Elsewhere Today 487

Aljazeera:
Thai cabinet approves referendum

Thursday, September 04, 2008
12:08 Mecca time, 09:08 GMT

The Thai government has approved in principle plans for a national referendum to end a three-month political deadlock as thousands of protesters continued their campaign to force the prime minister's resignation.

There were reports saying the proposed vote would be on whether Samak Sundaravej, the Thai prime minister, should stay in office.

But Somsak Kiatsuranont, the culture minister, said the issue to be voted on was still unclear although the cabinet "has agreed in principle to hold a referendum".

"The referendum is to ask public opinion and the prime minister has agreed to it as a possible solution to solve the problem," he said after a special cabinet meeting at the army headquarters in Bangkok.

Somsak said on Thursday the process for drafting the referendum will start immediately.

Hours earlier on live radio, Samak said he will not resign nor see any reason to dissolve parliament.

Political impasse

However, Abhisit Vejjajiva, the Democrat party leader, told Al Jazeera it was probably "unconstitutional" to hold a referendum on a person or a group of people.

"If the PM really would like the verdict of the country, why not dissolve the house?" he said.

"We're not disputing that the house is democratically elected, but subsequent actions by this government is judged to have been wrong ... violating the constitution by the constitutional court, as well as a series of scandals.

"In any civilised democracy, the government would have shown some kind of responsibility or accountability by now."

Resignation

The cabinet move to break the political impasse came a day after Tej Bunnag, the foreign minister, resigned.

Samak is facing repeated calls to resign from anti-government protesters led by the People's Alliance for Democracy (PAD) who have been camped out on his office lawn since last week.

He has repeatedly refused to resign, vowing not to bow to the demands of street protesters he described as a "freak cult" seeking anarchy.

He insisted that he will "stay in order to preserve democracy and to protect the monarchy".

If his opponents wanted him out, they should use the courts and not take to the streets, he said.

The referendum, if it proceeds, will be only the second ever in the kingdom. The first was in 2007, passing a new military-backed constitution formed after a coup a few months earlier.

Angry reaction

In Bangkok, Al Jazeera's Selina Downes who was with protesters at Government House, said it was not the speech that they wanted to hear.

Samak's opponents, who had expected him to announce his resignation, reacted angrily to his speech and shouted for him to "get out", she said.

The digging in of the prime minister's heels has thrown up suggestions that there might now be a split within the PAD on what to do next, but Sondhi Limthongkul, who leads the group, said dismissed the possibility of any fracture within the alliance.

Sondhi said Samak was a "master of deception and he lies about everything".

The PAD and sympathetic unions had earlier called for a general strike to disrupt transport services and cut off water and power supplies to government offices, but were bitterly disappointed when it failed to materialised.

Samak's announcement on Thursday indicated that the standoff with his opponents was unlikely to be resolved soon.

On Wednesday, the PAD had appeared to change tack when it said only Samak, instead of the whole government, needed to resign, a move that may have undermined support from Samak's coalition partners and put more pressure on him to go.

But it reversed its position a day later following the prime minister's radio address, saying the whole government was guilty of vote-buying in December's elections and so the entire government must go.

Minister quits

Pressure mounted on Samak on Wednesday when his foreign minister resigned, a move widely viewed as a sign that Samak was losing support from his government.

Tej Bunnag was formerly a royal adviser and he had been seen as a link for Samak to the royal palace, so his resignation was a big blow to the prime minister.

Some analysts said Tej was jumping from Samak's sinking political ship.

Samak said Tej, a diplomat who was appointed to his post on July 27 to help ease political tensions, had been "pressured by many sides" and that his wife was not well.

His resignation came a day after the prime minister invoked emergency rule in the capital, Bangkok, to quell street protests against his seven-month-old administration.

But thousands of anti-government protesters have humiliated Samak by defying the emergency decree and remaining at his office compound, after the army declined to use force to remove them.

Legal challenge

Samak also faces a legal challenge after the country's election commission recommended that his People's Power party (PPP) be disbanded for alleged electoral fraud during December's elections.

The commission on Tuesday forwarded its findings to the attorney-general's office to decide whether to submit the case to the constitutional court for a final ruling.

Samak and other party leaders would be banned from politics for five years if the ruling is upheld, although other members could form a new party and retain power by winning new elections.

Tuesday's move was reminiscent of the court dissolving of Thaksin's Thai Rak Thai party last year. The party later regrouped under the PPP flag.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia-pacific/2008/09/20089464647549139.html

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AllAfrica: 15 Killed As Al Shabaab
Attack Somalia Presidential Palace

Garowe Online (Garowe) NEWS
3 September 2008

At least 15 people were killed and 25 others wounded Wednesday in Somalia's capital Mogadishu after insurgents attacked the Villa Somalia presidential compound, Radio Garowe reported.

Six mortars hit Villa Somalia and its environs, followed by face-to-face street fighting between government troops and al Shabaab insurgents, according to witnesses.

Some mortars reportedly hit locations inside Mogadishu's sprawling Bakara Market, while other mortars hit neighborhoods of Wardhigley district. At least four dead bodies were discovered inside Bakara, witnesses said.

Five civilians were killed when mortars aimed at the presidential palace hit nearby homes.

Locals reported seeing six dead bodies - all of them soldiers and insurgents - in parts of Wardhigley district, where most of the heavy fighting was concentrated.

Medical sources at Medina Hospital said the wounded included many women and children.

A spokesman for the al Shabaab insurgents claimed responsiblity for the violence, saying they killed 14 soldiers and suffered four wounded fighters on their side.

Col. Dahir Mohamed Hersi, a spokesman for the Somali military, told reporters that government security forces killed at least 8 al Shabaab fighters.

He confirmed that some mortars hit Bakara Market, but blamed al Shabaab for the violence.

Separately, insurgents attacked African Union peacekeepers overnight Tuesday but there were no casualty reports available.

Somalia has been marred by violence since the outbreak of civil war in 1991. In 2004, a UN-endorsed transitional government came to power and soon invited Ethiopian troops to help restore order in Mogadishu, after ousting the capital's Islamist rulers.

The Islamists, including al Shabaab, have since waged a relentless guerrilla campaign aimed at toppling the interim government and expelling its Ethiopian military backers from Somali soil.

Copyright © 2008 Garowe Online. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200809030951.html

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AlterNet:
Palin Fails by Her Own Standards

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on September 4, 2008

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin accepted the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nomination Wednesday night in a confident and insistent address that attacked members of the media and Washington "elites" who questioned her experience to be vice president and mocked Barack Obama for his qualifications, stances on issues and even his inspiring words.

After several days of silence, Palin introduced herself to America as the newest GOP attack dog. She alternately wrapped herself in what she described as all-American small-town values and engaged in nasty smear tactics - belittling Democrats, mischaracterizing Obama and insulting Americans, who she and her campaign speechwriters must think will not have enough sense to see past such a thin veil.

Palin established the confrontation tone early in her speech by deriding "pollsters and pundits" who "wrote off" Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the Republican nominee, early in his presidential campaign for supporting a troop surge in Iraq. She then introduced her family, praised her rural upbringing and experience in local and state government, and concluded - in a departure from reality - that her brief political resume qualified her to serve as vice president.

"And since our opponents in this presidential election seem to look down on that experience, let me explain to them what the job involves," Palin said, comparing herself to Obama's community work after law school. "I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a 'community organizer,' except that you have actual responsibilities."

Then, as was typical of her speech, she broadened her political attack.

"I might add that in small towns, we don't quite know what to make of a candidate who lavishes praise on working people when they are listening, and then talks about how bitterly they cling to their religion and guns when those people aren't listening," Palin said. "We tend to prefer candidates who don't talk about us one way in Scranton and another way in San Francisco."

Palin was referring to comments Obama made at a fundraiser that were controversial during the Democratic primaries when he was asked about why rural voters often vote for Republicans when the GOP did not advocate for their economic interests. She then drew a picture of life in small town America that was at least as divisive as Obama's remark was controversial, by suggesting rural America is where the country's truest patriots, hardest workers, and members of the military come from.

"I grew up with those people," she said. "They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America ... who grow our food, run our factories, and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America. I had the privilege of living most of my life in a small town."

Vice-presidential candidates are often used by presidential campaigns to criticize the opposing ticket - so the presidential nominee does not have to descend to the muddier side of politics. However, as Palin wrapped herself in a mythic version of small-town America to emphasize Republican values, she also presented a distorted picture of political realities in the country. Most notable in this regard was her criticism of the media and Washington "elites," even though her party has held the White House for seven-plus years and majorities in Congress until 2006.

"I'm not a member of the permanent political establishment," Palin said. "And I've learned quickly, these past few days, that if you're not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone. But here's a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I'm not going to Washington to seek their good opinion; I'm going to Washington to serve the people of this country. Americans expect us to go to Washington for the right reasons, and not just to mingle with the right people."

Palin portrayed herself as a reformer in Alaskan politics, although independent press accounts in recent days strongly suggest otherwise. Despite an ongoing investigation by Alaska's Legislature into Palin improperly using her office to pressure the state police to fire an officer who divorced her sister, and Palin heading a fundraising committee that accepted unlimited donations for Sen. Ted Stevens, now under federal indictment for corruption, Palin said that she fought and beat "special interests."

"We are expected to govern with integrity, good will, clear convictions, and a servant's heart," she said. "I pledge to all Americans that I will carry myself in this spirit as vice president of the United States. This was the spirit that brought me to the governor's office, when I took on the old politics as usual in Juneau; when I stood up to the special interests, the lobbyists, big oil companies, and the good-old-boys network."

Palin's account of herself as an anti-corruption and anti-spending crusader also included her oft-repeated claim that she opposed building a bridge costing several hundred million dollars to a remote town of 14,000. Press accounts from Alaska note that she supported "the bridge to nowhere" for years, before finally canceling the project as governor.

Palin touted her efforts closing a deal to build a new major natural gas pipeline, saying efforts to drill for oil, natural gas and to build more nuclear power plants would be the cornerstone of the country's energy independence. Energy was the only domestic issue Palin discussed at length in her speech, which notably did not mention the economy, health care, the sub-prime mortgage crisis, immigration, family planning, appointing Supreme Court judges or the relation of church and state - she is an evangelical. She dismissed Democratic priorities such as global warming and civil liberties.

"Our opponents say, again and again, that drilling will not solve all of America's energy problems - as if we all didn't know that already," Palin said. "But the fact that drilling won't solve every problem is no excuse to do nothing at all."

Palin's harshest attack concerned the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Obama's qualifications to lead the military.

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word victory except when he's talking about his own campaign," she said, speaking of Obama. "Victory in Iraq is finally in sight; he wants to forfeit. Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay; he wants to meet them without preconditions. Al Qaeda terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America; he's worried that someone won't read them their rights."

Notably, the only foreign policy issues raised by Palin concerned using U.S. troops to ensure the country had an ample supply of oil from the world's trouble spots. If anything, these remarks suggest that a McCain-Palin administration would continue the current White House policy of deploying troops overseas to ensure oil imports.

"Families cannot throw away more and more of their paychecks on gas and heating oil," she said. "With Russia wanting to control a vital pipeline in the Caucasus, and to divide and intimidate our European allies by using energy as a weapon, we cannot leave ourselves at the mercy of foreign suppliers.

"To confront the threat that Iran might seek to cut off nearly a fifth of world energy supplies, or that terrorists might strike again at the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia, or that Venezuela might shut off its oil deliveries, we Americans need to produce more of our own oil and gas," she continued. "And take it from a gal who knows the North Slope of Alaska: we've got lots of both."

Palin also attacked Obama for saying he planned to raise taxes on the top 5 percent of American income earners, which the Democratic nominee has said was necessitated by a federal deficit that has ballooned since the Bush administration needlessly invaded Iraq.

Palin's attacks undoubtedly previewed those the McCain campaign will use in the final two months of the campaign, as Republicans try to convince Americans that a candidate who did not wear a military or law enforcement uniform as a younger person is unfit to be president.

"Though both Senator Obama and Senator Biden have been going on lately about how they are always, quote, 'fighting for you,' let us face the matter squarely," Palin said. "There is only one man in this election who has ever really fought for you, in places where winning means survival and defeat means death, and that man is John McCain."

Of course, Palin did not hold herself to those same standards, which many newspaper editorial writers have said is the most important consideration for the running mate of a candidate who would be the oldest American ever to enter office as president. Instead, she joked that the only different between a "hockey mom" - her role prior to government service - and "a pit bull" was lipstick. Indeed, her introduction to America and national politics was as the GOP's newest attack dog.

Steven Rosenfeld is a Senior Fellow at AlterNet.org, where he reports on elections from a voting rights perspective. His books include Count My Vote: A Citizen's Guide to Voting (AlterNet Books, 2008), What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election (The New Press, 2006), and Making History in Vermont: The Election of a Socialist to Congress (Hollowbrook Publishing, 1992). An award-winning journalist, he has been a staff reporter at National Public Radio, Monitor Radio, TomPaine.com, and at daily and weekly newspapers in Vermont.

© 2008 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/97529/

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Arab News:
Georgia: Hottentot morality

Uri Avnery I avnery@actcom.co.il
Thursday 4 September 2008 (04 Ramadan 1429)

IF he steals my cow, that is bad. If I steal his cow, that is good” — this moral rule was attributed by European racists to the Hottentots, an ancient tribe in southern Africa.

It’s hard not to be reminded of this when the United States and the European countries cry out against Russia’s recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, the two provinces which seceded from the Republic of Sakartvelo, known in the West as Georgia.

Not so long ago, the Western countries recognized the Republic of Kosovo, which seceded from Serbia. The West argued that the population of Kosovo is not Serbian, its culture and language is not Serbian, and that therefore it has a right to independence from Serbia. Especially after Serbia had conducted a grievous campaign of oppression against them. I supported this view with all my heart. Unlike many of my friends, I even supported the military operation that helped the Kosovars to free themselves.

But what’s true for Kosovo is no less true for Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The population in these provinces is not Georgian, they have their own languages and ancient civilizations. They were annexed to Georgia almost by whim, and they have no desire to be part of it.

SO what is the difference between the two cases? A huge one, indeed: The independence of Kosovo is supported by the Americans and opposed by the Russians. Therefore it’s good. The independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia is supported by the Russians and opposed by the Americans. Therefore it’s bad. As the Romans said, what’s allowed to Jupiter is not allowed to an ox.

I do not accept this moral code. I support the independence of all these regions.

In my view, there is one simple principle, and it applies to everybody: Every province that wants to secede from any country has a right to do so. In this respect there is, for me, no difference between Kosovars, Abkhazians, Basques, Scots and Palestinians. One rule for all. There was a time when this principle could not be implemented. That was the era of the “nation state”, when a strong people imposed itself, its culture and its language, on weaker peoples, in order to create a state big enough to safeguard security, order and a proper standard of living. France imposed itself on Bretons and Corsicans, Spain on Catalans and Basques, England on Welsh, Scots and Irish, and so forth.

That reality has been superseded. Most of the functions of the “nation state” have moved to supernational structures: Large federations like the USA, large partnerships like the EU. In those there is room for small countries like Luxemburg beside larger ones like Germany. If Belgium falls apart and a Flemish state comes into being beside a Walloon state, both will be received into the EU, and nobody will be hurt. Yugoslavia has disintegrated, and each of its parts will eventually belong to the European Union.

That has happened to the former Soviet Union, too. Georgia freed itself from Russia. By the same right and the same logic, Abkhazia can free itself from Georgia.

But then, how can a country avoid disintegration? Very simple: It must convince the smaller peoples which live under its wings that it is worthwhile for them to remain there.

It is rather funny to hear Vladimir Putin, whose hands are dripping with the blood of Chechen freedom fighters, extolling the right of South Ossetia to secession. It’s no less funny to hear Micheil Saakashvili likening the freedom fight of the two separatist regions to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.

Nobody can know what was passing through the mind of Saakashvili. He is an inexperienced person, educated in the United States, a politician who came to power on the strength of his promise to bring the separatist regions back to the homeland. The world is full of such demagogues, who build a career on hatred, supernationalism and racism.

But even a demagogue does not have to be an idiot. Did he believe that President George W. Bush, who is bankrupt in all fields, would rush to his aid? The elite units of the Georgian Army have been trained by Israeli officers, including the one who was blamed for losing Lebanon War II. If the Israeli officers infected their Georgian colleagues with their own arrogance, convincing them that they could beat the mighty Russian Army, they committed a grievous sin against them.

When Henry Kissinger was still a wise historian, before he became a foolish statesman, he expounded an important principle: In order to maintain stability in the world, a system has to be formed that includes all the parties. If one party is left outside, stability is in danger. The present American policy, with its attempt to push Russia out, is a danger to the whole world. (And I have not even mentioned the rising power of China.)

A small country which gets involved in the struggle between the big bullies risks being squashed. That has happened in the past to Poland, and it seems that it has not learned from that experience. One should advise Georgia, and also the Ukraine, not to emulate the Poles but rather the Finns, who since world War II have pursued a wise policy: They guard their independence but endeavor to take the interest of their mighty neighbor into account.

We Israelis can, perhaps, also learn something from all of this: That it is not safe to be a vassal of one great empire and provoke the rival empire. Russia is returning to our region, and every move we make to further American expansion will surely be countered by a Russian move in favor of Syria and Iran.

So let’s not adopt the “Hottentot morality”. It is not wise, and certainly not moral.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7&section=0&article=113829&d=4&m=9&y=2008

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Asia Times:
The failure of two empires

By Dmitry Shlapentokh
Sep 5, 2008

At first impression, it seems that the greatest among all Georgians - Joseph Stalin - is back. Alexander Solzhenitsyn, his most implacable enemy, the author of the major anti-Stalin work, Gulag Archipelago, is dead.

Moreover, while the world hailed Solzhenitsyn as one of the major forces in the 20th century that helped destroy Stalinization as the political ideological system in Russia, he soon fell out of the public mind. Few ordinary Russians came to his funeral. For the majority, his Gulag was as irrelevant as The Secret History of Procopius of Caesarea or the Annals of Tacitus of Rome.

Indeed, for quite a few people, Stalin is once again popular as the man who created the great Soviet - read Russian - empire; and it is not accidental that Alexandr Prokhanov, editor of one of the most influential Russian dailies, Zavtra, proclaimed that in the recent war with Georgia, the Georgian "battalion Solzhenitsyn" was destroyed by the advancing Russian army.

One could assume that these Russian forces advancing toward Gori, Stalin's birthplace in Georgia, were hailed by a huge effigy of Stalin, possibly the only one that remains in the world. Here, as if still alive, and looking dignified, he hails Russian soldiers as he did in 1945 when they marched in Red Square in Moscow during the victory parade that followed the end of World War II.

This seems to explain why the comparison between the recent Russian invasion of Georgia and the Soviets' imperial buildup launched by Stalin is so popular in the Western media.

But this is not the case: the war has irrevocably broken the relationship between the Russians and the other peoples of the former Soviet Union, that is, the war has in fact finally destroyed the legacy of Stalinism.

It is true that Stalin has been associated with the legacy of Russian nationalism. His empire looked like the Russian empire of the tsars; he praised Russian nationalism and deported millions of those minorities whom he suspected of disloyalty into the heartland of the empire. Still, his empire was not just a Russian empire; it was not an empire for Russians and by Russians. The empire transcended the narrow confinements of Russianness, not just because Stalin himself was not Russian, but because of the nature of the empire.

Imperial expansion did not benefit Russians. Russian gas and oil, machinery and education - all were spread to the outskirts of the imperial domain; and, with all the nastiness and discrimination of his rule - the case of Russian Jews and Germans in the late Stalin era is a good example - Stalin's elite and, later, the post-Stalin elite, was multi-ethnic.

Moreover, it is the Russified minorities - so similar to Stalin himself, who were the greatest patriots of the empire. These trans-ethnic elements of the empire (it's not a Russian but actually an Eurasian empire) permeated all of Soviet rule. And through a web of marriages, datings and friendships, a new people emerged: the Soviet/Eurasian people.

This was not just a Soviet propaganda statement. Still, all of this began a process of continuous destruction from the beginning of the post-Soviet era in the early 1990s. The price of gas and oil was increasingly raised to everyone. Even Russian friends - such as Belarus - were slowly compelled to pay the same prices as the distant lands which had never been a part of the empire. Ethnic violence against the people from the Caucasus and Central Asia became common.

The recent Russo-Georgian war was the last straw: from now on, Moscow, the Third Rome, the capital of the Eurasian empire to which all the numerous people of the empire have had a feeling of awe, a feeling that Moscow is also their capital, became a city of a foreign state. This feeling of Russia's foreignness is shared not just by the people of the Caucuses and Central Asia, but also by friendly Belarus, which offended Moscow by not supporting the Georgian war.

Now, Russia is more alone, more alienated and hated among the republics of the former Soviet Union than at any other time in Soviet and post-Soviet history.

And while Russia was able to inflict a great blow against Georgia, Russia has not been able to withstand a protracted war in the North Caucuses. Chechnya has in effect been abandoned to President Ramzan Kadyrov, who exists if not de jure but as an independent ruler, receiving tributes in the form of subsidies from Moscow.

While Russia cannot be either a new edition of the Stalinist Soviet Union or a reinvention of itself in the form of say a German Third Reich, the United States is seen by a considerable segment of the Russian elite as the country's major geopolitical rival, as a grand empire.

Still, the US's inability to defend its proxy Georgia, which it implicitly encouraged to attack South Ossetia, setting off the war, is a reflection of the broad geopolitical burden of Iraq and Afghanistan on the US's shoulders. These geopolitical debacles are related to America's increasing economic problems, for which no viable solution can be found in the context of present social-economic arrangements. The collapse of the American global imperial presence is structurally similar to that of the collapse of the Soviet empire. Neither Russia nor the US can be true imperial powers.

The geopolitical structure of the global order created by Stalin and his American adversaries in the aftermath of World War II is collapsing, not just on the Russian side but also on the American side. This implies that the future - at least the immediate future - is not so much for Pax Russika or Pax America, but most likely a push for increasing global anarchy.

Dmitry Shlapentokh, PhD, is associate professor of history, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend. He is author of East Against West: The First Encounter - The Life of Themistocles, 2005.

Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI05Ag01.html

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Clarín:
La locomotora Solanas

"La próxima estación", documental de Pino Solanas, se centra en la historia y estado de los trenes en la Argentina.

Por: Clarín.com
04.09.2008

A esta altura, sobre todo en estos casos, es imposible evaluar una película de Fernando Solanas aisladamente: cada uno de sus filmes, en especial cada uno de sus documentales, ya forma parte de un vasto corpus sobre el país, de un fresco sobre la Argentina del siglo XX, creado —por etapas— desde una perspectiva ideología que no necesariamente debe ser compartida. Lo cierto es que, a 40 años de La hora de los hornos, el incansable y mítico Pino sigue haciendo un cine urgente, rabioso, reflexivo, emotivo y —abandonemos de una vez las connotaciones negativas de ciertas palabras— militante, doctrinario. La próxima estación se centra en los trenes en la Argentina. O mejor: en el modelo de país que los llevó al esplendor; y en el otro que, luego, los sumió en el abandono, el desguace, los bordes de la desaparición.

"Los trenes se privatizaron porque daban pérdidas. ¿Pero los servicios públicos están para dar ganancias o para servir a la comunidad? ¿Deben dar renta las escuelas o los hospitales públicos? Hoy los ferrocarriles cuestan 3 millones diarios y funciona el 20 por ciento de los que teníamos antes", dispara el director en off, sin maquillar su cine de ideas. Pero La próxima... no se apoya sólo en datos y retórica políticoeconómica: Solanas —un gran reportero, que logra soltura en sus entrevistados— recorre historias, ideas y propuestas de los hombres que le dieron vida al sistema ferroviario nacional. Esas charlas —informales, aunque tienen gran valor sociológico y antropológico— funcionan como viajes dentro de viajes: al hablar, los entrevistados y el director recorren enormes espacios donde hubo talleres, estaciones, trabajo, vías, vidas y ahora, nada.

La próxima... es el cuarto documental de una serie de cinco, que Solanas comenzó a concebir tras la crisis de 2001 y cerrará con La tierra sublevada. Viaje por el país profundo, valioso como el que hizo Bialet Massé un siglo antes; testimonio reflexivo influido por las miradas de Raúl Scalabrini Ortiz y Arturo Jauretche (dos referentes de Solanas); documento sobre las consecuencias de los años de esplendor neoliberal, cuyas bases, según el director, se mantienen intactas.

El tono de la película, que tiene excelente música original de Gerardo Gandini y toma una decisión ética en cada plano, se sitúa en un punto intermedio entre la desolación de Memoria del saqueo y La dignidad de los nadies, y el optimismo de Argentina latente. La próxima... combina la épica fundacional con la caída de los sueños. Pero Solanas se muestra confiado en un retorno a tiempos mejores. Muchas veces, a través de la palabra de los trabajadores: individuos que formaron parte de una construcción colectiva y que están convencidos de que se puede volver a ella.

A diferencia de un historiador, que tomaría más distancia temporal, Solanas recorre temas actuales, como el tren bala o Aerolíneas. Y otros: el robo millonario de viejos materiales ferroviarios (alguien habla de ferricidio) y el estado lamentable de los servicios. Tras mostrar imágenes de violencia contra las máquinas, Pino opina que la furia debería tener otro destino. "Pero nadie puede defender lo que no sabe que le pertenece", reflexiona. En otros tramos, encara a funcionarios —del sistema judicial— y los deja mal parados, a lo Michael Moore, con menos narcisismo.

Los documentales de Solanas nos invitan a informarnos, debatir y mirarnos en un espejo no del todo grato. No parece poco, en tiempos vacíos: se tenga la ideología que se tenga.-

Copyright 1996-2008 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/diario/2008/09/04/um/m-01752571.htm

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Guardian: Only a combination of deterrence
and detente can meet this challenge

Others are far from blameless, but Putin's Russia is now squaring up to test Europe's whole way of doing things

Timothy Garton Ash
The Guardian,
Thursday September 4 2008

As you read this, another corner of Europe has been ethnically cleansed. That means young men murdered, old women driven out of their lifelong homes, villages plundered and torched. As in Bosnia, so now in South Ossetia, with the butcher's work largely done by irregular militias. "We did carry out cleaning operations, yes," the militia leader "Captain Elrus" told the Guardian's Luke Harding. These violent crimes have been committed under the noses of Russian troops, now unilaterally rebranded peacekeepers by the simple expedient of being given blue helmets. This ethnic cleansing has extended to the buffer zone around South Ossetia that Russia has unilaterally established, exploiting an alleged loophole in the ceasefire agreement brokered by Nicolas Sarkozy on behalf of the European Union.

These facts, established on the ground by brave and careful reporters, are the true human measure of Europe's failure to keep its cardinal promise of peace even in its own backyard. They are also the measure of Russia's deliberate, strategic challenge to the whole late-20th century way of doing politics and international relations that the EU represents. Do not underestimate the significance of this moment.

Two things must be said, which complicate but do not negate the point. First, Georgia's leaders behaved with reprehensible folly in escalating the conflict in South Ossetia on August 7, allowing their forces to kill and wound civilians, and failing to anticipate the hammer blow of Russia's military reaction - despite indications that it had been rehearsed. "We did not prepare for this kind of eventuality," confessed Batu Kutelia, the Georgian deputy defence minister. What irresponsible idiots.

Second, the dying Bush administration behaved with characteristic incompetence in allowing the Georgian government to nurse even the shadow of a hope that the US cavalry might ride to the aid of this would-be Israel of the Caucasus. Warnings to the contrary were reportedly conveyed by the state department, but not with equal clarity from all parts of this dysfunctional administration. Worldwide ridicule of Washington's indignant response also demonstrated how much credibility the US has lost due to the invasion of Iraq. (Don't invade a sovereign country - that's what we do.)

So, yes, there was fault in Tbilisi and Washington. But finding fault with the US (a sport at which Europeans excel) and Georgia (a faraway country of which most Europeans know nothing) reduces by not one jot or tittle the challenge Russia now poses to the whole way western Europe has tried to conduct human affairs since 1945 - and the creed most of Europe has lived by since 1989.

"Territorial integrity" is not the heart of the matter here. The essence of our new European way of doing things is something more like procedural integrity. The frontiers of existing states must be respected, but in exceptional cases territories within states may negotiate special autonomies or even vote to become independent, like Slovakia and Kosovo, or perhaps Scotland one day - but always by peaceful means, by negotiation and consent, with the sanction of national and international law. The how matters even more than the what.

That's our fundamental claim, which Putin's Russia now challenges head on. Its message is that the unilateral use of force in the advancement of national interests is part of what great powers do; that the EU's postmodern, multilateral, law-based order is a transient 20th-century anachronism; and that, in the words of Thucydides's Melian dialogue, "the strong do what they can, and the weak submit".

So what is Europe's answer? The outcome of Monday's EU emergency summit was less bad than it might have been. By contrast with the last emergency summit, held five years ago over Iraq, a minimal unity was preserved. But the measures agreed were still weak. "Thank God common sense triumphed," commented an apparently satisfied Vladimir Putin. And the unity itself is weak, reflecting differing levels of energy dependency on, and diverse historical experiences with, Russia. Moscow will do everything in its power to exploit these differences. Monday's Izvestia had a fascinating coloured map of EU states divided into four categories, with Britain and Poland tagged "virulent critics", while Germany, France, Belgium and Italy received the complimentary label of "Moscow's lobbyists".

I found the tone of mild self-congratulation from Sarkozy and José Manuel Barroso at the post-summit press conference in Brussels inappropriate. You should not allow that tone to creep in when, even as you speak, poor women and children are being made destitute, if not worse, partly as a result of Europe's failure. A defeat is not a victory. And this summit can only be counted a success if it begins a fundamental rethinking of Europe's whole policy towards Russia.

What we need is a twin-track approach, combining elements of muscular deterrence and skilful engagement - if you will, of cold war and detente. Putin's is not the only view in Russia. Hopes that President Medvedev's would soon be audibly different have receded, but there are others, including the private views of some worried Russian capitalists. It must remain clear that the door is still open to the kind of strategic partnership the west dreamed of in the 1990s, with Russia as a new pillar of liberal international order.

Our new working assumption, however, must be that it will for the foreseeable future remain Putin's Russia: a ruthless great power, determined to roll back the influence of the west and establish its own 19th-century style sphere of influence in the post-Soviet space; and one prepared to use violence, intimidation and extortion to realise its national interests, which it defines as extending to the "protection" of millions of Russians in other sovereign states around its borders - in Crimea, for example, a part of the sovereign state of Ukraine where slightly more than half the population identify themselves as Russians and the Kremlin has its Black Sea fleet harboured at Sevastopol.

Yalta, c'est fini, declared Sarkozy at the Brussels press conference, alluding to the alleged division of Europe into two spheres of influence at the 1945 Yalta conference. But a new kind of Yalta may be beginning - at that very same town in Crimea, and many like it, where Mother Russia yearns to look after her own. Europe must do what it can for Georgia, including a visible presence on the ground. But strategically even more important is to do what it can for Ukraine, a large and pivotal state that (unlike Georgia) still more or less controls all the territory within its borders.

David Miliband was absolutely right to go there in response to the Georgian crisis. The EU should now give Ukraine a clear perspective of membership. It should put monitors, officials, lawyers, police advisers and development workers - Ukrainian and Russian-speaking - on the ground, especially in regions such as Crimea. Our response should be realistic in assessing not just Russia, but our strengths and weaknesses. Russia does tanks. Europe is not good at doing stuff with tanks. But we do a thousand other things, each smaller, softer and slower than a tank, which, given time and the perspective of eventual membership, can be a force more powerful. This European model is now on trial.

timothygartonash.com

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/04/russia.eu

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New Statesman:
Is Ukraine next?

With Georgia in pieces, Ukraine could be the next to fall to Russia's territorial ambition, separatist sentiment and economic realities. Andrey Kurkov reports

Andrey Kurkov
Published 04 September 2008

Ukraine's political summer season was cool and quiet, despite air temperatures in the high thirties (centigrade) and the war in Georgia, which the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko, tried hard to make a matter of personal significance for each Ukrainian.

The president's speeches in defence of Georgia's territorial integrity and against Russian aggression were published regularly in the papers. Television covered the Stop Russia Now! meeting of four presidents in Tbilisi, while the idea that Russia's next target would be the Crimea sparked discussion among Ukrainian politicians and political scientists. Yushchenko put on combat gear that made him look like Fidel Castro and it was announced that Ukraine would be the first to join any international "anti-Russian" alliance - although it remains unclear how such an alliance would act, and the idea now seems to have been put on the back burner.

The political battle cries over the conflict have gradually died down. Despite protests by many politicians, Ukraine's Independence Day on 24 August was celebrated in Soviet style with a military parade down Kiev's main street. Two days later, near the country's second-largest city, Kharkiv, a huge arsenal of ammunition caught fire and, for several days, bombs and mines were exploding, firework-style, over a five-kilometre radius. The minister of defence, Yuriy Yekhanurov, was forced to admit that the ammunition was to have been sold to the government of Chad. At the same time Yushchenko, in his combat suit, was bestowing the rank of general on 117 officers and government administrators.

Thus, Ukraine begins the autumn season of 2008. The start of parliament's first sitting will be dominated by a motion, tabled by the opposition, to recognise the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Parliament will not recognise them, just as Kosovan independence is not rec ognised or even discussed. But this only underlines how stable is Ukrainians' "many-sidedness" and how split the political sympathies of the country's eastern and western territories.

For many Ukrainians, the recent military conflict was yet another phase in the ongoing personal war between the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, and the Georgian president, Mikhail Saak ashvili. The first phases of this war were purely economic. There was the ban on imports to Russia of Georgian wine (the wine war) and mineral water (the Borzhomi war, after a famous Georgian water). Then came the ban on imports of Georgian oranges and tangerines (the citrus war). After that began the countrywide campaign against Georgians residing - legally and illegally - in Russia, involving the deportation of illegal "guest workers" and the harassment of others, some of whom were very well known. One of Russia's best-known authors, Boris Akunin, whose real name is Grigory Chkhartishvili, suddenly found himself terrorised by the Russian tax authorities.

However, in response to the most recent Russo-Georgian conflict, Georgians living in Russia have banded togeth er against President Saakashvili. It is not a question of who did what and who is to blame. Georgian Russians simply want to get on with their lives in peace.

People in Ukraine also want a peaceful life, but Ukrainians have been more disturbed by the recent events in Georgia than western Europeans. Russia repeatedly declared that the Georgian army was using Ukrainian arms and that Ukrainian mercenaries were fighting on the side of Georgia in South Ossetia. Although neither charge has been proven, these repeated accusations serve to illustrate Russia's political antagonism towards Ukraine.

Moscow's politicians have repeatedly responded aggressively to Ukraine's demand that Russia prepare to remove her Black Sea fleet from Crimea in 2017, the year the contract under which Russia leases the Crimean naval base expires. The mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, once called Sebastopol "a region of Moscow", and Moscow has been financing the construction of apartment buildings in the city. Luzhkov has also demanded the return of the Crimean peninsula to the Russian Federation. (Crimea was "gifted" to Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Ukraine's voluntary integration into the Russian empire.) There are many in Russia who share Luzhkov's views, and few Ukrainians believe Putin's statement, made in an interview on CNN, that Russia has no territorial quarrel with Ukraine.

The perils of Russophobia

Ukrainians note that Russia seemed to have no territorial quarrel with Georgia until the beginning of last month. The suddenness of the Georgian crisis, and that Ukraine has approximately equal numbers of pro-Russian and pro-European politicians and regions, only underlines the complexity of the situation in which Ukraine finds itself. A referendum held in 2006 showed that a majority of South Ossetians did not wish their country to remain as part of Georgia; similarly, if a referendum were held in Crimea today, it would show that most people there do not want to live as part of Ukraine.

In an attempt to transform the south and east of the country, Yushchenko has tried to "Ukrainianise" secondary and tertiary education in the Russian-speaking regions. This has drawn protests from the local popu lation and politicians, and the policy has only increased pro-Russian sentiment in these regions. Yush chenko, called a "Russophobe" in the Russian press, has never been so unpopular. Ukrainian polls give him only 5 to 6 per cent support, the same as the Ukrainian Communists. His chances of winning a second term in office in the 2009 presidential elections are practically nil.

The presidential race is expected to be between Yulia Tymoshen ko and Viktor Yanukov ych. Both would be acceptable to Moscow. Both would be prepared to negotiate an extension of lease for the Crimean naval base and to postpone the question of Ukraine's Nato membership - unless Nato acts swiftly to make Ukraine a member while Yushchenko is still in power.

With regard to the European Union, most Ukrainians understand that they won't get in for at least another 20 years, leaving Ukraine economically dependent on Russia for the foreseeable future. Each anti-Russian move by the Ukrainian president has resulted in the sort of economic sanctions employed by Russia against Georgia, except that now it's Ukrainian meat and dairy products that Russia has banned. Thus, American chicken and Ukrainian dried milk have been the first victims of the current stand-off between the west and Russia.

Ukraine, an industrially developed country, could be seriously harmed by Russian sanctions. Most thinking Ukrainians appreciate that the country requires super-competent politicians if it is to maintain its political independence while being economically dependent on Russia - about which Ukraine has no choice. Unfortunately, the present level of political corruption puts Ukraine a long way from seeing the necessary calibre of politician in its corridors of power. Sadly, Yush chenko has not fulfilled his central election promise to overcome corruption.

But Saakashvili, his good friend and the godfather of one of his children, seems fully to intend to carry out his own election promises. Having been re-elected in January this year, Saakashvili sought to strengthen his position by reinforcing the territorial integrity of Georgia, a task made urgent by the obligation on all countries aspiring to join Nato not to have any unsettled territorial disputes. It is my belief that, in rekindling the South Ossetian conflict, Saakashvili planned to speed up the process of his country's entry into Nato. Perhaps he hoped Nato would join in the conflict on Georgia's side. Surely he could not have imagined that Russia would not respond to artillery fire over a town where a battalion of Russian peacekeepers was stationed, or that the Georgian army could win the ensuing battle on its own. Nato remained outside this conflict, as I believe it would in the case of any military confrontation with Russia, because doing otherwise could take the world to the brink of disaster.

A Pandora's box

The Ukrainian president, like the Georgian leader, wants Ukraine to join Nato as soon as possible, and though Ukrainians themselves are less enthusiastic, right-wing politicians maintain that if Georgia had been a member of Nato, Russia would not have dared to protect South Ossetia or march into Georgian cities and ports.

However, most Ukrainians doubt that the west will put any significant pressure on Russia, and expect that any protests will be confined to hard-hitting rhetoric, along the lines of David Miliband's recent speech in Kiev. On returning to London, he admitted that Europe needs Russian gas and also noted that Gazprom needs European clients and investors.

Meanwhile, untouched by western opinion, Russia has boosted its image as a country prepared for brutal confrontation with neighbours. As Putin put it on 29 August, the west started the business of redrawing the map of Europe when it recognised the independence of Kosovo, thus "opening a Pandora's box". South Ossetia and Abkhazia are only the second and third "evils" to have flown out of that box since Kosovo. Might there be others?

For 17 years, the "independent" state of Transdnestria has existed on the boarder of Ukraine and Moldova. It is populated by Russians, Ukrainians and now well-rooted settlers from the 14th army of the USSR, which was stationed there when the Soviet Union broke up. There are other unrecognised "independent" territories, the leaders of which are now looking hopefully towards Moscow, which is ready to expand its political territory under the banner of the CIS (Confederation of Independent States), a friendly enough sounding union.

All that will be required, from Moscow's point of view, will be the recognition of these states by each other and by Russia - and, in the end, eastern Europe, the Caucasus and central Asia will be firmly within the Russian sphere of influence. The western border of this sphere could very well be drawn through the middle of Ukraine, slicing the country in two.

Andrey Kurkov is the author of "The President's Last Love" (Harvill Secker, £12.99)

http://www.newstatesman.com/europe/2008/09/russia-ukraine-georgia

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Página/12:
Un día para multiplicar en cuadritos

Se empezó a festejar en 2006, pero este año cobró un impulso acorde con lo que todos los especialistas señalan como un “reverdecer” del arte creado en la Argentina. Las claves de una historia rica en dibujantes y guionistas que marcaron tendencia.

Por Andrés Valenzuela
Jueves, 4 de Septiembre de 2008

La fecha podía ser cualquiera. Simplemente tenía que haber un día, y ¿qué mejor que elegir la salida de la obra más emblemática del comic nacional? Un 4 de septiembre, hace 51 años, apareció por primera vez Juan Salvo, el Eternauta, con el rostro carcomido por el cansancio, la soledad y las aventuras. Fue en la mítica revista Hora Cero, de la editorial Frontera, fundada por el mismo guionista de esa historia: Héctor Germán Oesterheld. La dibujaba Francisco Solano López con su línea clásica y potente. Así, hoy los amantes del noveno arte festejan el Día de la Historieta Argentina. Y, como no podía ser de otra manera, cientos de adoradores de las viñetas se reunirán en distintos puntos del país (ver recuadro) para festejar(se).

El Día H, como lo llaman sus ideólogos, creció desde su nacimiento en 2006 hasta hoy. Del humilde encuentro de un puñado de fanáticos y artistas del género en un centro cultural para brindar, la iniciativa fue creciendo en apoyo, convocatoria y aceptación en el ambiente. Al punto que hoy al encuentro madre de la fecha en Capital (en el Centro Cultural Plaza Defensa) se plegaron otros diez eventos.

“Nos gustaría que quede claro que no festejamos sólo el Eternauta, sino toda la historieta argentina, que es mucho más que eso”, señala Alejandra Márquez, organizadora de la jornada porteña sobre la fecha. Para reflejarlo, en esta ocasión harán hincapié en la historia de la industria editorial nacional, cuenta el historietista y coorganizador Gustavo Schimpp. Por el mismo motivo, además, se hará un reconocimiento a la trayectoria de varios artistas históricos del género: los guionistas Alfredo Julio Gra-ssi (ver recuadro), Carlos Albiac, Eugenio Zappietro (también conocido como Ray Collins) y los dibujantes Carlos Vogt, Mannken y Guillermo Guerrero.

Poniendo fecha

Decidir una fecha para conmemorar la historieta argentina, que nació hace siglo y medio es, por lo menos, complicado. Un repaso (rápido y forzosamente plagado de omisiones) por la historia del género permite establecer algunos mojones importantes. Las primeras historietas aparecieron en la Argentina entre mediados y fines del siglo XIX en las revistas de sátira política, como la legendaria El Mosquito, que se nutrió de ilustradores recién llegados de Europa dedicados al humor gráfico. A fines de siglo aparecen las primeras historietas propiamente dichas en Caras y Caretas y el primer personaje de la historieta local: Goyo Sarrasqueta, de Manuel Redondo. Viruta y Chicharrón, también de Redondo, suelen considerarse los primeros, pero en verdad estaban inspirados en una tira norteamericana.

En la década del ’20 se afianzó el género, que paulatinamente se instaló en todos los espacios editoriales locales. Para entonces prácticamente no había diario o revista popular que no incluyera al menos alguna caricatura. Además, en 1928 nació la primera revista exclusivamente de historietas: El Tony, de la editorial Columba. Ya en esta época empezaron a multiplicarse las revistas de historietas y aparecieron varios personajes emblemáticos, como Patoruzú o Isidoro Cañones. Este proceso se consolidó hasta el comienzo de “la edad dorada de la historieta argentina”, en 1940. Entre las muchas publicaciones de esa década vale resaltar tres: Rico Tipo, fundada por Guillermo Divito, que llegó a vender 350.000 ejemplares y contó entre sus colaboradores con talentosos como Calé, Landrú, Oski y Mazzone; Patoruzito, donde Alberto Bre-ccia hizo sus primeras armas como dibujante, e Intervalo, de Editorial Columba, que comenzaría la serie de historietas “para adultos”.

Los siguientes diez años fueron el punto más alto para el género. Se destacó Tía Vicenta, dirigida por Landrú, pero lo más sobresaliente fue la aparición de Héctor Germán Oesterheld como guionista, que legó cantidad de personajes emblemáticos: el Sargento Kirk, Ticonderoga, Ernie Pike y, claro, El Eternauta. Considerada su cumbre artística (junto a Mort Cinder, de 1962), aquí Oesterheld refinó su estilo narrativo: terminó de abandonar la división entre “buenos” y “malos”, construyó personajes de gran profundidad y llevó la aventura al mundo cotidiano. Todo permeado por su comprometida visión de la realidad política.

En 1960 comenzó la decadencia editorial, con el cierre de varias revistas. Tres causas ayudaron a esto: la competencia con material mexicano a bajo precio y mejor impreso, la aparición de la televisión, y la emigración de destacados artistas argentinos, producto del menor espacio para publicar aquí y una revalorización como arte de la historieta en los círculos intelectuales europeos. Pese a esto, la década vio nacer a otros grandes: Mafalda, que Quino publicó por primera vez en el diario El Mundo, el Corto Maltés, de Hugo Pratt, y Nippur de Lagash, del paraguayo Robin Wood.

La década siguiente, como el final de la del ’60, estuvo marcada por los sucesivos golpes de Estado: la historieta sufrió la censura como cualquier otro arte. En contrapartida, un punto altísimo de la década es la aparición de dos revistas de humor político: Satiricón, hasta su clausura en 1974, y, sobre todo, Humor, con su abierta oposición a la dictadura militar, la misma que da la nota siniestra de la década a la historieta cuando desapareció a Oesterheld. Entre los destacados de la época figuraron El loco Chávez, de Trillo y Altuna, y Hortensia, donde Roberto Fontanarrosa publicó por primera vez algunos de sus personajes más populares.

A comienzos de los ’80 se destacó el suplemento Superhumor, de la revista Humor, donde, además de historietas, había artículos sobre el género firmados, en otros, por Juan Sasturain. También de esta época es Cuero, una corta experiencia de Oscar Steimberg en la que por primera vez un escritor argentino reconocido, Dalmiro Sáenz, guionizó un comic firmándolo con su propio nombre. Pero las viñetas argentinas de la década estuvieron marcadas por otra revista: Fierro. Fierro vino a renovar el género y poner en sus páginas lo más creativo del momento. Eran historietas para adultos por temática y por lenguaje. Incluyó un suplemento dedicado a la experimentación, hizo concursos para buscar nuevos talentos y la sección “Argentina en pedazos”, que adaptaba textos literarios argentinos.

La década de los ’90 dio un golpe a las producciones locales. La paridad cambiaria que impuso el gobierno de Carlos Saúl Menem abarató las revistas norteamericanas, que inundaron el mercado a caballito de las comiquerías, multiplicadas por todo el país. La fortísima competencia empujó al abismo a las revistas antológicas locales y, con ellas, desarticuló el circuito de formación de nuevos artistas. Como consecuencia, los jóvenes que querían ingresar en el mercado laboral se encontraron con que no podían hacerlo. Se volcaron así a la autoedición, fanzines donde la falta de estructura se compensa con exploraciones estilísticas y libertad creativa, que, en la década actual, renuevan el género. Se destacaron fanzines como Catzole y Hacha o la revista sobre historietas Comiqueando, que se convirtió luego en comercial. En la otra cara de la moneda, de esta época son las multitudinarias convenciones de comics como Fantabaires, con invitados extranjeros. El siglo XXI las haría más modestas y reorientadas a la producción nacional.

Siglo XXI, estallido y después

La devaluación posterior al estallido de diciembre de 2001 terminó de sumir en un letargo a la edición nacional de comics al disparar, entre otros, los costos del papel. El fenómeno abarcó también a la importación de material, encarecido súbitamente al terminarse el 1 a 1. Así, mientras dejaron de circular la mayoría de los fanzines y cerró la histórica editorial Columba, también cerraron sus puertas un montón de pequeñas comiquerías, quedando en pie apenas un puñado. Con la aparición de Internet, buena parte de la producción local se volcó a la web, desde donde ahora empieza a pasar al papel.

Tomó algunos años rearticular el mercado local y de hecho es un proceso aún en marcha. En ese tiempo surgieron varias editoriales pequeñas que publican una buena cantidad de títulos, algunas grandes volvieron a editar historieta y, hace casi dos años, reapareció la revista Fierro, que se edita mes a mes con PáginaI12. Todos signos alentadores que forman parte de lo que se llama habitualmente “el reverdecer de la historieta nacional”. La incógnita es qué depara el futuro. En una nota publicada hace algunas semanas en este diario, un editor aseguraba que las editoriales aún no tocaron su techo y que confían en seguir creciendo. Cómo y hacia dónde, está por verse. Lo que sí está claro es que la historieta nacional, que parecía herida de muerte en los ‘90, está viva y con abundante energía creativa. Merece festejarse.

© 2000-2008 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/2-11172-2008-09-04.html

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Página/12:
Todo mezclado

Por Juan Gelman
Jueves, 4 de Septiembre de 2008

Es curioso lo que sucede con los vicepresidentes que eligieron los actuales candidatos a gobernar EE.UU.: el republicano John McCain, que anunció su decisión de combatir enérgicamente el calentamiento global, irá a las elecciones de noviembre próximo en compañía de Sarah Palin, gobernadora de Alaska, miembro de la Asociación Nacional del Rifle y una convencida de que el fenómeno no es producto de la actividad humana. En tanto, el demócrata Barack Obama, que se distingue por haber votado contra la invasión a Irak y no cesa de enrostrárselo a su oponente, será acompañado por Joseph Biden, senador durante cuatro períodos seguidos que apoyó sin reservas la invasión a Irak y ahora la critica y se arrepiente. Bien decía René de Chateaubriand: “En política, el resultado casi siempre contraría lo previsto”.

Es evidente la pelea de ambos por arrancarse votos. McCain cree que una compañera de fórmula le atraerá los sufragios de demócratas mujeres todavía enojadas porque Hillary Clinton no fue la elegida. Obama piensa que un conservador como Biden puede arrimarle votos de los llamados “halcones liberales”, practicantes de una extraña ideología que incluye las políticas de guerra. La elección del republicano sorprende menos que la del demócrata: Biden insistió en que Obama no estaba preparado para ejercer la presidencia hasta que éste le ofreció compartir la fórmula. Pero lo central pasa por otro lado: la guerra contra Irak.

Biden fue uno de sus defensores más acérrimos y así proporcionó una cobertura bipartidaria al peor desastre de la política exterior estadounidense en las últimas tres décadas. En su calidad de presidente de la Comisión de Relaciones Exteriores del Senado, en julio de 2002 –nueve meses antes de la invasión– convocó audiencias sobre la guerra ya preparada a las que no citó a especialistas y organismos que ponían en tela de juicio el pretexto: que Saddam Hussein tenía armas de destrucción masiva. A finales del 2002, Biden defendió el derecho de W. Bush a invadir Irak y votó a favor de todas las partidas presupuestarias destinadas a financiar la ocupación que exigió la Casa Blanca. Hizo más: propuso la división del país invadido según alineamientos étnicos con gobiernos regionales y una autoridad central débil. Fue demasiado: la mayoría de los legisladores iraquíes impugnó la idea.

Steven Zunes, catedrático de la Universidad de San Francisco, se refiere a esta contradictoria situación: subraya que una de las cartas más fuertes de Obama frente a McCain es precisamente su casi solitaria posición contra la guerra. “Al elegir a Biden, sin embargo, quien fue tan partidario de la guerra como el candidato republicano –señala el politólogo–, Obama está diciendo ahora que eso realmente no importa y cohíbe así una de sus principales ventajas. La ‘experiencia’ de Biden es la de un militarista cuyo desprecio por el derecho internacional se puso de manifiesto tanto en sus duras posiciones sobre Irak como en otras cuestiones críticas de la política exterior” de EE.UU. (www.alternet.org, 23/8/08). ¿Entonces?

En el discurso que pronunciara al aceptar la candidatura a presidente por el Partido Demócrata –que la prensa internacional calificó de histórico–, Obama prometió el cambio de políticas en distintos campos, pero explicó la necesidad de retirarse de Irak para concentrar la acción en “el frente principal de la guerra antiterrorista”: Afganistán. Los tonos belicistas de Biden fueron similares. Esa es la “guerra justa”, según los halcones liberales, la de Irak, no. Así se encuentran los dos candidatos demócratas y cabe imaginar que Biden se convertirá en el Dick Cheney de Obama. Es notorio cómo el vice de W. Bush resolvió sin mayor trámite que los atentados del 11/9 eran obra de Saddam y manipuló la información para “probarlo”. Cheney es la eminencia gris de la llamada “guerra antiterrorista” y siempre hubo dudas acerca de quién era el verdadero número uno en la materia. Dicho de otra manera: gane quien gane, el partido de la guerra seguirá en la Casa Blanca.

La situación en Afganistán es cada vez más engorrosa para las fuerzas de la OTAN encabezadas por EE.UU.: no están vencidas, pero tampoco pueden ganar y de ahí el clamor de los “halcones-gallina” pidiendo más tropas estadounidenses cumplir de una vez los proyectos energéticos trazados hace más de veinte años. Y siguen los “daños colaterales” de civiles afganos causados por los bombardeos aliados: 90 muertos en Herat, de los que 60 eran niños, tres niños en la provincia de Paktika y dos de un año y dos años de edad en los arrabales de Kabul. No sorprende que, en lo que va del año, los talibán aumentaran en un 40 por ciento sus ataques en relación con el 2007. Si sale electo, al tándem Obama-Biden le espera otro pantano.

© 2000-2008 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-110921-2008-09-04.html

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The Independent:
Murdoch unmasked: Meeting a media mogul

He dyes his hair, drinks coconut water, and outraged his mother when he got divorced. A new biography paints the most revealing portrait yet of the most powerful man in the media

By Stephen Foley in New York
Thursday, 4 September 2008

Rupert Murdoch's biographer got an up-close-and-personal look at the media mogul over nine months of interviews, but there was one thing that Michael Wolff couldn't quite pin down. Just what colour was that hair? At 77, it is surely grey – there are photos that suggest as much. And yet, one afternoon it might be "flaming orange", then "sometimes aubergine".

It took a trip to Mr Murdoch's daughter, Prudence MacLeod, in the newspaperman's native Australia to get the scoop. "I've said to him, 'Dad, I understand about dyeing the hair and the age thing' – he never wants to die – 'but just go somewhere proper.' But he insists on doing it over the sink because he doesn't want anybody to know. Well, hello! Look in the mirror."

Such is the interest in Wolff's semi-authorised biography that its publisher, Random House, has brought forward the release to December to grab a chunk of the Christmas gift sales. And this week, Vanity Fair, the US magazine to which Wolff contributes, has offered a sneak peek of what was learnt in 56 hours of interviews with Mr Murdoch and countless more with friends, relatives and enemies.

Wolff has only just delivered his manuscript, which sets out what motivates Mr Murdoch and majors on the machinations which won him control of The Wall Street Journal, the most powerful conservative voice in US newspapers. But Random House editors are working furiously to get the book out. They are confident that The Man Who Owns The News: Inside The Secret World Of Rupert Murdoch provides the first truly intimate portrait of a man whose pungent right-wing views and powerful media empire – spanning The Sun, The Times and BSkyB in Britain, the Fox News channel in the US, Star TV in Asia and now the MySpace social networking site – has made him a bogeyman for liberals the world over.

If we are to believe hints in the Vanity Fair article, published tomorrow, Wolff has no shortage of anecdotes to make Mr Murdoch's liberal critics blanche. "He remains a militant free-marketeer and is still pro-war (grudgingly, he's retreated a bit)," the author says. "And there was the moment, one afternoon, when over a glass of his favorite coconut water (meant to increase electrolytes) he was propounding the genetic theory that the basic problem of the Muslim people was that they married their cousins."

With an energy that belies his years, Mr Murdoch is as involved as ever in the newspapers he runs and still pursues gossip about his rivals and enemies with that famous glee, most recently spreading rumours that a senior Hillary Clinton staffer had a stake in a porn company. And his advances to Barack Obama – until recently repeatedly rebuffed – are cast by Wolff in a cynical light. Advising his biographer to choose the upstart candidate over Mrs Clinton, he says: "Obama – he'll sell more papers."

Mr Murdoch has invested heavily in the US, transferring his citizenship and the ownership of his News Corp empire from Australia, and controls one of the country's biggest television networks – Fox – and one of its biggest film studios – 20th-Century Fox. Meanwhile, the unapologetically right-wing Fox News has entirely upended American cable news in little more than a decade.

And yet nothing prepared the US media establishment for Murdoch's coup de grâce last year, when he wrested control of the WSJ from the feuding Bancroft family that had been its guardian for more than 100 years with a $5bn offer that was 60 per cent higher than the company was worth. The paper's journalists came close to revolt, fearing a slide downmarket and editorial meddling to further their proprietor's numerous business interests. They have since been largely quieted by promises of more resources, but Mr Murdoch complained at the time that he got the sort of press coverage normally reserved for "a genocidal tyrant".

The close co-operation he has given Wolff and the access he has afforded the author to his wife, Wendi Deng, and his children is testimony to his desire to paint a more rounded picture. It is also, says Wolff, because Mr Murdoch is "as pleased as Punch with himself". The Murdoch family fortune is these days put at $8.3bn, putting him just outside the top 100 richest people in the world, according to Forbes magazine, the official arbiter of these things.

While all about him are losing their appetite for the newspaper business, the irrepressible mogul is doubling-up in the industry. Just months after taking on the WSJ, he made an ultimately unsuccessful tilt at Newsday, a Long Island paper he hoped to merge with his ballsy tabloid, the New York Post.

Newspapers are a trade he learnt at his father's knee, as Sir Keith Murdoch built a mini-empire around the afternoon daily, The News, in Adelaide. In his will in 1952, Sir Keith told his trustees that Rupert should begin his career proper at The News "if they consider him worthy of support". They did, satisfying a natural instinct for the gossip of news, the poetry of headlines and the art of design that stays with him today.

Mr Murdoch will have to wait until final publication of Wolff's book to find out whether flinging open the doors of the family's homes will prove the right decision. For the time being, there are tantalising glimpses of the tensions that run through the dynasty, even as it remains on largely friendly terms. Most intriguing of all, Wolff says that the mogul's mother – Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, 99, and still running about her award-winning garden in Australia in a golf buggy – continues to smart about the break-up of her son's marriage to Anna, his second wife, in 1999 after 32 years, a union which brought them three children. Dame Elisabeth told him: "I remember saying to Rupert, 'Rupert, you're going to be very, very lonely and the first desiring female who comes along will snap you up.' He said, 'Don't be ridiculous, mum, I'm far too old for that.' That's exactly what happened. Never mind." Friends have long said that Mr Murdoch's marriage to the Star TV executive, Wendi Deng, less than three weeks after his divorce was finalised, has given him a new zest for life, sending him to the gym and pitching him into a new, more liberal cocktail party circuit. These days he is as likely to be hobnobbing with new media moguls such as the founders of Facebook, MySpace and Google as he is with dour conservative politicians. The Man Who Owns The News is likely to tell her story, too, and Wolff has boasted of how he got on well with Ms Deng, who helped arrange an interview for him with the British former prime minister, Tony Blair.

Ms Deng, born in Shandong province in China, is 38 years younger than her husband. She came to the US to study, working in the kitchen of a Chinese restaurant before she could fully speak English, then attended the Yale School of Management and worked her way through the ranks of Murdoch's Star TV in Hong Kong, where the couple met. These days she is a kind of roving ambassador to Asia for the News Corp machine, advising most recently on a Chinese launch for MySpace. She has given to her husband the trappings of her glamour, persuading him to don designer suits, to trade up their Manhattan apartment and to take a little more care of himself – for the sake of their young daughters. Mr Murdoch, for his part, is said to be "captivated by her ambition".

Now, though, Wolff's Vanity Fair article is sowing seeds that may grow into family discord, in a passage that has caught the attention of News Corp insiders worried about the succession. Mr Murdoch's eldest son, Lachlan, stormed out of the company in 2005 amid a dispute over how the mogul's two young daughters – Grace, six, and Chloe, five – would share in the family trust that controls News Corp. After handing $1.5m in cash to his four adult children, it was agreed that all six offspring would take an equal financial share, but only the four oldest would have voting rights. If Wolff is correct, it is an agreement that might not stand.

"His attitude about this is now curious, or alarming or crafty," he writes. "Although his older children happily spell out the terms of the trust, as does Mr Murdoch's long-time lawyer, Arthur Siskind, Murdoch himself baldly denies that what is, is. All his children will participate equally, he says flatly."

The author adds: "This is a broken synapse or his way of dealing with his lack of control, or it's what he's telling his wife or it's Murdochian principle that everything can be renegotiated."

And who would bet against him getting what he wants? After all, Murdoch got his sit-down meeting with Barack Obama and the Democratic presidential nominee has just agreed to his first grilling by Fox News. Mr Murdoch got the WSJ and now fantasises about adding the financial data company Bloomberg, or even The New York Times to his empire. But has he got the biography he hoped for? We'll see.

©independent.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/
media/murdoch-unmasked-meeting-a-media-mogul-918067.html

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ZNet:
Berlusconi Privatizes Culture

A Letter From Rome

By Judy Harris
Source: DIRELAND
September, 04 2008

Rome - In what amounts to political sleight of hand, Italy's new brooms are recklessly sweeping away a huge portion of the income that pays for tending the Italian cultural heritage.

Here's what happened. Campaigning for national general elections last spring, media tycoon Silvio Berlusconi promised to abolish the property tax (ICI) for those owning only one house. It worked, he won.

Trouble was, the incoming rightist government which Berlusconi heads was left with a budget hole from the unpaid property tax. How to fill it? Eureka! Foreigners especially love the Italian cultural heritage, as has been proven by the Packard Foundation's recent donation of cash to pay for ordinary maintenance at the ancient site of Herculaneum. This donation was proof that culture is a fine begging bowl, and that it can lure cash from foreign foundations and the earnest, cultivated filthy rich.

The first step in trying to cadge money to pay for Italian culture: a campaign denigrating Pompeii, depicted as hopelessly degraded by various news organizations in the U.S. and elsewhere.

No one denies Italy faces a challenge in maintaining its immense cultural heritage: along with its 4,000 museums and 2,000 archeological sites are minor treasures, such as mildew-threatened archives of ancient abbeys and the endangered film libraries housing the masterworks of early Italian cinema. Who is to take care of all this?

Article 9 of the Italian Constitution is clear on this point. The custody of the national heritage, plus protection of the landscape itself, is specifically and exclusively the responsibility of the national government.

But it is also clear that tourism, which brought into the country last year over E. 31 billion, depends upon that heritage, the single most important attraction for foreigners.

When it was announced that the Culture Ministry would lose E. 1.5 billion in the next three years, the first to protest was the head of that Ministry's advisory committee, archaeologist Salvatore Settis. The cuts suggest the Government intends to abolish the Culture Ministry or to reduce it to a larval state, he charged. What's left will just about pay the staff, whose median age, incidentally, is over 55.

At just 0.28% of the Italian GNP in 2007, the Ministry budget was already anorexic. Even the directors of Uffizi Gallery in Florence are worried that its services and plans for a new exit and exhibition space for its Magliabechiana Library will be affected.

The new minister for culture, Sandro Bondi, 49, is taking all this in his stride, counting upon the privatization of Italian cultural enterprises to make up the difference. Bondi, a sometime poet (he publishes a weekly poem in a popular magazine), used to be Berlusconi's private secretary and gate-keeper. He is also the author of Una Storia Italiana, a lavishly illustrated biography of the Premier mailed to all Italian families during the 2001 election campaign.

In planning to recover income through privatization, Berlusconi and Bondi have seized upon ancient Pompeii as the likeliest new income source, and to this end Bondi toured the site in mid-July with a gaggle of fellow parliamentarians and journalists. This is an important day, my first real trial as minister, he said after meeting Pompeii staffers.

With well over two million visitors annually, Pompeii was and is the quintessential cash cow, and last year a private research firm hired by the Italian industrialists' association, Confindustria, suggested that the present income is only a small amount of what Pompeii could earn.

Subsequently a press campaign was launched protesting the alleged degradation of Pompeii (and making clear that privatization can heal its wounds), culminating in installation of a prefect to oversee finances and to work alongside the archaeologist, Pietro Giovanni Guzzo, director of Pompeii for the past decade.

Pompeii can surely use some tidying: it sorely needs a visitors information center, explanatory panels, more gardeners, more guards and refurbished public toilets. But what is being proposed is to use the site as a movie set and for private events; last spring its largest ancient theater was rented for a local political event.

In the past, income from Pompeii ticket sales went automatically to the Ministry in Rome and was then parceled out, with a portion returning and the rest financing less popular sites. But since the arrival of Professor Guzzo, all Pompeii funding remains at Pompeii. (Although an official figure mentions $60 million income, with $16 charged per ticket for approximately 70% paid entries, Pompeii's take-home should be in excess of $200 million annually.)

Privatization goes hand in hand with devolution, promoted actively by Berlusconi's powerful coalition partner, the truculent Umberto Bossi, photographed in late July giving the finger while the Italian national anthem was being played. The problem here is that greater localism is a serious risk to the cultural heritage in those regions where organized crime penetrates local politics. Among the sites known to be at perennial risk from building speculators is the Valley of the Temples at Agrigento.

DIRELAND's Rome correspondent, Judy Harris (left), is a veteran ex-pat journalist who used to write from Italy for TIME magazine and the Wall Street Journal, and now writes for ArtNews. She's the author of the recently-published book, Pompeii Awakened: A Story of Rediscovery.

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18679