Elsewhere Today 482

Aljazeera:
Damaged dam hampers China rescue

WEDNESDAY, MAY 14, 2008
17:17 MECCA TIME, 14:17 GMT

Rescue workers in China faced a new hazard on Wednesday when "extremely dangerous" damage was identified in a dam in Sichuan province as thousands of people remained buried in towns and villages downstream.

Two thousand soldiers have been sent to plug the cracks in the dam and have been told to avoid certain areas due to the risk of the dam being breached and areas flooded.

Rescue teams have already been hampered by heavy rains in the two days since a powerful earthquake hit the country's southwestern Sichuan province.

Thousands of people are thought to still be buried under the rubble of collapsed buildings.

Wang Zhen Yao of China's ministry of civil affairs told Al Jazeera that communications with dozens of communities close to the epicentre of the quake had been cut.

As a result, he said, the toll could rise significantly once the full impact of Monday's magnitude 7.9 earthquake becomes clear. State media put the toll at just under 15,000 on Wednesday.

Al Jazeera's Melissa Chan, who visited a town in the area below the dam, said: "The People's Liberation Army soldiers who are tasked with rescuing survivors in these areas have been asked to stay away from certain areas.

"It's a very tricky situation we have here."

Chinese officials say nearly 400 dams have been damaged.

In the city of Mianyang alone, close to the epicentre of the quake, more than 18,000 are believed to have been buried in the rubble of collapsed buildings.

About 100,000 troops and police have been deployed to the region, but several of the hardest-hit areas remain largely inaccessible because roads have been cut by landslides.

The Chinese air force has also been brought in to drop emergency food and relief supplies to survivors.

Chan reported from Dujiangyan that survivors had no electricity and water and the local hospital was unable to help the injured because it had its own cave-in to deal with.

She said aftershocks occurring every few hours brought panic and kept people in a state of fear.

In Sichuan's provincial capital of Chengdu, 24-hour radio station FM 91.4 was reading out text messages sent by survivors in stricken areas to let relatives know they were safe.

Rain hampers search

More rain is forecast in the region over the next few days and landslides could further hinder relief work.

Only 58 people have been pulled from destroyed buildings across the quake area so far, Zhang Hongwei, a spokesman for China's Seismological Bureau, told state-run Xinhua news agency.

Wen Jiabao, China's premier who toured the disaster area to oversee relief efforts on Tuesday, called for air drops of emergency supplies to hard-to-reach areas, but rain had impeded those efforts.

In the hard-hit city of Mianyang, the government has ordered residents to stay away from damaged buildings fearing further aftershocks, and security guards were posted at apartment blocks to keep people out.

The industrial city of 700,000 people is home to the headquarters of China's nuclear weapons design industry, and the quake has sparked fears of potential radioactive fallout.

Foreign aid

Aid agencies such as the International Red Cross and Oxfam are pouring money and supplies into the region.

Russia said it was sending an aircraft with 30 tonnes of relief supplies while the US is offering an initial $500,000 in aid.

The government said it welcomed outside aid, but officials said that the assistance would be confined to money and supplies, not to foreign personnel.

"We welcome funds and supplies. We can't accommodate personnel at this point," Wang Zhenyao, the Civil Affairs Ministry's top disaster relief official, told reporters in Beijing.

Bowing to public calls, Olympics organisers scaled down the ongoing national torch relay, saying Wednesday's leg in the southeastern city of Ruijin will begin with a minute of silence and more sombre ceremonies.

People along the route, which next month is scheduled to arrive in quake-hit areas, would be asked for donations, an organising committee spokesman said.

Seismologists said the quake was on a level the region sees once every 50 to 100 years.

Source: Al Jazeera and agencies

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/
05F89E31-2378-4ACE-AEF5-259D4E6FC9FB.htm

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AllAfrica:
Violence 'Shocks' SA Generals

By Dumisani Muleya, Harare
Business Day (Johannesburg) NEWS
14 May 2008

RETIRED South African army generals investigating post-election violence in Zimbabwe have uncovered "shocking levels" of state-sponsored terror, sources close to them say.

The continued violence makes any chance of a peaceful runoff election "almost impossible", they say.

When President Thabo Mbeki visited Harare last week, the team's leader, Lt-Gen Gilbert Lebeko Ramano, briefed him on their findings.

The violence intensified after it was confirmed that President Robert Mugabe and his ruling Zanu (PF) had lost to the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai in the March 29 poll.

Senior members of the investigating team said their findings were "alarming" and that most of the violence was state sponsored, although the opposition had also retaliated.

"What we have heard and seen is shocking. We have heard horrific stories of extreme brutality and seen the victims," said one of the generals.

"We have seen people with scars, cuts, gashes, bruises, lacerations and broken limbs, and bodies of those killed. It's a horrifying picture."

The generals' report will soon be given to Mbeki, who will decide whether to publish it.

Since it lost the elections, Mugabe's regime has launched a crackdown in a bid to win the expected presidential election runoff. Opposition and human rights activists, trade union leaders, lawyers and journalists have been arrested during the past three weeks.

Yesterday police briefly detained US, British, Dutch, Japanese and Tanzanian diplomats and journalists in Glendale outside Harare while they were visiting scenes of political violence.

Human Rights Watch last week accused the army, deployed nationwide, of creating a climate of fear and of committing human rights abuses. The military has denied this.

The incident which has shocked the investigators most happened at Chaona village in the Chiweshe area last Monday. A Zanu (PF) MP is believed to have led an armed gang of 45 in an attack on MDC activists, leaving four dead. Three other victims died later and a t least 50 people were seriously injured.

"It was a ferocious onslaught on the village. We have never seen anything like that before. The village is still in a state of shock and we now live in fear," said an eye - witness at the Avenues Clinic in Harare, where some of the victims have been admitted.

The team of generals has met government, Zanu (PF) and opposition officials, civil society leaders and other interest groups.

Mbeki is understood to have been "shaken" by what he was told, and it is hoped he will press Mugabe to curb the violence and to ensure that the runoff is held in a secure environment.

While Mugabe agreed that violence should end, he complained that the MDC was behind some incidents.

Sources say Mbeki is convinced that a runoff cannot take place in the tense climate. His envoy on Zimbabwe, Kingsley Mamabolo, highlighted these concerns even before he travelled to Harare last week.

The MDC claims 32 of its activists have so far been killed. MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said yesterday that political violence has reached alarming levels.

Copyright © 2008 Business Day. All rights reserved.

http://allafrica.com/stories/200805140020.html

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AlterNet:
The Terrifying Normalcy of Assaulting Women

By Ann Jones, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on May 14, 2008

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Ann Jones spent several years as a humanitarian aid worker in Afghanistan focusing on the lives of women and wrote a moving book, Kabul in Winter, about her experience. More recently, she took Tomdispatch readers to West Africa. There, she laid out the chilling nightmare of women's lives in strife-torn lands in which the war against women doesn't end just because grim wars between men finally do. Today's dispatch from the Democratic Republic of Congo, a place where war between men of an especially brutal sort remains an ongoing reality, highlights quite a different aspect of women's lives in West Africa - the way in which some women are moving from victims to actors in their own life dramas. This is the second in a series of reports Jones will be writing for this site in the coming months, as she works with refugees in Africa and elsewhere. To check out an accompanying Tomdispatch video (filmed by site videographer Brett Story) in which Ann Jones discusses the camera project that is the subject of this dispatch, click here. - Intro by Tom Engelhardt

"Me, I'm a Camera"
African Women Making Change

By Ann Jones

Bukavu, Democratic Republic of Congo - The last time I was back in the U.S.A., everyone was talking about "change." Change seemed to mean electing Barack Obama president and thereby bringing all Americans together in blissful agreement. But real change isn't like that. Didn't the guy who's got the job now promise to be a "uniter"? Real change has content and direction. It's driven by courageous people unafraid to speak up, even - or perhaps especially - when it's risky.

Anyway, there are plenty of Americans I'll never agree with, so I'm in self-imposed exile in Africa where I work with women who teach me a lot about real change and the risks involved in going for it. The women I work with live in the aftermath of civil wars - in the midst of a continuing war on women that's acted out in widespread sexual exploitation, rape, and wife beating. They've had enough.

As a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee (IRC), I go from country to country, running a simple little project dreamed up by the IRC's Gender-Based Violence unit. (GBV is the gender-neutral term for what I still call VAW: Violence Against Women.) The project - dubbed A Global Crescendo: Women's Voices from Conflict Zones - is meant to give women a chance to document their daily lives, their problems, their consolations and joys. It's meant to give them time and space to talk together and come up with their own agenda for change.

Digital cameras are the tool. I arrive with them and lend them to women, most of whom have never seen a camera before. I teach them to point and shoot - only that - and then I turn them loose to snap what they will. I ask them to bring me some photos of their problems and their blessings. They work in teams, two or three women sharing a camera and very nervous at first. (Some women actually shake.) It takes the whole team to snap the first photos: one holds the camera, another points, another shoots. The teamwork they build is a step to solidarity.

Once a week for four or five weeks these teams get together - some 10 to 15 women in all - to look at their photos and talk about why they shot the things they did. For most of these women, whose lives are consumed by endless chores, this is a rare chance to sit and talk - really talk - with their neighbors. Most of them are non-literate. They don't have television. Few have radio. Whatever news they get comes largely from their husbands - and husbands often tell them nothing, except what to do. Excluded from public life, they have no say in the decisions of men who determine everything from issues of sexuality and childbearing to matters of war and "justice." Even at home, they're never asked their opinion, never encouraged to make a decision about anything. For such women, real conversation with other women invariably proves a revelation.jonespic1

For me - listening in, asking questions - it's like the old days of the women's movement in the U.S. and the informal consciousness-raising get-togethers that blew the collective mind of my generation. Now a senior citizen, I have the privilege of surfing another wave of feminism, a distant continent away.

What Women See

What do they talk about, these women struggling to survive, to make a life for themselves and their children in countries shattered by the wars of "big men"? It depends on where you are. In Ivory Coast, village women talk about having too much backbreaking work to do, while men do very little. In Liberia, urban women talk about not having enough work to do to earn the money to keep their husbands (who do very little) from straying. In Sierra Leone, they talk about the problems of war widows who can't support their children or send them to school or save their young girls from sexual exploitation. In the Democratic Republic of Congo they talk about the problems of gang-raped women, repudiated by their husbands, unable to bear children, many literally ripped apart, never to be made whole again. In all these countries, simple questions quickly come up: Is this fair? Is it just?

Snapping pictures, women see what a lifetime of experience already tells them: that men run the world, the country, the province, the village, the home. In these lands, men of all persuasions have waged disastrous wars - most lasting more than a decade, one (in the Congo) still unofficially going on - characterized by unspeakable atrocities. Even many men will admit that they've made a terrible mess of things. In all these lands, when armed men stopped shooting and called it "peace," they continued to assault and rape and murder women.

The pattern of assaulting women, once adopted as a tactic of war, has become a habit with ex-combatants. Civilians have adopted it, too. In the Congo, rapists now target little girls. One village women's group I work with in South Kivu Province has reported five rapes in the last month of girls younger than nine, the most recent, a six-year-old by the pastor of her church. So any time women begin to talk - really talk - about their lives, and the conspicuously different lives of men, the word "justice" is bound to come up, even if the conversation concerns only the seemingly trivial (though fundamental) question of who fetches the water and who enjoys the bath. jonespic3

The women to whom I lend cameras take a startling number of photos of physical violence against women: men beating women in the house, the yard, the street, the market place. Men throwing women to the ground. Men wielding sticks and tree branches and brooms. Acts of violence intended to punish women for things they've done or left undone, or to force them to do things they haven't the will or the strength to do. These are acts of violence intended to control lives. Women can easily take these photos because men feel free to beat women anywhere, anytime, without fear of interruption or disapproval. War set the precedent.

Women take many photos of abandoned women, often pregnant, with their children - like the photo of a penniless young woman with three tiny children living in the open on the outskirts of a village. This image is deeply troubling in ways not obvious to an outsider. Most West African women feed and clothe themselves and their children by working their farms, selling produce in the market, making things for sale or trade. But the house still belongs to the man, together with everything in it and the land it stands upon. To be abandoned is to become homeless. The threat of abandonment is what coerces women to endure all other forms of abuse.

Women take pictures of economic violence, too. In Ivory Coast, for instance, a woman photographed the family's cocoa crop: her husband's share spread across the frame like a rich gray carpet, hers - as the principal farm laborer - a tiny mound barely visible to one side. A photographer in Sierra Leone snapped a shot of a woman working knee deep in a pit of red palm oil, while her husband stood by to pocket the proceeds from her sales. jonespic4

Then there's the labor of daily lives. Women take photos of women working in fields, forests, plantations, markets, and homes; women cultivating, harvesting, processing, selling, cooking, and serving food; women washing dishes, clothes, babies; women sweeping houses and yards; women fetching and carrying water, firewood, produce; women bearing burdens of all sorts on their heads - stalks of plantains, basins of tomatoes, bundles of firewood, bags of laundry - walking long distances to a field, or the market, or the river.

Even in big cities, women do these chores. In Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, women living in the very heart of the city spend hours each day, trudging back and forth to polluted wells in search of water. My computer now holds thousands of photos of women at work.

What emerges from these massed photos, first and foremost, is a bigger picture, a broader definition of violence against women. It is not just wife-beating or rape or sexual servitude. It is not just psychological tyranny and threat. For countless women in village and town, violence against women is life itself - a life that demands relentless forced hard labor just because they are women.

Showtime

Wherever I go, the Global Crescendo Project culminates in a photo show. Invariably, in every location, it is the First-Ever-All-Women's-Photographic-Exhibition and a very big deal. Each photographer selects her most important images. I print enlargements and have them laminated. The photographers choose a venue and extend formal invitations to the chiefs and sub-chiefs, notables and dignitaries, families and friends, sometimes the whole village.

If the show is held in a meeting hall or school, we mount the photos on the wall. If it takes place under a village tree, the photographers hold up the pictures themselves, for all to see. Each woman in turn speaks about her photos - why she took them, what they show about what's right or wrong with the community, what must change.

What happens then depends largely on local leadership. Outsiders often draw broad generalizations about foreign "cultures" as if they were all of a piece. In fact, African cultures are in flux and often dramatically varied. Old traditions may be belligerently defended by one chief, while repudiated by another in a village just down the road. African "cultures" rest on the conservatism or courage of such men - and on the rising voices of women. jonespic5

Last September, in the village of Zatta in Ivory Coast, women photographers who had never before attended a village meeting, spoken in public, or even dared to look at a chief stood before the village notables in the public square and showed their photos of women working hard. Then, Zounan Sylvie displayed a photograph of a woman's bruised and bleeding leg. The woman's husband had beaten her badly. Sylvie said the woman couldn't take any more beatings and wanted the villagers to see a photo of her whole battered body, but Sylvie feared that if the woman was recognized, her husband might kill her.

At that, the chief raised his arm. "I have heard your message," he said. "I do not want violence of any kind. If such violence goes on in this village, it must stop now."

After the show he invited the photographers - who had formed an organization called Anouanze ("Unity") - to join his council of advisors. He invited all village women to attend village meetings. Overnight, cameras in hand, the women of Zatta village, who had never had a voice in public affairs, moved to the center of governance, and there they remain almost eight months later. This was our project's greatest triumph, and a rebuke to those who adhere to the truism, "Change takes time."

In February, at the photo exhibition in the town of Kailahun in Sierra Leone, another powerful chief denounced all foreign non-governmental organizations (without whom his war-torn town would have even less in the way of health care, schools, and food) and warned all the townspeople: "Do not speak of FGM [female genital mutilation]. It is our tradition. We do not want foreign traditions." He then stomped out of the exhibition hall, followed by his cronies.

I was taken by surprise, for the chief had once welcomed us warmly and, in the whole course of the project, nobody had ever spoken about FGM. I make it a point to discuss only issues the women themselves raise with their photographs; FGM is an atrocity, but it is also a potent taboo.

After the show, when IRC national staff members went to talk to the chief, he told them he knew that FGM was a bad practice and should be stopped, but gradually - another believer that change takes time, despite the power he can wield.

A week later, after I'd left, 500 women marched through the town in a display of support for FGM, a display of loyalty to the chief. They carried signs that said in Mende and English, "We don't talk about it." I saw this as our greatest defeat until I got an email from an IRC national staff member. "It's really a very good thing," she wrote. "Before, nobody could even mention it. Now, thanks to the chief, at least people are talking about how they can't talk about it. That's progress."

"Your Eyes Are the Lens"

But you see what I mean about the riskiness of change? A great many African women are fed up with violence, fed up with their enslavement to work and the sexual proclivities of men. They want a better life for their daughters. They want to be able to send them to school and keep them safe from the sexual advances of their teachers and other grown men (or boys). They want change, and many of them - like the battered woman who wanted Zounan Sylvie to show her photograph - are willing to put their lives on the line.

In the South Kivu region of Congo, where I'm working now, we've just had to put the project on hold for security reasons in an area where the war seems to be heating up again. The IRC's security specialists determined that women photographers might be in danger.

The women themselves, who have already survived acts of violence I can't bear to tell you about, were eager to risk it. Their concept of risk is quite different from ours. One of them told me she'd found it crushing to be "hated," even by her own husband and family, after she was gang-raped by armed soldiers. She was helped by joining a group of women survivors - of whom there are thousands. She was able to get over her shame, she said, when she realized that being gang-raped is "normal."

Women's wants are basic. They want their husbands to forgive them for having been raped by others. They want their husbands to help with the chores on the farm and around the house. They want men to take responsibility for their children, to help with their support and care. They want men to stop making senseless and devastating wars. One says, "We want to be safe in our homes, in our country, and that is our right." Another says, "We have a right to dream of a free, safe country. It is possible." ("Right," like "justice," is word such women increasingly use.)

What would these women I've been working with like to see in five years' time? Vera dreams that all the broken buildings will be rebuilt and all the girls and boys will go to school together. Anna hopes to walk freely in the streets, without fear of assault. Mantina hopes that women and girls may be safe in their homes. Annie dreams that women will be self-employed. Esther prays that girls will be educated and take up positions in government. Kebeh hopes that her sister, paralyzed during a gang rape, may walk again. Betty wants women to act in solidarity. She says: "We are like a bundle of sticks. If the bundle is loose, men can pluck us out, one at a time, and break us. But a tight bundle of sticks cannot be broken."

When the show is over, I collect the cameras, pack my bag, and move on to the next country. Local staff from the International Rescue Committee continue to work with the women and support their agenda for change. As I write, I've just been informed by email that, after IRC staff and women photographers in Sierra Leone displayed their photos to a parliamentary committee, the women were invited to mount an exhibition for the full Parliament.

We don't give away the cameras because there's no way the women could maintain them or get the photos processed; and more important, they don't need them. This project isn't really about photography. It's about women's voices rising in conflict zones in a global crescendo of pain, protest, and hope. The camera is a device to encourage new ways of looking. The discussions the women organize around the photographs stimulate new methods of analysis and advocacy. My IRC colleague in Ivory Coast, Tanou Virginie, told photographers they didn't need cameras. "Your eyes are the lens," she said. "The memory card is in your brain. And the picture can come out of your mouth."

I repeat that to all the photographers I work with. And they get it. One photographer in Liberia told the women's group, "Some people use cameras. Some people are cameras. Me, I'm a camera."

Throughout the conflict zones of Africa, among women worn out by violence and wars in which they've had no voice, no role to play but that of target, and who now have no desire but to feed their surviving children, there are some women who have picked themselves up, reached out, and organized to help others. They've formed groups with names like Unity or the Commune of Women. They are smart and courageous, and many of them are angry. They are looking anew at the lives they've been handed by men and "tradition." Some of them took part in the Global Crescendo Project - seeing things with new eyes, talking things over, speaking up, and arguing persuasively for change. Amid the ruins of their countries, their voices grow louder every day.

Writer/photographer Ann Jones is working as a volunteer with the International Rescue Committee (IRC) on a special project for their Gender-Based Violence (read: Violence Against Women) unit called "A Global Crescendo: Women's Voices from Conflict Zones." Her blogs about the project can be found by clicking here. She is the author, most recently, of Kabul in Winter: Life Without Peace in Afghanistan (Metropolitan Books), a report from another war that's not over.

© 2008 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/85282/

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Arab News:
Finding the Center in Lebanon

Osama Al Sharif, osama@mediaarabia.com
Wednesday 14 May 2008 (08 Jumada al-Ula 1429)

Explaining Lebanon is almost always a matter of perspective. Views and opinions are as diverse and abundant as the parties, sects, militias and religious chiefs that together make up the unique political mosaic that is Lebanon. So when the latest crisis turned into a bloody confrontation last week in Beirut, Tripoli and the Chouf mountains, the world looked on in awe as pundits and other talking heads attempted to explain and apportion blame.

In fact, few know for sure what the core issues are. Most Lebanese will offer simplistic and biased views on the causes of the current standoff, and fewer still will attempt to explain the two-year political stalemate between the so-called loyalists and opposition. Understanding what is going on is never easy, but it is safe to say that Lebanon has been an open arena for local, regional and international power struggle since its independence. It is certain that foreign hands are involved. Syria, which had pulled its troops from Lebanon three years ago, still maintains influence especially among the opposition groups. The United States, Iran, France, Israel and some Gulf countries too have favored one side over the other.

Even at the sectarian level, loyalties have been divided. The Druze find themselves on both sides of the conflict and so do the Christians. Last week’s escalation, which had sent Hezbollah and its allies into the streets of Beirut and other parts of Lebanon, had stunned the loyalists whose militias quickly retreated. The army has managed to stay united and is now slowly restoring law and order.

But the face-off is far from over. The opposition claims it has aborted a US-Israeli plot to strike Hezbollah and the Lebanese resistance forces. The loyalists accuse the Shiite party of using its military arsenal to topple the legitimate government and impose a political settlement on its pro-West foes. On the outside there is Washington, which wants Hezbollah disarmed and dismantled as a way to undermine Iranian and Syrian presence in Lebanon. And it is no secret that Hezbollah’s main allies reside in Tehran and Damascus. And of course there is always Israel, which also wants to remove Hezbollah’s threat and check the Syrian and Iranian influence in Lebanon.

In the heart of the crisis there is the sectarian power sharing deal which has become out of date. Dialogue, which now looks like the only viable alternative to armed confrontation and chaos, will have to center on amending the historic Taif national reconciliation accords agreed to by Lebanese factions in 1989.

Lebanon’s ill-fate has been in its diversity and proximity to the epicenters of clashes, including the Arab-Israeli conflict. The root causes of recent crisis can be traced to as far back as one cares to remember. At one point, Lebanon became a battlefield between “progressive” Arab governments and “reactionary” regimes. At another, it was the hot arena where Palestinian groups fought and lost a war against Israel and its Lebanese Christian allies. The Israeli invasion gave birth to Shiite resistance movements, which in turn galvanized the sect’s political and military efforts under the umbrella of Hezbollah.

The ideological struggles that were ripping through the Arab world in the 1950s and 1960s quickly spilled over and Lebanon, with its openness and Westernized mentality, became a stage for regional saber rattling.

It is difficult to see the Lebanese reaching accord so long as foreign interference in the country’s internal affairs continues. The current showdown between Washington on the one side and Iran and Syria, on the other will not help ease the pressure on Lebanon. And Hezbollah’s military capabilities will continue to worry the Israelis who were humiliated in the July 2006 aggression on Lebanon.

The Arabs have been unable to play a positive role as well. What the Arab League wants to do is often derailed by the involvement of some of its members. And within Lebanon, traditional leaderships have concentrated more on solidifying their own power rather than seeking a compromise with their bitter enemies., Still, Lebanon has been able to survive previous crises in a remarkable way. If a political formula is reached then that country can make a quick come back. The challenges are enormous and the problems are complicated.

To endure, the Lebanese will have to change the sectarian power-sharing arrangement that has reached its limits. Such a new deal could probably be reached if the Lebanese parties were left to themselves. Such a pre-condition is far from likely now and Lebanon’s struggle to move beyond its perennial ailment is far from over.

Copyright: Arab News © 2003 All rights reserved.

http://www.arabnews.com/?
page=7&section=0&article=109879&d=14&m=5&y=2008

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Asia Times:
No foreigners, no cameras for Myanmar

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
May 15, 2008

BANGKOK - Images of the dead keep trickling out of Myanmar. The most moving are those of children who died when Cyclone Nargis tore through the populous Irrawaddy Delta.

Among those e-mailed to Inter Press Service (IPS)is one showing a row of six children, girls in faded dresses, a boy in shorts and an orange shirt, and another in a blue sarong. There is an image of a child, face down, stuck between branches of a bush. And there is another of a man, shock on his face, holding a dead baby in his arms.

Yet the photographer does not want to be named. He knows the risks he faces if he is identified in a country ruled by a military that has known no limits to its oppression since coming to power following a 1962 coup. Even the May 2-3 cyclone, which has according to some estimates killed over 100,000 people and rendered over a million homeless, has done little to change the junta's iron grip.

This week, a senior junta official issued another command to extend the blanket of censorship that has been thrown over the devastated terrain. Prime Minister Thein Sein told a meeting of pro-junta businessmen that "no foreigners" and "no cameras" would be permitted in the devastated delta in southwestern Myanmar, according to an informed source.

The order from that meeting, held at the Yangon military command headquarters, comes in the wake of the junta denying visas to foreign journalists to enter the country and its enforcement of tougher restrictions on cyclone coverage by local news publications.

The junta's attempt to keep Myanmar's worst natural disaster from the public eye is part of a strategy that has become painfully clear during the 10 days since the cyclone struck. The regime wants to give the impression, locally and internationally, that it has the relief efforts under control.

Its interaction with United Nations officials in Yangon, the former capital, has set the tone. Until May 9, the junta had not made a formal or informal request for UN assistance, a highly-placed source in the dilapidated city said in an interview. "They have still remained aloof."

In fact, assistance by UN agencies in Myanmar thus far has been shaped by the latter's initiative. "The UN has been offering assistance - even battling to provide it - and they accept it in bits and pieces," the source added.

Any hope that UN officials harbored of a change in attitude were dashed at a press conference given by three ministers on Sunday. This military trio, which included social welfare minister General Maung Maung Swe, informed the media that the government was "in control of the situation", and that thanks to the government's response "nobody has died except as a direct result of the cyclone" and that it was "grateful for the international aid provided".

"Myanmar is pleased to receive assistance, but distribution is to be done by the government and foreigners are not allowed in affected areas," General Maung Maung Swe reportedly said. "If you want to visit, write to us; we will consider on a case-by-case basis and go together at the appropriate time."

No wonder then the UN's exasperation at what some have described as the junta's criminal negligence. This frustration was on full display at the highest echelons of the world body on Monday.

"I want to register my deep concern - and immense frustration - at the unacceptably slow response to this grave humanitarian crisis," UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon said at a press conference. "I therefore call, in the most strenuous terms, on the government of Myanmar to put its people's lives first. It must do all that it can to prevent this disaster from becoming even more serious."

Ban also used the conference to echo the view of many international relief agencies gathered in Bangkok who are having difficulty getting their emergency relief staff and experts into the delta because of Myanmar's visa restrictions. "They, too, need greater access and freedom of movement," he said.

The junta shot down Ban's call barely hours after it was made. "The nation does not need skilled relief workers yet," a senior junta official was reported to have said in Tuesday's edition of the New Light of Myanmar newspaper, a mouthpiece of the junta. In doing so, the regime reaffirmed the kind of assistance it is receptive to - cash donations or aid in kind given directly to the generals in power.

Typical of such assistance was the aid rushed to Myanmar by its giant western neighbor, India. A week after the cyclone struck, New Delhi sent two Indian naval ships - the INS Rana and INS Kirpan - loaded with immediate relief and medical supplies. Four Indian Air Force planes - two AN-32s and two IL-76s - loaded with tents, medicine and roofing material also made deliveries.

India's assistance was received in Yangon by Foreign Minister Nyan Win and Social Welfare Minister Gen Maung Maung Swe. Similar government-to-government aid efforts have been carried out by Myanmar's neighbors and commercial allies Thailand and China, as well as cash donations from smaller Asian countries such as Singapore and Cambodia.

"This way there are no impediments, there is no confusion," a diplomat from a developing country told IPS. "Most developing countries prefer it this way."

While welcome, such aid is barely a trickle compared to what the cyclone-torn country really needs. It has also failed to win support from some international humanitarian agencies and Myanmar citizens living both in the country and in exile. The military regime, they say, is not equipped to handle a disaster of such monumental scale. What is more, there is emerging evidence that the junta is misusing the aid, they add.

And the likelihood of the junta changing its ways seems remote if the behavior of the country's strongman, the reclusive Senior General Than Shwe, is any indicator: so far he has refused to even receive repeated calls from the UN secretary general.

(Inter Press Service)

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Southeast_Asia/JE15Ae01.html

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Clarín: Murió Robert Rauschenberg,
el padre del Pop Art

El pintor estadounidense Robert Rauschenberg, pionero del Pop Art y considerado una de las figuras artísticas más influyentes de la segunda mitad del siglo XX, murió en Tampa, Florida, el lunes, a los 82 años. Fue el primer representante de su país en ganar el León de oro de la Bienal de Venecia.

13.05.2008 | Arte

Rauschenberg fue un incomprendido hasta la llegada del "pop-art", un movimiento que reconoció su obra y que le atribuyó la paternidad del nuevo estilo, donde Andy Warhol y Roy Lichtenstein fueron dos de sus principales representantes.

El ciclo de su obra más célebre es el que se encuadra bajo las "Combine Paintings", un período que surge con la incorporación de objetos reales a su obra y representan el interés del artista por trabajar en todas direcciones, persiguiendo la idea de tridimensionalidad.

Aunque declaró no haber llegado a entender lo que es el dadaismo, de Marcel Duchamp -padre de este movimiento y figura clave del arte del siglo-, aprendió a elevar a la categoría de arte cualquier objeto de la vida cotidiana.

Su trayectoria artística ilustra la evolución que se produce en las décadas centrales del siglo XX desde el expresionismo abstracto dominante hacia las nuevas formas del Pop Art, cuyo punto de partida fue la toma de conciencia de la modernización tecnológica y de sus consecuencias culturales.

En 1964, un año después de pintar Express, obra que refleja sus más importantes innovaciones y técnicas, Rauschenberg se convirtió en el primer artista norteamericano en obtener el primer Premio de Pintura de la Bienal de Venecia, contribuyendo así de manera decisiva a que el "pop art" se diera a conocer internacionalmente.

Considerado como una figura clave de la vanguardia de los años 1950 y 1960 además de inspirador de muchas figuras del arte objetual y otras vanguardias radicales de la década de 1970, Rauschenberg fue descubierto en 1951 por el mítico galerista neoyorquino de origen italiano Leo Castelli.

Nacido el 22 de octubre de 1925 en la localidad de Port Arthur (Texas), Rauschenberg fue un incomprendido hasta la llegada del "pop-art".

Fuente: EFE

Copyright 1996-2008 Clarín.com - All rights reserved

http://www.clarin.com/notas/2008/05/13/01671237.html

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Guardian: MoD launches inquiry
into Iraqi's death in army custody

Richard Norton-Taylor
Wednesday May 14 2008

The Ministry of Defence has announced a public inquiry into one of the most notorious episodes involving British soldiers in Iraq: the death of Baha Mousa, a hotel receptionist, and the abuse of other civilians in Basra in September 2003.

The unexpected move was announced in a written statement to the Commons this afternoon by Bob Ainsworth, the armed forces minister.

After months of bitter argument in the courts and a court martial that failed to get close to the full story of what happened, the government has decided the issue will not go away and was persuaded that an open inquiry was the best answer.

"Someone died, we must find out what happened and in what circumstances," a well-placed official told the Guardian.

Mousa, 26, died while being held for a weekend in a British detention centre. He had 93 identifiable injuries on his body and had suffered asphyxiation. Eight other Iraqis were inhumanely treated.

Six soldiers of the Queen's Lancashire Regiment, including Colonel Jorge Mendonca, the commanding officer, were acquitted of negligence and abuse. A corporal admitted inhumane treatment. No one was convicted of killing Mousa.

Des Browne, the defence secretary, admitted in March to "substantive breaches" of the European convention on human rights, specifically articles two and three of the convention, which guarantee the right to life and prohibit torture.

The admissions, which could cost the MoD millions of pounds in compensation, followed a vigorous campaign in and outside the courts by relatives of Mousa and the other Iraqi victims. They and their lawyers argued that the Human Rights Act demanded an independent inquiry into the incident.

Today, Browne told MPs: "A public inquiry into the death of Baha Mousa is the right thing to do. It will reassure the public that we are leaving no stone unturned in investigating his tragic death. The army has nothing to hide in this respect and is keen to learn all the lessons it can from this terrible incident."

The inquiry will investigate not only what happened but why. It will look into why the soldiers and other senior figures in the British army were apparently unaware that five brutal interrogation techniques - including wall-standing, hooding, subjection to noise, sleep deprivation and deprivation of food and drink - were banned.

The methods were expressly prohibited in 1972 by the then prime minister, Edward Heath, after the European human rights court condemned techniques used by the security forces in Northern Ireland.

The court martial heard that British soldiers used "conditioning" techniques to "soften up" Iraqi detainees. It revealed that army officers had ignored the 1972 ban on hooding and other techniques. Signficantly, Brigadier Euan Duncan, the director of the army's Intelligence Corps, told the court that US commanders had criticised British forces in 2003 for failing to extract sufficient intelligence from detainees.

In a report earlier this year, Brigadier Robert Aitken, the army's director of personnel strategy, said British soldiers had not been told about their obligations under international law. Troops were given "scant" information on how to treat civilian detainees and needed "a better understanding between right and wrong", he said. The military's Defence Intelligence and Security Centre did not mention the five techniques banned in 1972, he said.

Phil Shiner, a lawyer for the Iraqis, insisted today that any new inquiry must include other claims of ill-treatment by British troops. "It will not be sufficient if the inquiry has a narrow remit and does not look at all the cases and issues," he said.

"The public, as well as parliament, must be given the opportunity of fully understanding what went wrong in our detention policy in Iraq and what are the lessons to be learned for the future."

He said his clients wanted a single inquiry into the British detention policy in Iraq. "The most serious allegations that could be made about UK forces' behaviour in Iraq include that 20 Iraqis were executed at Abu Naji facility in May 2004, another nine survivors tortured, and that bodies were mutilated," Shiner said.

The investigation announced today will be held under the 2005 Inquiries Act. The act - drawn up after the Bloody Sunday inquiry and the Hutton inquiry into the death of the government weapons expert David Kelly - gave the government new powers to control aspects of the conduct of independent public inquiries.

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

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2008/may/14/military.iraq

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Jeune Afrique: Le Soudan poursuit
la traque d'un chef rebelle du Darfour

SOUDAN - 13 mai 2008 - par AFP

Les autorités soudanaises poursuivaient mardi leur traque du chef d'un groupe rebelle du Darfour, auteur samedi d'une attaque sans précédent sur Khartoum.

Le ministre soudanais de la Défense, Abdoul Rahim Mohammed Hussein, a indiqué à l'agence officielle SUNA que Khalil Ibrahim, le chef du Mouvement pour la justice et l'égalité (JEM), se trouvait au Darfour-nord.

Le Soudan a demandé "aux citoyens dans tout le pays et particulièrement dans les Etats du Darfour (ouest) et du Kordofan (centre) de communiquer immédiatement aux autorités toute information pouvant mener à l'arrestation de Khalil Ibrahim," a rapporté SUNA.

L'armée a déjà offert une prime de 250 millions de livres soudanaises (123 millions de dollars) à quiconque permettrait de capturer Ibrahim, un médecin islamiste.

Les rebelles du JEM, un des groupes engagés dès le début de la guerre contre le pouvoir central au Darfour en 2003, ont attaqué samedi Omdurman, ville jumelle de Khartoum, avec l'objectif de marcher sur la capitale. Ils ont été repoussés par les forces régulières.

Un couvre-feu était toujours imposé mardi, mais le trafic a pu reprendre à l'aéroport de Khartoum qui avait été fermé.

Selon le quotidien anglophone Sudan Times, les autorités soudanaises auraient fait état de 400 rebelles et de 100 membres des forces de sécurité tués dans les affrontements. Aucun bilan officiel n'a été communiqué.

Mais pour le ministère soudanais des Affaires étrangères, plus de 300 combattants soudanais et tchadiens ont été arrêtés après cette attaque.

Le chef de l'opposition islamiste, Hassan al-Tourabi, a été relâché lundi dans la soirée sans qu'aucune explication ne soit fournie sur son arrestation dans la matinée, a affirmé le directeur de son bureau, Awad Babakr.

Quatre cadres de son parti, le Congrès National populaire (CNP), ont aussi été remis en liberté, a-t-il ajouté, précisant que 16 autres restaient en détention.

Mardi matin, aucun tir n'était reporté dans la capitale. La veille, des témoins avaient fait état de tirs sporadiques dans différentes parties de Khartoum, alors que l'armée pourchassaient les rebelles à Omdurman.

L'organisation de défense des droits de l'Homme Human Rights Watch (HRW), basée à New-York, s'est inquiété des arrestations de masse à Khartoum de partisans des rebelles et de membres de l'opposition, craignant qu'ils subissent des mauvais traitements.

"Tous ceux qui ont été arrêtés et qui ont participé à la récente attaque sur Omdurman auront un procès militaire juste", a répliqué M. Hussein à SUNA.

De son côté, le chef d'état-major du JEM, Souleimane Sandal, avait affirmé lundi que son mouvement avait décidé de porter jusqu'à Khartoum la bataille du Darfour.

"Nous n'allons plus combattre au Darfour et dans le désert, nous allons combattre à Khartoum", avait-il dit en précisant qu'il se trouvait à Omdurman.

L'attaque de samedi ont conduit le Soudan à rompre ses liens diplomatiques avec le Tchad, son voisin qu'il accuse d'avoir soutenu l'attaque des rebelles. N'Djamena a nié tout implication dans l'offensive.

Le Tchad a fermé lundi sa frontière avec le Soudan "dans le but d'éviter toute infiltration et trafic suspects", et gelé ses liens économiques et culturels avec le Soudan.

Selon le ministère soudanais des Affaires étrangères, le Soudan détient la preuve de communications entre les rebelles, le gouvernement tchadien et l'embassade tchadienne à Khartoum.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/
article_depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP31308lesouruofra0

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Lo Straniero: Italia e Romania,
e i famosi anni del boom economico

di Andrea Bajani
Numero 95 - maggio 2008

Quando la mia generazione si è affacciata al mondo, tutti parlavano della Famosa Italia del boom. Arrivava sempre qualcuno, tra i grandi, che prima o poi tirava fuori il discorso dei Famosi anni dell’Italia del boom, dei frigoriferi, delle lavatrici, le famiglie che si compravano le automobili, e poi tutti insieme che si andava al mare. La televisione ne parlava, i giornali ne parlavano, e noi seduti sul divano guardavamo tutto a cose fatte, il panino spalmato di Nutella, i cartoni animati delle quattro del pomeriggio, e la Famosa Italia del boom che era già stata molto tempo fa. Era stata, era passata, e i suoi segni erano tutti disposti a forma di mobilio dentro casa: il mormorio del frigorifero la notte, la biancheria che si rivoltava dentro l’oblò della lavatrice, le fette di pane che saltavano fuori come salmoni dal tostapane, il frullatore che trucidava i pomodori per il sugo, il mangiadischi che sequestrava i 45 giri per il tempo di una canzone, e poi ovviamente la televisione, che ci teneva impietriti contro il tempo che passava. Ed era proprio la televisione a trasmettere ogni tanto dei lunghi servizi in bianco e nero sui Famosi anni dell’Italia del boom. L’Italia, lì seduti sul divano, perdeva in colore e acquistava in fantasia, gli italiani felici compravano elettrodomestici, e tutti dicevano, commentando con entusiasmo misurato quei servizi, che quella era l’Italia del Miracolo economico. C’era stato un momento, pensavamo noi impietriti contro il tempo che passava, che nel paese in cui stavamo avvenivano miracoli. C’era stato un momento, pensavamo mangiando il panino alla Nutella, in cui le cose cambiano per magia, e c’erano cose che prima non esistevano, poi all’improvviso venivano alla luce. C’era stata un’epoca lontana in cui il cambiamento, il mutamento delle forme, la metamorfosi era una condizione intrinseca del paese alla cui anagrafe eravamo iscritti pure noi. C’era stato un momento in cui il tempo passava, correva, gli orologi giravano, il mondo si srotolava davanti alle persone come un tappeto che portava chissà dove. Ma poi era finito, quel momento, e a noi sembrava che lì seduti sul divano di fronte alla televisione con i cartoni animati, il tempo si fosse fermato. Ci sembrava che l’Italia corresse sì a rotta di collo, ma sul tapis roulant, sempre allo stesso punto ma con un gran fiatone addosso, e la maglietta con il cono di sudore sulla schiena. La Famosa Italia del boom era passata, e a noi non restava che certificarne il trapasso, commemorarla senza averla vista. Questo era uno dei più grandi crucci della mia generazione, essere arrivati quando tutto era già fatto, mettersi in mare quando era calato il vento.

Ecco, quando ho deciso di andare in Romania, nella primavera del 2006, quando ho comprato il biglietto di un volo Alitalia da Milano Malpensa per Bucarest, quando sono atterrato a Otopeni, quando ho preso un autobus e ho attraversato prima la campagna e poi la periferia della capitale romena; quando ho costeggiato i mille cantieri che sembravano esploderci accanto come mine, quando ho visto case, palazzi e condomini venire su contro la campagna, le impalcature con gli operai che ci si arrampicavano sopra; quando ho visto i camioncini delle imprese edili sfrecciare accanto al bus, tagliarci la strada in mezzo al traffico, parcheggiarsi sul ciglio della strada; quando ho visto i fuoristrada degli imprenditori italiani fermi al semaforo accanto alle vecchie Dacia dei romeni, i gomiti fuori dai finestrini, gli occhiali da sole e l’espressione arrogante dei padroni; quando ho visto, seduto sull’autobus con la valigia tra le gambe, i manifesti dell’imminente trionfale apertura dell’Ikea tappezzare Bucarest, per poi vedere il capannello di persone assembrate sotto quei manifesti; quando arrivando dall’Italia in Romania ho visto tutto questo, entrando a Bucarest, ho pensato che era l’unica possibilità che avevo io, nato nel 1975, di vedere che cosa era successo in Italia nei Famosi anni Cinquanta. Era l’unica possibilità che mi era concessa di vedere che cosa era stata la Famosa Italia del boom: il tempo che si rimetteva in moto, il vento che soffiava, le lancette che giravano, gli elettrodomestici nelle case, le lavatrici caricate sulla schiena, i frigoferi che salivano su lungo i tornanti delle scale. Soprattutto, avevo la possibilità di vedere qual è il punto in cui poi tutto questo andare avanti delle cose all’improvviso si blocca, di calcolare l’istante in cui il tempo si schianta, sparato alle spalle.

Quando la mia generazione si è affacciata al mondo l’uomo non era più quello che era stato fino a qualche decina d’anni prima, fino ai Famosi anni del boom economico. Era cambiato, gli era cambiata la faccia, era cambiata la sua postura, il modo in cui camminava lungo la superficie convessa della terra. Si era mangiato la campagna, e tutti ci dicevano che là dove noi guardavamo, con le mani allacciate alle ringhiere dei balconi, là una volta era tutta campagna. Dove il nostro occhio si scontrava con i balconi dei condomini che ci stavano davanti, ci dicevano, una volta invece poteva sconfinare, andarsene per prati fino in fondo dove poi cominciavano a salire le montagne. Quei prati noi non li avevamo visti mai, perché noi non c’eravamo ancora, in quei Famosi anni. Noi eravamo già l’uomo che era cambiato, e nemmeno con tutta la buona volontà saremmo riusciti a vedere il prato che non c’era più davanti. Era avvenuta, aveva scritto Pasolini, una profonda mutazione antropologica. Noi Pasolini lo leggevamo, lo sottolineavamo facendo solchi sulle pagine dei libri, e facevamo sì con la testa. Ma potevamo crederci soltanto per una specie di atto di fede, e così guardandoci in faccia non potevamo che vederci molto diversi da come in effetti, per vizio d’anagrafe, non eravamo stati mai. Ma c’era di più. Pasolini scriveva (e noi sottolineavamo facendo solchi sulle pagine dei libri) che la società dei consumi era riuscita a cambiare quello che il fascismo in Italia non era riuscito a cambiare, che la società dei consumi era riuscita a rivoltare l’anima degli italiani, a trasformarli nel profondo. La società dei consumi, in quei Famosi anni del boom, era riuscita a bruttare l’Italia, a sfigurarle la faccia. Pasolini scriveva così, e noi negli anni ottanta pensavamo a un’Italietta che chissà dov’era finita, che chissà com’era stata. Chissà come dovevano essere quegli italiani che poi, una volta sfigurati, rovinati nell’anima, corrotti, eravamo diventati noi.

La Romania io l’ho poi fatta avanti e indietro per un anno, salendo e scendendo dai tram, dai treni, dai taxi, atterrando e decollando tra Torino e Bucarest, tra Milano e Timisoara, in quella che mi sembrava un’altalena tra l’Italia di oggi e quella del Miracolo, un’andare e venire tra il colore e il bianco e nero. Per un anno, nelle incursioni che ho fatto in Romania, ho cercato il punto in cui tutto si ferma, in cui il movimento decade, in cui un popolo poi finisce seduto su un divano impietrito contro il tempo, con i baffi di Nutella sulla bocca, e cartoni animati davanti a rotazione. E quel punto l’ho trovato un pomeriggio in cui mi sono perso, scappato da Bucarest e finito per caso in Transilvania, preda di uno smarrimento culturale, se così si può chiamare la percezione angosciante, violenta, di un massacro in atto, di un mondo agonizzante, riverso in terra e preso a calci in faccia. Erano giorni che giravo per stabilimenti di imprenditori italiani che avevano delocalizzato la produzioni in Romania per sfruttare la manodopera locale a basso costo. Entravo e uscivo da capannoni geometrici montati in mezzo alla pianura, monumenti in lamiera innalzati a santificare la furbizia, l’orgoglio italiano di chi delle leggi del proprio paese se ne fotte, e lo urla a tutti piantando una bandiera tricolore fuori dal proprio cubo di metallo. Che sia chiaro a tutti quelli che passano, se mai qualcuno avrà voglia di transitare in mezzo al nulla, che è lì che i furbi stanno di casa, e che quei furbi hanno l’inno di Mameli sempre in testa. Parlavo con gli imprenditori, ma molto tempo lo passavo anche con gli operai romeni, e tutte le volte che gli trovavo in bocca le stesse espressioni boriose dei loro padroni italiani, tutte le volte che li vedevo alludere al proprio popolo come a un popolo di bonari trogloditi, in una sorta di perverso accanimento frutto di una colonizzazione e di un dominio culturale ormai avvenuti, tutte le volte che questo succedeva avevo voglia di scappare a gambe levate da quel posto. In quei giorni mi sembrava che quell’Italia che vedevo lì attraccata, quell’Italia di lamiera che stava colonizzando il volto della Romania coi suoi valori abborracciati, con la logica facilona dell’abuso edilizio, della corruzione morale, del furbismo, con l’ostentazione fallica di macchine, telefonini e altre simili patacche, fosse già l’Italia di oggi. Come se quello spazio intercorso tra i Famosi anni del boom e l’Italia bloccata del presente, in Romania fosse avvenuto nel giro di pochissimi anni.

Così sono scappato in Transilvania, perché mi illudevo che là sarei riuscito a trovare un dente ancora sano in una bocca che mi sembrava ormai in rovina. E un pomeriggio di giugno, perso lungo la strada tra Bucarest e Brasov, sono stato raccolto da un furgone, un padre e un figlio che mi hanno caricato, e poi per giorni mi hanno portato in giro per la Transilvania parlando poco o nulla tra di noi per evidenti e insuperabili limiti linguistici. È stato proprio quel primo pomeriggio che ho trovato il punto che cercavo, quel punto in cui il tempo si blocca, in cui si smette di pensare che le cose sono in movimento e si pensa che il mondo è finito lì, che ci si può sedere a vederlo sul divano. Il tempo l’ho visto fermarsi sulla faccia rugosa di Claudiu, che mi ha trascinato con suo figlio su per la montagna promettendomi uno spettacolo imperdibile. Abbiamo preso per una strada a tornanti sopra Brasov, ci siamo inerpicati lentamente con il furgone, io e suo figlio stretti nei due sedili dalla parte del passeggero. Claudiu mi diceva soltanto Foto, mi pregava di fare un po’ di fotografie a quello che stavamo per vedere. Poi finalmente siamo arrivati, e lui mi ha detto Guarda. E davanti a noi c’erano quattro alberghi, brutti come sono brutti gli alberghi monumentali dei paesi di montagna, tutti cemento e balconi come arnie. Mi ha sorriso e poi mi ha ripetuto Foto. E così io ho preso la macchina fotografica e l’ho puntata verso quegli alberghi. Ho dovuto persino arretrare, per farli stare tutti dentro l’inquadratura. Ho puntato, e poi ho premuto, e in quel momento mi è sembrato di sparare: alla Romania, all’Italia, a Claudiu, a suo figlio, al tempo in movimento, alle cose che cambiano di forma. E poi ci siamo seduti sull’erba, che era arrivato il tempo di metterci a guardare.

http://www.lostraniero.net/pagine/uno.html

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Mail & Guardian:
Nigeria says gunmen hijack oil-services boat

Ufford Wilson | Port Harcourt, Nigeria
14 May 2008

Unidentified gunmen in Nigeria's restive south have hijacked an oil-services vessel carrying 11 crew members, the military said on Wednesday.

The hijackers are demanding about $250 000 for the release of the boat and the crew, including one Portuguese and one Ukrainian, according to military spokesperson Major Sagir Musa.

The boat, used for maintaining oil infrastructure in Africa's biggest petroleum producer, was taken on Tuesday, Musa said. The situation remained unresolved on Wednesday in the southern Niger Delta, he said, giving no further details.

Numerous armed militant and criminal groups roam the vast delta region of creeks, swamps and rivers but few roads. Militants frequently blow up oil infrastructure or attack security forces to press demands for more oil-industry revenues for their impoverished region.

But criminality is closely linked to militancy, and most armed groups are presumed to steal crude oil from pipelines for overseas resale, often with complicity from corrupt government officials.

Piracy, which is broadly defined as any waterborne crime, is also rampant and Nigeria's maritime areas are now the most pirate-infested on the globe.

Over 150 foreigners were kidnapped for ransom in the region in 2007 alone. The hostages are normally released unharmed after payment is delivered, although several have been killed or injured during botched seizures or rescue attempts.

Nigeria is Africa's biggest oil producer, but incessant pipeline bombings and other attacks have cut output by nearly one quarter, helping push crude prices to historical highs on international markets.

Sapa-AP

http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/
breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=339201

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New Statesman:
The view from inside Burma

Save The Children child protection advisor Katy Barnett is one of the few foreign aid workers to have been able to operate in Burma. Here she reports for newstatesman.com about the work she is doing in the wake of the cyclone

Katy Barnett
Published 13 May 2008

Less than twenty four hours ago I was in a different world – the shiny expanse of Bangkok’s new airport, busy with sushi, hotspots, orchids, palatial lounges and themed cafés. Here in Yangon, everyone is focusing on recovery and survival, one step at a time. The traffic lights don’t work, nobody has had time to right the pot plants on the office balcony, which have fallen like dominoes, and even simple things like sending an email are mini triumphs amidst the frustration.

Everything seems to change continuously – flights are happening, then not happening, then happening … this a good thing in one way, because you don’t take the things that do go well for granted. We’re starting to reach some of the remote, worst hit areas with our aid now, with national teams working flat out round the clock to fill boats and trucks with food, water purifying tablets, blankets and other essentials. I listened to one young woman in our team say how satisfying it was to see children smile as they played in one of the child friendly spaces we have set up, where children can talk through their fears and anxieties.

The hardest part of the work for me is ensuring that there’s enough time and money set aside to keep children safe, as well as giving them food, water, shelter, and somewhere to play. One of my jobs here is to help our team set up tracing to reunite lost children with their parents and families, and to make sure that in the mean time, whilst we are doing the tracing, they’re looked after by caring adults from their own communities and don’t fall prey to traffickers. Sometimes, when the child’s parents just can’t be found, we have to find another relative or foster family. There are unconfirmed reports already of one camp of 3,000 people includes 300 orphans – this is incredibly high, so we’ll have to verify with our own assessment.

On the roads in town young men and boys are cutting up fallen trees, loading them on to lorries. It’s a reminder that children are also starting to complain that they are having to work to support themselves and sometimes their families. All over the world children report that, in the aftermath of wars and disasters, they are forced to give up school, and sometimes even move away from their families too, to become street hawkers, factory workers and domestic servants, just to make ends meet. We still have a lot to learn about how to keep children safe in those crucial months and years after the quick fire aid has gone.

The best news of the day is our national team: the ones I have already met are full of energy and commitment, and eager to get this right. We worked till 5pm today before we realised we had forgotten to have lunch... Tomorrow, we’re expecting streams of field workers to return with more information, and we’ll be able to train them up in family tracing techniques before sending them out again.

To find out more about Save the Children's work in Burma
and to make a donation click here

http://www.newstatesman.com/200805130010

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Página/12:
Siete bombas matan a ochenta en India

Al menos 200 personas resultaron heridas por la serie de detonaciones que golpearon la ciudad turística de Jaipur, conocida como “ciudad rosa” por el color de su edificación. El número de muertos podría aumentar con las horas.

Miércoles, 14 de Mayo de 2008

Una serie de atentados con explosivos causaron al menos 80 muertos y 200 heridos ayer en varios bazares de la ciudad india de Jaipur (noroeste), uno de los destinos más populares para los turistas, a unos 250 kilómetros de Nueva Delhi, la capital de India. La policía dijo que las siete explosiones se produjeron con intervalos de unos minutos en esa localidad. El ministro del Interior del estado de Rajastán, Gulab Chand Kataria, declaró: “Tenemos noticias de 80 muertos”, y añadió que la policía detuvo a un sospechoso que estaba siendo interrogado. Según las imágenes de televisión, una de las bombas estalló cerca de un templo hindú, dejando bicicletas y otros vehículos destrozados en medio de manchas de sangre.

La policía logró desactivar otros dos artefactos. Estos, de media o baja potencia, estallaron en puntos muy concurridos como bazares y templos a partir de las 19.00 hora local y de forma consecutiva en el siguiente cuarto de hora. Estos lugares, que rodean el palacio rosa de la ciudad, el Hawa Mahal, o Palacio de los Vientos, atraen a millones de indios y extranjeros todos los años.

Según el inspector general de Policía de Jaipur, Pankaj Singh, fueron siete las bombas que explotaron en seis diferentes puntos de la ciudad, todos ellos muy próximos. Singh dijo que los explosivos fueron colocados en rickshaws, los populares triciclos indios, aunque otras fuentes hicieron referencia a bicicletas e incluso a un coche bomba. La primera bomba explotó en un templo dedicado al dios-mono hindú, cuya festividad es celebrada cada martes. Otra de las bombas estaba colocada en el Badi Chaupar, el cruce principal de la “ciudad rosa”, cerca al Hawa Mahal, joya arquitectónica del siglo XVIII, que no sufrió daños por la explosión. Las otras detonaron en las dos avenidas que se abren hacia el oeste y el sur desde el Badi Chaupar, las de los bazares de Tripolia y Johari. También explotó una bomba en la puerta de Sanganeri, que da acceso a la ciudad amurallada por el bazar de joyas de Johari. Aunque es muy visitado por los turistas, la estación de turismo terminó en marzo y es improbable que haya extranjeros heridos.

La ciudad histórica de Jaipur, que tiene una población de más de dos millones de personas, es uno de las principales lugares turísticos de India, uno de los favoritos de los extranjeros. Jaipur es popularmente conocida como la “ciudad rosa” por el color de sus viejos edificios y los muros de la ciudad. Es también una parada del circuito turístico conocido como el “Triángulo Dorado”, junto con otros lugares históricos de Rajastán y el Taj Mahal, en el estado de Uttar Pradesh.

“No toleraremos semejantes acciones”, dijo el primer ministro de Rajastán, Vasundhara Raje. “Se trata de un atentado terrorista. No hubo información de inteligencia que lo anticipase”, dijo a la televisión el director general de la policía, A. S. Gill. Las autoridades indias suelen acusar de este tipo de ataques a los militantes islamistas que operan en Pakistán. “Los responsables de estos ataques tienen conexiones con el extranjero”, denunció el viceministro del Interior del estado, Shriprakash Jaiswal, aunque evitó señalar directamente con el dedo a la vecina Pakistán. Las fronteras del estado fueron cerradas y se lanzó la alerta en Rajastán y en las zonas lindantes, informó la policía, que precisó que no se habían producido acciones en represalia, y llamó a la calma.

India ha sufrido decenas de atentados de los que acusa normalmente a los grupos islámicos de la zona caliente de Cachemira. En los últimos nueve meses un atentado dejó 43 muertos en Hyderabad, otro mató a 6 personas en un cine del estado de Punjab y otro, también múltiple, acabó con la vida de 13 personas en tres ciudades del norte. Los atentados coinciden con el décimo aniversario de los ensayos nucleares indios en Rajastán, pero no está claro que guarden relación con las efemérides.

Algunos analistas creen que grupos extremistas musulmanes están tratando de avivar la tensión entre comunidades para hacer descarrilar el proceso de paz entre India y Pakistán y poner trabas al espectacular crecimiento económico indio. El primer ministro de India, Manmohan Singh, condenó los hechos y pidió calma. “Hay paz en la ciudad, nadie debe preocuparse”, dijo Arvind Jain, un alto responsable policial, a la cadena de televisión NDTV.

El gobierno de Estados Unidos condenó rápidamente los atentados. “Aún estamos recabando información, pero por los datos que tenemos, está bastante claro que estas bombas trataban de acabar con vidas inocentes y eso lo condenamos claramente”, dijo Sean McCormack, vocero del Departamento de Estado. El Ministerio del Interior en Nueva Delhi habló de un ataque terrorista. Por ahora, ninguna organización se atribuyó el atentado.

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

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Página/12:
Charles Tilly, sociólogo, historiador (1929-2008)

Por Javier Auyero * y Daniel Fridman **
Miércoles, 14 de Mayo de 2008

El pasado 29 de abril falleció a los 78 años en Nueva York el sociólogo Charles Tilly, pionero de la sociología histórica norteamericana y del estudio de la acción colectiva, la formación de los Estados modernos y las revoluciones. Chuck, como lo conocían sus colegas y estudiantes, llevaba varios años batallando intermitentemente contra el cáncer.

En medio siglo de carrera, la amplitud y extensión de la obra de Tilly es difícil de comparar. Publicó más de 600 artículos y 50 libros, entre ellos The Vendée (1964), From Mobilization to Revolution (1978), As Sociology meets History (1981), The Contentious French (1986), Grandes Estructuras, Procesos Amplios, Comparaciones Enormes (1991), Popular Contention in Great Britain, 1758-1834 (1995), La Desigualdad Persistente (2000) y Social Movements, 1768-2004 (2004). Escribió, publicó, dio clases y conferencias y aconsejó a alumnos y colegas hasta muy poco antes de su muerte. Su último libro, Credit and Blame, fue publicado este mismo año.

El trabajo de Tilly ha influido en varias generaciones de cientistas sociales, en especial en sociología, historia y ciencia política. En los centros de investigación que fundó y dirigió –primero en la Universidad de Michigan y más tarde en la New School for Social Research–, así como en el Contentious Politics Workshop en la Universidad de Columbia, Tilly combinaba su extraordinaria productividad con una enorme solidaridad para ayudar a colegas y estudiantes a producir trabajo relevante y de calidad dentro y fuera de su área de interés.

Chuck vivió la tarea de hacer –y ayudar a que otros hagan– ciencia social con una intensidad y un sentido de la responsabilidad asombrosos hasta sus últimos días. Todos los recuerdos y anécdotas que han estado circulando en foros electrónicos hablan de su inmensa generosidad, curiosidad, humildad y apertura. Invariablemente, se lo describe como un intelectual y académico brillante, un consejero único de incomparable amabilidad e igualitarismo. Cuando sus estudiantes le agradecían la rapidez con la que leía y comentaba sus artículos y la dedicación con la que sugería posibles caminos para sus investigaciones, solía responder: “No me lo agradezcas, simplemente hacé lo mismo con tus estudiantes”.

Nosotros tuvimos la suerte y el privilegio de recibir sus consejos, aun cuando nuestras áreas de investigación no coincidían específicamente con la suya. Seguramente etnografía no suene a Charles Tilly, el del análisis macro-histórico, el de los Estados y las guerras, el de las monumentales bases de datos de eventos de protesta a lo largo de décadas. Hubo sin embargo un Tilly de grandes y pequeñas estructuras, de procesos amplios y micro, de comparaciones enormes y variaciones minúsculas al interior de un caso. Es cierto, Chuck no fue un etnógrafo. Pero siempre estuvo ahí cuando lo necesitamos. Quienes elegimos la etnografía como modo de comprender y explicar las múltiples y complejas formas en que los actores sociales y políticos actúan, sienten y piensan, podíamos contar con él, para que nos dijera no qué pensar, sino cómo recolectar evidencia y construir nuestros argumentos. Nos ayudaba a agudizar nuestra propia perspectiva analítica. El principio que siempre invocaba era tan simple que a veces se hace fácil de olvidar: “Además de este caso particular, ¿de qué se trata tu estudio?”.

Chuck insistía en recordarnos que pusiéramos las preocupaciones teóricas al principio y al final de la experiencia etnográfica: “¿Qué pueden aprender de esta investigación aquellos a los que no les interesa –por dar un ejemplo– la política de los pobres en Argentina?”.

No sorprende que escuchar a Tilly desafiar nuestro trabajo con críticas y preguntas constituía un aprendizaje fascinante. Lo curioso es que observarlo proponiendo enfoques posibles a otras personas –tanto académicos consagrados como jóvenes estudiantes jugando con ideas sin rumbo aparente– era también una forma de aprender. Tilly nunca forzaba a seguir un camino, pero mostraba con provocadora claridad que había varias rutas posibles ya incorporadas en las todavía precarias preguntas de investigación. Ninguna de esas rutas era buena o mala, pero cada una llevaría a un destino distinto. La sugerencia, tan simple, era: “Entonces, tendrás que decidir hacia dónde querés ir”.

Chuck enseñaba a sus estudiantes y colegas que la crítica implacable necesariamente debe venir acompañada de al menos la insinuación de una solución o un camino alternativo. Que las ciencias sociales avanzan gracias al esfuerzo colectivo y solidario. Aun así, nos incentivaba a pensar en grande y nos hacía sentir confianza en el potencial de nuestros proyectos individuales. Uno entraba en su oficina con una pequeña idea y salía sintiendo que revolucionar las ciencias sociales estaba al alcance de la mano. “Con este proyecto, podés tomar la posta de lo que C. Wright Mills dejó sin terminar”, le dijo a uno de nosotros. “Bourdieu dejó una gran pregunta que todavía nadie respondió. Vos tenés la oportunidad”, dijo al otro sobre una tibia propuesta de monografía.

Tilly lideró una generación de académicos que devolvió la historia a la sociología norteamericana, rescatándola de la sistematicidad parsoniana que dominaba en los años ‘50. Desde su tesis doctoral, un estudio comparativo sobre la contrarrevolución en una región de Francia, fue ampliando la geografía, primero a Gran Bretaña y luego al resto del mundo y en el contexto histórico de más de diez siglos. En sus últimos años, agregó a sus preocupaciones otros temas como la construcción de fronteras sociales, las narraciones, las relaciones interpersonales y las redes de confianza. Ha dejado una enorme cantidad de herramientas y recursos que durante muchos años nos servirán para comprender procesos sociales complejos. Quizá su más simple principio, por el que insistía en cada conferencia, clase o artículo, era que ni el individuo ni los sistemas sociales, sino las tran-sacciones o interacciones sociales son el aspecto central del análisis sociológico.

Uno de los últimos libros de Tilly analiza las distintas formas en que las personas dan razones. Como no debería sorprender, el libro se llama sencillamente Why? (¿Por qué?) El título quizá contuviera una implícita reflexión personal. Lo escribió hace unos años, durante uno de los recurrentes tratamientos por su enfermedad. Desde el inicio, Chuck se propuso que la escritura de Why? fuera una compañía durante el tratamiento. Lo comenzó en la primera sesión y lo terminó en la última. Ese libro es quizás uno de sus más importantes legados. Además de su aporte sociológico, testimonia una forma de vivir la profesión. Una pasión por las ciencias sociales que transmitió a quienes lo leyeron y lo conocieron.

* Profesor de Sociología, Universidad del estado de Nueva York.

** Candidato a doctor en Sociología, Universidad de Columbia, Nueva York.

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

http://www.pagina12.com.ar/diario/contratapa/13-104115-2008-05-14.html

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The Independent:
Lebanon does not want another war. Does it?

Despite everything that has happened in the past few days, the people have no appetite for yet more civil conflict

By Robert Fisk in Beirut
Sunday, 11 May 2008

I went to cover a demonstration in West Beirut yesterday morning – yes, please note the capital W on "West" – and then I get a text from a Lebanese woman on my mobile phone, asking if she will have to wear a veil when she returns to Lebanon. How do I reply? That the restaurants are still open? That you can still drink wine with your dinner?

That is the problem. For the war in West Beirut is not about religion. It is about the political legitimacy of the Lebanese government and its "pro-American" support (the latter an essential adjective to any US news agency report), which Iran understandably challenges.

A few days ago, I went to view an exhibition – here, in Beirut – of posters of the terrible 15-year civil war which cost the Lebanese and Palestinians 150,000 lives. It was called "Signs of Conflict: Political Posters of Lebanon's Civil War, 1975-1990", and I came to the conclusion that there would never be a civil war in Lebanon again. How could a people who were prepared to show such outrageous placards re-fight this hopeless conflict? But, am I not seeing almost identical posters in the streets of West Beirut?

So let us start at the beginning (be that the Ottoman, French, post-Versailles beginning of Lebanese history). Or let us begin yesterday, when it was broadcast that two Hizbollah members (for which read Shia Muslims) were knifed to death in Aley by Druze Muslims. Outrageous, if true. So let us begin with the statement that the Lebanese army command has decided to let Brigadier General Wafiq Chucair remain in command of security at Beirut airport. And that the Lebanese army commander – General Michel Sulaiman (the favourite for president if parliament, after 18 sittings, decide to choose one) – was determined to restore "law and order".

Thus (if the reader is not already confused) we should advance to the near-present. The army is demanding an end to all militia presence, for example the armed checkpoints in Lebanon; also, the opening of all roads. The army's fear, of course – and this is not in the official communiqués – is that if the militias do not end checkpoints and open all roads, then the army itself will split and its soldiers become part of the checkpoints. Yesterday, though, Hizbollah TV said the militias would comply with the request.

But let's go back to that demonstration I was covering in Beirut. Two days ago, Hizbollah, in its takeover of West Beirut, captured Saad Hariri's Future Television. This was the station of ex-prime minister Rafiq Hariri prior to his assassination on 14 February 2005 (for whether Syria was responsible watch this space, as they say). When Hizbollah took over West Beirut two days ago, they cut Future's cable, and so the 200 or so demonstrators who turned up yesterday were wasting their time.

Meanwhile, back at the poster exhibition, the Phalangists (still very much alive) tell their supporters that their "martyrs" died "for Lebanon to live". Another tells readers that "the Morabitoun [in Arabic, the Muslim "Ambushers"] destroyed the symbol of fascist treason, of black Zionism". The Syrian Social Nationalist Party calls, after 53 years, for "the renaissance and unity of society, and for the liberation of the nation from Zionist and foreign occupation". Let us remember here that the SSNP still wants an Arab nation which includes "Palestine", and Cyprus. And there is poor old Bashir Gemayel (Phalangist leader, assassinated in 1982, after winning the pro-Israeli presidential ticket) telling the Lebanese, Kitchener-like, that "Your nation needs you – yes, You!"

And when I walked round that exhibition, I thought – yes – that this war could never be recreated. I even contemplated an article saying that there would not be another civil war here. On reflection, I should have sent that story to this paper. For despite everything that we have witnessed these past three days (or two years, or the 30 years or 2,000 years, you take your pick), I don't think the Lebanese want another civil war.

Five days ago, I recorded an interview for Saad Hariri's Future channel about my new book, and told my interviewer that I did not think there would be another civil war in Lebanon. Because Hizbollah has cut the cables of the channel, there will be no programme. "You did it for nothing," the young Lebanese woman interviewer told me yesterday. Yes, I think she was right. But I still suspect that the Lebanese will not tolerate another civil conflict.

And I say this in front of the facts: that Hizbollah paraded down the Corniche in front of my apartment with their weapons, and that my car is shredded with bullet holes courtesy of – let us speak frankly – Hizbollah's venal allies, the Amal militia (owner; Nabih Berri, speaker of parliament). Like all who live here, my driver and I are happy we were not in the car. But in Lebanon, the question is: who will drive the car?

©independent.co.uk

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fisk/
robert-fisk-lebanon-does-not-want-another-war-does-it-825915.html

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The Nation:
The Tortured Law on Torture

truthdig
By Robert Scheer
May 14, 2008

Robert Scheer is the publisher of Truthdig, where this article originally appeared. His new book, The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America, will be published June 9 by Twelve.

Ah yes, those torture confessions have proved so useful. That, at least, was the claim of our President in justifying one of the most egregious assaults ever on this nation's commitment to the rule of law. But now comes news that charges have been dropped against the so-called September 11 attacks' twentieth hijacker, one of dozens so identified, because the "evidence" he supplied under torture and later recanted is not credible enough to go to trial.

That fact, of course, will not compel President Bush to cut the tortured prisoner loose. After all, Saudi citizen Mohammed al-Qahtani has only been held in confinement for more than six years without being charged with a crime, and without being allowed to confront his accusers in a court of law.

The fact that the information produced is worthless-as evidenced by Qahtani, once driven insane, naming everyone around him in the camp as a major Al-Qaeda operative-will not deter those who condone torture. But others expert in these matters, including presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain, will recoil from such tactics.

It was the treatment of Qahtani and other prisoners, as witnessed by horrified US Navy Department investigators at Guantànamo, that got the attention of the Navy's then-General Counsel Alberto J. Mora. In one of those all-too-rare examples of true heroism that makes one proud to be an American, Mora challenged the Bush Administration to practice the human rights standards that America proclaims to the world. But Bush would stay true to his own values: "Any activity we conduct is within the law," Bush stated in November 2005, adding, "We do not torture."

What was it then? As the New Yorker's Jane Mayer reported in 2006, citing the Army's own interrogation logs, Qahtani, in addition to being subjected to documented beatings and other physical abuse, was put through an S&M routine calculated to drive him mad, which it accomplished:

"Qahtani had been subjected to 160 days of isolation in a pen perpetually flooded with artificial light. He was interrogated on 48 of 54 days, for 18 to 20 hours at a stretch. He had been stripped naked; straddled by taunting female guards, in an exercise called 'invasion of space by a female;' forced to wear women's underwear on his head, and to put on a bra; threatened by dogs; placed on a leash and told that his mother was a whore.' "

Quite an advertisement for the American way of life. Should we expect the rest of the world to boycott the Olympics when we next get to host the Games? Others might question why the Third 1949 Geneva Convention's prohibition against "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment," doesn't apply to the United States.

The failure to elicit any usable incriminating information from Qahtani once again supports the view of most experts that torture is not only morally repugnant, it is in fact counterproductive to getting at the truth.

But this didn't trouble John Yoo, then the Justice Department lawyer who wrote the infamous Bybee memo on torture, named after Yoo's boss, Jay S. Bybee, who was rewarded for his leadership with a judgeship on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in Los Angeles. Yoo, the best recent example of what the great anti-Nazi writer Hannah Arendt once referred to as the "banality of evil," teaches law at UC Berkeley when not touring the country to argue that if an action does not produce death through organ failure it can't be torture. Audiences tend to clap politely and observe that while they don't agree with him, he is, as I was told by a UCLA professor after such an appearance, "a very bright fellow."

On February 6, 2003, as Qahtani was being led around on a leash, Yoo visited Mora in his Pentagon office. Mora later told the New Yorker writer Mayer that he asked Yoo, "Are you saying the President has the authority to order torture?" Yoo answered with a clear "yes." Following that stellar legal advice, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, with Yoo's encouragement, officially approved "hooding," "exploitation of phobias," "stress positions," "deprivations of light and auditory stimuli" and the other horrors that the scandals of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo would burn into the legacy of the United States.

About Robert Scheer
Robert Scheer, a contributing editor to The Nation, is editor of Truthdig.com and author of the newly published Playing President (Akashic Books). He is a Puffin Foundation writing fellow at The Nation Institute and the author, with Christopher Scheer and Lakshmi Chaudhry, of The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq (Akashic Books and Seven Stories Press.) His weekly column, distributed by Creators Syndicate, appears in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Copyright © 2008 The Nation

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080526/scheer

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The New Yorker: Sichuan Postcard
After the Earthquake

Former students report on the disaster.

by Peter Hessler May 19, 2008

Mr. Hessler, the Internet connection has been broken for 30 hours, I just opened my email, thanks very much for writing to me. I am sorry to say my parents’ house collapsed, but they are fine, when the earthquake happened, they were working in the field, but my niece was badly wounded when she was at school. My parents are with me in the city center. We are busying go to and coming back to hospitals to see our relatives. my house is full of people, my uncles, my aunts, and many other. I am too busy to write, I will let you know more when I am free. Thanks.
David

At my home in Colorado, I received David’s e-mail early Tuesday morning, as the news about the earthquake in southwestern China worsened. As of now, the official death count is more than thirteen thousand, and that number will undoubtedly rise in coming days. I hope that I continue to hear from friends who are safe. David was a student of mine in the mid-nineteen-nineties, when I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Sichuan province; that was the English name he had chosen for himself. Like most of my students, he had grown up in the countryside. Many of the e-mails I’m now receiving indicate that people in rural settlements have generally fared better than city residents. A young man named Willy described his wife’s village in northern Sichuan:

In Nancy’s home town . . . their parents were dealing with the newly picked tea and they found the house shake, and they ran out of the room, and the tiles fell off, the windows shook hard, and the water in the jars in their yard jumped out of the jar. People found it very hard to stand and many of them just took hold of the trees to keep balance.

But the truth is that nowadays rural Chinese villages are home mostly to the very old and the very young. Virtually everybody of working age has migrated, and the population of urban centers has exploded—the National Bureau of Statistics estimates that a hundred and thirty million rural Chinese are now living in cities. Construction is fast and often slapdash; during a recent visit to Lishui, a city in Zhejiang province, I was told by workers that it generally takes fifty days to build a two-story factory. This is the kind of structure that has collapsed in cities such as Mianyang, which is close to the epicenter of the quake. A former student named Lucy wrote:

We are really sad to see China is experiencing so many bad things. . . . I called one of my friends in Mianyang, and she told me the things there are very bad. Many people are under the broken buildings. Many students are crying for help. Many children are also crying because they have not eaten anything for 28 hours. Today, when I called her again, I could not reach her. I really hope all the things will be better soon.

In the minds of many Chinese, major earthquakes are often connected with political events. This week’s disaster is the largest since 1976, when a quake in eastern China killed more than two hundred and forty thousand people. That was the year that Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong both died, and the Cultural Revolution ended. At that time, Willy was a newborn in rural Sichuan, far from the epicenter, but even there his parents felt the tremors. His mother was bathing her two sons and her first instinct was to put some clothes on them—later, she said that she couldn’t stand the thought of them dying naked. In a neighboring village, the peasants slaughtered all the pigs, even the smallest ones; they believed that it was best to enjoy what they had before the world ended.

This week, Willy told me that many people are responding in similar ways to China’s recent string of disasters. First, brutally cold weather in January and February caused major transportation-related delays and deaths and disrupted the Spring Festival holiday; then the protests occurred in Tibet and during the Olympic torch relay overseas; and now the earthquake has devastated parts of Sichuan province. He wrote:

People here are likely to connect it with the Olympics. Almost everyone thinks that this year gives China disasters and it is a bad year. Interesting enough, when the snowstorm occurred, when I was watching TV, I just said for fun to Nancy that the year of 2008 was so bad that possibly an earthquake might happen in China. It seems that my sixth sense is right. And the authorities in Sichuan just predicted that there would be severe drought during the summer.

In China, when bad things happen, they happen in places like Sichuan. The province is landlocked, remote, and rugged; it’s always been heavily populated, and it’s always been poor. When I was in the Peace Corps, Sichuan was home to a hundred and ten million people, a staggering figure: roughly one of every fifty human beings on earth was Sichuanese. Since then, the central government has divided the region into two parts, Sichuan province and Chongqing municipality, but that has done nothing to change the sheer sense of massed humanity. And the recent earthquake is by no means unusual. If you’ve lived in Sichuan, and continue to follow it in the news, you become accustomed to terrible stories—floods and landslides and collapsed bridges. Periodically, I’ll receive an e-mail that stops me cold, such as the one that Kevin sent last May:

I am sorry to tell a bad news. My town is called Yihe in Kaixian County in Chongqing. Two days ago, a big thunder hit my wife’s village school. It killed 7 students and wounded 44 students. It was not my wife’s class. But when the tragedy happened, my wife was teaching her students. . . . I am sorry to tell you about the bad news. These days my wife and I are both sad and scared at home.

The Chinese often believe that human beings are shaped by the land around them. After my time in Sichuan, I came to agree; I had never lived among people who were so tough. The Sichuanese are natural workers, and they dominate construction crews in many parts of China. They are patient and tireless and determined, and they’re famous for pragmatism—Deng Xiaoping came from Sichuan. The people are also surprisingly good-natured and optimistic. Maybe that’s what happens when you’re a survivor, and maybe that also accounts for their sense of humor. On Tuesday, I received another e-mail from Willy:

…a minor quake measure 6.1 occurred again in Chengdu at around 3:00 and I called my friend there, they said when it happened yesterday, the whole house was like a swing. But this afternoon, when I called him, he said many of his colleagues (some teachers) were playing mahjong happily in the wake of the terrible quake.…
Do you still remember my uncle, who went to Gansu as the early migrant worker? His son survived the quake. . . . He was a college student in Aba Teachers’ College, which happens to be located in the epicenter. He is going to graduate in July, but he found a job for Yanjing Beer Company, the company asked them to go to Guangxi to get training instead of going back to school to study, so when the quake happened he was on the train to Guangxi not knowing that Yanjing Beer Company had saved his life.

This week, it’s unlikely that there will be much good news coming from China. But the rescue crews will, one hopes, make progress, and there may be reason for some Sichuan-style optimism. First, it seems that the Chinese government has been relatively open about news coverage, and it doesn’t seem to be restricting e-mails and phone calls. Second, the scale of destruction could easily have been worse. The epicenter was near the city of Dujiangyan, which in May of 2001 started construction on a massive hydroelectric dam on the Min River. Big dams are common in China, and Dujiangyan was one of the nation’s “Ten Key Projects” aimed at producing electricity and better water supplies.

By 2003, there were signs that the government was quietly expanding the project, and silt had begun to accumulate at a second location on the river. Dujiangyan is home to a local irrigation system that has functioned for more than two thousand years and has been declared a World Heritage site; it would have been effectively destroyed by the new dam. The city’s World Heritage Office opposed the project, contacting journalists from Chinese publications. The press was allowed to report with relative openness, in part because it portrayed the dam as destructive of cultural heritage. But one of the local entities that openly opposed the dam was the Dujiangyan Seismological Bureau.

In August of 2003, dam construction was forced to stop. In the history of the People’s Republic, this represented the first time that an engineering project on such a scale had been cancelled because of public pressure. (For a full account, see “Unbuilt Dams,” by Andrew C. Mertha and William R. Lowry, published in the October, 2006, issue of Comparative Politics.) Today, with Dujiangyan in ruins and the government struggling to respond, there’s some small consolation in the fact that at least there wasn’t another major dam on the site. And maybe later, after the emergency has passed, officials will remember the importance of the press and the seismological experts in stopping the dam. Sichuan’s greatest resource has always been its people, and sometimes the government just needs to listen to them.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/05/19/080519on_onlineonly_hessler

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ZNet:
Come in Goblin Market, your time is up...

By Toni Solo
May, 14 2008

"I feel no confidence that countries, apart from ourselves and those seated around this table, can deal with this problem completely seriously. I don't see the Americans helping us, nor do I see the Europeans helping us and in fact, on many occasions when they bring programmes for diversification, for agricultural production and so on, they perpetrate a fraud on people, raising expectations, and there are many, for the small contributions they make."

- Ralph Gonsalves, Prime Minister of St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Managua, May 7th

We go to news media for all kinds of information - weather reports, sports results, financial information, law reports, travel information - as well as general news. We tend to believe what the media tell us because if they were to misreport routine facts no one would give them the time of day and they would go bust. People tend to assume an accurate news source for the weather is likely to be reasonably accurate about other things too, say, events in Venezuela, Lebanon or Palestine.

Another reason for people to trust the corporate media is that the reporters and writers seem just like them, ordinary individuals struggling to cope with the vagaries of an unpredictable world. They prize normality. Normality for people in Western Bloc countries consists generally of abundance and ease. That abundance and ease facilitates the liberal humanitarian self-image, honest, tolerant of diversity, seeking pacific resolution of conflicts, showing decent concern for vulnerable people and an abhorrence of cruelty.

Corporate news media exploit people's misplaced trust by reporting the hypocritical, sadistic status quo imposed by Western Bloc governments as if it were normal and with the necessary bias to render it so. Now, the propaganda war is intensifying as corporate globalization's goblin market faces a serious interruption, if not an end, to the unquestioned abundance and ease. The propaganda intensification is both explained and signalled by a concentration of corporate control of news media and by their obvious identification with political power

Goblin Market and Dorian Gray

An acute psychological image from Western Bloc imperialism's high tide, Christina Rossetti's "Goblin Market", tells how inexperience can be fatally seduced by false promises of luxurious enjoyment and excess. Rossetti wrote Goblin Market in 1862, just a few years after Britain forced open China's markets with the Second Opium War and reinforced its control of India by defeating what it dubbed the Mutiny. The effects of the Irish famine were still recent. In Britain itself, poverty and injustice provided endless subject matter for Dickens, George Eliot and their contemporaries.

Consciously or not, Rossetti's moral point is unlikely to have excluded religious misgivings about imperialist crimes abroad and grotesque capitalist exploitation at home. Like Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray" published in 1891, another deep European testament around the motif of narcissism, "Goblin Market" has extraordinary resonance now. As corporate consumer capitalism fails to deliver luscious, juicy, forever young prosperity, people in Western Bloc countries turn against the leading lights that failed. Prominent among the casualties is British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

Kinds of "wanting" worth wanting

As the UK's official economic fixer, Brown apparently used to joke that there are two kinds of Chancellors of the Exchequer : the ones that fail and the ones that get out in time. Brown's doppelganger, supreme war crime aggressor Tony Blair, clearly took the joke to heart. He stiffed Brown, leaving him as the fall guy holding the bitter dregs of New Labour's wretched legacy.

Conventionally, commentators in the UK, while criticising Brown, give him credit for seeking solutions to world poverty about which he is alleged to care passionately. Brown may want to reduce poverty, but certainly without prejudicing the power and privilege of the interests he represents. What kind of edge does that give "want" in such a case? A forever-postponed wish? A wistful sigh? A meaningless public relations gesture? The Gleneagles G8 "Make Poverty History" fiasco suggests the latter.

Western Bloc corporate mainstream journalists seem to have no idea how their countries' governments and their political leadership look from outside the corporate capitalist bubble. Just one day's worth of Western Bloc country war expenditures would be enough to transform healthcare and education in a couple of dozen impoverished countries. But no sign exists of any determined effort to shift priorities away from the standard imperialist agenda of economic domination and military aggression. Talk of poverty reduction from G7 leaders has consistently turned out to be insincere froth.

The picture of corporate media imperialism

Following Oscar Wilde, one would have to have a heart of stone not to be stolidly indifferent to the plight of Gordon Brown. He, Tony Blair and their G7 accomplices continued the genocidal sanctions regime against Iraq despite knowing its devastating effects on hundreds of thousands of children. Contrast their manipulation of events in Tibet with their complicity in the vast human catastrophe in the Congo. They have consistently supported Israel's creeping genocide against the Palestinians.

They colluded deliberately to destroy the viability of Jean Bertrand Aristide's government in Haiti and finally to engineer a murderous coup. They support a narco-paramilitary regime in Colombia that has overseen the displacement of around 4 million people from rural areas. The same number of people have been displaced in Iraq as a result of the US-uk criminal war of aggression.

More than a decade of "free trade" arrangements with Canada and the United States have wrecked Mexico's rural economy. There too, millions of people have been displaced by the greedy economic policies of corporatist Western Bloc imperialism. Mexican society has been blighted and corrupted by the criminal organization necessary to satisfy Western Bloc societies' drug habits and their corporate financial institutions' readiness to process billion-dollar drug profits.

At the same time corporate news writers assure us that Gordon Brown wants to reduce world poverty, their colleagues spread reports suggesting that the governments of Venezuela and Cuba have failed their peoples. But it is countries like Colombia and Mexico that have conspicuously failed. The corporate media reinforce Western Bloc messages that Hizbollah and Hamas threaten regional stability. But it is Israel that has consistently destabilised the region with its relentless military aggression. The corporate media cast Iran as the aggressive influence destabilising Iraq. But it is the Western Bloc countries who invaded Iraq.

Faced with such forever young duplicity, the banal spectacle of mainstream corporate media journalists writing Gordon Brown's political obituary is almost completely irrelevant. Brown and his G7 cronies and the media journalists who parasitically infest them, are all variations on Dorian Gray, flouncing about in a plunging goblin market. Occasionally the masks slip and one gets glimpses of reality.

People-trafficker-in-chief King Juan Carlos W. Bush is responsible for US forces having purchased innocent people in Afghanistan to torture and imprison. G7 leaders colluded in that and in the torture flights called "extraordinary rendition" involving hundreds of other individuals. They collaborate in the massacres of civilians carried out regularly in Afghanistan and Iraq. Their military expeditions are as flawed as their stumbling economies.

Managua food security summit

As the G7 frauds posture, the only people likely to do anything significant about reducing world poverty are political leaders whose governments depend for their support on their countries' impoverished majorities. Cue an important food security summit involving the leaders of Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Costa Rica, Haiti, Honduras and St Vincent and the Grenadines. Also participating were high level delegations from Venezuela, Cuba, El Salvador, Mexico, Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Belize and Panama. This important meeting went almost completely unreported in the corporate mainstream media.

Among the various leaders speaking at the summit in Managua on May 7th, Haitian Prime Minister Rene Preval said:

"For me this is an opportunity to thank CARICOM, via the President of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and it is is also a chance to thank Venezuela for immediately sending aid, as well as other countries who helped us too..... Venezuela has sent us, free of cost, fifteen thousand tons of urea and we are currently unloading 50 tractors donated by Venezuela. ... We can no longer wait and see the feeding of our countries left dependent on rich countries. We have to build solidarity between our countries to guarantee our food production."

Preval also pointed to the connection between the worsening effects of climate change, such as the increased frequency of hurricanes, and food production and the consequent need for increased regional coordination and solidarity. Following Preval, speaker after speaker pointed to the hypocrisies and contradictions of European and North American policies on trade, environment and military spending.

Even Oscar Arias, President of Costa Rica, a decided ally of the United States government remarked, " ...again we are talking, for example, of discrepancies and contradictions as large as spending US$70bn or US$75bn on development aid while the world spends US$1.3 trillion on weapons and soldiers with just one country, as we all know, the United States, with half that expenditure!"

Arias also noted that various countries in the region have made progress towards the Millenium Goals for reducing poverty. He had the intellectual honesty to point out that the country most successful in meeting those goals is Cuba. He said, " And that just shows us that in Cuba, the objectives are clear; that they have decided priorities answering to an ethic, namely to help the Cuban people satisfy their population's most basic needs."

Honduran President Manuel Zelaya observed, "The contradictions of the international model made us take on faith that the industrial economies were gathering their surpluses to put into agriculture and make agriculture profitable for their economies while breaking our producers, but opening a space for consumers to get cheap food from the industrialised countries. What resulted was a false illusion : we were given to trust that globalization of international markets was going to solve the energy problem, the food problem, the development problem - but what it did was make things worse!"

Ecuador's President Rafael Correa said, "The problem is not a lack of resources, the problem is not technical limitations, the problem is the terribly unequal distribution of wealth and the perverse systems that perpetuate those stuctures instead of trying to correct them...... It is supposed that the market system guarantees optimum allocation of resources...but what optimum allocation are we talking about if, after 20 years of dogmatically applying neoliberal market theory, we have food shortages in countries with tremendous potential for agricultural production? Something is wrong, very wrong! And we have to confront it and correct it."

Despite their willingness to participate in coordinating responses to the food crisis, Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama are absent from the signatories of the joint declaration. Oscar Arias said he had "conceptual differences with some of what it says here, not just in the Considerations, but in the Agreements. Certain value judgements are expressed which I don't share and for that reason prefer to exclude myself." In fact much of the final declaration reads like notes from a work in progress, which, really, it is - the sovereign solidarity based integration of Latin America and the Caribbean.

Among many themes covered in the discussions prior to the final declaration were an increased role for the state in guaranteeing food production, an obligatory increase of private sector finance for agriculture, reactivation of land reform processes in favour of small and medium producers, sustainable exploitation of marine resources, security of land tenure and improved communications infrastructure. The final declaration itself made clear that while the summit had been called to face the current food security crisis, participants see it as helping to coordinate processes already in train in Central America, in the ALBA countries, in the Caribbean and in South America generally.

The meeting was historic in that the Central American countries were meeting the ALBA countries and other associated countries like Ecuador and Caribbean nations specifically for the first time to work out common approaches to an issue of common concern. In a sane world this would nail once and for all the lie that Venezuela and Cuba are disruptive, destabilising influences in Latin America. As more than one summit participant noted, the only destabilising country in Latin America is Colombia, which has failed for decades to resolve its internal civil war.

The virtually complete absence of reporting of this important meeting in mainstream corporate news media and the skewed reporting it received in regional media overwhelmingly controlled by the right wing confirm an inescapable conclusion. It is inherently impossible for Western Bloc corporate media to give a true and fair view of world events.
Any fair reporting of the Managua summit and its proceedings would have to include the huge forbearance shown by all participants.

The spectacle of regional leaders making every effort to bury their differences in order to move forward regional inter-governmental processes is truly sobering. It shows up mainstream corporate reporting on Latin America as completely disingenuous and makes ni-chicha-ni-limonada liberal social-democrat commentary look fake and mealy mouthed. While Western Bloc corporate propaganda media unreported the Managua summit turning it into non-news, they facilitate a redoubled deceitful campaign waged by the US and Colombia against Ecuador and Venezuela based on laptops of mysterious provenance allegedly recovered from the attack on Ecuadoran territory in March.

Reading the Nicaraguan government transcript of the Managua Food For Life Summit and the Summit's Final Declaration make that propaganda campaign look more far fetched and self-serving than ever. That is certainly why the summit was not reported in the mainstream corporate press. Any fair report would show up the corporate media's standard account of Latin America offered to Western Bloc media consumers as completely stupid and dishonest. It would also reveal that the rest of the world has had enough of corporate consumer capitalism's global goblin market.

toni solo writes for tortillaconsal

From: Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives
URL: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/17628