Elsewhere Today 489
Aljazeera:
Pakistan's Zardari is sworn in
Tuesday, September 09, 2008
13:34 Mecca time, 10:34 GMT
Asif Ali Zardari has been sworn in as the new president of Pakistan, replacing Pervez Musharraf.
Zardari, widower of the former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, was inaugurated at a ceremony at President House in Islamabad on Tuesday.
Reciting the oath of office as his three children looked on, Zardari said: "I will bear true faith and allegiance to Pakistan."
His oath was greeted by cheers from supporters of "Long live Bhutto" and "Bhutto is alive".
Around 800 people were reported to have attended the ceremony, including the chiefs of the different branches of the military, the governors of the four provinces, and the chief ministers for each of those provinces.
Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, flew in for the ceremony as well.
"Let it be known to all and sundry that Asif Ali Zardari has on this ninth day of September taken the oath as president of Pakistan," an official proclamation read out at the ceremony, said.
Swift ascent
Zardari, co-chairman of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), rose swiftly to power after the assassination of his wife, Benazir Bhutto at her own election rally last year.
He was chosen as head of the PPP, co-chairing with his son Bilawal, three days after Bhutto's death. On Saturday, he swept a vote by members of the two-chamber parliament and four provincial assemblies to award him the presidency.
Zardari's party heads a fragile coalition government which, although still in office, recently lost the backing of a key coalition party.
As president, Zardari takes charge of a country that has been riven by violence, with nearly 1,200 people killed in bombings and suicide attacks in the past year.
The economy is also in trouble, with rampant inflation and a plunging stock market that has lost around 40 per cent of its value since January.
Zardari is expected to outline his vision for Pakistan later on Tuesday, including his plans to counter the violence and turn around the economy, and whether he will continue Musharraf's policies of support for the US and its "war on terror".
Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said: "The people of Pakistan are going to be watching to see whether Mr Zardari is going to support the American agenda, or the agenda that is acceptable to the people of Pakistan."
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/09/20089974226953475.html
AllAfrica:
Medical Workers Threaten Strike Sept 30
By Ruby Rabiu
Daily Trust (Abuja) NEWS
8 September 2008
Medical workers unions has threatened to go on strike on September 30 to protest non payment of monetisation arrears by the federal government.
According to a communiqué issued at the end of the Joint Health Sector Union emergency meeting held at the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) Labour House at the weekend, (JHSU) bemoaned the delay antics employed by the government regarding payment of monetization arrears.
The communiqué was signed by Nana Takai and Ngozi Osunde (National Association of Nurses and Midwives), Elder A.E Archibong and Ralph Iloka (Senior Staff Association of Universities, Teaching Hospitals, Research Institute and Associated Institutions), C.N Nwobodo and I.G Jibia (Medical and Health Workers Union of Nigeria), F.O Faniran and I.O Okebiorun (National Union of Pharmacists, Technologists and Other Professional Allied to Medicine).
The union declared the health workers would not issue another strike notice to government if its monetization arrears among other demands were not met by September 30.
The communiqué read in part: "The session however frowned at the lackadaisical and time buying approach of the Federal Government on the settlement of monetization arrears from 1st October, 2003 to 30th September 2005. The session herein demand that the arrears be paid on or before 30th September 2008. The joint session, therefore, give the Federal Government of Nigeria from now to the end of September 2008, to meet the unions demands as itemized above or face industrial action without further notice from midnight of 30th September, 2008."
Commending the Federal Government for the on-going verification of pensioners for speedy payment, the protesting workers enjoined government to ensure payment before the end of September to avert the impending strike.
They are also demanding the reinstatement of essential departments that have been the outsourced.
The unions also called on government to prevail on the Chief Medical Director of Ido Ekiti federal medical centre to reinstate the unjust sacked medical workers in the institution.
Copyright © 2008 Daily Trust. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200809080475.html
AlterNet:
Why Obama's Message Resonates with Millions
By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on September 9, 2008
On the campaign trail with Barack Obama, four days before the Democratic convention. Another teeming high school gym in another halfway-to-somewhere town, decorated with still more banners proclaiming the heroic exploits of the Local Sports Team, in this case the football studs of Oscar Smith High in Chesapeake, Virginia.
In the audience are the same characters you see everywhere on the campaign trail: the bare-armed cheerleaders congregating near the bleachers, the sullen-faced union workers dutifully decked out in matching T-shirts, the heavyset Soccer Moms cheering from the back rows with that weird overhand applause style they all seem to use, their fingers curled back so as not to ruin freshly painted nails. There are the same Secret Service agents waiting to herd the press into the same windowless concrete filing room, and the same exhausted, khaki-clad campaign staffers with the rapidly thickening backsides ready to queue up behind the journalists to fill their buffet plates with the same Regionally Appropriate Cuisine (pork ribs and hush puppies in the South; steak, corn and potatoes in the Midwest) made up with pride by the local caterers.
And to top it all off, there's even the same speech.
Four years ago, I listened first to Howard Dean and then to John Kerry as they went through the motions of promising to support the middle class, to create jobs through investment in renewable energy, to punish companies that exploited tax loopholes by moving overseas and to find the real terrorists in Afghanistan. They trod the same ground as Gore and even Clinton, coughing out the same paeans to the same lost paradise of the middle-class lifestyle, to those same vanishing days of our history when hardworking, patriotic Americans could live with comfort and economic security on one decent manufacturing job. At stake, they insisted, was nothing less than the American Dream itself. For Dean, it was "time for a change in America." Kerry sometimes ended his speeches by presenting his campaign as a choice of "change versus more of the same" - a phrase he actually borrowed from Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign.
Here in Chesapeake, Barack Obama offers up the same milky hodgepodge of middle-class tax cuts, investment in alternative fuels and consequences for job exporters and terrorists. And rhetorically, he uses the same old magic trick for his main theme, talking about how all Americans want is to leave a better world for their children.
"That's the essence of the American Dream," he tells the crowd, echoing his predecessors. He goes on to tell the already-famous story of John McCain's seven houses, then explains that someone who has seven houses can't possibly understand what the middle class is going through. "You need a president who's going to be fighting for you," Obama says, to thunderous applause. He concludes by declaring, "We are going to fundamentally bring about change in America" - a message punctuated by the huge banner hanging behind him, emblazoned with his infuriatingly omnipresent campaign slogan: "Change We Can Believe In." Obama has even taken to borrowing some of his theme music from other candidates: I was mortified when his rallies began to feature the worst of the Hillary standbys, the excruciating "I Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty. The painful predictability of it all was summed up by a front-page headline in The New York Times after the first day of the Democratic convention: "Appeals Evoking American Dream Rally Democrats."
All of this saccharine talk of "change" is so transparently a mechanical come-on that if it were anybody but Barack Obama uttering the word, you'd want to throw up at the very sound of it. And yet, as I watch Obama deliver the same hackneyed act I've seen hundreds of times before, I feel against my will that I am actually watching something different at work. After Kerry and Dean speeches, I often heard people say things like, "At least he's not as dumb as Bush." But after Obama speeches, I see audience members stumbling around in all directions with orgiastic smiles on their faces, as though they've been splashed with gallons of magic pixie paint. In Raleigh, North Carolina, where Obama knocked dead a massive town-hall crowd at a local fairgrounds with a speech that said almost nothing at all, I ask a woman named Melanie Threatt why she thinks her life would improve under an Obama presidency. "It just will," she says. When I press her for specifics, she says, "I just think doors are going to open." You hear stuff like this a lot on Planet Obama, and it makes you wonder just what it is you're encountering. Obama's followers implicitly believe in the things he says, and the fervor of their belief is more religious than intellectual, closer to faith than to reason. Watching him at work, you realize that Obama's remarkable success has almost nothing to do with the same-old product being marketed by the same-old political machine, and almost everything to do with the specific qualities of the individual who is selling it. The same stuff that sounded like hollow, invidious horseshit coming from Kerry and Gore sounds, as dispensed by Obama, like nothing less than a clarion call to collective action. And every time you feel his pitch working, you wonder: Is this some chat-room robot I'm falling in love with? Or is this an actual human being on the line, offering me an opportunity at last to fulfill my deepest desires?
Such, it seems, are the pitfalls of both love and politics in the Internet Age. Too many embarrassing false steps make it hard to take that leap one more time.
One thing that makes the cult of Obama difficult to dissect is the method of its dissemination. The technology of campaign propaganda has advanced to such a degree that the concept of campaign-trail "journalism" is now indistinguishable from corporate PR. The wall that once separated campaign staff from the press corps has broken down completely; those paid by the candidate and those covering him might as well be two different shifts on the same factory ship, working together to bring the world frozen fish patties by the ton. On the shimmering 757 that Obama uses to jet around the country, reporters have plastered the press section in the rear of the plane with cheery, offbeat photographs of themselves captured with campaign staffers in various goofy scenes (clowning with boom poles, quaffing beers, drooling while asleep on buses). The collage seems lifted straight from a high school yearbook; the press might as well have titled it "Our Cool Campaign."
Maybe it's natural that a certain camaraderie would develop between staffers and the press, given that the two groups are prisoners in the same campaign jail for months at a time. The constant Secret Service security protocol leaves everyone On the Bus roped off from all external human contact from morning till night; at the events in between, the press is often kept in windowless rooms behind closed doors or curtains, where reporters sit and listen to the candidate's speeches fed in via loudspeaker. This hilarious setup makes it possible for so-called "political journalists" to cover a candidate without (a) seeing him, (b) seeing his audiences and (c) receiving any information at all that is not fed to them directly by the campaign. On one recent swing through the South, I actually witness a reporter sitting in a concrete filing room during a town-hall session, checking his BlackBerry for an e-mail from the campaign staff to find out what town he is in.
Hemmed in by such restrictions, America's top political journalists have nothing better to do than flog their expensive college educations by playing games like Guess the Identity of Obama's Running Mate. At a VFW convention in Orlando, when Obama mentions "my friend, Senator Joe Biden," reporters - we were all walled off in a basement room hundreds of yards from the actual speech, watching the candidate on a little TV - actually break out in hysterical cries of "That's it! It's Biden! It's Biden!"
The rest of the time, reporters think about food. When's lunch? Will there be snacks in the filing room? Is there booze on the bus this time or no booze? When we roll into Richmond, Virginia, one night, I hear an older female reporter complain to another, "They didn't even have white wine on our bus!" Reporters on the campaign trail are like the migrant laborers I met on assignment years ago in an Orthodox monastery in central Russia. With every minute of every workday exactly the same, the laborers devoted themselves to guessing what would be served at lunch, the one slot in their schedule that was different every day. Would it be borscht or cabbage soup? Mayonnaise with their bread or no mayonnaise? I heard conversations an hour long on that theme.
This is what the journalists have been reduced to: the level of indentured field hands at a Russian monastery. With such a castrated press corps in tow, Obama doesn't have to work very hard to "sell" his message. The whole process has been streamlined, politically and culturally, to smooth the spread of the party's propaganda: The speech is already written, the press is already on board, and everybody's already working together to crank out those fish patties.
So here's the interesting part: It's surprising that there is an interesting part. Someone like me - someone who has actually sailed on this factory ship long enough to get sick at the first whiff of fish - is instantly dismissive of anyone who dirties himself by entering this world. If the second coming of Jesus Christ stepped on the bus to run on the Democratic ticket, I'd be wondering who paid for his robe and why his message cribbed so much from the New Testament. But even I find myself being seduced by Obama, despite everything I know about the party he represents, its record and where it gets its money. There's just something about the guy; he has that effect.
Obama manages to appeal somehow to that part of us that is tired of there always being another side of the story when it comes to our presidents. We don't want to live in a world where there's always a set of lurid secret tapes that will come out someday, or a mistress with a cigar in her twat hidden off-camera somewhere, or a backroom deal to juice a prewar intelligence report for a bunch of oil-fat-cat golf buddies.
We've become trained to look for the man behind the mask, for in real life there is no one whose emotional life is confined to a lifelong, passionate love for his high school sweetheart wife and their two children, an undying appreciation for the sacrifice of soldiers, awe before the flag and concern for the future of the middle class. Oh, and a burning passion for reducing dependence on foreign oil 30 percent by 2018 and for full federal funding for special education. Because that's the standard we set for our presidential candidates; anyone who reveals himself to have other things going on inside, to be more human than that, never makes it this far.
But I'm not sure there is a mask when it comes to Barack Obama. It sounds crazy, but he might actually be this guy, this couldn't-possibly-exist guy, inside and out. I heard Joe Lieberman talk about his middle-class dad, I heard Hillary plaster every corner of Pennsylvania with talk about her grandfather's sojourn in the lace factory, I heard John Edwards tell everyone who would listen, and even some who wouldn't, about what being the son of a millworker meant to him, and in every case I could feel the cold hand of political calculation crawling up my shirt as they spoke.
Then I hear Obama tell audiences about his grandmother and her time working on a bomber assembly line during World War II. Intellectually I know it's the same thing - but when you actually watch him in person, you get this crazy sense that these schlock ready-for-paperback patriotic tales really are a big part of his emotional makeup. You listen to him talking about his grandfather waving a little American flag on the Hawaiian beach as he watched the astronauts come in to shore, and you can almost see that these moments actually have some kind of poetic meaning for him, and that he views his own already-historic run as a continuation of that pat-but-inspirational childhood story - putting a man on the moon then, putting a black man in the White House now.
Obviously, Obama has some off-script moments of anger, and ill humor, and ego; his personality sometimes comes out looking well short of iconic. During his appearance in Chesapeake, a teacher gets up to complain about her long working hours since the passage of No Child Left Behind and starts to say something about how no one should have to work 13 hours a day, and -
"Not unless you're running for president!" Obama quips rosily, thinking the audience is with him. Instead, many in the crowd grow silent, drinking in the rock-star candidate's curious decision to compare his admittedly tiring-but-still-thrilling quest for ultimate earthly power with some dreary educator's slavish pursuit of a paycheck.
Obama also makes dumb jokes, and flirts with his audience ("Y'all are silly!" he told a group of girls who overdid the shrieking-Beatles-fan act when he took off his suit jacket), and overdoes it on the gooey poeticizing (his gushing over the beauty of America "from sea to shining sea" is particularly atrocious). But all in all, you never get a sense that there's a more interesting side of Obama lurking underneath somewhere. Oddly enough, the guy only really lights up when he starts delivering those same ham-handed lines about the American Dream that fell out of the mouths of Dean and Kerry like dead bullfrogs.
And maybe that's the difference. When those other guys took this act on the campaign trail, it was obvious they were just reading lines in a bad script. But maybe it sounds different coming from Obama because he actually means what he says, as weird as that would be. The American Dream, after all, is dying. We do need something new. That much is painfully obvious.
What's confusing about Obama is that he's so successful at projecting an air of genuineness and honesty, even as he navigates the veritable Mount Everest of fakery and onerous bullshit that is our modern electoral system. And the reason it's confusing is that we've grown so used to presidential candidates who fall short of the images they present in public, we don't even know anymore what a man worth the office would look like. Is this him? Or is this just a guy with a gift for concealing the ugliness of the system he represents? As I watch Obama on the campaign trail, I know I'm listening to the Same Old Shit, delivered by a candidate who could cross the Atlantic on a bridge constructed entirely from Wall Street cash culled for him by party hacks and insiders. But I suddenly don't care. It's not just that the alternative is four years of the madman John McCain. It's that, if Obama wins, it will be interesting to find out, at long last, if there really can be something truly different about someone who sounds so much the same.
AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.
Matt Taibbi is a writer for Rolling Stone.
© 2008 RollingStone.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/97792/
Arab News:
The great war on innocents
Linda Heard I sierra12th@yahoo.co.uk
Tuesday 9 September 2008 (09 Ramadan 1429)
BRITAIN wouldn’t put up with, say, France sending bombers across the Channel to dump their payload on Dover in hopes of killing a criminal. The US wouldn’t condone the Mexican military marching into California to obliterate drug smugglers. And no nation worth its constitution or with even an iota of dignity would allow foreigners to cross its borders and incinerate innocent village folk in the name of combating terrorism. This is why I felt like cheering when I heard that the government of Pakistan has finally asserted its independence and made a firm stand.
Last week, US Special Forces invaded Pakistani airspace to launch an attack on a farm village that left 20 dead, including women, children and the elderly. Surviving villagers swear the assault occurred while everyone slept and insist none of the dead had any links with either the Taleban or Al-Qaeda. As far as the mourners are concerned, this was a wanton act of murder that has forever changed their lives.
Washington acknowledges the deed as well as the fact there may have been women and children among the casualties but claims the people greeted them with guns. That contradicts the villagers’ account but even if they did come out firing who can blame them? If armed men entered my home at night with obvious murderous intent and I happened to have a weapon at hand, I wouldn’t hesitate to protect my family by firing it. Wouldn’t everyone? Pakistan’s foreign minister described the slaughter as a violation of his country’s sovereignty, adding, “No important terrorist or high-value target” was taken out. “Innocent citizens, including women and children have been targeted,” he said. Pakistan’s lawmakers and military have also condemned the bloody incursion.
ISLAMABAD has repeatedly rejected comprising its sovereignty by inviting either US or NATO forces to operate on its soil while, at the same time, confirming its partnership in the global fight against militant extremism.
But now that the US has openly flouted this restriction and not only refused to apologize for the deaths but promised more of the same, the Pakistani government has retaliated by refusing to allow weapons and supplies destined for Afghanistan-based American and allied forces to cross its borders. There are those who say this was a move made to appease angry tribesmen calling for military retaliation.
Whether they’re right or not, there is no doubt that any government in Pakistan has to tread carefully between its duty to protect its people and the demands put upon it by its US ally to proactively flush “terrorists” out of its frontier regions.
Like President Musharraf before him, Pakistan’s new leader Asif Ali Zardari — who will be sworn into office today — will have to manage a balancing act between adhering to pro-Western policies to bolster Pakistan’s depressed economy and international clout while taking the temperature of his people’s mood and defending their sovereign rights.
The question is this. Is maintaining the popularity of his government and continuing good relations with the US that has showered his country with over $10 billion in aid over the past seven years mutually exclusive goals? They needn’t be if only Washington would be more respectful in its understanding of Pakistan’s border sensitivities and be willing to give due value to human life during its military operations.
The government of Afghanistan is faced with a similar dilemma, although as a nation that is still under occupation, it does not enjoy the luxury of choice.
Last month, US airstrikes stole the lives of 90 innocents — mainly women and children — in the province of Herat, as confirmed by UN investigators. This was initially denied by the Pentagon but now mobile phone videos have emerged showing gruesome footage of children’s corpses laid out in rows. As following the recent assault on Pakistan, the American military says it was fired upon. Many of those youngsters were toddlers and babies. Are we seriously to believe that they were toting guns?
President Hamid Karzai was distraught about this and similar incidents in the past and he has complained bitterly to his Washington backers, which have recently stepped up their anti-terrorist campaign in Afghanistan that often fails to discriminate between insurgents and ordinary Afghans. According to various aid agencies more than 1,000 civilians were killed during the period January — June this year. Why aren’t we outraged? If the Pakistani leadership tries to keep the White House happy for financial/economic considerations, the government of Hamid Karzai needs the US for its very survival. Moreover, without Western support Afghanistan’s reconstruction would be imperiled, foreign investment would disappear and the country would soon would be lawless and fractured by warlords. But what if Pakistan and Afghanistan made common cause and came together. Currently at loggerheads, which is the way that Western neoimperialists like it, the two countries could together tell the US and NATO to quit the neighborhood while assuring the international community that they will take their anti-terrorism responsibilities seriously. It’s time to ask what foreign armies are doing in the region and demand answers. The long-stated reason that they are there in search of a bearded troglodyte with a life-threatening kidney disease and his one-eyed motorbike-riding Taleban associate will no longer wash. The longer they stay, the more they kill. In the end nothing is achieved apart from an understandable increase in anti-Western sentiment.
How do you ask a mother or father, whose child’s legs have been amputated by US bombs, or those who are placing blackened corpses of their relatives in the ground to bless America and its friends?
Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.
http://www.arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=114027&d=9&m=9&y=2008
Asia Times:
Azerbaijan at crosswinds of a new cold war
By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
Sep 9, 2008
Azerbaijan's presidential elections are a few weeks away and while most experts agree it is a sure bet that the current president, Ilham Aliyev, will easily win re-election, there is less certainty about the future orientation of the country, increasingly caught in the crosswind of a new US-Russia power struggle.
In his tour of the region last week, US Vice President Dick Cheney shot many salvos against Russians, accusing them of posing a "threat of tyranny, economic blackmail and military invasion" to its neighbors. In his meeting with Aliyev, Cheney was comparatively more reserved and put the emphasis instead on "energy security".
Coinciding with Cheney's trip has been a new report by the European Union's energy commissioner, Andris Piebglas, calling on the EU to redouble its efforts to build the US$12 billion Nabucco gas pipeline [1] and reduce its dependence on imports from Russia in the wake of the Georgian crisis that, per a report in the British newspaper The Guardian, has led many experts to dismiss the planned 3,300 kilometer Nabucco pipeline from Azerbaijan to Europe via Georgia and Turkey.
Not only that, both Russia and Iran have opposed the construction of a trans-Caspian pipeline that would allow the shipment of gas from the Caspian section of Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan and then to Europe. Last week, at a meeting of the Caspian littoral states on the legal status of Caspian Sea, held in Baku, Iran's point man on the Caspian Sea, Mehdi Safari, stated, "We object to the trans-Caspian pipeline because of the possible negative impact on sea ecology ... there are Iranian and Russian energy routes and it is unnecessary to jeopardize Caspian ecology."
Although there is real concern about the Caspian ecology, both Tehran and Moscow are equally if not more concerned about the geopolitical ramifications of so-called "pipeline politics" in the Caspian basin and the adjacent regions, particularly now that the US and Europe seem determined to lessen the West's energy dependency on both Iran and Russia by cultivating alternative sources.
The crisis in Georgia is, however, a powerful wake-up call to Baku concerning "roads not taken". On the one hand, Baku is interested in cultivating closer military ties with the West, in light of the Azeri parliament's recent ratification of an action plan for greater military cooperation with the US. A top US State Department official has recently called for a strategic, trilateral cooperation between US, Azerbaijan and Turkey. And yet, on the other hand, this is precisely the kind of initiative that Baku would be wise to stay away from, unless it is prepared to embrace serious backlashes from its powerful neighbors, Iran and Russia.
One such backlash could conceivably come in the form of Russia's support for the independence of the Azeri breakaway region of Gharabagh, given that the leaders of Upper Gharabagh have welcomed Moscow's decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia. For now, Moscow is disinclined to back this scenario and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated last week that the situation in Gharabagh is "different". That may be small music to Baku's ears, yet few leaders or pundits in Azerbaijan can afford to miss the sobering lesson from the crisis in Georgia, that is, the exorbitant price paid for ignoring Russia's national security concerns.
This means that, contrary to some hasty conclusions about "Russia's colossal blunder", to paraphrase Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria, Russia's military gambit in Georgia has not thrown Russia's neighbors in the bosom of the West, but rather, as in the case of Azerbaijan, prompted them to adopt a more cautious foreign policy approach that is geared to maintaining a balance in foreign relations, partly for the sake of protecting fragile borders and territorial integrity. Instead of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, countries such as Georgia and Azerbaijan have the theoretical option of cooperating and or even joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which is dominated by Russia and China. At the moment, this may seem not to be in the cards, yet it makes sense from the prism of regional stability.
In the Caspian Sea, Iran and Russia rely on the existing legal convention for the Caspian that refers to it as a "common sea". That is why both countries are opposed to the division of the Caspian's surface water. The various bilateral and trilateral agreements for the division of the Caspian's underwater resources do not trump the "shared sea" condominium status of the sea that acts as a hinge shutting the door to a foreign presence in the Caspian.
The above means that for the foreseeable future, despite marathon meetings of the five Caspian littoral states, there will most likely not be any new convention, thus guaranteeing the exclusion of NATO or US forces from the important energy hub of the Caspian.
As for Baku's geopolitical orientation, its cordial, business-like relations with Tehran, as well as its pragmatic approach toward the Russia-led geopolitical realities in the region, are prudent courses of action that Baku would be ill-advised to forsake in favor of closer ties with the West. After all, the West has been rather helpless in terms of pulling Tbilisi out of the grave mess that its adventurist leadership carved for itself.
Concerning the latter, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has accused the US of providing military assistance to Georgia under the guise of humanitarian assistance. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on the other hand, has tried damage-control in US-Russia relations by not putting the kiss of death on the US-Russia nuclear cooperation agreement and, more importantly, not echoing Cheney's blistering verbal volleys.
While we await the results of elections in both the US and Azerbaijan, the latter is likely to thread a cautious middle path that would steer it clear of the headaches gripping the South Caucasus. Needless to say, the pain of such headaches would be much alleviated if Democratic Senator Barack Obama wins in November and somehow succeeds in introducing real change in the hitherto hegemonic orientation of US foreign policy. In that case, the first priority of a president Obama should be to throw water on the new cold war logs fired up by Cheney.
Note
1. For more on the Nabucco pipeline, click here,
and for more on trans-Caspian pipeliness, click here.
Kaveh L Afrasiabi, PhD, is the author of After Khomeini: New Directions in Iran's Foreign Policy (Westview Press) and co-author of "Negotiating Iran's Nuclear Populism", Brown Journal of World Affairs, Volume XII, Issue 2, Summer 2005, with Mustafa Kibaroglu. He also wrote "Keeping Iran's nuclear potential latent", Harvard International Review, and is author of Iran's Nuclear Program: Debating Facts Versus Fiction.
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/JI09Ag02.html
Clarín:
El escritor como espectáculo
Se acerca el Festival Internacional de Literatura de Buenos Aires, que se suma a los muchos ámbitos en que la figura del escritor está bajo los focos. Sacados de su vida de reclusión, se han habituado a una circulación multimediática en festivales, charlas multitudinarias con pantallas gigantes, reportajes abiertos. Algunos se prestan a performances y hasta a escribir en público. El autor ha vuelto al centro.
Por: Virginia Cosin
Sábado 06 Sep
La capacidad de la sala está colmada. El patovica de la puerta no deja pasar a nadie más. Una mujer empuja. Otros, a su vez, la empujan a ella, que no entiende razones. Las personas en la vereda de la avenida Córdoba no estaban frente a la puerta de la última disco de moda, sino a la de la Alianza Francesa de Buenos Aires, minutos antes de que el escritor francés Michel Houellebecq diera su conferencia en diciembre del año pasado.
Lecturas de narrativa, performances poéticas, jams de escritura y una cantidad de festivales literarios (desde el Hay Festival hasta el FILBA, que se realizará en Malba en noviembre de este año) abundan en las principales ciudades del mundo. El escritor, asociado a la figura de quien trabaja en un ámbito de intimidad, replegado sobre sí mismo para producir sus obras lejos del ruido exterior, se asoma a la luz de los reflectores, se sube a una tarima y se deja ver y escuchar. La voz, esa que los lectores modernos se han acostumbrado a interiorizar y reproducir imaginariamente, vuelve a cobrar materialidad sonora y se proyecta hacia afuera. Ya lo dijo la española Rosa Montero: "Los escritores son personas que escriben para esconderse pero cada vez más son obligados a aparecer, hablar, estar en la televisión y en los festivales. Nos convertimos en actores, somos los leones del circo".
Oralidad y escritura
El camino histórico que emprendió la palabra desde su manifestación oral hasta su inscripción en el espacio inmóvil mediante la técnica de la escritura, es a la vez el trayecto de la conciencia del hombre desde un afuera de sí hasta su interiorización. Los hombres comenzaron a contar historias mucho antes de que éstas llegaran a plasmarse por escrito. Los primeros relatos de los que tenemos noticia –desde el Antiguo Testamento hasta los poemas de Homero– fueron narraciones orales que describían los orígenes y las gestas heroicas de sus pueblos. Estos relatos, fuertemente vinculados al mito, no escindían la existencia divina de la realidad terrena. Allí los dioses tenían voz y el narrador jamás empleaba la primera persona del singular. Conforme se crea una ley y ésta se pone por escrito, la voz de Dios se apaga. Se convierte en huella. Es susceptible de ser interpretada.
Las tecnologías –y la escritura, como afirma el académico estadounidense Walter Ong en Oralidad y escritura , es una de sus manifestaciones más primarias– "no son sólo recursos externos, sino también transformaciones interiores de la conciencia y mucho más cuando afectan la palabra".
Al historiador francés Roger Chartier, que se encargó de elaborar una minuciosa Historia universal de la lectura , le interesa analizar cómo los distintos modos de procesamiento de la escritura –desde sus formas de producción hasta los de su recepción– fueron modificando, a través de los tiempos, las conciencias sociales. La tesis que sostiene es que en la época actual, en la que el texto se produce y transmite electrónicamente, nos encontramos frente a una tercera revolución luego de la que se suscitara entre los siglos II y IV cuando el códex reemplazó al rollo de la antigüedad primero y, en segundo lugar, la que sobrevino en el siglo XV con el nacimiento de la imprenta.
Fue a partir de la época moderna, con la aparición de los grandes centros urbanos y la producción en serie de –entre otras cosas, libros– que se produjo el gran salto desde los espacios públicos hacia la esfera de la intimidad. En La muerte de la tragedia , George Steiner rastrea las causas por las cuales la tragedia como género teatral desapareció por completo después de Shakespeare. "La historia de la decadencia del teatro serio es, en parte, la del desarrollo de la novela. El siglo XIX es la época clásica de la impresión, a gran escala y bajo precio, de los folletines y la sala pública de lectura".
El hombre burgués ya no estaba cómodo entre el murmullo de la gente y la cercanía de los otros en las butacas contiguas de un teatro. Si hasta el Renacimiento las representaciones teatrales funcionaron como un gran espejo que reflejaba, siempre de manera defectuosa, el vasto mundo, el nuevo hombre de ciudad contaba con un periódico informativo con el que podía retirarse cómodamente a leer en su propia casa. El cuarto propio que la narradora británica Virginia Woolf reclamaba para las mujeres que escribían, era aquél que los hombres habían ganado hacía ya tiempo: un lugar silencioso y aislado del ruido frenético, en el que reconcentrarse para escuchar el dictado de su conciencia interior.
La modernidad asiste, por tanto, a un cambio de registro: abandono de la oralidad en virtud de las publicaciones impresas, repliegue del espacio comunitario al ámbito privado, constitución de un nuevo género literario, configuración de la subjetividad. El Yo hace su aparición. Y a medida que la novela evoluciona, más hondo intenta calar en él.
Escenarios literarios
Pregunta: ese "Yo" que aflora juntamente con el nacimiento del psicoanálisis y las vanguardias de principio del siglo XX, ¿es el mismo que constituye el objeto de los relatos confesionales, los diarios íntimos en Internet, los videos en la Web, los autorretratos en los fotologs y un amplio etcétera de manifestaciones autorreferenciales? La respuesta, probablemente, sea no. La irrupción de Internet (y el auge de la web 2.0) se traduce en un nuevo cambio de paradigma, aun más radical que el que constituyó en su momento la invención de la imprenta. Como propone Paula Sibilia en el libro La intimidad como espectáculo , en realidad ya no estaríamos hablando del Yo, sino de Todos Nosotros. La multiplicación de sitios en los que la producción de contenidos es un aporte de los mismos usuarios de Internet ya sea en los blogs, en los sitios para compartir videos como YouTube, o en las redes de relaciones sociales como Myspace y Facebook es subrayada por los grandes medios masivos tradicionales como un fenómeno que está transformando las artes, la política y la manera de percibir el mundo. "En virtud de ese estallido de creatividad –y de presencia mediática– entre quienes solían ser meros lectores y espectadores, habría llegado la hora de los amateurs", apunta Sibilia.
Cualquiera puede tener un blog. Desde el más reconocido y prestigioso escritor editado y premiado hasta un poeta ajeno a cualquier otro tipo de circulación en el mercado convencional de bienes culturales. Los narradores, principalmente jóvenes, se han apropiado de las nuevas reglas impuestas por la democratización que posibilita la publicación de su obra en Internet. Ya no dependen del anzuelo del mercado para emerger hacia un lugar de visibilidad.
El investigador argentino Reinaldo Laddaga, en la introducción a su ensayo sobre la nueva narrativa latinoamericana Espectáculos de realidad, llama la atención acerca de una tendencia que se profundiza –particularmente en las prácticas de los más jóvenes– en los últimos años: "En Buenos Aires, en Río de Janeiro, en México, un número creciente de individuos interesados en las letras parecen ocupar sus mejores energías menos en la composición de libros destinados a ser puestos en circulación en medios (editoriales, bibliotecas) cuya constitución no controlan y cuyo destino es la lectura solitaria y silenciosa, que en otras cosas. ¿Qué cosas? En primer lugar, en realizar performances. No sólo en realizar performances si no en realizarlas en condiciones particulares: en situaciones de celebración, en fiestas o en exposiciones en donde se encuentran articuladas a la música o a la moda".
La proliferación de lecturas de narrativa y poesía gestionadas por los mismos autores da cuenta de ello. A su vez este tipo de iniciativas comienzan a ser abordadas por instituciones que cuentan con un aval de prestigio y reconocimiento. El escritor Carlos Gamerro le propuso al Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aire (Malba) realizar "La voz propia", un ciclo de lecturas que partiera del ejemplo de los readings que se realizan en otros países y en el que ya participaron autores como Pablo de Santis y Pedro Mairal, entre otros. Allí, opina Gamerro, se produce un encuentro entre autor y público de un modo diferente y más rico que el de las conferencias, las presentaciones de libros o las firmas de ejemplares. "Por otra parte –continúa– hay un retorno de la oralidad a la literatura, que encabezaron los poetas, y a formas de circulación colectivas y ya no solitarias de la literatura. Acá hace rato que distintos grupos, generalmente de jóvenes autores, venían haciendo readings de poesía y cuento: me pareció que era hora de apostar a una difusión mayor".
Del autor al actor
A fines de los 60, Roland Barthes y Michel Foucault dieron un batacazo a la figura del autor con dos artículos que resultaron decisivos para pensar el tema de la producción y la recepción de la obra. Ya no se trataba de atribuir importancia a las marcas de identidad del autor, cuya figura quedaba opacada por la escritura. Ahora la pelota quedaba en el campo de juego del lector, quien se apropiaba del texto y lo construía mediante el acto singular de la lectura y la interpretación. Hay quienes plantean, frente a su alto nivel de exposición pública, que nos encontramos ante un renacer de la figura del autor.
En el año 2005, el grupo de artistas neoyorquinos "Flux Factory" organizó un experimento que consistía en encerrar a tres escritores en cubículos de vidrio para que cada uno de ellos escribiera una novela a la vista del público. Algo así como un reality show al que denominaron Novel: a living installation . Según sus organizadores, lo que escribieran no era tan importante como su manera de vivir mientras escribían. A la larga, la reflexión más evidente, no sobreviene a partir de una cosa –la obra que allí se produjo– ni de la otra –el modus vivendi del escritor– sino de la voluntad expositiva que pareciera ser una marca de época. Esta tendencia se distingue claramente a partir de los festivales de literatura que se realizan en centros urbanos y turísticos y convocan una gran cantidad de público: la Fiesta Literaria de Parati, los Hay Festival de Inglaterra, Cartagena y Segovia y ahora el Festival Internacional de Literatura de Buenos Aires (FILBA). No se trata ya de las clásicas ferias del libro, sino de un nuevo concepto, más afín al de los grandes festivales de rock, en los que las figuras adquieren más rutilancia que los libros, y las actividades combinan intereses culturales, mediáticos y turísticos.
Si el escritor se ha transformado en aquella figura que se muestra, da charlas, habla de su vida privada, lee en público, juega partidos de fútbol, asiste a programas de televisión, cabe preguntar: ¿cuándo escribe?
Pareciera –opina Martín Kohan– que hay más ansiedad por mostrarse que deseo de escribir. Sí, dice el autor de Ciencias morales , hay una tendencia general de la cual los artistas no quedan exentos: todos quieren ser "estrellas". Pero, "si querés ser una estrella dedicate al rock, o al fútbol. No a la literatura". Para Kohan, leer en público tiene más sentido que hablar de sí mismo – "nada más aburrido que yo", dice– porque lo que se pone en juego es la escritura, la circulación de ideas. La entonación, la cadencia de la voz y la expresión de un texto propio leído en voz alta tienen sentido cuando constituyen un valor agregado a la literatura. De otro modo, se transforma en un espectáculo vacío.
Si de escritores-estrella se habla basta con recordar las visitas de Paul Auster, Julian Barnes, David Lodge o Michel Houellebecq. Auditorios repletos y pantallas gigantes frente a las escaleras. O también de cameos cinematográficos (Salman Rushdie en E l diario de Bridget Jones , 2001) o televisivos (Thomas Pynchon en Los Simpsons , con el rostro cubierto, claro).
Estas movilizaciones podrían compararse –para Sibilia– con las suscitadas por consagrados escritores del siglo XIX que eran figuras ilustres, seres destacados en la sociedad en la que vivían y actuaban. Aunque –aclara– en la actualidad no se trata de un culto a la obra, gracias a la cual el artista recibía el reconocimiento popular, sino al carácter de esa "curiosa invención contemporánea que es la celebridad". Hoy es la vida privada o la personalidad de las figuras mediatizadas lo que despierta el interés del público (ya no, necesariamente, del lector).
En palabras de Barthes, veinte años después de La muerte del autor : "Los estudiosos se ocupan del autor que, por ende, 'retornó'. Pero, deformación cruel y errónea, el autor que volvió es el autor externo: su biografía exterior, las influencias que sufrió, las fuentes que pudo conocer, etc. Retorno que no estaba tomado en la perspectiva, en la pertinencia de la creación: no era el YO el que volvía, sino solamente el EL: el 'Señor' que escribió obras maestras: sector particular de la historia fáctica."
Ver para leer
"Nos encontramos en el centro de una vasta transformación", escribe Reinaldo Laddaga, que propone a la producción de tres autores latinoamericanos contemporáneos –César Aira, João Gilberto Noll y Mario Bellatin– como ejemplos de un nuevo paradigma literario. "Estos libros se escriben en una época en que, por primera vez en mucho tiempo, no está claro que el vehículo principal de la ficción verbal sea lo impreso: en la época de Internet, de la televisión por cable, de la transmisión televisiva durante 24 horas, de la diversidad de lenguas en las pantallas (y en las calles también) de la extensión de las pantallas en todos los espacios, de la emergencia de un continuo audiovisual, una atmósfera de textos, visiones y sonidos que envuelve el menor acto de discurso. En estos universos contemporáneos la letra escrita no está enteramente aislada de la imagen (de la imagen en movimiento) y del sonido sino siempre ya inserta en cadenas que se extienden a lo largo de varios canales. Esta es la literatura de una época en la cual un fragmento de discurso está siempre ya atravesado por otros."
Un ejemplo curioso de convivencia entre escritura, autor y lector en un mismo tiempo y espacio, es el jam de escritura. La terminología es jazzística y se refiere a la instancia de improvisación que, a partir de un standar , los músicos interpretan sin ensayo previo. Ideado y puesto en práctica desde fines del año pasado por el narrador argentino Adrián Haidukowski, el evento se desarrolla en el bar Podestá, ubicado en el "glamourizado" barrio de Palermo. En una de las paredes, una pantalla. En el otro extremo, una computadora portátil. "El jam no está separado de la música ni del ambiente", explica Haidukowski, quien, por otro lado, no reniega del componente de frivolidad que algunos le reprochan. El escritor invitado elige una selección musical que será mezclada por el dj que lo acompaña. La idea es improvisar un texto que es proyectado mientras la concurrencia lee y toma un trago. El primero en realizar la experiencia fue José María Brindisi. "¿Por qué los escritores no podemos ocupar el rol de entretenedor?", se pregunta la escritora Florencia Abbate, que participó en una de las fechas. "Para mí era importante que el texto fuese fluido, no detenerme demasiado a pensar, porque de otro modo, para el público que estaba leyendo podía ser muy aburrido".
Con el criterio de que la literatura puede ser un entretenimiento más, el canal Telefé apostó desde abril de 2007 a Ver para leer . En el programa, el escritor Juan Sasturain compone a un personaje que se enfrenta a diversas peripecias frente a las cuales debe salir airoso, siempre con la ayuda de los libros y de sus amigos escritores.
Por otro lado, están los escritores que han dado un salto desde la producción convencional de literatura hacia el show con todas sus letras (y sus plumas), incluidas. Gaby Bex –seudónimo de la poeta Gabriela Bejerman– y el autor uruguayo Dani Umpi son los dos ejemplos más destacados en esta región: letras y música se conjugan en espectáculos con espíritu pop y una iconografía perteneciente al glamour del star system . ¡Disponibles en YouTube!
Espontánea, instantánea, mutante. Condiciones a las que la literatura actual, según Reinaldo Laddaga, aspira y cuya práctica es cada vez más evidente. Ya no: autor o lector, sino ambos, adheridos al aquí y ahora del proceso de producción. Pantallas, escenarios, actuaciones, performances. Aunque resulta tentador hablar de un "retorno" a ciertas prácticas orales, es claro que ya no se trata de eso. De un giro, sin duda.
Copyright 1996-2008 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.revistaenie.clarin.com/notas/2008/09/06/_-01753261.htm
Guardian:Bush announces
withdrawal of 8,000 troops from Iraq
Forces in Iraq will be reduced over the next few months, but more troops will be sent to Afghanistan to fight Taliban
Mark Tran and agencies
guardian.co.uk,
Tuesday September 09 2008 10:25 BST
George Bush will today announce the withdrawal of 8,000 combat troops from Iraq and an increase in US forces in Afghanistan.
In remarks prepared for delivery to the US National Defence University, and released by the White House late last night, the US president bracketed Pakistan with the other two countries as major battlegrounds in the so-called war on terror.
The troop cut for Iraq will probably be Bush's last major decision in a highly unpopular war that has seen his ratings plummet.
There are around 146,000 US forces in Iraq. A marine battalion, of about 1,000 troops, would go home on schedule in November and not be replaced. An army brigade of between 3,500 and 4,000 troops would leave in February. About 3,400 support forces will also go home over the next few months.
As for Afghanistan, Bush will send roughly 4,500 troops to face a resurgent Taliban. More than half of Bush's address will be devoted to Afghanistan as he outlines a "quiet surge" of additional American forces there, bringing the US presence to nearly 31,000.
"For all the good work we have done in that country, it is clear we must do even more," Bush said.
The US president announced that a marine battalion scheduled to go to Iraq in November would go to Afghanistan instead, and that would be followed by an army combat brigade. His speech also highlights decisions to vastly increase the size of the Afghan national army, which will grow from its current size of 60,000 troops to 120,000, instead of 80,000.
Bush also had a firm message for Pakistan, where the new president, Asif Ali Zardari, was sworn in today, saying it has a "responsibility" to fight extremists "because every nation has an obligation to govern its own territory and make certain that it does not become a safe haven for terror."
His barbed message came amid reports of strikes inside Pakistan recently by US or international troops based in Afghanistan, which accuses its neighbour of failing to act firmly enough against insurgents using Pakistan as a safe haven from which to launch attacks.
Without commenting directly on a US strike in Afghanistan that Kabul claimed killed 90 civilians, Bush declared that "the history of warfare" shows such losses are inevitable but that the United States "mourns every innocent life lost".
On Iraq, Bush hinted that more troops could return to the US in the first half of 2009 if conditions improve.
"Here is the bottom line: while the enemy in Iraq is still dangerous, we have seized the offensive, and Iraqi forces are becomingly increasingly capable of leading and winning the fight," Bush said.
US commanders have been divided on the rate of troop cuts in Iraq and today's plan is a compromise. General David Petraeus, the top US commander in Iraq, had argued in favour of maintaining current levels until next June.
Others, including Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, thought that a faster withdrawal from Iraq represented a small risk compared with the gain that could be made by sending reinforcements to Afghanistan.
Anthony Cordesman, an analyst at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, said that the plan reflected the concern of US commanders that the rush to reduce US forces could lead to instability at a crucial moment in Iraq.
"This plan does, however, mean continuing stress on both the active and reserve forces," Cordesman added.
The Democratic presidential hopeful, Barack Obama, has advocated pulling all combat forces out of Iraq within 16 months of taking office.
John McCain, his Republican rival, has said that he would rely on the advice of US military commanders to determine the timing and pace of troop reductions.
Both candidates agree on the need for more troops for Afghanistan, amid growing concern that Nato is losing ground to Taliban insurgents.
* guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/sep/09/iraq.usa
Internazionale:
Il Messico immutabile
Se le parole fossero fatti, il Messico potrebbe sembrare il paradiso terrestre
Ugo Pipitone
Internazionale 760, 4 settembre 2008
Centinaia di migliaia di persone hanno sfilato a Città del Messico contro l'insicurezza: il paese è diventato il campione mondiale dei sequestri, davanti all'Iraq e alla Colombia. Cambierà qualcosa dopo questa nuova dimostrazione di esasperazione collettiva? Probabilmente no.
Nel 2004 ci fu una manifestazione anche più grande e da allora non è cambiato nulla. Apriamo una parentesi: ogni anno, il 16 settembre in Messico si festeggia l'inizio della lotta d'indipendenza del 1810.
Tra coriandoli, matracas e trombette la gente si accalca attorno al paseo de la Reforma per festeggiare i giovani soldati, in maggioranza di origine indigena, che sfilano. Alla fine della parata passa la polizia cittadina e regolarmente, in pochi istanti, l'entusiasmo festoso si trasforma in una bufera di fischi. Cercherò di spiegare questo fatto con due esempi recenti.
Alla fine di luglio la polizia di Città del Messico è intervenuta in una discoteca causando la morte per calpestamento e asfissia di dodici persone, per lo più adolescenti: gli ha impedito di uscire da quella che era diventata una trappola mortale. Per qualche giorno tv e giornali hanno discusso della tragedia, provocata da una polizia poco professionale e senza nessun senso dello stato.
Ma continuiamo con la cronaca: due settimane fa è stato ritrovato il cadavere di un ragazzino di 14 anni, Fernando Martí, rapito a giugno. I genitori avevano pagato il riscatto, ma poi si è scoperto che i sequestratori erano importanti funzionari della polizia cittadina. A capo della banda c'era il responsabile della polizia dell'aeroporto internazionale di Città del Messico.
La ciliegina sulla torta è stata il fatto che il sindaco della capitale, Marcelo Ebrard, si è rifiutato di incontrare il presidente per discutere un piano nazionale antisequestri. Per Ebrard (vicino al leader della sinistra Andrés Manuel López Obrador, che considera illegittime le elezioni del 2006), il presidente Felipe Calderón è "illegittimo" e quindi non può incontrarlo.
Per restare sul terreno del surreale, il procuratore della città ha dichiarato tempo fa che in effetti alcuni poliziotti sono delinquenti in uniforme, ma i loro delitti sono stati commessi fuori dall'orario di servizio.
E mentre i politici (di destra e di sinistra) dimostrano di non avere né la volontà né le idee per risanare apparati di sicurezza corrotti fino al midollo, la polizia continua un'antica tradizione di inefficacia e degrado morale che da decenni mina la convivenza senza che si scorgano segni di una possibile uscita dal tunnel. Passano i presidenti, i sindaci e gli impegni solenni, ma la corruzione istituzionale e la delinquenza continuano ad alimentarsi a vicenda.
Nelle classifiche nazionali, Città del Messico è il luogo di maggiore corruzione del paese. Ma a proposito di questa città c'è un dettaglio: è governata da undici anni dalla sinistra. Il Partito della rivoluzione democratica (Prd) nato dalla scissione del vecchio Pri – il Partito rivoluzionario istituzionale, al potere per 71 anni fino al 2000 – ha in comune con il predecessore una visione leaderistica e clientelare della politica, oltre alla retorica spregiudicata.
A sentire certi discorsi a volte sembra che il Messico viva la rivoluzione permanente immaginata da Trotzky. Ma siamo in America Latina, una parte del mondo in cui sequestratori, narcotrafficanti e terroristi come le Farc colombiane possono definirsi marxisti e comunisti, ricevendo pure il sostegno sottobanco di chi in Europa pretende di rifondare il comunismo.
In questo paese ha governato per decenni una sinistra istituzionale che si diceva erede della rivoluzione del 1910. Oggi governa la capitale una nuova sinistra (costola del vecchio Pri) amministrando una situazione di cui non è responsabile ma a cui aggiunge un'impotenza e una mancanza di idee in contrasto con vari casi latinoamericani di buona amministrazione cittadina da parte delle forze progressiste (Porto Alegre, Bogotá eccetera).
Il Messico è prigioniero di un passato da cui non riesce a emanciparsi e fatto di scatole cinesi corporative con un potere presidenziale quasi assoluto. La polizia è solo una di queste scatole cinesi legata alle altre da reti istituzionali che operano in una logica di impunità, arricchimento personale e discorsi rivoluzionari tipici di un vecchio populismo più che della volontà reale di cambiamento democratico.
E tanto per confermare uno stile di governo in cui corruzione e tendenze corporative sono parte di complessi equilibri politici, in questi giorni si firmerà una nuova riforma dell'istruzione scritta insieme al sindacato nazionale dei lavoratori dell'educazione, il più grande sindacato dell'America Latina e uno dei più corrotti. Il costo della stabilità politica è la scarsa credibilità delle istituzioni, in un paese che a forza di retorica rivoluzionaria è da tempo uno dei peggiori casi mondiali di polarizzazione della ricchezza.
Se le parole fossero fatti, il Messico potrebbe sembrare il paradiso terrestre. Purtroppo non è così, tra poliziotti che uccidono quelli che dovrebbero proteggere, sindacalisti con conti in Svizzera e politici che parlano, parlano, parlano.
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Jeune Afrique: Faire du paludisme "une maladie
du passé" : semaine de mobilisation à Paris
EUROPE - 8 septembre 2008 - par AFP
"Décider c'est vaincre" : des responsables et experts internationaux se retrouvent à partir de mardi à Paris pour faire avancer la lutte contre le paludisme, une maladie parasitaire qui fait plus d'un million de morts par an.
Première de cette ampleur, la rencontre, qui veut contribuer à "faire du paludisme une maladie du passé", est organisée par les Amis du Fonds mondial Europe, association présidée par l'ex-ministre française de la santé Michèle Barzach, pour qui "contrôler l'épidémie en tant que fardeau sanitaire et économique est à portée de main".
"Les fonds apportés donnent des résultats tout à fait spectaculaires", souligne Michel Kazatchkine, président du Fonds mondial de lutte contre le sida, la tuberculose et le paludisme, qui sera à Paris. Ainsi, le Vietnam a divisé par 100 le nombre de cas de paludisme entre 1992 et 2006 et la mortalité des enfants de moins de 5 ans a diminué de 51% en Ethiopie. Au Brésil, le nombre de décès dû au paludisme a chuté de 60% entre 1989 et 1996.
Selon la nouvelle carte mondiale du paludisme, si 2,37 milliards de personnes risquent de contracter la maladie, près d'un milliard d'entre elles vivent dans des régions où ce risque est devenu très faible.
Le paludisme, dû à un parasite transmis par un moustique, l'anophèle femelle, touche chaque année plus de 500 millions de personnes et en tue, selon les estimations de l'OMS, plus d'un million, pour la grande majorité en Afrique subsaharienne.
C'est dans cette région, la première cause de mortalité des enfants de moins de 5 ans. "Il en coûte à l'Afrique subsaharienne 12 milliards de dollars par an, avec une cascade de conséquences : arrêts maladie, dépenses individuelles qui peuvent représenter plus de la moitié du budget des familles, poids jusqu'à 60% dans les dépenses de santé d'un pays impaludé", dit Mme Barzach.
Jadis traitée à base de chloroquine, à laquelle le parasite est devenu résistant, la maladie est aujourd'hui soignée à base d'artemisinine (ACT) mais les traitements sont plus de dix fois plus chers. Un projet du Fonds mondial pourrait permettre d'en réduire considérablement le coût.
Par ailleurs les moustiquaires imprégnées de répulsif sont efficaces, mais leur distribution reste insuffisante et leur durée de vie n'est que de cinq ans.
Enfin la mise au point d'un vaccin ne devrait pas aboutir avant plusieurs années. Des recherches visent la modification génétique des moustiques, pour les empêcher d'être vecteurs du paludisme.
En dix ans, les dépenses internationales sont passées de quelque 60 millions de dollars à plus d'1 milliard aujourd'hui, dont les deux tiers par le biais du Fonds mondial. Mais c'est encore insuffisant, note le Dr Awa Marie Coll-Seck, directrice exécutive du partenariat RBM ("Roll back malaria", "Faire reculer le paludisme"), pour qui "on a besoin de trois fois plus".
"Il faut donner un dernier coup de rein", dit Mme Barzach.
Le président français Nicolas Sarkozy doit inaugurer une exposition de photos, tandis que des réunions d'experts, de députés, responsables de coalitions nationales et un débat avec le secteur privé sont prévus. "On a suscité cette réunion à ce moment-là du fait de la présidence européenne de la France, pays-clé dans la lutte contre les pandémies", note Mme Barzach.
L'homme d'affaires américain Ray Chambers, nommé émissaire spécial de l'ONU pour la lutte contre le paludisme par le secrétaire général des Nations unies, Ban Ki-moon, sera à Paris. M. Ban a aussi lancé en avril un plan visant à mettre fin en moins de 1000 jours à l'hécatombe en Afrique.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/
article_depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP04438fairesirapn0
Mail & Guardian: Opposition party
acknowledges defeat in Angola vote
CHARLOTTE PLANTIVE | LUANDA, ANGOLA - Sep 09 2008
Angola opposition party the Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) acknowledged defeat in last week's election, as the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) savoured an overwhelming win in the country's first post-war election.
"After about 80% of valid votes have been counted, despite all that has happened, the leadership of Unita accepts the results of the elections," said Unita president Isaisa Samakuva, Angolan state news agency Angop reported.
Samakuva added that he hoped the ruling left-wing MPLA "would govern in the interest of all Angolans".
With more than three quarters of the votes counted, the MPLA had about 80% of the votes, the Angola electoral committee said earlier on Monday.
Unita had won about 10%.
The former rebel movement had tried to contest the vote because of its chaotic start in some areas of Luanda, but the electoral commission rejected its claim.
The historic vote represented a sweeping victory for President José Eduardo dos Santos's MPLA in an election to which international observers gave qualified approval.
African Union monitors on Monday hailed the vote as "free and fair".
Earlier, observers from the 15-nation Southern African Development Community (SADC) said the vote was "peaceful, free, transparent and credible" and reflected "the will of the people".
"The elections were transparent [...] people voted freely and we have not seen any violence or intimidation during the campaign," EU observer mission chief Luisa Morgantini said.
However, the official EU mission report on the poll criticised organisational weaknesses, procedural inconsistencies and an uneven playing field for candidates.
Voting in the first election since the 27-year civil war ended in 2002 began on Friday, but had to be extended to Saturday because of delays and a lack of election registers in many polling stations.
Unita's unsuccessful challenge to the election had contested the conduct of the Luanda vote.
The capital bore the brunt of the election chaos, with some polling stations not opening at all and others missing ballot papers and voter lists.
But the electoral commission said Unita did not have enough evidence to support its claims.
Before conceding the election, Unita said it would ask the Constitutional Court to rule on the matter.
The former rebel movement's rejection of the results of the last election held in 1992, during a lull in the war, plunged Angola back into conflict that raged for another decade.
Regardless, the state-owned Jornal de Angola's headline read "MPLA eliminates the competition" as the party, in power for three decades, claimed victory.
"The results are in line with our expectations," MPLA spokesperson Norberto dos Santos told the newspaper.
The parliamentary elections were seen as a popularity test for veteran leader José Eduardo dos Santos ahead of presidential elections slated for next year.
The MPLA spokesperson said the victory was due to the dedication of the party's three million supporters.
"In every neighbourhood, in every village our supporters are there nearly every day like a priest at a Sunday service," Norberto dos Santos told the newspaper.
The Southern African nation has a booming economy driven by vast oil and diamond riches that have fuelled double-digit growth.
However, more than two-thirds of its people remain mired in poverty, living on less than $2 a day.
Sapa-AFP
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
http://www.mg.co.za/article/
2008-09-09-opposition-party-acknowledges-defeat-in-angola-vote
Mother Jones:
Jesus Is Magic
Catherine Price
September/October 2008 Issue
As the annual convention of the Fellowship of Christian Magicians kicks off on a hot July afternoon, the campus of Indiana Wesleyan University is awash in displays of irreverent reverence. Ventriloquists converse with Scripture-quoting puppets, unicyclists pedal through the halls, and a man plays "Amazing Grace" on a turkey baster. In the gym, vendors sell mysteriously materializing Communion cups, paper that dissolves in water (perfect for making sins "disappear"), and fire-spouting Bibles ($50 each, they open "with or without flames"). Visitors to the auditorium are greeted by a Noah's ark and Jesus, life-size and complete with cross and crown of thorns, made from balloons by a group of self-described "balloonatics." Outside, preteens wearing gold crosses and short shorts practice high kicks: The five-day event coincides with a gathering of the Fellowship of Christian Cheerleaders.
One of the main attractions is Duane Laflin, a 54-year-old former fellowship president who's known for taking his showmanship as seriously as his message. Notebook- and camcorder-wielding fans pack into a small auditorium to see him deliver a lecture titled "Gospel Magic With a 'WOW' Factor."
Laflin opens with a series of standard scarf tricks that ends with a twist—a silk square emblazoned with Jesus' face. "One of my theories is that you have 15 seconds to connect," Laflin tells the crowd. "You need to do something wonderful in the first 15 seconds, or you're going to have a hard time holding on."
To demonstrate one of his favorite bits of legerdemain, Laflin selects a boy named Drake and asks him to mark a quarter. "This quarter represents Drake's life," announces Laflin, delivering a stream of well-rehearsed patter. "Now, it's a treasure, isn't it?" He places the coin in a small box, and retrieves a silver cube, which, he says, represents God's will for Drake's life. "Would you like to know what's in the cube?" Laflin asks. Drake nods. Music swells from a set of portable speakers. "There's only one way for you to know—you must give up your life. You can keep the quarter or pick God's plan for your life. What's your choice, Drake?"
After a moment's hesitation, Drake picks God's plan. Laflin hands him the silver cube. Nervously, the boy lifts its lid—only to find that it contains six smaller boxes, nested like Russian dolls. Inside the final box is a handkerchief with two quarters inside. One is unmarked; the other is his original coin. "When you make the decision to live for God and give your life to him, God gives your life back to you so you can live for God," Laflin says as Drake stares at the coins in amazement. After Laflin finishes his lecture, audience members—mostly middle-aged men and teenage boys—line up for autographs.
The fcm, which boasts about 2,000 members around the world, is a nondenominational organization dedicated to "the winning of souls to Christ" using "sleight of hand, optical illusion, ventriloquism, puppets, balloons, clowning, juggling, storytelling, and other visual arts." The transformation of beguilement into belief can take many forms. A mind-reading trick may illustrate God's omniscience; an escape-artist routine reminds audiences that they can break free of sin; an illusion in which three black rings explode into color is a metaphor for what it's like to suddenly see the light. Pulling biblical lessons out of a hat may seem forced, but as the website of the ministry Seeing Is Not Believing puts it, "Many people will come to see a woman get cut in half that would never set foot in a church building otherwise."
The 600 attendees of the convention are mostly amateurs, but there are plenty of pros, like ventriloquist and "motorcycle missionary" Jill Bryan. Asked why she chose to spread the good word with a dummy dinosaur named Beano and a stuffed chimpanzee that wears a biker jacket, she explains, "Jesus told everything through a parable. He told everything through a story. I thought, 'Wow, what better way than to use the variety arts?'"
"Why should the devil have all the good entertainment?" asks Kerry Kistler, a chalk artist known for speed drawing canvases that reveal the face of Christ when exposed to black light. "We've surrendered the arts to the secular world for far too long." (Christian balloon artists, for example, are engaged in a running feud with "adult" twisters whose creations are more prurient than pious.)
But the relationship between the magical arts and evangelical Christianity is not without controversy. After all, Deuteronomy explicitly forbids witchcraft, divination, and sorcery, and Revelation warns that "those who practice magic arts" will wind up in "the fiery lake of burning sulfur" along with deviants, unbelievers, and murderers.
Contemporary critics have lumped magic shows in with Dungeons & Dragons and Ouija boards as another example of Satan's deceptions. J.K. Rowling's wizards inspired a stream of anti-occult critiques, including the book Harry Potter and the Bible: The Menace Behind the Magick. And when two secular Scottish magicians created a TV show in 2005 called The Magic of Jesus, in which they replicated biblical miracles, a Pentecostal bishop suggested that they attempt a new trick: crucifying themselves.
Laflin agrees that the Bible forbids magic, but says it's a "terminology thing." "The magic that it's speaking of is trying to speak to the dead or cast spells on people," he explains. "What I do is sleight of hand. It's literally optical illusion. It's not what the Bible forbids at all." Gospel magicians regularly assure their audiences that they don't possess real mystical powers. ("I do tricks, just tricks," Laflin tells his audience. "But the power of God is real and wonderful.") Some have eliminated the word "magic" altogether, referring to themselves instead as "gospel illusionists."
Gospel magic dates back to at least the early 1900s, when the Reverend C.H. Woolston, pastor of the East Baptist Church in Philadelphia, began using candles and bells as props in his lessons. He became a sensation, especially with children, who another preacher claimed would "gather around him...like bees around flowers." Woolston wrote the first gospel magic book, Seeing Truth, and assembled the first convention of "gospel illustrators" in 1917.
With time, missionary magic was taken up by a group of preachers who called themselves "magi-ministers." In 1940, J.B. Maxwell explained in his book Magical Object Lessons that "Objects of any kind are valuable to use in teaching lessons, but when the objects are used in such a way that a mystery results, the interest is not only more fully aroused, but also the lesson connected with the mystery is more indelibly stamped upon the mind."
Laflin came to a similar realization when he was 20 and worked some magic into a church lecture for kids. It was a hit, and before he knew it, he was imparting magical object lessons every Sunday morning. "I was a frustrated artist," he says. "All of a sudden I could create stories, visual events that made people go, 'Ooh, aah, isn't that neat?' It was a very happy thing for me." Laflin now runs a theater in Libby, Montana, with his wife, Mary, a platinum blonde who acts as his stage assistant. (The two also perform an Elvis-inspired act, which explains Laflin's jet-black dyed hair and sideburns.) Though his stage persona is all schmaltz and sequins, Laflin is humble and unguarded in person. "I'm doing what I love," he says. "I'm doing what I was made to do."
Gospel magicians are confident that they're following a higher calling, but they worry about how to respect—and illuminate—the line between illusion and bona fide miracles. Nobody wants to be accused of stealing the spotlight from Jesus. Not that He wasn't something of a showman: Turning water into wine, walking on water, producing loaves and fishes to feed the multitude—the Son of Man certainly knew how to bring the wow factor. In his book, What a Fellowship, one of the fcm's founders observes that "the surprise ending in magic is indeed very much like the effect that Jesus's parables had on His audience." The fellowship's Christian Conjurer magazine recently ran a cover article titled "Jesus—Magician or God?"
That's a trick question, of course. For some gospel magicians, the very fact that their powers aren't supernatural is proof that the biblical miracles were real. "I carry tons of equipment in order to do my shows," says André Kole, a famed magician who consults for David Copperfield and has mastered an illusion where he appears to walk on water. "If Jesus was a magician, you'd have to visualize 2,000 years ago Jesus and the disciples walking through the dusty streets of Galilee wearing sandals, with three diesel trucks behind them carrying all their equipment."
But magic and miracles do share something in common: Both tap into our desire to believe in something greater and more mysterious than ourselves. "A lot of folks want the supernatural—they want something special," Laflin says, explaining why adults, not kids, respond best to his act. "They want to believe in something, but they don't know which way to go. You put the right thing in front of them and give them half a reason to go for it, and they will."
just before midnight on the third day of the convention, a group of about 45 magicians gathers in a dorm lounge for "the late, late show"—a tradition where they share insider tips and tricks until the last one heads off to bed. Laflin is again the center of attention, demonstrating illusions as a thunderstorm erupts outside. He does a banana trick, earning groans when he describes its "appeal." He fields a stream of questions: How do you pull off a thumb palm? Should a Christian performer wear makeup? A man on a couch raises his hand. "Can you talk a little about posing, staging, pausing for applause—things like that?" he asks.
It's a question that cuts to the heart of the gospel magicians' conundrum. While they seek to thrill and entertain, they must never derive too much pleasure from performing, lest they divert glory from God. Given that most successful magicians (not to mention preachers) are born scene-stealers, this can be tough.
Laflin considers the question for a moment. "Audiences like to clap," he says. "And if you do something that others enjoyed, you ought to let them thank you. It's just a matter of keeping your heart right."
At 1:15 a.m., the storm knocks out the lights. Though it is too dark to see and Laflin is clearly fatigued, nobody moves to leave. Instead, the magicians pull out pdas and cell phones and point them at Laflin as he continues to patiently answer their questions, bathed in an ethereal glow.
This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.
© 2008 The Foundation for National Progress
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/
2008/09/witness-do-you-believe-in-magic.html
New Statesman:
Preventing violent extremism
There is no single, or simple, demographic or psychological profile of those likely to be recruited to take part in acts of terror argues academic Alexandra Stein
Alexandra Stein
Published 08 September 2008
We now have a new record: last month Britain’s youngest terrorist was convicted. Hammaad Munshi was only 15 when he was recruited by the then 20 year-old Aabid Khan. Khan, according to the Guardian, had “links to proscribed terrorist groups” including al-Qaeda, and is believed to have visited a terrorist training camp in Pakistan.
A recent MI5 report confirmed what many scholars of terrorist and cultic groups have long known: there is no single, or simple, demographic or psychological profile of those likely to be recruited. Social psychologists such as Philip Zimbardo have for years argued that it is the strong situation of increasing isolation within closed, coercive groups that creates these dangerous behaviors. This is what is critical, not the particular psychology or disposition of the individual.
Further, and contrary to Mark Sageman, a former CIA agent, these are not simply “bunches of guys” who organise themselves into suicidal acts of terror. What we are seeing is the deliberate targeting and recruitment of youth by well-organized internationally-linked extremist groups, as, for instance described by Ed Husain in his book The Islamist, or by Masoud Banisadr in his account of the Iranian Mojahedin.
How then do we protect both the potential victims of these acts, and the young people who are recruited into these extremist groups? We know young people are being recruited in further education colleges and now, like Munshi, at even younger ages. How are we preparing these young people for these assaults on their autonomy and, eventually, on their lives?
Social psychologists, such as Zimbardo, who study extremist groups, cults and coercive persuasion understand that the key to prevention is education. This is education about the structures and processes of totalitarian, ideologically extremist groups.
I recently taught a course on Cults and Totalitarianism to two groups of students at the University of Minnesota in the midwestern US. We covered the social psychology, structures and processes of groups as varied as Lyndon LaRouche’s right-wing political cult, the sexually abusive Children of God, and Pol Pot’s totalitarian and murderous regime in 1970s Cambodia. Several students stated that during the term of the course itself they had cause to use this new information to help either themselves or friends and family to stay away from dangerous groups. Other students asked me why this sort of information hadn't been made available at an earlier stage in their education.
We must teach young people how to recognize totalitarian groups. Drawing on work from Hannah Arendt, Robert Jay Lifton and others, we can start with this five point definition:
* The group is led by a charismatic and authoritarian leader
* It is isolating and has a closed, steeply hierarchical inner structure
* The group adheres to an absolute and exclusive belief system (a total ideology)
* Processes of coercive persuasion are used to isolate followers and control them through a combined dynamic of “love” and fear
* Followers are exploited
These groups succeed because they operate based on universal human (and usually adaptive) responses of people seeking comfort and connection when afraid. The process unfolds by isolating recruits from prior sources of comfort, establishing the group as the new safe haven, and then instilling fear to create what is known as a trauma bond. This is now well-understood by social psychologists. It can be taught in interesting and understandable ways to young people.
We must take a strategic view to introduce this into the curriculum. Educators must collaborate with experts in this field to train teachers in both the classic social-psychological studies as well as the most up-to-date research available and work to develop materials and curricula for classrooms at various age levels.
For over 60 years social scientists have been developing a broad knowledge base about these fundamental human vulnerabilities and the groups and situations that exploit them. In her 1987 volume, Prisons we choose to live inside, nobel laureate Doris Lessing argued for disseminating this knowledge to our children in order to challenge our “most primitive and instinctive reactions” - those reactions which so often have led us to act against our own interests and our own survival. We cannot wait any longer to take this on.
Perhaps then a future 15-year-old – one who has had some basic education in the structures, processes and dangers of totalitarian groups – will be able to recognize and turn away from a recruiter who promises liberation and glory but who will deliver only suicidal sacrifice.
Alexandra Stein is visiting lecturer, Birkbeck, Faculty of Lifelong Learning
http://www.newstatesman.com/international-politics/2008/09/groups-recruited-social-young
Página/12: Jaime Torres
y el Tata Cedrón, juntos en un escenario
“Nos damos el gusto de tocar todo lo que nos gusta”
En los shows que están compartiendo en Buenos Aires, cada uno hace lo suyo y luego se juntan para interpretar un puñado de temas. ¿Dónde está la coincidencia? “Hacemos música, poesía, provocamos emoción; no es poco, ¿verdad?”, dicen.
Por Santiago Giordano
Martes, 9 de Septiembre de 2008
“Mirá el perfil griego del tipo”, bromea el Tata Cedrón apuntando las cejas frondosas en dirección de Jaime Torres, mientras ambos posan para la foto. “Mirá, Tata, los griegos eran grandes navegantes y nosotros los coyas grandes caminantes, así que en algún punto nos debemos haber encontrado”, retruca el charanguista. Son distintos. Cedrón transita la senda del tango, al que sintonizó también con versos de poetas que lo miraban desde afuera, para sumarle la carga de rabia que su proverbial melancolía le impedía ejercer. Torres viene del folklore, que pintó como pocos desde su charango y al que empujó hasta cruces casi impensables, por ejemplo con el chill out, con el flautista Magic Malik y el percusionista Minino Garay, con la Sinfónica Nacional, con Paco de Lucía, con Divididos o con el piano distinguido de Ariel Ramírez. Cedrón vivió 30 años en Francia, aunque de una manera u otra, como Troilo, siempre estuvo volviendo; Torres se jacta de haber elegido su país para vivir. Jaime habla con voz pausada, sin perder el tono gentil; al Tata lo arrebatan las palabras a medida que la conversación fluye.
Son distintos, está claro; sin embargo, nada de eso les impide encontrarse en un escenario, como sucedió en varias oportunidades en distintos lugares del mundo y se está repitiendo en el Centro Cultural Torquato Tasso (Defensa 1575). Arrancaron el fin de semana pasado y volverán a presentarse este viernes y sábado, junto al charanguista estarán Goyo Alvarez (guitarra), Javier Sepúlveda (quena, sikus) y Néstor Pastorive (percusión y danza); al guitarrista y cantor lo secundarán Miguel Praino (viola) y Miguel López (bandoneón). “Este encuentro nace fundamentalmente de la amistad. Nunca pasé por París sin compartir momentos con el Tata, sin por lo menos darle un abrazo”, asegura Torres. “Pero además de la amistad de años, hicimos cosas juntos –interviene Cedrón–, si bien nunca nos pegoteamos. Lo que hicimos con Paco Ibáñez, algunas giras por Francia, un espectáculo de los mayas, alguna vez en Mar del Plata. Jaime me invitó cuando tocó en el Alvear y yo le devolví la gentileza en el Bar Tuñón, además de compartir nuestra música en el Salón Blanco de la Casa de Gobierno.” “Quién te dice que este no sea el punto de partida para un futuro espectáculo conjunto –arriesga Torres–. En esta oportunidad estaremos cada uno con su grupo y tendremos un momento de encuentro que se dará con algunos temas, de esos que hacemos en la intimidad, cada vez que nos juntamos en casa. Pero es a partir de esa espontaneidad que las cosas podrán ir tomando cuerpo, y eso es lo más natural. Llegará el momento en que nos demos cuenta de que el espectáculo conjunto ya está listo; mientras, compartimos algunas de esas melodías olvidadas, nos damos el gusto de tocar lo que nos gusta.” “Ni Jaime toca tango ni yo chacareras. Se trata de encontrarnos a compartir”, concluye Cedrón.
Ciudadano Ilustre de Buenos Aires, Cedrón volvió a residir en la Argentina cuatro años atrás, después de pasar tres décadas viviendo y trabajando en Francia, componiendo y tocando tangos al frente del Cuarteto Cedrón. “Qué querés, tengo pasaporte francés e inevitablemente parte de la cultura francesa la absorbí en todos esos años –explica el ahora ciudadano de Boedo–, pero me siento argentino, porque las cosas que pasan acá me duelen como siempre. El día en que no me duelan más, no tendré derecho a sentirme de acá. ¿Que cómo estoy? Y... como cuando me fui, peleando, haciéndome mala sangre...”
“Yo, en cambio, soy de San Telmo y en estos conciertos jugaré de local, por eso la gente vendrá a verme”, bromea Torres, que nació en Tucumán, de padres bolivianos, pero vivió casi toda su vida en Buenos Aires. “Con mi familia vivíamos primero en Chacarita y después nos mudamos a Viamonte y 25 de Mayo, la zona del bajo, con sus piringundines y el movimiento del puerto”, recuerda el charanguista. “Después, en el ’48, nos fuimos a Bolivia. Yo tenía 10 años y me llevé un charango chiquito que me había regalado mi maestro Mauro Núñez. Volvimos cuando tenía 15 y nos instalamos en Rosario.”
En distintas etapas de su vida, Jaime tuvo oportunidades para radicarse en Europa y hoy enfatiza que vivir en la Argentina fue una elección. “Cuando andaba bien de todo lo demás me podría haber quedado en Europa –asegura–, la gente allá no conocía lo que era un charango.” “Acá, en realidad, tampoco”, agrega Cedrón. “De todas maneras he recorrido bastante –continúa Torres–, con distintas formaciones, distintos espíritus. Si en muchos lugares no conocían el charango, nunca me presenté como si hiciera una cosa exótica, sino que lo hice desde la convicción de que mi música tenía que gustar. No fui a Europa a ponerme el poncho y gritar ‘huija canejo’: en el charango está mi origen y de ahí me aparece una causa.”
Cedrón, por su parte, aclara que en estas actuaciones está junto a él Miguel Praino, durante 45 años su aparcero, fundador del Cuarteto Cedrón. “Con Miguelito y el bandoneón de López tocamos en trío”, señala. Respecto de la actualidad del Cuarteto Cedrón, el Tata asegura que “va y viene”, pero no esconde su malestar por no haber estado en el último Festival de Tango de Buenos Aires. “Me invitaban, pero no pagaban un pasaje del integrante del cuarteto que vive en Francia –su hijo, el violinista Emilio Cedrón–. ¿Qué querían, que tocáramos por Internet?”, tira la bronca.
“Es que hacemos música, emoción, poesía. No es poco, ¿verdad? Es difícil juntarse, organizarse, por eso nos gusta estar en un espacio ya instalado, de esos que son tan necesarios para nuestra cultura”, explica.
“A Buenos Aires le hacen falta espacios para la música –interviene Torres–. Nosotros tenemos la ventaja de los años, de conocer a todos, pero para los más jóvenes se hace difícil.” “Mirá, no me hablés del tema que me pongo mal –agrega Cedrón–; el otro día me invitaron a una radio y les dije que no iba para hablar, que estoy podrido de decir cosas, que quería cantar. Entonces me fui con la guitarra y me largué ocho temas al aire. Después les tiré la onda a los pibes de hacer como se hacía antes: conciertos de música en vivo en la radio; primero dicen que sí, pero después, cuando llega el momento, se tiran atrás por cuestiones organizativas, que los sponsors, que dónde ponemos la gente...” “De esas cosas todavía hay alguna –insiste Torres–. En el auditorio de Radio Nacional, Sadaic organiza un ciclo en vivo, con público. A mí nunca me invitaron a tocar, pero esa es otra historia.” “Bueno, pero es sólo uno, no es como era antes –retoma Cedrón–. ¿Acaso hay un lugar para que los músicos argentinos toquemos en televisión, para una presentación en vivo, mostrando lo que sabemos hacer? No. Medio tema como cortina de cierre, a lo sumo. Partamos de una pregunta básica: ¿Es importante la cultura? El problema es la política cultural, cómo el Estado satisface las necesidades culturales de la gente.” “Lo que pasa es que dolorosamente nos seguimos manejando con los códigos del culto al poder político, desde hace mucho –puntualiza Torres–. Si no cambiamos esa concepción, estamos sonados.”
La charla empieza a terminar para dar lugar al ensayo. Comienzan a llegar los músicos, a templar los instrumentos, a desplegar el mismo repertorio de chistes de cada ensayo. Pero Torres y Cedrón todavía tienen para decir. “Hoy en día los músicos jóvenes que tocan en las tanguerías están podridos de hacer ese laburo –asegura Cedrón–, de tocar todos los días lo mismo: a las 11 ‘Naranjo en flor’, a las 12 ‘Adiós Nonino’ y cerrar con ‘La comparsita’. Eso es para turistas; después ves un tipo tirando la manga en el subte que la rompe tocando ‘Danzarín’ con el bandoneón.” “Está bien que un turista tenga espectáculos para ver –analiza Torres–, pero hay muchos tipos de turistas y algunos buscan otras cosas. Hay quienes conocieron el tango o el folklore por los artistas que están de gira por el mundo, que saben lo que es bueno, pero nadie protege al turista en este sentido. ¿Adónde se puede llevar, en Buenos Aires, a alguien que quiera escuchar folklore bien tocado? No es fácil encontrar un lugar y es una lástima, sobre todo porque no hay mejor eslogan turístico que una canción bien cantada.” “Eso de la moda del tango es un bolazo, te lo digo yo –concluye Cedrón–. Está bien que haya tango para el turismo, es laburo para muchos, pero pensar que a partir de eso hay una moda del tango es puro grupo. Y ojo que después de las modas vienen los saldos.”
© 2000-2008 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados
http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/suplementos/espectaculos/3-11225-2008-09-09.html
Página/12:
Salto al vacío
Por Enrique Medina
Martes, 9 de Septiembre de 2008
Como siempre, por defecto, lógica, comodidad, como cualquiera que tiene un balcón, mira el espacio incoloro. Mira el espacio pero no lo ve. Es inexistente pero define, es su poder. Nada extraño observa en la rutina, pero todo repercute diferente: no ve lo que ve, ni respira como debe. En realidad siente que se afofa y se eleva sin, necesariamente, crecer en este espacio brillante. Para restaurarse y ver lo que debería ver, arroja los anteojos negros. Ni gente caminando ni autos girando en la esquina ni chicos jugando ni la mujer en medio de la calle gritando desa-forada contra sus odios antes de ingresar a la verdulería. El no escucha el barullo del tráfico, pero reconoce que recién ahora, aunque no la ve, está entendiendo a esa mujer que grita insultos contra quienes la quieren mal, porque recién ahora entiende la cuerda de ella. La entiende porque él no está en la suya propia. Un hilo de lucidez le permite reconocer que está caminando en cuerda ajena y que no es lo mismo, porque cada uno debe sostenerse en su propia cuerda. Entonces toma conciencia. Debe controlarse porque si deja de hacer equilibrio en su cuerda para pasar a cuerda ajena puede ser peligroso. Se sonríe. Sí, es así, sólo soy un equilibrista en este circo que es la vida, se dice y se confirma golpeando la baranda como recién dándose cuenta de algo tan obvio y trivial. Y vuelve a apoyarse, colgarse de la baranda, esforzándose en parecer natural, pero no puede, siente que pierde el equilibrio, que su cuerda no quiere sostenerlo, que la cuerda tiene vida propia y se sacude como queriendo librarse de él. Y él se esfuerza en hacer equilibrio, pone todos sus sentidos en orden para verificar si está apoyado en su propia cuerda o en cuerda ajena. Un relámpago de sol le avisa que algo anda mal, que virus y troyanos se han apoderado de él, y que si no quiere perder el equilibrio no debe inclinarse hacia adelante a pesar de aferrarse con tanta sensatez a la baranda. Es como sostenerse de una cuerda superior para dejar de hacer pie en la cuerda inferior. Tiembla. Se le escapa el cuerpo, o presupone eso. Es posible que al intentar pisar la cuerda inferior ésta haya huido y el pie tantee en el aire. Otro relámpago de sol le llama la atención para que no se abrace tan desesperadamente a la baranda porque ésta puede resentirse. El comprueba que es verdad: la baranda como que se derrite, o quiere eso. O se disuelve, o se hace líquido inconsistente. Tenaz, él se agarra a la baranda pero ésta se niega a la rigidez. Por más que él quiera aferrarse con seguridad para volver a hacer pie en su cuerda, se le hace difícil y complicado conseguir el beneficio. Tan enmarañado como saber dónde está él. Por suerte los relámpagos de sol están cuidándolo, se le clavan en la nuca para que él se mantenga en fila y no salga de la formación. Percibe la advertencia y responde que nadie le impedirá hacer lo correcto: y se mantiene en la formación. Lo hace. ¿O no lo hace? ¿O cree que no lo hace y sí lo hace? Se le confunde el mucho dinero, sicarios mexicanos, grandes negocios, drogas y muertes a reglamento, cheques voladores que vuelan y ríen en el espacio porque la gente en la calle salta para agarrarlos con la ambición que él ya conoce. Toda esa gente tiene su rostro, pero nadie tiene vergüenza. La baranda se hace agua y él, creído en su cuerda, bebe para recuperar el temor del equilibrio. Quiere hacer pie, pero no. Manotea absurdamente la cuerda superior que indiferente se aleja y se aleja hacia el cielo. La baranda se ha convertido en partículas de nada, y él ya está metido en este simulacro de brecha, abandonándose en este espacio postrero, dejándose ir, cuando, a destiempo, estalla, inmaculado, el último relámpago de sol.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-111248-2008-09-09.html
The Independent:
It's never good to swap people for bodies
If you get into this grisly game, the result is a murderer released from Israel parading around Lebanon
Robert Fisk
Saturday, 6 September 2008
Al-Jazeera – much praised by the now-dying US administration until it started reporting the truth about the American occupation of Iraq (at which point, you may recall, George Bush wanted to bomb it) – is back in hot water. And not, I fear, without reason. For on 19 July, its Beirut bureau staged a birthday party for Samir Kantar, newly released from Israel's prisons in return for the bodies of two Israeli soldiers. "Brother Samir, we would like to celebrate your birthday with you," allegedly gushed al-Jazeera's man in Beirut. "You deserve even more than this... Happy Birthday, Brother Samir."
The problem, of course, was that "Brother Samir" – whose moustache looks as if it has been modelled on that of a former German corporal – had been convicted in Israel for the 1979 killing of an Israeli father and his daughter. The Israelis claim he smashed in the head of the four-year-old with a rifle. Kantar denies this – though he does not deny that another child, this time two years old, was accidentally asphyxiated by its mother when she was trying to avoid giving away their hiding place. Kantar received a conviction of 542 years – long, even by Israel's standards – and had been locked up for 28 years when he was swapped (along with other prisoners) for the bodies of the dead soldiers, Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser, whose capture started the 2006 Lebanon war.
Kantar received a hero's welcome home from Hizbollah – even though Hizbollah did not exist when he was convicted – and was received by virtually the entire Lebanese government. I reported this whole miserable affair and referred to the cabinet in Beirut "grovelling to this man". I was right. Al-Jazeera has now done a little grovelling of its own – but this has been accompanied by an extraordinary article in the American and Canadian press by Judea Pearl, attacking Kantar's reception in Lebanon and al-Jazeer's treatment of the man, announcing that Kantar's royal procession in Lebanon had brought "barbarism back to the public square".
Professor Pearl – who teaches at UCLA – is the father of Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal correspondent butchered by Islamists in Karachi. They cut off his head. And only someone with a heart of stone could read Judea Pearl's words without being moved. Here, after all, is another father grieving for a cruelly murdered child. Not long before he died, Daniel Pearl had shown great kindness to me after I was badly beaten on the Afghan border. He shared all the numbers in his contacts book with me while he and his wife made me tea and cookies in Peshawar. After his abduction, I wrote an open letter to Osama bin Laden (whom I knew), pleading for his release. I was too late. Daniel had already been murdered.
Judea Pearl currently runs a foundation named after his son and dedicated to dialogue and understanding. I will not go on at any length about a vindictive letter he wrote about me before his son was abducted – in which he claimed that I "drooled venom" and was "a professional hate pedlar", adding that the 2001 international crimes against humanity in the United States were caused by "hate itself, of precisely the obsessive and dehumanising kind that Fisk and bin Laden has been spreading".
This, of course, is the kind of incendiary stuff that produces a deluge of crude hate mail (which, indeed, is exactly what it did). But whatever his feelings about me now, Judea Pearl has a point.
Yet he wants al-Jazeera to apologise formally for that infamous party which has, he writes, robbed journalism of its "nobleness" and "relegitimized barbarism", and something in me says – whoa there! The narrative is being cut off and rewritten. For if Kantar represents barbarism, why on earth did Israel release him in the first place?
Indeed, Israel released Kantar and other prisoners and 200 corpses of dead Hizbollah and Palestinian fighters at the demand of the Hizbollah militia. And when you get into the bodies game – swapping long-held prisoners for corpses – then the prisoners are going to be greeted when they are freed, whether we like it or not. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, suggested there was indeed something noble about the prisoner exchange because it showed that Israel always cared for the return of its missing soldiers, alive or dead.
And I am reminded now of how Benjamin Netanyahu released Sheikh Ahmed Yassin from prison after two of Israel's Mossad would-be killers tried to murder Khaled Meshal of Hamas in Amman. King Hussein had angrily demanded the antidote to the poison they gave Meshal – which is how Yassin obtained his release. Then, after Yassin had been greeted by his Palestinian followers and gone ranting on about the need to avoid recognition of Israel, praising suicide bombers into the bargain, an Israeli pilot fired a missile into his wheelchair – not exactly a noble act since the old man was a cripple – and once again we heard about the barbarity of the now dead Yassin. But if he was so barbarous, why did Netanyahu, that famous enemy of "terrorism", release him? Because the two Mossad agents had been caught by the Jordanians? Of course.
So here we go again. The truth is that Israel uses these men as hostages – the American press employ the weasel words "bargaining chips" – and if you're going to get into the grisly game of body swapping, then the result is Samir Kantar parading himself around Lebanon and celebrating his birthday on al-Jazeera. That doesn't justify the pathetic performance of the Lebanese government. It certainly does show the power of Hizbollah. But it shows even more clearly that, despite all Israel's huffing and puffing about "never dealing with terrorists", this is exactly what it does. It's very easy to kick al-Jazeera – and not without reason. But the story didn't start there. And it hasn't ended yet.
©independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/
fisk/robert-fisk-its-never-good-to-swap-people-for-bodies-920837.html
ZNet:
Who Lost Iraq?
Is the Maliki Government Jumping Off the American Ship of State?
By Michael Schwartz
Source: TomDispatch
September, 09 2008
As the Bush administration was entering office in 2000, Donald Rumsfeld exuberantly expressed its grandiose ambitions for Middle East domination, telling a National Security Council meeting: "Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that's aligned with U.S. interests. It would change everything in the region and beyond."
A few weeks later, Bush speechwriter David Frum offered an even more exuberant version of the same vision to the New York Times Magazine: "An American-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and the replacement of the radical Baathist dictatorship with a new government more closely aligned with the United States, would put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans."
From the moment on May 1, 2003, when the President declared "major combat operations... ended" on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln, such exuberant administration statements have repeatedly been deflated by events on the ground. Left unsaid through all the twists and turns in Iraq has been this: Whatever their disappointments, administration officials never actually gave up on their grandiose ambitions. Through thick and thin, Washington has sought to install a regime "aligned with U.S. interests" - a government ready to cooperate in establishing the United States as the predominant power in the Middle East.
Recently, with significantly lower levels of violence in Iraq extending into a second year, Washington insiders have begun crediting themselves with - finally - a winning strategy (a claim neatly punctured by Juan Cole, among other Middle East experts). In this context, actual Bush policy aims have, once again, emerged more clearly, but so has the administration's striking and continual failure to implement them - thanks to the Iraqis.
In the past few weeks, the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has made it all too clear that, in the long run, it has little inclination to remain "aligned with U.S. interests" in the region. In fact, we may be witnessing a classic "tipping point," a moment when Washington's efforts to dominate the Middle East are definitively deep-sixed.
The client state that the Bush administration has spent so many years and hundreds of billions of dollars creating, nurturing, and defending has shown increasing disloyalty and lack of gratitude, as well as an ever stronger urge to go its own way. Under the pressure of Iraqi politics, Maliki has moved strongly in the direction of a nationalist position on two key issues: the continuing American occupation of the country and the future of Iraqi oil. In the process, he has sought to distance his government from the Bush administration and to establish congenial relationships, if not an outright alliance, with Washington's international adversaries, including the Bush administration's mortal enemy, Iran.
Withdrawal Becomes an Official Issue
Perhaps the most dramatic symbol of this new independence is the Iraqi government's resistance to a Washington proposal for a "status of forces agreement" (SOFA) that would allow for a permanent and uninhibited U.S. military presence in Iraq.
With the impending expiration of the UN resolutions that gave legal cover to the U.S. military presence in Iraq, the SOFA negotiations are crucial. They began with a proposal that expressed the full extent of Washington's ambitions to utilize Iraq as the base for making the U.S. "more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans." The proposal first leaked to the press in June 2008 was essentially a major land grab, including provisions like the following that would not have seemed out of place in a nineteenth century colonial treaty:
*An indefinite number of U.S. troops would remain in Iraq indefinitely, stationed on up to 58 bases in locations determined by the United States.
*These troops would be allowed to mount attacks on any target inside Iraq without the permission of, or even notification to, Iraqi authorities.
*U.S. military and civilian authorities would be free to use Iraqi territory to mount attacks against any of Iraq's neighbors without permission from the Iraqi government.
*The U.S. would control Iraqi airspace up to 30,000 feet, freeing the U.S. Air Force to strike as it wishes inside Iraq and creating the basis for the use of, or passage through, Iraq's air space for planes bent on attacking other countries.
*The U.S. military and its private contractors would be immune from Iraqi law, even for actions unrelated to their military duties.
*Iraq's defense, interior, and national security ministries (and all of Iraq's arms purchases) would be under U.S. supervision for 10 years.
When leaked (clearly by Iraqis involved in the negotiations), this proposal generated opposition across the political spectrum from parliament to the streets. It was even denounced by the usually silent Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most influential Shia Ayatollah. Soon, Prime Minister Maliki made clear his own rejection of the proposal, setting in motion a chaotic negotiating process in which the Iraqis seem to have argued vehemently for a more modest, briefer U.S. presence, as well as a definite deadline for full withdrawal - a proposal that was anathema to the Bush administration.
By early August, when the details of a new proposal endorsed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice began to leak out, it was clear that U.S. negotiators had given way, granting significant concessions to the Iraqi side. According to Iraqi insiders, the new draft agreement called for U.S. troops to be completely withdrawn from Iraqi cities, where most of the fighting usually takes place, by the summer of 2009. All U.S. troops - not just the "combat" troops usually mentioned when Democrats talk about withdrawal timelines in Iraq - would have to be gone by the end of 2011.
If the leaked draft were implemented, the U.S. would leave behind those 58 bases, including the five massive "enduring" bases into which the Bush administration has poured billions of dollars. Moreover, the unhindered scope of action Washington had originally demanded for its forces would be dramatically limited: The U.S. would not have the right to attack other countries from Iraqi soil, its ability to conduct operations within Iraq would be circumscribed, and immunity from prosecution would be restricted to U.S. military personnel (and then only when they were participating in approved military actions).
Symptomatic of the loosening U.S. grip on its Iraqi client government were the reactions of the two sides to the leaked provisions of the new version of the agreement. Secretary of State Rice declared it "acceptable" and explained uneasily that the timeline proposed was not the sort of fixed withdrawal date that the Bush administration had long adamantly rejected, but an "aspirational" "time horizon" that would depend on "conditions" in Iraq.
Maliki, in all likelihood responding to the fervor of public protests to Rice's comments, immediately declared the agreement unacceptable unless the deadline for withdrawal was time-based and unconditional. In a well publicized speech to a gathering of tribal sheiks, he said that any agreement must be based on the principle that "no foreign soldier remains in Iraq after a specific deadline, not an open time frame." In further clarifying his remarks, a key aide told the Associated Press that "the last American soldiers must leave Iraq by the end of 2011, regardless of conditions at the time."
The latest reports suggest that a further round of secret negotiations had restored some U.S. demands, including full immunity for American soldiers (but not mercenary fighters), and application of the withdrawal deadline to combat troops only. Such concessions by Maliki, however, appeared certain to trigger another round of protest and resistance in the streets and in the Iraqi Parliament.
Whatever their outcome, the still-unfinished negotiations point to something quite new in the relationship between the two governments. Until recently, the Iraqi leadership faithfully sought to enact whatever policies the Bush administration favored (though its capacity to implement them was always in question). With the proposed SOFA, this posture disappeared, replaced by a clear antagonism to Washington's desires. With its formidable weapons (including 146,000 soldiers on the ground), Washington is bound to win at least some of these confrontations, but what we may be seeing is the end of the dream of a regime "closely aligned" with U.S. policies.
The Re-emergence of Oil Nationalism
Nothing better highlights this transformation than oil policy. From the beginning of its occupation of Iraq, the Bush administration sought to quadruple Iraqi oil production by delivering control of the industry to the major international oil companies. Once given free rein to act on their own discretion, Washington policymakers believed that the oil majors would invest vast sums in modernizing existing fields, activate undeveloped reserves using the most advanced technology available, and discover major new fields utilizing state-of-the-art exploration and extraction methods.
Up until 2007, the Iraqi government was an active ally in this enterprise, even though the vast majority of Iraqis - including the powerful oil workers union, the religious leadership, and a majority of Parliament - vehemently opposed these plans, demanding instead that control of the industry remain in government hands. In 2004, the U.S.-appointed Iraqi government enthusiastically endorsed an International Monetary Fund agreement that mandated the development of major Iraqi oil reserves by international oil companies. When those companies found the legal basis for such investment too fragile to risk vast sums of capital, the Iraqi government (surrounded by American advisors) immediately began work on an oil law that would presumably provide a more secure foundation for their investment. In the meantime, informal advice was accepted from the oil majors, whose technicians were placed in charge of various engineering operations within the country.
In 2007, when the oil law was finally delivered to the Iraqi Parliament, it met with unremitting opposition. The always strong oil unions immediately began a ferocious resistance campaign that stalled the law.
None of these developments altered the Bush administration's determination to push the law through. They did not, however, anticipate that the Maliki administration itself would become a further source of opposition. As Charles Ries told journalists on leaving his position as U.S. Economic Ambassador to Iraq in August 2008 after a year of failure, "When I got here... I was quite optimistic it was only a month or two [before the petroleum bill would be passed, but the] more I understood what the real issues were... it was clear this was going to be a major political challenge."
While Ries was on the job, even the leadership of the Ministry of Oil, until then a pro-American bastion, went into opposition. One symptom of this was its failure to complete five no-bid contracts (that did not include either investment or extraction rights) with oil consortia led by the usual suspects - Exxon Mobil, Royal Dutch Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron - designed to increase Iraqi production by 500,000 barrels per day. Oil Minister Hussein al-Shahrastani told the Wall Street Journal that a key reason for the faltering negotiations was the desire of the oil companies for "preferential treatment for future oil-exploration deals." This comment, like the faltering negotiations, hinted at the abandonment of the Bush administration's long-desired version of Iraqi oil policy.
The new attitude was underscored when the Oil Ministry revived a Saddam-era agreement with the China National Petroleum Corporation, which was now granted a $3 billion contract to develop the Ahdab oil field. Given the growing U.S.-China rivalry over the control of foreign oil sources, the symbolism of this act couldn't have been clearer - especially since the earlier contract had been unceremoniously canceled by the United States at the beginning of the occupation in 2003. No less important, this was a "service contract" whose terms did not follow U.S. guidelines calling for the reduction or elimination of Iraqi government control of the oil industry.
Soon after announcing this new agreement, Oil Minister Shahrastani offered what might be seen as a declaration of oil policy independence. "[Global] oil supplies," he declared, "meet and may slightly exceed current world demand." The world, that is, had plenty of oil, and so there was, he insisted, no global need to rush pell-mell into oil development agreements that might not, in the long run, be of use to Iraq.
This represented an attack on the fundamental premise of U.S. oil policy - that, as Vice President Cheney told an oil industry gathering back in 1999, "By 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from? While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East, with two-thirds of the world's oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies."
Significantly, back in 2001 - and before 9/11 - the Cheney Energy Task Force, working with the National Security Council, would make this commitment the centerpiece of administration Middle Eastern policy, defining the world situation as one in which the supply of oil must be drastically increased to meet the demand for an "additional fifty million barrels a day."
Oil-producing countries of the Middle East never embraced Cheney's analysis and consistently resisted U.S. efforts to encourage, induce, or coerce dramatic increases in oil production. Instead, they viewed the "shortage" of oil as a natural result of market forces, beneficial to their own economies.
With the success of the U.S. invasion, the Iraqi government threatened to become a maverick among the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), endorsing U.S. supported plans that, theoretically, would have quadrupled Iraqi production within 10 years. So Shahrastani's comments were a signal that Iraq was rejoining OPEC's ranks and potentially opening a new era in post-invasion Iraqi politics in which the government he represented would no longer be a reliable ally of the United States.
A Nail in the Coffin of American Defeat?
Implicit in these actions is a new attitude toward, and assessment of, the U.S. presence in Iraq. Prime Minister Maliki and his cohorts appear to have adopted the viewpoint of journalist Nir Rosen that "the Americans are just one more militia," just the most powerful of the rogue forces that they have to manage and eventually eliminate.
As the Iraqi government accumulates an expanding lake of petrodollars and finds ways to shake them loose from the clutches of U.S. banks and U.S. government administrators, its leaders will have the resources to pursue policies that reflect their own goals. The decline in violence, taken in the U.S. as a sign of American "success," has actually accelerated this process. It has made the Maliki regime feel ever less dependent for its survival on the American presence, while strengthening internal and regional forces resistant or antagonistic to Washington's Middle East ambitions.
The respected Iraqi newspaper Azzaman pointed to one of these forces in a recent editorial: "Iran has emerged as the country's top trading partner. Its firms are present in the Kurdish north and southern Iraq carrying out projects worth billions of dollars. Iranian goods are the most conspicuous merchandise in Iraqi shops. Iraq, though occupied and administered by America, has grown to be so dependent on Iran that some analysts see it as a satellite state of Tehran."
To support this contention, Azzaman asserted: "The Ministry of Oil and other key portfolios such the Ministry of Interior and Finance are in the hands of pro-Iran Shiite factions." Citing Oil Ministry sources, it suggested that recent changes in oil policy actually reflected Iranian pressure to "exclude U.S. oil majors from contracts to develop the country's massive oil fields."
Azzaman may be overemphasizing Iranian influence, since there are myriad internal Iraqi influences that continue to press against Washington's desire for a client regime. Parliament, the Sunni and Shia religious leaderships, powerful unions, and the Sunni and Shia insurgencies have all registered broad opposition to continued U.S. presence and influence.
As all this occurs, U.S. leverage over the Iraqi government, though still formidable, is in decline. The Bush administration - or its soon-to-be elected successor -- may face a difficult dilemma: whether to accept some version of the withdrawal demands of the Iraqi government or re-escalate the war in yet one more attempt to create a government that is "aligned with U.S. interests." The recent declaration by the Pentagon that only the most modest of troop reductions is militarily feasible in the foreseeable future may be a symptom of this dilemma. Without a full complement of U.S. troops, after all, it will be increasingly difficult to convince the Maliki regime to re-embrace policies favored by Washington.
The question remains: Can anything reverse the centripetal forces pulling Iraq from Washington's orbit? Will the President's "surge" strategy prove to have been the nail in the coffin of its hopes for U.S. dominance in the Middle East?
If this turns out to be the case, then watch out domestically. The inevitable controversy over "who lost Iraq" - an echo of those earlier controversies over "who lost China" and "who lost Vietnam" - is bound to be on the way.
Michael Schwartz's new book, War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context (Haymarket, 2008), will be released later this month. It explains just how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the U.S. to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling sectarian civil war inside that country. A professor of sociology at Stony Brook State University, Schwartz has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency. His work on Iraq has appeared in numerous outlets, including TomDispatch, Asia Times, Mother Jones, and Contexts. His email address is ms42@optonline.net.
[This article first appeared on Tomdispatch.com, a weblog of the Nation Institute, which offers a steady flow of alternate sources, news, and opinion from Tom Engelhardt, long time editor in publishing, co-founder of the American Empire Project, author of The End of Victory Culture, updated in a newly issued edition covering Iraq, and editor and contributor to The World According to Tomdispatch: America in the New Age of Empire.]
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18761
posted by attilav at 16:19
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