Elsewhere Today 490
Aljazeera:
Pakistan 'al-Qaeda leaders killed'
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
10:42 Mecca time, 07:42 GMT
Three al-Qaeda commanders in Pakistan, including a newly appointed leader, have been reported killed in North Waziristan province, sources have told Al Jazeera.
Abu Hamza and Abu Qasim, believed to be two Saudi nationals, and leader Abu Haris, who was believed to be Syrian, were reportedly killed when a drone aircraft fired a missile on a housing compound near a school on Monday.
At least 25 people were reported to have been killed in the assault. Casualties included women and children, who were taken to the hospital in Miran Shah, the capital of North Waziristan.
One of the injured included the sister-in-law of Jallaluddin Haqqani, a Taliban leader.
A religious school founded by Haqqani was at first thought to be the target of the attack near Miran Shah, intelligence officials and Pakistani villagers said.
Kamal Hyder, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Islamabad, said: "We know that the attack targeted a compound about one and a half kilometres from where the madrassa of Jallaluddin is located.
"This was a compound where little girls were also studying in some sort of informal madrassa.
"Of course, it was a few days later that there was speculation that senior al-Qaeda members had been killed."
Sources confirmed to Al Jazeera that Haqqani was not present during the attack, and was probably in Afghanistan.
Witnesses said about 17 bodies were pulled from the rubble of the collapsed houses, and more were expected to be found.
Ex-defence minister
Haqqani is a well-known Afghan leader who served as defence minister during the US-led invasion in 2001.
He is also a veteran of the Afghan war against the Soviet invasion in the 1970s and 1980s.
Kamal said: "It's difficult to understand how three or four of their senior commanders would be present at one location. It’s also difficult to understand why the US has not issued a statement. Whenever there is success, the US is very quick to say they have been able to get their man. So again, there will be doubts raised.
"In the past, we have found that high-priority targets have been 'killed' three to four times over. People are already saying that this is yet another attempt to justify an attack that went wrong.
"Whenever such an attack takes place there is considerable anger in the area.
"So it's very difficult for someone to do a tally of the death toll, notwithstanding that this is a very remote region."
Wishful thinking
Tayyab Siddiqui, a Pakistan analyst in Islamabad, the Pakistani capital, told Al Jazeera that the reports were highly speculative.
"There is even an element of wishful thinking. The Americans seem to be in a kind of paranoia. They are talking about the structure of al-Qaeda and hierarchy being killed and this keeps increasing by the day.
"In fact, there is a huge trust deficit between Pakistan and the United States.
"Both feel the other is not doing enough. The Pakistan army and political leadership feel there is not adequate appreciation of the suffering and sacrifices that have been made in the fight against 'terror'."
The speculation that al-Qaeda leaders have been killed comes a day after a new president was sworn in for Pakistan. Asif Ali Zardari won the election after Pervez Musharraf stepped down under the threat of impeachment.
"President Musharraf lost his popularity primarily because he was considered toeing the American line. So there is an increasing gulf between the government and the people," Siddiqui said.
"Pakistan thinks with a democratic government there will be rethinking of the policy. In the frontier province more than 300,000 people have been displaced and everyone's asking what this is for. It is going to be a major test for President Zardari."
Source: Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/asia/2008/09/20089918515579775.html
AllAfrica:
Pre-Election Violence Escalates
UN Integrated Regional Information Networks NEWS
9 September 2008
Accra
Following an upsurge of pre-election violence that has killed three people and injured many others in northern Ghana, experts fear hostilities will continue in the months leading to December presidential and legislative elections.
Charred remains of houses, walls riddled with bullets, and burnt cars and are talismans of last week's violence in the Northern Region's capital of Tamale. Violence erupted following a shooting incident on 31 August that abruptly ended a political rally organised by the ruling New Patriotic Party.
A 12-hour curfew is currently in force and additional joint military-police patrols have been deployed on the streets.
Fred Degbe, president of the religious non-profit Christian Council, told IRIN, "If Ghana burns because of politics we have nowhere else to go, so it's in our interest to do everything possible to preserve the peace we are known for in the sub-region."
Burnt remains
Affected by the violence was Alhaji Mahama Jeboni, an opposition party chairman for the National Democratic Congress (NDC), who is based in Tamale.
His 30-year-old daughter, Sayakulu Mahama Jeboni told IRIN, "The attackers asked my father to choose between his life and his properties. There were about a hundred people all armed. They were arguing whether to burn the houses first or my father's commercial vehicles. They set fire to all of his eight cars." She said the flames razed their three homes to the ground. "Everything was burnt, all our possessions, possessions dating back to one hundred years. We have nothing left," Jeboni told IRIN.
Violent flashpoint
There have been other conflicts since the beginning of 2008, mostly based on land rights, but none that turned deadly.
In early August 2008, violence erupted during voter registration as supporters of the two main political parties vandalised registration centres and traded gun shots.
December elections
In December 2008 Ghana's President John Kufuor is expected to hand over power as he has served the maximum constitutional eight-year term.
The ruling New Patriotic Party seized power from the National Democratic Congress in 2000 during the first peaceful democratic transition of power since Ghana attained independence in 1957.
Now for the first time in 16 years the NPP, a party that won power while in opposition, must hand over the presidency and with polls predicting a close race with a high possibility of a run-off, that president could equally come from the NPP or the NDC.
But for Degbe, who is helping to launch an anti-violence campaign in the north, "the importance of the elections can never be a justification to destroy the country's peace."
[ This report does not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations ]
Copyright © 2008 UN Integrated Regional Information Networks. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200809091142.html
AlterNet:
Can Progressives Love Obama?
By David Moberg, In These Times
Posted on September 10, 2008
After Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) secured his party's nomination in June, his tightly knit campaign message began to fray at the edges. Critics from across the political spectrum charge that Obama has shifted to the center or right on a host of issues, and that the flip-flopping was - take your pick - good, bad, inevitable or duplicitous.
Progressives, whose hopes for Obama grew from his early opposition to the war in Iraq, and the youthful movement his candidacy inspired, wondered how much they could trust him on Iraq, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, civil liberties, gun control, the death penalty, trade, government funding of faith-based groups and other issues.
Disappointed as some progressives may be, Obama has not made a dramatic shift to the center: He's always been more centrist, cautious and compromising than many of his supporters - and critics - have wanted to admit.
"I don't think he's changed positions," says Robert Borosage, co-director of the progressive advocacy group, Campaign for America's Future. "He's always been a cautious liberal."
The Wall Street Journal took the supposed changes as Obama's admission that the conservative positions on most issues were correct, and concluded that Obama, as much as Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), would represent a third term for Bush.
Right-wing anti-Obama groups warned their followers that a devious Obama was trying to woo evangelicals from the conservative fold. McCain's backers used the controversies to tarnish Obama's character and disillusion his supporters.
Meanwhile, centrists rejoice that the middle - wherever that shifting spot may be - is always best. And a few on the left find evidence, once again, that no Democrat can be trusted.
Even if Obama is more consistent than critics allege, questions still haunt progressives. Does an Obama presidency promise dramatic and progressive change, as his rhetoric sometimes suggests? Or will Obama simply shift from Bush's neoconservatism back to the confused - if slightly less conservative - perspective of the Democratic Party establishment?
And what president would Obama most resemble? A Lincolnesque figure who would bring national unity (without a civil war), as Obama often implies?
A Clinton, who campaigned to "put people first" - as he had put it - but failed to take bold steps and ended up triangulating political differences?
A Kennedy, who inspired millions but got dragged down by conventional assumptions about American power in the world, as evidenced by the Vietnam War and Bay of Pigs?
Or, as many on the left fantasize, an FDR running a conservative campaign but responding to the times with dramatic reforms?
On the record
The character of an Obama presidency will depend not just on Obama but also on worsening world conditions that demand a new direction - economic collapse and financial instability, environmental and energy crises, failure of a military approach to terrorism, worsening inequality and insecurity for most Americans.
It also will depend on opportunities, such as the size of a Democratic congressional majority, and pressures, including demands from popular movements at home for an end to the war, single-payer national health insurance and worker rights, as well as high expectations from nations and leaders around the world.
What Obama says as a candidate does affect his chances of winning. It can also skew the direction of his potential presidency and demonstrate his will - and ability - to be a forceful leader.
In most of the controversies, Obama has maintained previous positions that often departed from progressive orthodoxy.
On other points, however, he has shifted in disappointing ways.
Obama broke his promise to vote against and filibuster the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) re-authorization. The measure included immunity from prosecution for the telecommunications companies that aided the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping of citizens.
"There is no reason why telephone companies should be given blanket immunity to cover violations of the rights of the American people," Obama had said in February. "We must reaffirm that no one in this country is above the law."
But in June, Obama told reporters that the FISA compromise was an improvement since it would put an "inspector general in place to investigate what happened previously." He continued: "Given ... all the information I received ... the underlying program itself actually is important and useful to American security as long as it has these constraints on them."
Though Obama didn't change his views on the merits of the legislation, his vote for the bill - which passed easily, thanks to many Democrats' defections - angered civil libertarians and the left blogosphere.
Obama's vote also defied majority public opinion: nearly two-thirds of respondents to a January 2008 poll for the American Civil Liberties Union said that the government should be required to get an individual warrant before listening to conversations between American citizens and people outside the country. Obama's decision did little to inoculate him from McCain attacks and undermined his image as a different, more principled political leader.
Obama also angered many liberals by siding with the conservative bloc of the Supreme Court against the Washington, D.C., handgun ban that interpreted the Second Amendment as protecting an individual right to own guns.
Obama has publicly supported the individual right to possess firearms at least since his 2004 U.S. senate race. A campaign spokesperson said in April that a staffer in Obama's 1996 Illinois senate campaign incorrectly indicated he supported a ban on handguns.
Obama - who is a longstanding supporter of government's right to regulate guns - has said he believed that the District of Columbia gun ban was constitutional, according to a November 2007 Chicago Tribune report, and thus shifted on that point in his support for the court decision.
Obama also sided with the conservative bloc's view that the death penalty is constitutional in child rape cases.
As a state senator, Obama reformed procedures to Illinois' flawed application of the death penalty, but he did not oppose the death penalty in all cases.
In his autobiography The Audacity of Hope, he wrote, "I believe there are some crimes - mass murder, the rape and murder of a child - so heinous, so beyond the pale [that the death penalty is warranted]." But the crucial issue before the Supreme Court was whether the rape alone - not murder - of a child permitted capital punishment. So Obama, reversing his previous position, took sides with right-wing Justice Antonin Scalia when he could have deferred to the court majority.
Shifts, but not flip-flops
Critics have misrepresented or overstated most of Obama's other supposed rightward shifts. Progressives might not like his decisions, but they are hardly "flip-flops," as critics from both sides have alleged.
For example, Obama's decision not to rely on public financing for the general election reflects both his own fundraising success and the massive funding edge the Republican National Committee has over the Democratic National Committee.
But John K. Wilson, author of Barack Obama: This Improbable Quest, argues that Obama had only pledged to "aggressively pursue ... a fundraising truce," not to adopt public financing under any conditions.
In November 2007, Obama wrote, "My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. ... If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election." Obama could have been more aggressive in pursuing an agreement, but he wasn't backing out of a firm pledge to take public funding.
It's no big surprise that on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Obama has muted his earlier expressions of sympathy for the Palestinian people and echoed full-throated support for Israeli positions. In a speech to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, he called for recognition of an "undivided" Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. He explained afterward that, rather than prejudging a thorny "final status" issue in the Middle East conflict, he was arguing that the city should not be physically divided by barbed wire.
Obama's embrace of Bush's program for funding faith-based initiatives, which angered many secular progressives, was not a flip-flop. He has said openly that religious institutions should play a greater role in public life.
In the Audacity of Hope, Obama distances himself from secular liberalism, writing that, "I think we make a mistake when we fail to acknowledge the power of faith in the lives of the American people, and so avoid joining a serious debate about how to reconcile faith with our modern, pluralistic democracy."
He advocated regulation that would require non-discrimination in hiring and the use of public funds only for secular ends.
"To truly be successful, this initiative must utilize the unique resources and identity of the faith community, while at the same time recognizing the indispensable role that government and public policy must play in tackling the root causes of poverty," writes Jim Wallis of the liberal evangelical group Sojourners. "Obama's proposals also contain necessary protections for religious liberty, pluralism and constitutional safeguards."
Mainstream reproductive choice groups such as NARAL and Planned Parenthood support Obama and have usually given him 100 percent approval on his voting record (even though he voted "present" on some legislation in the Illinois senate, as part of legislative strategy by defenders of abortion rights).
In April, however, Obama, departing from the position of most pro-choice organizations, said that states could properly restrict late-term abortions if they make an exception for cases that threaten the health of the mother.
In a recent interview with Relevant, a religious magazine, Obama said "mental distress" should not be counted as a health exception. NARAL responded to this new statement - not necessarily a shift, since his earlier votes were against late-term abortion bans with no exceptions - by emphasizing that Obama's position was still consistent with the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Roe v. Wade.
Obama "is right on the health exception, and he is right on reproductive choice, and he is going to be there for us 100 percent," NARAL President Nancy Keenan told National Public Radio.
During the primaries, Obama said he would re-negotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. Then in June, Fortune magazine headlined this story: "Obama: NAFTA not so bad after all."
This was no flip: Obama had never proposed to cancel NAFTA, simply re-open NAFTA and use U.S. leverage to strengthen labor and environmental protections, which he says he still wants to include in all trade deals. Obama has consistently expressed his support for expanded trade while recognizing the costs that globalization imposes on many people.
Progressives want Obama to expand his critique of current global economic policy, but despite those reservations, AFL-CIO public policy director and long-time progressive trade policy analyst Thea Lee says, "I think [Obama] has a better position on trade than any Democratic presidential nominee in my memory."
Obama stirred controversy when he said he might "refine" his plans for Iraq as conditions change. He quickly restated his plan to start withdrawing troops as soon as he takes office and to remove all combat forces within 16 months - a strategy given new credibility by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's call for foreign troops to withdraw by 2010. Throughout the campaign, Obama has said, he would be "as careful getting out as we were careless going in."
"I don't think his position on Iraq has changed," says Tom Swan, manager of Iraq Campaign 2008, a coalition committed to pushing withdrawal from Iraq during the presidential election. "It's not as fast a withdrawal as many of us want, but it's clearly different than staying for 100 years."
There are two bigger worries for progressives: First, how big a residual force would Obama retain and what would they do? Second, will his shift of troops to Afghanistan presage a counterproductive war in that country - making it Obama's Iraq?
The issue is not whether Obama has flipped, but whether he will shape a new foreign policy that acknowledges limits to militarism, unilateralism and the exercise of global power. To his credit, Obama has emphasized aggressive diplomacy over war, particularly in dealing with Iran, and despite his plan to expand military action in Afghanistan, he also proposes increasing economic development aid to win its people away from supporting the Taliban.
No Wellstone
Domestically, Obama's sermons to black audiences about family responsibility are politically valuable for winning white votes. Despite legitimate criticism that blacks alone seem to be singled out for failing families or watching too much television, many African Americans also embrace Obama's message. It was consistent with Obama's politics (he often talks about how government can't solve all problems) and did not preclude increased social responsibility toward the needy.
And his appointments of many mainstream Democratic economic and foreign policy advisers may raise anxieties, but they're not surprising for a candidate who has talked about transcending ideological divisions. Overall, Obama is no crusader like the late Sen. Paul Wellstone (D-Minn.), but a "pragmatic progressive," says Wilson.
"He's made some small shifts but no fundamental change," says Wilson. "Some on the left simply overestimated where he stood and thought he was some leftist. He hasn't changed fundamental values, but he's always been willing to compromise."
Throughout the primaries, Obama walked a political tightrope, inspiring hope for dramatic change and, for other supporters, a new post-partisan politics. If he appears not to be principled in his pursuit of fundamental change, he risks losing the energy that could carry him to victory.
Strategists from the Democratic left argue that Obama needs a bold progressive plan, especially on pocketbook economic issues and the war, not only to solve the nation's problems but also, simply, to win.
"The enthusiasm he garnered from younger people was based on their perception of him related to what they wanted to see, not what was there," says Bill Fletcher, executive editor of BlackCommentator.com, and a leader of Progressives for Obama. "Their perceptions of him were rooted in rebellion against the Bush and Clinton years, and their hopes for a different kind of politics. If Obama presents himself as a kinder, gentler DLC'er [the corporate-oriented Democratic Leadership Conference], it's not going to inspire."
'The movement, not the person'
Antiwar and healthcare proponents are organizing independent efforts to make their issues central to the presidential race this fall, and to keep pressure on Obama.
Iraq Campaign 2008, for example, is mobilizing a broad coalition to knock on "a million doors for peace" on Sept. 20, talking about the war in Iraq and its costs to Americans. On healthcare, progressives are divided between growing ranks of single-payer, Medicare-for-all advocates and a new, institutionally weightier coalition of more than 100 labor unions and other advocacy groups - Health Care for America Now. The coalition, which includes organizations such as AFSCME (public employees) SEIU, the AFL-CIO, Campaign for America's Future, and ACORN - promote a strategy closer to Obama's proposal that would include employer-provided or individually purchased corporate insurance and the option of a public plan
While some on the left may still opt for the Green Party's Cynthia McKinney or independent Ralph Nader, most typically say they support Obama because of the need to defeat McCain. Members of the 125 chapters of Progressive Democrats for America (PDA) overwhelmingly preferred Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) or John Edwards. Now, says PDA Executive Director Tim Carpenter, their goals in the campaign are to support "more the Barack Obama movement, not Barack Obama, the person" and "to make him a better candidate."
Democracy for America did not endorse a candidate in the primaries. Now the 725,000-member group - which grew out of the 2004 Howard Dean campaign - is working to support Obama and to push issues, such as withdrawal from Iraq and universal health insurance.
"This battle is about a culture of activism versus a culture of incumbency," says DFA chair Jim Dean, Howard Dean's brother. Whatever disagreements DFA may have with Obama, "I'd rather have the discussion with Obama than with John McCain."
Obama's campaign will set its own course. The dominant culture could push him to become more conservative, not only during the campaign, but even more so if he wins. Yet by organizing popular movements, progressives can promote issues in the election, encourage Obama not to drift to the right, and build the expectations and organizations that put demands on an Obama presidency.
"It's going to be a bumpy ride," says Carl Davidson, an organizer with Progressives for Obama. "People will get bent out of shape. This is politics. You've got to keep a laser focus - stop McCain, stop the war, keep your eyes on the prize."
And the prize is the possibility - not the certainty - of what an Obama presidency can deliver.
David Moberg is a senior editor of In These Times.
© 2008 In These Times All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/97484/
Asia Times:
US's 'good' war hits Pakistan hard
By Syed Saleem Shahzad
Sep 10, 2008
KARACHI - Seven years after the United States led the invasion of Afghanistan in search of al-Qaeda and to topple the Taliban government, US President George W Bush has added neighboring Pakistan to the list of countries that are "a major 'war on terror' battleground", while also announcing a "quiet surge" of troops into Afghanistan.
Bush, in remarks prepared for delivery to the US National Defense University and released by the White House late on Monday, said Afghanistan, Iraq and now Pakistan "pose unique challenges for our country" in the worldwide conflict against terror and that it is in Pakistan's interests to "defeat terrorists and extremists".
What Bush didn't spell out is that it is also in the US's interests that Pakistan get tough on militants, and that the US is increasingly taking matters into its own hands inside Pakistan. In the the latest incident on Monday, at least 25 people were killed in a missile attack by unmanned Predator drones on a Pakistani village near the Afghan border.
The USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier has moved into the Persian Gulf. Contrary to comments by US officials that it is to relieve the USS Abraham Lincoln, Asia Times Online has learned it is part of a new task force, separate from the Lincoln, which will allow the US to increase air sorties in the South Asian war theater. The Bush administration, critics say, is desperate to notch up a major terror success ahead of the presidential elections in November.
Pakistan, under president-elect Asif Ali Zardari, is on board with the US's war strategy, but, to the surprise of Islamabad and with potentially devastating consequences for Pakistan, the US has trained its guns on the "good" Taliban based in Pakistan with deep connections to the Pakistani establishment.
In Monday's drone attack, several missiles were fired at an Islamic madrassa (seminary) and the house of powerful Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani in Dandi Darpa Khail in the North Waziristan tribal area near the border with Afghanistan.
Jalaluddin, the spiritual leader of the Haqqani network and legendary figure in the Afghan mujahideen in the fight against the Soviets in the 1980s, and his son, Sirajuddin, the operational head of the most powerful component of the present Afghan resistance, had left the area. Most of those killed were woman and children from the families of the Haqqanis.
Earlier, three strikes, two on South Waziristan and one on North Waziristan, targeted Pakistan-friendly commander Haji Nazeer's area. Haji Nazeer operates the biggest Taliban network in the neighboring Afghan province of Paktika.
Monday's was the fourth attack this month inside Pakistan either by US drones or by US special forces and clearly indicates that the US has already opened up a war theater in Pakistan.
In the line of US fire
That the US set its sights on the Haqqanis is perplexing, and - given the failed outcome - indicates that it struck with inadequate, if any, input from Pakistan.
Although Sirajuddin Haqqani's network is the most resourceful and the strongest component of the Taliban-led Afghan national resistance, the Haqqanis - like Haji Nazeer - have long-standing links with Pakistan.
The US's information on the network was clearly sketchy. The madrassa targeted on Monday had been closed for some time and the Haqqanis are known by people in the area to have left the tribal region as they were on the US's radar.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) publishes posters saying Sirajuddin Haqqani is a wanted man, but it does not have a photograph of him - merely a portrait of his father.
NATO headquarters and US intelligence have tried to gain information on Sirajuddin by interviewing people from his Zadran tribe in Khost and Paktia provinces in Afghanistan. But the people accessible to NATO only interacted with Sirajuddin several years ago when he was militarily naive and irrelevant. (The reclusive Sirajuddin gave Asia Times Online a rare interview - see Through the eyes of the Taliban May 5, 2004.)
The Haqqanis have always been on good terms with the Pakistani security apparatus. Jalaluddin Haqqani was persuaded by Pakistan to surrender to the Taliban after the student militia emerged from southern Afghanistan in the mid-1990s and reached Khost and Paktia, Haqqani's domain.
Haqqani remained an outsider under Taliban rule, but he never betrayed them. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the US and the invasion of Afghanistan a few months later, the only name Pakistan discussed with Washington in terms of regime change in Afghanistan was Jalaluddin Haqqani.
He was invited to Islamabad and urged to become Taliban leader Mullah Omar's replacement in Kabul, but he declined and returned to the mountains of Paktia, Paktika and Khost to organize a guerrilla war against the Americans.
After five years, Haqqani's network emerged as the leading component of the resistance and he was reckoned as Mullah Omar's rival (a charge he always denied).
This once again brought hope to Islamabad that if the Americans decided to abandon Afghanistan, Haqqani, who is friendly with top Afghan leaders, especially in the north, would be a most useful connection in Kabul.
It is most likely then that the US acted on its own in going after this key Taliban network.
However, in militant and jihadi circles the perception is that the new government in Islamabad is fully cooperating with the US, including going after the "good" Taliban. As a result, for the first time, there is a chance of enmity between the Pakistani establishment and the Haqqani network. Hafiz Gul Bahadur, the chief of the Taliban in North Waziristan and a close ally of Haqqani, was quick to announce that they would avenge the attack.
A similar backlash could occur in South Waziristan, where the US's recent attacks were aimed in Taliban commander Haji Nazeer's area, rather than at the biggest Taliban network, the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Taliban led by anti-Pakistan Baitullah Mehsud, or his associates in other tribal areas. Mehsud has been branded in the US media as the world's most dangerous person.
Haji Nazeer runs the biggest jihadi network in the Afghan province of Paktia and has always been close to the Pakistani establishment and he is a rival of Mehsud and his al-Qaeda allies. In January 2007, at Pakistan's instigation, Haji Nazeer led a massacre of Uzbek militants in South Waziristan, killing over 200 of them and forcing the remainder to flee.
Jihadis in the Haji Nazeer camp are bitter that the US has targeted them and for the first time recently carried out attacks on the Pakistani security forces in retaliation.
This American focus on "good" Taliban has blunted Pakistan's bid to create divisions within the Taliban as all groups are uniting under the umbrella of the Emirate of Mullah Omar - and all their guns are now trained on Pakistan.
Syed Saleem Shahzad is Asia Times Online's Pakistan Bureau Chief. He can be reached at saleem_shahzad2002@yahoo.com
Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JI10Df02.html
Clarín: El existencialismo visceral
de Francis Bacon invade la Tate Britain
Esta semana se inaugura en Londres una de las mayores retrospectivas dedicadas a Bacon, cuya visión desoladora y descarnado tratamiento de la sexualidad causaron admiración y rechazo. La muestra, que incluye casi 60 obras que cubren medio siglo de su creación –entre trípticos, autorretratos y sus famosos desnudos deformados– permanecerá hasta enero de 2009, para exhibirse luego en el Museo del Prado.
09.09.2008 | Arte
La Tate Britain de Londres dedica una retrospectiva a Francis Bacon (1909-1992), un artista cuya desoladora visión de la condición humana, unida a su descarnado tratamiento de la homosexualidad masculina, despertó en su momento tanto fascinación como rechazo. Sin embargo, su obra no ha dejado de ganar importancia con el tiempo.
Esta exposición del más importante de los pintores británicos del siglo XX, que podrá visitarse hasta el 4 de enero de 2009 y viajará luego al Museo del Prado de Madrid, comprende alrededor de setenta obras que cubren casi medio siglo de creación continua, interrumpida por su muerte.
Nacido en Dublín de padres ingleses, Bacon trabajó algún tiempo como diseñador de interiores antes de comenzar a pintar hacia el año 1928 y, exigente consigo mismo, destruyó la mayor parte de su producción temprana.
Su auténtica irrupción en el mundo del arte contemporáneo no se produjo hasta 1945, cuando su tríptico Tres Estudios para Figuras en la base de una Crucifixión, pintado un año antes, causó un enorme impacto en los visitantes de la galería Lefebvre de París, donde se expuso por primera vez al público.
En ese tríptico, perteneciente hoy a la Tate, están "in nuce" algunas de las constantes de su obra: el aislamiento –más tarde enjaulamiento– de la figura, la violencia sadomasoquista, la náusea, la fascinación por la carne, elementos todos que hacen de Bacon el pintor existencialista por excelencia.
Un existencialismo visceral, viscoso y abiertamente sexual parece estar en las antípodas del existencialismo distante, ascético y casi metafísico de su contemporáneo suizo Alberto Giacometti.
El mismo escribió en 1964 de su obra que le gustaría que sus lienzos parecieran como si hubiese pasado por ellos una presencia humana dejando su huella "como un caracol deja su baba".
Bacon fue un coleccionista de imágenes, de fotografías y reproducciones de todo tipo que veía en revistas y libros y que recortaba y amontonaba en su caótico estudio para echar eventualmente mano de ellas cada vez que lo necesitaba.
Totalmente autodidacta, pero fascinado por los momentos fuertes de la historia del arte, y en especial por la pintura de Massaccio, Velázquez, Goya, Rembrandt, Van Gogh o Picasso, Bacon no dudó en apropiarse de imágenes ajenas y manipularlas para sus propias creaciones.
Su apropiación más famosa, al margen de las de las series de fotografías de atletas y animales de Eadward Muybridge, es la que hizo del retrato del Papa Inocencio X, de Velázquez, que distorsionó hasta convertirlo en la imagen icónica del aislamiento y la desesperación más radicales.
Otra de las influencias mayores sobre Bacon es la que ejerció el Picasso de las figuras violentamente distorsionadas de los años treinta, aunque en los cadáveres de animales que aparecen en sus estudios para una crucifixión hay también claras citas de Rembrandt y Soutine.
La exposición de la Tate incluye algunos de sus trípticos más enigmáticos, como los inspirados por poemas de T.S. Eliot o la Orestíada de Esquilo, con sus cuerpos desnudos, miembros descoyuntados y sus misteriosos rastros de sangre.
Su material favorito era sin duda la figura humana: Bacon no se sentía evidentemente a gusto con el paisaje, del que hay, sin embargo, alguna muestra, muy particular, en la exposición londinense.
Pero están sobre todo sus desnudos, tanto los femeninos- por ejemplo, los de su amiga Henrietta Moraes- como los masculinos, amasijos amorfos de carne que parecen librar un combate agónico en medio de un ring.
Y están también sus retratos -y autorretratos, aunque él mismo decía detestar su rostro y pintarlo sólo cuando no tenía otro modelo- con sus rostros retorcidos y deformados por esas violentas pinceladas que hacen su estilo inmediatamente reconocible.
Entre ellos destacan sin duda los que pintó casi obsesivamente de su amante George Dyer, cuyo suicidio en un hotel parisino, la víspera de la inauguración de la retrospectiva de Bacon en el Grand Palais de esa capital, dejó en el artista un enorme vacío.
Bacon le dedicó varios trípticos póstumos, desde el más misterioso y elegíaco de todos, pintado en 1971, sólo dos meses después del suicidio, hasta los mucho más desesperados de 1972 y sobre todo de 1973.
En este último, el artista muestra a su amigo solo en la habitación de su hotel, vomitando en el lavatorio o sentado en la taza del váter, rodeado de una mancha negra que se diría la muerte en trance de engullirle.
Fuente. EFE
Copyright 1996-2008 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/notas/2008/09/09/_-01756441.htm
Guardian: The right conspires to hide it,
but this is no classless society
Camouflaging reality has stifled debate on wealth and inequality. Labour's silence drains political identity from the poorest
Polly Toynbee
The Guardian,
Tuesday September 9 2008
After my piece last week about Accord, the campaign against faith schools, the gentle Jesus lovers struck back. Here's an email from the US: "I love to read the Guardian for its sneering, Christ-hating elitist attitudes. We believers kick ass for Jesus Christ, that's for sure! White hetero America-loving MALE!!!"
You might not expect the Catholic Herald to be ass-kicking for Jesus too - though Conrad Black is still a director. Far be it from me to define Christian values, but their latest editorial is hardly of the turn the other cheek tendency: "Imagine the deadliest dinner party north London has to offer - Polly Toynbee, AC Grayling, Bernard Crick, Fiona Millar - all showing off like crazy as they attempt to outdo each other in moral righteousness over an organic aubergine souffle served by an underpaid Polish nanny."
Let's leave God out of this. Instead, let's look at this virulent vein of personal abuse that slips like a stiletto between the ribs of ideological argument. It is class, which has become a weapon used mainly by the right against anyone on the liberal left who is middle class in order to stifle the salient issues.
The Jesus ass-kicker calls me "elitist" and the Catholic Herald uses "dinner party" "north London" "aubergine souffle" and "underpaid Polish nanny" as class machine-gunfire. Never mind that I live in Lambeth and my most constant hate-swipes on Comment is Free and in rightwing political blogs is for being middle class. Indeed, I do come from a middle-class background.
This line of attack is turned mainly on women of a similar background. Look at the loathing reserved for Harriet Harman, Shirley Williams, Margaret Hodge, Tessa Jowell, Tessa Blackstone, Fiona Mactaggart and others. They attract a rightwing spleen that middle-class male politicians escape. Neither Hilary Benn, with a millionaire mother, nor his father get it in the neck like Margaret Jay: class and misogyny fuse together in the rightwing hater.
Rightwingers have long used class against any middle-class leftist, a bullying that sidesteps the real political argument. It implies anyone middle class is a traitor to their own by supporting fairer shares. The abuser never explains what's hypocritical about those born privileged arguing on the side of those who are not.
It lays bare the rightwing mind set - everyone should root for themselves, and devil take the hindmost. The only authentic politics is class self-interest. Only those on low incomes are entitled to speak up for themselves - which is convenient, since almost by definition, fewer low earners have access to political platforms. If they did, they'd earn political or journalistic salaries and get the same contempt for "hypocrisy" - unless they were Mahatma Ghandis who gave everything away, and publicly. Exceptional saintliness seems to be the only acceptably pure position from which well-paid professionals on the left can argue that people like them should pay higher taxes.
Labour suffered for its toff attack at the Crewe byelection, raising much discussion about whether we are still a class-ridden society. Conservatives like to protest that class in Britain is a dead duck: they would, wouldn't they, with a frontbench of Old Etonians? But if those same Old Etonians were sitting on the Labour benches, the Tories would be first to shout class abuse. This cleverly stops Labour exposing the gross self-interest of the trustafarians on the Tory benches who would, if in power, raise the inheritance tax threshold to £2m. The remarkably close synergy between people who earn a lot and those who vote Tory to keep their taxes down is something pollsters can pinpoint, street by street. "The politics of envy" was such a cunning phrase to stop Labour attacking selfishness in the well-off.
How adeptly the right took class out of politics to disguise the unaltering distribution of power and money. Oxford's John Goldthorpe chronicles, over decades, how little has changed. Commanding most of the media, the right constructed a "classless Britain" myth. New Labour colluded - Cool Britannia was a classless trope to shed its cloth-cap image. But there was nothing cool about Sunday's picture of Prince Harry's girlfriend Chelsy holding a "chav" fancy dress party, where royal hangers-on dressed in (very expensive) shell suits, hoop earrings and gold necklaces. What's hip about hoorays mocking their idea of the working class? The new classlessness is just the yob rich shedding all class embarrassment.
The idea that we are all classless now drains any political identity from the 50% of all employees who earn less than £23,000. Half the population has almost ceased to exist in the mirrors in which the nation sees itself, airbrushed from magazines, celeb gossip and lifestyle TV. People no longer know what others earn; even the low-paid imagine they are nearer the middle-income range than they are. Indignation at the distribution of wealth is stifled by this camouflaging of class reality.
Scratchily angry cynicism about politics springs partly from no one honestly representing what's happening to people with middle and low incomes. Half the population has seen very little real growth in recent years, and the bottom third has suffered an absolute fall in income for five years. People feel it, yet no one says it. As Labour blathered on about high GDP growth, whose growth was that? Official figures show it was among the top 20%, and mostly the top 5%.
By sleight of hand, Britain abandoned class politics in a still deeply class-bound society. The illusion that anyone can make it is created by fixating on a few who do - or an older generation who did in the 50s and 60s. Alan Sugar and the Beckhams are useful fig leaves - as if a room full of lottery winners were typical of lottery players. Yet class rancour breaks out frequently. Gut resentment rankles, but since Labour is silent on obscenely ostentatious wealth, there is no coherent political channel for it.
Centrica's chief executive has just had a £1m pay increase, up to £4.8m, despite - or because of - this winter's 35% gas bill rise. Chelsy's chav party is a reflection of the same sod them all attitude that sees the Cable & Wireless boss about to snatch a £20m windfall. The right spits venom at talk of class, except to sneer at middle-class leftists, but avoids hard facts: a working-class child is 15 times less likely to move upwards than a middle-class child is to stay put. This is no classless society, but a society whose politics conspire to deny it.
polly.toynbee@guardian
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News and Media Limited 2008
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/sep/09/britishidentity.labour
Jeune Afrique: Un Français, ancien de l'ONU,
jugé à Paris pour viols sur mineures en Afrique
RD CONGO - 9 septembre 2008 - par AFP
"Là-bas l'homme blanc a ce qu'il veut", aurait-il dit aux enquêteurs : un ancien fonctionnaire français de l'Onu est jugé depuis mardi à Paris pour le viol d'une vingtaine d'adolescentes lorsqu'il était en poste dans des pays africains entre 1998 et 2004.
Didier Bourguet, 44 ans, originaire de Saône-et-Loire, doit répondre pendant trois jours devant la cour d'assises de la capitale de viols sur mineures de 15 ans, des accusations qu'il a niées à l'ouverture des débats, assurant n'avoir jamais dû recourir à la contrainte.
Les faits auraient eu lieu en République centrafricaine entre 1998 et 2000, puis de 2000 à 2004 en République démocratique du Congo (RDC), où ce titulaire d'un CAP de mécanicien automobile entretenait les véhicules de la mission de maintien de la paix des Nations Unies (Monuc).
Didier Bourguet est également accusé d'avoir détenu dans un disque dur 250 images pornographiques, certaines provenant de son propre appareil numérique qu'il aurait utilisé pour immortaliser ses ébats.
Il encourt vingt ans de réclusion criminelle.
Arrêté à Goma, en RDC, fin octobre 2004, il avait été rapidement remis aux autorités françaises, en vertu de son "immunité" onusienne, avant d'être placé en détention provisoire en décembre 2004.
A une policière de la brigade de protection des mineurs de Paris chargée de l'interroger dès son interpellation à l'aéroport, il confiera des actes sexuels avec "environ 24" adolescentes de 12 à 18 ans, payées chaque fois "10 à 20 dollars", a témoigné à la barre cette enquêtrice, Nathalie Freund.
Pour les fellations et pénétrations pratiquées avec ces mineures, jamais vierges selon lui, il n'exprime pas de remords, s'étonne la policière, à qui il livre moult détails sur les rencontres - via des intermédiaires eux aussi rémunérés -, les tarifs ou même les prénoms.
"Pourquoi des relations avec des mineures et pas avec des prostituées?", interroge le président, Jean-Pierre Getti.
"Il disait que les prostituées savaient simuler alors que les mineures vivaient l'acte pleinement", répond Mme Freund, aujourd'hui en poste au SRPJ de Toulouse.
Le violeur présumé lui aurait aussi confié sa satisfaction d'être enfin interpellé, car il voulait se soigner, s'inquiétait d'être attiré par des Africaines de plus en plus jeunes. "Là-bas l'esprit colonial persiste, l'homme blanc à ce qu'il veut", aurait-il justifié.
Dans l'après-midi, l'accusé, veste ample sur un corps fluet, crâne chauve, a affirmé qu'il demandait systématiquement aux mineures leur consentement préalable avant les rapports. Aucune n'aurait dit "non".
"Ce que j'ai réalisé après c'est qu'elles avaient pu subir des pressions pour un intérêt financier (...) j'avais perdu la notion des réalités", admet-il quand le président relève le "décalage" entre sa situation d'expatrié aux 2.600 dollars mensuels et celle de ces jeunes filles pauvres.
Une victime présumée, celle qui a permis son arrestation à Goma, a ensuite raconté comment elle aurait été abusée après s'être vu administrer "une tasse de thé" lui ayant provoqué "comme un vertige".
Accusé d'avoir exigé une fellation de cette jeune Congolaise - aujourd'hui âgée de 16 ans et réfugiée au Canada -, l'accusé a nié vigoureusement.
Au cours de l'instruction, il avait plaidé la thèse du "traquenard" tendu par les proches de l'adolescente, qui l'auraient incitée à coucher avec lui avant de tenter de monnayer chèrement leur silence.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/
article_depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP10048unfraeuqirf0
Mail & Guardian:
Hurricane Ike over Gulf of Mexico, targets Texas
JEFF FRANKS | HAVANA, CUBA - Sep 10 2008
Hurricane Ike swirled over the Gulf of Mexico on Tuesday, targeting Texas near the US offshore oil patch after toppling decrepit buildings in Cuba's capital and ripping the communist-run island from end to end.
Ike, a category-one storm but strengthening late on Tuesday with 130km/h winds, left a long trail of destruction across the Caribbean and had energy companies fearful it could do the same to their Gulf oil rigs as they scurried to evacuate workers and shut down production.
Forecasters said Ike would likely regain power in the Gulf's warm waters and become a major storm again, revving up to a category-three on the five-step hurricane intensity scale with a minimum of 178km/h winds.
But latest projections pointed Ike toward the middle of the Texas coast, skirting to the west of the main region for offshore production in the Gulf, which provides a quarter of US oil and 15% of its natural gas.
Oil futures dipped more than $2 to below $105 on the forecast, although the US National Hurricane Centre in Miami warned that its projections were subject to change.
New Orleans, still scarred by Katrina, which killed 1 500 people and caused $80-billion in damage on the US Gulf Coast in 2005, appeared to be out of danger.
At 3am GMT, the hurricane centre said in its latest advisory the storm was 195km west of Havana and regaining strength as it churned west-northwest at 15km/h.
Ike wreaked widespread damage on the east and west sides of Cuba.
Few official figures have emerged yet, but state-run media showed a panorama of destruction across the island, still reeling from the more powerful Hurricane Gustav 10 days ago.
Ike struck eastern Cuba on Sunday with 195km/h winds and torrential rains that destroyed buildings, wiped out the electricity grid, toppled trees, leveled crops including sugar cane fields, and turned rivers into roaring torrents.
Costly Cuban clean-up
After dumping up to 40cm of rain on the island the downpour continued on Tuesday even as Ike moved away, causing widespread flooding and growing alarm among officials.
Ike's damage could total between $3-billion and $4-billion, according to some official sources, said Elisabeth Byrs of the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs at a news briefing in Geneva.
Cuba said Ike did no serious damage to its key nickel mines and processing plants and it expected to restart production of its top export in a few days.
Havana, which barely escaped the full wrath of Gustav, was pounded by Ike's winds and rain on Monday and Tuesday, which toppled at least 16 of the many beautiful but crumbling old buildings in the capital.
"It sounds like Havana has been invaded by an army of ghosts," Havana resident Maria Valdez said, referring to the howling winds that blew through streets littered with fallen trees, foliage and debris.
A total of 2,6-million people were evacuated ahead of Ike, or about 22% of the country's 11,4-million population, but officials said four people died in the eastern provinces.
No deaths were reported from Gustav, but state-run Prensa Latina said on Tuesday it damaged 140 000 buildings - 90 000 of them homes - when it blasted across the Isle of Youth and westernmost province of Pinar del Rio.
After crossing the eastern provinces, Ike dipped into the Caribbean and headed north-west where it made its second Cuba landfall on Tuesday at Punta la Capitana in Pinar del Rio. The storm ripped across the same region struck by Gustav before leaving the island near the town of Manuel Sanguily on Pinar del Rio's north central coast.
Before Cuba, Ike hit Britain's Turks and Caicos Islands and the southern Bahamas as a ferocious category-four hurricane. Floods triggered by its torrential rains were blamed for at least 71 deaths in Haiti, where Tropical Storm Hanna killed 500 last week.
The United Nations said it would launch an emergency appeal for money with about 800 000 people in Haiti in need of urgent help, nearly half of them children. The impoverished country has been hit by four storms in a month.
Reuters
Source: Mail & Guardian Online
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2008-09-10-hurricane-ike-over-gulf-of-mexico-targets-texas
Mother Jones:
Worshiping the Indispensable Nation
Commentary: The Bush/neocon attempt to transform the Middle East has failed. The sooner we face up to that failure, the sooner we can get about repairing the damage.
By Andrew Bacevich
September 9, 2008
Can anyone be surprised that, once again, the attacks of 9/11/01 were reflexively ground zero for embattled Republicans? George W. Bush led the way at the Republican National Convention, saying of John McCain, "We need a president who understands the lessons of September 11, 2001." In his convention keynote address, Rudy Giuliani followed suit, zapping Obama and his supporters this way: "The Democrats rarely mentioned the attacks of September 11. They are in a state of denial about the threat that faces us now and in the future." Post-convention, it's evidently time to assure the nation that Sarah Palin is just the pit bull to handle the next 9/11. Now comes the news that this Thursday, the endless presidential election campaign will finally make it—quite literally—to Ground Zero. Barack Obama and John McCain will "put aside politics" and appear together for the yearly ceremonies. By now, however, it's far too late to "put aside" 9/11, no less remove it from American politics. Our world has been profoundly reshaped, after all, by the decisions Bush and his top officials made in the wake of those attacks.
Still, taking up the President's implied question, what "lessons" exactly should be drawn, seven years later, other than that you stand a reasonable chance of winning elections by invoking 9/11 ad nauseum? As Andrew Bacevich, author of the New York Times bestselling book, The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, indicates below, there are indeed lessons to be drawn. They are, in fact, devastating to the Bush administration, and unless they are grasped, further disaster is undoubtedly in the offing. (To watch a video of Bacevich discussing those post-9/11 lessons, click here.) Tom
9/11 Plus Seven
By Andrew J. Bacevich
The events of the past seven years have yielded a definitive judgment on the strategy that the Bush administration conceived in the wake of 9/11 to wage its so-called Global War on Terror. That strategy has failed, massively and irrevocably. To acknowledge that failure is to confront an urgent national priority: to scrap the Bush approach in favor of a new national security strategy that is realistic and sustainable—a task that, alas, neither of the presidential candidates seems able to recognize or willing to take up.
On September 30, 2001, President Bush received from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld a memorandum outlining U.S. objectives in the War on Terror. Drafted by Rumsfeld's chief strategist Douglas Feith, the memo declared expansively: "If the war does not significantly change the world's political map, the U.S. will not achieve its aim." That aim, as Feith explained in a subsequent missive to his boss, was to "transform the Middle East and the broader world of Islam generally."
Rumsfeld and Feith were co-religionists: Along with other senior Bush administration officials, they worshipped in the Church of the Indispensable Nation, a small but intensely devout Washington-based sect formed in the immediate wake of the Cold War. Members of this church shared an exalted appreciation for the efficacy of American power, especially hard power. The strategy of transformation emerged as a direct expression of their faith.
The members of this church were also united by an equally exalted estimation of their own abilities. Lucky the nation to be blessed with such savvy and sophisticated public servants in its hour of need!
The goal of transforming the Islamic world was nothing if not bold. It implied far-reaching political, economic, social, and even cultural adjustments. At a press conference on September 18, 2001, Rumsfeld spoke bluntly of the need to "change the way that they live." Rumsfeld didn't specify who "they" were. He didn't have to. His listeners understood without being told: "They" were Muslims inhabiting a vast arc of territory that stretched from Morocco in the west all the way to the Moro territories of the Southern Philippines in the east.
Yet boldly conceived action, if successfully executed, offered the prospect of solving a host of problems. Once pacified (or "liberated"), the Middle East would cease to breed or harbor anti-American terrorists. Post-9/11 fears about weapons of mass destruction falling into the hands of evil-doers could abate. Local regimes, notorious for being venal, oppressive, and inept, might finally get serious about cleaning up their acts. Liberal values, including rights for women, would flourish. A part of the world perpetually dogged by violence would enjoy a measure of stability, with stability promising not so incidentally to facilitate exploitation of the region's oil reserves. There was even the possibility of enhancing the security of Israel. Like a powerful antibiotic, the Bush administration's strategy of transformation promised to clean out not simply a single infection but several; or to switch metaphors, a strategy of transformation meant running the table.
When it came to implementation, the imperative of the moment was to think big. Just days after 9/11, Rumsfeld was charging his subordinates to devise a plan of action that had "three, four, five moves behind it." By December 2001, the Pentagon had persuaded itself that the first move—into Afghanistan—had met success. The Bush administration wasted little time in pocketing its ostensible victory. Attention quickly shifted to the second move, seen by insiders as holding the key to ultimate success: Iraq.
Fix Iraq and moves three, four, and five promised to come easily. Writing in the Weekly Standard, William Kristol and Robert Kagan got it exactly right: "The president's vision will, in the coming months, either be launched successfully in Iraq, or it will die in Iraq."
The point cannot be emphasized too strongly: Saddam Hussein's (nonexistent) weapons of mass destruction and his (imaginary) ties to Al Qaeda never constituted the real reason for invading Iraq—any more than the imperative of defending Russian "peacekeepers" in South Ossetia explains the Kremlin's decision to invade Georgia.
Iraq merely offered a convenient place from which to launch a much larger and infinitely more ambitious project. "After Hussein is removed," enthused Hudson Institute analyst Max Singer, "there will be an earthquake through the region." Success in Iraq promised to endow the United States with hitherto unprecedented leverage. Once the United States had made an example of Saddam Hussein, as the influential neoconservative Richard Perle put it, dealing with other ne'er-do-wells would become simple: "We could deliver a short message, a two-word message: 'You're next.'" Faced with the prospect of sharing Saddam's fate, Syrians, Iranians, Sudanese, and other recalcitrant regimes would see submission as the wiser course—so Perle and others believed.
Members of the administration tried to imbue this strategic vision with a softer ideological gloss. "For 60 years," Condoleezza Rice explained to a group of students in Cairo, "my country, the United States, pursued stability at the expense of democracy in this region here in the Middle East—and we achieved neither." No more. "Now, we are taking a different course. We are supporting the democratic aspirations of all people." The world's Muslims needed to know that the motives behind the U.S. incursion into Iraq and its actions elsewhere in the region were (or had, at least, suddenly become) entirely benign. Who knows? Rice may even have believed the words she spoke.
In either case—whether the strategy of transformation aimed at dominion or democratization—today, seven years after it was conceived, we can assess exactly what it has produced. The answer is clear: next to nothing, apart from squandering vast resources and exacerbating the slide toward debt and dependency that poses a greater strategic threat to the United States than Osama bin Laden ever did.
In point of fact, hardly had the Pentagon commenced its second move, its invasion of Iraq, when the entire strategy began to unravel. In Iraq, President Bush's vision of regional transformation did die, much as Kagan and Kristol had feared. No amount of CPR credited to the so-called surge will revive it. Even if tomorrow Iraq were to achieve stability and become a responsible member of the international community, no sensible person could suggest that Operation Iraqi Freedom provides a model to apply elsewhere. Senator John McCain says that he'll keep U.S. combat troops in Iraq for as long as it takes. Yet even he does not propose "solving" any problems posed by Syria or Iran (much less Pakistan) by employing the methods that the Bush administration used to "solve" the problem posed by Iraq. The Bush Doctrine of preventive war may remain nominally on the books. But, as a practical matter, it is defunct.
The United States will not change the world's political map in the ways top administration officials once dreamed of. There will be no earthquake that shakes up the Middle East—unless the growing clout of Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas in recent years qualifies as that earthquake. Given the Pentagon's existing commitments, there will be no threats of "you're next" either—at least none that will worry our adversaries, as the Russians have neatly demonstrated. Nor will there be a wave of democratic reform—even Rice has ceased her prattling on that score. Islam will remain stubbornly resistant to change, except on terms of its own choosing. We will not change the way "they" live.
In a book that he co-authored during the run-up to the invasion, Kristol confidently declared, "The mission begins in Baghdad, but it does not end there." In fact, the Bush administration's strategy of transformation has ended. It has failed miserably. The sooner we face up to that failure, the sooner we can get about repairing the damage.
Retired Col. Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at Boston University. His bestselling new book is The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. You can read excerpts from it by clicking here, and here, or watch a video of him discussing the lessons of 9/11, seven years later, by clicking here.
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/
tomdispatch/2008/09/worshiping-the-indispensable-nation.html
Página/12:
Nuevas historias recuperadas
Dos jóvenes apropiados durante la dictadura conocieron su identidad
Se trata de Laura Catalina De Sanctis Ovando, que habría nacido en el Hospital Militar de Campo de Mayo a mediados de 1977, y de Federico Cagnola Pereyra, que nació en la ESMA en febrero de 1978.
Por Diego Martínez
Miércoles, 10 de Septiembre de 2008
Otros dos hijos de militantes políticos secuestrados y desaparecidos durante la última dictadura militar recuperaron ayer su identidad. Se trata de Laura Catalina De Sanctis Ovando, que habría nacido en el Hospital Militar de Campo de Mayo a mediados de 1977, y de Federico Cagnola Pereyra, que nació en la ESMA en febrero de 1978. Son dos jóvenes que después de treinta años tienen la posibilidad de conocer su verdadero nombre y su verdadera historia. En el caso de Federico, fue gracias a una investigación de la agrupación HIJOS. La noticia se anunciará formalmente hoy a las 12 en la sede de Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, Virrey Cevallos 592.
Laura es hija de Myriam “Tita” Ovando, nacida el 17 de enero de 1956 en Rosario, donde estudió psicología, y de Raúl René De Sanctis, que nació el 21 de julio de 1954 en Concepción del Uruguay, Entre Ríos. Ambos militaban en Montoneros. Myriam fue secuestrada el 1º de abril de 1977 en Virreyes, cerca de su domicilio, en el norte del Gran Buenos Aires. Estaba embarazada de seis meses. Se sabe que estuvo secuestrada en una casa de militantes montoneros, en Escobar, que luego el Ejército utilizó como centro de detención. Desde allí fue trasladada a Campo de Mayo.
En cautiverio, Myriam logró escribir una carta para sus padres. Allí les contó que había dado a luz a una niña a la que llamó Laura Catalina. La carta sugería su certeza de que la niña había sido entregada por los militares a sus abuelos. Pero nunca la recibieron. De Sanctis cayó en mayo de 1977 en la estación de trenes de Campana, provincia de Buenos Aires, y fue visto en el centro clandestino que funcionó en la Comisaría 5ª de La Plata, punto neurálgico del circuito Camps. Ambos están desaparecidos.
Federico es hijo de Liliana Carmen Pereyra, nacida en La Plata el 1º de septiembre de 1956, y de Eduardo Alberto Cagnola, en Chacabuco, 12 de diciembre de 1954, también militantes de Montoneros. Fueron secuestrados el 5 de octubre de 1977 en una pensión de Mar del Plata, en calle Catamarca 2254. Lali, de 21 años, estaba embarazada de cinco meses. Ambos fueron trasladados a la Base Naval local, que encabezaba el vicealmirante Juan José Lombardo (procesado con arresto domiciliario), donde fueron torturados brutalmente. En diciembre de 1977, Liliana fue trasladada para parir en la ESMA, donde funcionaba la maternidad clandestina de la Armada, junto con otra embarazada, Elizabet Marcuzo. Durante más de dos meses estuvo alojada en la “sala de embarazadas”, en el tercer piso del Casino de Oficiales, pegado a “Capucha”. En febrero de 1978 dio a luz a un varón, a quien llamó Federico. La asistió en el parto el médico y capitán de navío retirado Jorge Luis Magnacco, que aún goza de prisión domiciliaria. Los abogados de Abuelas solicitaron que se le revoque el privilegio y se lo envíe a una cárcel común, ya que los últimos exámenes médicos muestran una recuperación del cáncer que padece. Aún esperan respuesta por parte de los jueces federales María Romilda Servini de Cubría y Sergio Torres.
Después de dar a luz, Liliana Pereyra fue retirada de la ESMA, sin su hijo, por los mismos marinos de Mar del Plata que la habían llevado. Federico estuvo al menos un día más en la ESMA, donde quedó en manos de Héctor Febres, el prefecto que murió envenenado pero en silencio en diciembre pasado. Liliana fue asesinada el 15 de julio de 1978. En marzo de 1985 el Equipo Argentino de Antropología Forense exhumó e identificó su cuerpo, que había sido enterrado como NN en el cementerio de Mar del Plata. Cagnola permanece desaparecido. Liliana es hija de Jorgelina Azzarri de Pereyra, “Coqui”, referente de Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo en La Plata, que después de treinta años de espera ayer conoció a su nieto.
Con las dos nuevas restituciones llega a 94 la cifra de hombres y mujeres recuperados por Abuelas. En las dos identificaciones anteriores, confirmadas a fines de julio, las investigaciones fueron impulsadas por los hermanos de los jóvenes apropiados. Ahora se trata de una investigación de los equipos de Abuelas, en el caso de Laura, y de la comisión “Hermanos” de la agrupación HIJOS en el de Federico.
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http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/elpais/1-111295-2008-09-10.html
The Independent:
The world's biggest experiment begins
PA
Wednesday, 10 September 2008
Scientists today "switched on" the most powerful particle accelerator ever built in an attempt to answer some of the biggest unanswered questions in physics.
Despite some "small electrical problems" overnight, the £5 billion Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was switched on at 8.39am BST after a slight delay.
Scientists later announced they had succeeded in sending a beam of protons all the way round the collider in one direction. The next step will be to test the other direction.
As experiments build, the LHC will smash protons into each other at energies up to seven times greater than any achieved before.
No one knows precisely what will come tumbling out of the primordial soup of disintegrating protons, but the scientists have dismissed suggestions that the experiment could somehow cause the end of the world.
The LHC could help scientists explain mass, gravity, mysterious "dark matter" and why the universe looks the way it does.
It could also produce the first evidence of extra spatial dimensions and even create mini-black holes that blink in and out of existence in a fraction of a second.
The LHC, a colossal machine housed in a 27 kilometre (17 mile) tunnel under 100 metres of rock, straddles the borders of Switzerland and France between Lake Geneva and the Jura mountains.
Beams of protons will be accelerated in opposite directions through the ring-shaped tunnel, which is supercooled to just 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (minus 271C), the lowest temperature allowed by nature.
Reaching velocities of 99.99 per cent of the speed of light, each beam will pack as much energy as a Eurostar train travelling at 150 kilometres per hour.
The particles will be brought together in four huge "detectors" placed along the ring. Each detector is like a giant microscope, designed to probe deeper into the heart of matter than has ever been possible before.
Concerns have been voiced - in particular by German chemist Professor Otto Rossler - that black holes created by the LHC will grow uncontrollably and "eat the planet from the inside".
Excitement builds for Cern scientists
But those involved in the project insist they have reviewed all the evidence and concluded that it poses no risk to the universe.
Particle physicist Dr James Gillies, a spokesman for the LHC, said: "We have received a lot of worried calls from people about it.
"There's nothing to worry about, the LHC is absolutely safe because we have observed nature doing the same things the LHC will do.
"Protons regularly collide in the earth's upper atmosphere without creating black holes.
"What we are looking at is a global community representing 10,000 people working in 500 universities in 80 countries, none of whom has the slightest worry about risks of this kind.
"Then we have a retired German chemist who has never published a paper in this field in his life, who has come up with this theory.
"We are very excited about the project. We hope to learn more about this wonderful universe of ours."
The eyes of the world were on LHC project leader Dr Lyndon Evans, from Aberdare in south Wales, in the tense minutes before the machine was "switched on".
Looking relaxed in a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, Dr Evans counted down the last few seconds before the first beam of protons was put into the LHC.
"Five, four, three, two, one, zero - nothing," he joked before a blip appeared on a computer monitor signalling that the long years of hard work had paid off and the machine was working.
Dr Evans, whose father was a coalminer, said: "This is really the biggest and most complex scientific project ever undertaken, and you cannot do a thing like this without engineers and applied scientists of very top quality."
Skills Secretary John Denham hailed the launch of the LHC today as an "extraordinary moment".
Noting that the project had taken two decades to come to fruition, he joked: "My lab technique used to be bad but I used to get set up quicker than that."
Mr Denham said theoretical research like this often produced practical benefits but said this was not the only concern of the Government in providing funding.
He said: "We do this fundamentally because we need to know. We need to know as human beings because we have a curiosity, an intellectual excitement."
Turning on the LHC was nothing like as simple as flipping a switch.
A chain of smaller accelerators, built for earlier projects, were first used to speed up the proton beams to the point where they could be injected into the machine.
The start of the process involved a bottle of hydrogen gas no bigger than a fire extinguisher.
Hydrogen atoms were stripped of their electrons to produce streams of protons that are fed into accelerators of increasing size.
The last link in the chain before the LHC, the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS), is buried underground and covers a distance of seven kilometres.
Timing between the SPS and the LHC has to be accurate to within a fraction of a nanosecond.
Today's "switch on" involved transferring a beam from the SPS to the LHC so that it is circulating around the machine in a stable fashion.
The first particle collisions are likely to take place within a few weeks.
In some cases teams of more than 2,000 collaborating scientists will be sifting and analysing data from the machine.
Most will not be at the LHC's operating base at CERN, the European nuclear research organisation, in Geneva.
A revolutionary computer network called the "Grid" - the next step beyond the World Wide Web - will make it possible for scientists all over the world to share huge amounts of processing power and carry out much of the work on their PCs.
The cost of the LHC is mainly shared by CERN's 20 European member states, which include Britain. Six "observer" nations, including the US, Russia and Japan, make significant contributions.
CERN estimates the total cost of the project to be 10 billion Swiss francs, or £5 billion. The material cost alone is put at £2.6 billion.
Britain's direct contribution to the LHC each year is £34 million.
©independent.co.uk
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/
the-worlds-biggest-experiment-begins-924755.html
The Nation:
State Capitalism Comes to America
Howl
By Nicholas von Hoffman
September 8, 2008
With George Bush's approval, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has tripped across a line of historic dimension. Two less likely agents of change we have seldom seen, but in executing the financial putsch on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, they have taken America to a new place.
Other nations have been there. In the early decades of the twentieth century Italy went there when Benito Mussolini initiated his version of state capitalism. He was followed in Germany by Adolf Hitler and national socialism. Both were able to bring about a significant increase in prosperity, however repugnant their other teachings and practices.
Though the particular arrangements may vary from one nation to another, under state capitalism government is the senior partner in the economy. That is a different arrangement from tax breaks, tax shelters, tax subsidies, tax-exempt bonds, low-interest loans, tariff protection or the kind of parasitical finagling that made George W. Bush rich. Under state capitalism, the economy is manipulated to meet government set goals. Under state capitalism, Washington rules.
Under the Freddie and Fannie takeovers, the government becomes the controlling stockholder and supplier of capital in two previously private organizations on whom the residential construction, real estate, building materials, home appliance, banking and furniture industries depend. An enormous segment of the American economy has been turned over to the government, with the enthusiastic approval of the industries concerned.
A line has been crossed, but not in accordance with any doctrine or set of economic beliefs or with a thought-out plan in mind. "The sweeping government intervention stemmed from a growing realization by Treasury and Federal Reserve officials that the two companies couldn't survive in their present forms, and that any collapse would be devastating to the economy," reports the Wall Street Journal, "The decision was hashed out over weeks of meetings. They included a conclave of Federal Reserve officials during their annual retreat at Jackson Hole, Wyoming; a mid-August polling of bond-market players by Morgan Stanley bankers advising Treasury; and a marathon session over the Labor Day weekend, fueled in part by Diet Coke and Coke Zero."
As with the other steps in the direction of state capitalism these past months, the decision was made in pit-of-the-stomach fear that the whole system was moving toward implosion. As to what comes next, the businessmen-turned-government-officials who pressed the button on this one have no idea. The administrators whom Paulson and James Lockhart, the head of Federal Housing Finance Agency, have installed as the heads of these two gigantic organizations will run them the best as they can, at as little cost to the taxpayers as they can.
The Clinton-Bush II administrations finished the work of destroying and/or emasculating the regulatory framework inherited from the 1930s New Deal and replaced it with nothing. Their deregulation was the economic equivalent of opening the doors to a maximum security penitentiary and letting the most dangerous criminals in captivity out to feast on the civilian society.
What a feast it was! And, oh, how we are paying for it.
Instead of rounding up the escaped felons from their Wall Street dens and re-imposing law and order, Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke have been running to the scenes of the crimes committed by the escapees to attend to the wounded and cart off the dead. All fine and noble, but in their ill-considered attempts to help they are creating anarchy. The are making various state capitalist precedents which have no pattern or direction but will open us up to the depredations of every business lobby and special-interest group.
Soon Paulson and company are going to have to deal with a desperate automobile industry pleading for a $25 billion loan. Once upon a time the car companies were too big to fail. They are now so shrunken they are merely too important to fail. When they get their money, another chaotic step into state capitalism will have been taken.
France has operated under a form of state capitalism since before its revolution. It is carried out with a modicum of planning and self-discipline. When the French state invests in a company, it has a plausible rationale for what it is doing.
The United States has none. Without realizing it, we are ripping holes in our free-market system and filling them with a jumble of ineffectual expedients. The Freddie and Fannie takeover will not take care of our problems. It will not hold back the night.
About Nicholas von Hoffman
Nicholas von Hoffman is the author of A Devil's Dictionary of Business, now in paperback. He is a Pulitzer Prize losing author of thirteen books, including Citizen Cohn, and a columnist for the New York Observer. more...
Copyright © 2008 The Nation
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080922/howl2
ZNet: Original Workers
Overcome Divisions After Mississippi Raid
By David Bacon
Source: t r u t h o u t
September, 10 2008
Laurel, Mississippi - In the recent raid of the Howard Industries electrical plant in Laurel, Mississippi, 481 workers have been detained for almost two weeks in Jena, Louisiana. Neither they nor their attorneys know when they will be formally charged, deported or released, and Barbara Gonzalez, spokesperson for the Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, says simply, "Their cases are being investigated."
"We don't know the fate of those people or what they may be charged with," says Patricia Ice, attorney for the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance (MIRA). "These people were rounded up and just dumped in a privately run detention center. We've heard reports that there weren't even enough beds and that people were sleeping on the floor. Because they haven't been charged, so far as we know, there's no process for them to get bail. My gut reaction is that this is an outrage."
Ironically, Jena was the site last year of massive protests over racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, after a group of young African-American men faced felony charges in a confrontation with a group of young white men, who were not charged.
Approximately 100 women were released the day of the Laurel raid for "humanitarian reasons," to care for children or because they are pregnant, according to ICE, and 50 of them have been required to wear ankle bracelets with electronic monitoring devices. Their situation is also desperate, according to MIRA organizer Victoria Cintra. "People were living paycheck to paycheck and rent is due," she explains. "They can't work and provide for their families now, and many others are dependent on husbands and fathers and brothers who were all detained. We need to redefine what humanitarian means."
Meanwhile, MIRA and other labor and community activists say media coverage of the raid has heightened racial tensions. Newspaper stories have painted a picture of a plant in which African-American and white union members were hostile to immigrants, based mostly on an incident in which some workers "applauded" as their coworkers were taken away by ICE agents. This simplistic picture obscures the real conditions in the plant, activists say, and the role the company itself played in fomenting divisions among workers.
According to Clarence Larkin, African-American president of IBEW Local 1317, the union at the plant, "this employer pits workers against each other by design, and breeds division among them that affects everyone," he says. "By favoring one worker over another, workers sometimes can't see who their real enemy is. And that's what helps keep wages low."
Workers at Howard Industries, however, do not simply look at each other as enemies across race lines. On August 28, Cintra led a group of women fired in the raid to the plant to demand their pay, after the company denied them paychecks. Managers called Laurel police. "They tried to intimidate us with 10 vehicles of police and sheriffs. They tried to arrest me and make us leave." After workers began chanting, "Let her go!" and news reporters appeared on the scene, the company finally agreed to distribute checks to about 70 people.
The following day, Cintra and the women returned to the plant to get paychecks for other unpaid workers. They sat on the grass across the street from the factory in a silent protest. "When the shift changed, African-American workers started coming out and they went up to these Latina women and began hugging them. They said things like, "We're with you. Do you need any food for your kids? How can we help? You need to assert your rights. We're glad you're here. We'll support you.' There's a lot of support inside the factory for these workers who were caught up in the raid."
Meanwhile, the union has been in negotiations with the company since its contract expired at the beginning of August. In preparation for those negotiations, the IBEW brought in a Spanish-speaking organizer, Maria Gonzalez, to recruit immigrant workers into the union. She visited people at home to help explain the benefits of belonging. Larkin says many immigrant workers joined, complaining of bad treatment. "Supervisors yell at people a lot," he says, "not just immigrants, but at everyone. Howard has always been an anti-employee company, and treats workers with no respect, as though they make no contribution to its success."
When workers have volunteered to become stewards, Larkin says, or to serve on the negotiations committee, the company "institutes a very aggressive discipline against them, so people fear reprisals. It's a challenge to get people involved. Bear in mind, this is the South. It's always a tall order to talk about forming a union here."
Local 1317 hasn't been as active as other unions in nearby poultry plants, however, in bringing workers together across racial divides. In Mississippi fish plants, Jaribu Hill, director of the Mississippi Workers Center, has worked with unions to help workers understand the dynamics of race. "We have to talk about racism," she says. "The union focuses on the contract, but skin color issues are still on the table. We don't try to be the union, but we do try to keep a focus on human rights." Organizing a multi-racial workforce means recognizing the divisions between African-Americans and immigrants. "We're coming together like a marriage," she warns, "working across our divides."
Hill says it's important for workers to understand the historical price paid for racial division in the South. "Our conditions are the direct result of slavery," she explains. "Today, Frito Lay wages in Mississippi are still much lower than Illinois - $8.75 compared to $13.75 an hour. This is the evolution of a historical oppression. Immigrants have come here looking for better lives - we came in chains."
Larkin makes the same point. Wages at Howard Industries, the world's largest manufacturer of electrical transformers, are $2 lower than other companies in the industry, he says. That difference goes into the pocket of the Howard family. "The people who profit from Mississippi's low wage system want to keep it the way it is," alleges Jim Evans, a national AFL-CIO staff member in Mississippi, a leading member of the state legislature's Black Caucus, and MIRA's board chair.
Some state labor leaders, however, have contributed to racial divisions and anti-immigrant hostility. After the Howard Industries workers, many of them union members, were arrested, state AFL-CIO President Robert Shaffer told The Associated Press that he doubted that immigrants could join unions if they were not in the country legally. US labor law, however, holds that all workers have union rights, regardless of immigration status. It also says unions have a duty to represent all members fairly and equally.
Divisions are likely to be deepened as well by repeated public statements by ICE spokesperson Barbara Gonzale zthat the raid took place because of a tip by a "union member" two years before. She claimed ICE waited two years before conducting the raid, because "we took the time needed for our investigation," but declined to say how that investigation was conducted, or what led ICE to believe the tip had come from a union member.
"It's hard to believe that a two-year-old phone call to ICE led to this raid, but whether or not the call ever took place, that possibility is a product of the poisonous atmosphere fostered by politicians of both parties in Mississippi," says MIRA director Chandler. "In the last election, Barbour and Republicans campaigned against immigrants to get elected, but so did all the Democratic statewide candidates except Attorney General Jim Hood. The raid will make the climate even worse."
During the 2007 election campaign, the Ku Klux Klan organized a 500-person rally in Tupelo, and when MIRA organizer Erik Fleming urged Republican Governor Haley Barbour to veto a bill making work a felony for the undocumented, he was attacked by state anti-immigrant organizations.
Evans called the raid "an effort to drive immigrants out of Mississippi. It is also an attempt to drive a wedge between immigrants, African-Americans, white people and unions - all those who want political change here. But it will just make us more determined," he declared. "We won't go back to the kind of racism Mississippi has known throughout its past."
From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/18772
posted by attilav at 12:35
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