Elsewhere Today 486
Aljazeera:
Shots fired at Pakistan PM's convoy
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
16:37 Mecca time, 13:37 GMT
Yousuf Gilani, Pakistan's prime minister, has escaped an apparent assassination attempt after shots were fired at his motorcade in Rawalpindi, officials said.
Kamal Shah, Pakistan's interior secretary, said Gilani and his staff were not in the car when the shots were fired at the bullet-proof car.
Reports have suggested Gilani's son, Moosa, and Qamar Zaman Kaira, the federal minister for Kashmir and Northern affairs, were in the motorcade going to Islamabad's international airport to pick up the prime minister.
Gilani's spokesman Zahid Bashir said two bullets hit the reinforced glass window.
"By the grace of Allah the prime minister is safe," he said.
Rehman Malik, an adviser to the prime minister said investigations into the incident had begun and a preliminary report would be presented within 24 hours.
Tariq Khosa, a senior law enforcement official, is to lead the government investigation team.
Taliban claim attack
The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack, saying Gilani was responsible for offensives against their fighters in the northwest.
"We will continue such attacks on government officials and installations," said Muslim Khan, a spokesman for the group.
Hundreds of people have so far been killed in bomb attacks by the Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters.
Gilani remains a potential, high-profile target even though he is protected by a massive security cover.
Security questions
Sherry Rehman, Pakistan's Federal Information Minister, denies the incident occurred owing to lapse in security, but Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent at the scene said "there was no doubt this was a lapse in security".
"The question is how the sniper was able to conceal himself and how he was able to make his escape.
"Reports suggest the sniper perched himself on a hilltop on the Islamabad highway from where he would have had a considerable vantage point on the convoy."
Mike Hanna, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said the prime minister was returning from a meeting in Lahore yesterday and was due to travel to his residence after arriving at Islamabad's airport.
"This was a highly-skilled sniping attempt, given the vehicles were moving at high speed," he said.
Gilani's Pakistan People's Party leader, Asif Ali Zardari, is standing for president in elections scheduled for September 6.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/09/20089395412461660.html
AllAfrica: Coastal Erosion Threatening
to Wipe Out Parts of Cotonou
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
2 September 2008
Cotonou
Rising sea levels have destroyed hundreds of homes, hotels, roads and harvests, and threaten to engulf large areas of Cotonou, Benin's capital.
A government-commissioned study about a year ago recommended urgent action to hold back the rising tides, and save the city's ports, airport, and coastal communities, but political infighting has blocked funding.
Residents of the city, with a population of about three million people, say little has changed - except the advancing sea.
Accountant Finagnon Dossa said storms in March 2007 caused over US$3,000 of damage to his property, 500 metres from the coast in the east Cotonou district of Donaten.
His retired fisherman neighbour, Jacques, has lived by the sea for 20 years: "There is only one explanation. It is coastal erosion. It is a problem all over the world. We want to leave," he said.
However, both Jacques and Dossa said they did not have the money to find other lodgings inland.
Vacation homes and government buildings dot Benin's 125-km coastline, but most of the 100,000 people in east Cotonou - the most vulnerable to sea damage from coastal erosion - can ill-afford the advancing sea.
Coastal erosion in the Gulf of Guinea, including Ivory Coast, Ghana, Togo, Benin and Nigeria, has been linked to climate change, and in turn to rising sea levels, flooding, and waterborne diseases. (For a recent IRIN report on the disappearance of West Africa's coastline, click here)
Threat to industry, tourism, fishing
Benin's Urban Planning Ministry estimates the sea may rise by up to 59m, in a worst- case scenario, by the year 2100.
A 2007 study by the UK-based non-profit International Institute for Environment and Economic Development (IIED) found coastal erosion could wipe out Benin's eastern districts of Donaten, Tokplegbe, Finagnon, Akpakpa-Dodomey and JAK, if nothing is done to stop the sea's advance.
IIED mapped out roads, drainage, pavement and coconut plantations that have begun to disappear. Researchers said coastal erosion could kill off Benin's industrial, fishing and tourism sectors, and wipe out buildings, ports, and the airport, as well as other infrastructural facilities.
Pumping of sand banned
Cotonou, which sits on alluvial sand at most four metres deep, drives most of Benin's economy, in addition to being a regional trade hub. Its port brings in most of the country's customs revenue, and its Danktopa market earns over US$750 million annually, according to the IIED.
Until recently, it was legal for companies in Benin to pump sand from the beach for construction projects, further shrinking the coast.
The government banned this practice in September 2007, but locals say they still see companies hauling away sand.
Gilbert Medje, president of the Benin non-profit organisation, Front United Against Coastal Erosion, said the city could not spare the sand, or the time.
From his upstairs apartment in Akpakpa District, he looks out anxiously at the sea. He said his home used to be 141 metres from the ocean but over the past five years the sea had closed in by 30 metres.
Threat not only to Benin
Remote sensing and maps of eastern Cotonou, 1963-2000, show the shoreline has receded over 400 metres in the area east of the port of Cotonou
According to Medje's organisation, coastal erosion has in recent years wiped out 460 fields, destroyed 47 homes, and threatens over 1,000 properties in Cotonou.
Benin's former minister of finance, Stanislas Pognon, told IRIN Cotonou is important not only for Benin, but also for West Africa. "The new international Cotonou-Provo [Nigeria] highway is at risk [of being damaged by coastal erosion]. That is an important regional link that would affect our relations with Nigeria. According to experts [including French firm SOGREAH-Laboratoire DEFT], Akpakpa could be wiped off the map by 2025, and other neighbourhoods cut off from the rest of Benin. This would be detrimental to the fertile Oueme valley."
With rising global food prices, government officials are counting on Oueme valley, central Benin, to supply more food for the cash-strapped country. According to Pognon, coastal erosion would wipe out roads, making communications with this major local food source more difficult.
Millions in aid blocked
Environmental researchers with the Netherlands-based Royal Haskonning firm recommended last September that the government build groynes (large barriers perpendicular to the sea to prevent sand from shifting), invest more in coastal development, forbid sand pumping, and resettle at-risk coastal communities.
Donors, including the Islamic Development Bank and Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, have pledged over US$70 million to build rock barriers, starting with a 7km stretch along the high-risk eastern Cotonou shoreline.
But Benin political infighting has stalled construction. Some lawmakers were withholding their approval until their earlier demands for municipal electoral reforms were met. President Boni Yayi broke the impasse in July with a presidential decree, but construction has not yet begun.
Even if the groynes are built, the IIED has said this will only push the erosion problem further east to Nigeria. The UN Environmental Programme has called for a regional groyne covering the entire Gulf of Guinea coastline.
For Benin fisherman Kofi Ayao, the problem is closer to home: "The sea was far from us two years ago. But now, here it is. We are scared. If we do not find a solution soon, we may simply drown in our sleep one day."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2008 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200809030001.html
AlterNet: Keeping the Psychedelic Dream
Alive: An Interview with Rick Doblin
By Arran Frood, New Scientist
Posted on September 2, 2008
Turn on, tune in, drop out, was the mantra of the 60s guru Timothy Leary, who ran experiments on using LSD at Harvard. Millions of America's youth listened - including the teenage Rick Doblin. But Leary's work ran into serious criticism, the US banned psychedelics and research into them became career death. Doblin, however, "kept the faith" and is among those backing new, headline-grabbing work with psychedelics. Rick Doblin studied psychology at New College of Florida and then completed a PhD at Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government on the regulation of the medical use of psychedelics and marijuana. In 1986 he founded the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, and is on the board of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, a body working to repeal laws banning medical and recreational use of cannabis. Arran Frood caught up with Doblin for this interview.
How did you get into all this?
When I was 17 years old, two things happened. The first was reading Ken Kesey's One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest. I was into literature, not drugs, so when a friend said Kesey wrote part of it on LSD, I thought: "This is incredible!" The second was taking LSD for first time. I felt it really touched part of my psyche that my bar mitzvah hadn't. As a Jew, I was educated about the holocaust and grew up with this sense that I had to study the psyche, and that social insanity was a direct threat to me - I was preset to look at this stuff. I did psychedelics, went deep down into my psyche and thought: "This might be a tool." I knew as soon as I dropped out that I couldn't handle the emotions the psychedelics brought up.
I thought I was intellectually overdeveloped and emotionally underdeveloped; I needed to drop out to work on what was more important. I awoke to psychedelics' value just as the law was shutting them down. It was very painful - like having something snatched away.
What made you decide to drop back in, and how did you manage it?
Moving back in had always been my goal - to promote social change and activism. But I was a draft resister, so I figured I'd never get a licence for any above-board career. What career wouldn't require licensing? Being an underground psychedelic therapist was it. But when Jimmy Carter was elected in 1976, he pardoned the draft resisters - and that let me think I could rejoin society.
After studying psychology and writing a PhD at Harvard on regulating psychedelics research, I set up the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) to develop the therapeutic use of the then-legal ecstasy [MDMA]. We were also trying to anticipate the banning of MDMA, since we knew from history that there would be a central crackdown. The only way to get MDMA back into some sort of legal context, or even develop it as a prescription medicine, was to work through the Food and Drug Administration, so we set up MAPS as a small non-profit pharmaceutical company.
Does MAPS lobby for drug laws to change?
No, we're not asking for them to be changed because the laws don't really need to change - we just need the regulations to be followed. The problem is that there's a market failure: certain drugs like MDMA, LSD and marijuana have substantial medical uses, but are not patentable. So pharmaceutical companies have no financial incentive to develop them. Plus these psychedelics will compete against their own products. MAPS has to be non-profit because it relies on donations - and both donors and MAPS get tax breaks on donations if we are non-profit. We have to raise money from sources that don't usually fund drug research. The abortion drug RU486 was developed this way, so we had a model of non-profit drug development.
How are you doing with attracting backers?
We've conducted a preliminary data analysis of our study into MDMA and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The study is being done by Michael and Ann Mithoefer using full double-blind and placebo-controlled techniques. The researchers expect to publish within the year.
The results are remarkable, especially since all the participants had failed to benefit from antidepressant medicines or psychotherapy. This initial study is so strong it has motivated us to change our strategy and not wait for our other studies on psilocybin ("magic mushrooms") and end-of-life anxiety to serve as a comparison before going to investors. The PTSD results are so good we're going full speed to turn MDMA into a prescription medicine. The study will have cost about $1 million, but when people see the results they'll realise it was worth it.
You had two Iraq war veterans in the MDMA/PTSD study. Do you hope you'll be able to treat more?
We will. Lots of people with PTSD are coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan so the problem is substantial. Because we have pilot data, we've been able to get in touch with the chief psychiatrist at the US Veterans Association. Until recently, the VA has been resisting our approach, largely because a lot of people who have PTSD become alcoholics or drug abusers, so the VA is worried that our study might be seen as encouraging it. But we argue that it's not the drug alone, it's MDMA plus psychotherapy. The appropriate use of drugs is the antidote to drug abuse, rather than no use of drugs.
What else can psychedelic drugs do?
There is a rise in religious fundamentalism at a time when that world view is more and more difficult to sustain. In the era of the internet and satellite TV, it's difficult for people to say: "We have a patent on the truth. It's our way, or hell." The fundamentalists are scared that psychedelics might delegitimise their particular religion, but I think psychedelics can reinvigorate religion and make people appreciate their traditions. Global spirituality is not inherently anti-religion. The challenge is to come to terms with the fact that psychedelics have thousands of years of use in a religious context.
You won a big court case against the US Drug Enforcement Agency. What happened?
The DEA was refusing to issue a licence to Lyle Craker, professor of plant, soil and insect sciences at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, to set up a MAPS-sponsored medical marijuana facility. However, the DEA judge just issues recommendations to the DEA and the DEA has to make a final ruling. The ruling was in favor of granting the licence in 2007 but the DEA is stalling.
How did you feel when DEA lawyers likened you to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar?
It made me feel like the government is really insane. It helped me see even more clearly the fear, the paranoia and the pathology of how the DEA looks at things - and at me. It made me more aware of how delicate our work is. The DEA has become as cruel and insensitive as these rapacious drug dealers who just try to make money and don't care about the people doing the drugs. It also made me feel we're on the right track, that the DEA is not responsive to our arguments about why it's bad that the government monopolises marijuana for research because it can dictate the marijuana research agenda by refusing to supply the stuff to research that may show marijuana has health benefits.
Our drug enforcement agency is as cruel as the rapacious drug dealers. What would an Obama administration do?
There's a very good chance, but it's not a certainty, that a Democratic administration would say: "We're not ready to legalise or decriminalise drugs, but we are ready to let the science go forward."
Senator Edward Kennedy has been crucial in Barack Obama's career, and Kennedy and Senator John Kerry wrote to the DEA saying Craker should get his licence. They won't do it because they're in favour of medical marijuana, they'll do it because they want to show that science comes before politics. That's the hope.
There is a lot of illegal, underground psychedelic therapy going on. What do you think about that?
It's very important work and it gets us back to the drug war, which is a fundamental affront to human rights. Those courageous enough to go on working with psychedelics because they think it will benefit patients - and are willing to go to prison - have my great admiration.
How do your wife and kids react to your work?
My wife was a lobbyist for the Quakers. She says she developed an appreciation for lost causes early because the Quakers never won a thing. And no matter what, you are a parent, so your kids are going to think you're not cool. I think they are bored by it and will be slow to use drugs if they ever do. The problem is some parents think their kids will get ideas from my kids that came from me. The mother of one of my son's friends did think about breaking up their friendship. My wife persuaded her you can't protect your kids from ideas.
From issue 2671 of New Scientist magazine, 27 August 2008, page 42-43.
AlterNet is making this material available in accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107: This article is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
© 2008 New Scientist All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/97340/
Arab News:
Bush-inspired new world order
Ramzy Baroud I Arab News
Wednesday 3 September 2008 (03 Ramadan 1429)
THE series of unfortunate and costly decisions made during the two terms of the Bush administration, combined with economic decline at home, might devastate the United States’ world standing much sooner than most analysts predict. What was difficult to foresee is that the weakening of US global dominance, spurred by erratic and unwise foreign policy under the Bush administration, was to reignite a degree of Cold War over a largely distant and seemingly ethnic conflict — that of Georgia and Russia. Who could have ever predicted a possible association between Baghdad, Kabul and Tbilisi?
But to date the decline of US global power to the advent of the Bush administration, or even the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001, is not exactly accurate. The rapid collapse of the Soviet Union and the unfolding of the Warsaw Pact — especially as former members of the pact hurried to join NATO in later years — empowered a new breed of US elite who boasted of the economic viability and moral supremacy of US-style capitalism and democracy. But a unipolar world presented the US leadership with an immense, if not an insurmountable, task.
While 9/11 and a gung-ho president presented a convenient opportunity to reassert US global dominance, action was taken the moment the Soviet Union collapsed. Such efforts, however, were not accentuated until 1997, with the establishment of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a think tank from which many neoconservative policy advisers operated. Their aim was “to promote American global leadership...(which) is both good for America and good for the world.” William Kristol and Robert Kagan, PNAC founders, were inspired by the Reaganite policy of “strength and moral clarity.” But the supposedly inspiring model was justified on the basis of the Cold War, which no longer existed. Fashioning an enemy was a time-sensitive and essential task to justify the repositioning of US power to reclaim domains that were left vacant with the disappearance of the bipolar international system, which existed since World War II.
Even PNAC’s more recent report, “Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century (2000),” appeared of little relevance and urgency. It expressed the “belief that America should seek to preserve and extend its position of global leadership by maintaining the pre-eminence of US military forces.” The report would have been another neglected document were it not for the terrorist attacks of 9/11, which turned it into a doctrine that defined US foreign policies for nearly a decade.
The wars and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq were projected to strengthen the US hand in protecting its interests and managing its international affairs. Afghanistan’s position was strategic in warding off the regional growth of the rising powers of Asia — aside from its military and strategic value, it was hoped to become a major energy supply route — while Iraq was to provide a permanent US military presence to guard its oil interests in the whole region, and to ensure Israeli regional supremacy over its weaker, but rebellious Arab foes. The plan worked well for a few weeks following the declaration of “Mission Accomplished.” Since then, the US has learned that managing world affairs with a decided military approach is a recipe for disaster. Defeated and humiliated, Iraqis fought back, creating a nightmare scenario and promising a never-to-be-won battle in their country. The US original plan to exploit the country’s fractious ethnic and religious groupings also backfired, as shifting alliances made it impossible for the US to single out a permanent enemy or rely on a long-term ally. In Afghanistan, the picture is even more bleak as the country’s unforgiving geography, the corruption of US local allies, the resurgence of the Taleban — and the US-led coalition’s brutal response to the Taleban’s emboldened ascension — have equally rendered Afghanistan a lost cause by any reasonable military standard.
But the trigger-happy mentality that has governed US foreign policy during the Bush years is no longer dominant and has been since challenged by a more sensible, dialogue-based foreign-policy approach, as championed, reluctantly, by Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. The change of heart, however, is not entirely moralistic, but largely pragmatic. According to a survey conducted jointly by Foreign Policy magazine and the Center for a New American Security (Feb. 19, 2008), 88 percent of present and former US military officers believe that the demands for the Iraq war alone have “stretched the US military dangerously thin.” Although not “broken”, 80 percent believe it is “unreasonable to expect the US military to wage another major war successfully at present,” as reported by CNN. Such estimation is not too different from similar assessments provided by top US military commanders, most of whom found their way to early retirement for obvious reasons.
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=113787&d=3&m=9&y=2008
Asia Times:
A sting in Pakistan's al-Qaeda mission
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Sep 4, 2008
KARACHI - The Pakistani military has halted operations in Bajaur Agency in the northwest of the country, saying "the back has been broken" of the militancy there.
A military spokesman said that in light of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began on Sunday, all action would stop, which would allow about 500,000 displaced people to return home. Officials claim that in three weeks of fighting 560 militants have been killed, with the loss of 20 members of the security forces.
The ground reality, though, is that the operation failed in its primary objective, to catch the big fish so wanted by the United States - al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. This would have been the perfect present for Islamabad to give the George W Bush administration in the run-up to the US presidential elections in November.
Pakistan said they had Zawahiri in their sights, but he evaded them. Zawahiri, who has a US$25 million bounty on his head, escaped a US missile strike in January 2006 near Pakistan's border with Afghanistan.
The Bajaur operation was a comprehensive joint show of power by North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Pakistan forces as they were convinced that the al-Qaeda leaders and other senior Taliban militants were in an area spanning Kunar and Nooristan provinces in Afghanistan and the Bajaur and Mohamad agencies immediately across the border in Pakistan. (See Ducking and diving under B-52s Asia Times Online, May 22, 2008.)
NATO and the Pakistani military had hoped that a pincer operation would force their prey to move their base, thereby exposing them. The thinking was that the militants would seek refuge inside Pakistan, where they could be cornered.
The mission began disastrously, though. Two days before troops were ordered from the corps headquarters of Peshawar in North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) early last month, news of the impending attack was leaked to the militants and the al-Qaeda leadership was hastily moved. The Pakistani forces also received an unwelcome - and unexpected - reception when they began operations in Bajaur; the militants were armed and waiting.
The al-Qaeda leaders were taken under the wing of Qari Ziaur Rahman, a senior Taliban leader and regional commander of Nooristan, Kunar and adjoining Pakistani regions. Over the past few months he has emerged as a key figure and has generated considerable publicity by staging public executions in Kunar and Bajaur of suspected spies for the Americans. Rahman even took the unusual step of contacting the Pakistani press to claim responsibility for successful attacks on Pakistani troops.
Pakistan and NATO had placed high store on a successful mission, launching the heaviest-ever aerial bombardment inside Pakistan's tribal regions - hence the high level of displaced persons. The militants claim that many dozens of paramilitary troops were killed and many captured, along with their heavy weapons and tanks.
The assault continued for several more weeks, but on August 28 during a secret meeting on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen, and the chief of the Pakistani Army Staff, General Ashfaq Pervez Kiani, it was agreed the Bajaur mission had failed. No key militants had been hit and they had now completely fallen off all radar screens.
Inter-Services Public Relations of the Pakistani army then issued a statement confirming that the leading militants had escaped from Bajaur and that the army did not have any idea where they had gone, be it Afghanistan or elsewhere.
The Pakistani government then changed tack and lavished millions of rupees on tribal chiefs through its political agents to form lashkars (groups) to fight against the Taliban and militants. This experiment had earlier failed dismally in the North Waziristan and South Waziristan tribal areas, resulting in the assassination of over 200 tribal chiefs and religious clerics. The survivors fled to the cities, leaving the self-acclaimed Pakistani Taliban to take charge of those areas. There is no reason to believe the story will be any different in Bajaur.
The Bajaur operation was carried out at a time when the Taliban's offensive in Afghanistan was winding down for Ramadan. The militants tend to fast and sleep in peace for the month until Eid, which marks the end of Ramadan.
By this time winter has set in and, as they do each year, the Taliban gradually leave Afghanistan and melt into the Pakistani tribal areas.
Unlike previous years though, the militants are unlikely to remain inactive during their winter break from the battlefields of Afghanistan.
The Bajaur operation, mainly because of the severity of the aerial bombing that caused widespread civilian displacement, has aroused intense anger in militant circles and bloody reprisal attacks can be expected within Pakistan.
The initial skirmishes have already started in NWFP, where members and political allies of the ruling Pashtun sub-nationalist Awami National Party have been targeted. Four top leaders have already been killed and many homes have been gutted. Scores of anti-Taliban political workers have fled from the Swat Valley and other areas.
Taliban sources have confirmed to Asia Times Online that high-level targets are also planned, including army chief Kiani, the leader of the lead party in the ruling coalition, the Pakistan People's Party's Asif Zardari and Rehman Malik, the powerful advisor to the Ministry of Interior. Zardari has vacated his private Islamabad residence in favor of the prime minister's house and he has also curtailed his public appearances.
On Wednesday, shots were fired at Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani's motorcade, his spokesman said. The attack took place on the road to the airport in Islamabad. Gilani was not believed to be in the motorcade.
The Bajaur operation, which was intended to eliminate key figures in the "war on terror", could end in leading figures in Pakistan being killed.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI04Df04.html
Clarín: Estreno mundial, en España, de la peíicula
"Che: el argentino" de Steven Soderbergh
02.09.2008 | Cine
Es la primera parte de una película que dura en total de 4 horas y media. En esta entrevista su protagonista, el actor puertorriqueño Benicio del Toro, equipara el candidato presidencial estadounidense, Barack Obama, con el idealista guerrillero argentino Ernesto "Che" Guevara.
El actor puertorriqueño Benicio del Toro elogió hoy la figura del líder revolucionario Ernesto 'Che' Guevara y equiparó su trayectoria en lo años 60 con la del demócrata Barack Obama en su intento de ganar las elecciones a la Casa Blanca en noviembre.
Benicio del Toro estuvo hoy en Madrid para promocionar Che: el argentino, de Steven Soderbergh, que se estrenará en España el viernes próximo, y reiteró su deseo, ya mostrado con anterioridad públicamente, de que las elecciones presidenciales de noviembre las gane el candidato del Partido Demócrata, Barack Obama.
"Sí, soy soñador, es una realidad", señaló el puertorriqueño pero afincado en EEUU en declaraciones a la cadena de radio SER y al diario El Mundo.
El actor incluso comparó al guerrillero con el político estadounidense: "Yo uso mucho el ejemplo de Obama. La figura del Che se debe tomar en contexto con los años 60, la idea de que un hombre negro pudiese llegar a presidente en los años 60 es imposible. Era más fácil que el hombre llegase a la Luna".
Del Toro contó además su experiencia a la hora de dar vida al revolucionario argentino, cuya figura ha estudiado durante años para poder interpretarlo.
"El Che era un hombre coherente, tal y como se puede leer en el diario que escribió durante sus años en Bolivia, pero lo que más me ha llamado la atención ha sido su energía y su fuerza", afirmó a la prensa el actor, quien matizó que no ha pretendido "ser" Guevara, sino "Benicio haciendo del Che".
Respecto a la Cuba actual, afirmó que el 'Che' la admiraría "por mantener su dignidad ante un bloqueo de cincuenta años y por su sistema sanitario y educativo. Creo que sabiendo todo lo que ha pasado en el mundo desde su muerte, podría ver lo positivo de la Cuba de hoy en día, no sólo lo negativo".
Se mostró convencido de que uno de las enseñanzas de Guevara es que fue "coherente, nunca vendió o abandonó sus principios.
Che, el argentino cuenta los años que van desde que Che Guevara conoce a Fidel Castro en México, cómo viaja con él a Cuba, cómo participa en la revolución y cómo, finalmente, la ganan tomando La Habana.
Más adelante se estrenará Che, el guerrillero, que está basada en "un noventa por ciento en el diario escrito (por el Che) en Bolivia y termina con los últimos años de su vida".
No obstante, Benicio del Toro cree que esos largometrajes películas no son la vida del Che, porque ella daría para "diez o doce películas".
Del Toro, ganador en 2001 del Oscar como mejor secundario por Traffic, también de Soderbergh, ya ha recibido el premio a la mejor interpretación masculina del último Festival de Cannes (Francia) por su interpretación del Che.
Fuente: EFE
Copyright 1996-2008 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/notas/2008/09/02/_-01751568.htm
Guardian: IRA has disbanded
as underground army, report says
Henry McDonald
guardian.co.uk,
Wednesday September 03 2008
The IRA has effectively disbanded as an underground army and no longer meets for any terrorist purposes, an independent body found today.
However, the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) report says the Provisionals' ruling body, the army council, has not dissolved – a key unionist demand.
The Northern Ireland Office (NIO) and government ministers talked up the positive messages contained in the latest IMC report (PDF). They stressed the inactivity of the IRA and the fact that there appears to be no sign of fresh recruitment, intelligence gathering or other potential terrorist operations from within the republican movement.
Today's NIO and ministerial briefings reinforced the message yesterday of Northern Ireland's chief constable, Sir Hugh Orde. The head of the Police Service of Northern Ireland told a delegation of Democratic Unionist politicians that whilst the IRA army council still exists it no longer meets to map out paramilitary campaigns, activities or strategies.
Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland's first minister, has made disbanding the army council a condition for the last step in devolution – the transfer of policing and justice powers from London to the Stormont assembly.
Robinson repeated his determination yesterday that the army council must dissolve before those powers are handed over. Although he accepted Orde's advice that the IRA ruling seven-man council was no longer meeting for terrorist purposes, Robinson said: "We require the removal of the IRA's army council and we've always made that clear." The first minister said such a move would build confidence within the community and acceptance that in the future a Sinn Fein minister might exercise some control over security matters.
A Sinn Fein source warned yesterday against Robinson setting the issue down as an absolute condition. 'He would be very silly if he did," the source said.
Sinn Fein has said publicly that it might pull out of power sharing if policing and justice powers are not transferred.
g u a r d i a n . c o . u k © G u a r d i a n N e w s a n d M e d i a L i m i t e d 2 0 0 8
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/sep/03/northernireland.ireland
Jeune Afrique: Des milliers de personnes
assistent aux funérailles du président Mwanawasa
ZAMBIE - 3 septembre 2008 - par AFP
Quelque 5.000 personnes, dont de nombreux leaders africains, assistaient mercredi aux funérailles du président zambien Levy Mwanawasa, décédé en août des suites d'une attaque cérébrale, a constaté un journaliste de l'AFP.
Le président zimbabwéen Robert Mugabe et son rival, le leader de l'opposition Morgan Tsvangirai, étaient notamment présents lors de la cérémonie religieuse dans une église baptiste de la capitale.
M. Mugabe a loué, lors de son arrivée mardi soir, le "courage" et la "franchise" de celui qui avait pourtant vivement critiqué le régime zimbabwéen.
Le président zambien entretenait une relation tendue avec son homologue zimbabwéen, et s'était distingué des autres dirigeants régionaux en adoptant un ton ferme à l'encontre de son voisin.
Il avait notamment comparé le Zimbabwe de Robert Mugabe à un "Titanic en train de sombrer" et dénoncé le "silence scandaleux" de l'Afrique australe.
Le leader de l'opposition zimbabwéenne avait qualifié de "très bon ami et camarade" M. Mwanawasa au lendemain de son décès.
Le chef de l'Etat tanzanien Jakaya Kikwete, qui préside actuellement l'Union africaine (UA), et son homologue sud-africain Thabo Mbeki, à la tête de la Communauté de développement d'Afrique australe (SADC), doivent prononcer des discours lors des obsèques.
Le président zambien, au pouvoir depuis 2002, s'était éteint le 19 août à l'âge de 59 ans dans un hôpital parisien après avoir subi une attaque cérébrale fin juin en marge d'un sommet de l'UA en Egypte.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/
article_depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP91958desmiasawan0
Mail & Guardian:
Depriving Africa to feed Europe
GEORGE MONBIOT
LONDON, UNITED KINGDOM - Sep 03 2008
In his book Late Victorian Holocausts, Mike Davis tells the story of the famines that sucked the guts out of India in the 1870s. The hunger began when a drought, caused by El Nino, killed the crops on the Deccan plateau.
As starvation bit, the viceroy, Lord Lytton, oversaw the export to England of a record 6,4-million hundredweight of wheat. While Lytton lived in imperial splendour and commissioned, among other extravagances, "the most colossal and expensive meal in world history", between 12-million and 29-million people died. Only Stalin manufactured a comparable hunger.
Now a new Lord Lytton is seeking to engineer another brutal food grab. As Tony Blair's favoured courtier, the former United Kingdom cabinet minister Peter Mandelson often created the impression that he would do anything to please his master. Today he is the European trade commissioner. From his sumptuous offices in Brussels and Strasbourg, he hopes to impose a treaty that will permit Europe to snatch food from the mouths of some of the world's poorest people.
70% of the protein eaten by the people of Senegal comes from fish. Traditionally cheaper than other animal products, it sustains a population that ranks close to the bottom of the human development index.
One in six of the working population is employed in the fishing industry; about two-thirds of these workers are women. Over the past three decades, their means of subsistence has started to collapse as other nations have plundered Senegal's stocks.
The European Union (EU) has two big fish problems. One is that, partly as a result of its failure to manage them properly, its own fisheries can no longer meet European demand. The other is that its governments won't confront their fishing lobbies and decommission all the surplus boats. The EU has tried to solve both problems by sending its fishermen to west Africa. Since 1979 it has struck agreements with the government of Senegal, granting our fleets access to its waters. As a result, Senegal's marine ecosystem has started to go the same way as the EU's. Between 1994 and 2005, the weight of fish taken from the country's waters fell from 95 000tons to 45 000tons.
Muscled out by European trawlers, the indigenous fishery is crumpling: the number of boats run by local people has fallen by 48% since 1997.
In a recent report on this pillage, ActionAid shows that fishing families that once ate three times a day are now eating only once or twice.
As the price of fish rises, their customers also go hungry. The same thing has happened in all the west African countries with which the EU has maintained fisheries agreements. In return for wretched amounts of foreign exchange, their primary source of protein has been looted.
The government of Senegal knows this, and in 2006 it refused to renew its fishing agreement with the EU. But European fishermen - mostly from Spain and France - have found ways round the ban. They have been registering their boats as Senegalese, buying up quotas from local fishermen and transferring catches at sea from local boats. These practices mean that they can continue to take the country's fish, and have no obligation to land them in Senegal. Their profits are kept on ice until the catch arrives in Europe.
Mandelson's office is trying to negotiate economic partnership agreements with African countries. They were supposed to have been concluded by the end of last year, but many countries, including Senegal, have refused to sign. The agreements insist that European companies have the right both to establish themselves freely on African soil and to receive national treatment. This means that the host country is not allowed to discriminate between its own businesses and European companies. Senegal would be forbidden to ensure that its fish are used to sustain its own industry and to feed its own people. The dodges used by European trawlers would be legalised.
The UN's Economic Commission for Africa has described the EU's negotiations as "not sufficiently inclusive". They suffer from a "lack of transparency" and from the African countries' lack of capacity to handle the legal complexities. ActionAid shows that Mandelson's office has ignored these problems, raised the pressure on reluctant countries and "moved ahead in the negotiations at a pace much faster than the [African nations] could handle". If these agreements are forced on west Africa, Mandelson will be responsible for another imperial famine.
This is one instance of the food colonialism that is again coming to govern the relations between rich and poor counties. As global food supplies tighten, rich consumers are pushed into competition with the hungry. Last week the environmental group WWF published a report on the UK's indirect consumption of water, purchased in the form of food. Britons buy much of their rice and cotton, for example, from the Indus valley, which contains most of Pakistan's best farmland. To meet the demand for exports, the valley's aquifers are being pumped out faster than they can be recharged. At the same time, rain and snow in the Himalayan headwaters have decreased, probably as a result of climate change. In some places, salt and other crop poisons are being drawn through the diminishing water table, knocking out farmland for good. The crops we buy are, for the most part, freely traded, but the unaccounted costs all accrue to Pakistan.
Now we learn that Middle Eastern countries, led by Saudi Arabia, are securing their future food supplies by trying to buy land in poorer nations. The London-based Financial Times reports that Saudi Arabia wants to set up a series of farms abroad, each of which could exceed 100 000ha. Their produce would not be traded: it would be shipped directly to the owners. The FT, which usually agitates for the sale of everything, frets over "the nightmare scenario of crops being transported out of fortified farms as hungry locals look on". Through "secretive bilateral agreements", the paper reports, "the investors hope to be able to bypass any potential trade restriction that the host country might impose during a crisis".
Both Ethiopia and Sudan have offered the oil states hundreds of thousands of hectares. This is easy for the corrupt governments of these countries: in Ethiopia the state claims to own most of the land; in Sudan an envelope passed across the right desk magically transforms other people's property into foreign exchange. But 5,6-million Sudanese and 10-million Ethiopians are currently in need of food aid. The deals their governments propose can only exacerbate such famines.
None of this is to suggest that the poor nations should not sell food to the rich. To escape from famine, countries must enhance their purchasing power. This often means selling farm products and increasing their value by processing them locally. But there is nothing fair about the deals I have described. Where once they used gunboats and sepoys, the rich nations now use chequebooks and lawyers to seize food from the hungry. The scramble for resources has begun, but - in the short term, at any rate - we will hardly notice. The rich world's governments will protect themselves from the political cost of shortages, even if it means that other people must starve. - © Guardian News & Media 2008
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-03-depriving-africa-to-feed-europe
Mother Jones:
Homeland Security and Other Boondoggles
NEWS: The unintended consequences of the Bush administration's signature reforms.
By Bruce Falconer
August 25, 2008
"Government likes to begin things—to declare grand new programs and causes," President Bush said in 2001 at the unveiling of his "Management Agenda," a program aimed at improving the performance of federal agencies. "But good beginnings are not the measure of success. What matters in the end is completion. Performance. Results." In subsequent years, the Bush administration gave birth to numerous new executive departments, offices, and programs of its own—and the results are in. A stroll through the graveyard of best intentions…
Department of Homeland Security
Promise: To develop a more effective domestic response to terrorism and natural disasters by bringing 22 federal agencies and more than 200,000 employees under the management of a single Cabinet-level agency.
Performance: DHS has yet to make even "moderate" progress toward improving emergency preparedness and eliminating the kinds of bureaucratic and technological ineptitude that contributed to the 9/11 attacks, according to the Government Accountability Office.
Office of the Director of National Intelligence
Promise: First proposed by the 9/11 Commission, it was created to place the sprawling, and frequently squabbling, intelligence community under a single authority.
Performance: Added yet another layer of bureaucracy. Like the CIA before it, ODNI is held responsible for overseeing America's intelligence community (civilian and military), though lacks control over some 80 percent of the nation's intelligence budget, which remains the purview of the Pentagon.
Military Transformation
Promise: Based on a belief in the transformative power of technology, the so-called Revolution in Military Affairs emphasized using fewer troops, reliance on sophisticated weapons systems, and air strikes.
Performance: Iraq.
No Child Left Behind
Promise: Aimed to improve K-12 education by imposing a series of national achievement standards in math and reading, measured primarily through standardized testing.
Performance: Teachers were tacitly encouraged to "teach to the test," often at the expense of untested subjects like social studies, foreign languages, the arts, and physical education. Some schools have gamed the system, either by lowering standards or by turning away students who may skew test results.
Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives
Promise: A hallmark of "compassionate conservatism," which funneled billions of dollars in federal funding to faith-based and community organizations on the belief that such groups are better positioned to cater to local needs.
Performance: By focusing almost exclusively on Christian charities, the office violated the separation of church and state, quickly becoming the target of legal challenges. Its first director, John DiIulio, resigned in disgust, characterizing the Bush administration as "the reign of the Mayberry Machiavellis" and alleging that aides were more interested in promoting a partisan agenda than advancing good policy.
Community-Based Abstinence Education
Promise: Pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into local groups that worked to reduce teen pregnancies by preaching abstinence—sometimes literally, through means of Bible readings and exhortations to accept Jesus.
Performance: Last year, instances of teen pregnancy increased for the first time in 15 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
FutureGen
Promise: Established a public-private partnership to build a near-zero-emissions coal-fueled power plant to be located in Mattoon, Illinois—a pilot facility that, if successful, would form the basis for the expansion of clean coal plants.
Performance: In January 2008, the Energy Department withdrew funding, citing cost overruns. Illinois politicians complained that the program was killed after their state edged out Texas as the test site.
Bruce Falconer is a reporter at the Mother Jones Washington, DC, Bureau.
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/09/exit-strategy-homeland-security.html
New Statesman:
Obama comes out fighting
The now official Democratic candidate passes his penultimate hurdle with flying colours but the real fight is only just beginning, says Andrew Stephen.
Andrew Stephen
Published 29 August 2008
Obama's acceptance speech in front of 80,000 people capped the biggest political extravaganza the US has ever seen.
So it’s now official, and 80,000 packed into the Denver Broncos’ football stadium in Denver on Thursday were there to see it: Barack Obama is now indisputably the Democratic candidate for the 2008 presidential election campaign, and the first bi-racial man in American history to win the nomination of a major party. The unlikely campaign that began 19 months ago in the freezing winter of Springfield, Illinois had reached and passed its penultimate hurdle.
Senator Obama himself, revelling in the biggest political extravaganza the US has ever seen, seized the opportunity on prime-time, coast-to-coast television to switch gears in campaign strategy - and the nation witnessed non-confrontational Obama morph into combative Obama.
"If John McCain wants to have a debate about who has the temperament and judgment to serve as the next commander-in-chief, that's a debate I'm ready to have," he roared with the characteristically brilliant, soaring oratory that has stirred so much enthusiasm across the world. "I've got news for you, John McCain. We all put our country first... John McCain likes to say that he'll follow bin Laden to the gates of hell, but he won't even go to the cave where he lives."
McCain, meanwhile, also took advantage of the evening to spring a surprise, one-upmanship campaign ad on the nation’s television screens. Oozing supposed sincerity, McCain looked straight into the camera and congratulated his opponent: "Senator Obama, this is truly a good day for America," he said. "Too often, the achievements of our opponents go unnoticed." Minutes later, viewers saw an Obama campaign ad featuring a negative personal attack on McCain - all with the overall effect that Mr Nice Guy seemed to have transformed into an attack dog during the course of the evening, while the veteran old toughie McCain had changed into the warm and fuzzy of the two candidates.
All of which is to say it was a thoroughly political, highly calculated evening. To make certain the 80,000 seats in the stadium were filled, the Obama campaign had distributed 20,000 more tickets to supporters than there were seats - leaving many who had waited for hours to get through secret service security fuming that they were unable to get into the stadium for the big moment.
In fact, they had already missed a monumentally choreographed event in which entertainment and politics became inextricably intertwined: the likes of Sheryl Crow or Stevie Wonder were entertaining the teeming thousands in the so-called "mile-high" stadium one minute, Al Gore and Joe Biden thundering away the next.
No longer was there any pretence that American politics has not merged imperceptibly with entertainment and showbiz, sometimes making it hard to distinguish between them. I gather it will be somewhat similar at the Republican convention in St Paul, Minnesota that begins on 1 September - except that it will be country music entertaining the Republican masses, and the convention will intentionally and conspicuously be much less of a spectacle.
That is why the dramatic final day of the Democratic convention, perfectly timed to co-incide with the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s "I Have A Dream" speech, was something of a risk for Obama - that it could re-enforce Republican attacks that he is all show and no substance. His speech, partly a shopping list of all the positive things an Obama administration would do - delivered, as ever, in spectacular fashion - was intended to pre-empt such charges.
Inside the stadium, though, there was much genuine emotion. Journalists abandoned any show of impartiality by joining in the party, with CNN’s main anchorman getting up and dancing (off-camera) with an Obama strategist to the strains of Stevie Wonder. More touchingly, the likes of 68-year-old Representative John Lewis - the only surviving, still-active member of Martin Luther King’s inner circle - repeated remarks by many African-Americans during the evening, that they never thought they would live to see the day when a black man was nominated by a major party to be president.
I wonder. I just hope they’re right that a major racial rubicon has been crossed with Obama’s nomination, and that it is not wishful thinking that African Americans have now gained political equality with whites. But would America be ready to nominate a younger John Lewis, say, whose skin is much darker and whose ancestors were slaves - like nearly all African Americans? Because Obama is half-white, did not have ancestors who were slaves, and did not have an economically underprivileged upbringing, he is far from being an ideal representative of America’s still-repressed black population - and a man whose style and manner is very different from the likes of Lewis and other highly respected African-American politicians of all ages who have never come remotely close to being seen as potential US presidents.
Obama is unquestionably one of America’s greatest-ever political orators, though, and Thursday night’s speech encompassed a touch of JFK here, a dab of MLK there, with bits of Lincoln thrown in for good measure. Fireworks exploded from a mock Roman coliseum to mark the end of his acceptance speech as Michelle Obama and their two daughters, aged 7 and 10, joined Obama on stage and dodged the confetti raining down on them.
But now it’s straight back to politics as usual. Polls still show Obama only very slightly ahead of McCain, worryingly for the Democrats; Rasmussen's Thursday daily tracking poll, taken before the extravaganza from which Obama should be able to expect a bounce, had them tied. The presumptive Republican candidate will unveil his running-mate on Friday, hoping to upstage Obama’s acceptance speech coverage and steal some of his spectacular thunder. In the words of McCain’s Thursday night’s surprise lovey-dovey ad, “Tomorrow, we'll be back at it.” He can say that again: by the time McCain is officially enthroned by the Republicans at their convention next Thursday, real battle will have commenced. And much blood, I predict, will then be spilled.
http://www.newstatesman.com/north-america/2008/08/obama-campaign-mccain-thursday
Página/12: Manuel Ferreira
y las ideas detrás de Gente como uno
“Para mí, todo teatro es político y social”
La obra, que se verá desde mañana en diversos espacios no tradicionales, ensaya una reflexión sobre el papel de la clase media en la crisis. El director reflexiona sobre el estado de la cultura en la Italia de Berlusconi.
Por Hilda Cabrera
Miércoles, 3 de Septiembre de 2008
“Nosotros inventamos una manera de estar fuera del sistema teatral, porque a veces la cultura es hostil a sí misma. Los que están en el sistema no te escuchan y uno no puede esperar.” Manuel Ferreira, porteño de Talcahuano y Corrientes, partió en 1991 con una beca a Milán y se fue quedando, hasta que seis años atrás se asoció a un grupo de artistas italianos integrando la Compañía Alma Rosé. La estrategia que dice haber inventado se relaciona con la diversidad de lugares en los que presenta sus trabajos: teatros, fábricas, escuelas, universidades, cárceles, museos... Luego de una investigación en Argentina, y de las respuestas a sus cuestionarios hechos a conocidos y amigos, armó un espectáculo que ya estrenó en Italia y ahora quiere mostrar en Buenos Aires y provincias. El título es Gente como uno, su particular mirada sobre esa clase media argentina que salió a la calle durante el estallido de diciembre de 2001. Aquella fecha coincidió con una de sus visitas al país, y de ese impacto nació Gente.... Este actor y director –que se inició en la escuela de Alejandra Boero– recuerda hoy a sus compañeros de aquellos años, a Eduardo Rivas y Luciano Suardi, entre otros, y su participación en la renovadora Romeo y Julieta expulsados del Paraíso, de Claudio Nadie. “Las giras son una necesidad en Italia –dice–, donde no hay público suficiente para las obras y el teatro oficial sufre el recorte de su presupuesto. Los distintos gobiernos se encaminaron hacia los cortes en cultura, lo que no significa que estén ahorrando dinero”, puntualiza Ferreira en diálogo con PáginaI12.
–En Gente como uno el acento está puesto en la clase media argentina. ¿Interesa esto en Italia?
–Confieso que me asustaba estrenar un espectáculo sobre la crisis de 2001, pero me decidí porque la intención de la compañía es hablar de la memoria del presente, un tema universal. El quiebre de 2001 puede darse en cualquier sociedad, y en toda persona que sufre las consecuencias de un Estado que no ofrece garantías. En Europa la gente siente mucho temor ante esa pérdida de garantías.
–¿Aunque se trate de sociedades con experiencias e historias diferentes?
-El miedo es el mismo, porque el sistema es el mismo. La gente vive en un estado de contradicción permanente, atrapada en el consumo, que no critico, porque también yo consumo. Pero eso no quiere decir que olvide cuál era mi actitud y la de mis amigos en mis visitas previas a la Argentina. Ellos me agasajaban y me invitaban a una quinta como si nada estuviera ocurriendo. Cuando estalló la crisis, me pregunté qué había mirado yo hasta entonces. ¿Había puesto atención en lo que se estaba perdiendo, en las privatizaciones y el cierre de fábricas, por ejemplo? En Italia, el ciudadano tiene, digamos, un colchón más grande en cualquier caída, pero el susto existe y le interesa lo sucedido en Argentina, porque la ve como a la América en la que es posible el progreso.
–¿Aun con el reclamo de los bonistas?
–Sí, porque no les robaron los ciudadanos argentinos sino los bancos. Esto lo digo en Gente..., donde toco también el asunto de las fábricas recuperadas. Ante esa escena, el público se relaja, pero en cuanto lo relaciono con el cierre, cada vez más numeroso, de las fábricas italianas la atmósfera se tensa.
–¿O sea que el estallido de 2001 es también un alerta para el Primer Mundo?
–Argentina fue, en mi opinión, el mejor alumno del neoliberalismo, y cuando cae, como cayó entonces, impresiona. Lo sabemos porque nuestro público tiene la oportunidad de participar, y hasta de llevar más público cuando se entusiasma, por ejemplo cuando nos convoca un consorcio de edificios en Milán. Estos consorcios son en realidad cooperativas, una modalidad de la década de 1960. En esas presentaciones, el lugar y el público son verdaderos protagonistas, y muestran interés por esos temas.
–¿Cuáles son sus lugares en Argentina?
–La Universidad de las Madres, el Hospital Borda, teatros como El Galpón de Catalinas... Vinimos para cumplir un programa. Quiero aclarar que no hago lo que comúnmente se denomina teatro político. Para mí todo teatro es político y social. Lo digo por aquellos que gustan etiquetar, actitud habitual en Italia, como aquí, creo, la tendencia a rechazar todo espectáculo que parezca una crónica.
–¿La visita de diciembre de 2001 fue casual?
–Vine para Teatro X la Identidad, porque conozco a la actriz Valentina Bassi y a otras personas que están en eso. Llegué el 19 de diciembre, y en esos días estuve con las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo. Me conmovió ver que ellas, como las Madres y los hijos de víctimas y desaparecidos por la dictadura militar, estaban entre los pocos que mantenían el ánimo y la fuerza. Me conmueven estas Madres y Abuelas que dieron vuelta el cliché de la señora que sufre, que, creo, es una figura que toda Europa quiere ver. Porque, vamos a ser sinceros, Europa ha convertido a los desaparecidos y el baile del tango en asuntos de los que vale la pena hablar.
–¿Sucede algo similar con el temor a desaparecer como clase media?
–En Europa se ponen muy tensos con eso. Es increíble, pero el tema se convirtió en un fenómeno comercial. Un ejemplo: ahora recibo por Gente... más ayuda de organismos no teatrales. Llevamos un registro documental de los circuitos que hemos hecho en Italia, y esto también entusiasmó. En Buenos Aires, le propuse realizar un documental a la directora Sandra Gugliotta, que fue compañera de estudios y es amiga desde hace mucho tiempo, porque mi sueño es tender un puente con Argentina, que tiene un público extraordinario, fiel al teatro, al cine...
–¿Se llevó alguna sorpresa en las giras?
–Aprendimos cuándo es necesario llevar un espectáculo y cuándo no. Hemos hecho funciones en cárceles, y siempre bien, salvo una última vez: presentábamos un trabajo sobre Auschwitz y a los organizadores se les ocurrió llevar a las detenidas en la hora libre, en la que pueden fumar y charlar. Eso no sirve. Es muy importante el grado de disposición del huésped, porque de lo contrario el espectáculo se transforma en un capricho nuestro. También está el caso de que nos inviten porque está de moda hablar sobre el horror y la miseria.
–¿Lo ve como una actitud que lava conciencias?
–Es lo que pienso. Me impresiona tanto como ver a un gran modista haciendo un desfile en una villa. Algunos elencos organizan una función en una estación de trenes abandonada o en un comedor de pobres y después no vuelven nunca más.
–¿Cómo se organiza Alma Rosé en este punto?
–Nuestro trabajo es de persona a persona. Gente... es parte de un proyecto que denominamos “Memoria del presente”, en el que estoy junto a Annabella Di Costanzo y Elena Lolli, las dos de nacionalidad italiana. El año pasado estuve en Argentina conociendo gente para interesarla en la propuesta, porque para mí era necesario traer esta obra después de probarla en Italia, donde día a día se privatiza con más liviandad y donde los presidentes son o se convierten en empresarios.
–¿Se acabó el proyecto país?
–Mi impresión es que se acabó el aspecto social de la política. Ahora la pregunta que se hacen los que están en el poder es si un proyecto deja o no deja dinero. En Italia se está discutiendo en estos momentos la construcción de una red ferroviaria para un tren veloz que partiría de Francia y tendría como terminal la ciudad de Milán, elegida para la Expo Universal de 2015. Ese tren contaminaría las montañas con amianto, pero eso no importa si trae dinero. Aclaro que no estoy en contra de que el dinero circule, sino de la falta de un proyecto que contemple los problemas que arrastra este tipo de emprendimiento.
–¿Cuánto influye en su teatro el hecho de ser argentino?
–Uno no se olvida nunca de lo que es, y eso me lo decían mis padres, que eran gallegos. Ahora lo entiendo. Es una elección personal dejar el país, pero hay que saber que el costo afectivo es muy alto. Mi mujer es italiana, tengo un bebé y me gustaría que cuando crezca conozca la Argentina. No quiero “llorar la Argentina”, pero confieso que me tira.
–¿Qué le dice la frase “gente como uno”?
–Pensaba poner otro título al espectáculo: El mejor alumno. Preferí el de Gente... porque en Italia ese “uno” equivale a nosotros, a gente encaminada hacia el bien. Cuando me inscribí en la escuela de teatro, mi mamá me dijo que ésa no era gente como nosotros, y cuando ella pudo comprarse un tapado de piel –y con eso pasó de ser inmigrante gallega a señora– me pareció que era más gente como uno.
© 2000-2008 www.pagina12.com.ar |Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/10-11151-2008-09-03.html
Página/12:
Navajas de Ockham
Por Leonardo Moledo
Contratapa|Miércoles, 3 de Septiembre de 2008
Dos malevos se enfrentan en una esquina cualquiera. Sacan sus navajas para eliminar al contrincante, al que juzgan (con apresuramiento) innecesario. No saben (y presumiblemente no les importaría saberlo) que están utilizando una herramienta inventada por uno de los más grandes pensadores europeos.
Tampoco saben (ni piensan) que el personaje central de El nombre de la rosa, todavía no publicada, se llama Guillermo de Baskerville, en homenaje a Guillermo de Ockham, ni que la popularidad de este último y su aparición en las conversaciones de los ascensores, los trenes, las multitudes en las plazas, se debe al famoso utensilio que concibió, la “navaja de Ockham” –expresión feliz que en realidad no fue acuñada por él sino por sus seguidores, Jean Buridan (1295-1358) y Nicolás de Oresme (1323-1382)–, y que muchas veces es esgrimida en los duelos intelectuales cuando se llega al punto en que los felices adversarios quieren ver correr la sangre.
Ni deben saber, mientras luchan, que además de inventar su navaja (en rigor, lo que él enunció fue que “no se debe multiplicar de manera innecesaria el número de los entes”; y que cuando estamos ante dos teorías igualmente explicativas, se debe elegir la más simple), Guillermo de Ockham fue el pensador más importante del siglo XIV europeo, el que de alguna manera anuncia el final de la escolástica medieval y el que establece un nexo (temprano, por cierto) con lo que será la nueva ciencia que representará Galileo, doscientos cincuenta años más tarde.
Ignoran (mientras buscan el flanco débil del adversario) que, como su nombre lo indica, había nacido en la aldea de Ockham, a unos 30 kilómetros de Londres, alrededor de 1380, ingresó en la orden franciscana y realizó sus estudios en Oxford (donde funcionaba, dicho sea de paso, una escuela que investigó y encontró grandes novedades en física, en especial cinemática, que contradecían fuertemente al aristotelismo reinante); escribe algunas de sus obras y en 1324 es llamado a Aviñón (entonces residencia de la corte papal) por el papa Juan XXII (1244-1334), para responder a una acusación de herejía; en 1328, cuando la cosa se pone espesa, y los problemas teológicos se complican con los políticos, puesto que toma “la opción por los pobres” de los orígenes del franciscanismo y, en contra del despilfarro y la riqueza de la corte papal, se escapa y se refugia en Pisa bajo la protección de Luis VI de Baviera, a quien sigue después a Munich, donde muere en 1349 durante una epidemia de cólera.
Ni siquiera sospechan (y si lo sospecharan, ¿se detendrían?) que el pensamiento medieval se arrastró en medio del debate y el difícil problema de conciliar la razón y la fe. Mientras que algunos pensadores optaban por la fe lisa y llana, y negaban la posibilidad de la razón o la subordinaban lisa y llanamente a la teología y a la revelación, a partir del siglo XII, con la reintroducción del aristotelismo, se produce un esfuerzo marcado por encontrar entre ambas una articulación aceptable tanto para la teología y el catolicismo papal omnipresente como para la “ciencia según Aristóteles”, que pretende llegar a la verdad a través de la observación y el razonamiento: será Tomás de Aquino (1225-1274) quien en principio encuentra un razonable ensamble entre ambas (en su Summa Theologica) y le da finalmente al aristotelismo patente de ciudadano en la ciudad de dios pretendida por la Iglesia (ciudad a la que el correr de los tiempos iba convirtiendo cada vez más en ciudad terrena).
Y que Ockham toma una postura radicalmente diferente y opuesta a la de Tomás de Aquino: si éste había trabajosamente ordenado y jerarquizado las “verdades de fe” y las “verdades de razón”, para nuestro buen Guillermo no existe ni puede haber ninguna articulación entre ellas: la razón y la fe no tienen nada que ver, la teología y la filosofía (o la ciencia) se ocupan de cosas distintas, por caminos distintos y no pueden prestarse ningún apoyo mutuo (una separación que en su momento marcará claramente Galileo).
Pero que además, y a pesar de venerar a Aristóteles, rompe con el aristotelismo, negando la posibilidad de conocimiento universal: todo conocimiento se deduce de la experiencia con los objetos individuales, que luego puede o no plasmarse en ideas generales que no tienen existencia real (como lo hubiera sostenido Platón, y parcialmente Aristóteles) sino como, dicho de manera moderna, formas puras del entendimiento, y que están en el pensamiento, pero no en el mundo. Es decir, establece un fuerte sentido experimental, que cuajará a través de Jean Buridan en la teoría del impetus, una descripción del movimiento que desbanca el temible y ya estrecho corset aristotélico, y que será la inspiración del joven Galileo para avanzar hacia la ley de caída de los cuerpos.
No les preocuparía saber que esto fue en relación con las disciplinas científicas, o la filosofía natural, pero que en teoría política, además de la ya relatada opción por la pobreza, proclama un dualismo parecido entre poder temporal (el emperador) y espiritual (el Papa); ambos no tienen nada que ver, y ninguno de los dos está sometido al otro; nudo de la lucha política en los siglos medievales; el Papa, por su parte, no es sino un príncipe de la Iglesia, es falible como cualquiera, y no es el árbitro de la verdad (que reside, para Ockham, en la Iglesia, en todo caso); los príncipes temporales, por su parte, se ocupan de las cuestiones civiles sin tener que rendir ningún tipo de pleitesía al Papa: no es extraño que tuviera que escaparse de Aviñón; en sus últimos escritos, reclamó la separación de la Iglesia y el Estado, avanzó singularmente hacia la tolerancia y la libertad de pensamiento (“fuera de la teología, cada uno debería ser libre de decir lo que le parezca y le plazca”), valores que ya prenuncian el Renacimiento, para el cual todavía falta un siglo. Y mucho más, que, como suele decirse, excede lo que se puede decir aquí.
Los malevos siguen su lucha, sin pensar que nuestro amigo Guillermo fue un pensador múltiple y feraz, que enfocó los principales problemas de su época y los resolvió en el sentido en que marcaba la historia (y rompiendo cierto inmovilismo medieval), que se de-sembarazó (y desembarazó al pensamiento) de la pesada carga del dilema razón-fe, que adivinó la tolerancia y el pensamiento libre.
Los malevos continúan su danza de navajas; fatalmente, una de ellas se hundirá en el cuerpo del otro; habrá un vencedor, un vencido, y un hilo de sangre que corre por la vereda, tributario de una cuestión de fe. Ninguno de los dos fue capaz de someterse a la dulce tiranía de lo razonable.
© 2000-2008 www.pagina12.com.ar |Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-110869-2008-09-03.html
ZNet:
Gustav and the Dome
By Dave Zirin
Source: Edge of Sports
September, 03 2008
Witness the massive padlock, tightly hugging its doors. That will tell you all you need to know about Hurricane Gustav and the federal government's carefully orchestrated response. The padlock, roughly the size of a Frisbee, is set firmly around the doors of the Louisiana Superdome. The padlock articulates a message that would be clear to even a Bush or a Brownie: this storm will not be Katrina. By that I don't mean, "We've learned a lot in the last three years" or whatever talking points the White House is putting out.
The padlock makes clear that the public relations hurricane battle has been well engaged. There will be no photo ops of 30,000 people herded into a luxury stadium that magically morphs into a homeless shelter from hell. There will be no opening up the stadium to the poor and unwashed, not after spending 185 million bucks to rebuild the dome and not with the NFL season right around the corner. There will be no one left behind, even if it means putting people on buses, taking them hundreds of miles away, and not even telling them the destination for them and their families. And, more than anything else, the padlock in all of its glistening, metallic glory, is a self-incriminating indictment. It is an admission that despite what we were told three years ago, a stadium isn't really shelter; that the act of forcing people at gunpoint into the dome was a criminal act; and that believing any stadium could have redeeming social value as an emergency evacuation center, is a lie.
The padlock on the Superdome prevents any more ugly backdrops for "When the Levees Broke II", and preserves the pristine field for Drew Brees, Reggie Bush, and the rest of the Saints. But it also raises more questions than answers: if people aren't in the dome, then where are they?
Where are New Orleans' 12,000 homeless residents, double the pre-Katrina numbers?
Where are the 17,000 residents of greater New Orleans still living in FEMA trailers?
Where will people live when they return? Why won't the city call for the suspension of the planned bulldozing of the city's four largest housing projects? How will the people being bussed out, be able to move back if their homes have been flattened? If people can't make it home, will they find their residence somewhere even more frightening than the dome?
New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin said over the weekend, "Anybody who's caught looting in the city of New Orleans will go directly to Angola [Louisiana State Penitentiary]. You will not have a temporary stay in the city. You go directly to the big house, in general population."
Considering that many of the so called looters after Katrina, were fighting for their lives, and considering that the media had color-coded looters, with white residents classified as heroes, the implications of Nagin's dictate is chilling. It's horrifying to think that they could be laying their head in the former slave plantation known as Angola.
And what will the fate be of the hero as of now, the wetlands? The wetlands absorbed the worst of Gustav, before the hurricane slammed into the great city. As New Orleans resident and comedian Harry Shearer said, "We're losing Wetlands at a rate of a football field every 45 minutes." The padlock is also a reminder of all the people, 25% of the pre-Katrina population, who haven't been able to return to the city. How can they have the hope of return when rents have gone up 46% in the last two years? When will this ever be addressed?
The future of New Orleans will depend on our ability to answer these questions. And no amount of shameless political posturing can avoid this.
E of S Nation: if you have the funds, and have something to give for those rebuilding after Hurricane Gustav in New Orleans, please click on the below link http://www.commongroundrelief.org/taxonomy/term/12/9
[Dave Zirin is the author of the forthcoming "A People's History of Sports in the United States" (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com.]
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18673
posted by attilav at 18:48
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home