Isangqa

Sharon seems to have recognized—belatedly—Israel’s stark demographic future: the number of Jews and Arabs between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea will be roughly equal by the end of the decade. By 2020, the Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola has predicted, Jews will make up less than forty-seven per cent of the population. If a self-sustaining Palestinian state—one that is territorially contiguous within the West Bank—does not emerge, the Jews of Israel will be faced with two choices: a binational state with an Arab majority, which would be the end of the idea of Zionism, or an apartheid state, in which the Arab majority would be ruled by a Jewish minority.
[...]
The settlers reject the idea of a demographic crisis. They still see themselves as Sharon once saw them—as the avant-garde of Zionism, heirs to the pioneers of the early twentieth century who restored the Jews to Palestine. But, should they somehow prevent the emergence of a viable Palestinian state, they may well be the vanguard of Israel’s demise as a Jewish democracy.

They are, for the moment, prevailing.

The committee was set up under a World Bank plan to try to bring transparency to Chad's oil bonanza.

But a senior member said neither Exxon Mobil -- which has built a pipeline to export the crude -- nor the government were providing sufficient information.

A rather staid anti-corruption conference in London came alive when Therese Mekombe, vice-president of the Chadian oversight committee, got up to speak.

It soon became clear that a whistle-blower had taken the stage.

The committee, she said, was underfunded, understaffed and deprived of information by both Exxon and the Chadian government.

In these circumstances, it could not do the job it was set up to do -- which is basically to try to make sure that Chad's opportunity to lift itself out of poverty is not wasted.

Who's more brutal than who? This was the issue of the week in the press, as writers argued over whether America, Egypt or Saddam's Iraq was the worst torturer of all. The online issue of the Islamist paper Al Shaab of 21 May explained below a picture of an Iraqi in an orange prisoner outfit before a vicious-looking dog that "the civilization of America releases dogs on prisoners to ravage their bodies. Dozens of Iraqis died after trained dogs ravaged their sexual organs." In the opposition Al Arabi of 23 May, Yusri Fatyan wrote that it was no better in Egyptian prisons. "Frankly, what happens in Egypt doesn't differ much from what happens in Iraq's prisons," he wrote, saying he was personally a victim and so knew what he was talking about. "So that we don't get a surprise when foreign organizations start talking about some of our police stations, like Helwan, Al Sahel, Bilqas and others, we need to stop looking at this issue as one of individual cases." But in Lebanon's The Daily Star of 24 May, Iraqi rights activist Ibrahim Al Idrissi said the abuse in Iraqi prisons today is a “joke” compared to what went on under Saddam. He recounted one incident he witnessed himself when a woman was raped by 12 men then her unborn child cut from her stomach.

The government consultant said that there may have been a serious goal, in the beginning, behind the sexual humiliation and the posed photographs. It was thought that some prisoners would do anything -- including spying on their associates -- to avoid dissemination of the shameful photos to family and friends. The government consultant said, "I was told that the purpose of the photographs was to create an army of informants, people you could insert back in the population." The idea was that they would be motivated by fear of exposure, and gather information about pending insurgency action, the consultant said.

Agents in the territories for example, are adept at exploiting the importance of honor in conservative Palestinian society, by adopting a method known as isqat. A crude recruiting measure, isqat is a form of sexual blackmail in which Palestinians are allegedly lured by Israeli agents or other collaborators, photographed in compromising situations, and then pressured to collaborate under the threat of publicizing the photographs.

In his cell in the Maputo top-security prison, Anibalzinho told Reporters Without Borders he is the only person who knows the whole truth. "I will die here. There are people outside who want me to die here. If there is a new trial one day, then perhaps I will say everything I know." Asked if there were other people responsible for Cardoso's death who were still at large, he said : "I cannot reply." He added : "I am the one who killed Cardoso, but I didn't order his death."

If the curve of global oil production is indeed near the point of descent, as these experts believe, it has epochal implications for the world economy. More expensive oil will undercut China's energy-intensive boom, return OECD countries to the bad old days of stagflation, and accelerate the environmentally destructive exploitation of low-grade oil tars and shales.

Most of all, it will devastate the economies of oil-importing third-world countries. Poor farmers will be unable to purchase petroleum-based artificial fertilizers just as poor urban-dwellers will be unable to afford bus fares. (Already, rising oil prices have brought chronic blackouts to cities throughout the globe's southern hemisphere.)

The only certain beneficiaries of this coming economic chaos will be the big five oil corporations and their corrupt partners: the Nigerian generals, Saudi princes, Russian kleptocrats, and their ilk. Crude oil truly will become black gold.

The rising value of an increasingly scarce resource is a form of monopoly rent, and a future permanent crude-oil regime of $50 per barrel (or higher) would transfer at least $1 trillion per decade from consumers to oil producers. In plain English, this would be the greatest robbery by a rentier elite in world history. Someday, Enron may seem like the equivalent of a liquor store hold-up by comparison.

The oilmen in the White House, of course, have the best view of the lush terrain on the far side of Hubbert's peak. No wonder, then, that a map of the 'war against terrorism' corresponds with such uncanny accuracy to the geography of oil fields and proposed pipelines. From Kazakhstan to Ecuador, American combat boots are sticky with oil.

This is developing into an interesting test of the ANC's commitment to human rights. After all, rights should be accorded to everyone, even those whom we don't like (or, perhaps, especially those whom we don't like). So, will the ANC take a principled approach and oppose the extradition? Or are they likely to stay silent, with the result that this will probably end in an messy court confrontation?

The notion that Arabs are particularly vulnerable to sexual humiliation became a talking point among pro-war Washington conservatives in the months before the March, 2003, invasion of Iraq. One book that was frequently cited was "The Arab Mind," a study of Arab culture and psychology, first published in 1973, by Raphael Patai, a cultural anthropologist who taught at, among other universities, Columbia and Princeton, and who died in 1996. [...]
The Patai book, an academic told me, was "the bible of the neocons on Arab behavior." In their discussions, he said, two themes emerged -- "one, that Arabs only understand force and, two, that the biggest weakness of Arabs is shame and humiliation."

Consider these statements:
"Why are most Africans, unless forced by dire necessity to earn their livelihood with 'the sweat of their brow', so loath to undertake any work that dirties the hands?"

"The all-encompassing preoccupation with sex in the African mind emerges clearly in two manifestations ..."

"In the African view of human nature, no person is supposed to be able to maintain incessant, uninterrupted control over himself. Any event that is outside routine everyday occurrence can trigger such a loss of control ... Once aroused, African hostility will vent itself indiscriminately on all outsiders."

These statements, I think you'll agree, are thoroughly offensive. You would probably imagine them to be the musings of some 19th century colonialist. In fact, they come from a book promoted by its US publisher as "one of the great classics of cultural studies", and described by Publisher's Weekly as "admirable", "full of insight" and with "an impressive spread of scholarship".

The book is not actually about Africans. Instead, it takes some of the hoariest old prejudices about black people and applies them to Arabs.

Replace the word "African" in the quotations above with the word "Arab", and you have them as they appear in the book. It is, the book says, the Arabs who are lazy, sex-obsessed, and apt to turn violent over the slightest little thing.

Writing about Arabs, rather than black people, in these terms apparently makes all the difference between a racist smear and an admirable work of scholarship.

Political parties have swept away a decade of silence and embarrassment to compete for the votes of those stricken with or affected by the disease.

Candidates from the president down reached out to a constituency once shunned as untouchable by admitting that they had lost relatives to Aids and promising to provide free medical treatment.
[...]
But in the run-up to today's vote, Malawi's politicians have made private tragedies public. The lands minister, Thengo Maloya, told of losing three children to Aids. President Bakili Maluzi admitted losing a brother. The leader of the opposition National Democratic Alliance, Brown Mpinganjira, lost six siblings.

Whatever the motive, the president's honesty about his brother was music to the ears of Austin Gamba, a 26-year-old street trader who has battled against prejudice since being diagnosed with HIV four years ago. "Some people still have high blood pressure when they hear about the virus, so it was very, very important that he said that."

The Tajikstan-born Bout would be an embarrassing ally to acknowledge publicly. But the coalition partners are showing him exceptional favours as he does some of their job for them.

The UN Security Council drafted a resolution in March to freeze the assets of mercenaries and weapons dealers who backed ousted Liberian dictator Charles Taylor. Bout should top that list, French diplomatic sources say. But the diplomats and UN sources say the United States has been working to keep Bout off that list.

U.S. officials have indicated unofficially that the reason is that Bout is useful in Iraq, the sources told IPS.

In other words, it’s all a big con game. The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon—which this week stopped funding Chalabi’s INC —is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi’s sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq’s fate in his wrinkled hands.

Palestinians and human rights groups maintain that the latest round of demolitions suggests a political rather than a security agenda: to maintain control over the West Bank and Gaza Strip indefinitely, through an ever-expanding network of settlements, using bypass roads to link them with Israel and military positions to protect them. "Yes, this is a planned-out policy," confirms Nizar Farsakh, research assistant at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem (ARIJ), which studies land and water issues in the Occupied Territories. "Slowly, slowly, [the Israelis] are demolishing houses as they build their roads and settlements."

IDF spokesmen are careful to maintain the official line, but occasionally the government is more candid about its intentions. "If we don't keep this territory clean, at the end of the day there will be irreversible facts on the ground that will reduce our 'maneuvering space,' if you can call it that, as we enter into negotiations," said Israel's Deputy Head of Civil Administration David Bar El in 1998, as quoted by Amnesty International.

A look at a map of the Occupied Territories suggests that army destructions of Palestinian property are anything but random. Confiscations, occupations and demolitions overwhelmingly occur in strategic areas -- land adjacent to settlements, such as Abu Samra's, or fields that can be paved over with a bypass road connecting an isolated settlement with Israel. "It's important to see where the [targeted] houses are located and why," says Jad Isaac, director general of ARIJ. "It's not arbitrary. These sites are meticulously selected. They are for the bypass roads or new zoning for the settlements, to increase Israeli control."

Human rights groups fear the discrepancy between government rhetoric and reality means President Robert Mugabe is preparing to use hunger as a political weapon.

"If independent assessments are correct, the risk is that food will be used for political ends and food supplies will go first and only to supporters of the ruling party," said Amnesty International.

Pius Ncube, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Bulawayo and a leading government critic, said the govern ment was preparing for general elections due next year.

"They will use food politically," he said.

[...] the basic story seems more and more clear, and increasingly confirmed from multiple sources. That is, that irregular methods originally approved for use against al Qaida terrorists who had just recently landed a devastating blow against the US, were later expanded (by which mix of urgency, desperation, reason, bad values or hubris remains to be determined) to the prosecution of the insurgency in Iraq.

In the words recently attributed to Gen. Miller, they Gitmo-ized the counterinsurgency operation in Iraq.

In other words, methods approved for use against the worst and most dangerous terrorists spread -- like ink through tissue paper -- to other military theaters that were, at best, only tangentially related to the war on terror. And this, I think we can say, is tied to the boundless, amorphous and ever-expanding definition which the administration has given to the war on terror.

‘What type of leader are you? And you are asking me this type of rubbish question. You are an idiot. A total idiot. And I have no apologies for that’

Olusegun Obasanjo’s legendary temperament appeared, last night, to have scuttled his peace initiative on the Plateau State religious crisis after flaring up at a stakeholders' meeting in Jos, calling the state chairman of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) an idiot.

The Plateau crisis ignited the Kano mayhem which, for the two days it lasted, claimed about 30 lives. Tension remained high in the city yesterday with the morgue overflowing and thousands homeless.

The latest email linked to the 419 scam comes from the brother of former ANC chief whip Tony Yengeni, or so it claims.

The chain letter currently doing the rounds via email is signed by Yengeni's alleged brother, 'Fred', and promises the reader 20 percent of US$25.5-million for his/her help.

iafrica.com can confirm, however, that Yengeni does not have a brother called Fred. In a telephone conversation, an irate Yengeni complained about the number calls he had received regarding the scam. "People are calling me everyday, asking: 'Do you have a brother called Richard, do you have a brother called Fred'. I have nothing to do with this."

The email even goes as far as to include links to the BBC and CNN websites, about "Fred's family", to actual articles written about Yengeni, who was embroiled in the R43-billion arms deal.

[The journey from Jerusalem to Ramallah]

The traffic is fairly heavy with cars, some motorcycles, a few brave bicyclists, and the buses. In spite of the fact that buses have been a favored target for suicide bombers, and that no attacks have occurred in Israel since the Yassin and Rantisi assassinations, Israelis ride them daily. Children, young, old, religious, secular, soldiers all clamor onto the buses as people do in every city in the world. When I told my Israeli friend I was surprised by this she simply said, "People have to get around." Of course she’s right, life must go on in spite of its dangers.

Security is high in the city; almost every bus stop or bus has a good looking, young security guard scanning the crowd. Occasionally these security guards – who I’ve been told are privately hired by the bus company – will stop and ask you a random question. "How are you? Do you have a weapon?" My friend thinks that half the time these guards are calculating your response, while the other half they are just trying to talk to women. But since I’ve promised my parents I will avoid riding the buses, I mostly watch them pass me by from the sidewalk.

This conflict has undoubtedly created strange morning commutes for everyone living in the region. The Israeli who doesn’t drive to work takes a death-defying ride on public transportation; while the Palestinian, delayed at checkpoints, can only hope the soldiers will not suddenly close the road before she reaches her destination. I have no complaints about my "commute", but I imagine that my route – from the heart of Israeli Jerusalem to the center of Palestinian Jerusalem – is not common. On my walk Tuesday morning, feeling a little self-conscious about speaking Arabic in an Israeli area, I made arrangements for my friend Ziad to drive me to the Ramallah checkpoint in his Taxi. [...]

For the last year Ziad has driven a Mercedes taxi around East Jerusalem. He says he likes the job, and owning the car, but wishes the economy would improve and allow him to utilize his degree in business. [...]

The fifteen-minute ride to Kalandia checkpoint was fairly awkward. When the weight of the conflict hangs so heavily in the air it can be a little difficult to know what to talk about. Ziad appeared void of emotion. He kept his eyes on the road and the silence was filled with the words of the Koran that flowed from his radio. We drove on a new settler highway, with the Palestinian town of Beit Hanina on our left, and Israeli settlement Pisgat Ze’ev on our right. I tried to be cheerful as we drove, but I was feeling nervous about the checkpoint and negotiating my way around the West Bank, and I didn’t really know what to say to Ziad. Two years ago I felt the same way when I crossed the green line into the Occupied Territories. Even though I’ve spent enough time here to have a good geographical and cultural sense of the region, the barrage of media images of gun-toting Hamas members parading around makes me nervous. Most Jewish Israelis won’t go into the territories, and are often shocked when they learn that I go there.

Ziad explained that if he drove me through the checkpoint he would end up spending two hours convincing the soldiers to let him and his car back onto the Israeli side. He dropped me off, didn’t charge me for the ride, and told me to call him when I wanted to come back to Jerusalem. I fell in line with the surprisingly few Palestinians crossing into the checkpoint. We walked on the side of the road past an old woman and a child begging (a rare sight amongst Palestinians) and an old man in a wheel chair sitting on the path to the checkpoint. The soldiers apparently weren’t too concerned with those of us entering the West Bank and we all walked straight past the checkpoint. On the other side a group of shared taxis waited to take passengers to Ramallah and Birzeit. I climbed into the minivan, with other young students, and we set off to the university. Aside from being briefly stopped by another makeshift checkpoint, our ride was uneventful. [...]

[Back in the Old City]

It’s overwhelming to be here, and much has changed in the past two years. The most obvious effects of the intifada are the empty stores and closed businesses. The old Sbarro pizza restaurant in West Jerusalem is closed, as is the nearby Dunkin Donuts and other western chains. Rumor has it that even Starbucks couldn’t make it. Walking through the center of West Jerusalem, stores and cafes I used to visit are gone, along with the crowds of tourists. Salah Eddin street in East Jerusalem was filled with school children, and while the stores were open, the clothing shops were quiet. Only the cell phone store where I bought a local sim card seemed to be doing well. The tourist shops in the old city were completely empty, despondent looking shopkeepers sat outside their stores trying to convince me that they sold exactly what I was looking for. I tried to visit a shopkeeper friend, who has a store near the Western Wall, but his shop was gone and the nearby shopkeepers didn’t know what happened to Samir’s jewelry shop. I drank tea with a nearby shopkeeper and his son, and when I asked them how much business they did in a week they just gave me an exasperated look. In the hour I visited with them, a few tourists and Israelis came in, but I didn’t see anyone buy anything.

ronaldrobinson@jumpy.it
05/10/2004 09:05 PM

JOHANNESBURG 2198 GAUTENG PROVINCE
REP. OF SOUTH AFRICA .
SEEKING FOR FINANCIAL ASSETS INVESTMENTS INFORMATION .

Zimbabwe formerly Rhodesia under the colonial rule gained independence in 1981 under the nationalist struggle for independence led by Mr. Robert Mugabe and late Joshua Nkomo. Under the white rule and since independence the minority whites that owned most of the farmlands in Zimbabwe have dominated agriculture. The aborigines believe that they are still slaves in their own land if they continue to work the lands for their white masters even after independence. Robert Mugabe as the black Moses who led his people to freedom has vowed to revoke ownership of the white owned farms and redistribute the lands to the landless blacks. This move he said is necessary to redress the imbalance of the colonial era. For the struggle to be meaningful the whites must give up their lands, which was part of the struggle for freedom. To effect this initiative the government has amended its land acquisition laws and policies months ago, which gave about 3000 white Zimbabwean farmers a 45-day quit notice to leave their lands to the government.

My family and I are caught up in this web of land politics, which also led to the death of our father. We have seen reforms after reforms by the government of Mugabe and we are fed up with it. Our economy is in shambles and it is just not profitable and safe enough for us to remain in Zimbabwe. We have decided to relocate our farm to Swaziland, a neighboring country, where we have acquired lands. Our capital base is in South Africa where we are temporarily living pending such time logistics would be ready for full-scale operation in Swaziland.

Bearing in mind that some African Presidents and their government are playing Russian Roulette over the Zimbabwean land crisis, every effort has begun in earnest to move our capital base to a stable country where it can be safer, hence contacting you. With a capital base of U.S$25 million, there is a great deal of secrecy involved to avoid the piercing eyes and smelling noses of the government of Zimbabwe and their agents.

It indicates a change from isolated bombings and incidents to systematic and coordinated guerrilla warfare throughout the Gaza Strip.

This type of warfare, the militants believe, could provide them with the legitimacy that to some extent they lost, especially after the attacks at the Erez checkpoint which put a halt to the ever-thinning stream of Palestinian workers entering Israel.

This system also appears to have the advantage of being safer, since it is hard for Israel to discover the perpetrators in advance and prevent them from attacking. Whether or not it can be compared with the Hezbollah's tactics in Lebanon is a moot point. It was successfully used in Afghanistan against the Soviet forces, and is now being employed against the Americans in Iraq.

If indeed this is a new strategy, it was born out of the difficulty of "exporting" bombers to Israel and of the availability of the targets -settlers and soldiers in APCs - in proximity to the attackers. The success of three attacks in the last 10 days and their effect on the public will probably mean they will be expanded and possibly also copied in the West Bank.

The system strengthens the image of Hamas and Islamic Jihad since they are perceived as fighting against a regular army rather than civilians. That is why the two groups realized immediately that showing off body parts and making excessive demands for a prisoner swap would weaken their stance.

One of the "non-violent civic actions" that Zvakwana! is claiming credit for was carried out before the Independence Day celebrations on Apr. 18. Some activists spray painted lamp posts and the sewage pipe along Tongogara Road in the capital -- Harare -- which Mugabe normally uses to travel to the National Sports Stadium (where the celebration was held).
The activists also painted a Zvakwana! slogan, "Get UP Stand UP", on turnstiles and walls at the stadium. "There was so much graffiti," says the group, that "the regime couldn’t repaint it before Mugabe's trip, so he had to take a different route!"

In the interests of public safety and to encourage greater effective resistance to the regime please read how best to deal with the effects of teargas.

Stay calm and focused! Fear and confusion are the State's major weapon. Confidence, determination, preparation and awareness of your strength is your best weapon. When your body heats up (from running or panicking, for example), irritation may increase. Part of the reason is that your pores will open allowing more absorption of the chemicals.

*Make your way to a safe space with fresh air.
*Face the wind, open eyes, hold arms out and walk around to let fresh air decontaminate you. Take slow deep breaths of clean air.
*Don't touch your eyes or your face as you may re-contaminate yourself.
*Blow your nose, spit out chemicals.

If you attend a public event where you think the police will use teargas, make sure that you take a cloth and some water so that you can place something wet over your face.

"It is little bit of magic from Allah," says Mahdi, stuffing fresh leaves in his mouth, his teeth and tongue coated in a green of saliva and chewed khat, also known as miraah in Kenya.

UN officials dismiss the government's estimate as "impossible" and "a fantasy".

"The government does not want to admit that its land grab has been a disaster and that Zimbabwe can no longer produce enough food to feed itself," said a political scientist, John Makumbe, the chairman of the Zimbabwe branch of Transparency International.

Israeli police and army spokespeople say that security forces use force only after stone throwing breaks out.

But last month, during a protest against the fence, this correspondent witnessed security forces firing tear gas and stun grenades into a peaceful demonstration. The firing continued for about 45 minutes before Palestinian youths began throwing stones.

Later that day, Israeli police tied a 12-year-old Palestinian boy to the hood of a Jeep.

The boy, Mohammed Badwan, said he was beaten by soldiers and then tied by his belt to the jeep for four hours as a human shield. "The soldiers would come by and slap me," he said.

When rabbi Arik Ascherman, executive director of the dovish group Rabbis for Human Rights, tried to intervene on behalf of the boy, he was himself handcuffed and forced to serve as a human shield, Ascherman said.

REPORTER: A number of times from the podium you've said U.S. troops do not torture individuals. Is this one of those rare exceptions here that torture took place?

DONALD RUMSFELD: I think that -- I'm not a lawyer. My impression is that what has been charged thus far is abuse, which I believe technically is different from torture. Just a minute. I don't know if the -- it is correct to say what you just said, that torture has taken place, or that there's been a conviction for torture. And therefore I'm not going to address the "torture" word.

Torture refers to purposefully harming someone who is in custody—unfree to fight back or protect himself or herself and imperiled by that incapacitation. Other violent practices, like domestic violence and battery, also involve the purposeful causing of pain, and in some ways these practices might “look like” torture. But they lack the public dimension of custodianship. The distinction does not turn on what happens, because if it did, torture would be difficult if not impossible to distinguish from domestic violence and battery. Pain and suffering, humiliation and injury are common to all. But, legally, severe pain, suffering, humiliation and injury constitute torture only if they serve some public purpose and if the status and role of the torturer emanates from a public authority and if the person being harmed is in custody.
[...]
What was done to the Iraqi detainees was torture because the detainees were in the custody of the US military and private contractors, because they were compelled by their captors to assume the humiliating positions and because they were powerless to resist their humiliation. [...]

On at least one occasion, the 320th MP Battalion at Abu Ghraib held a handful of “ghost detainees” (6-8) for OGAs that they moved around within the facility to hide them from a visiting International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) survey team. This maneuver was deceptive, contrary to Army Doctrine, and in violation of international law. (Findings and Recommendations, Part II, No. 33)

If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job.
-- a U.S. official, referring to the use of torture in interrogations, Washington Post, 2002