tout membre des forces armées et sur la durée de la transition.
Le général Ould Abed Aziz, à la présidence de ce conseil, s'est plusieurs fois engagé devant les Mauritaniens et "devant Dieu à organiser dans les meilleurs délais une élection présidentielle libre et transparente", mais sans fixer de délai.
Il y a trois ans, les militaires avaient renversé le président Maaouiya Ould Taya puis gardé le pouvoir pendant 19 mois.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/
article_depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP75938lajunnoitis0
Lo Straniero:
Le stagioni del sergente
di Gianfranco Bettin
Settembre 2008
“Vorrei che tutti potessero ascoltare il canto delle coturnici al sorgere del sole, vedere i caprioli sui pascoli in primavera, i larici arrossati dall’autunno sui cigli delle rocce, il guizzare dei pesci tra le acque chiare dei torrenti e le api raccogliere il nettare dai ciliegi in fiore”: è stato quasi un programma di vita, per Mario Rigoni Stern, questo, schizzato con la mano ferma e felice di un Hemingway senza nevrosi, un programma che era anche il suo desiderio e il suo augurio per la vita di tutti. Ora che il suo respiro è cessato, la sua voce continua a parlare dall’altipiano, tra le foglie e nel vento, nei versi degli animali che ci ha insegnato a distinguere, come le piante dell’arboreto salvatico, e anche nei silenzi di valli e montagne, eloquenti come sermoni. E, naturalmente, nel ricco deposito di testi che lascia. Niente di naïf e niente di occasionale, come errando sostenne Elio Vittorini nel ’53 presentando “Il sergente nella neve”. La prosa di Rigoni Stern, dal grande romanzo d’esordio ai tanti racconti successivi, è la prosa di un vero scrittore, innervata di profonda, precisa conoscenza degli elementi e delle situazioni di cui parla impastando esperienza e visione, ispirazione e scienza delle cose.
“Verrà, verrà il caro scricciolo sulla catasta di legna ad annunciare la prima neve come quando ero ragazzo con il suo tic tic ripetuto più volte, il suo campanellino nascosto nella gola si sentirà anche lassù dove le nuvole compatte e bianche aspettano il segnale”: è l’imminenza dell’inverno, descritta con perizia da ornitologo e da meteorologo, utilizzando appropriatamente tecnicismi e onomatopee, alternando suggestioni a descrizioni icastiche.
Come non è ingenua sulle cose, la narrativa di Rigoni Stern non lo è sulla Storia e anche quando staglia di fronte a noi la bellezza e la serenità del mondo, resta consapevole della sua precarietà, della possibilità sempre incombente della tragedia. Era da un luogo come quello che avrebbe voluto mettere a disposizione di tutti, tra larici e torrenti, tra api e coturnici, che era partito per attraversare le guerre del suo tempo, dall’Albania alla Russia. Dagli inverni fiabeschi dell’altopiano di Asiago a quelli atroci del Don insanguinato. Ne era tornato, salvando i suoi uomini, in quello che, come disse pacato e fiero a Marco Paolini nel film biografico di Carlo Mazzacurati, considerava il vero capolavoro della sua vita: non aver perso nessuno di quelli che guidava durante la ritirata, sergente nella neve che nella neve aveva cercato e saputo trovare, oltre Nikolajewka, la strada per tornare “a baita”. Ma non aveva più dimenticato quel gelo e quell’ombra che insidiano il mondo, sempre, e che spesso, insanguinandola, scendono nella storia. Spesso le sue pagine ci parlano tenacemente e volentieri d’altro, del piacere di stare nella natura, rispettandola, conciliati con essa, e tuttavia senza ignorare mai la dialettica e il conflitto immanenti, se non deflagranti, il dovere di prendere posizione e, prima ancora, di essere consapevoli di questa dinamica della storia. L’altipiano non è la meta di una fuga, il ritiro. Al contrario, è il luogo e il modo di vita, sono i visibili e tangibili valori, in nome dei quali confrontarsi con la Storia e col Potere. Ognuno, sulla base di questa lezione, ai luoghi del vecchio Sergente può sostituire i propri, se ne ha ancora, o se ne sa trovare nel vasto mondo che valgano la pena, come può abbracciare, scegliere, i modi di vita e i valori in nome dei quali mostrare che un altro mondo è possibile – e anche, o prima ancora, che è possibile un altro modo di stare al mondo.
In un racconto Rigoni Stern sogna di smarrirsi nel bosco insieme al suo cane, tra i faggi e il sorbo. “Andare così, per tutta la vita”, si lascia andare a desiderare, seguendo quello smarrimento felice come si assapora un desiderio in via di soddisfazione e come si gode un legittimo diritto di ogni vivente. Eppure anche lassù la Storia parla, riemerge. Un vecchio gallo precipita in un burrone e la disgrazia dell’animale gli riporta la visione lontana della testa spaccata di un tedesco in guerra. La tragedia e la violenza non sono dimenticabili, per chi le ha vissute, e non sono esorcizzabili, neanche nella bellezza dei lati migliori del mondo e della vita, per chi ne abbia ascoltato il racconto. Lo si capisce quasi con naturalezza leggendo “Il sergente nella neve”, romanzo singolarissimo e perfetto, che cresce lentamente ma sicuramente, decennio dopo decennio, avanzando col passo del montanaro, nella storia della nostra letteratura ma anche nel ruolo che svolge nella coscienza di un paese spesso aduso a giocarci viziosamente, con la propria coscienza, a manipolarla ipocritamente o cinicamente. Quel romanzo ci riporta al freddo della Storia e ce ne rende dolorosamente e necessariamente consapevoli, almeno quanto, nel cuore più duro della vicenda che narra, riesce ad aprirci gli occhi sul sempre possibile incontro e rispetto umano, anche nelle estreme vicende belliche, come nell’episodio del silenzioso e pacifico pasto casualmente condiviso in un’isba tra i russi resistenti e l’italiano invasore e ora in ritirata. Nemici acerrimi, che fuori di quell’isba torneranno a combattersi, ma tutti in cerca di un tetto e di un piatto caldo nella grande tormenta che gli soffia addosso e che li accomuna.
C’è sempre, in Rigoni Stern, questo doppio registro: calore umano e gelo della storia, incanto e disincanto verso il mondo e la natura. C’è nei drammatici e pur sempre vivi racconti di guerra e c’è nelle storie spesso meravigliose dell’altipiano, sviluppando i primi e le seconde con la stessa perizia artistica, sotto il controllo di una tecnica che, per essere sommamente artigianale, non è affatto minore. Anzi, che trova nella propria sobria misura e nel proprio ricco catalogo di figure e colori e voci, la cifra segreta e inimitabile di un’autorevolezza paterna più che patriarcale, da sergente che sta con te nella neve o, meglio, che ti sa precedere tracciando la pista, più che da alto ufficiale che percorre vie riservate. è da questa posizione che può ricordarci la bellezza del mondo senza che ciò suoni patetico o consolatorio, o, viceversa, che può mostrarci l’orrore della Storia e la bassezza dell’uomo senza che ciò neghi in radice la speranza e la fiducia nella vitalità e nella possibilità di cambiamento della nostra specie.
“Sono nato alle soglie dell’inverno, in montagna, e la neve ha accompagnato la mia vita”, così incomincia “Stagioni”, il suo ultimo libro, errabondo tra stagioni della vita e della storia, oltre che intensa celebrazione del variare e dell’andare delle stagioni durante l’anno, necessaria alternanza di vite morti rinascite che portano ognuna colori forme suoni e semi germogli frutti, e sonni e risvegli, che insieme sviluppano il grande ciclo di tutti e del tutto. Un andare e un vedere che, a chi ha addestrato i propri sensi, non sembra mai monotono, neanche quando pare più uniforme. Si fa presto, ad esempio, a dire neve. Rigoni Stern lo dice in molti modi diversi, usando la lingua dell’altipiano, quella più connessa alle cose che nomina, capace di distinguere, della neve, una decina di fasi, forme, colori (le sorprendenti gradazioni del bianco) e anche i suoi mutevoli contenuti (il diverso significato che assume per gli animali, per i pascoli, per il bosco, per il cielo nelle varie fasi dell’anno). “Le più variate nevi”, le chiama in un verso Andrea Zanzotto, un altro grande vecchio veneto (del Veneto capace di vero radicamento e di vera universalità) a sua volta osservatore infallibile della complessa, mutevole costituzione delle nevi.
Come nello stesso Zanzotto, la neve, che pure incanta (e che, nel poeta di Pieve di Soligo, perfino “risana”), in Rigoni Stern non nasconde tuttavia ciò che ne insidia la purezza. Nella lunga intervista concessa a “Lo straniero” circa un anno fa ad Asiago, ci raccontò della neve che a maggio, sciogliendosi, anche lassù, a 2500 metri, adesso è spesso “unta”. Qualche decennio fa non lo era, ci disse, spiegando che ora capita di vederla sporca, “zaleta”, gialliccia, lasciare sulla terra, quando si scioglie, uno strato untuoso, residuo di inquinamenti assorbiti nell’atmosfera e ricaduti insieme ai cristalli composti nei fiocchi. Il grande narratore della meraviglia della natura, è sempre stato anche un lucido testimone di ciò che a essa ci rende estranei e indifferenti, prima ancora che, di essa, acerrimi sfruttatori.
“Pochi sono quelli che nell’agenda scrivono le temperature, le precipitazioni, i cambiamenti del clima. Solo affari, solo appuntamenti; una volta erano di più gli uomini che usavano annotare anche le cose della natura, perché ora si vive di artefizi, ossia con espedienti diretti a ottenere effetti estranei all’ordine naturale”, scrive in “Stagioni”, piccolo ultimo e magnifico libro in cui non mancano pagine preoccupate o decisamente disilluse, radicalmente critiche verso la perdita di rispetto per la natura e per il nostro stesso patrimonio storico e culturale. Eppure, come nell’inverno della guerra, come nella tormenta che confondeva ogni strada, anche in questa pace smarrita e corrotta, il Sergente continuava a segnare la pista, a mostrare la meta.
http://www.lostraniero.net/
Lo Straniero:
Quarant’anni fa, Franco Basaglia
di Carlo e Rita Brutti
Settembre 2008
L’occasione di ricordare Franco Basaglia – a quarant’anni dalla pubblicazione di “L’istituzione negata” (Einaudi), il libro che rese famosa la sua esperienza – potrebbe trovarsi esposta, come ogni commemorazione, a una retorica esaltazione del suo valore e dei suoi meriti o, per contro, a una subdola e talora ingenerosa svalutazione del suo pensiero, del suo operato e del ruolo che ha giocato in quel turbinoso e pur fecondo periodo che prende nome da un anno mitico: il ’68.
Tuttavia una distanza critica che ci faccia non solo ricordare e ripetere, ma anche elaborare con intenzione di verità l’eredità di Franco Basaglia, potrebbe permetterci, al di là dei limiti e delle contraddizioni di un pensiero che si fece azione, di partire da quella esperienza, comunque esemplare, e tornare a interrogarci oggi sui nuovi volti di quelle drammatiche realtà che Franco Basaglia e altri pionieri ebbero il coraggio di affrontare. Intendiamo riferirci a tre realtà, cioè ai modi in cui nella metà del secolo scorso si configuravano la “follia”, l’“istituzione psichiatrica” e le “direttrici della cultura politica dominante”: tre dimensioni di un’epoca solo in apparenza sussistenti di per sé ma, di fatto, così strettamente intricate da creare una situazione il cui grado di decomposizione era occultato da una potente rimozione collettiva.
Già il proposito di sollevare lo spesso velo di tale rimozione e mettere sotto gli occhi di tutti il degrado dell’istituzione psichiatrica, e la condizione disumana di coloro che vi erano reclusi, costituì un evento di così grande portata e produsse effetti tali che gli attuali rigurgiti regressivi e negatori potranno contestare ma non cancellare. Prima di tale evento, la cattiva coscienza dell’epoca occultava ipocritamente le operazioni che si svolgevano nei manicomi presentandole come “custodia” e “cura”. Termini, questi, rivelativi del legame e della solidarietà sussistente tra “cultura politica” e “scienza”, se è vero che le istituzioni psichiatriche rappresentavano la risposta a un bisogno di sicurezza e di protezione della società che si credeva assicurato da una strategia contrabbandata come terapeutica. Essa, in realtà, si riduceva a un programma di controllo rigido (di fatto “carcerario”) delegato a “secondini” con la divisa della corporazione sanitaria.
Il campo di battaglia scelto da Franco Basaglia – medico e psichiatra – fu primariamente quello politico. Si trattò di una intuizione lungimirante che niente aveva a che fare con il politicismo becero e protestatario di alcuni suoi epigoni. Essa scaturì dall’ondata contestativa che investì in Occidente tutte le strutture di potere mettendo sotto processo le loro prassi di dominio e di oppressione consolidate da secoli ma che il lento lavorio della cultura aveva via via messo a nudo e incominciato a erodere.
Questo clima culturale degli anni sessanta trovò in Franco Basaglia, che proveniva da una seria formazione clinica a impronta fenomenologica, un osservatore attento, dotato di quell’acuta sensibilità che gli permise di cogliere i fermenti più significativi presenti nei due grandi maestri del sospetto: Marx e Freud. Dal primo trasse gli strumenti per una lettura delle istituzioni totali come funzionali alla logica dominante della divisione del lavoro e a quella del profitto. Dal secondo il principio – formulato per la prima volta dal padre della psicoanalisi – per il quale venne cancellata ogni differenza di natura tra normale e patologico a favore del pur inquietante assunto della sola differenza di grado. Un salto concettuale tutt’altro che tranquillo, ma di enorme portata trasformativa se si pensa che all’epoca il dogma scientifico dominante sosteneva che la patologia mentale fosse di natura “altra” rispetto alla condizione “normale”. Dogma che costituiva il fondamento giustificativo della separazione e dell’emarginazione dei folli dei quali veniva pure sancita l’incurabilità.
In realtà proprio il criterio di incurabilità della malattia mentale costituì l’asse portante attorno al quale venne a strutturarsi e consolidarsi l’istituzione psichiatrica. (Non si vuole con ciò sostenere che, all’origine, l’idea di costruire cittadelle per alienati non rispondesse a un’esigenza di assistenza che, per lo spirito con il quale venne esercitata, potrebbe persino fornirci, ancora oggi, preziose indicazioni: gente da “assistere” l’avremo sempre con noi!). Ma, a nostro parere, il successivo tentativo di riduzione medicalistica della sofferenza psichica contribuì, paradossalmente, a deteriorare il primitivo assetto di quegli asili, connotandoli del carattere restrittivo e punitivo che assunsero, dove la gente che vi approdava finiva per diventare definitivamente folle.
Sappiamo come questo processo di medicalizzazione fu avviato da Emil Kraepelin – un gigante nella storia della medicina – il quale elaborò un’opera poderosa sulle malattie mentali cui dette un ordinamento nosografico al quale ancora oggi si fa riferimento. (Basti guardare l’impianto tassonomico del Dsm, imposto al mondo dall’imperialismo scientifico statunitense, per rendersene conto.)
L’intuizione basagliana – e dell’intero movimento contestativo – rispetto allo statuto scientifico della psichiatria, consisté nel denunciare l’errore basilare di Kraepelin il quale non si rese conto che quanto descrisse e classificò non riguardava processi patologici “naturali” ma gli effetti della segregazione dei pazienti dalla comunità umana, cioè da relazioni e scambi comunicativi che costituiscono la trama del nostro reciproco (anche se inevitabilmente conflittuale) riconoscimento e del nostro stesso sussistere come persone.
Solo alla luce di questi rilievi acquista allora il suo peculiare significato lo slogan scandaloso dell’antipsichiatria: la malattia mentale non esiste. Esso mirava a sovvertire la concezione medicalistica delle affezioni psichiche che dovevano riconoscersi come il tragico effetto di spinte espulsive presenti in una società attraversata da contraddizioni così profonde di cui pativano le conseguenze le fasce più deboli, cioè meno garantite, della popolazione.
Proprio in ragione di tali analisi l’antipsichiatria – attaccando l’istituzione asilare e quella medica che la gestiva e quindi i secolari interessi attorno a essa consolidati – non poteva che coinvolgere le forze politiche più vive del Paese se voleva essa stessa salvarsi da reazioni repressive e perseguire risultati concreti senza esaurirsi in proteste velleitarie e sterili.
La strategia politica di Basaglia e dell’antipsichiatria riuscì nell’intento di coinvolgere le forze politiche della sinistra ispirandone l’azione coraggiosa di smantellamento e di rinnovamento dell’assistenza. Una politica sulla quale il saggio realismo della sinistra riuscì a far confluire consistenti forze della maggioranza governativa. Fu tale convergenza a permettere la formulazione e l’approvazione della famosa Legge 180 (che non a caso viene evocata come “Legge Basaglia”). Essa decretò, come sappiamo, la chiusura definitiva degli ospedali psichiatrici: il raggiungimento di un traguardo da cui non si potrà più recedere e che segnò la fine di un’epoca e l’inizio di un’era di rinnovamento radicale nella gestione dei malati mentali.
Non è questa la sede per un’analisi dettagliata di una così straordinaria vicenda, legata certo al nome di Basaglia e dei suoi collaboratori. Ma non possiamo qui non ricordare anche le équipes operanti a Perugia, Arezzo, Parma, Reggio Emilia, per citare alcune tra le sedi più importanti che si segnalarono per gli apporti creativi e per le riflessioni sulle strategie del movimento che ognuna di esse aveva attivato e che ebbero un peso sempre più significativo ed efficace. Queste diverse esperienze non sempre dialogarono tra loro né si integrarono vicendevolmente. Ma la sostanziale ispirazione di fondo unificò tutti in un significativo movimento che nessuno meglio di Michel Legrand – un sociologo belga che soggiornò a lungo proprio nelle sedi dove il processo di cambiamento era più fervido – ha saputo approfondire e documentare in un volume di grande interesse “La psychiatrie alternative italienne”. (Che nessuno da noi si peritò di tradurre forse perché non si rinvenne un editore disposto a pubblicarlo in italiano.)
Ma il nostro ricordo di Franco Basaglia si ridurrebbe a sola memoria della stagione di destrutturazione delle istituzioni totali e dei primi passi del nuovo corso, se non ci confrontassimo con la situazione che da quell’avvio iniziò a prendere forma. Le note critiche che ci apprestiamo a formulare al riguardo, lungi dall’intaccare il valore dell’impianto ideale di partenza e dei traguardi raggiunti, vorrebbero rappresentare un piccolo contributo a una riflessione più incisiva che possa rimettere in moto il processo.
Non c’è chi non riconosca come lo sviluppo delle premesse poste dal movimento antipsichiatrico abbia incontrato lungo il suo cammino tre ostacoli fondamentali, tre nodi problematici che non si è riusciti a sciogliere appieno. Il primo serio ostacolo fu rappresentato dalle reazioni al cambiamento che si sono via via potenziate per l’attenuarsi dell’impegno politico e per la debolezza e il ritardo delle risposte alle prime inevitabili disfunzioni. L’appoggio politico, essenziale nella fase “destruens” del progetto, non lo fu altrettanto nel sostenere la fase “costruens”, cioè l’avvio della sperimentazione – e dell’eventuale correzione “in itinere” – delle nuove vie di assistenza e di cura. Tale impasse dell’azione politica a noi sembra concatenata – e questo è il secondo nodo – alla carenza dell’elaborazione scientifica da parte degli addetti ai lavori. Fu questo a produrre lo scollamento con la componente politica del movimento che finì per appostarsi su una gestione burocratica del cambiamento assistenziale senza un’adeguata attenzione al problema centrale della cura. Fu proprio il tema della “cura” – e incontriamo così il terzo nodo problematico – che il movimento non fu, nel suo insieme, in grado di assumere e gestire a fronte della pressante richiesta da parte della gente di una presa in carico, non solo assistenziale ma terapeutica, degli ex ricoverati e dei nuovi portatori di sofferenza psichica.
È nostra convinzione che il non essere stati all’altezza del compito abbia favorito il trionfale ritorno della psichiatria biologica che ha segnato la sua rivincita. Dissotterrato l’antico credo del suo fondatore – Wilhelm Griesinger – abbiamo inteso di nuovo affermare che le malattie psichiche sono solo malattie del cervello e, irridendo al radicalismo sociologista dell’antipsichiatria, questi profeti redivivi hanno di fatto reintrodotto la psichiatria nella cittadella medica. Un recupero, dobbiamo aggiungere, favorito dalla contraddizione che il movimento antipsichiatrico non riuscì mai a superare, rappresentata dalla commistione dell’assunto teorico che bollava la medicalizzazione come una subdola contenzione chimica e il contemporaneo ricorso, anche massivo, agli psicofarmaci senza i quali – e tutti noi, segretamente, ne eravamo convinti – lo svuotamento degli ospedali psichiatrici non sarebbe stato possibile.
La debolezza teorica dell’antipsichiatria non le permise di portare la sua battaglia proprio all’interno del terreno epistemologico della psichiatria organicista per dimostrare, a fronte della sua stantia impalcatura positivista, la forza umanistica delle proprie tesi, l’affermazione del valore della persona, il significato fondante della relazione al fine di instaurare quell’alleanza terapeutica con il paziente che, pur nelle condizioni più destrutturate, mantiene possibilità di libertà, responsabilità e cambiamento. Ma una simile prospettiva antropologica richiedeva un’attrezzatura culturale e scientifica che purtroppo il movimento non promosse rimanendo sempre più incastrato in battaglie di retroguardia, in beghe di potere e di carriera, rischiando di far rientrare dalla finestra quell’istituzionale che si credeva di aver cacciato dalla porta.
Eppure c’erano attorno a noi segnali che indicavano la strada per la conquista di una originale identità scientifica della nuova psichiatria. Una strada naturalmente tutta in salita che, per pregiudizi ideologici, ma soprattutto per pigrizia intellettuale e tornaconti personali, i più si son ben guardati dal percorrere.
Già contemporanei ai lavori di Basaglia apparvero gli scritti di Cooper, Goffman, Laing. In Italia non mancarono le voci che indicavano in una psichiatria psicoterapeuticamente orientata il nuovo orizzonte che si apriva dinanzi a noi dopo la destrutturazione del vecchio ordine (ricordiamo qui le iniziative scientifiche ed editoriali di Pierfrancesco Galli sviluppatesi attorno alla rivista “Psicoterapia e Scienze Umane”, gli scritti di De Martis e Petrella, i libri di Brutti e Scotti). Ma più forti furono le resistenze contro le prospettive di quelle indicazioni e oggi sembra che si è fermi su una reintegrazione medicalistica della psichiatria e nella gestione dei pazienti “seri” in piccoli asili di ricovero (di certo di gran lunga più dignitosi degli ospedali psichiatrici che ci siamo lasciati alle spalle, ma non sappiamo quanto destituzionalizzanti e realmente terapeutici).
Franco Basaglia, ne siamo certi, condividerebbe le nostre perplessità e la delusione che peraltro non arriva a spegnere la certezza che i valori essenziali che ispirarono l’antipsichiatria non tarderanno (di necessità) a riproporsi e fruttificare.
Bibliografia
Basaglia F. (a cura di), “L’istituzione negata”, Einaudi, Torino 1968.
Brutti C., Scotti F., “Psichiatria e democrazia”, De Donato, Bari 1976.
Cooper D., “Il linguaggio della follia”, Feltrinelli, Milano 1979.
Goffman E.,(1961), “Asylums” (traduzione di Franco Basaglia), Einaudi, Torino 2003.
Legrand Michel, “La psychiatrie alternative italienne. Entre mythe et réalité”, Privat,
Toulouse 1987.
Legrand Michel, “Introduction” a “Réussir la psychiatrie alternative”, Les éditions Esf,
Paris 1988.
Scotti F., Brutti C., “Quale psichiatria?” , due voll., Borla, Roma 1981.
http://www.lostraniero.net/
Mail & Guardian:
Monsoon misery spreads in India
BISWAJYOTI DAS | GUWAHATI, INDIA - Sep 02 2008
Heavy rains and rising floodwaters forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in north-eastern India and sent elephants and rhinos fleeing, as monsoon misery spread in South Asia.
In the eastern Indian state of Bihar, desperate flood victims attacked a warehouse and looted food supplies, while in neighbouring Bangladesh major rivers rose to danger levels and fresh parts of the country were submerged.
In the north-eastern state of Assam, heavy rains caused water levels to rise on Tuesday, affecting more than a million people and disrupting road networks for the second consecutive day.
Animals fled to higher ground in Kaziranga National Park after the Brahmaputra burst its banks and flooded most of the park, home to more than half of the world's population of one-horned rhinoceros.
At least two rhino calves were drowned and a herd of 100 elephants were swept away by floodwaters, forest officials said.
"We are now worried the poachers will take advantage and kill rhinos and elephants as they are moving out of the protected areas to safer ground," said chief warden SN Buragohain.
In Bihar, the floods have already displaced about three million people and killed at least 90.
Hundreds of stick-wielding villagers ransacked a food warehouse in Madhepura district and looted food packets while police guarding the warehouse ran for cover. Government vehicles carrying food were also looted.
"We cannot stop incidents despite our best efforts," said Bijendra Prasad Yadav, a state relief official. "These are very common during flood time."
Many villagers in impoverished Bihar have been marooned on rooftops for days with nothing to eat, while some have taken to eating plants and leaves to survive.
The Kosi river burst a dam in Nepal late last month flooding hundreds of villages across the state and destroying 100 000 hectares of farmlands.
Television images showed desperate villagers driving their livestock into the Kosi river because they had no food for them.
Since the monsoon began in South Asia in June, more than 1 000 people have died in floods, with most of the casualties recorded in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh in July.
Some experts have blamed the floods on heavier monsoon rains caused by global warming, while others say authorities have failed to take preventive measures and improve infrastructure.
Not welcome here
Although floodwaters are rising in Assam and Bangaldesh, water levels in Bihar are receding and the government aims to evacuate all stranded villagers within the next three days.
Aid agencies have criticised the government's handling of the crisis saying they should have done more to anticipate the disaster and plan relief operations since the region is hit by monsoon flooding every year.
In Bihar, more than 560 000 people have been evacuated so far, and some 200 000 have been moved to government relief camps, officials said.
Local media reported that the first train carrying Bihar flood victims reached New Delhi on Monday, complaining of having received little or no government help.
"The fields are flooded. There's no way I can sustain my family in the next six months," Gopal Punia, a farmer from Madhepura was quoted as saying by the Indian Express newspaper.
"I will try to find work here in Delhi."
Bihar state officials have also said flood refugees would not be welcomed in Patna, the state capital.
"They should return to their respective places by the same trains," said Raj Kumar Singh, a disaster management official. - Reuters
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-02-monsoon-misery-spreads-in-india
New Statesman:
The truth about GM
Will GM technology feed the world - or destroy farming, and human health, in the name of corporate profit? How can we tell, when the science is up for sale?
Colin Tudge
Published 28 August 2008
Genetically modified crops might once have proved useful. In the early days, in the 1980s, scientists I spoke to in India hoped to transfer genes from groundnuts (which are very resistant to heat and drought) into sorghum, the staple cereal of the Sahel, which is also drought-resistant but succumbs in the worst years. In California, there were advanced plans to produce barley that could thrive in brackish water of the kind that is spreading worldwide in the wake of overzealous irrigation. In Brazil, just a few years ago, I found GM being used to make disease-resistant papaya - which grows everywhere in the tropics and is an instant, free source of succulence, energy and Vitamin A. I was all for it.
Of course, the scientists anticipated snags. The GM plants might develop undesirable traits, possibly hazardous to consumer health, not necessarily in the first generation but down the line. That things could go wrong was evident from some of the early forays into GM livestock, which produced sad monsters. Perhaps the GM plants would escape into ecosystems and become pests - as many a crop has done in the past - but the GM super-crops might prove to be super-pests. Perhaps the insect-resistant types with built-in insecticide would kill non-target insects, with disastrous knock-on effects.
Nevertheless, the mood I encountered then was optimistic, essentially altruistic, and cautious. There was no need to hurry, because the conventional techniques of the day, properly deployed, could do what needed doing. Today, the world isn't like that: food production is now private enterprise, controlled by corporations and banks. The main purpose of farming is no longer to feed people but to maximise profits, raise GDP and maintain economic growth.
Critically, farming geared to making money differs in all significant ways from farming that is committed to providing good food today and for the future. Farming that feeds people well and sustainably must in general be mixed (many kinds of livestock and crops all interacting). It is complex and labour-intensive. Chemical inputs should be minimised, especially inputs of non-renewables; and, as far as possible, most food should be produced locally. The overall target is to ensure resilience: a steady supply of varied and high-quality crops, even in difficult times.
Cheap food is an illusion
In contrast, farming that is designed to make money must be maximally productive, but at minimum cost. So the systems must be simple: big machines and industrial chemistry instead of husbandry, and the farms on as large a scale as possible and monocultural, with just one crop or one kind of animal. Balanced diets in any one place can therefore be ensured only by mass imports. Labour - usually the most expensive input - must be cut to the bone and then cut again, with the workers paid as little as possible.
Finally, there must be maximal "value-adding" by processing, packaging and contrived exoticism, but above all by turning cheap yet good staples of the kind that have supported the great cuisines into meat for fast food. So we feed half the world's wheat to animals, and 80 per cent of the maize. But if something else should turn up that makes more money than food - for instance, biofuels - we'll grow that instead.
It works, does it not? While the food technologists and retailers have grown rich beyond all dreams of avarice, the masses have had, at least until recently, cheap food: it takes up just 8 per cent of the average Briton's income. Yet cheap food is an illusion. It is made to seem cheap by creative accountancy that ignores the vast quantities of oil needed, the collateral damage to soil, rivers, lakes, forests, wildlife, climate and, indeed, to human life, as well as the most blatant injustice as farmers across the globe are made bankrupt. According to the UN, one billion people now live in urban slums worldwide; and most of the shanty-dwellers are former farmers or their immediate descendants and dependants. The multinationals assure us there are "alternative industries". No, there aren't. When and if there are alternatives, it may be sensible to encourage people to leave the land. Not until. And it's a big "if".
As long as GM was part of an economy and a morality that had the well-being of humanity at heart, it had the potential to become what Ivan Illich in the 1970s called "a convivial technology", truly improving the human lot. As things stand, it merely serves to consolidate the status quo: to strengthen the arm of the corporations, which alone will control the seed and the inputs that the new seed requires; and to promote all the agro-industrial strategies that are so obviously destructive.
To be sure, the biological risks of GM remain, and should not be underestimated; but given time, and due caution, they could have been minimised. Commerce, however, demands immediate results, such that organic farmers already find it hard to buy feed for their animals that is not made from GM maize or soya. Yet reports that all is safe in the world of GM technology are greatly exaggerated. Nor is it true that it simply replicates the "horizontal" transmission of genes that occurs in the wild, and hence is "natural". Natural genes contain stretches of DNA known as "introns" that modify and regulate their function. Genetic engineers strip out the introns before they transfer them, to make life simpler. The difference could be significant, but we just don't know. I have yet to hear an advocate of GM technology even raise this issue.
Indeed, there has been so much hype and obfuscation in the promotion of GM - Prince Charles's recent warning about the looming environmental disaster aside - that it would be foolish to believe a word of it. Here are three quick examples. We have heard much, of late, of the "golden rice" made by Syngenta. It is fitted with a gene that produces carotene, which is the precursor of Vitamin A - the lack of which is a prime source of blindness among children worldwide. Therefore, Syngenta tells us, golden rice is a good thing - a sentiment echoed subsequently in the media and in the House of Lords by Dick Taverne. But carotene is the yellowish pigment in green leaves (such as spinach) and in all yellow-orange roots and fruits (carrots and papaya among them) and is one of the commonest organic molecules in nature. Poor people do not need handouts from Syngenta. All they need is horticulture - which, before the days of corporate-owned monocultures of commodity crops, they had.
We are told that GM crops yield more, and that the technology's opponents are irresponsible. Yet yield is rarely what really matters: very few famines in modern history have been caused by an inability to grow enough food; it has always been secondary to wars and economic breakdown, often caused by the west's destruction of subsistence farming. And anyway, the idea that GM crops can be relied upon to yield more than conventional crops is simply not true. Some GM crops do sometimes yield more than most standard crops in some circumstances and in some years; often they do not. In the long term, we have yet to see. The published results which seem to show that GM crops consistently outstrip their conventional counterparts are highly selective, with unfavourable results not made public. More and more, we are urged to rely on the "objectivity" and unimpeachable integrity of science. But when science itself is up for sale, there is no court of appeal.
"Feeding People is Easy" by Colin Tudge is published by Pari Publishing (£9.99)
http://www.newstatesman.com/food/2008/08/technology-feed-crops-farming
Página/12:
El triunfo del hipo
Por Horacio Verbitsky
Desde Monterrey
Martes, 2 de Septiembre de 2008
La tediosa sesión sobre Responsabilidad Social Empresarial dejó lugar a una jubilosa sobremesa, en la que Gabriel García Márquez conversó con su primer editor, José Salgar, a quien todavía llaman El Mono, porque en Colombia así les dicen a los rubios y a sus 87 años todavía se le ve el color del pelo. El tema fue el periodismo, para conmemorar los 60 años desde que Gabo dijo que se dedicaría al periodismo porque con la literatura no iba a ganar plata. La tertulia fue bajo una carpa junto a la cascada artificial del hotel de esta ciudad del norte de México, tan parecida a muchas de los Estados Unidos, donde todos los años realiza su seminario sobre calidad periodística la Fundación del Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano. Gabo la creó hace tres lustros, como una escuela itinerante que organiza talleres con reconocidos maestros del oficio para jóvenes profesionales de todos los países de habla hispana. Desde hace ocho años también entrega premios a la excelencia en distintas categorías. El venezolano Teodoro Petkoff, director del pequeño pero incisivo periódico Tal Cual, con el cual dice que no hace periodismo sino política, recordó cuando Gabo ganó el premio Rómulo Gallegos y entregó los 100.000 dólares que le dieron para que la izquierda venezolana creara el diario Punto, que sobrevivió cuatro años. “Se lo bebieron”, comentó alguien. Petkoff lo negó, no se sabe si con el ascetismo del guerrillero marxista o con la manía contable del ministro de Economía neoliberal, que fueron sus dos encarnaciones antes de devenir editor. “Salió hasta que se acabaron los 100.000”, lo ayudó alguien. Mercedes Barcha, que según García Márquez es su dueña pero no su jefa, suspiró por no haber sido consultada antes de la donación, lo cual pone en duda su teoría del matriarcado. Salgar (Bogotá, 1921) negó la autoría de la orden que el escritor le atribuye en Vivir para contarla, de torcerle el cuello al cisne para escribir periodismo. “Yo ni sabía qué eran los cisnes”, se disculpa. La frase es una exhortación de un poeta a sus colegas para librarse de la influencia de Rubén Darío. El Mono tampoco se cree la historia de que esa directiva, real o imaginada, señalara el camino de la objetividad y la precisión, de las que ni el jefe ni el reportero eran fanáticos, como dejaron en claro en el diálogo, para espanto de algunos funcionarios de la FNPI que hubieran querido tapar los oídos de los muchos jóvenes que escuchaban. Salgar dijo que en cada generación los periodistas deben contar las mismas historias, aumenta el costo de vida, hay guerras. El desafío consiste en inventar otra forma de tratar esas noticias y para eso es mejor la mística periodística que “todas estas pavadas que hemos escuchado durante la mañana”. Cuando la jarana ya era general, el Mono y Gabo agregaron una precisión oportuna.
–Con cada noticia había que inventar el periodismo –dijo Salgar.
–Nosotros no inventábamos las noticias, las promovíamos –acotó Gabo, para referirse a una guerra que empezó después de que la escribieran.
Salgar, quien dijo que celebraba las bodas de plata de sus bodas de oro con el periodismo, contó a dúo con Gabo una historia de aquellos años, cuando supo del prolongado hipo de Pío XII y se anunció que si en dos días más no paraba, el Papa se moría. Mientras todas las redacciones se documentaban sobre la biografía del papa Pacelli y preparaban sus ditirambos, ellos acopiaron toda la información accesible sobre el hipo y prepararon una crónica que no se titulaba “Murió el Papa” sino “Triunfó el hipo”. Pero el hipo paró, Pío XII vivió otros diez años y la nota no fue a parar a las historias papales sino al cesto de los papeles. La gozadera había terminado y debía reiniciarse el seminario sobre la Responsabilidad Social Empresarial, que por piedad se resume como RSE.
© 2000-2008 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-110783-2008-09-02.html
The Independent:
Why do we keep letting the politicians get away with lies?
Robert Fisk
Saturday, 30 August 2008
How on earth do they get away with it? Let's start with war between Hizbollah and Israel – past and future war, that is.
Back in 2006, Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers from their side of the Lebanese frontier and dragged them, mortally wounded, into Lebanon. The Israelis immediately launched a massive air bombardment against all of Lebanon, publicly declaring Beirut's democratically-elected and US-backed – but extremely weak – government must be held to account for what Hizbollah does. Taking the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese, almost all civilians, Israel unleashed its air power against the entire infrastructure of the rebuilt Lebanon, smashing highways, viaducts, electric grids, factories, lighthouses, totally erasing dozens of villages and half-destroying hundreds more before bathing the south of the country in three million cluster bomblets.
After firing thousands of old but nonetheless lethal rockets into Israel – where the total death toll was less than 200, more than half of them soldiers – Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's leader, told a lie: if he had known what Israel would do in revenge for the capture of two soldiers, he announced, he would never have agreed to Hizbollah's operation.
But now here comes Israel's environment minister, Gideon Ezra, with an equally huge whopper as he warns of an even bigger, more terrible war should Hizbollah attack Israel again. "During the (2006) war, we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon's infrastructure but we never (sic) resorted to this option, because we thought at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hizbollah attacks... At that time, we had Hizbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hizbollah do not live on the moon, and some (sic) infrastructure was hit." This was a brazen lie. Yet the Americans, who arm Israel, said nothing. The European Union said nothing. No journalistic column pointed out this absolute dishonesty.
Yet why should they when George Bush and Condoleezza Rice announced that there would be peace between Israelis and Palestinians by the end of 2007 – then rolled back the moment Israel decided it didn't like the timetable. Take this week's charade in Jerusalem. The moment Israeli foreign minister Tzipi Livni announced that "premature" efforts to bridge gaps in the "peace process" could lead to "clashes" (Palestinians, it should be remembered, die in "clashes", Israelis are always "murdered"), my friends in Beirut and I – along with a Jewish friend in London – took bets on when Condi would fall into line. Bingo, this was Her Holiness in Jerusalem last week: "It's extremely important just to keep making forward progress rather than trying prematurely to come to some set of conclusions." "Some set", of course, means "peace"'. Once more, US foreign policy was dictated by Israel. And again, the world remained silent.
So when the world's press announced that Barack Obama's new running mate, the silver-haired Joe Biden, was "an expert in foreign policy", we all waited to be told what this meant. But all we got was a reminder that he had voted for the 2003 Iraq invasion but thought better about it later and was now against the war. Well, Goddam blow me down, that certainly shows experience. But "expertise"? No doubt in government he'll be teemed up with those old pro-Israeli has-beens, Madeleine Albright and Martin Indyk, whose new boss, Obama, virtually elected himself to the Israeli Knesset with his supine performance in Israel during his famous "international" tour.
As one of the Arab world's most prominent commentators put it to me this week, "Biden's being set up to protect Israel while Obama looks after the transportation system in Chicago." It was a cruel remark with just enough bitter reality to make it bite.
Not that we'll pay attention. And why should we when the Canadian department of national defence – in an effort to staunch the flow of Canadian blood in the sands of Afghanistan (93 servicemen and women "fallen" so far in their hopeless Nato war against the Taliban) – has brought in a Virginia-based US company called the Terrorism Research Centre to help. According to the DND, these "terrorism experts" are going, among other subjects, to teach Canadian troops – DO NOT LAUGH, READERS, I BEG YOU DO NOT LAUGH – "the history of Islam"! And yes, these "anti-terrorism" heroes are also going to lecture the lads on "radical (sic) Islam", "sensitivities" and "cultural and ideological issues that influence insurgent decision-making". It is a mystery to me why the Canadian brass should turn to the US for assistance – at a cost of almost a million dollars, I should add – when America is currently losing two huge wars in the Muslim world.
But wait. The counterinsurgency school, which claims links to the US government, is reported to be a branch of Total Intelligence Solutions, a company run by infamous Cofer Black, a former director of CIA counterterrorism, and Erik Prince, a former US navy seal. Both men are executives with the Prince Group, the holding company for Total Intelligence Solutions and – and here readers will not laugh – a certain company called Blackwater. Yes, the very same Blackwater whose mercenary thugs blithely gunned down all those civilians on the streets of Baghdad last year. So Canada's soldiers are now going to be contaminated by these mercenary killers before they head off to the Muslim world with their unique understanding of "the history of Islam". How do they get away with it?
On a quite separate matter, you might ask the same of Conrad Black, languishing in a Florida prison after his business convictions. Responding to an enquiry from Murdoch's grotty New York Post into body searches and other appalling humiliations at the jail, Uncle Conrad, as I like to call him – for he is among the rogues I would love to have interviewed (others include the younger Mussolini and the older Yeltsin) – responded that the Florida facility was not oppressive, that "many of the people here are quite (sic) interesting" but – AND HERE IT COMES, LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! – "if saintly men like Gandhi could choose to clean latrines, and Thomas More could voluntarily wear a hair shirt, this experience won't kill me".
Now when Uncle Conrad likens himself to the assassinated Mahatma, the apostle of India, that is mere hubris. But when he compares himself to England's greatest Catholic martyr, a man of saintly honour if ruthless conviction, this is truly weird. "I die the King's good servant but God's first," More reportedly said on 6 July 1535, before they chopped off his head on Tower Hill. And many are there among Uncle Conrad's enemies who might wish the same fate for the former owner of The Daily Telegraph. After all, Henry VIII didn't let Thomas get away with it.
©independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/
robert-fisks-world-why-do-we-keep-letting-the-politicians-get-away-with-lies-913244.html
The New Yorker:
Conventional Battle
by David Remnick
September 8, 2008
In the summer of 1960, Norman Mailer took an assignment to cover the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. This was when conventions could still be the scenes of smoky, unpredictable battle, and on this occasion the improbably junior senator from Massachusetts, John Kennedy, who had won most of the primaries, was forced to fend off last-minute challenges from the Senate Majority Leader, Lyndon Johnson, and from the Party’s nominee in 1952 and 1956, Adlai Stevenson. Then, having overcome the opposition of Eleanor Roosevelt and the plots of the Party elders, Kennedy turned to Johnson and asked him to be his running mate against Richard Nixon and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Mailer wrote his article in a mythmaking frame of mind—the title was “Superman Comes to the Supermarket”—and he was determined to invest his protagonist and the times with the maximum sense of destiny. Senator Kennedy, he wrote, “was unlike any politician who had ever run for President in the history of the land, and if elected he would come to power in a year when America was in danger of drifting into a profound decline.”
The Democratic Convention last week in Denver was not the “pig-rooting, horse-snorting, band-playing, voice-screaming medieval get-together” of Mailer’s yesteryear. But, no matter how frictionless the stagecraft and Hellenic the actual stage, the sense of historic moment in Denver was far more profound than it was in Los Angeles forty-eight years ago. The nominee, Barack Obama, and the would-be-but-not-quite nominee, Hillary Clinton, did battle with central taboos of Presidential politics: Obama, of course, is the first African-American to capture a major-party nomination; Clinton is the first woman to contend seriously for the Presidency, winning a primary even on the day she lost the big prize. Obama’s nomination and Clinton’s near-miss are, in their way, belated fulfillments of the promises of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Seneca Falls Convention of 1848, and the Nineteenth Amendment. No banality of cable-news commentary—not even the mad bickering among the anchors on MSNBC—could eclipse the meaning and the emotion of their prolonged race, the Party’s dramatic reconciliation, and Obama’s fiercely eloquent acceptance speech.
The Convention suggested possibility and hope even with the Bush Administration, arguably the worst in history, still in power, and with the Republican nominee’s poll ratings seeming to pop precisely when he resorts to the tactics of his old nemesis, Karl Rove. The sense of national drift is no longer a novelist’s overheated conceit. Obama was careful to keep the mood focussed on better days and not signal despair, but, as he made plain, American decline, in economic, political, and moral terms, is an undeniable diagnosis.
The success of Obama’s convention in Denver was of a piece with the nineteen months of the Obama campaign. It was a disciplined, well-paced, sometimes moving production; no one stepped out of line and there were only a few bombs (e.g., Mark Warner). The curtain-raising media narrative about the Clintons turned out to be so preposterously inflated that it allowed both Bill and Hillary to execute easy maneuvers of rhetorical and emotional jujitsu, repairing his reputation of late for narcissistic resentment and hers for a confounded petulance in defeat. Edward Kennedy magisterially demanded the endurance of the Party by bravely displaying his own. Michelle Obama tore up the wing-nut caricatures of herself as a closet radical by revealing, without exploiting, the irresistible charms of her children and delivering a warm, genuine, and impassioned introduction to her husband. John Kerry was uncommonly forceful, even alighting upon an important subject left alone by Obama: the shame of American torture and the need to shut down the prison at Guantánamo Bay. The Ohio governor, Ted Strickland, got off the best, unheard line of the Convention when he said that, unlike George H. W. Bush, who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple, George W. was born on third base and stole second. Even Montana’s stoutly appealing governor, Brian Schweitzer, performed with a cuff-shooting, shoulder-shrugging panache. Who knew that Buddy Hackett was a Catholic rancher in a bolo tie?
Obama’s decision to deliver his speech outdoors in the vast, in-season corral of the Denver Broncos was clearly meant to “play big” in theatrical terms as well as lay down, for the historically minded, mystic chords of memory evoking Kennedy’s “New Frontier” acceptance speech, at the L.A. Memorial Coliseum, and Roosevelt’s “rendezvous with destiny” speech, at his renomination in 1936, at Franklin Field, in Philadelphia. The Greek columns onstage summoned Soldier Field, in Chicago, the White House colonnade, and the Lincoln Memorial and Martin Luther King, Jr.,’s “I Have a Dream” speech, if not Demosthenes rallying the Athenians against the Macedonian threat. Team Obama does not do modest Off-Broadway productions.
The imperative for historical change was the nominee’s theme in Denver, as it has been since he announced his candidacy, nineteen months ago, in Springfield:
Tonight, I say to the people of America, to Democrats and Republicans and Independents across this great land—enough! This moment—this election—is our chance to keep, in the twenty-first century, the American promise alive. Because next week, in Minnesota, the same party that brought you two terms of George Bush and Dick Cheney will ask this country for a third. And we are here because we love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight. On November 4th, we must stand up and say: “Eight is enough.”
Obama did not follow the rhetorical lead of the Presidents he invoked by name and symbol. At Franklin Field, F.D.R. made reference to “the immortal Dante” and the weighing of “divine justice”; at the Coliseum, J.F.K. quoted the prophet Isaiah and touched on Cromwell, Henry II, and Lloyd George; in Denver, Obama restrained his penchant for rhetorical filigree. (For the culturally disadvantaged, “Eight Is Enough” is a reference to a Dick Van Patten sitcom of the late seventies.) And yet his moments of homey sloganeering worked, especially in combination with his rigorous attacks on the Republican record and a newly specific sense of where he wants to lead the country. His call to arms and unity was plaintive and affecting: “We are a better country than this.”
Obama has been more moving at the lectern—at the Convention in Boston four years ago, when he relied mainly on the story of his modest, yet remarkable, multicultural upbringing; at the victory party after the breakthrough win in Iowa, last January—but he has never described himself and his political vision with more clarity. In order to win the votes of the unconvinced, he could not allow “change” to remain an airy mantra. (If anything, he risked the specificity and length of a Clintonian State of the Union address.) Obama was also newly and surprisingly direct in his assault on John McCain—whose policy differences with the Bush Administration have narrowed to the vanishing point—and even questioned his opponent’s “temperament and judgment.”
In 1960, Mailer described Kennedy in terms that recall caricatures of Obama: J.F.K. “seemed at times like a young professor whose manner was adequate for the classroom, but whose mind was off in some intricacy of the Ph.D. thesis he was writing.” Obama set aside his occasional lofty reserve and gave what for him was a barnburner. And yet his talent, particularly evident in Denver, is to transform righteous anger into meliorist fervor, a tone that could draw votes in Colorado and Virginia, as well as in New York and California.
For eight years, we’ve had a President who has a faith-based relationship with his own “gut,” a serene confidence undisturbed by reality. Obama, emerging as a candidate to succeed him, has demonstrated distinct evidence of a first-class intelligence and a first-class temperament. That seemed to leave experience—the length of Obama’s résumé—as a Republican angle of attack. Then came Friday morning. On his seventy-second birthday, John McCain selected as his running mate Sarah Palin, a social conservative who spent the nineties embroiled in the civic affairs of Wasilla, Alaska (pop. 6,715), won the Alaska governorship only two years ago, and has zero experience in national politics and world affairs—a baffling rejoinder to the assuring nomination of Joe Biden and to the historic achievement of Barack Obama.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/comment/2008/09/08/080908taco_talk_remnick
ZNet:
The Middle East and Oil
By Alberto Cruz
Source: Pueblos/CEPRID
September, 02 2008
August 15th 2008 -- Oil is for the moment what drives development in the world economy. Not only is it one of the main reference points for planning a country's political economy, but also the main component for any diagnosis of the health of the capitalist economic system as we know it.
Since 1908 when the first important oil deposits were found in Iran, developed countries, especially the United States, thought it strategically important to create States in that part of the world simultaneously loyal to it and indebted. So in 1922, it supported the creation of Saudi Arabia and in 1961 it recognized Kuwait - which had been a province of Iraq up until then. But the most important part happened later.
The Iraqi Ba'ath party had overthrown the monarchy in a military coup in 1963. Its radicalization after Saddam Hussein came to power and its alliance with the Soviet Union alarmed the Western powers. In less than four months, between August 15th and December 2nd 1971, three new States in the region were recognized : Bahrain, Qatar and United Arab Emirates. In other words, an Emir or King was placed wherever there was oil and recognized as a country.
But the new States, aware of their power, sparked the first oil crisis in 1973. It is then that a series of studies was begun on known oil reserves, where there could be new deposits and how much time that finite fossil fuel might last. As a result of those studies, it is today considered that sufficient reserves exist to guarantee production at the same levels as now, or even greater levels, for approximately fifty years. So one can say that oil is a strategic resource in the medium and long term.
It happens that two-thirds of known reserves are in the Middle East. According to data of the 2006 Statistical Review of World Energy, the latest for now, of total reserves totaling 1.2 trillion barrels of oil, the Middle East has 61.9%. Two countries, Saudi Arabia and Iran, lead the ranking with 22% and 11.5% of those reserves respectively. That is to say,just two countries have one third of the world's oil reserves. A fact that helps us understand not only the importance of conflicts like the one in Iraq but the threats that are being made against Iran.
On the other hand, proven reserves in the whole American continent - North and South - are reckoned at just 13.6% of the planet's total and of that 13.6% three-quarters are in Venezuela. As for Europe, including Russia and its Asian region, the percentage is around 11.7%. With those figures, it should surprise nobody that the Middle East has been a region subject to imperialist intervention since the 1980s.
The person who designed that strategy is a man who appears today as a champion of world peace, ex US President James Carter, curiously a Nobel Peace prize winner. The excuse was the victory of the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 that overthrew the brutal and corrupt regime of the Shah, a man described as "a little local imperialist" approved of by the West. Cyrus Vance, Carter's Secretary of State, says as much in his memoirs, "Within the new military strategy of the United States, based on the experience of defeat in Vietnam, the Nixon and Ford governments with Kissinger's support, insisted that the Shah guarantee stability and governability in the region". (1)
The Carter Doctrine and the invasion of Iraq
In synthesis, the Carter Doctrine as it is known in the ambit of international relations, establishes that Persian Gulf oil reserves are a vital US interest. From the moment that doctrine was put into practice in 1981, military intervention was justified. The text of that doctrine is as follows, "Any attempt by a force other than the United States to obtain control of the Persian Gulf will be considered as an attack on the vital interests of the United States and will be rejected by all necessary means, including military means." (2).
A foreign policy decision of that calibre had to be backed up by military deployment and that us how the Rapid Reaction Force currently named the United States Central Command serving the Pentagon and the UK Ministry of Defence to carry out military operations in the Middle East from air bases in Bahrain, Diego Garcia (leased from Britain in the Indian ocean), Oman and Saudi Arabia. So, it is nothing new that the various US administrations since then (Reagan, Bush Sr., Clinton and Bush Jr.) made the Middle East a priority of their foreign policy and specifically the Persian Gulf for its strategic importance to the leading power of world capital.
It s well know that the US produces only 40% of the oil it consumes and has to import the rest. At the same time, its gas reserves are declining progressively and it barely has the capacity now to produce new reserves. This was why it invaded Iraq in 2003 along with its neocolonial Middle East plan to turn Israel into the main regional power and secure recognition for it from the States regarded as moderate in the region, namely, US allies.
As a result of the embargo suffered by Iraq, imposed by the UN after Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, Iraq had its oil industry reduced to a minimum. However, it managed to get around some of those sanctions and had established agreements and signed contracts for future oil exploration and extraction with rivals of US oil companies, for example Total-Fina-Elf of France, Russia's Lukoil and China's National Oil Corporation. That is to say there were "other forces" trying to get control of one of most oil rich countries in the Persian Gulf. And the Carter Doctrine meant that was regarded as an attack on the vital interests of the United States, for which reason it was decided to invade Iraq.
Via that action, outside all international law, the US guaranteed control of Iraq's oil. A little known fact is that during the bombardment that began the invasion, the only Ministry not affected by the bombing was, exactly, the Oil Ministry. Something better known is that one of the first measures of proconsul Paul Bremer was to cancel contracts signed by Saddam Hussein's government with the companies mentioned earlier.
US strategy was twofold. In part it sought to normalize oil production and facilitate Iraq's exit from OPEC which would lead in the medium term to cheaper, more secure oil supplies, by lowering the oil price to around US$20. But also, were it not possible to normalize oil supplies, as was the case, the strategy sought to keep Iraq inside OPEC to reinforce the "moderate" position of States like Saudi Arabia while simultaneously threatening to increase production when possible.
Iraq's current Oil Minister, the collaborationist Hussein al-Sharistani, has said that the medium term objective is to market 4 million barrels a day, reaching 6 million a day by 2012. That would lower the price to around US$30 a barrel and hand control of the main Iraqi oil fields mainly to British and United States multinationals. (3) In either case, the US would be seen not as an imperial power breaking international law but as a still hegemonic but benign power for having lowered oil prices and prevented a worldwide economic recession.
Reinforcing Saudi Arabia
Five years after invading Iraq, one can say US plans have failed. The oil price reached as high as US$145 a barrel and there is a swelling current within OPEC on whether or not it is necessary to introduce other currencies like the Euro for oil's financial transactions. While friendly countries like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates or even Kuwait are reducing their dollar currency reserves and increasing the percentage of their reserves in Euros (4), only the Saudis and the Iraqis stay loyal to the US currency.
The fragile situation in the Middle East worries the main US ideologists. The fragility was accentuated in the summer of 2006 when the Lebanese political-military movement Hizbollah defeated the until then all powerful Israeli war machine. Thinkers like Patrick Clauwson or Michael Klave argue that if the US wants to maintain its dominance in the Middle East it needs to keep Saudi Arabia from becoming unstable since that country has 22% of the world's oil reserves.
Others are more radical, like Zbigniew Brezinski, ex national Security adviser and Richard Haas an adviser to George Bush. They think US dominance in the Middle East is over and that a new era has begun. These last two individuals, via different routes, agree in noting that "a new era has begun in the region's modern history... in which one has to take into account the preponderance of local forces (ie countries) faced with external actors (traditionally influential powers like the US)" (5).
Neither Brezinski nor Haas say it straight out, but one can assert that a new regional security structure is forming including various countries : Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Syria and Iran. Of these the first and the last - the two countries with the region's largest oil reserves - are the most active in moving their pieces on the regional board. Saudis and Iranians The Saudis and the Iranians are entangled in a muffled struggle for control not any longer of the Middle East but of the Maghreb and the Far East.
In the Iranian case it has no godfather and acts as it does as a result of the failure of US strategy in Iraq. But in the Saudi case it is obvious they would not have dared to take that step towards acting as a regional power without the support and complaisance of the United States, since Israel is sunk in a deep crisis following its failures in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2008.
The role Saudi Arabia has played and continues to play in Lebanon is symptomatic. It was the country that created most difficulties for a political agreement. It maintained a hard critical line against Hizbollah and has stayed on the edges of the agreement negotiated between the pro-Western forces and the Lebanese nationalists in Qatar last May, by virtue of which the pro-Western forces and the Saudis lost power.
..and ensuring water
However, while oil is the current nub of the conflict in the Middle East with its repercussions in the world economy, one should not lose sight of the fact that the next looming crisis in the region might be over water. Oil deposits remain and even grow as new deposits are discovered. In fact today, production is at the same level it was two years ago, about 85 million barrels a day. But that is not the case with water resources, at the moment about 1% of the world's total.
Countries like Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, the United Arab Emirates, Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories (these as a result of theft of aquifers by Israel) have clear problems of supply for their populations. Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights, belonging to Syria, was due to Israel's need for water and this is the reason why Israel still refuses even to talk to Syria about returning that territory.
And the exploitation of the waters of Lebanese rivers Wazzani and Hasbani by the Israelis was one of the reasons for prolonging the occupation of Southern Lebanon for 20 years, until they were forced to abandon the country after a long and heroic resistance by Hizbollah. However the Israelis still today prevent the Lebanese from fully enjoying the waters of those rivers (tributaries of the River Jordan flowing into Lake Tiberias) despite the water shortages in Southern Lebanon under the threat of Israeli military attack. The same reason serves to prolong the occupation of the Sheba'a farms, land in Southern Lebanon occupied by Israel since 1967. It happens that the Sheba'a Farms are located near Mount Hermon, an important reserve of subterranean water, and are very close to the rivers Hasbani and Wazzani.
Exactly that is one of the main reasons for the conflict in Lebanon and for US interest in that little country. There are no chance events in geopolitics and it is worth mentioning that the Israeli bombardment of Lebanon in 2006 coincided with the inauguration of the Baku-Tblisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline joining the Caspian Sea to the eastern Mediterranean(6). A project that will serve among other things to provide Israel with oil and which has been designed by the United States. The same as the pipeline project to bring water to Israel pumping from the higher sources of the river system of the Tigris and Euphrates, which rise in Turkey but run mostly through Iraq.
(1) Cyrus Vance, "Hard Choices: Critical Years in America's Foreign Policy", Simon & Schuster Books 1983.
(2) Alberto Cruz., "Breve manual de la política exterior de los EEUU" http://www.avizora.com/publicaciones/politica_y_economia_americanas/politica_y_economia%20americanas_18.htm
(3) Alberto Cruz, "Irak, la baza de EEUU para evitar el derrumbe del dólar" http://www.nodo50.org/ceprid/spip.php?article73
(4) Ibid.
(5) Foreign Affairs, noviembre-diciembre 2006.
(6) Michel Chossudovsky, "The Lebanese war and the battle for oil" http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=5841
This article was published in Number 32 of the review Pueblos for June 2008 coinciding with the celebration of the Alternative Oil Summit to the official one that took place in Madrid. Here, oil price data have been revised and a mention added of the Doha accord on Lebanon.
Alberto Cruz is a journalist, political analyst and writer specializing in international relations - albercruz@eresmas.com
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18662
posted by attilav at 15:07
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